Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  Or this:

  What most demoralizes men living through long revolutions is less the mistakes or even the crimes which they commit in the ardour of their faith and passion than the contempt which they sometimes end in feeling for that same faith and passion when, weary, disenchanted, disappointed, they turn at last against themselves and decide that they were adolescent in their hopes, ridiculous in their enthusiasm, and more ridiculous still in their devotion. Broken by such a fall, the strongest souls cannot recover. Men are crushed by it, to the extent that not only can they no longer attain great virtue, they seem to have become almost incapable of great wickedness either.15

  Writing at full speed, Tocqueville was discharging all the spleen which would otherwise have gone into the Souvenirs, had he undertaken to finish that work. Indeed, the chapters on Brumaire may be read as the Souvenirs’ completion, that book’s matter being too discouraging to handle directly.

  For that very reason the chapters are somewhat untrustworthy history. Tocqueville’s account of the last months of the Directory seems accurate enough, but once its message has been decoded a reader is bound to wonder if the narrator is really reliable. Tocqueville was probably not conscious of this, but the vengeful impulse which drove him to write was soon exhausted; having scarified the French for being ready to submit to a tyrant he had no more to say on the point. And as he pondered the records, questions of a quite different type began to occur to him. The central argument of his Brumaire chapters was that although the French had come to reject the Republic, because of its many failures, they were still fervently loyal to the Revolution, because of what it had done for them. But what was that? Everyone said that the peasants had got much richer, but exactly how much richer? And how much had the Revolution changed the structure of French society? As against what was generally thought, Tocqueville was coming to believe that under the ancien régime France was already, overwhelmingly, a country of small peasant proprietors, which would seem to suggest that the changes made by the Revolution, when it seized and distributed the lands of the Church and the émigrés, were marginal. How could he find solid information on these points?16

  He put these questions to Kergorlay by letter, and as usual got a thoughtful and helpful response, though Kergorlay was far from sure that the questions were answerable. Statistics were needed to make an estimate of pecuniary gains from the Revolution, and where were they to be found? Historians had simply not made the right enquiries; in fact, ‘I think that nothing is more unknown to the France of today than what the France of yesterday was administratively, pecuniarily, materially.’ As to the question of the distribution of land before the Revolution, answering it would require interminable research. Kergorlay had under his eye documents which enabled him to say that Tocqueville’s theory was correct so far as Fosseuse and its neighbouring communes were concerned: the same peasant families owned the land then as now; ‘but how can one generalize from this one study?’ Kergorlay, old friend though he was, did not quite know his man. ‘An army of Benedictines would be needed to reveal that unknown period, quite as much as for the darkest epochs of the Middle Ages; and you have better things to do than become one of those indefatigable researchers; besides there would only be one of you.’ This was not the way to put Tocqueville off; he loved archival research, and Kergorlay’s remarks had shown him a way to exercise his talents in a vast field, much as Royer-Collard had shown him how to exploit the necessity of making a speech about Lacuée de Cessac.* Kergorlay had referred in passing to Valognes and the archives of the Manche as possible mines of information, so two weeks later Tocqueville wrote to Zacharie Gallemand, a landowner at Valognes who had always been a staunch political supporter, for help in estimating the actual benefits that came from the abolition of feudal dues on the famous night of 4 August 1789:

  Being unemployed in the present time, I am trying to live usefully in the past and the direction of the great work which I have undertaken is leading me to make a very detailed examination and, if possible, one that is more precise than any made so far, of the state of French society at the moment when the Revolution transformed it ... It occurred to me that you could perhaps indicate some sources which I might investigate for our area [pays] and this hope leads me to write to you ... The importance of the subject is my excuse.

