‘the most numerous and most forgotten part of the nation’ to its rightful place.66 If
Thierry was only ever to remain a historian, dedicating his life to writing the history
of the oppressed French ‘nation’, Guizot was to deploy these historical insights to
defend and to further the interests of the ‘new France’. In parallel to this, and with
similar motives and inspiration, Auguste Mignet and Adolphe Thiers wrote and
published histories of the French Revolution.
Both histories were largely narrative in form and were meticulous in their
attention to detail. Each author placed his account in the broad sweep of French
history and was comprehensive in his analysis of the events and personalities of the
period, although Thiers, unlike Mignet, ended his narration with Napoleon
Bonaparte’s overthrow of the Directory in November 1799.67 Both sought to
write histories for a general public and both succeeded in reaching what was, by
nineteenth-century standards, a vast readership.68 Likewise, Mignet and Thiers
sought to place themselves above the fray, putting passions and hatreds to one side,
Thiers in particular alerting his readers to the fact that his aim had been to grasp
‘the deep designs of Providence in these great events’.69 The ambition was to make
the Revolution intelligible. Yet, for all the appearance of impartiality and detach-
ment, the two men, both schooled in the liberal journalism of the 1820s,70 believed
that there were important lessons to be learnt from the history of the Revolution.
65 See Lionel Gossman, Between History and Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 83–151.
66 ‘Première lettre sur l’histoire de France’, Dix Ans d’Études Historiques (1846), 257–62. This text
was 1st publ. in Le Courrier français in July 1820 and republ. in the 1st edn. of the Lettres sur l’Histoire
de France in 1827.
67 Thiers was subsequently to remedy this omission by writing his Histoire du Consulat et de
l’Empire, vol. i of which appeared in 1845; 20 vols. appeared in all.
68 It is estimated that by 1833 Thiers’s history had sold 150,000 volumes.
69 Histoire de la Révolution française (1823–7), x. 530.
70 Mignet wrote for Le Courrier français; Thiers wrote for Le Constitutionnel.
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From the very first sentence of his Histoire de la Révolution française, Mignet
made his intentions absolutely clear. ‘I am going to trace’, he announced, ‘the
history of the French Revolution, which in Europe began the era of new societies in
the same way as the English Revolution began the era of new governments. This
revolution did not only modify political power: it changed the entire interior
constitution of the nation.’71 France, he specified, had been a country where
royal power knew no limits and which had been given over to arbitrary government
and privilege. In place of this abusive regime, Mignet continued, ‘the revolution
substituted one which better conformed to justice and which was more appropriate
to the age’.72 It had replaced arbitrary rule by law and privilege by equality; it had
freed men from the distinctions of class, land from the barriers of provinces, trade
from the restrictions of corporations, and agriculture from feudalism; the whole had
been reduced to one state, to one law, and to one people.
To attain these great reforms, the Revolution had had many obstacles to
overcome and it was this that had produced its ‘fleeting excesses’. Forced to fight
its enemies, it had not known how to measure its efforts or moderate its victory.
Internal resistance had produced ‘the sovereignty of the multitude’ and external
aggression had generated ‘military domination’. However, ‘despite the anarchy and
despite the despotism, the end has been obtained: the old society has been
destroyed during the Revolution and the new one has been founded under the
Empire’.73 To this Mignet then added the observation that, when a reform was
necessary and the moment to realize it had arrived, nothing could prevent it. Thus,
in retracing the events of the Revolution from the opening of the Estates-General to
the fall of Napoleon in 1814, it had to be recognized that each phase was ‘almost
obligatory’, that, given its causes and the passions it had aroused, the Revolution
had to follow this specific path and produce this particular outcome.
Next, Mignet sketched out a history of France that broke decisively with that of
Frankish conquest. At its origin, he specified, the crown was elective; the nation was
sovereign; and the king was nothing but a military leader. The nation exercised
both legislative and judicial power. Nevertheless, in the feudal period this ‘royal
democracy’ gave way to a ‘royal aristocracy’. The monarch became hereditary and
the people were deprived of their sovereignty. Over time power became concen-
trated in the hands of one person. ‘During several centuries of continuous exertion’,
Mignet wrote, ‘the kings of France reduced the feudal edifice to ruins and lifted
themselves up on the debris.’74 Under Louis XIV, the ‘absolute monarchy’ was
established definitively and from that point onwards France lived under a regime
that was more arbitrary than it was despotic. Yet, little by little, the nation in the
form of the Third Estate began to reassert itself and to defend its own interests.
