concession.’74 Seen in this light, the Orleanist regime of Louis-Philippe was to be ‘a
popular monarchy surrounded by republican institutions’.75
The fact was that the July Monarchy was not to go in this direction. As Carrel
quickly realized, the intention of Louis-Philippe’s ministers, especially Guizot, was
to make a return to the Charte of 1814, minus only the principle of divine right.
France was not to have Carrel’s formula but rather ‘a monarchy surrounded by
constitutional institutions’. It was this realization that pushed Carrel into the ranks
of the opposition and then, as we shall see, on to an endorsement of republicanism.
In the first instance, however, the source of Carrel’s displeasure was what he
contemptuously referred to as the party of ‘peace at any price’ and the government’s
adamant refusal to carry the principles of the Revolution to the rest of Europe.76
The specific issue was how France was to respond to the popular uprisings in
Belgium and Poland: the broader question concerned the relevance of revolutionary
nationalism.
A foretaste of how Carrel was to respond to the European revolutions of 1830
was provided immediately prior to the fall of the Bourbon dynasty. In June 1830,
Charles X, desperately courting popularity, dispatched French troops to Algeria on
the somewhat spurious grounds that the Dey of Algiers had been providing
sanctuary for Mediterranean pirates. Liberals, including Thiers in Le National, at
first denounced the expedition, perceiving its ultimate domestic purpose and
fearing war with England, only for them to find the idea of a French colony to
be irresistible. Carrel was no exception to this rule. Discounting fears that a
victorious army—the ‘national’ army—would be used by the counter-revolution-
aries to crush opposition in France, what he saw and what he believed that the rest
of Europe would see in the ‘African campaign’ was ‘the France that the Revolution
had made’, a France of immense resources, a young army, and a revolutionary
spirit.77
After the July Revolution, Carrel’s basic position was that the international order
of Europe could not be allowed to date from the Treaty of Vienna and from
74 Ibid. ii. 95. Carrel made it clear as early as Feb. 1830 that his interpretation of the sovereignty of
the people was not to be understood as a Rousseauian vision of direct democracy.
75 Ibid. ii. 107–14.
76 Louis-Philippe, as well as his ambassador to England, Talleyrand, quickly appreciated that peace
could only be preserved if France did not seek to use the Belgian revolt against the Netherlands as an
excuse to annex the Belgian provinces. The Treaty of London established Belgium as an independent
and neutral power. Talleyrand was less successful in the case of Poland where his proposals for an
independent Poland were firmly rejected by the other Great Powers. In Sept. 1831 the Russians retook
Warsaw.
77 Carrel, Œuvres politiques et littéraires, i. 46–51, 89–96, 121–6.
216
Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat
France’s defeat at Waterloo. ‘The expulsion of the Bourbons, who signed the
infamous treaties of 1814’, he wrote, ‘entails the revision of these treaties. It is a
duty for us to ask for, to demand their immediate revision.’78 The new regime, in
other words, was not bound by the arrangements that had been imposed upon
France in a situation of abject humiliation and which had been agreed to by rulers
imposed upon a hostile population. ‘Never’, Carrel complained, ‘will a more
inhumane cunning better calculate all the conditions of a permanent degradation
of a nation without allies.’79 To submit to these conditions, as the new government
appeared ready to do, was therefore to accept that France was to be placed amongst
the ‘second rank’ and that she was forever to be subject to the dictates of the Holy
Alliance. ‘If they could divide us up’, Carrel wrote, ‘they would do it; if we could
not defend Paris, they would raze it to the ground . . . they only want us as ruined,
enchained, humbled supplicants.’80 In short, the European powers would go to war
to keep France within the boundaries of the post-Napoleonic settlement.
1830 was thus as much a rejection of the dominance of the Holy Alliance as it
was of the principles of the Restoration. To that end, Carrel was prepared to reject
nothing of the previous ‘forty years’ of French history: Valmy, Austerlitz, Waterloo,
‘the battle outside Algiers under the white flag’, were all part of a past in which the
France that had not emigrated and that had remained true to itself had stood up
against Europe. Carrel therefore had no time for those who believed that, at best,
France could fight a defensive war from within the borders of 1814. ‘The Revolu-
tion’, he declared, ‘can only defend itself through attack. This was the instinctive
French cry in 1792 and still this time there is only salvation for us if we strike the
first blows.’81 Diplomacy would settle nothing and thus the responsibility of the
new government was to impose a recognition of the changed balance of forces now
operating in Europe upon France’s enemies.
