Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  Up to that point it was a well-planned and neatly executed enterprise, and it seemed that the plotters had thought of everything. The drums of the National Guard had been slashed in the night; the main presidential proclamation emphasized that the coup was aimed solely at the Assembly, which was said to be a centre of conspiracy; only governmental newspapers were allowed to appear; and a plebiscite was promised in a fortnight, which would approve (or, in theory, disapprove) a new constitution, under which Louis Napoleon would be president for ten years. But as soon as the news got about some two hundred representatives, Tocqueville and Beaumont among them, hurried to the Palais Bourbon. They could not get in, but the legitimist maire of the tenth arrondissement (nowadays the sixth) offered them the use of his town hall. So for several hours the National Assembly continued, passing unanimous motions deposing Louis Napoleon and constituting itself an emergency government, and throwing copies of its decrees out of the window to the street (having got in to the mairie they could not get out again: the building had been rapidly surrounded by soldiers). Berryer, the portly legitimist leader, harangued the crowd from a balcony, and was received with some warmth – many of the Parisians mistook him for Ledru-Rollin, supposedly returned from exile. The troops were genuinely uncertain what to do, but eventually the representatives were driven from the town hall as they had been from the Palais Bourbon, and this time they were not allowed to go unsupervised. They were herded, two by two, a mournful procession, through the narrow streets of the quartier Saint-Germain – presumably by way of the rue de Grenelle and the rue du Bac – until they reached the riverside barracks of the Quai d’Orsay, where they were to be confined until further orders. They did not receive much sympathy from what Rémusat described as a thin and apathetic crowd, though according to Tocqueville there were cries of ‘Vive l’Assemblée Nationale!’ evoked, he thought, by compassion for all the distinguished men – ‘former ministers, former ambassadors, generals, admirals, great orators, great writers’ – forced to trudge through the mud of the streets surrounded by bayonets, like a band of malefactors. He felt intensely humiliated, as his account of the affair shows. 25

  They spent the night in the barracks. Tocqueville recalled, a few weeks later:

  The gayest time ... that I ever passed was at the Quai d’Orsay. The elite of France in education in birth, & 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 thro’ some perils, and we had some to encounter, & we were in the high spirits which excitement and danger shared with others, when not too formidable, create. From the Court yard, in which we had been penned for a couple of hours where the Duc de Broglie and I tore our chickens with our hands & teeth, we were transferred to a long sort of gallery or garret, running along 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 [and] hired palliases from the soldiers & carried them up for themselves. I was too idle, & lay on the floor in my cloak. Instead of sleeping we spent the night in shouting from pallias to pallias anecdotes, repartees jokes, & 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 Kerdrel,† a man of great humour exciting shouts of laughter by exclaiming with great solemnity, as he looked round the floor, strewed with mattresses & statesmen, & lighted by a couple of tallow candles Voilà donc où en est reduit ce fameux parti de l’ordre. 26 ‡

  Such reactions to a situation of such stress are not in the least surprising. But the notes which Tocqueville scribbled to Marie while he was a prisoner add some different shades to the story (and imply, among other things, that the conditions of his captivity were not especially oppressive):

  2 December 1851. I do not know whether you have received the letter which I sent to tell you that I was well, that I was in the barracks next to the river across from the Tuileries and that if you should be able to send Eugène to me with a little food and an overcoat, you would give me great pleasure. A.

  [3 December 1851]. A gentleman whom I do not know is kind enough to carry this letter to you. I am very well. I have nothing to fear. I have written to you twice to request you to try and send Eugène to me here in order to bring me my greatcoat and my galoshes. If that is possible I shall be most happy. By speaking to the officers, by saying that I am unwell and by giving my name he will be allowed to come to me. I embrace you from the bottom of my heart as you can suppose. A.

