[The _coup d'état_ took place on the 2nd, and Mr. Senior reached Paris on
the 21st of December.--ED.]
_Paris, December_ 23, 1851.--I dined with Mrs. Grot and drank tea with
the Tocquevilles.
[1]'This,' said Tocqueville, 'is a new phase in our history. Every
previous revolution has been made by a political party. This is the first
time that the army has seized France, bound and gagged her, and laid her
at the feet of its ruler.'
'Was not the 18th fructidor,' I said, 'almost a parallel case? Then, as
now, there was a quarrel between the executive and the legislature. The
Directory, like Louis Napoleon, dismissed the ministers, in whom the
legislature had confidence, and appointed its own tools in their places,
denounced the legislature to the country, and flattered and corrupted the
army. The legislature tried the usual tactics of parliamentary
opposition, censured the Government, and refused the supplies. The
Directory prepared a _coup d'état._ The legislature tried to obtain a
military force, and failed; they planned an impeachment of the Directory,
and found the existing law insufficient. They brought forward a new law
defining the responsibility of the executive, and the night after they
had begun to discuss it, their halls were occupied by a military force,
and the members of the opposition were seized in the room in which they
had met to denounce the treason of the Directory.'
'So far,' he answered, 'the two events resemble one another. Each was a
military attack on the legislature by the executive. But the Directors
were the representatives of a party. The Councils and the greater part of
the aristocracy, and the _bourgeoisie_, were Bonapartists; the lower
orders were Republican, the army was merely an instrument; it conquered,
not for itself, but for the Republican party.
'The 18th brumaire was nearer to this--for that ended, as this has begun,
in a military tyranny. But the 18th brumaire was almost as much a civil
as a military revolution. A majority in the Councils was with Bonaparte.
Louis Napoleon had not a real friend in the Assembly. All the educated
classes supported the 18th brumaire; all the educated classes repudiate
the 2nd of December. Bonaparte's Consular Chair was sustained by all the
_élite_ of France. This man cannot obtain a decent supporter.
Montalembert, Baroche, and Fould--an Ultramontane, a country lawyer, and
a Jewish banker--are his most respectable associates. For a real parallel
you must go back 1,800 years.'
I said that some persons, for whose judgment I had the highest respect,
seemed to treat it as a contest between two conspirators, the Assembly
and the President, and to think the difference between his conduct and
theirs to be that he struck first.
'This,' said Tocqueville, 'I utterly deny. He, indeed, began to conspire
from November 10, 1848. His direct instructions to Oudinot, and his
letter to Ney, only a few months after his election, showed his
determination not to submit to Parliamentary Government. Then followed
his dismissal of Ministry after Ministry, until he had degraded
the·office to a clerkship. Then came the semi-regal progress, then the
reviews of Satory, the encouragement of treasonable cries, the selection
for all the high appointments in the army of Paris of men whose infamous
characters fitted them to be tools. Then he publicly insulted the
Assembly at Dijon, and at last, in October, we knew that his plans were
laid. It was then only that we began to think what were our means of
defence, but that was no more a conspiracy than it is a conspiracy in
travellers to look for their pistols when they see a band of robbers
advancing.
'M. Baze's proposition was absurd only because it was impracticable. It
was a precaution against immediate danger, but if it had been voted, it
could not have been executed. The army had already been so corrupted,
that it would have disregarded the orders of the Assembly. I have often
talked over our situation with Lamoricière and my other military friends.
We saw what was coming as clearly as we now look back to it; but we had
no means of preventing it.'
'But was not your intended law of responsibility,' I said, 'an attack on
your part?'
'That law,' he said, 'was not ours. It was sent up to us by the _Conseil
d'État_ which had been two years and a half employed on it, and ought to
have sent it to us much sooner. We thought it dangerous--that is to say,
we thought that, though quite right in itself, it would irritate the
President, and that in our defenceless state it was unwise to do so. The
_bureau_, therefore, to which it was referred refused to declare it
urgent: a proof that it would not have passed with the clauses which,
though reasonable, the President thought fit to disapprove. Our
conspiracy was that of the lambs against the wolf.
'Though I have said,' he continued, 'that he has been conspiring ever
since his election, I do not believe that he intended to strike so soon.
His plan was to wait till next March when the fears of May 1852 would be
most intense. Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One was the
candidature of the Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only dangerous
competitor. The other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists in
the _Conseils généraux_ for the repeal of the law of May 31. That law was
his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that if he delayed,
it might be abolished without him.'
