Revolution and the Republic

by Jeremy Jennings

  history of France’, he wrote, ‘begins with the French language. Language is the

  principal sign of a nationality.’123 The ‘continuous infiltration’ of the French

  language over the entire territory was an integral part of the overcoming of local

  particularisms and of the intimate fusion of races that constituted the identity of the

  nation. France, on Michelet’s view, accordingly stopped at the border between

  Lorraine and Alsace. Next, Michelet was in no doubt that ‘the war of wars’ that had

  opposed England and France had been of ‘immense service’ in confirming and

  strengthening French nationality. It was, he wrote, ‘through seeing the English

  close up that [the provinces] became conscious that they were a part of France’.124

  Thirdly, Michelet did not hesitate to describe Paris as ‘the great and complete

  symbol of the country’. An entity which resulted from the complete annihilation of

  local and provincial sentiment, Michelet ventured, might be regarded as being

  ‘entirely negative’, but in the case of Paris it was precisely from the negation of

  such local particularities that derived the qualities of ‘generality’ and ‘receptivity’

  towards the universal that in turn denoted the ‘superiority’ of the Ile-de-France over

  the regions and of France herself over Europe.125

  France, according to Michelet, had therefore been able to ‘neutralize’ and

  ‘convert’ those parts of her territory that had been originally English, German, or

  Spanish and, in so doing, she had produced an ‘intimate fusion’ of civilizations

  120 ‘Tableau de France’ in Michelet, Œuvres complètes, iv. Histoire de France, 331–84.

  121 Ibid. 381.

  122 Ibid. 384.

  123 Ibid. 331.

  124 Ibid. 377.

  125 Ibid. 381.

  Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat

  225

  and races. Hence, she was the most ‘artificial’, ‘human’, and ‘free’ of countries.

  France as such existed as ‘an abstract unity’ and it was precisely because of this level

  of abstraction that she could be conceived as ‘the universal patrie and as the city of

  Providence’.126 Accordingly Michelet was able to begin his Introduction à l’histoire

  universelle with the lavish claims that France was ‘the pilot of the vessel of

  humanity’ and that his introduction to universal history might just as well have

  been entitled an introduction to the history of France.127

  Yet, as Michelet accepted, France had failed to live up to the promise announced

  by ‘the brilliant morning of July’, and it was therefore in a mood of profound

  pessimism that Michelet penned his classic essay, Le Peuple, published in 1846.

  ‘I see France’ he wrote in the preface dedicated to Edgar Quinet, ‘sinking hour by

  hour . . . our country is disappearing.’ The central theme of Le Peuple was a

  straightforward one. The text began with a long discussion of the aspirations and

  sentiments of the different classes and groups which made up French society: the

  peasant, the factory worker, the artisan, the manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the

  government official, and the wealthy bourgeois. Michelet’s conclusion was that

  each class, in its own particular way, existed in a state of bondage. For example, the

  factory worker, despite his relative affluence, lived in a world of ‘fate and necessity’.

  Dominated by the machine he was reduced to ‘physical weakness and mental

  impotence’. Likewise, the peasant, for all that he possessed and loved his land,

  was ground down by poverty and consumed by hatred of his neighbours and the

  world. As alone on his property as on a desert island, Michelet wrote, he had

  become ‘a savage’. The total effect of this situation of generalized bondage, Miche-

  let argued, was that the French people hated and despised one another. The rich

  hated and no longer knew the poor; the poor despised and did not trust the rich.

  France, in sum, was afflicted by an ‘evil’, an evil which Michelet identified as ‘the

  chill and paralysis of the heart’ and which, he believed, manifested itself as

  ‘unsociableness’.

  Where was the remedy to be found? Michelet’s short answer was that, if the evil

  lay in the heart, it was here also that the solution was to be found. The French had

  to remember that they were ‘brothers after all’. They had difficulty doing this,

  Michelet contended, because France had become overrefined, overcultivated, and,

  as a consequence, the emotions of the French and their capacity for love, as well as

  for action, had been dwarfed and stultified. ‘The separation of men and classes’,

  Michelet wrote, ‘is due principally to the absurd opposition between instinct and

  reflection that has been established in our time.’ What was needed was a return to

  instincts and with that an escape from what Michelet described as ‘this bastard

  hotchpotch’.

  It was precisely at this point that Michelet’s prose was at its most lyrical. The best

  example that he could find of man in his uncorrupted and instinctive state was in

  the shape of the child. ‘The child’, he wrote, ‘is the people themselves in their native

  truth before they were deformed; it is the people without vulgarity, rudeness or

  126 Ibid. 384.

  127 ‘Introduction à l’histoire universelle’, 227.

  226

  Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat

  envy.’ The child, put simply, was the ‘interpreter of the people’, the purest

  expression of what was ‘young and primitive’ in the people, an expression of ‘the

  people innocent’. What of the people themselves? ‘Son of the people’, Michelet

  wrote, ‘I have lived with them, I know them’, and what he knew was that, although

  disfigured, their degeneration was only ‘superficial’. The foundations were intact.