  The unusually formal language shows that Tocqueville was expecting his notes to be read by the authorities.27

  And those authorities were somewhat embarrassed by what had happened. The Assembly’s demonstration of defiance had been unexpected. It saved the honour of the representatives, but had no other consequence; still, Morny and Louis Napoleon could not overlook it. They gave orders for the immediate demolition of the salle de carton where the Assembly had met since 1848, and decided to transfer the prisoners from the barracks to more regular jails – Vincennes, Mont-Valérien, Mazas. Beaumont was sent to Mont-Valérien. Charles de Rémusat was among those sent to Mazas, and was much impressed by what he found there – a whitewashed cell lit by gas, with no bad smells, furnished with a hammock, a table, and a chair. It sounds as if Mazas was one of the prisons which had benefited from Tocqueville’s long campaign. Rémusat had been a prison reformer himself in 1836, when he was sous-secrétaire d’état, and had introduced cellular carriages for those under arrest, though in 1851 he may not have appreciated the irony when he found himself carried in one. But the officer in charge broke the principle of silence and allowed his captives to keep the doors of their cells open so that they could talk. He said it was not a favour that he granted to his normal clients – convicts, madmen and prostitutes, but he was fairly sure that representatives of the people would not abuse it.28

  Tocqueville was far too angry to be amused, even in retrospect. He thought it ignominious to be transported in a paddy-waggon and assumed it was a deliberate insult. He was sent not to Mazas but to Vincennes (whither some members of the Assembly had once hoped to send Louis Napoleon). Tocqueville did not have to sample the dungeons there: Vincennnes was a military prison, and the officers treated the representatives as prisoners on parole (Beaumont found the same at Mont-Valérien). Eugène appeared at last, and Tocqueville felt that he was again in touch with Marie, who was taking the affair badly, which deeply worried her husband. ‘For mercy’s sake I beg you [not to torture and distress yourself]. And in spite of my extreme desire to see you, I engage you not to come here because I am not sure they will let you in.’ Tocqueville was offered an order of release by the prefect of police at the intercession of a friend,* but angrily refused it: he would not go free before his colleagues were released. Next day, 4 December, the order came to let them all go, and they made their way back to central Paris as best they could. Within a day or two Louis Napoleon sent his old tutor, Vieillard, whom Tocqueville knew well, to apologize for his arrest, but Tocqueville would not let Vieillard into the house. 29

  There was something farcical about Tocqueville’s martyrdom, unpleasant though it was, and although he took some pride in it. There was nothing farcical about various other calamities which resulted from the coup. The workers of Paris had no love for the Assembly: they remembered the June Days too clearly, and resented the fact that the representatives, even their own, had drawn generous stipends while they themselves were unemployed and hungry. On the morning of 3 December a handful of Montagnard representatives tried to stimulate the building of barricades in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, but had very limited success. Why, said the workers, should we fight for men who had been paid twenty-five francs a day and did nothing useful to earn them? Angered, Representative Baudin cried, ‘You will soon see how one can die for twenty-five francs a day,’ and a few moments later he was indeed shot and killed.�
� There was more fighting next day, 4 December; some of the bourgeoisie were showing, unusually – I might almost say, uniquely – some sympathy for the insurgents, so they too were shot down on the boulevards. Many bystanders were also killed. Perhaps the soldiers were drunk and got out of hand, but Morny was entirely ruthless. By 5 December resistance in Paris was at an end. That in the provinces was just beginning, but it did not amount to much, even in the Alpine south-east, where it was most serious; a week later order had been restored everywhere, giving Louis Napoleon the chance to pose as its preserver, when he was really its disturber.30

  France was entering upon a new phase of her history. Tocqueville’s political career was at an end. Before it quite finished he made three gestures which between them convey his own verdict on the event and on that career.