'And how long,' I asked, 'will this tyranny last?'
'It will last,' he answered, 'until it is unpopular with the mass of the
people. At present the disapprobation is confined to the educated
classes. We cannot bear to be deprived of the power of speaking or of
writing. We cannot bear that the fate of France should depend on the
selfishness, or the vanity, or the fears, or the caprice of one man, a
foreigner by race and by education, and of a set of military ruffians and
of infamous civilians, fit only to have formed the staff and the privy
council of Catiline. We cannot bear that the people which carried the
torch of Liberty through Europe should now be employed in quenching all
its lights. But these are not the feelings of the multitude. Their insane
fear of Socialism throws them headlong into the arms of despotism. As in
Prussia, as in Hungary, as in Austria, as in Italy, so in France, the
democrats have served the cause of the absolutists. May 1852 was a
spectre constantly swelling as it drew nearer. But now that the weakness
of the Red party has been proved, now that 10,000 of those who are
supposed to be its most active members are to be sent to die of hunger
and marsh fever in Cayenne, the people will regret the price at which
their visionary enemy has been put down. Thirty-seven years of liberty
have made a free press and free parliamentary discussion necessaries to
us. If Louis Napoleon refuses them, he will be execrated as a tyrant. If
he grants them, they must destroy him. We always criticise our rulers
severely, often unjustly. It is impossible that so rash and wrong-headed
a man surrounded, and always wishing to be surrounded, by men whose
infamous character is their recommendation to him, should not commit
blunders and follies without end. They will be exposed, perhaps
exaggerated by the press, and from the tribune. As soon as he is
discredited the army will turn against him. It sympathises with the
people from which it has recently been separated and to which it is soon
to return. It will never support an unpopular despot. I have no fears
therefore for the ultimate destinies of my country. It seems to me that
the Revolution of the 2nd of December is more dangerous to the rest of
Europe than it is to us. That it ought to alarm England much more than
France. _We_ shall get rid of Louis Napoleon in a few years, perhaps in a
few months, but there is no saying how much mischief he may do in those
years, or even in those months, to his neighbours.'
'Surely,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'he will wish to remain at peace
with England.'
'I am not sure at all of that,' said Tocqueville. 'He cannot sit down a
mere quiet administrator. He must do something to distract public
attention; he must give us a substitute for the political excitement
which has amused us during the last forty years. Great social
improvements are uncertain, difficult, and slow; but glory may be
obtained in a week. A war with England, at its beginning, is always
popular. How many thousand volunteers would he have for a "pointe" on
London?
'The best that can happen to you is to be excluded from the councils of
the great family of despots. Besides, what is to be done to amuse these
400,000 bayonets, _his_ masters as well as ours? Crosses, promotions,
honours, gratuities, are already showered on the army of Paris. It has
already received a thing unheard of in our history--the honours and
recompenses of a campaign for the butchery on the Boulevards. Will not
the other armies demand their share of work and reward? As long as the
civil war in the Provinces lasts they may be employed there. But it will
soon be over. What is then to be done with them? Are they to be marched
on Switzerland, or on Piedmont, or on Belgium? And will England quietly
look on?'
Our conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the Abbé
Gioberti, and of Sieur Capponi, a Sicilian.
_Paris, December_ 31, 1851.--I dined with the Tocquevilles and met Mrs.
Grote, Rivet, and Corcelle.
'The gayest time,' said Tocqueville, 'that I ever passed was in the Quai
d'Orsay. The _élite_ of France in education, in birth, and in talents,
particularly in the talents of society, was collected within the walls of
that barrack.
'A long struggle was over, in which our part had not been timidly played;
we had done our duty, we had gone through some perils, and we had some to
encounter, and we were all in the high spirits which excitement and
dangers shared with others, when not too formidable, create. From the
courtyard in which we had been penned for a couple of hours, where the
Duc de Broglie and I tore our chicken with our hands and teeth, we were
transferred to a long sort of gallery, or garret, running along through
the higher part of the building, a spare dormitory for the soldiers when
the better rooms are filled. Those who chose to take the trouble went
below, hired palliasses from the soldiers, and carried them up for
themselves. I was too idle and lay on the floor in my cloak. Instead of
sleeping we spent the night in shooting from palliasse to palliasse
anecdotes, repartees, jokes, and pleasantries. "C'était un feu roulant,
une pluie de bons mots." Things amused us in that state of excitement
which sound flat when repeated.
