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On the French Monarchy from its Establishment to the Present Day, or Inquiries into the Ancient French Institutions, their Progress, their Decline, and the Causes that Led to the Revolution and its Various Phases up to the Declaration of the Empire, with a Supplement on the Government of Buonaparte, from its Beginnings to its Fall, and on the Return of the House of Bourbon; by Count de Montlosier, deputy of the nobility of Auvergne to the Estates-General.

There has hardly appeared, for a very long time, a work as instructive, as forcefully [193] conceived, as original as that of M. de Montlosier. A year after publication, such works still retain their novelty, and in the current circumstances in which this work takes on renewed interest, we do not regret having delayed until now to review it.

The author of this book composed it by order of Napoleon, at the time of his elevation to Emperor, and he published it under the Bourbons just as he had written it at the time when our hopes were high. He did not have to rewrite his history, but only to continue it; a sad supplement was enough to bring the reader to a new era of hope... which was disappointed... Let us await the next supplement that M. de Montlosier will give us in his second edition.

The first parts of the work are especially devoted to the examination of feudal government in its nature, its progress, and its decline. In this treatise one can consider two very distinct objects: the author’s historical critique and his political views; the former is strong, learned, illuminating; the latter [194] at the very least singular and bizarre, though it is supported by a multitude of particular insights full of sense and usefulness. However original this view may be, it nonetheless belongs to one of the two great sects which, in France, have divided opinion since the eighteenth century, since our revolutions, and in particular since the most recent one. Their well-known spirit gives meaning to our writing, our speeches, and our political factions. It is true that they should not be judged by their effects, for both have disgraced themselves in becoming popular; but both have also been adopted by the most distinguished minds. For one, theory is everything; for the other, the authority of times past; one clings to principles, the other to established institutions; the former want to renew the laws, the latter to recall ancient customs; the speculations of the former receive, at least in appearance, more rigor and clarity from the systematic spirit that guides them; those of the latter, always intermingled with sentiments and ancient memories, retain, under the pen [195] of the best writers, something vague, mysterious, shadowy, which they owe to their lack of cohesion and to the nature of the principles upon which they rest. It is certainly good that the spirit of innovation be continually in conflict with the spirit of conservation, so that they may correct one another in their excesses; moreover, the moral functions that one of the two schools more particularly claims for itself can only be beneficial and deserve respect.

M. de Montlosier loves his country, but he loves it especially in the time of Charlemagne, of Hugh Capet, and of Saint Louis. No author, it seems to me, has known feudalism better than he, and none has shown more affection for that system. M. de Montlosier was a nobleman, and his work appears to be a memoire in favor of the old nobility; but is a mind so elevated susceptible to being dominated by the influence of personal interest? In a few scattered and fleeting phrases, he acknowledges the necessity of the great change that has occurred in our customs and in our government; but every time he [196] returns to speak of feudal organization, he immediately adoptsa tone of admiration and regret, and that of ill-humor and almost of animosity, every time the causes are mentioned that so scandalously stripped the nobility of its former prerogatives.

The personal services of vassals, the seigneurial dues and courts, the servitude of the glebe, even private wars, are the objects of his enthusiasm; he forgets the ecclesiastical tithe, no doubt in favor of the censives (land tax and labour obligations). This state of things presents to him a perfect order, a system as favorable to good morals as to public prosperity. Outside of it, he sees only disorder and confusion; he is nearly outraged by science, industry, and commerce, which have usurped the sacred rights of birth; he maintains, up to the end of his work, the distinction between two groups of people in France, the conquering people, the Franks of Germany, and the conquered people, the inhabitants of primitive Gaul. These are many peculiarities in an otherwise valuable work; [197] what is even more peculiar is that nowhere does the author seek to demonstrate in principle the excellence of the feudal system, and that most of his detailed evidence contain sound and solid ideas.

It is in no way proven that there cannot exist a form of government which is good in itself, and which exists independently of the particular circumstances in which a people may find itself. What is more, no government should be called good so long as human prudence can foresee a change of circumstances capable of making it bad. Indeed society, by giving itself a constitution which is designed not only for the present time but also for an indefinite future, has a duty to constitute itself as well as possible, not with a view to any given time, but under the assumption that it will last indefinitely. It should not lay the groundwork for any future and perhapsinevitable misfortune by establishing an order of things which bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction. What then shall we think of those governments which, like the ancients make [198] virtue their foundation, or, like modern governments make the absolute exclusion of the most numerous classes and the extreme inequality of rights their foundation, and thus reject civilization, enlightenment, and industry, whose influence must sooner or later prevail over their institutions? Such systems are bad from the moment we perceive the internal flaw that must make them perish, and they are essentially perishable, since they are contrary to nature and to the necessary progress of the human race. Hence their fall is usually miserable or disastrous; and surely we have learned enough about the cost to one generation of correcting all the foolishness of previous generations not to be very tempted to feel grateful to our ancestors for their allodial and feudal privileges, their nobility and their common birth, and a thousand other fine inventions so regretted by M. de Montlosier.

