historian and therefore was initially uncertain about both his subject matter and
methods of investigation. The end product did not take a narrative form and it
dispensed with the conventional chronology of events, focusing rather upon the
prehistory of the Revolution and what Tocqueville saw as its long-term causes. A
never-to-be completed sequel was to be devoted to the Revolution proper. The final
text drew upon extensive archival work, for the most part carried out in Tours
(where Tocqueville was again in need of a period of convalescence), and it was here
that he became convinced that the centralized administrative machinery associated
with Napoleon was ‘purely the old regime preserved’.214 Tocqueville also made an
extended trip to Germany in 1854 in search of still-existing feudal traditions
analogous to those of pre-1789 France. In addition, he read memoirs of the period
and consulted diplomatic documents.
Tocqueville’s argument also built upon insights developed in two earlier texts: an
essay detailing the social and political condition of France prior to 1789 published
in John Stuart Mill’s London and Westminster Review in 1836215 and the reception
speech he made before the Académie Française in April 1842.216 In the first,
Tocqueville described a France that was increasingly homogeneous and character-
ized by social equality and one where the central power of the State was stronger
than anywhere else in the world. The Revolution, he argued, had only served to
augment the equality of conditions and further to strengthen state power. In the
second, and despite the formality of the occasion, Tocqueville castigated Napoleon
for creating ‘the most perfected despotism’, commenting that ‘the eighteenth
century and the Revolution, at the same time that they introduced new elements
of liberty into the world, secretly sowed in the new society dangerous seeds from
which absolute power could grow’.217
The result of this long and arduous process of deliberation and research was a
work divided clearly into three sections and held together by an argument that was
deceptively simple. That argument was succinctly set out in the Foreword and then
developed in book 1. The opening lines of the second paragraph read as follows: ‘in
213 Alexis de Tocqueville, Œuvres complètes, viii/3. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et de
Gustave de Beaumont (1967), 370, 372–3, 379, 384.
214 See Gannett, Tocqueville Unveiled, 79–98. Tocqueville first observed that the French system of
administrative centralization was not born with the French Revolution but only perfected by it as early
as 1835: see Œuvres complètes, i/1. De la Démocratie en Amérique (1961), 447.
215 Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘Political and Social Condition of France’, London and Westminster
Review, 8 (Apr. 1836), 137–69. See also ‘État social et politique de France avant et depuis 1789’, in
Œuvres complètes, ii/1. L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1952), 31–66.
216 ‘Discours de M. de Tocqueville prononcé dans la séance publique du 21 avril 1842 en venant
prendre séance à la place de M. le Comte de Cessac’’, in Œuvres complètes, xvi. Mélanges (1989),
251–69.
217 Ibid. 259.
278
History, Revolution, and Terror
1789 the French made the greatest effort ever undertaken by any people to break
with their past and to put an abyss between what they had been and what they
wished to become. To this end, they took all manner of precautions to bring
nothing of the past into the new order.’218 Yet, Tocqueville continued, the French
were far less successful in this than they had believed. Despite themselves and
unintentionally, ‘they retained from the old regime most of the feelings, habits, and
even ideas which helped them make the Revolution that destroyed it’.219 The new
society was built upon the debris and wreckage of the past. From this Tocqueville
drew two conclusions. The first was that properly to understand the Revolution one
had to interrogate a France that no longer existed. The second was that no
fundamental break had taken place in 1789. What the Revolution destroyed was
everything in the old order that derived from aristocratic and feudal institutions but
beneath the seemingly chaotic surface a clear pattern of continuity could be
discerned. ‘I will show’, Tocqueville wrote, ‘how a stronger government, much
more absolute than that which the Revolution had overthrown, arose and concen-
trated all power in itself, suppressed all freedoms so dearly bought, and put vain
images in their place.’220
The central empirical claim underpinning this interpretation of the Revolution
was sketched in book 2 and was summarized by Tocqueville in the title he gave to
one of its chapters: ‘How Administrative Centralization is an Institution of the
Ancien Régime and not the Work of either the Revolution or the Empire, as is
said’.221 In brief, Tocqueville’s argument was that, despite appearances of diversity
and confusion to the contrary, it had been the French monarchy that had built a
vast centralized bureaucracy with tentacles spreading throughout the kingdom and
intruding into all aspects of daily life. In summary, Tocqueville wrote, there existed
‘a single body, located at the centre of the kingdom, which regulated public
administration throughout the entire country; the same minister directing almost
all internal affairs; in each province, a single official in charge of all the details; no
secondary administrative bodies or bodies able to act without prior authorization to
do so; exceptional courts which judged matters relating to the administration and
its officers’.222 If its procedures were less regular and its machinery less efficient
than what now existed, nothing of importance had since been added or subtracted
from it. ‘It has been sufficient’, Tocqueville commented, ‘to pull down all that had
been erected around it for it to appear as we now see it.’223
The consequences for the condition of French society, according to Tocqueville,
had been profound. Government exercised a quasi-paternal tutelage over the
population. Municipal government had declined into petty oligarchy. The admin-
istration resented all independent bodies and distrusted any display of initiative
from private citizens. Paris had achieved absolute predominance over the country.
