Children of the Revolution Read online

  Women were initially liberated by the Revolution, then excluded from the public sphere by revolutionaries who associated political women with the court intrigue of the Ancien Régime and perfected a model of the male citizen and soldier and the female wife and mother. Women gradually fought back for emancipation, but they anticipated republican fears that Catholic women would bring back the monarchy if they were given the vote and concentrated on securing civil rights: divorce, control of their property, education, and the opening up of the professions. When they did start to demand the vote they had no time for the civil disobedience of British suffragettes. As women demanded emancipation, society expressed fears of female sexuality, a falling birth rate, family break-up, over-educated bluestockings grown mannish and female voters bringing back the Ancien Régime. French women may have gained less than their British counterparts, but they negotiated an emancipation that was tempered to the demands of femininity, family, society, Republic and country.

  In the cultural sphere, there was a tension between the creativity of the artist, the control and patronage of the state, and the demand of the market. Successive generations of avant-garde artists and writers, Romantic, Realist and Symbolist, challenged both artistic and social conventions. Their excesses, however, were balanced by writers and artists who kept faith with the classical canon and more easily pleased audiences. Beneath both of these the growing demand of a mass semi-educated urban market stimulated the beginnings of a mass media which included serialized novels, detective fiction and thrillers, the 1-sou press, comics, the popular theatre and the cinema. Avant-garde creativity was not self-contained but drew on the powerful popular inspirations of myth, folklore and religion, and also sought the public recognition afforded by attention-grabbing manifestos, reputable dealers and publishers, and literary prizes. It was also international in status. What went on in Paris salons and opera-houses, on Montmartre or in Montparnasse, branded Paris as the European, even Western, capital of art.

  How France fared on the great-power stage was nevertheless more important to most French people than its cultural standing. The revolutionary generation saw France as the Grande Nation, then the Grand Empire, dominating Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals and from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. It developed an ideology first of bringing liberty to oppressed peoples, then of bringing civilization in the form of the rule of law and enlightenment. All this came to an end in the snows of Russia, the mountain gorges of Spain and the farmland of Belgium. Successive generations through the nineteenth century struggled to reconstruct France’s national greatness and, to sustain it, a national identity. They looked anxiously around to assess which countries enjoyed more liberty or more civilization than France. Hopes that the revolutions of 1830 or 1848 would relaunch French armies to liberate Europe came to nothing. A revival of French power under the Second Empire was checked by the defeat of 1870, the amputation of Alsace-Lorraine, and the loss of great-power ranking to Germany, Great Britain and Russia. France’s greatness was painstakingly rebuilt in the colonies, from Indo-China to sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. Officers who saw action in the colonies and indigenous troops recruited into French units played a significant role in the war effort of 1914–18. At the same time the pain of defeat was used to rebuild French national identity. The cult of Vercingétorix and Joan of Arc, the soldier– citizens of 1792 and Napoleon served to create a coherent national consciousness and confidence. It inspired the jeunes gens d’aujourd’hui, who went to the front as young officers, and the peasants from Brittany to the Alps who became the poilus of the trenches, and who together left a million and a half bodies on the battlefields of France and Belgium to defend the French Republic and French nation.

  Two views of the Revolution, as hope and as tragedy. The Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790 reveals a nation united in liberty…

  …While in this hostile cartoon Robespierre is shown executing the executioner after the last citizen has been guillotined.

  The revolutionary generation. Clockwise from the top: Madame de Staël, defender of liberty

  Counter-revolutionary François-René de Chateaubriand

  The Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American and French Revolutions

  Ex-bishop Talleyrand, the great survivor of regime change.

  Paris old and new: grim alleys imagined by Gustave Doré

  The wide boulevards built by Baron Haussmann, with the new Opéra in the background.

  The Romantic generation. Clockwise from the top: liberal politician Adolphe Thiers

  Painter Eugène Delacroix

  Writer and prophet Victor Hugo

  Félicité de Lamennais, who attempted to reconcile the Catholic Church with liberty and democracy.

  The curé d’Ars, a country priest who worked to restore religious life after the destructiveness of the Revolution

  A peasant family of the kind which bred generations of priests, here from the Auvergne.