If it is not things that are at fault, but men. If it is not events that are blameworthy, but rather the institutions that ought to have prevented them, let us conclude that [199] the feudal regime is bad, whatever partial advantages one may discover in it, since it has fallen, or rather, since we see how it was necessarily bound to fall. A system that, by dividing all men between the profession of arms and the bondage of the soil, condemned the human mind to ignorance and immobility, was incompatible with our nature. Doubtless this system owed its existence only to the imperfect state of development in which it found human society at the time it seized hold of it, and in which it kept it for too long. If the constitution that France now appears to wish to adopt is, in appearance, in some of its fundamental provisions, the least bad of all those known to us, this is above all because it appears less than any other to contradict the progress of enlightenment, industry, and civilization.

These considerations excuse us from going into the details of feudal laws to show their disadvantages; they seem to us simple and decisive; one example [200] will suffice to show the point of view from which M. de Montlosier regards these things. Here is how he presents to us the happy era of the Renaissance of letters, which was one of the first attacks made on the feudal regime:

"The Franks cultivated little beyond courage, honor, devotion, and all the virtues of the heart. They imagined creating competition between the faculties of the mind. Study suited very well the urban population which had leisure, wealth, and sedentary habits: so it was resolved to give great consideration to study..."

(It is fortunate that this resolution was taken; otherwise study, or to express ourselves more faithfully, education, was not a force capable of commanding respect on its own, as much as fencing and other skills of chivalry.)

"The taste for theological law having joined that for Roman law, there was created, along with medicine and the humanities which [201] were already joined together, I know not what pompous and imposing thing, under the name of the four faculties."

(It was not necessary for this to happen that that a conspiracy against the nobility had been plotted. It is the common fault of people just beginning to be educated to believe that they have perceived the limits of human knowledge; hence the name of the four faculties. The rivalry with the nobility had nothing to do with the imposing pomp displayed by the pedantry which is inseparable from Renaissance doctrines.)

"The honor of science thus balanced that of arms. Great feats of memory were placed alongside great feats of courage. The degrees of bachelor and licentiate were set alongside those of squire and knight: thus vanity was seized upon, etc."

This is the tone and spirit that unfortunately make themselves felt in the greater part of the work. We will now look here and there for the motives of the author's preference for feudal government; then we will come to the sound part of [202] the work, by which I mean the critical inquiries into the earliest epochs of feudalism, into the particular causes of its fall, and finally into his thoughts on our recent revolutions.

One of the things that most contributes to giving a specious color to M. de Montlosier’s ideas regarding feudalism is the continual comparison he makes between the order that bound together all its parts and the disorder and incoherence so easy to observe in the government that succeeded it. This is what led me to say earlier that almost all the particular evidence he provides contain sound and useful ideas. But first, while agreeing with this unity that the author has so well observed throughout the entire feudal system, we will note that when the principles are bad, it is not always advantageous that the consequences be faithfully carried out. And whatever M. de Montlosier may say, we would prefer, if we had to choose, to live under Louis XIV and Louis XV rather than under Louis the Quarrelsome and Philip the Tall, even though the government as a whole, the [203] customs and morals, may present less cohesion and harmony. Next, how has M. de Montlosier neglected to consider that this second French monarchy, which followed the feudal monarchy, was in fact merely the interval of a transition that would lead, through a more or less delayed, more or less violent revolution, to the renewal of our institutions? And yet if this is so, one sees that it is not fair to compare the condition of a government that is decomposing in order to renew itself, with that of a state formed and complete in all its parts.

Despite what some of our old novelists may say, we must acknowledge that the domestic morals of the feudal nobility were honest, serious, and religious; that the education of noble youth was wholly virile, and directed primarily toward submission, devotion, and loyalty. Loyalty, humanity, courage, honor were virtues common to the entire body of nobles; and finally, modesty, joined with all sorts of generous sentiments, had among noblewomen [204] a particular grace and dignity. A perfect hierarchy was established among the nobles, such that the services they rendered one another were always honorable, even those of livery or freed, those of valet, footman, lacquey, etc.

All that is beautiful, no doubt; but goodness! shall there never be any mention here of commoners, who perhaps are also human beings? You do not tell us whether they participated in all these advantages. The commoners, or more properly the serfs, had in France the advantage of not being employed in domestic service and of not being considered entirely as slaves: “French soil being reputed a land essentially generous, upon which every slave became free merely by breathing its air.” It is true that they were attached to estates which they could not leave, that they were passed from hand to hand along with the land to which they belonged, and that they could not themselves possess any. In addition to the various taxes they had to pay, [205] they were also bound to perform corvées and duties considered servile. But they owned animals, money, goods which they could dispose of; and “they thus built up fortunes more or less considerable, especially in the towns.” Take care: it is these fortunes, the product of industry and commerce, that will by rapid progress soon eclipse the luster of your seigneurial properties, necessitate the emancipation of the communes, and bring down your entire system.