  Mrs Grote had been spending the autumn in Paris. On 6 December Tocqueville read to her a letter for The Times giving his account of the coup, and the next day sent it to her. She smuggled it successfully to London, and it was printed (anonymously) on 11 December, becoming part of the great campaign which the Thunderer (inspired by Henry Reeve) was launching against the new dictator. Tocqueville’s chief concern was to give an accurate account of what had happened, since Louis Napoleon was trying to silence all hostile voices and to impose his own version of events; but for Tocqueville accuracy entailed denunciation of violence, aggression and defiance of the law. He had almost nothing to say about anything other than the struggle between the president and the Assembly; in fairness to him it should be remembered that, writing on the 5 or 6 of December, he probably had only the vaguest knowledge of much that had occurred. With this reservation it may be said that his account is full and fair. His verdict on the whole affair is worth quoting, though unsurprising: ‘Force overturning law, trampling on the liberty of the press and of the person, deriding the popular will, in whose name the Government pretends to act, – France torn from the alliance of free nations to be yoked to the despotic monarchies of the Continent, – such is the result of this coup d’état.’31 He was never going to forgive Louis Napoleon’s crime, in part, no doubt, because he himself had been so entirely ineffective in resisting it. Nor for long could he forgive the French, and particularly his own sort, for acquiescing so eagerly in what had happened, and being so ready to sacrifice their country’s liberty, dignity and honour in return for material well-being. The salons of Paris were full of self-styled gentlemen and their poor little wifelets (femmelettes)* who had been so frightened by the thought of what 1852 might do to their incomes that they welcomed the ignominious new regime with transports of joy. He was disgusted and appalled, but he agreed with his brother Édouard that there was nothing to be done.32

  He was still a member of the conseil-général of the Manche, and when it met in special session in March he was again its president, and the chief author of the latest report about the Cherbourg railway. After the session he resigned. Although publicly he professed otherwise (he wanted to leave open the possibility of returning to the conseil if times improved), he did so because he was not going to take the oath to Louis Napoleon that was now required of him, and everyone knew it (including Clamorgan, now a fervent Bonapartist: he and Tocqueville broke off relations, which were never to be resumed). Tocqueville resigned, as he told Beaumont, with deep regret: it was foreclosing the future and becoming an émigré of the interior; it was sacrificing his particular, and particularly agreeable, position in the department, one founded on respect for him personally, and independent of political opinions – his sort of democracy. But not to resign would be ridiculous, and anyway his regrets were trifles compared to the general mass of shame and misery generated by the coup d’état.33

  He was extremely bitter about what had happened, and blamed it all on the February Revolution, which had generated socialism and the terror of socialism that had given Louis Napoleon his opportunity. He still did not recognize that his own commitment to obsolescent economic theory, his obsessive cult of property and his fear of revolution made him a part of the problem which he analysed. But as his reference to emigration of the interior suggests, he was aware that after twenty-one years he had fallen into the trap which had engulfed so many of his family and friends after the July Revolution. He had devoted the best years of his youth and maturity to building a free state in France, and now it seemed that he was condemned to ineffectiveness on the sidelines of a despotism. He did not abandon hope, but curiously if logically he now associated that hope with the cause which his family had maintained and which he had abandoned: the cause of the Bourbons. Not that he reverted to legitimism of the old school. On the contrary, since the legitimists showed a distressing tendency to slide towards acceptance of Louis Napoleon, he wanted a reconciliation between the pretenders of the elder line and Orleans and an explicit commitment to liberalism by the comte de Chambord, which would make him the rallying-point for all those opposed to the Bonapartes. He wrote a long memorandum for Chambord’s eyes pressing liberalism upon him.* It was another exercise in wishful thinking, but Tocqueville never wavered again. His acceptance of the July Monarchy had always been faute de mieux, and although he had been a sincere Republican it had never been without anguish; besides, both Louis-Philippe and the Republic had failed; Louis Napoleon was a criminal; who was left but Henri V?34

  It is to be hoped that his brothers and his father were never so unkind as to say, ‘We told you so.’

