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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Modern political history begins with the French Revolution. This is not merely because the Revolution began a diffusion of institutional innovations—universal suffrage, rights of association and publication, and so forth—which have been the political shibboleths of advanced societies ever since. It is also that there then appears the modern vision of politics. The term ‘vision’ is deliberately chosen, because it does not imply any necessary or objective correlation with the facts of political life. It is a name for a chosen way of seeing things, a persuasive account of the facts, not the facts themselves. Intransigent opponents have been able to agree on this vision and in finding it inspiring or clarifying. Its essence is a presentation of politics as a struggle between two enduring forces or principles. Sometimes these forces are sharply contrasted, sometimes they are only the opposite ends of a spectrum whose middle ground makes precise distinctions hard (though never impossible). Such modifications of the model do not matter; it is the enduring conflict which is crucial. Whatever names they bear—progress and reaction, liberalism and conservatism, movement and order, Left and Right—in this vision these principles are always at war, and that is what politics is about.
1 Especially, of course, in this country and the United States of America. It is interesting here to note that the word ‘Right’ in its political sense appears in the O.E.D., viii (1910)Google Scholar, only with reference to continental practice, citing an American magazine of 1887. The O.E.D. Supplement (1933) does not add to this. Neither volume contains ‘right-wing’ in its political sense.
2 Germany, where there are special features in Right-wing thought arising from exaggerated political fragmentation and a multi-confessional culture (to remark only the most important), is obviously crucial. The study by Epstein, K., The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar, is the best starting-point for its exploration.
3 Revealing differences between men who defend the same institution can too easily be overlooked in the Revolution. No one could have respected property more than, say, Sieyes, but to call him a man of the Right on this basis and leave the matter there would be ludicrous.
4 In this connexion, see Cohen, D. K., ‘The Vicomte de Bonald's Critique of Individualism’, Journal of Modern History, xli (1969)Google Scholar.
5 A sense of the nuances which must be taken into account is easily obtained by consulting the lists of party names provided by Brunot, F. (Histoire de la langue française des origines á nos jours, ix, La Révolution et I'Empire, new edn Paris, 1967, pp. 835–7)Google Scholar. A recent and important study of some of the oppositions inside the royalist camp is by Chaumié, Mile J., Le réseau d'Antraigues et la Contre-Révolution 1701–93 (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar; Antraigues’ group looked to the exiled princes for leadership. After excluding the constitutional monarchists from classification as counter-revolutionaries, Chaumié, Mile points out that the ‘royalistes’ of 1789–92 ‘ne forment pas un bloc monolithique’ (p. 19)Google Scholar. Further light has been thrown on the well-known divergences between the aims of Louis XVI and those of his brothers in a recent article by Barton, H. A., ‘The Origins of the Brunswick Manifesto', French Historical Studies, v (1967)Google Scholar. Evidently Louis XVI was not a man of the Right; Marie Antoinette's position is harder to assess.
6 It is worth noting that this subject and its great variety have not only been illuminated recently by such French scholars as Mile Chaumié (op. cit.) and Bois, Paul (Paysans de I'Ouest, Mans, Le, 1960)Google Scholar but also by Englishmen and Americans. The publications of Professors Goodwin and Cobb, Dr Gwynn Lewis, Mr Hutt and Professor Tilly spring to mind; there is much work still moving through the pipelines of research, too.
7 The marquis de Ferriéres, member of a distinguished épée family, navigated the whole crisis of privilege as a member of the Constituent and belonged to the socéiété populaire and the revolutionary administration of his village (see his Correspondence inédite, ed. Carre, H., Paris, 1932, pp. 1–16)Google Scholar. He thought that Mounier, spokesman for the constitutional innovators, was already beginning to calm down and reveal a conservative concern in early August 1789 (ibid., pp. 118–19). Malouet tells us (Mémoires de Malouet, Paris, 1874, i, pp. 271, 301)Google Scholar that Mounier saw the error of his ways after the Tennis-Court oath. But Sieyes, detested by the Right, is perhaps the most striking example of a man whose fundamental conservatism only appears as events unroll. Yet the kernel of his ideas is already clear in the idea of a régime censitaire adumbrated in his most famous book—and in some of its fears: ‘en France, en Hollande, et partout, on a des terribles examples de la coalition naturelle entre la derniére classe de la société et les ordres privilègiés’; Qu'estce-que le Tiers Etat?, ed. Zapperi, R. (Geneva, 1970), p. 14Google Scholar.
8 Beik, P. H., The French Revolution seen pom the Right. Social Theories in Motion (Philadelphia, 1956)Google Scholar; Godechot, G., La Contre-Révolution. Doctrine et Action 1780–1904. (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar.