Therefore, to preserve it, you must thwart the will of nature by preventing the society of the greater number from consolidating its position in the cities, by scattering your peasants over the surface of your domains, by destroying the fruits of their peculium (savings), which would soon stifle those of your usurpation. What injustice there is in these principles! What wrongs are committed against entire nations by a small number of men! What will be the morals, the benefits of education, and the effects of personal merit in a [206] multitude you thus sacrifice to your vanity even more than to your ambition? Thus you cast the greater part of the human race into the shadows in order to enhance the brilliance of your artificial glory. The people will one day justly punish this insolent pride which finds freedom only in the slavery of others; at such a price, we would not even want the liberty of the Romans and the Spartans.

To conclude this moral part of M. de Montlosier’s observations, I must say that he makes very good use of these ideas of subordination, of the civil and domestic bonds that are, in his view, necessary for the proper constitution of a state. He applies them very well in particular instances. But I cannot doubt that he abuses them in favor of the feudal system. It is very true that everything is a form of subordination in society: the son depends on his father; the tenant, on his landlord; the poor man, on the rich man who gives him work, etc.; but it does not follow from this that one belongs to the other. This needs explaining. We must distinguish between two kinds of [207] subordination: one established by nature, the other by men. To be subordinated by the will of nature is to depend upon someone; to be subordinated by the will of man is to belong to someone. The son, the tenant, the poor man depend on the father, the landlord, because nature alone, need alone, compels them to submit. The slave, the citizen belong, the one to his master, the other, under certain aspects only, to his country, by the sole effect of the will of man. The greatest liberty to which we all have the right to aspire consists in depending as much as possible on the needs of our nature, on ourselves in the end, and as little as possible on the will of others.

The necessity of preserving the social state must alone set the strict measure of proportion between these two kinds of dependence; the governments in which one or the other exceeds the measure are either anarchic or despotic. The feudal government is clearly in the latter case. This distinction may, I think, shed some light on the sophisms contained [208] in the following passage:

“Let us beware lest our views of liberty be for certain classes a vain theory or a wretched trap. What does political liberty mean to a man who doesn’t even have a bit of wool to make himself clothes, or a bit of thatch to make himself a roof? May God preserve me from the political liberty of a man five feet ten inches tall who is my neighbor and who has nothing to eat for dinner tomorrow! Instead of concerning ourselves with liberty for certain classes, let us concern ourselves with delivering them from want.”

It is certainly right to concern oneself with delivering the indigent classes from want; but it is false that political liberty means nothing to them. That man who lacks bread today may tomorrow, either by his own efforts or in the person of his children, rise by means of industry and talent to the rank of property owner, of representative, of administrator, or of army general. You wrong him by denying to him and to all his race such a possibility. Several times in his work, [209] M. de Montlosier seems to conclude that feudal government is necessary because of the incapacity of non-property-owners to carry out political functions, a principle accepted from time immemorial by free people. This is mockery: no doubt, the proletariat must be excluded; but they must not be condemned to remain so forever, along with all their posterity.

Let us now turn to M. de Montlosier’s understanding of history.

We must be clear when claiming that feudal dominations were usurpations. No doubt, they were usurpations to the philosopher who judges them according to the eternal principles of the rights of man in society; but they were not usurpations to the skilled writer who knows how to trace their origin in the ancient positive law of the Franks and the Gauls. This is what M. de Montlosier has done, if I may speak on matters so difficult, with a success worthy of his talent. If this is so, it turns out that from Philip the Fair to our own time, all powers and rights that have arisen from the ruins of [210] feudalism are nothing but usurpations more or less illegitimate. I see no problem in admitting that they are so many usurpations by time and reason upon positive law. It was necessary for kings to usurp the despotism of the nobles so that it might be possible for the nation to usurp its rights from the despotism thus concentrated in the hands of one person.

M. de Montlosier set out to show the origin of the feudal system while establishing the immemorial antiquity of the elements that composed this system. The distinction of lands and individuals into tributaries and free, the seigneurial courts, the private wars of city against city, and the armed bodies under the leadership of lords, all existed in Gaul before the Roman conquest. Their domination brought no change to the internal regime of the Gauls; only the contagion of Roman morals, the cultivation of the land, and the habitation of cities contributed powerfully to weakening in them the warrior spirit and the energy of Germanic customs, which the Franks brought back [211] in all their purity at the time of their invasion. They (the invaders??) allowed the established order to remain in all things, contenting themselves with the portion of land that was ceded to them and with a certain degree of respect above the free Gauls. This should not surprise us. The victors and the vanquished, whether Roman or barbarian, were not civilized enough for it to be possible at that time to organize a conquest. The ancients had only two ways of invading a country: either to destroy everything and take the entire population into captivity when they took a city or a very small region, or to allow the entire civil and political order to remain, confining themselves to a concession of territory or the payment of some tribute, when it came to a more extensive region.

Nevertheless, this mixture of two peoples united under the same domination presented at first a confusion of laws and customs that M. de Montlosier applies himself to unravel. But soon, the Gauls who owned allods honored themselves with the name of the [212] conquering people; the customs of the two nations mutually influenced one another; the Franks’ aversion to domestic servitude made it disappear throughout all of Gaul; their taste for the countryside made them abandon the towns (castra) and remain on their estates. Castella—fortified manors or castles—multiplied everywhere. Private wars between one estate and another multiplied at the same time. Order and judicial forms underwent some modifications, such as the use of trials by ordeal and of combat, among others. The Germanic assemblies mentioned by Tacitus were introduced into the political order under the name of the Fields of March and of May.