True to the messianism of the revolutionary tradition, Carrel believed that, of all
the modern nations, it was France that was most blessed with ideas, activity, and
intelligence, and to this was to be added an unequalled geographical position,
excellent military institutions, and ‘the staunchest and most extensive warlike
spirit’. France’s course of action would of necessity be that of ‘a nation which
wishes the liberty of others as a guarantee of its own liberty’ and therefore her
actions would rekindle ‘the hopes of European liberty’. Thus, from the outset
Carrel not only supported the Belgian uprising against the Dutch but also advo-
cated French military intervention in what he saw as a ‘neighbouring revolution’,
equally intent upon removing ‘the odious yoke’ imposed by the Congress of
Vienna. ‘Belgium’, he wrote, ‘is on our doorstep: its revolution and ours are
interdependent.’82
But there was more to Carrel’s enthusiasm for the Belgian struggle than the
recognition that the Belgians faced the same opponents as the French. At its most
immediate level, Belgian independence could be justified in terms of the right of
every nation to self-determination.83 To this consideration Carrel appended a less
78 Carrel, Œuvres politiques et littéraires, ii. 186.
79 Ibid. i. 397.
80 Ibid. ii. 159–65.
81 Ibid. i. 388–94.
82 Ibid. ii. 199–204.
83 Ibid. i. 340.
Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat
217
altruistic preoccupation born out of the Revolution of 1789. For Carrel, France’s
‘incomparable situation’ derived from her position between what he described as
‘two seas and its impregnable natural frontiers’.84 One of these frontiers was ‘the
barrier of the Rhine’. The questions that Carrel set before the Belgians as a
consequence were quite simple: ‘are you a distinct people capable of ensuring
that its existence will be respected? You have neighbours: do you have frontiers?’85
Carrel’s answer was that it was highly unlikely that Belgium could secure its
national and territorial independence and therefore that its ‘honour and security’
would best be safeguarded by sharing in ‘our riches, our name, our civilization, our
future, our certain predominance in Europe’.86 His preferred option, then, was the
‘reunification’ of Belgium and France.
Carrel accepted that this was an improbable outcome and that the Belgians were
wary of France’s intentions but as the months passed he became increasingly
concerned that the government of the day had not even the courage to ensure
the establishment of an independent Belgium capable of defending itself. ‘We have
renounced’, he wrote in April 1831, ‘the task of protecting our natural borders.’87
Some consolation was forthcoming when French troops were sent into Belgium to
drive out the invading Dutch army but again Carrel was to complain that the
justification provided was unduly apologetic. Invasion, he stated bluntly, was in
‘the interest of the revolution’; it served to protect French territory from surprise
attack; and it supported a ‘sister revolution’; but to argue, as had been done, that
France was defending the Belgian King Leopold I was ‘ridiculous’.88
Moreover, the dishonour done to France by this policy of inaction was com-
pounded by similar responses to the other popular uprisings that spread across
Europe in the months following the July Revolution. Carrel advocated assistance
for Italian claims against Austria and fought a lengthy journalistic campaign in
support of Poland’s fight to recover its ‘liberty and national existence’.89 The Poles,
he argued, were the French of the North. Their cause was France’s cause. The two
nations were ‘brothers in arms’. Poland’s struggle against Russia, Austria, and
Prussia struck at the very heart of the Holy Alliance. Furthermore, Poland had
natural borders, the Dnieper and the Dwina, and, like all other nations, had the
right to free itself from foreign oppression. To have abandoned Poland, Carrel
believed, was ‘a national crime’.90
Carrel’s overall conclusion was that the monarchical powers, having turned back
the revolutionary tide in Belgium, Italy, and Poland, would be content to let France
die of starvation. This in turn led to the articulation of a stridently nationalist
message. ‘The country before everything’, he declared, ‘the defence of the soil, the
purity of the soil, because the foreigner cannot take a step on it without defiling it;
the unity, the integrity of the soil before everything else.’91 To that end, new
84 Ibid. 321.
85 Ibid. ii. 30–2.
86 Ibid. 32.
87 Ibid. 201.
88 Ibid. 340–4.
89 Carrel’s articles on Poland from Le National were repr. with a preface by Ladislas Mickiewicz: see
Les Articles d’Armand Carrel pour la Pologne (1862).
90 Carrel, Œuvres politiques et littéraires, i. 417–24, 426–30; ii. 49–57, 153–65, 403–25.
91 Ibid. ii. 429.
218
Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat
policies and a new government were required and from July 1831 Carrel took up
the call for the formation of ‘a ministry of the left’. It was at this point, as Carrel
began the relatively short journey that was to lead to his conversion to republican-
ism, that a more general distancing of nationalism from liberalism could be
discerned.