  This race, he told his readers, still has wine in its blood and ‘is capable of action and

  is ever ready to act’. The people, in brief, maintained the virtues of innocence,

  compassion, self-sacrifice, love, and faith. They possessed the qualities of simplicity,

  the capacity to see what their more sophisticated fellows were blind to, an instinct

  which allowed them to sympathize with life. This led to the final, curious element

  of this part of Michelet’s argument. The simplicity of the people, he argued, drew

  them close to ‘the man of genius’, that rare person who combined ‘the instinct of

  the simple and the reflection of the wise’, the merits of both the child and adult, the

  barbarian and the civilized. The people exist, Michelet contended, ‘in their highest

  power only in the man of genius; in him resides their great soul’.

  It is the concluding, third part of Michelet’s Le Peuple that takes us to the heart of

  his nationalism. The regeneration of the French nation would not be achieved by a

  return to instinct alone. A faith was also required, because only ‘a God, an altar’

  could engender sacrifice. The problem was that we had lost our gods, and thus

  required a new faith. This faith was to be France herself. It was to be through

  France, and not as isolated individuals, that ‘the soul of the people’ was to realize its

  nature. From this Michelet was able to provide a description of France, and of

  France alone, as t
he inheritor of the traditions of Greece and Rome, and as the

  country which had realized what Christianity had promised: brotherly equality.

  France embodied ‘the salvation of the world’, whilst ‘its own interest and its own

  destiny’ was identical with that of ‘humanity’. Such a conclusion, Michelet re-

  marked, was ‘not fanaticism’ but a ‘short summary of a considered judgement based

  upon long study’. In particular, this view rested upon Michelet’s identification of the

  Revolution of 1789 with the advent of the age of Justice, Right and Fraternity.128

  For Michelet it was no idle coincidence that France had proclaimed her ‘lofty

  and original revelation’ at the very moment when the ‘conflicting’ Frances existing

  within her bosom were being suppressed and her provincialisms were disappearing.

  France was herself, and in the very instant that she proclaimed ‘the future common

  rights of the entire world’ was never more distinguishable from other nations.

  This in turn led to a broader conclusion: nationalities were not on the point

  of disappearing. On the contrary, Michelet announced, ‘I see them every day

  developing profound moral characteristics and becoming individuals instead of

  collections of men.’

  There were several interesting dimensions to this claim. We have seen that

  Michelet accredited the long war against England with a key role in the formation

  of French national self-consciousness. France came to know herself through her

  enemy. In similar vein, Michelet now scorned all those who believed that France

  128 Michelet’s interpretation of the Revolution will be explored in the next chapter.

  Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat

  227

  should copy or imitate English arts, fashion, literature, and, worse still, political

  institutions. To do so, Michelet argued, was to invite France ‘to march against

  her history and her nature’, to counsel that France should model herself upon

  ‘anti-France’.

  That England explained France but by opposition was a theme very evident in

  Michelet’s Introduction à l’histoire universelle, and was used not only to demonstrate

  that the two nations possessed different moral characteristics but also to lend

  further support to the claim that France had a special destiny. At bottom, Michelet

  shared the prevailing republican view that England was a country dominated by the

  aristocracy. In his particular case he stressed that ‘[t]he land of France belongs to

  fifteen or twenty million peasants who cultivate it’, whilst in England it was held by

  a few thousand individuals who had it farmed for them. ‘What a serious moral

  difference’, he remarked. Moreover, if Michelet recognized that it had been the

  ‘heroism’ of the English aristocracy that had begun the long march towards

  ‘modern liberty’, he was unambiguously of the view that heroism was not to be

  confused with liberty. ‘In England’, Michelet wrote, ‘dominated as it is by Ger-

  manic and feudal elements, it is old, barbaric heroism, aristocracy, liberty through

  privilege that triumphs. Liberty without equality, unjust and impious liberty, is

  nothing else than the absence of sociability in society. France wants liberty through

  equality. . . . Liberty in France is just and holy.’ It was around this ideal, this vision

  of liberty combined with equality, that France, a country made for action and not

  for conquest, would construct a future not only for herself but for the entire

  ‘human race’.129 France, Michelet concluded eloquently, was ‘a religion’.

  Eric Hobsbawm has argued that the liberal nationalism associated with mid-

  nineteenth-century Europe rested upon two important assumptions: the principle

  of nationalities applied in practice only to nations of a certain geographical size and

  self-determination was relevant only to nations that could be considered to be both

  culturally and economically viable.130 Applied to the nationalism of Michelet, this

  characterization arguably misses its mark. For Michelet, the very idea of a nation

  implied not homogeneity but a plurality of different cultures living harmoniously

  side by side around a common point of unity. The particular genius of the French

  nation lay in its capacity to absorb and to assimilate these cultures (as well as races)

  and to do so in a manner that enhanced, rather than diminished, their vitality.