With each day it grew in strength, in wealth, and in enlightenment, to the extent
that it was ‘destined to combat and to dispossess’ the crown. At this point there also
emerged the new phenomenon of public opinion, increasingly critical and intoler-
ant of governmental abuses. ‘The century of reforms’, Mignet wrote, ‘was prepared
71 Mignet, Histoire de la Révolution française, depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1814 (1824), 1–2.
72 Ibid. 2.
73 Ibid. 3.
74 Ibid. 5.
History, Revolution, and Terror
255
by the century of philosophy’.75 Such was the state of affairs when Louis XVI
ascended to the throne and, despite his good intentions, there had been nothing he
could do to improve the situation. ‘The Estates-General’, Mignet concluded, ‘could
only decree a revolution which had already been accomplished.’76
Such was the eloquence of Mignet’s account of the Revolution that it would be
tempting to relate it in detail. For our purposes, however, it is sufficient to focus on
its major themes. Mignet, like Thiers, saw Louis XVI as a well-intentioned but
irresolute monarch, dominated by incompetent and unscrupulous courtiers. It was
his alliance with the clergy and the nobility against the Third Estate that first
pushed events in a radical direction, the Revolution gathering pace over the
summer of 1789 such that by the night of 4 August the monarchy had lost all
‘moral’ and ‘material’ influence. The people had become ‘the masters of society’.
Moreover, the divisions between those who wanted a ‘constitutional revolution’
and those eager to foster a ‘republican revolution’ were already visible. These
tensions were played out in the debates of the National Assembly but, as its
members grappled with the complicated issue of providing France with a new
<
br /> constitution, the forces of counter-revolution were preparing civil and foreign war.
Therefore, if the imposing Fête de la Fédération held to mark the first anniversary
of the storming of the Bastille was one of the most joyous and magnificent days of
the Revolution, it could only suspend the hostilities arising from the abolition of
the nobility and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Nevertheless, the Constitu-
tion of 1791 was a constitution in tune with ‘the ideas and situation’ of France. It
was ‘the work of the middle class’. It represented the end point of a journey that had
seen France endure the feudalism of aristocracy and the absolute power of monar-
chy, finally to arrive at a situation where the source, if not the exercise, of power
rested with the people. All citizens possessed equal rights and all could aspire to
participate in government. To that extent, it had established ‘genuine equality’.77
If this constitution was to perish, Mignet argued, it was not because of its own
defects. Placed between the aristocracy and the multitude, it was attacked from
both sides. Yet the multitude would never have become the ‘sovereign’ power
without civil war and without the foreign coalition against France. As a conse-
quence, the multitude made its own revolution, and was to do so in much the same
way as the middle class had done before it. The storming of the Tuileries on 10
August 1792 and the subsequent fall of the monarchy would be its 14 July 1789.
But, Mignet affirmed, ‘without the emigration there would not have been a
republic’.78
On this view, the 10 August amounted to an insurrection of the multitude
against the bourgeoisie and it was now that the ‘dictatorial and arbitrary’ phase of
the Revolution began. If the goal pursued had been liberty, henceforth it was to be
‘public safety’.79 The Girondins, Mignet contended, had been forced by circum-
stances to be republicans. The Jacobins, on the other hand, ‘wanted a republic with
the people’. To them, the most extreme form of democracy seemed the best form of
75 Ibid. 15.
76 Ibid. 34.
77 Ibid. 195–6.
78 Ibid. 198.
79 Ibid. 270.
256
History, Revolution, and Terror
government. Thus, in the shape of the constitution of 1793, they ‘established the
pure regime of the multitude’. But they also established ‘a terrible power’ that
would devour itself, where death became the only means of government and the
republic was delivered up to ‘daily and systematic executions’. With each step, the
spilling of blood became greater and the system of tyranny more violent.80
According to Mignet, Robespierre’s fall was inevitable and with his fall the
ascending revolutionary movement came to an end. Like Thiers, Mignet detested
Robespierre. He had all the personal qualities required for tyranny and was
supported by an ‘immense and fanatical sect’. Yet Mignet, like Joseph de Maistre
before him,81 acknowledged that the Jacobins had saved France and had saved the
Revolution. Liberty might have been abandoned but the salvation of the country
had been secured. With the organization of military victory, the task of the Jacobins
was accomplished. Their own success made them superfluous. Dictatorship could
come to an end.
Mignet’s account of what followed was premised upon the claim that the
Revolution had had two distinct goals: the setting up of a ‘free constitution’ and
the attainment of ‘a more perfected society’.82 The first six years of the Revolu-
tion—until the Constitution of Year III in 1795—had focused upon the first of
these but each attempt to forge a new constitutional settlement, either on the part
of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, or the multitude, had failed because each class
had sought to secure power exclusively for itself. After the ‘agitation’ and ‘destruc-
tion’ of the first years, the second stage of the Revolution sought ‘order’ and ‘rest’.
