Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  What Louis Napoleon made of this development would not become clear for months, but as a parliamentary manoeuvre it was brilliantly successful. Disraeli in 1844 defined ‘a sound Conservative government’ as ‘Tory men and Whig measures’;23 in France in 1849 it was liberal (or Republican) men and conservative measures. Tocqueville was well aware of this; he knew that the remodelled Barrot cabinet could not survive without the support, or at least the toleration, of the Burgraves and their supporters, and sometimes chided Dufaure, that sturdy Republican, for being insufficiently accommodating to their wishes. But the cabinet survived, and indeed, in the Assembly, grew stronger. Tocqueville never forgot its frailty; nor did his wife: when Nassau Senior visited her at the foreign ministry in July she remarked, ‘We ourselves have removed nothing from our own house. We are birds of passage in this hôtel.’ In theory, the ministry was at the mercy of Thiers, and he was so unfriendly to the experiment that he deterred Rémusat from accepting the post of foreign minister. But in practice he could not bring Barrot down for no reason, and Barrot was careful not to give him an excuse. The reshuffle had greatly strengthened the team. Barrot could rely on Dufaure to help him effectively in the day-to-day battle on the floor, and Tocqueville had become a strong parliamentary performer. Falloux, the Catholic and legitimist, regarded himself as Dufaure and Tocqueville’s prisoner, but he was a loyal colleague and a capable minister of education. The ministry’s programme was unexceptionable. By the autumn Tocqueville might reasonably hope that it would succeed in what he regarded as its main mission: to survive until prosperity returned and the Republic had become generally accepted.24

  If Tocqueville’s appointment to the cabinet was somewhat fortuitous (it was Dufaure whom Barrot needed) his appointment to the foreign ministry was still more so. He had again hoped for the ministry of education, but Falloux, indispensable as the one legitimist in the cabinet, would not move, so he accepted foreign affairs. He took office on 2 June 1849.

  He now sat at the desk where Talleyrand, Chateaubriand and Guizot had sat before him, but if he gave the point a moment’s attention, or wondered what sort of a revolution it was which promoted Chateaubriand’s nephew, he did not say so (although it may have been at this time that he amused himself by looking up Talleyrand’s letters to Louis XVIII in the archives). Another man might have felt that he had reached the summit of his career, but Tocqueville had never wanted or expected to become foreign minister. He was far from sure that he would be equal to the challenge. ‘I am by nature full of self-distrust,’ he was to write, ‘and the nine years which I had frittered away so miserably in the last parliaments of the monarchy had much increased this natural weakness.’ But he had always hoped for power, and now he found that he actually enjoyed exercising it. The discovery gave him self-confidence, which his oratorical successes since January 1848 had already stimulated: he preferred the National Assembly as an audience to the Chamber of Deputies, though because of the size of the hall he had to scream his way through his speeches, interrupting them from time to time to rest his throat. The foreign ministry crowned this development. It even cured the bad manners resulting from his shyness: he no longer had to seek out politicians and grope for something to say to them; they came to him, full of business, and at last he found it easy to be gracious. He discovered that great questions were not necessarily more difficult to manage than smaller ones and that, if anything, he enjoyed them more: he rose to their challenge. Besides, he was always sure of willing and capable helpers. Of these the most important to him personally was Arthur de Gobineau, a promising young journalist whom he selected for his chef de cabinet (head of his private office).* It proved to be a good choice: Gobineau served Tocqueville devotedly.25

  Tocqueville was excellently qualified for his new position. He had travelled widely, and had a large acquaintance among the notables of half Europe. He had long reflected on modern history and on France’s place in the world. In personal relations he was frank, sincere and intelligent, and contributed greatly to the harmony and smooth running of Barrot’s unstable cabinet. He worked well with the Assembly, and seems to have made a favourable impression on the statesmen and diplomats he encountered. He threw himself into his work with all his formidable powers of application and understanding. He had at last found ways of deploying his talents as he had hoped to do when he first entered politics. All in all, there is reason to think that had he enjoyed a longer spell in office he might have left as strong a mark as any of his illustrious predecessors; but circumstances were against him, and almost as soon as he had mastered his job, he lost it.