9 Professor Beik narrows his field so much as to include ‘only those whose opinions would not stretch beyond the point of incorporating the Estates General on a regular basis into the political life of the nation’ (p. 3), but this is already to include great diversity.
10 See Brunot, , op. cit., pp. 769–71Google Scholar.
11 On this subject, see Rouanet, G., ‘Les débuuts de parlementarisme français’, Annales Révolutionnaires, viii (1916), pp. 173–211Google Scholar.
12 Archives parlementaires, ix, p. 454 (15 10 1789)Google Scholar.
13 Chaumié, p. 23. The idea that the privileged started the Revolution is now, of course, a commonplace, though the idea still remains in need of further exploration and definition. I do not know who first suggested it; Professor Godechot finds the earliest statement to be by de Meilhan, Sénac (whom he quotes in La Contre-Révolution, pp. 45–46)Google Scholar.
14 Montjoie, , the author of L'Ami du Roi, said in his first number (i, p. 12)Google Scholar that Lamoignon ‘rappela (au Parlement) que la France était une monarchie, et non une aristocratie. C'est la première fois que ce funeste mot, qui a produit tant de crimes a été prononcé.’ For a pamphlet title embodying an idea similar to Lamoignon's see Le gouvernement sénati-clerico-aristocratique, said to be of 10 1788 (Archives parlementaires, i, p. 56)Google Scholar.
15 An ironical use of the antithesis of aristocratie and democratic is to be found in the first number of the Actes des Apôtres (p. 4), together with some teasing of Robespierre for producing another version in aristocratie, but the antithesis can be found earlier than this (e.g. Barruel, B. A. de, Le patriote viridique, 1789)Google Scholar.
16 An obvious obstacle to providing one is, of course, the lack of any personal and institutional focus so dominating as the House of Commons, though it seems fair to remark that even when (in the Revolution) such a focus appears, French historians do not seem to favour political history; the Convention awaits its Namier. It is the economic and social historians who have provided the sustaining continuities of French eighteenth-century history.
17 On y était janséniste, ou du moins très parlementaire, mais on n'y était pas Chrétien'; Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, etc., ed. Tourneaux, M. (Paris, 1877), ix, pp. 317–18Google Scholar.
18 And, of course, many of these were published so that the assumptions of this model were widely diffused. R. W. Greenlaw pointed out that arrétés and other official declarations or statements by parlements or similar bodies made up almost one-third of the publications he considered: ‘Pamphlet Literature in France during the period of the aristocratic revolt (1787–1788’), Journal of Modern History (1957), xxix, p. 351Google Scholar. The proportion (of a lower absolute total) would probably have been higher at earlier periods when restrictions on publication were more effective. The Crown often published its replies to the assertions of corporate bodies, thus tending to accentuate the impression of a dialogue.
19 About which debate continues. See, for example, Doyle, W., ‘The Parlements of France and the Breakdown of the Old Regime 1771–1788’, French Historical Studies, vi (1970)Google Scholar and Egret, J., Louis XV et l'opposition parlementaire (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar, for two recent attempts to explain it. The fullest study and point of departure is the old book by Flammermont, J., Le Chancelier Maupeou et les parlements (Paris, 1883)Google Scholar. Antoine's, M. recent study Le Conseil du roi sous le règne de Louis XV (Geneva, 1970)Google Scholar illuminates the crisis in passing from the point of view of government, and another relevant recent article is by Bosher, J. F., ‘The French Crisis of 1770’, History, vii (1972)Google Scholar.
20 ‘Ces disgraces, ces efforts, que l'on fait sous différentes formes pour empêcher la verité de parvenir jusqu'au trone, n'annoncent que trop le changement du constitution que les ennemis de la magistrature avaient tenté dès 1771’ said the premier president of the Parlement of Paris a t the sitting of 8 May 1788; Archives parlementaires, i, p. 316.
21 Réflexions générales sur le Système projetté par le Maire du Palais, pour changer la Constitution de l'Etat (Paris, 1771), p.52Google Scholar. On 24 June 1772 Malesherbes used the same comparison in a letter to Mme Douet: ‘L'administration établie en France depuis quelque terns et à laquelle on a donné le dernier degré de perfection depuis … la destruction des cours, nous conduisoit au veritable despotisme oriental et non pas à celuy de Prusse ou d' Autriche’; Grosclaude, P., Malesherbes et son temps. Nouveaux documents inèdits (Paris, 1964), pp. 75–76Google Scholar.
22 Mémoires secrets pour servir à I'histoire de la république des lettres en France depuis MDCCLXII jusqu' à nos jours (London, 1774–1789), xxx, pp. 13–14 (entry for 22 04 1787)Google Scholar.
23 Protestations des Princes du sang, Contre I'Edit de Décembre 1770 (Paris, 1771). p. 6Google Scholar. It is interesting that this pamphlet speaks of ‘citoyens’.