  Two women with public profiles: Delphine de Girardin, in a painting by Hersent, who declared that ‘the first duty of a woman is to be beautiful’

  George Sand, the power behind Ledru-Rollin, minister of the interior in 1848.

  Private and public society: the salon of Marie d’Agoult, where select writers and politicians networked

  A much more diverse theatre audience that was never shy to voice its opinions.

  The Realist generation. Clockwise from the top: scholar and thinker Ernest Renan

  Novelist Gustave Flaubert

  Republican politician Léon Gambetta

  Revolutionary Louise Michel.

  Paris under siege and Paris in revolution, 1870–71. national guardsmen hold off an invisible Prussian enemy

  They build barricades against a defeatist and repressive government.

  The generation of Rejuvenators, who shaped the Republic of the Belle Époque. Clockwise from the top: Aristide Briand, anarchist turned peacemaker

  Alexandre Millerand, socialist turned nationalist

  Joseph Caillaux, ‘plutocratic demagogue’

  Henriette Caillaux, here shooting the editor of the Figaro to defend her honour.

  Belle Époque France at ease with itself. The middle classes holiday at Trouville

  While Louis Renault races one of his new machines.

  Two faces of French feminism: former actress Marguerite Durand, who claimed that ‘feminism owes much to my blonde hair’

  Madeleine Pelletier, a grocer’s daughter and psychiatric doctor who defended women’s right to abortion and campaigned with British suffragettes.

  Despite these images of a divided society – the social elite hunting in the forest of Chantilly

  Button-makers on strike in the Paris region – French society was becoming increasingly cohesive around a broad middle class.

  The generation of Sacrifice, which brought together patriotism, faith and social conscience. Clockwise from the top: Charles Péguy

  Marc Sangnier, leader of republican Catholic youth

  Ernest Psichari, the model Catholic soldier

  Raïssa Maritain, a Jewish refugee whose conversion to Catholicism was much acclaimed.

  Faces of French nationalism. Clockwise from the top: national heroes Joan of Arc and Vercingétorix imagined together by sculptor Chatrousse for the Salon of 1872

  Colonial proconsul Lyautey in France’s Moroccan protectorate

  Big Bad Wolf Britannia confronts Red Riding Hood France at Fashoda on the Nile in 1898.

  Peace and War. Socialist tribune Jean Jaurès addresses an antimilitarist rally on the outskirts of Paris in 1913

  While in 1914 Renault taxis are used to transport troops to the battle of the Marne, where the German offensive was checked.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION: THE CHILDREN

  OF THE REVOLUTION

  1. Karl Mannheim, ‘The Problem of Generations’, in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 276–320

  2. Al
an B. Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987), 3–34

  3. Edgar Quinet, Histoire de mes idées (Paris, 1878), 21, 108, 142. See also Edgar Quinet: The Story of a Child, translated with introduction and notes by Rosemary and Peter Ganz (London, Duckworth, 1995), 18, 66, 84

  4. Alfred de Musset, Confessions d’un enfant du siècle (Paris, Garnier, 1968), 1–5

  5. Claude Digeon, La Crise allemande de la pensée française, 1870–1914 (Paris, PUF, 1959). Digeon explores the impact of the defeat of 1870 on several generations of French writers and thinkers, with a periodi-zation of generations differing slightly from my own.

  6. Agathon [Alfred de Tarde and Henri Massis], Les Jeunes Gens d’aujourd’hui (Paris, Plon, 1913)

  CHAPTER 1: REVOLUTION OR

  CONSENSUS?: FRENCH POLITICS,

  1799–1870

  1. Richard Cobb, Reactions to the French Revolution (London, Oxford University Press, 1972), 181–211; Michel Vovelle, Ville et campagne au 18e siècle (Chartres et Beauce) (Paris, Éditions Sociales, 1980), 299–303

  2. Henri Pirenne, Histoire de la Belgique, IV (Brussels, La Renaissance du Livre, 1974), 157–8

  3. T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983), 289–300

  4. Howard G. Brown, Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon (Charlottesville and Paris, University of Virginia Press, 2006), 163–8