'I remember Kerrel, a man of great humour, exciting shouts of laughter by
exclaiming, with great solemnity, as he looked round on the floor,
strewed with mattresses and statesmen, and lighted by a couple of tallow
candles, "Voilà donc où en est réduit ce fameux parti de l'ordre." Those
who were kept _au secret_, deprived of mutual support, were in a very
different state of mind; some were depressed, others were enraged. Bédeau
was left alone for twenty-four hours; at last a man came and offered him
some sugar. He flew at his throat and the poor turnkey ran off, fancying
his prisoner was mad.'
We talked of Louis Napoleon's devotion to the Pope.
'It is of recent date,' said Corcelle. 'In January and February 1849 he
was inclined to interfere in support of the Roman Republic against the
Austrians. And when in April he resolved to move on Rome, it was not out
of any love for the Pope. In fact, the Pope did not then wish for us. He
told Corcelle that he hoped to be restored by General Zucchi, who
commanded a body of Roman troops in the neighbourhood of Bologna. No
one at that time believed the Republican party in Rome to be capable of a
serious defence. Probably they would not have made one if they had not
admitted Garibaldi and his band two days before we appeared before their
gates.'
I mentioned to Tocqueville Beaumont's opinion that France will again
become a republic.
'I will not venture,' he answered, 'to affirm, with respect to any form
whatever of government, that we shall never adopt it; but I own that I
see no prospect of a French republic within any assignable period. We
are, indeed, less opposed to a republic now than we were in 1848. We have
found that it does not imply war, or bankruptcy, or tyranny; but we still
feel that it is not the government that suits us. This was apparent from
the beginning. Louis Napoleon had the merit, or the luck, to discover,
what few suspected, the latent Bonapartism of the nation. The 10th of
December showed that the memory of the Emperor, vague and indefinite, but
therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic legend in the
imaginations of the peasantry. When Louis Napoleon's violence and folly
have destroyed the charm with which he has worked, all eyes will turn,
not towards a republic, but to Henri V.'
'Was much money,' I asked, 'spent at his election?'
'Very little,' answered Tocqueville. 'The ex-Duke of Brunswick lent him
300,000 francs on a promise of assistance as soon as he should be able to
afford it; and I suppose that we shall have to perform the promise, and
to interfere to restore him to his duchy; but that was all that was
spent. In fact he had no money of his own, and scarcely anyone, except
the Duke, thought well enough of his prospects to lend him any. He used
to sit in the Assembly silent and alone, pitied by some members and
neglected by all. Silence, indeed, was necessary to his success.
_Paris, January 2nd_, 1852.--I dined with Mrs. Grote and drank tea with
the Tocquevilles.
'What is your report,' they asked, 'of the President's reception in Notre
Dame. We hear that it was cold.'
'So,' I answered, 'it seemed to me.'
'I am told,' said Tocqueville, 'that it was still colder on his road. He
does not shine in public exhibitions. He does not belong to the highest
class of hypocrites, who cheat by frankness and cordiality.'
'Such,' I said, 'as Iago. It is a class of villains of which the
specimens are not common.'
'They are common enough with us,' said Tocqueville. 'We call them _faux
bonshommes_. H. was an instance. He had passed a longish life with the
character of a frank, open-hearted soldier. When he became Minister, the
facts which he stated from the tribune appeared often strange, but coming
from so honest a man we accepted them. One falsehood, however, after
another was exposed, and at last we discovered that H. himself, with all
his military bluntness and sincerity, was a most intrepid, unscrupulous
liar.
'What is the explanation,' he continued, 'of Kossuth's reception in
England? I can understand enthusiasm for a democrat in America, but what
claim had he to the sympathy of aristocratic England?'
'Our aristocracy,' I answered, 'expressed no sympathy, and as to the
mayors, and corporations, and public meetings, they looked upon him
merely as an oppressed man, the champion of an oppressed country.'
'I think,' said Tocqueville, 'that he has been the most mischievous man
in Europe.'
'More so,' I said, 'than Mazzini? More so than Lamartine?'
At this instant Corcelle came in.
'We are adjusting,' said Tocqueville, 'the palm of mischievousness.'
'I am all for Lamartine,' answered Corcelle; 'without him the others
would have been powerless.'
'But,' I said, 'if Lamartine had never existed, would not the revolution
of 1848 still have occurred?'