More troubling still were the pathologies that had arisen from the vast gulf existing
between the government and individual citizen. Having taken the place of divine
218 Œuvres complètes, ii/1. L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, 69.
219 Ibid.
220 Ibid. 72.
221 Ibid. 107.
222 Ibid. 127.
223 Ibid.
History, Revolution, and Terror
279
providence, it was but natural that everyone should turn to government when in
need. ‘No one imagined’, Tocqueville argued, ‘that an important matter could be
brought to a successful conclusion without the intervention of the State.’224 If the
eradication of local and regional differences and of distinctions between classes
meant that individuals more and more resembled each other, the process of
centralization also ensured that they were more than ever separated from one
another. People were indifferent to the fate of others and mutual suspicion reigned.
What mattered most were the petty privileges and prerogatives marking them out,
however flimsily, from their rivals. But, Tocqueville observed, ‘everyone was ready
to merge into the same mass, provided that no one remained apart and no one rose
above the common level’.225 When, at last, they had come together in 1789 their
first thought was to tear each other apart.
The final component of this noxious state of mind was the existence of an ‘unusual
kind of freedom’. It would be wrong to believe, Tocqueville commented, that the
ancien régime was a time of ‘servility and subservience’. The ‘art’ of silencing dissent
was far less perfected than it had later become. To that extent there was more freedom
than now existed—the soul was kept free—but ‘it was a kind of freedom that was
irregular and intermittent, always constrained within the limits of a class, always
linked to the idea of exception and privilege’.226 If it served a function in preparing
the French to overthrow despotism, ‘it perhaps made them less suited than any
other people to establish in its place the free and peaceable empire of law’.227 When
taken together, Tocqueville seemed to suggest, the combined weight of these factors
was such as to indicate that the outcome of the Revolution was predetermined.
We should not be surprised, he speculated, by the ease with which centralization had
been re-established at the beginning of the nineteenth century: ‘The men of 89
had toppled the building but its foundations had remained in the very souls of its
destroyers and upon these foundations it was possible to raise it up anew and to build
it more solidly than ever before.’228
All that remained to be done was to assess the immediate causes and precise
character of the Revolution. Here Tocqueville returned his readers to one of the
original questions that had informed analyses of the Revolution: what had been the
role played by men of letters? In Tocqueville’s opinion, it had been a very signifi-
cant one. Despite their disagreements, Tocqueville argued, the political pro-
grammes of the writers of the eighteenth century all agreed on the need to
replace the old order with one grounded upon a set of simple and general principles
derived from reason and natural law. Given the injustice and absurdities of the
world they saw around them, Tocqueville conceded, it could hardly have been
otherwise. However, Tocqueville next postulated that this predilection for abstract
theories and generalizations was a reflection of their social and political marginality.
They simply lacked experience of the real world and, as a consequence, failed to
appreciate the obstacles that stood in the way of even the most laudable and
seemingly straightforward reforms. The same ignorance of the everyday realities
224 Ibid. 135.
225 Ibid. 158.
226 Ibid. 176.
227 Ibid. 177.
228 Ibid. 138.
280
History, Revolution, and Terror
of politics among the French in general provided a wider public receptive to these
ideas, with the result that the entire nation ended up adopting the attitudes and
tastes of the men of letters. ‘Little by little’, Tocqueville observed, ‘there was built
up an imaginary society in which everything appeared simple and coordinated,
uniform, equitable and in accordance with reason.’229 Moreover, it was precisely
this fondness for abstract theory and ingenious preconceived institutions that had
inspired the Revolution to believe that society could be reordered from top to
bottom following the rules of logic.