We now come to a new era: the institution of feudalism. The error of Montesquieu and of so many other writers was in believing that this regime was the result of the granting of benefices. But, as M. de Montlosier says:

“If the benefices should be regarded as the principal origin of feudalism, then it would not be in France, nor at the time of the establishment of the Franks, that one should place [213] this origin—it would be at Rome itself. One finds enough of such kinds of concessions in Roman history, where they are also called benefices. These were lands of the conquered that were divided, etc. ... There were dukes and counts under the Roman emperors and under the Merovingian kings; for all that, there was no feudalism. As for the use of either domestic serfs or serfs tied to the soil, which one is accustomed to associate with feudalism, it must have required great blindness or great ignorance to see, in this practice common to all peoples and as old as the world, any resemblance to our modern feudalism.”

Here the author distinguishes three kinds of patronage and client relationships established for centuries among three different peoples. One, purely civil, which was adopted by the Romans, bound the patron to the client by reciprocal services of ambition or civil interests. Another, purely servile, which was practiced among the Gauls, transferred to the powerful man the bare ownership (la nue-propriété de la terre) of the weak man’s land, [214] as well as part of the income, on condition of preserving the rest for him. The third, finally, which was wholly military and noble, entrusted to a chief of a group of warriors the faith and courage of his companions, and their mutual commitments were to be rewarded by the sharing of the fruits of war. Through the mingling of these various nations, their various forms of clientage became confused and all assumed the honorable character of the last kind. The subordination of landholdings was to be noble and referred exclusively to military service, just like that of persons, among the Franks once they became landowners. The Gauls, already mixed with them, were to imitate this example or rather take advantage of this alliance of Frankish clientage with their own. “The civil clientage of the Romans, in turn, received a luster it had not had.” Why does M. de Montlosier not expand upon the effects of this new insight into the nature of civil clientage, while he insists on the other two? Might it not be because this distinction, though valid in itself, is not reflected [215] in the facts here? Whatever the case may be, we have found feudalism. Solemn acts declare that the submission of persons and property causes no harm to ingenuity (i.e., free birth). The titles vassus and miles, later chevalier, succeed that of client. One no longer gives away one's property; one recommends it. Ceremonies characterize the noble recommendation. It is true that the servile recommendation of the old Gauls still persisted for individuals of the lowest class, when, after having shorn the front of their heads, they presented themselves in the courtyard of a powerful man to offer themselves to him.

Montesquieu and several other authors have found, in the hereditary transmission of benefices established mainly under Charles the Bald, the cause of a great revolution in favor of the feudal system. M. de Montlosier proves that little importance should be attached to this event by distinguishing between the fictitious benefice and the real benefice. The first occurred “when an allodial property owner came, a branch in hand, to hand over his property to [216] a powerful man who returned it to him with feudal obligations;” the second occurred when a vassal had truly received from the king, a count, or a lord some domain as a benefice." Now, in the first case, it was quite natural that the hereditary alleu became a hereditary fief; in the second case, which happened more and more rarely, one ought to follow the precedent set in the first.

Such is the history of the French constitution under the first two dynasties. A few considerations on kingship are necessary to complete it.

The independence of Germanic customs must have confined the power of the Frankish kings within very narrow limits. Thus we see that they could not decide great affairs without consulting the entire nation, and not even minor ones without the advice of the principal officers. They encountered a very different spirit and different customs when they found themselves at the head of a nation long bowed beneath the absolute power of the emperors, and among a clergy accustomed [217] to preaching the divine right of despotism. The influence of the dominant nation kept royal power within its original bounds; only, since kings were no longer leaders of wandering hordes, their care extended to new areas of civil order, but always with the same restrictions. The varying attitudes of the subjects toward royal authority gave rise to a multitude of contradictory testimonies of submission and independence, from which writers of various factions have each drawn advantage according to their views, and which M. de Montlosier assesses at their true value.

From this, he proceeds to establish the true principles of succession to the throne under the first two dynasties, and he demonstrates that although royalty was especially attached to one and the same family, the king had to be elected by the nation, which did not always follow the order of primogeniture. The exclusion of women among the Franks is based first on one of their customs, which consisted in the woman receiving a dowry from the husband instead of bringing one, so that [218] the right of succession would have resulted in a double inheritance falling into their hands; and second, on the need to have male leaders in a nation always armed, always on the move, and in a state of war for so long.

Let us now see what were the causes of the fall of the first two dynasties.

The perpetual granting of benefices drained the resources of the crown day by day. The entire royal domain was already dissipated under Chilperic. “Our fisc (treasury) has nothing left,” said this prince; “our riches are possessed by the churches. They live in abundance, and we in misery.”

