Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  * Nassau Senior, Journal, 26 May 1848.

  * She was writing in 1832.

  * Now the place de la Concorde.

  * Orléans had lived in the United States from 1796 to 1798, as a refugee from the great Revolution.

  * It is perhaps necessary to remark, in fairness to Charles X, that the precaution was not pointless: before he got to Cherbourg he had to pass through some very hostile country, and one night the escutcheon was torn from his carriage.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  UPHEAVAL

  1830–1831

  Soyez l’esclave de votre propre opinion et le serviteur de personne. D’ailleurs, dans le temps de pitoyable confusion dans lequel nous vivons, rien ne presse de prendre une cocarde.*

  ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE TO BEAUMONT,

  4 OCTOBER 18291

  IN JANUARY 1830 few in France had particularly desired, and none had expected, the immediate fall of the Bourbons; by the end of July few desired or expected their survival. They had disgusted and disappointed even their most faithful supporters.

  No Tocqueville, it seems, journeyed with the fallen King on his dismal trek towards exile, although it took him eventually to Cherbourg by way of Saint-Lô (where he heard that Louis-Philippe had accepted the throne) and Valognes – right through the Tocquevilles’ own country. Louis de Rosanbo accompanied his wife, one of the duchesse de Berry’s ladies-in-waiting, and according to Mme de Boigne (but she was a malicious Orleanist) was rewarded by unwelcome amorous advances from the duchesse herself. Colonel Louis de Chateaubriand, whose regiment had deserted him and the Bourbon cause, went all the way with his King to Cherbourg, on a pony – the only mount he could find.2 His uncle François-René stayed in Paris to give his last political speech in the Chamber of Peers in support of the duc de Bordeaux, the grandson in favour of whom Charles had abdicated. Hervé de Tocqueville did not even attend the session.

  In his memoirs he makes it plain that he had lost all faith in the judgement and leadership of the King and the Dauphin: in his opinion they should have stayed near Paris and called the revolutionaries’ bluff. He supported the duc de Bordeaux, but knew that the issue was settled. He despised the Chamber of Peers (‘when the Gauls took Rome, the Senate did not offer the crown to Brennus’); he believed that it would have been right and politically profitable to go down in defence of principle. Matters were not helped when the same session, having accepted Louis-Philippe as King, excluded all peers created by Charles X – Hervé, of course, being one of them. He decided that his political career was over. He had always supported the elder branch of the Bourbons, and received many honours and benefits at their hands. He felt no temptation to rally to their supplanters: he wanted to keep the respect of his friends. Besides, he had seen so many revolutions and so much social upheaval, ‘my life had been shaken so often by events, that my soul was weary. After so many disappointed hopes, so many changes in my life, so many illusions destroyed, I felt the need to rest in the happy bosom of my family from the deceptive spectacle of human passions.’ His sons would be his consolation, his grandchildren his hope (he does not mention his wife). And compared to some more illustrious persons he thought himself lucky.

  His sons were variously affected by the disaster. Édouard, leading the life of a rich country gentleman, suffered least. Hippolyte did not at once resign his army commission, as many of his fellow officers did; he took the oath to Louis-Philippe, for it seemed quite possible that the revolution would provoke a European war, and he did not wish to desert his country; but by January 1831 the emergency was over, and he too resigned.

  Alexis was hit hardest. He was doubly afflicted, as a Frenchman and as a magistrate with a career at stake. The street-fighting which he had witnessed in Paris had shocked him deeply. He wrote to Marie Mottley on 30 July of how horrible it was ‘to see Frenchmen cutting each other’s throats for fun, to hear such cries of fury and despair all in the same language, and those poor, unlucky soldiers who gave their lives for an opinion which was certainly not theirs and for a man who should have died fighting at their head ... we ought to be ashamed to be alive!’ He was also ashamed to be a bystander; he ought to be marching in the van of those confronting the armed populace. The thought of the bloodshed in Paris and the din of the tocsin haunted him. He would never forget the experience; it would shape much of his thought in later years, but for the time being (once the fighting stopped) he was more concerned with the political consequences of the revolution, in both the short and the long terms.3