  Gallemand wrote back most helpfully, and also suggested that Tocqueville get in touch with the Manche archivist, François Dubosc, which he did; but Dubosc’s reply, when it came in late November, was not particularly encouraging: the archives were as yet entirely unsorted. By that time Tocqueville had drawn up a programme of what needed doing that would do credit to a student nowadays planning one of those formidable French doctoral theses. All forms of profit would have to be investigated – the purchase of confiscated lands at knock-down prices; the payment of debts and rents in depreciated currency; the rise in wages (Birette, the agent at Tocqueville, assured him that the price of labour had shot up in the Cotentin in the last years of the Empire, as able-bodied men were conscripted to the army); the abolition of feudal dues and of certain taxes; the non-payment of taxes. He read every relevant book that he could lay his hands on, and made extensive notes. Napoleon, as a topic, began to gather dust.17

  It is possible to regret this. The period of the Consulate was a subject that seems admirably suited to Tocqueville’s strengths, including his talent for pen-portraits, and unlikely to suffer from his weaknesses. True, Thiers had already published several thick volumes on the topic, but Tocqueville might reasonably have regarded this as a challenge which had to be answered, since Thiers was an ardent centralizer. But Tocqueville was not a professor, or, any longer, a politician. He was a Romantic, who could only write successfully when his feelings were deeply engaged; and it is easy to see why he was uninspired by the topic of the creation of the Napoleonic state. He could not celebrate it, as he had celebrated that other exemplar of the new order, the United States; instead he found himself drawn to studying the ruin of the old order.

  He had a happy summer, clouded only by the death of Eugène Stoffels in July. Tocqueville was distressed, partly because he liked Stoffels so much, and partly because he was the first of his intimate friends to die. But it could not be helped, and for the rest Tocqueville enjoyed his studies so much that he came somewhat to resent any interruption, however agreeable otherwise, even visits from Kergorlay and Beaumont. Ampère came to stay for several weeks, but that was different: he could be assigned a tower-room to get on with his own work, while Tocqueville studied in the room below. He wrote to Freslon:*

  You would laugh if you could see the man who has written so much on democracy surrounded by works on feudal law and bent over terriers and other dusty registers which enumerate all the rights of certain lordships and note the monies that they were still producing at the end of the eighteenth century. The tedium of these studies, joined to all the reasons I had already not to love the ancien régime, will end by making me a real revolutionary.18

  Tocqueville in his tower was far from being without access to primary sources, but the Parisian archives drew him, and in October he and Marie set off for the place de la Madeleine. On arrival Tocqueville again fell seriously ill, this time with pleurisy. He put it down to the appalling weather they met on their journey, which had begun by giving him rheumatism in his shoulder and side; he was relieved that, according to his doctors, his lungs were unaffected by this new malady. It is difficult to share his confidence in their verdict, for although his tuberculosis appears to have been in remission it is quite possible that it caused the pleurisy, and anyway Dr Andral’s treatment was decidedly antique. He believed in counter-irritants, so he blistered Tocqueville four times and kept the wound raw between treatments; the patient was in constant pain for three weeks or so. He was assured that the treatment was necessary to root out the illness and all its consequences, and was grateful that he was not blistered a fifth time; but it is hardly surprising that his convalescence was long and slow. As late a
s 17 December he had not found the strength to return to his work. Then, in the last week of December, just as his recovery began (Andral said it would take five or six months) Marie succumbed to une grippe abominable (presumably influenza) and had to take to her bed. ‘My wife and I have the habit of being always ill, one after another.’19