  5. Bernard Gainot, 1799: Un Nouveau Jacobinisme: La Démocratie représentative, une alternative à brumaire (Paris, Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale, 2001)

  6. Report of Bureau Central, 28 prairial An VII/16 June 1799, in Alphonse Aulard, ed., Paris pendant la Révolution thermidorienne et sous le Directoire, V (Paris, 1902), 567–8

  7. Howard G. Brown, ‘Revolt and Repression in the Midi toulousain, 1799’, French History 19/2 (2005), 234–61

  8. Quoted by F.-A. Aulard, L’État de la France en l’an VIII et l’an IX (Paris, 1897), 15

  9. P.-J.-B. Buchez and P. C. Lavergne-Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, XXXVIII (Paris, 1838), 122–3

  10. Quoted by Alan Schom, Napoleon Bonaparte (New York, HarperCollins, 1997), 208

  11. Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, XXXVIII, 201–20

  12. Claude Langlois, ‘Le Plébiscite de l’an VIII ou le coup d’état du 18 pluviôse an VIII’, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 44 (1972), 43–65, 231–46, 390–415

  13. Jean Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon (1800–1814) (Paris, Berger-Levrault, 1932), 39–49; Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship (New York and London, Norton, 2002), 46–52

  14. Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, 27, 76–9. See also Count of Las Cases, The Memorial of Saint-Helena (London, 1823), I, 1st part, 347–9, entry for 18 Dec. 1815

  15. Napoleon 1st, Correspondance, VI (Paris, 1860), 574, letter of 7 Sept. 1800

  16. Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe (Paris, Gallimard Pléiade, 1951), I, 308–439, 492–3

  17. Cynthia Cox, Talleyrand’s Successor: Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, 1766–1822 (London, Arthur Barker, 1959), 51–69

  18. L. de la Sicotière, Louis de Frotté et les insurrections normandes, 1793–1832 (Paris, 1889), 469–501

  19. G. Lenôtre, Georges Cadoudal (Paris, Grasset, 1929), 70–81

  20. Frédéric Bluche, Le Plébiscite des Cent-Jours (Geneva, Droz, 1974), 37

  21. Jean-Victor Moreau, Discours prononcé au tribunal criminal spécial du département de la Seine (Paris, 1804), 1–4. See also Louis de Villefosse and Janine Bouissounouse, L’Opposition à Napoleon (Paris, Flammarion, 1969), 248–50

  22. Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe, I, 534

  23. Lazare Carnot, Discours prononcé au Tribunat, 11 floréal An XII (Paris, 1804), 4–8

  24. David Chanteraine, Le Sacré de Napoléon (Paris, Tallandier, 2004); Laurence Chantal de Brancion, Le Sacré de Napoléon (Paris, Perrin, 2004)

  25. Jean-Roch Coignet, The Notebooks of Captain Coignet (London, Greenhill, 1998), 95–102, 117–23, 133–9

  26. Jean Tulard, Napoléon et la noblesse de l’Empire (Paris, Tallandier, 1979), 93–8

  27. Quoted by Natalie Petiteau, Élites et mobilités: La Noblesse d’Empire au XIXe siècle (1808–1914) (Paris, La Boutique de l’Histoire, 1997), 211

  28. Georges Six, Les Généraux de la Révolution et de l’Empire (Paris, Bordas, 1947), 24–8

  29. Charles Durand, Les Auditeurs au Conseil d’État de 1803 à 1814 (Aix-en-Provence, La Pensée Universitaire, 1958), 16–38; Marquis de Noailles, Le Comte de Molé, 1781–1855 (Paris, 1922), I, 13–174; Victor de Broglie, Souvenirs, 1785–1870 (Paris, 1886), I, 2–111