  * Because of his illness AT missed both debates. We know that he opposed the law of 31 May, and it is hard to be sure that he approved of the loi Falloux. He believed in liberté d’enseignement, but the law went much further than that, and one of AT’s firmest beliefs was in the separation of Church and state.

  * It also provides that three-quarters of the states must approve an amendment; but this requirement of federalism had no equivalent in the centralized France of 1851.

  * Though he still thought that mere vagabonds and drifters should not have the right to vote. He had not supported universal suffrage under the July Monarchy, but had been much encouraged by the elections of 1848 and 1849 in the Manche.

  * At least it won AT his only mention, so far as I know, in all the works of Karl Marx (see Eighteenth Brumaire, 101).

  * I am grateful to Dr Hugh Tulloch for straightening me out on this point.

  † Was AT thinking of himself?

  * Had the motion passed it would merely have accelerated the coup d’état.

  * ‘It was a rolling cannonade, a rain of epigrams.’

  † Presumably Vincent Audren de Kerdrel (1815–99), a legitimist representative from Brittany (Ile-et-Vilaine). He ended as a senator for life under the Third Republic.

  ‡ ‘So this is what the famous Party of Order has sunk to!’

  * The brother of the painter Théodore Chassériau, whose admirable portrait of AT had been exhibited in the Salon of 1850.

  † His last words are legendary, and it cannot be certain that he uttered them; but his death was real enough.

  * English cannot do justice to the venom of this word.

  * Chambord received the document and made a polite remark or two, but no more came of it. It found its way into print in November 1871, at a time when the legitimists were desperately trying to get their King to show the small amount of tact and common sense which was all that was then required to bring him back to his throne. Notoriously, Chambord failed them completely.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WRITING HISTORY

  1852–1855

  Je n’ai jamais désiré le pouvoir, mais la réputation.*

  ALEX DE TOCQUEVILLE, 18521

  LOUIS NAPOLEON was now the absolute master of France, and after another year would make himself Emperor (on 2 December 1852), calling himself Napoleon III. The interim was spent in consolidating his regime. The most spectacular and successful means that he employed was economic; he precipitated a landslide of investment through which France at last began to catch up with the other industrializing
states of Europe (Britain, Belgium and Prussia); but his programme made little impression on Tocqueville, who saw it only as a repetition, on a larger scale, of the friponnerie (dishonest speculation) of the July Monarchy. Other aspects of the dictatorship struck him as much more important, and alarming. The resistance in the Midi had been brutally defeated, and the thousands of arrests were followed by sentences of exile, or of penal labour in Algeria or (worst of all) of transportation to Cayenne in French Guinea, which, as Tocqueville bitterly remarked, was tantamount to a sentence of death. He was infuriated by the new press law, the most restrictive since the time of the first Napoleon (he did not seem to remember that the Second Republic, even in its early, liberal days, had led the way in censorship). He was also outraged by the affair of the Orleans seizures. The Prince-President felt it necessary to persuade French public opinion that order was threatened from the Right as well as the Left, thus making his rule seem more necessary than ever. To show that there was still an Orleanist as well as a socialist conspiracy he exiled half a dozen leading generals, Tocqueville’s friends Lamoricière and Bedeau among them, and also the most conspicuous Orleanist leaders, including Thiers and Rémusat. His master-stroke, however, was a decree in January 1852 by which the private fortune of Louis-Philippe, which in 1830 had been carefully reserved for his family instead of being merged in the estates belonging to the monarchy, was seized outright, and the Orleans princes were required to sell all their other possessions in France within a year. This robbery was too much for Morny, who had been a conspicuous Orleanist until very recently: he resigned from the ministry of the interior. It was also too much for Montalembert, the Catholic leader, who had publicly welcomed the coup d’état; but it served Louis Napoleon’s turn, for he could pretend that he was depriving conspirators of their financial resources, and he ostentatiously devoted the proceeds of his raid to charity. To Tocqueville the affair was one more proof of the regime’s essential criminality.2