This period, Mignet contended, could itself be split into two: from the Directory to
the Consulate and from the Consulate through to the end of the Empire. In the
first, the Revolution had sought to produce ‘a people of workers’, in the second ‘a
people of soldiers’. At this point, we were far removed from the France of 14 July
and 10 August, from the morality and liberty of the former and the language and
fanaticism of the latter.
Mignet therefore next described the moment in 1795 when people withdrew
into a world of private pleasure, of luxury, of lavish balls and intimate salons, and
where government sought to facilitate commerce and material abundance. But as
the authority of the Directory diminished, it increasingly relied upon repressive
measures and became dependent upon the support of the army. And so Napoleon
Bonaparte came to be seen as the only person who could save la patrie. His coup
d’état of the 18 Brumaire, accomplished in November 1799, was, according to
Mignet, the final desecration of liberty and the beginning of the domination of
‘brutal force’.83 Napoleon’s intentions quickly became clear. He sought to recon-
stitute the clergy, establish a new military order, create an administrative caste loyal
to the State, and silence opposition. Such, in only two years, was ‘the frightening
progress of privilege and absolute power’.84 Over time, the exercise of power
became more arbitrary and society became more aristocratic. All interests were
80 Mignet, Histoire de la Révolution française, depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1814 (1824), 437–8.
81 Mignet specifically quoted Maistre’s Considérations sur la France: ibid. 270–1.
82 Ibid. 552–3.
83 Ibid. 635.
84 Ibid. 666.
History, Revolution, and Terror
257
arranged hierarchically under one leader. It was military defeat and exhaustion that
brought the vast edifice of the Empire to its knees and ‘the most gigantic being of
modern times’ to his end. War, Mignet observed, was Napoleon’s passion, domi-
nation his goal. As such, he had aroused universal enmity and his fall proved ‘the
extent to which in our day despotism is impossible’.85
Nevertheless, Mignet acknowledged the achievements of Napoleon. If he had
enslaved France, he had pushed European civilization forward, shaking its old
foundations. More intriguingly, Mignet ended his account with an explicit com-
parison between Napoleon and Oliver Cromwell. Both embodied government by
the army, but Cromwell had had only to face internal enemies. Again therefore
Mignet was able to underline the central role played by foreign intervention in
determining the course of the Revolution in France. Napoleon had secured an easy
dominance over the people and it had been this that had allowed him to deploy his
immense power to secure his grandiose ends. At best Cromwell had been able to
neutralize his opponents. Napoleon fell due to a general European uprising,
Cromwell to internal conspiracy. Such, Mignet concluded, ‘is the fate of all powers
which, born out of liberty, are not founded upon it’.86
Adolphe Thiers’s Histoire de la Révolution française comprises ten weighty
Supporting evidence is marshalled with impressive thoroughness. Few incidents or
personalities escape its penetrating gaze. Acknowledging the immensity of his task,
at times Thiers despaired of being able ‘to say everything, to judge everything, to
paint everything’.87 However, if the different nuances of interpretation are signifi-
cant, it is a tale told in a very similar vein to that by Mignet. Again, the Revolution
was located within the broad sweep of French history and again the conclusion was
that the corruption, injustice, and inequalities of the ancien régime were such that
‘sooner or later’ the Revolution was certain to occur.88 It took only ‘a chance
combination of various circumstances’ to set it going. Like Mignet, Thiers captured
brilliantly the speed with which events unfolded in the summer of 1789, recording
each momentous step and decision, each tactical error made by the Louis XVI and
his supporters, each expression of popular agitation. In the aftermath of the
storming of the Bastille, he ventured, the Revolution could have been considered
to have achieved its purpose: the nation, by now in control of legislative and public
power, ‘could henceforth put into effect everything that was useful for its inter-
ests’.89 He scarcely mentions the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du
Citoyen: the next momentous step came with the abolition of the feudal order
on 4 August.90 This, in Thiers’s view, was ‘the most important reform of the
Revolution’.91 He saw the immense emotional appeal for its participants of the Fête
de la Fédération but, again like Mignet, recognized that it was no more than a brief
pause in hostilities. The king’s flight and capture at Varennes destroyed the last
vestiges of respect for the monarchy.
85 Ibid. 721.
86 Ibid. 724.
87 Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution française, iv, p. x.
88 Ibid. i. 40.
89 Ibid. 119.
90 Ibid. 142–3.
91 Ibid. 148.
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History, Revolution, and Terror
Above all, Thiers celebrated the work of the National Assembly.92 Perhaps for
the first time, he argued, an assembly had brought together all the enlightened men
Revolution and the Republic Page 54