The recommendations, whose usage spread rapidly, took from the monarch the supremacy he once exercised directly over individuals and estates.

“These two causes together lead me to a third, more serious one. On the one hand, it was permitted to recommend oneself to whomever one wished; on the other hand, since the kings had no more concessions to make, the flood of recommendations began to [219] turn toward the mayor of the palace, who, having in his hands the care of the prince and the command of the troops, easily acquired supreme importance. In this way everything escaped from the prince; nothing remained to him of his former kingdom but a palace, whose independent governor was given to him by a handful of leudes.”

The slightest commotion was enough to overthrow one of these two powers thus undermined at their foundations. The invasion of the Saracens, the triumphs of Charles Martel, the skillful ambition of Pepin overthrew the Merovingian dynasty almost without effort. However, the division of power among the lords increasingly weakened the material resources of the monarch. It required all the genius of Charlemagne to compensate for the loss of royal power. As early as the reign of his successor, his dynasty was in peril. The Duke of France and the invasion of the Normans were for this dynasty what the mayor of the palace and the Saracen invasion had been for the previous one.

“I cannot help,” says M. de [220] Montlosier, “but note in this regard the destinies of France. Meroveus laid some foundations there; this was after liberating her, on the plains of Châlons, from the Huns and Attila. Clovis, his grandson, established himself there completely; this was after liberating her from the Alamanni at Tolbiac. The line of Charles Martel rose in place of that of Meroveus; this was after liberating us from the Saracens. The Capetian house next rose in place of that of Charlemagne; this was after liberating us from the Normans. It was decreed by Providence that another house should in turn rise, after liberating us from barbarians of another kind.”

This was written in 1806.

Following this survey of the first two dynasties, the author examines, in a wholly polemical dissertation, various opinions of M. de Boulainvilliers, the Abbé Dubos, President Hénault, M. de Valois, and Montesquieu. His refutations seemed to me to be convincing. He effectively combats the modern lectures about [221] private wars, by proving that they formed part of the rights of the Franks, that they were authorized by the edicts of the monarchs and by the customs of the nation. Besides, this practice seems to have nothing shocking in his eyes.

Two grave errors of Montesquieu are here opposed by M. de Montlosier. One, that the feudal government was established in all its parts with the Franks and by the Franks; the other, that the entire French nobility resided in the order of the Antrustions or officers of the crown. M. de Montlosier could have pointed out here the frivolous and erroneous manner in which the author of The Spirit of the Laws supports this latter opinion against the Abbé Dubos, who, at least in this case, did not deserve such a harsh critique. A decree of Childebert, cited by the Abbé Dubos, states that if the judge finds a notorious thief, he shall have him bound to be sent before the king, if he is a Frank Francus; but if he is a weaker person (debilior persona), he shall be hanged on the spot. The Abbé Dubos understands Francus to mean a Frank, a free man; [222] and debilior persona, a serf. Montesquieu, on the contrary, wishes Francus to mean an Antrustion, and debilior persona, a Frank of a lower condition, but not a serf. “In whatever language it may be,” he says, “every comparative necessarily supposes three terms: the greatest, the lesser, the least...”If this principle were true without exception, it would follow that when the Latins said debilior manus, they implied a third hand, like the miser in Plautus. Montesquieu adds: “If it were only a question here of free men and serfs, they would have said a serf, and not a man of lesser power.” We can reply to this that debilior persona is the most accurate expression to designate all who were not Franks, whether serfs or free Gauls. A generic term was needed to designate at once the two categories of persons subjected to the same penalty. Let us leave aside this grammatical dispute, and resume with M. de Montlosier the history of France under the third dynasty.

[223]

During the first centuries, the progress of feudal organization, which extended to the smallest properties, brought no change to the institutions. This legislative and judicial chamber, formerly called the Autumn Assembly, takes on the title of Parliament of Peers, or Barons. Succession to the throne remains subject to the same laws; but it is then founded on new principles through the accession of the great fiefs to the crown. The fiefs were hereditary; the crown was not. But the quality of suzerain lord of all the fiefs attributed to the king’s heir necessarily entailed that of king, and gave rise to the hereditary right of the crown. Nevertheless, the formulas of the old law were not abolished and formed, together with those of the new, the most bizarre assemblage. M. de Montlosier finds a striking example of this in an old coronation ceremonial:

“The archbishop says first in his prayer: Lord, multiply the gifts of your blessings upon this your servant, whom, out of humble devotion, we elect together [224] to the kingdom.” This is for the king and the elective right. The archbishop, then addressing the prince personally, says to him: “Be steadfast, and long retain the state which you have held until now by the proposal of your father, by hereditary right. That is for the lord and for hereditary lordship.”

Women were not called to the throne, though they were to the successions of fiefs. This was because feudal rights, being united in the same individuals, had to correct or alter one another.