  He had shed tears of sorrow for the Bourbons, but they might just as sincerely have been tears of rage. Charles X, in his obstinate folly, had not only thrown away his crown and wrecked his dynasty, he had destroyed nineteenth-century France’s best chance of political stability. The constitutional question was not the only problem facing the country, but it was one which the French might have been spared had Charles X been a wiser man; then they could have devoted themselves to husbanding their strength and modernizing their society – in short, to preparing themselves for the challenges of the next 130 years. Instead, what was probably the most brilliant period of French civilization was marked by chronic political debility characterized by incipient or actual civil war, growing weakness relative to the other Great Powers, and three wars with Germany, each marked by disasters which ultimately came near to destroying the very nation. Charles X does not deserve all the blame for this state of affairs, but his fall, which was entirely his own doing, opened a new era of instability in which Tocqueville was destined to struggle all his life. If nothing else, the July Days had revived the Parisians’ taste for revolution; and since each convulsion ended, inevitably, in disappointment (for which the people blamed anything and anybody rather than their own unrealistic expectations), its principal achievement was to make a repeat performance likely.

  Tocqueville understood much of this in 1830: as Beaumont was to remark, he already had the gift of seeing more quickly, and further, than other people. The enthusiasm of July did not deceive him for a moment; he was chiefly afraid that Louis-Philippe, having come to the throne so dubiously, would either turn to military adventures to make himself feared at home and abroad, or meekly submit to every bully (such as the Tsar) to win pardon for his seizure of power.4 (In due course Louis Napoleon was to justify one of these apprehensions, Louis-Philippe the other.) Had he fully known what was to happen he might well have despaired and turned to farming, like so many of his fellow nobles (and like Beaumont after 1851). As it was, he hoped, in spite of all difficulties, to see a revival of liberty and rallied to the new régime, seeing in it the last chance for constitutional monarchy.

  This requires some explanation. In retrospect, it is difficult to believe that a republic headed by General de La Fayette would have been less liberal and constitutional than a monarchy headed by Louis-Philippe. The drift of French history from the Hundred Days onwards was towards some sort of republic; in 1848 Tocqueville himself became a republican of a kind. But such considerations are beside the point. As we have seen, La Fayette himself did not believe that in the conditions of 1830 a republic was possible or, at least, could be permanent. European opinion, not unjustly, identified the French Republic with war and invasion. It proved difficult enough to induce the Tsar, Nicholas I, to accept Louis-Philippe; confronted with a republic he might well have revived the Holy Alliance, tried to restore the Bourbons yet again, and precipitated a European war. Furthermore, in 1830 republicanism was the creed of only a handful of Frenchmen. Had there been a suitable mature Bonaparte available an imperial resurrection might have been popular, although just as alarming to Europe; but since Napoleon II was only a youth dying in Vienna, the Bonapartists had to compromise. Many of them had been willing to make the Restoration work, if possible; when it failed, they flocked to Louis-Philippe, who was in several ways the successor not of Charles X but of Napoleon. Bonapartism would not become a viable alternative to Orleanism until 1848, as Louis Napoleon’s failed coups d’état in 1836 and
1840 were to demonstrate (Louis Napoleon was the Emperor’s eldest surviving nephew). The Bourbon cause would take even longer to revive. Tocqueville in 1830 was right to feel that his choice lay between Orleanism and abandoning politics. His only mistake was his failure to foresee that Orleanism would soon become unpopular and that republicanism would gain enormous strength as the only immediately practicable alternative.

  Personal interest, he was uneasily aware, pointed in the same direction as patriotism. His judicial career had been getting nowhere under the Bourbons; it would probably do no better under Louis-Philippe, but if he took the oath he would at least keep his job. It gave him a certain standing and, as he was soon to discover, certain opportunities. But his decision to support the new monarch was sincere, if unenthusiastic; to take the oath of allegiance was his only means of affecting the situation, however marginally. And he would have to act soon. Guizot, now the minister of the interior, was ruthlessly purging the administrative and judicial corps: there was already a new prefect at Versailles. Tocqueville and his colleagues took the oath on 16 August.5 He wrote to Marie immediately:

  My conscience is absolutely clear, but nonetheless I am deeply upset, and I count this day as among the unluckiest of my life. Marie, this is the first time, since I entered society, that I have had to avoid the company of people I admire while disapproving of them. Oh! ... the thought tears me to pieces; my native share of pride is in revolt against me, and yet I have not failed in my duty, rather I have done what I should for my country which can find salvation only in the dominion now arising to save us from anarchy. But have I done my duty to myself, to my family, to those who once died for the cause which I am ceasing to serve just as everything turns against it? I am not a child, Marie, I am not giving way to some trivial grief, but I feel the blow I have just received acutely, I feel it more than I can say. I am at war with myself, a new sensation, horrible.6

  His voice had changed pitch as he uttered the fatal words, he felt his heart beating as if to break.

  This moment of agony must be respected. As Tocqueville knew perfectly well, he was being both sensible and patriotic in taking the oath, and the Bourbons simply did not deserve that he should abandon all his prospects for their sake. His strongly emotional reaction to the crisis was characteristic: we will see him responding to later events in the same way, and calming down afterwards. But it cannot be truthfully said that on this occasion he over-reacted. He was making a decisive, public break with everything that he had been brought up to believe in and act upon, and it would have been strange had he not felt like a traitor. He might not have been able to bring himself to act in time had there not been a family council over the weekend to strengthen his resolve. Beaumont, who was in exactly the same position (and who, as a member of the parquet of Paris, had perhaps taken the oath already), joined in the discussion. Comte Hervé, an admirable father, not only supported his sons in whatever they chose to do (Hippolyte’s course was also debated) but gave them the benefit of his advice as to how their decisions might be carried out, and used such influence as he retained to help them. He went to the war ministry to make sure that Hippolyte’s oath was accepted, and he joined Édouard and Beaumont in urging Alexis to act in unison with his colleagues.

  Alexis was already calmer when he wrote to Hippolyte two days later (or perhaps he was not ready to be as open with his brother as he was with Marie). His pride, he now said, was affronted by the idea that some people would think that he was acting against his principles for selfish reasons. He was not sure how long he would stay in the magistracy, which, like the army, had found taking the oath humiliating. If he had another profession to turn to he would resign; as it was, he thought he would stay on until he was dismissed, as he certainly would have been by the Polignac ministry, for resisting the ordonnances, had it triumphed. The thought was a small consolation.7

  He had agonized, he had acted, and his situation was still extremely uncomfortable. Kergorlay was in the same straits. Writing to Tocqueville from Algiers during August, and from the ship which carried him back to France in early September, he was far from sure about his course. He did not at all want to give up his military career, and like Hippolyte felt that his country might soon need him. He might or might not take the oath, and expected to discuss the matter with Tocqueville when he got to Paris (he would be on sick-leave, having caught what was probably dysentery during the campaign). His situation was complicated by his father, who, as a peer appointed by Louis XVIII, could have stayed in the Chamber, but instead resigned, taking a very public stance in favour of the Bourbons, claiming that they had been deposed unlawfully; which meant that, legally, Louis, his son and heir, could have entered the Chamber himself had he so wished; but Louis would not, and came to feel that having refused to take the oath as a peer he could not logically do differently as an army officer. He sent his colonel a letter of resignation on 7 October.

  So far as we know, Tocqueville and Kergorlay accepted each other’s different decisions without acrimony. Another young man of their circle was not so tactful. Tocqueville’s former antagonist, Henrion, was told by Eugène Stoffels that Alexis and Hippolyte had taken the oath, but affected not to believe it. He wrote to Tocqueville praising Louis de Rosanbo, who had published a letter affirming his loyalty to the fallen dynasty:

  there spoke the true grandson of Malesherbes, but of a Malesherbes cursing the philosophy that he had unluckily protected, and listening only to the religion which made him die a hero’s death. When one is lucky enough to be M. de Rosanbo’s nephew one cannot take a chance on the party which controls events. I am sure, my dear Alexis, that you have sacrificed your place to your conscience, that Hippolyte has resigned, and that your father rejoices in a proscription which proclaims him to Europe a faithful [vassal?]