24 Mémoires secrets, xxi, p. 20.
25 Even the wittiest of attacks on the chancellor only goes in one respect beyond the constitutional argument, and does so only by accusing the minister of personal financial corruption (Maupeouana, ou Correspondance secrètte et familière du Chancelier Maupeou avec son cœur Sorhouet, Paris, 1773, pp. 22 ft)Google Scholar.
26 Gay, P., Voltaire's Politics, The Poet as Realist (Princeton, 1959), p. 323Google Scholar.
27 Protestations, p. 5.
28 Réflexions générales. Eighteen years before, the Parlement of Paris quoted just the same passage from Bossuet in a remonstrance (printed in Remonstrances du Parlement de Paris au xviiie siècle, ed Flammermont, J., i (Paris, 1888), p. 526)Google Scholar.
29 A la nation française, cited in Archives parlementaires, i, p. 572.
30 Journal Général de France, pp. 193–96 (23 Apr. 1789).
31 Flammermont, , Le chancelier Manpeou et les parlements, p. 623Google Scholar.
32 A point appreciated by the party of progress but not overlooked by all conservatives. It appears to have been only in 1771 that a parlement (Rouen), for the first time in the eighteenth century asked for the summoning of trie Estates-General (Bickart, R., Les Parlements et la notion de souverainté nationale au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1932, p. 249)Google Scholar. No doubt the idea had been maturing well before this. Antoine, M. reveals (Le Conseil du roi, p. 428)Google Scholar that the idea was being canvassed on the other side of the political fence by quoting Bourgeois de Boynes: ‘on ne voit rien qui puisse opérer cet effect (of curbing the parlements) plus efficacement que l'assemblée des états généraux, parce qu'il est bien certain que la force des parlements a pour base le principe qu'ils cherchent à établir qu'ils représentent les états, du Royaume.’ But, he went on to say, ‘est-on sûr que l'assemblée des états généraux, après avoir réduit à justes bornes l'autorité des parlements, ne s'occuperait pas des moyens de tempérer aussi la trop grande autorité du Roi?’.
33 Ibid., pp. 385–86. MrDoyle, has noted that the clergy had been opposed to the recall of the parlements fifteen years before (op. cit., p. 441)Google Scholar.
34 See the language of a conservative case set out by a minister to the royal council, 27 December 1788; Archives parlementaires, i, p. 489.
35 Ibid., pp. 487–89.
36 Papon, J. P., Histoire du gouvernement françois, depuis l'assemblée des Notables … (London, 1788), p. 78Google Scholar, a work strongly condemning the first Assembly of Notables and another candidate for the distinction of being the earliest expression of the thesis tha t the nobles started the Revolution.
37 Archives parlementaires, viii, pp. 143–46.
38 It is fair to say that the Right always found it difficult to overcome its distrust of an unrestricted sovereignty which might, after all, be misused. Much of the next century was to be spent seeking a principle of authority which would control and validate the operation of unrestricted law-making power. In the long run, the Right usually plumped for Legitimism and/or Rome. But difficulties were likely to arise in a crisis—when, for example, a king conceded a constitutional charter or when, as in 1871, a legitimist pretender did not come u p to scratch.
39 Flammermont, , op. cit., p. 116Google Scholar.
40 Réflexions générales…, pp. 4–5.
41 It may have something to do with the fact that Voltaire appears to have been writing specifically in reply to the Protestations of the princes. Diderot chided Voltaire for not going far enough and for showing too much restraint; (œuvres complètes de Diderot, vi (Paris, 1875), pp. 402–3Google Scholar.
42 L'ami du roi, des françois, de l'ordre et surtout de la vérité, ou Histoire de la Révolution de France et de L'AssembUe nationale (Paris, 1791–1792), i, p. 2Google Scholar. The author was Galaxt de Montjoie.
43 Mémoires secrets… i, pp. iii–iv.
44 Journal Ecclésiastique, i (Paris, 1790), p. 3Google Scholar.
45 ‘Plaise à Dieu de conserver toujours á la France cette antique constitution qui, par la force de son esprit, supérieure à la révolution des temps et à la licence des opinions, a porté le royaume au plus hau t degré de spleadeur! S'il en pouvoit déchoir, ce serait par les illusions de cette philosophie téméraire qui depuis longtemps semble avoir entrepris de vouloir dormer de nouvelles lois aux monde; qui voudrait tout détruire dans l'ordre politique, comme dans celui de la religion, sous prétexte de tout réformer, et qui professe hautement l'opposition à toutes les anciennes maximes.’ From the remonstrance of the Clergy of France, 15 June 1788; Archives parlementaires, i, p. 379.