  So began the winter, and so it continued. Tocqueville was never really well, and in January he had one of his stomach attacks – the worst, he told Beaumont, for twelve years – that is, since 1841, when he went down with dysentery in Algeria. His spirits were also lowered by the state of politics, which seeped dismally into everything, even family life. He had already had a painful dispute with Édouard the year before, and now Hippolyte, whose political course since 1830 had been extremely erratic,* having rallied to the Empire tried to justify himself in a letter to his brother. He received a frosty reply: Hippolyte’s recent behaviour was as foreign to Alexis ‘as all the chief actions of your life have been since you were twenty’, which actions he then listed unforgivingly, though ending with assurances of brotherly devotion. He was as unrelenting with everyone else. He was severe when Rémusat, ‘that delicate and charming mind’, now returned from exile, sought to prove that the detested regime was solidly founded and that those who expected its downfall were fools. He could see no merit or intelligence in the imperial government, and was glad to think that Louis Napoleon made a great mistake when he married Eugenia de Montijo on 30 January; he was bitterly amused to think that this, of all things, was what would alienate him from the faubourg Saint-Germain: ‘To violate humanity and the laws may be overlooked, but a mésalliance! Fie!’ Nor did the clear propensity of the British and their government to accept the situation and work with Louis Napoleon escape his censure; in fact it became one of his chief complaints over the next few years, until the end of the Crimean War. Read today his letters plentifully demonstrate that he was politically consistent and high-principled, but the constant reaffirmation of his attitude becomes wearisome, and as his principles were sometimes only prejudices his judgement suffered. He became convinced that one day before long Louis Napoleon would go to war with Britain, and repeatedly told his British friends so, whereas such a war was something that the Emperor was determined to avoid. Unlike Tocqueville, he remembered the lesson of Trafalgar and Waterloo.20

  Not all the distractions of Paris were medical or political. Tocqueville had become friendly with the family of Edward V. Childe,* Americans living in Paris. Mrs Childe, the sister of Robert E. Lee, presided over a salon full of brilliant men and women, among them Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Vigny and Tocqueville himself. In March 1853 her elder daughter Florence, aged fifteen, ran away with a Polish diplomat, Prince Soltyk. Because of this Mrs Childe became the victim of spiteful Parisian tongues. Tocqueville was furious, and seized a chance of displaying his loyalty to his friends. The guilty couple had taken refuge in Geneva, and Mr Childe decided to go there to get his daughter back. Tocqueville gave him a letter of introduction to his old friend the publicist Auguste de la Rive, who contrived to dissuade the angry father from a wild scheme of re-abduction and got Soltyk to agree to marry the girl. Tocqueville did not think much of her: according to him she was ungrateful as well as morally feeble, but he was glad that he and La Rive had done what they could for the worthy parents.21

  None of these concerns was allowed to keep Tocqueville away from his research for long. As his health falteringly recovered he pursued two lines of enquiry, both inspired by his wish to discover why in 1789 revolution began in France rather than anywhere else. The first, and as it turned out the less fruitful, was inspired by his experience of 1848. In that year revolution had been an international phenomenon: why had the same not been true of 1789? Was Germany (for instance) so different from France? He decided to learn German, and sought out German correspondents. He wrote to Christian von Bunsen, equally distinguished as a historian and a diplomat,* that he wanted to study the European response to the French Revolution from the fall of the Bastille to the fall of the monarchy:

  Unfortunately, and much to my regret, I do not know Germany. So far I have lived exclusively in the English world. I imagine that during the last sixty years the Germans must have published memoirs, collections of letters or diplomatic documents which bring to light what I want to discover. I do not know of them, and in consequence cannot procure them. And the French Revolution must from its beginning have given birth, either deliberately or incidentally, to writings which reflect general public opinion. My semi-ignorance of German and my almost complete ignorance of Germany (which is happily not incurable) deprive me of this necessary information.

  So he turned to Bunsen for advice, which was courteously given and scrupulously followed, though not at once. Tocqueville soon began to carry out his resolution of learning German, and decided that in a year’s time, when he hoped to have mastered the language, he would make a long visit to Germany.22

  As if this project were not enough, Tocqueville continued his second line of enquiry, that of investigating through archives the nature of French society and government on the eve of the Revolution. When his health permitted he went to the archives of Paris, stored in the Hôtel de Ville, where he could find the records of the pre-revolutionary government of the region (généralité), the Île-de-France. Unfortunately they were more meagre than he had expected. He made a note:

  These files contain few documents anterior to 1787 and, beginning at that date, the old administrative system was profoundly modified and there began the transitional and rather uninteresting period which separates the administrative ancien régime from the system set up under the Consulate which rules us still.