  Given his antics at the time of the Mehemet Ali crisis, he might have been expected to do something rash: he was as ardent a nationalist as ever. But he had always been more prudent than his language suggested, and he had no difficulty in adopting the principles which had governed French foreign policy since 1830, if not since the battle of Waterloo. Never again must France wantonly unite the European Powers against herself. In 1849 it was also supremely necessary to reckon with the short and long-term consequences of the great revolutionary storm which had broken over Europe the year before and had still not entirely subsided. Among the problems which Tocqueville had to deal with were those of German refugees in Switzerland and Hungarian refugees in Turkey,26 though he was determined to interfere as little as possible in the affairs of central and eastern Europe. But there was no escaping the question of Italy, which dominated Tocqueville’s months in office and led, both directly and indirectly, to his fall.

  The whole peninsula had been disturbed. In the spring of 1849 Piedmont’s renewed challenge to Austria for control of Lombardy had been crushingly defeated at the battle of Novara. Revolution had been suppressed in Naples and Sicily, and in August the Austrians reconquered Venice. All these incidents might well concern, without involving, the French Republic. Instead it plunged into the quagmire of the Roman problem.

  The Pope, Pius IX, had been driven from the city in November 1848 and had taken refuge at Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples. Mazzini had proclaimed the Roman Republic, and Garibaldi had arrived to command its defence. Fatally, in the spring of 1849, the French Assembly authorized the Barrot government to send an expeditionary force to the papal states: Tocqueville voted for the small credit requested. The force sailed under General Oudinot and occupied Civita Vecchia. The declared object of the expedition was left vague, but it could only be either to restore the Pope or to defend the Roman Republic. Either plan was calamitous. It was like the first despatch of American ‘military advisers’ to South Vietnam: a commitment had been made without any clear perception of the consequences.

  Seen in retrospect, the temporal power of the Pope was clearly a medieval anachronism that served no good purpose, religious or otherwise. But Pius IX and his cardinals were intent on its restoration: that is, on the Pope’s right and duty to reign as an all but absolute monarch. The temporal power was assumed to be necessary to preserve the papacy and Catholicism itself. The large body of Catholic voters in France agreed. It meant nothing that Rome’s priestly government had long been notorious throughout Europe for its inefficiency and oppression, or that the Romans had repudiated it. Pius did not much mind who restored his power provided that it was restored untrammelled, and he was rightly confident that if France, the eldest daughter of the Church, would not do it, then Austria would. He and his secretary of state, Cardinal Antonelli, as unyielding as they were slippery, cared very little for the dilemmas of French statesmen.

  Such being the case, the most prudent course for those statesmen would have been to hold aloof from the whole affair, but once the expeditionary force had sailed that was impossible. Tocqueville entered office refusing to take responsibility for the decision to send it, of which he said he thoroughly disapproved, though how he reconciled that with his vote for the expedition is hard to see.27 But French prestige was now involved, and must be maintained. He did not even object when, on joining the cabinet, he learned that the order to take Rome
by force had already been given.

  Prestige was the fundamental issue, and not a simple one. The Catholic vote was important, and Tocqueville had no opinion of the Roman republicans: so far as he was concerned they were mere terrorists, like their supporters in Paris, who staged a demonstration on their behalf on 13 June (thanks to the indecisiveness of Ledru-Rollin it turned into a half-hearted rising that was easily suppressed: Ledru fled into exile). But the French state had repeatedly intervened in Italy over the centuries, competing for power and influence there first with Spain and then with Austria; it was the general view that the peninsula could not be abandoned now. After 13 June the Republicans who wanted to go to Garibaldi’s assistance did not matter; but Louis Napoleon did. His two uncles, the Emperor Napoleon and the Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais, had conquered and ruled Italy, and the president had his own ideas of what its future should be: there was no question of a hands-off policy. Tocqueville and the liberals agreed: they took the straightforward nationalist view that France must assert herself in her own sphere of influence if she wanted to remain a Great Power. So they acquiesced in the attack on Rome, although the preamble to the French constitution affirmed that the Republic would never attack another country (still less a sister republic). As Thiers was to say, ‘To know that the Austrian flag was flying on the Castle of St Angelo is a humiliation under which no Frenchman could bear to exist.’ Tocqueville entirely agreed; but he gave strict orders to Oudinot not to damage any of the great monuments of Rome, and like everyone else he hoped, even assumed, that by taking Rome the French would be in a position to induce the Pope to liberalize his government.28