46 I ignore here the masonic and protestant conspiracy hypotheses, which were certainly very important t o men of the Right, because they are dealt with elsewhere. See my book on The Mythology of the Secret Societies (London, 1972), esp. pp. 146–202Google Scholar, and an article ‘The Origins of a Mythology; Free-masons, Protestants and the French Revolution’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xliv (1971)Google Scholar. It is worth noting that in each case, as in that of the philosophe scare, the elements from which the hard dogmas of the post-Revolution Right are fashioned are traceable well before 1789.
47 Barruel, A., Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme (4 vols, London, 1797)Google Scholar, of which only the first volume is devoted to the philosophes.
48 Les Helviennes, ou lettres provençales philosophiques (Amsterdam, 1784–1788)Google Scholar.
49 This was in controversy with another priest Soulavie, whose views on creation provoked Barruel to a n angry rebuttal, La Génèse selon M. Soulavie in 1784. But, claimed Barruel, all copies had disappeared because their destruction had been ordered by the Garde des Sceaux; he therefore reprinted it in Les Helviennes, a law-suit followed and one can see how easily a suspicious man might couple to the idea tha the was personally the object of persecution the idea that subversive influences were at work in high places. On the whole episode see Mazon, A., Histoire de Soulavie (Paris, 1893), i. pp. 31–35Google Scholar. Jean Louis Soulavie wrote a number of historical books and during the revolution had a brief and unfortunate career as a French diplomatic agent.
50 By MrDarnton, R. in ‘The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in pre-Revolutionary France’, Past and Present, li (1971)Google Scholar.
51 L'Ami du Roi, loc. cit.
52 Perronet, Q. M., ‘Les Assemblées du clergé de France sous le règne de Louis XVI (1775–1788)’, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, xxxiv (1962), p. 14Google Scholar.
53 Année Littéraire, 1788, i, p. 20. Elie Catherine Fréron (1718–76) had founded the journal in 1714; it was sometimes suspended by the censor, mis-fortunes usually attributed by the editor to the influence of his enemies. See on him the eulogistic but informative book of Cornou, F., Elie Fréron (1718–1776), (Paris and Quimper, 1922)Google Scholar.
54 This was another paper called L' Ami du Roi.
55 For a typical account see L'Ami du Roi (Montjoie's), i, pp. 1–11 and, on the last point references in Roberts, , in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xliv (1971)Google Scholar, already cited.
56 Audainel, H. A. (pseud.), Dénonciation aux Français catholiques des moyens employés par l'Assemblée nationale, pour détruire en France, la religion catholique (London and Paris, 1791), p. 2Google Scholar.
57 The parallel has a little more than illustrative significance, for many Frenchmen in the revolutionary crisis showed their awareness of similarities between their situation and that of Englishmen in the seventeenth century. There is no space to pursue this here, but I hope to write about it elsewhere. These conscious similarities operated in many ways, among them by contributing to the later anglophobia of the French Right and, of course, to its obsession with Protestantism.
58 In the light of subsequent revolutionary changes which were to do much to substantiate these fears, it is interesting to see how even secondary revolutionary manifestations could be anticipated. In January 1788 the Journal Ecclésiastique (pp. 110–11) reported that proposals to modernize the calendar were under consideration. There was talk, it said, of ‘l'an premier de la règne de raison’, of holidays named ‘fête de l'Amour’ or ‘de la Reconnaissance et de l'Amitié.’
59 Egret, J., Les derniers Etats de Dauphiné (Grenoble, 1924), pp. 92–93Google Scholar. The more spectacular example of concern of the Mémoire of the princes of the blood has already been referred to.
60 Professor Beik makes the point with special reference to the continuing preoccupation of many conservatives with safeguards against absolutism; The French Revolution seen from the Right, p. 4.
61 Anachronism creeps in even when an attempt is made to use such words restrictively. A useful account suddenly remarks that ‘on sait, en effet, que sous les dehors libéraux, les parlementaires déguisaient le plus étroit conservatisme social, le plus âpre égoisme politique’ (Bickart, R., Les Parlements et la notion de souverainté nationale, pp. 278–79)Google Scholar.
62 Many examples could be given but one to be cited with respect (both because of the range of information it compresses and because of the stimulus it has given to scholarship and teaching) is Professor Palmer's, R. R.The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton, 1964)Google Scholar. The notion of a bipolar system of politics essentially continuous from 1760 to 1800 is fundamental to this work. A more specific and common example is the interpretation of the parlements' behaviour (along the lines indicated in the passage from Bickart just cited) by those in the tradition of Flammermont.
63 A point which may also be thought worth making about the history of the Revolutionary era itself. This is not only a matter of the growing complexity revealed by social historians to lie behind such simplifying abstractions as peuple and sans-culotte; there is also the detail of faction to account for. An example is the curious association of Pétion and Antraigues touched on by Chaumie, Mile (Le reseau d' Antraigues, p. 12)Google Scholar.