To this ‘frightening sight’ needed to be added two further dimensions of the
thinking of the men of letters. The first was the widespread and virulent anti-
religious sentiment that came to prevail in France. Nowhere else had irreligion
become such ‘a general, ardent, intolerant, and oppressive passion’.230 To those
who deified reason an institution for which tradition was fundamental could only
be worthy of contempt. In Tocqueville’s opinion, ‘the universal discredit’ suffered
by religion was to shape the character of the Revolution in a decisive and prepon-
derant way. The result of overthrowing religious institutions and government at the
same time, Tocqueville argued, was that ‘the human mind entirely lost its direction;
it no longer knew what to hold on to nor where to stop’.231 As a consequence, a
new species of revolutionary appeared who took audacity to the point of madness
and, lacking scruples, hesitated before no innovation. These ‘new beings’, Tocque-
ville commented, were not ‘ephemeral creations of the moment’: they had perpe-
tuated themselves and were still with us.
Tocqueville’s next allegation was that the men of letters had taught the French to
prize reform before freedom. This claim rested upon the unusual argument that the
most substantial reforms of the Revolution had been announced in the writings of
the physiocrats. Why Tocqueville sought to argue this becomes clear when we see
that, in his view, the physiocrats were not only completely contemptuous of the
past but were also of the opinion that ‘it was not a question of destroying absolute
power but of converting it’ to a more appropriate use.232 It was the function of the
State to reform and transform both society and the nation and to achieve that end
they set little store upon political liberty. For that reason, the French came to
embrace a set of ideas that were antithetical to free institutions such that, when at
last a love of freedom awoke among them, they found that they had accepted ‘as an
ideal society a people without any other aristocracy than that of public function-
aries, with a single and all-powerful administration directing affairs of State and
acting as the guardian of all individuals’.233 It was this attempt to superimpose
liberty upon the institutions of a servile state, Tocqueville concluded, that ex-
plained why, for the last sixty years, so many vain attempts to establish free
government had been followed by disastrous revolutions. Fatigued, the French
were now content to live as equals.
229 Œuvres complètes, ii/1. L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, 199.
230 Ibid. 202.
231 Ibid. 208.
232 Ibid. 212.
233 Ibid. 216.
History, Revolution, and Terror
281
How, finally, were these ideas turned into action? Tocqueville highlighted three
factors. First, and contrary to what had been imagined, the very prosperity of Louis
XVI’s reign hastened revolution by raising expectations. Second, well-intentioned
and disinterested efforts to improve the welfare of the people only served to fuel their
resentment and increase their desires. Third, the monarchy itself employed practices
that were ‘hostile to the individual, contrary to private rights, and friendly to
violence’.234 ‘The ancien régime’, Tocqueville commented, ‘provided the Revolution
with many of its methods: the latter only added the savagery of its spirit.’235
When,
therefore, administrative reform was introduced, this set in motion a process that led
to ‘the greatest upheaval and the most frightening confusion there ever was’.236
Thus the Revolution was inevitable and so, Tocqueville suggested, was the contrast
between theory and practice, good intentions and violent acts, which marked its
course. However, what Tocqueville chose to highlight by way of conclusion was that
the eighteenth century had given rise to two ruling passions. The first, with deeper
roots and of longer standing, was an intense hatred of inequality. The second, of more
recent origin, was a zeal for liberty. In 1789, these two passions coalesced, the French
believing that they could be equal in their freedom. Free institutions existed alongside
democratic institutions, and ‘centralization fell with absolute government’.237 Yet,
with the passing of the ‘vigorous generation’ that had begun the Revolution, the love
of liberty subsided amidst ‘anarchy and popular dictatorship’ and the taste for equality
prevailed. And so ‘from the very bowels of a nation that had just overthrown the
monarchy suddenly emerged a power more extensive, more detailed, and more
absolute than that exercised by any of our kings’.238 From this point onwards,
Tocqueville concluded, the French had limited themselves to ‘placing the head of
Liberty upon a servile body’.239
Contained within L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution was a passionate plea for
individual liberty as an end in itself. Yet this very same book served as an explana-
tion of the failure of liberty to secure a solid foundation and sustained existence in
France. Seen thus, the anomaly in Tocqueville’s account was the moment of
‘greatness’ and ‘virility’, the ‘time of immortal memory’ as he described it, when
the call for liberty, long submerged beneath despotism, all-too-briefly made its
voice heard above the clamour for vengeance. It was a moment that almost defied
explanation, such was the weight that Tocqueville attributed to the prevailing
tradition of centralization and its eradication of countervailing trends. This perhaps
explains the peculiar passage at the very end of the book where Tocqueville spoke of
the unique character of the French people. No nation was so full of contrasts, so
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