A great event will open for us a wholly new era. The emancipation of the communes will produce the most important revolution of modern times. M. de Montlosier announces it to us in these terms:

“We are about to see arise, in the midst of the old state, a new state; in the midst of the old people, a new people; in the midst of old customs, old institutions and old laws, new customs, new institutions, new laws. We shall see a double state [225] emerge, a double people, a double social order, progressing for a long time in parallel, then attacking and fighting one another with fierce tenacity. Such is this great revolution which has itself been the source of a multitude of revolutions; which, spreading throughout Europe, has covered it with wars and turmoil, filled the German Empire with imperial cities, Italy with republics; and has everywhere disseminated a multitude of new rights, new estates, new doctrines, and new constitutions.”

To awaken in advance your interest in this unfortunate nobility that will soon be stripped, piece by piece, of all its prerogatives, and to cast odium upon so many usurpations, M. de Montlosier emphasizes with a sort of boastfulness that the abolition of slavery or domestic servitude was a dreadful plague from which the human race had seemed to despair of ever healing! He firmly denies the Catholic religion any credit for this important revolution, attributing it entirely to [226] the nobility of Germanic manners.

“Progress had been slow,” he says, “but from the moment it manifested itself, it suddenly displayed two great movements: the first, which brought all slaves to the condition of tributaries and thus abolished true slavery; the second, which brought the luster of greatness and nobility to the functions which other people had sought to stigmatize.”

It was an honorable distinction to be called by a lord or a lady of rank to serve within their household. Military service, inseparable from domestic service, lent all its splendor to the latter.

“At the same time that the vassal fought alongside his lord on the battlefield, the son of that vassal or vasselet performed, together with the son of the lord or damoiseau(domicellus), the duties of the household. The lords sent one another’s children in turn to care for horses, serve at table, and fill the offices of page and valet. He among them who, having distinguished himself by his [227] courage and zeal, was chosen especially to care for the master's armor and his warhorse, was held in the highest esteem. His place henceforth was at the master’s side. Squire was for the château the first military rank as well as the first domestic one.”

The old offices of constable (superintendent of the stables), chamberlain, cupbearer, etc., combined with the most important state functions, presented this order of noble domesticity in the palace long before it was introduced into the castles of the lords.

To emancipate, in our history, does not mean to release from domestic servitude and elevate to a middle condition, that of the libertini. This word means to confer the condition of Frank. Such an act, until the time of the Crusades, applied only to individuals. The poverty of the crusading gentlemen who returned to their country, the extinction of many noble families, but more than anything else, undoubtedly, the pressing need of civilization, led the [228] communes to purchase their charters for money or to seize them by force. The kings, whose authority was increasing through the losses of feudalism, seconded this movement with all their efforts. They were seen to solemnly invoke this doctrine of the rights of man, which they forgot as soon as they no longer needed it.

“The inhabitants of the countryside, who by these words frank and franchise understood in particular to mean exemption from tributes [1], rose up. They began, as in recent times, to massacre the nobles and to burn the châteaux.”

Unfortunately, the disorders of the jacquerie, which were insufficient to destroy the feudal system, were only the precursors of a new jacquerie, more terrible in its effects and more important in its consequences, which was to drag [229] the absolute monarchy down along with the last remnants of feudalism.

The towns and the greater part of the countryside, freed from the yoke of the lords, created for themselves new administrations and new courts. They needed a new body of law; the discovery of the works of Justinian offered them a complete corpus of civil laws, which was received with enthusiasm, studied everywhere with fervor, and carefully propagated by the kings, who had no shortage of good reasons to do so. This new law presented them with a double advantage: the exclusion of feudal law, and the doctrines of monarchical despotism that were to result from it.

At this time, the old people (l'ancien peuple), to use M. de Montlosier’s expression, made an effort to maintain their liberties. The great expeditions to Asia and Africa had led to the arming of tributary militias, who obtained their freedom the moment they joined the military efforts of the nobles; hence the name livrée, which they long regarded as an honor. While [230] in Italy and in England, the nobility gave itself up, in a sense, to the discretion of the cities and the House of Commons, our ancient Franks, entrenched in their castles, resisted the attacks of the new people(le nouveau peuple)with the help of their loyal militias. The Assizes of Jerusalem, the Book of Fiefs, the Establishments of Philip Augustus and Saint Louis, all gave a more regular and more imposing structure to the feudal constitution.

M. de Montlosier observes, with justice and ingenuity, the changes our revolutions have brought to the language of the feudal system. We have seen the titles of lord and vassal succeed those of patron and client; the words noble, nobility, ennoblement, are now adopted by the holders of fiefs to distinguish themselves from the multitude of new Franks; the ideas expressed by these words were formerly conveyed by franchise and emancipation; and it would be a mistake, as President Hénault believes, to think that nobility and ennoblements only began with the use of these two words. It is [231] thus that knights long existed under the names milites, vassi, etc., before taking on the name of chevaliers.

Meanwhile, the French monarchy continues to advance toward a new form of government. We would like to follow step by step, as we have done thus far, the progression that M. de Montlosier, an enlightened though partial interpreter of this long revolution, assigns to it; but our breath might fail us in following in his footsteps. This work is so full of ingenious, true, and profound insights that it would require a pen more skillful even than that of M. de Montlosier to present them all in a rapid and compact analysis without erasing or weakening them. Up to now, we have had too much reason to fear this danger; but we had to insist especially on the difficult aspects of our ancient history that the author has addressed in a way that is uniquely his own. We will now more rapidly survey the picture of the decline of our ancient institutions, and then we will end with his thoughts that relate to the history of the current generation.