  Thus, the creation of the French nation had been a spontaneous and voluntary

  process, and one devoid of either economic imperatives or cultural expansionism.

  More than this, France was also adjudged to possess the capacity to absorb the best

  of what other nations and peoples had to offer, thereby making the French nation

  in aspiration the most human and universal of all nationalities. Fraternity both

  within and beyond the nation was the common theme.

  Accordingly, for Michelet, the worst moments of France’s history were those

  characterized by bitter division, and this, it seemed, was increasingly the case under

  the July Monarchy. It was therefore with immense relief and enthusiasm that

  129 ‘Introduction à l’histoire universelle’, 253.

  130 Nations and Nationalism since 1870 (Cambridge, 1999).

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  Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat

  Michelet, like so many of his fellow citizens, greeted the revolution of 1848.131

  Reinstated to his teaching post at the Collège de France, he again proclaimed his

  faith in the ability of France to lead the other nations of Europe towards emanci-

  pation and towards a future characterized by liberty and justice. He was not to be

  alone.132 However, the Republic, with first Alphonse de Lamartine and later Alexis

  de Tocqueville as its Minister of Foreign Affairs, showed itself to be distinctly

  disinclined to carry its principles abroad by force of arms (or, for that matter, to

  issue a direct challenge to the much-hated treaties of 1815), preferring rather to

  affirm France’s right to defend her own territory whilst offering only moral support

  to other nations seeking to pursue a similar path.133

  It was in the wake of the disillusionment that followed the bloody repression of

  the popular protests of the ‘June days’ and the gradual reassertion of monarchical

  and counter-revolutionary power across Europe that Michelet envisaged the publi-

  cation of a further volume asserting the primacy of the nation. Intended as an act of

  recompense for the betrayal inflicted upon the heroic and oppressed peoples

  abandoned by the Republic, the primary focus of Légendes démocratiques du Nord

  fell upon the struggles for national emancipation in eastern and south-eastern

  Europe.134 As with Carrel and Lamennais, the tragic fate of Poland occupied centre

  stage, and again it was assumed that Poland and France were joined together by a

  singular bond of shared experiences and sentiments. Michelet’s message was

  unmistakable. Europe, he announced, ‘is not in any way a chance grouping, a

  simple juxtaposition of peoples; it is a melodious instrument, a lyre, where each

  nationality is a note and represents a key. There is nothing arbitrary about it; each

  one is necessary in itself and necessary in relation to the others. To remove one

  alone would be to modify the whole, to reduce this array
of nations to impossibility,

  dissonance, and silence.’135 To seek to destroy one of these nations was therefore to

  act against ‘the sublime harmony designed by Providence’.

  It was also an act of folly. Nations, according to Michelet, were indestructible.

  Despite every attempt to suppress their existence, they reappeared, reinvigorated by

  their travails. And this was the lesson to be drawn from the repeated attempts of a

  barbarous Russia to annihilate ‘the France of the North’. Paradoxically, Michelet

  affirmed, Polish nationhood had been reaffirmed by Russian oppression, and it was

  Russia itself that had been immeasurably weakened, descending ‘into degradation,

  into moral asphyxia’. The truth therefore was that it was to the Polish people that

  Russia would owe its own ‘resurrection’. No greater calling was bestowed upon

  ‘poor Poland’ than the ‘salvation’ of ‘this drunken and mad giant’.

  131 See Vialleneix, Michelet, les travaux et les jours, 322–35.

  132 See Darriulat, Les Patriotes, 182–92.

  133 On 6 Mar. 1848 Lamartine had issued a Manifeste aux Puissances, indicating that France no

  longer accepted the treaties of 1815 as binding and offering support to ‘oppressed nationalities’.

  Lamartine subsequently went out of his way to assure the rival powers that France’s intentions were

  pacific.

  134 Œuvres complètes de Michelet, xvi. 99–323.

  135 Ibid. 137.

  Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat

  229

  Michelet’s zeal for the cause of Poland was not without reservation. He was

  troubled in particular by the desire of many Polish nationalists to ally the fate of the

  Polish nation to that of the Catholic Church. In Ireland, Spain, Italy, and France

  herself, Michelet contended, Catholicism had had a sterilizing and neutralizing

  effect, sapping the vitality of each nation. Poland in turn had been weakened by the

  intrusion of the Church (and especially by the ‘invasion’ of the Jesuits), becoming

  separated from its Orthodox neighbours. In this, therefore, he did not share the

  views of Lamennais. Nevertheless, Michelet did not wish to suggest that the Poles

  should abjure their faith. This, he knew, was not possible. Rather, he wished only

  that their faith should be extended and broadened. He was thus able to return to