  He feared that he insulted Alexis by supposing for a moment that the alternative was possible.

  Tocqueville was furious. Henrion, he wrote back, had lectured him like an usher in school. ‘Yet I think you know that while I always take pleasure in my friends’ advice, I have never had the habit of submitting my conduct to their control.’ How dare Henrion insinuate that he had acted basely?

  Since I became old enough to exhibit them, my opinions have been manifest. On the day of the ordonnances I declared before the session of the tribunal that henceforth resistance seemed legitimate to me and that I would resist in my narrow sphere. When the movement went so far as to overthrow the dynasty I did not conceal my opposition to that measure. I said that I would fight in the civil war if it came about. But when the matter was settled I continued to believe, as I have always believed, that my strictest duty was owed not to a man or a family, but to the country. The salvation of France, as things stood, seemed to me to lie in sustaining the new King. So I promised to support him, without hiding that it was not for his sake that I did so ...

  Finally, to save you in future from wasting your eloquence on the subject of my grandfather [sic], I will tell you that, rightly or wrongly, I am deeply convinced that he would have acted in my place exactly as I have done, just as I have the presumption to hope that I would have acted like him in his.

  Tocqueville has changed his tune since his letter to Marie, and he meant every word of this thunderbolt. When Henrion called at the rue de Verneuil, hoping to be reconciled, he was told that M. Alexis was not at home.8

  This explosion of wrath may have relieved Tocqueville’s feelings, but the quarrel was one more reminder of how far he was moving from his accustomed moorings. Life was also becoming awkward at Versailles: elite society there had split into two camps, legitimist and Orleanist, and it was impossible to be on friendly terms with both, or indeed with either: the legitimists regarded Tocqueville as a traitor, while the Orleanists despised him as a time-server.9

  His professional prospects were as bad as ever. The familial network of distinguished connections was now worse than useless: it made him an object of suspicion to the government. At that very moment his dist
ant cousin Maxence de Damas was serving as governor to the duc de Bordeaux. As Beaumont was to say, ‘what chance did the Restoration prefect’s son have of receiving from the July government the promotion which the Restoration government had not given to the grandson of Malesherbes?’10 He was so far from being in favour that in October he was made to take the oath a second time. Besides, the general political outlook was highly uncertain. As Pamela Pilbeam stresses in all her work, the July Revolution did not end with the installation of Louis-Philippe; France would not really settle down again until 1834–5, if then. There might be a war, there might be a restoration, there might be a republican coup. Tocqueville could not see his way. The one thing that became clear was that it would be a good thing to disappear for a while, evading hostile observation and the necessity for any more unpleasant choices. By late August he had made up his mind: he would go on a journey to the United States.

  By most measures, this was the most important decision of his life, but its origins are frustratingly obscure (which may remind us how much of a human life will always be hidden from observers).

  Tocqueville had long been aware of America. At some time in his boyhood he had read a sentimental novel, Voyage au Lac Oneida, which told a touching tale of a French noble and his wife who had fled from the Revolution to an island in Lake Oneida in the Iroquois country and lived there happily ever after, in a kind of Rousseauian rhapsody. This story had extraordinary power over its reader. In the first place, he took it for fact, though its relation to history was somewhat remote: the noble from whose story it was derived was not a refugee, for instance, and lived on the island for only two years; he had two children before he went there, and in the end returned to France, having inherited a fortune. Tocqueville himself did not understand why he was so moved by the legend: ‘Whether this effect on me was worked by the talent of the author, by the real charm of the adventure, or by the influence of my age, I cannot say; but the memory of the two French lovers of Lake Oneida was never effaced from my memory.’11 He may have first read it at a lonely moment of his adolescence, when feeling more than usually misunderstood, and have savoured the idea of flight with his Rosalie to a woodland refuge where they could create a new Garden of Eden. Eventually he shared the dream with Beaumont, and it became a proverb between them: ‘No happiness in this world save on the shores of Lake Oneida.’12 But this fantasy can have had little to do with his decision in 1830, except perhaps that it had established America in his mind as a place of refuge.