  Oudinot entered Rome on 2 July, and handed back government of the city to the Pope. The fallacy in French policy immediately became apparent: Pius would make no important reforms, and did not even thank the French for what they had done. He could not be coerced for fear that he would call in the Austrians – the one outcome which was intolerable to all shades of French opinion. Thoroughly perplexed, the French started quarrelling among themselves, and Tocqueville was in the middle of it. He had sent Corcelle as special envoy to the Pope, but Corcelle, once a carbonaro and now a devout Catholic, went over to Pius IX’s side and complained incessantly about the minister’s attempts to keep him in order, which led Tocqueville to reflect on the limited convenience of having a close friend for an agent (‘Corcelle is driving me mad’).29

  At this stage Tocqueville and the president agreed precisely about the policy to be pursued, even if they could not get Corcelle to execute it: pressure on the Pope must be maintained; but conservative opinion was startled when Louis Napoleon deliberately leaked to the press a letter expressing his displeasure with Pius. Thiers, who cared nothing for liberal government in Rome so long as the Austrians were kept out, tried to undermine both president and ministers in the Assembly, and Louis Napoleon was furious with Barrot for not defending him, and especially his letter, effectively. Falloux had just had to resign because of ill-health, and his departure would probably have broken up the ministry anyway, but Louis Napoleon had already decided to have done with it. The Roman wranglings had laid bare fundamental incompatibilities between the president and the ministers. It had become all too clear that these last regarded themselves as answerable, in the last resort, to the Assembly. Louis Napoleon decided that the time had come to show them, and the Assembly too, who was really the master.

  Legally he was unassailable: ‘The President of the Republic appoints and dismisses ministers,’ said the Constitution (Chapter v, section 64), and after reading accounts of cabinet meetings in which his wishes and suggestions were almost routinely snubbed it is easy to sympathize with him.30 In the Assembly Thiers and the Burgraves, blinded by their years in authority, by personal vanity and by self-interest, believed, and acted upon the belief, that the last word would always rest with them, so long as they were supported by a parliamentary majority; they would always be able to control Louis Napoleon, even without taking office (‘the folly of clever men is wonderful,’ remarked Tocqueville).31 President Andrew Jackson of the United States had faced a similar situation in 1831, and had responded similarly, by dismissing his entire cabinet, except for the postmaster-general, and Jackson was not a Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon sent a message to the Assembly on 31 October dismissing the Barrot ministry and naming its successors, who included Barrot’s brother – thereafter known as ‘Cain’.32

  In this message Louis Napoleon not only laid down that he must have for ministers men who would do as they were told, ‘men who would be as conscious of my responsibilities as of their own, as concerned with action as with words’, but added, ‘the name of Napoleon is in itself a programme. That is to say: at home – order, authority, religion, the well-being of the people; abroad – national prestige. It is this policy, initiated by my election, which I desire to see triumphant with the support of the Assembly and the people.’33

  Tocqueville described this message as ‘insolent’. He might well take personal umbrage at its thrust, since he had always been careful to work amiably with the president, informing and consulting him on everything. Foreseeing such a reaction Louis Napoleon wrote a private letter to Tocqueville, assuring him of his liking, respect and sympathy; the implication was that there were others in the former cabinet, no doubt including the notoriously uncouth Dufaure, of whom this could not be said. Tocqueville replied gratefully, while admitting that his feelings had been hurt, and visited the Élysée to show that he was reconciled.34

  But he had no doubt as to what the event meant. The president, he told Beaumont:

  wants to govern, and above all to seem to govern all by himself. He thought that, little by little, we were casting him into the shade and that the country would in the end lose sight of him. He wanted to display his independence of us and of the National Assembly. That is why he chose the moment when we were most assured of a parliamentary majority and why, instead of choosing new ministers from the leaders of that majority, he has looked to the lowest of the low among the parties for men to serve him.35