'It would have certainly occurred' said Tocqueville; 'that is to say, the
oligarchy of Louis Philippe would have come to an end, probably to a
violent one, but it would have been something to have delayed it; and it
cannot be denied that Lamartine's eloquence and courage saved us from
great dangers during the Provisional Government. Kossuth's influence was
purely mischievous. But for him, Austria might now be a constitutional
empire, with Hungary for its most powerful member, a barrier against
Russia instead of her slave.'
'I must put in a word,' said Corcelle,[2] 'for Lord Palmerston. If
Lamartine produced Kossuth, Lord Palmerston produced Lamartine and
Mazzini and Charles Albert--in short, all the incendiaries whose folly
and wickedness have ended in producing Louis Napoleon.'
'Notwithstanding,' I said, 'your disapprobation of Kossuth, you joined us
in preventing his extradition.'
'We did,' answered Tocqueville. 'It was owing to the influence of Lord
Normanby over the President. It was a fine _succès de tribune_. It gave
your Government and ours an occasion to boast of their courage and of
their generosity, but a more dangerous experiment was never made. You
reckoned on the prudence and forbearance of Austria and Russia. Luckily,
Nicholas and Nesselrode are prudent men, and luckily the Turks sent to
St. Petersburg Fuad Effendi, an excellent diplomatist, a much better than
Lamoricière or Lord Bloomfield. He refused to see either of them,
disclaimed their advice or assistance, and addressed himself solely to
the justice and generosity of the Emperor. He admitted that Russia was
powerful enough to seize the refugees, but implored him not to set such
an example, and--he committed nothing to paper. He left nothing, and took
away nothing which could wound the pride of Nicholas; and thus he
succeeded.
'Two days after, came a long remonstrance from Lord Palmerston, which
Lord Bloomfield was desired to read to Nesselrode, and leave with him. A
man of the world, seeing that the thing was done, would have withheld an
irritating document. But Bloomfield went with it to Nesselrode.
Nesselrode would have nothing to say to it. "Mon Dieu!" he said, "we
have given up all our demands; why tease us by trying to prove that we
ought not to have made them?" Bloomfield said that his orders were
precise. "Lisez donc," cried Nesselrode, "mais il sera très-ennuyeux."
Before he had got half through Nesselrode interrupted him. "I have heard
all this," he said, "from Lamoricière, only in half the number of words.
Cannot you consider it as read?" Bloomfield, however, was inexorable.'
I recurred to a subject on which I had talked to both of them before--the
tumult of January 29, 1849.
'George Sumner,' I said, 'assures me that it was a plot, concocted by
Faucher and the President, to force the Assembly to fix a day for its
dissolution, instead of continuing to sit until it should have completed
the Constitution by framing the organic laws which, even on December 2
last, were incomplete. He affirms that it was the model which was
followed on December 2; that during the night the Palais Bourbon was
surrounded by troops; that the members were allowed to enter, but were
informed, not publicly, but one by one, that they were not to be allowed
to separate until they had fixed, or agreed to fix, the day of their
dissolution; and that under the pressure of military intimidation, the
majority, which was opposed to such a dissolution, gave way and consented
to the vote, which was actually carried two days after.'
'No such proposition was made to me,' said Tocqueville, 'nor, as far as I
know, to anybody else; but I own that I never understood January 29. It
is certain that the Palais Bourbon, or at least its avenues, were taken
possession of during the night; that there was a vast display of military
force, and also of democratic force; that the two bodies remained _en
face_ for some time, and that the crowd dispersed under the influence of
a cold rain.'
'I too,' said Corcelle, 'disbelieve Sumner's story. The question as to
the time of dissolution depended on only a few votes, and though it is
true that it was voted two days after, I never heard that the military
demonstration of January 29 accelerated the vote. The explanation which
has been made to me is one which I mentioned the other day, namely, that
the President complained to Changarnier, who at that time commanded the
army of Paris, that due weight seemed not to be given to his 6,000,000
votes, and that the Assembly appeared inclined to consider him a
subordinate power, instead of the _Chef d'État_, to whom, not to the
Assembly, the nation had confided its destinies. In short, that the
President indicated an intention to make a _coup d'etat_, and that the
troops were assembled by Changarnier for the purpose of resisting it, if
attempted, and at all events of intimidating the President by showing him
how quickly a force could be collected for the defence of the Assembly.'