  30. Joanna Richardson, Stendhal: A Biography (London, Methuen, 1912), 105–234

  31. George Whitcomb, ‘Napoleon’s Prefects’, American History Review 79/4 (1974), 1089–1118

  32. Madame de Rémusat, Mémoires, 1802–8 (Paris, Tallandier, 1979), 97–104

  33. Duchesse d’Abrantès, Histoire des salons de Paris (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989), 209–12

  34. Schom, Napoleon, 617–27; Graham Robb, Victor Hugo (London, Picador, 1997), 12–41

  35. Germaine de Staël, Choix de lettres, 1778–1817, ed. Georges Solovieff (Paris, Klincksieck, 1970), 443–72, letters to Bernadotte, 25 Mar., 11 Sept., 11 Oct. 1813, and to Moreau, 12 Aug. 1813

  36. Jean Tulard, Joseph Fouché (Paris, Fayard, 1998), 226

  37. Talleyrand, Mémoires 1754–1815, ed. P. L. and J.-P. Couchod (Paris, Plon, 1982), 636; Jean Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon, 1800–1814 (Paris, 1932), 325–50; 38. Alexis Eymery, Dictionnaire des Girouettes (Paris, 1815); Alan B. Spitzer, ‘Malicious Memories: Restoration Politics and a Prosopography of Turncoats’, French Historical Studies 24/1 (2001), 37–61

  38. Tulard, Fouché, 297–8; Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon, 377–9. On the reconciliation of imperial titles in general see Gordon K. Anderson, ‘Old Nobles and Noblesse d’Empire, 1814–1830: In Search of a Conservative Interest in Post-revolutionary France’, French History 8/2 (1994), 151–3

  39. Charles de Rémusat, Mémoires de ma vie (Paris, Plon, 1959), I, 152

  40. François Guizot, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de mon temps, I: 1807–1816 (Clermont-Ferrand, Paléo, 2002), 7

  41. A. Philippe, Royer-Collard: Sa vie politique, sa vie privée, sa famille (Paris, 1857), 51, 67–8, 71

  42. Benjamin Constant, Oeuvres complètes, IX/1: Principes de politique et autres écrits, juin 1814–juillet 1815 (Tübingen, Niemeyer Verlag, 2001), 160–61; Alain Laquièze, ‘Le Modèle anglais et la responsabilité ministérielle selon le groupe de Coppet’, in Lucien Jaume, ed., Coppet, le creuset de l’esprit libéral (Paris and Aix-en-Provence, Economica-PU Aix-Marseille, 2000), 157–76

  43. Lazare Carnot, Mémoire adressé au roi en juillet 1814 (Brussels and London, 1814), 14; Marcel Reinhard, Le Grand Carnot (2 vols, Paris, 1950)

  44. Jean Vidalenc, Les Demi-solde: Étude d’une catégorie sociale (Paris, Rivière, 1955), 9–14

  45. Marshal Macdonald, Recollections, ed. Camille Rousset, trans. Stephen Louis Simon (London, 1893), 371; Henri Welschinger, Le Maréchal Ney, 1815 (Paris, 1893), 12–15

  46. Count of Las Cases, The Memorial of Saint-Helena I, 1st part, 316–17, entry for 10–12 Mar. 1816

  47. Welschinger, Ney, 28–52; Harold Kurtz, The Trial of Marshal Ney (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1957), 127–33

  48. Guizot, Mémoires, I, 95–6, 98

  49. Noailles, Le Comte de Molé, 1781–1855, I, 205–32

  50. Benjamin Constant, Mémoire sur les Cent Jours [1819], in Oeuvres complètes, XIV (Tübingen, 1993), 213–14

  51. Bluche, Le Plébiscite des Cent-Jours, 37

  52. Talleyrand, Mémoires, 757; Robert Alexander, Bonapartism and Revolutionary Tradition in France: The Fédérés of 1815 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991),
97–8

  53. Comte de Villèle, Mémoires et correspondance (Paris, 1888), 318

  54. Marquise de Montcalm, Mon journal (Paris, 1936), 202

  55. Broglie, Souvenirs, I, 325–33; Welschinger, Ney, 314

  56. Welschinger, Ney, 317–18

  57. Montcalm, Mon journal, 184–5, entry for 4 Sept. 1816; Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1994), 23

  58. Ernest Daudet, Louis XVIII et le Duc de Decazes, 1815–1820 (Paris, 1899), 19–59; Roger Langeron, Decazes, ministre du roi (Paris, Hachette, 1960), 23–30, 63–6