[232]

This is then what has happened:justice, reason, the sciences, the arts, industry, and all of human nature have conspired with royal authority to bring about the downfall of the feudal regime. First, the nobility is stripped of its seigneurial jurisdictions. Bailiffs chosen by the king from among the great lords, appropriate a certain number of legal cases known as cas royaux and cases on appeal, and end by taking all of them. Hence it is established that the king alone was the judge in the state, and that all justice emanated from him. Soon, graduates of common birth, associated with the bailiffs as their advisors, take their place and seize control of the courts. Thus, plebeian jurists, first consulted by the parliament of barons, end up sitting on the bench and driving out the high and mighty lords. Hence that questionable institution, at once political and judicial, without mandate as without laws, which was so disastrous for France, by preventing better institutions from emerging …. Ah! if, at that time when a reorganization which was flawed in so many respects was underway, France had been fortunate enough for its various orders to act in concert; and if these [233] great movements had operated uniformly throughout all parts of the monarchy, as happened in a neighboring nation; if the nobility, now stripped of its burdensome privileges, had sought refuge beside the throne, which in turn would have needed to turn it into a solid support against the terrible power of the united communes; then the dual national representation would have formed naturally and from its true elements: we would not, in the end, have waited so many centuries and suffered so much merely to obtain the hope of a good constitution.

Heu! nihil invitis Deus unquam credite divis.

(Alas! No one should place trust in anything against the will of the gods.)

Let us return to the successive losses of the nobility. The king’s peace and the truce of God take away its right to engage in private wars. It is released, willingly or by force, from feudal service; the right to levy taxes and to mint coin is gradually removed from it. The practice of tournaments is abolished. The nobles, long exempt from the taille, are subjected to it under the names of the vingtième and the capitation.

[234]

I repeat, in reading this work the reader is constantly harassed by the author’s regrets, who seems to turn this beautiful history into a brief on behalf of the feudal nobility. Thus, for example, M. de Montlosier seems to console himself for the abolition of private wars by reflecting that the duel became the habitual recourse of our gentlemen, and that all the power of kings could not vanquish this hideous and barbaric custom, worthy, as Rousseau says, of its savage origin.

The emancipated towns had at first claimed important prerogatives; the university had become a power of the first rank in the state. But soon the kings, who had supported their enterprises only to humble the nobility, made every effort to strip them of the spoils of feudalism. Nevertheless, since nothing was done openly against the established order, the various changes in power altered nothing in its external forms, grades, and titles. Royal authority did not make the same conquests in every province; [235] so that the rights of the monarch, those of the nobles, the municipalities, the parliaments, etc., remained until the end equivocal, obscure, unequal, and subject to all the whims of chance. So it was that the French monarchy, until the time of the Revolution, was nothing more than a strange and disordered mixture of new institutions with obsolete ones, of powers without titles and titles without powers, of despotism, liberty, and privilege combined fortuitously and without proportion: sine nomine corpus (a body without a name).

The reign of Louis XIV can be considered as the endpoint of the revolution we have just discussed, and the beginning of another which is still not complete today. It is equally true to say that this reign was not only the point of contact between the completed revolution and the one just beginning, but also the decisive cause of the passage from one to the other. Louis XIV, by surrounding the nobility pressed around his throne with a brilliance that was his own, in order to eclipse it entirely; by seducing our lords so as to make them [236] his courtiers and to destroy entirely the role they still played in the state, seems to have particularly attracted M. de Montlosier’s criticism. That said, we may readily agree that the expression “the century of Louis XIV” is only a flattering phrase foisted upon posterity, since the greatest men of that century had already begun to shine before he could have known them; since he brought misery to the generations over which he reigned, as well as to those that followed, through his arrogant mania for conquest and extravagance, a monarch, moreover, of few personal talents, the melancholy plaything of women, Jesuits, and of fortune.

We are obliged to refer the reader to the work itself for the account of the vices and disorders that filled France under the next two reigns, whether in its administration, its political conduct, or its morals. There was no religion, no patriotism, and not a single institution strong enough to uphold that crumbling edifice.

The need for reconstruction was [237] universally felt. What means should be employed? What do these scaffolds signify, built and torn down endlessly without being able even to delay the great and long-imminent ruin?—the high councils of Chancellor Maupeou, the military reforms of M. de Saint-Germain, the feudal reforms of M. Turgot, the provincial administrations of M. Necker, the cour plénière, the grand bailliages of M. de Brienne? Finally, the decision is made for the Estates-General; the multitude sets to work, leveling difficulties by destroying everything from top to bottom; France will groan for a long time amid trophies and ruins, until a warrior brings back to her order and internal peace by forcefully repressing all the factions he appears to unite. Soon he will lead her again into new disasters, burdened with chains and mourning... and, an unheard-of thing in the annals of the world, after being exiled, he will return to found an empire for the second time, after having, so to speak, shattered it in his own hands.