  He thought it was now clear that Louis Napoleon was determined somehow to resurrect the Empire, and had dismissed Barrot and his colleagues because they would never assist, or even tolerate, a coup d’état, although he admitted that there had been many secondary reasons why the president might have wanted to get rid of his inconvenient ministers. Unlike most of his friends, Tocqueville did not expect the president to overthrow the Republic immediately. He had studied the man closely since his letter to Clamorgan in the previous spring, and among other things had noticed Louis Napoleon’s tendency to take one backward step for every two taken forward. His letters to Beaumont on the affair are venomously exact and penetrating; it is lamentable that he did not complete his portrait of the president in the Souvenirs:

  The President is a monomaniac who will only give up the imperial dream with his last breath; he is audacious to the point of imprudence and insanity; but at the same time he is lymphatic and apathetic. He never makes two moves in succession. He has just given his vanity great satisfaction; he thinks he has humiliated the Assembly and all the party leaders and has much improved his standing in the eyes of France. That is enough for him for the moment. He will live off it for some time, until a new prick of the spur rouses him to jump the last ditch.36

  The crisis was over for the time being, but that did not make it any easier for Tocqueville and his friends to decide what to do next.

  At least Gobineau could be provided for: Tocqueville secured a post for him in the French embassy at Berne. This sort of patronage was to become all too common under the Third Republic, and cause serious trouble, but Tocqueville would have been surprised to be told that there was anything objectionable in his conduct. He had enjoyed playing patron to his friends: he had not only sent Corcelle to Naples and Lamoricière to St. Petersburg, but at Louis Napoleon’s suggestion had appointed Beaumont to the embassy at Vienna. Now Beaumont resigned and returned to his seat in the Assembly
. He regretted having to leave Vienna, and was warm in his thanks to Tocqueville for having sent him there. Tocqueville’s response to events was not quite so straightforward. He took a modest satisfaction in his short record as foreign minister: ‘I think I did all that there was to be done during my time in power ... I think I made a contribution to enforcing order on 13 June, to maintaining the general peace and to bringing France and England together,’ but his dismissal left him at a loss: as he told his niece Denise, ‘I don’t have the art of immediately substituting a large new mental project for the one that has ended’;37 in fact he seems to have fallen into the same pit of lethargy that swallowed him on his return from America in 1832; but worse was to follow. Marie had been exhausted by her exertions as a minister’s wife, and now she succumbed to a particularly prolonged and painful recurrence of her uterine troubles, which did not go away entirely until January. Soon after that, Tocqueville himself fell seriously ill.

  Medically, it was the turning-point of his life’s history: he was never again to be wholly free of doctors. It is therefore vexing that it is only possible to make a good guess as to the nature of his ailment. He coughed up blood in March and applied for a six-month leave of absence from the Assembly, which was granted on the 26th: as it turned out, he did not return to his duties for more than a year. His doctors (Andral and unnamed colleagues) seem to have taken the gravest view of his illness from the start, though they did not share all their alarms with their highly strung patient (who was to be plagued with untruthful physicians until his life’s end). At first they assured him that his lungs were in no way affected, and when he had recovered somewhat told him that they were healed; he seems to have believed them unquestioningly on both occasions. But the doctors were unsparing in their diagnosis of his larynx. It was a serious matter, they said, and the right treatment was a long and comprehensive rest of his throat (perhaps they thought that shouting in the Assembly through long and noisy sessions had done him no good). Through March and April and into May he was under orders to stay at home in the evenings (a rule that he faithfully obeyed, except for one dinner at the Élysée as the president’s guest) and was forbidden long conversations: he was allowed to speak but not to talk. Andral may have calculated that if he rested his throat he would also rest his lungs. In March there seem to have been fears for his life, and during April he was still very feeble. Marie fell ill again, perhaps from the strain of nursing him. He wrote in disgust to Monckton Milnes: ‘for six months our house has been a den of misery. When the wife gets better the husband falls ill, and vice versa.’ His chief concern was to be cured of his cures, or at any rate to stop taking his medicines. He was livelier in May, and as soon as Marie was better they were off to Tocqueville. She had already decided that they ought to spend the winter somewhere warm on the Mediterranean: ‘if he is not to speak, if he is not to write, if he is not to read or even think about politics, and such are the orders of his physicians what is the use of his staying ...?’38