_Sunday, January_ 4.--I dined with the Tocquevilles alone. The only
guest, Mrs. Grote, who was to have accompanied me, being unwell.
'So enormous,' said Tocqueville, 'are the advantages of Louis Napoleon's
situation, that he may defy any ordinary enemy. He has, however, a most
formidable one in himself. He is essentially a copyist. He can originate
nothing; his opinions, his theories, his maxims, even his plots, all are
borrowed, and from the most dangerous of models--from a man who, though
he possessed genius and industry such as are not seen coupled, or indeed
single, once in a thousand years, yet ruined himself by the extravagance
of his attempts. It would be well for him if he would utterly forget all
his uncle's history. He might then trust to his own sense, and to that of
his advisers. It is true that neither the one nor the other would be a
good guide, but either would probably lead him into fewer dangers than a
blind imitation of what was done fifty years ago by a man very unlike
himself, and in a state of society both in France and in the rest of
Europe, very unlike that which now exists.'
Lanjuinais and Madame B., a relation of the family, came in.
Lanjuinais had been dining with Kissileff the Russian Minister. Louis
Napoleon builds on Russian support, in consequence of the marriage of his
cousin, the Prince de Lichtenstein, to the Emperor's daughter. He calls
it an _alliance de famille_, and his organs the 'Constitutionnel' and the
'Patrie' announced a fortnight ago that the Emperor had sent to him the
Order of St. Andrew, which is given only to members of the Imperial
family, and an autograph letter of congratulation on the _coup d'état_.
Kissileff says that all this is false, that neither Order nor letter has
been sent, but he has been trying in vain to get a newspaper to insert a
denial. It will be denied, he is told, when the proper moment comes.
'It is charming,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'to see the Emperor of
Russia, like ourselves, forced to see his name usurped without redress.'
Madame B. had just seen a friend who left his country-house, and came to
Paris without voting, and told those who consulted him that, in the
difficulties of the case, he thought abstaining was the safest course.
Immediately after the poll was over the Prefect sent to arrest him for
_malveillance_, and he congratulated himself upon being out of the way.
One of Edward de Tocqueville's sons came in soon after; his brother, who
is about seventeen, does duty as a private, has no servant, and cleans
his own horse; and is delighted with his new life. That of our young
cavalry officers is somewhat different. He did not hear of the _coup
d'état_ till a week after it had happened.
'Our regiments,' said Lanjuinais, 'are a kind of convents. The young men
who enter them are as dead to the world, as indifferent to the events
which interest the society which they have left, as if they were monks.
This is what makes them such fit tools for a despot.'
_Thursday, January 8, 1852_.--From Sir Henry Ellis's I went to
Tocqueville's.
[3]'In this darkness,' he said, 'when no one dares to print, and few to
speak, though we know generally that atrocious acts of tyranny are
perpetrated everyday, it is difficult to ascertain precise facts, so I
will give you one. A young man named Hypolite Magin, a gentleman by birth
and education, the author of a tragedy eminently successful called
"Spartacus," was arrested on the 2nd of December. His friends were told
not to be alarmed, that no harm was intended to him, but rather a
kindness; that as his liberal opinions were known, he was shut up to
prevent his compromising himself by some rash expression. He was sent to
Fort Bicêtre, where the casemates, miserable damp vaults, have been used
as a prison, into which about 3,000 political prisoners have been
crammed. His friends became uneasy, not only at the sufferings which he
must undergo in five weeks of such an imprisonment in such weather as
this, but lest his health should be permanently injured. At length they
found that he was there no longer: and how do you suppose that his
imprisonment has ended? He is at this instant at sea in a convict ship on
his way to Cayenne--untried, indeed unaccused--to die of fever, if he
escape the horrors of the passage. Who can say how many similar cases
there may be in this wholesale transportation? How many of those who are
missing and are supposed to have died at the barricades, or on the
Boulevards, may be among the transports, reserved for a more lingering
death!'
A proclamation to-day from the Prefect de Police orders all persons to
erase from their houses the words 'Liberté,' 'Êgalité,' and 'Fraternité'
on pain of being proceeded against _administrativement_.
'There are,' said Tocqueville, 'now three forms of procedure:
_judiciairement, militairement_ and _administrativement._ Under the first
a man is tried before a court of law, and, if his crime be grave, is
sentenced to one or two years' imprisonment. Under the second he is tried
before a drumhead court-martial, and shot. Under the third, without any
trial at all, he is transported to Cayenne or Algiers.'