[238]

M. de Montlosier appears to be an enemy of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people. We would ask him whether he admits the sovereignty of the public interest. Surely he would not hesitate to grant us that. Well then! when people speak of the sovereignty of the people, they say, or rather, they should mean, nothing other than the sovereignty of the public interest. The expression is proper: it is merely a question of explaining it. It is folly to seek the sovereign people in a revolution. One will not find it there; it exists only in a free and regular government, whatever its particular form, be it the democracy of Athens, the tempered aristocracy of the Romans, or the representative monarchy of England.

Moreover, M. de Montlosier very rightly observes how, as a result of the misunderstood doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, the progress of the Revolution followed the successive meanings given to the word people.

“At the outset,” he says, “when people spoke of the French people, they [239] meant all the orders of the state, including the king himself... It was the parliaments who, in the heat of their resistance to the grands bailliages, began to speak of the rights of the people in opposition to those of the king. Louis XVI saw very clearly the danger of this expression; he complained of being separated from his people. Nonetheless, he consented to the Estates-General, which, in the meaning of the time, was a revolution for all the people, minus the king.

“At a second stage, when one came up with the idea that the two privileged orders were nothing, and that the Third Estate was everything; the nobility and clergy in their turn complained that people wanted to separate them from the people. That did not prevent the 14th of July, which was a revolution for the people, minus the king, the nobility, and the clergy.

“After the revolution of August 10, one would think that the founders of the Republic wished to recognize property and property owners as something in the state. Their adversaries [240] very effectively demonstrated to them that this class was no more ‘the people’ than the king, the nobility, and the clergy. This gave rise to the revolution of May 31, which was a revolution for the people, minus the property owners.”

"We see how the meaning of the word people, altered at each crisis, ended by referring exclusively to what were then called sans-culottes, and thereby gradually delivered sovereignty into their hands."

After the 9th of Thermidor, the statesmen seized the Revolution in order to return it, by taking a backward step, to the system of the Brissotins. This reaction was bound to produce new ones and to lead us back by degrees to the point from which we had started: constitutional monarchy, and previously, absolute monarchy. Thus an excessively violent impulse must be followed by an equally violent recoil. If from so much turmoil we retain only the experience of it, let us at least profit from it for the future.

The errors of the émigrés, those of the Vendée, those of the foreign powers in their first alliance; the vices and [241] disorders of the Directory government are exposed by M. de Montlosier with great force and truth. He then discerns, with a skill worthy of the subject, the clever precautions and the well-devised maneuvers employed by the general of 18 Brumaire to conquer the Revolution (without humiliating it, we have just seen what it cost others to attempt such a thing).

“The stroke of genius was to see, in an extremely complex matter, two points, one of which—the principles—had become untenable; the other—the results—had become unassailable.” Bonaparte then casts his eyes over the various factions; he finds them worn out by so many fruitless trials and divided more in persons than in opinions. “Amid this ostentatious display of so-called revolutionary zeal, the First Consul may have believed that what people feared was less the counter-revolution than those who wanted to bring it about; that it was less the ranks themselves that were resisted than those who laid claim to them again; that if people appeared [242] to fear the reestablishment of a social order, it was in assuming it would benefit the vanquished rather than the victors. Finally, he may have believed that the Revolution would agree to compromise on its errors as soon as one left it its conquests.”

“Thus it was that the First Consul aligned revolutionary interests with himself. He was also able to come to an equally advantageous arrangement with the opposing interests.

“Amid this display of zeal for the old regime, he may have seen that by trimming away certain features of particular hostilities, all that ensemble of views on order, religion, honor, and equity could be of great service to him. He repressed, not, as people sometimes say, all factions, but only what was offensive within each faction. In this way, he united everything around himself—friends and enemies, etc.”

The history of Napoleon’s government, presented under two such different aspects in the last two parts of this work, might be compared, like human life in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, to this terrestrial globe, one hemisphere of which is gladdened by the light of a radiant sun, while the other remains plunged in shadowy horror. In the first part are set forth all the benefits, and especially the hopes, of the consular restoration; in the second, all the vices of despotism, all its errors, and all the seeds of death it bore within itself.

The monarchs of Egypt were judged after their death by their own subjects; Napoleon, in his lifetime, heard his sentence pronounced by his entire century, as M. de Montlosier observes... And here he is, after having given himself time to hear and ponder the judgment of his century and that of M. de Montlosier, calmly returning to begin his career anew.

It is good that this last part of the work exists: it would be inappropriate to reproduce here all the details it contains. We shall content ourselves with recommending it to readers, along with the rest of the book. The style of M. de Montlosier is [244] energetic, rapid, and clear. It often lifts up and is colored with brilliant images. We believe we may criticise him for often descending into familiarity of tone and expression. In general, one might wish for greater breadth and care.

G. F.

Endnotes

[1] Is there not a touch of bad faith in this expression? Were the inhabitants of the countryside wrong to understand franchise as the exemption from their taxes and their most burdensome charges?