  (This must be the most dismissive remark ever made about France between 1787 and 1799.) He could not see his way forward. ‘I am lost in an ocean of research,’ he wrote to Beaumont, ‘where fatigue and discouragement keep seeking me out.’ He was not just discouraged about himself, but about the whole human race and its history. The only reason for working was to avoid feeling exiled in his own country.23

  No doubt his dismal state of health had much to do with his despondency; and Marie was if anything worse. She was undergoing her menopause, as well as her usual ailments, and for the next two years seems to have been at best a semi-invalid for most of the time. She and Tocqueville could only explain their debility in terms of variations of the climate. They needed a bolt-hole, somewhere they could vegetate in the sun until Nature restored them. Their chateau was too damp and draughty, Paris, apart from any other consideration, far too expensive. Beaumont suggested they look for a refuge nearby: he wanted them to buy a villa at Auteuil or Passy, even (he hinted) if it meant selling Tocqueville; at any rate they should stop their perpetual house-moving, bad in itself for health.24

  Alexis and Marie decided that it would be too difficult and expensive to find what they wanted near Paris; they chose instead the Loire valley, and set Beaumont to finding a house for them. He jumped at the chance of making himself useful; and before long discovered Les Trésorières, near Tours, which was to let for a year – just what they wanted. Facing south, it was full of sunshine, and sheltered from the north wind by hills. It had never been let before, so the furniture was in tolerable condition; it had a small park, a kitchen garden, stables and a coach-house; and next door lived a famous physician, Dr Bretonneau. The only drawback was that there was no view.25 After a few days’ hesitation Tocqueville and Marie decided to accept Beaumont’s recommendation, and installed themselves at Les Trésorières on 1 June. The short journey by train from Paris exhausted them both, which showed how right they were to retreat to the countryside; they liked the house at sight. Their pleasure was much diminished when the servants’ rooms turned out to be full of bedbugs. Tocqueville saw this as the latest in a succession of unforeseen misfortunes which had beset him for a year. ‘Who could have imagined beforehand that a house which its owner had just been living in could be infested in this way?’ Fortunately a vigorous campaign r
outed the enemy, and Tocqueville began to settle in.26

  Les Trésorières lay in the village of Saint-Cyr on the north bank of the Loire, some four kilometres from the centre of Tours. Tours itself is a beautiful town, somewhat like Metz or even a smaller, quieter Paris. It is not clear what Tocqueville expected to find there. He was determined not to waste his time making acquaintances, and did not do so (though he made an exception for the archbishop, who was invited to dinner). Before leaving Paris he told Senior that he might do some work in the cathedral library, but it soon struck him that Tours also contained the departmental archives of the Indre-et-Loire. One misty morning, very soon after his arrival at Saint-Cyr, he set off along the river and presented himself at the prefecture. It was perhaps the single most fortunate moment in his entire career as a writer.27

  Tours, like Metz, had been the centre of one of the great généralités of the ancien régime, and its records of that era, unlike those at Saint-Lô, had just been put in order by the departmental archivist. Charles de Grandmaison, an earnest and energetic young man (1824–1903) had only been en poste for a year or so.28 He was a man of the Loire: born at Poitiers, he died in Touraine, and spent his life devotedly tending the records in his care. But he had been trained at Paris, in the École des Chartes, and his first job had been in the department of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he had taken note of Tocqueville’s visits and his conversations with the keeper of manuscripts. He immediately recognized his small, weary-looking visitor, with his quiet air of distinction, and put himself at his service. Tocqueville explained that he was investigating the causes of the French Revolution, and with that in mind wanted to study the administrative records of Tours from the reign of Louis XI onwards. Grandmaison soon convinced him that even if the roots of the Revolution went down that far it was impossible for a newcomer to historical manuscripts to make much of the documents: years of training were necessary. Tocqueville did not need much convincing, and agreed that it would be wise to confine himself to the last phase of the ancien régime, that is, to the eighteenth century, which he had already begun to investigate (though Louis XI eventually put in two or three fleeting appearances in the Ancien Régime).29 He promised to return next day, and when he did Grandmaison noticed that he had brought with him an official black morocco-bound portfolio, the one useful relic of his brief ministry. Grandmaison had a selection of documents waiting for him, and he set happily to work.