Writing in November 1832 Carrel commented that, at its inception, the writers
of Le National had believed that the end of the ‘legitimist’ regime would be brought
about by a ‘French 1688’. In line with this perspective, Carrel had initially
acknowledged the parallel, only for him soon afterwards to argue that nothing
more than superficial agreement was possible between the governmental principles
of France and England. Then, as his opposition to Guizot intensified, he poured
scorn upon those who wished to imitate the English model.92 At first, his central
point was that England and France were different countries with markedly different
histories. Crucially, in England the aristocracy had thrown in its lot with the people
(thereby producing the renowned three-way balance of power); in France, by
contrast, the aristocracy in 1789 had fled, becoming ‘Austrian, Prussian, English,
out of hatred for their French name’. Thus, to replicate the English model was to
side with the representatives of anti-France and of anti-democratic sentiment.
Pressed further, Carrel went on to comment that, if the Revolution of 1830 had
been the defeat of a dynasty that had opposed the principles of 1789, it likewise
represented a rejection of ‘the constitutional monarchy based upon the English
system’.93 Yet, as Carrel’s displeasure with the government of Casimir-Périer
intensified, he concluded that an ‘elected monarchy’ was no better than a ‘legitimist
monarchy’. It was just as ‘irresponsible’, just as capable of abusing power and of
thwarting the wishes of an elected chamber. ‘The private interests of the elected
monarchy’, he wrote, ‘have greater affinity with the doctrines of the Holy Alliance
than they do with the principles of liberty, civilization, and social amelioration.’ In
article after article he pointed out the colossal cost and waste entailed by the
Orleanist monarchy and then, with almost obsessive detail, followed and criticized
the plans to fortify Paris. The intention, he argued, was not to defend the capital
from foreign aggression but to protect the monarchy from the populace. Finally, in
an article entitled ‘Identité de la Contre-Révolution et du Principe Monarchique’,94
he reached the conclusion that the July Monarchy was as much on the side of
counter-revolution as had been the regime of Charles X.
Faced with what he continued to regard as the ‘provisional’ nature of Louis-
Philippe’s reign—‘La Révolution de 1830 est-elle totalement détruite?’ demanded
the title of one of his best articles in Le National—from June 1832 onwards Carrel
was unequivocal in his support of what he characterized as ‘the government of the
country by the country’ but which more specifically he identified as the Republic.95
The Republic alone, he wrote in March 1833, is ‘the government of the nation by
the nation, the government of France by herself, and France will not be terrified of
herself, will not loathe herself, will not be frightened of her own shadow’.96 It was,
92 Carrel, Œuvres politiques et littéraires, 114–23.
93 Ibid. 110, 292–301, 379–87.
94 Ibid. 485–97.
95 Ibid. 123–30, 180–205, 311–12.
96 Ibid. 382.
Universalism, the Nation, and Defeat
219
in sum, the most complete expression of representative government and of the
duty of government ‘to conform like a slave to the wishes of the real majority’.
The Republic was, moreover, a system of government compatible with the order,
prosperity, and glory of the country.
To the charge that France and her people did not have the virtues required for
living in a republic, Carrel had two answers. First, it was rather the case that France
> no longer had all the vices necessary to sustain a monarchy. Second, the combina-
tion of a vigorous, serious-minded young generation and a proletariat daily giving
proof of its maturity and moderation was sufficient to ensure that a new republic
would not degenerate into another Committee of Public Safety. Therefore, if Carrel
saw no affinities between his position and those of ‘Robespierre, leader of the
triumvirate of the Terror’, he did see parallels between his views and that of
‘Robespierre, the theoretician’. They shared, he wrote in what was his most
elaborate statement of general policy, Extrait du Dossier d’un prévenu de complicité
morale,97 ‘the same goal, the same wish, the same end: the more equal distribution
of property, the more complete triumph of the political equality, the moral
regeneration of the rich and the poor, social reform as the end, political reform as
the means’.98 How, then, could the descent of the Robespierrean project into terror
be explained? According to Carrel, it derived from the fact that the people had been
reduced to a ‘passive nation’, to the status of ‘inactive citizens’. The Revolution had
served only ‘bourgeois interests’, thereby encouraging the people to believe that
their aims could only be attained through ‘the dictatorship of a minority’.
Much of what Carrel wrote in the few years of life that remained to him seemed
designed to avoid a recurrence of this tragedy. Scattered among the articles dealing
with his numerous court appearances, his (ultimately fatal) squabbles with his
fellow journalists, and his ceaseless campaign to defend freedom of the press,
were those that spoke passionately of the plight of the urban poor and of their
disillusionment with the Orleanist regime. ‘We explain the lack of hope of the
people of Lyons by their misery’, he wrote, ‘their misery by the bad laws which
favour unproductive property and put the burden of taxation upon a man that
eighteen hours work a day scarcely nourishes.’99 The people were condemned to
live and die like abandoned beings. A nation united before 1830 in its opposition to
the Bourbon monarchy had been divided into ‘people and bourgeois . . . property
owner and proletarian, middle class and lower class’ and all in the interest of
Revolution and the Republic Page 46
