KARL HILLEI3RAND, ESSAYIST AND HISTORIAN.* ESBCOND NOTICE.)
THE reason of the constant changes and agitations which have marked the course of French affairs since 1789 Hillebrand ascribes not to institutions or to laws, but "to one great deficiency in French character, as soon as it is brought into contact with politics,—to the absence of civic and moral courage." In this respect no class of the French nation has sinned more deeply than the bourgeoisie. It was in the bour- geoisie, he holds, that the false ideas of the Revolution embodied themselves, and it is to the political Radicalism which they fostered, and which found such powerful allies in the pas- sions of envy, vanity, and want of truth, that the subsequent calamities must, according to Hillebrand, be ascribed. In 1830, the middle-class came into power ; twice since then, in 1848 and in the spring of 1870, the fate of France rested with them, and twice, says our author, they let the reins slip through their hands, because they showed themselves unable to forget for a time their private for the public interest.. Instead of them, it was the blind mass of the peasantry who undertook to save those conservative interests without which it is, after all, impossible for society to live, and they did it by throwing liberty overboard, in order to secure peace. Those decisive acts Hillebrand judges to be indi- cations of a final and lasting choice. That France broke with her dynasty he certainly considers a misfortune, but not an irre- parable one, for he believes the substitution of another branch might have succeeded, as it did in England. He likewise reminds his readers that great and powerful States existed for a long time under a system of strict centralisation, and even the dangers of universal suffrage, he considers, might be effectually mitigated by collateral influences, such as indirect election. What really threatens the future in France is, in his opinion, not the institu- tions, but the ideas which have prevailed since 1789. The only Frenchman who had the courage openly to confess this was Alexis de Tocqueville ; and as long, in Hillebrand's opinion, as France re- fuses frankly to confess, with him, that its greatness is insepar- able from a strongly monarchical form of government, and that it is only a monarchy based on law and on the support of the best social forces which will be able to close the era of Re- volutions, it is hopeless to expect anything else than alternative changes of despotism and anarchy. Of course, we need not warn our readers that we are here stating not our own view,—which, as they know, is on this point entirely opposed to Hillebrand's,— but his, which indeed, strongly held as it is, is quite separable from his main conception of the radical political defect of the French people.
This notion of Hillebrand's that the want of individual initiative and moral courage is the great defect of the French character in him not only in his judgment on their public, but also on their private life, and affords an opportunity for ingenious ob- servation and comparison, particularly with some characteristic peculiarities of the English. He maintains, moreover, that the England of Stuart Mill or Gladstone has in many respects become more insular than the England of Walpole or Hume, and that the feeling of pride with which Old England looked down upon the Continent was, in reality, more modest than the sympathy and even the admiration which modern England pro- fesses for foreign nations, because in those days, he thinks, there existed a better knowledge of foreign affairs, a more correct appreciation of their moving forces, than is prevalent now, notwithstanding all the trouble taken to enter into detail. This Hillebrand ascribes partly to one of the dominant qualities of the English mind—its conscientiousness and love of truth—which when brought into contact with foreigners presupposes the same love of truth, and taking everything an pied de la lettre, is therefore expesed to error. In connection with this characteristic, he insists on the by no means rare instances in which men in England do not think it beneath them always to learn, and even to change their views at an advanced age ; whereas a Frenchman at thirty has generally made up his mind for the rest of his life—son sielle est fait—and so little is he accus- tomed to believe in the sincerity and strength of feeling which may prompt a change of conviction, even late in life, that, as a rule, he does not hesitate to attribute it to unworthy motives. For the Frenchman is above all things a rationalist,—whose private as well • 1, Frankreich end die &mama. Von Karl Hillebrand. Berlin : Verlag von IL Oppenhettn. 1873.
2. AIM and Ereber Envland. Von Karl Ifillebrand. Berlin : Verlag von B. Oppen- helm. 1870.
3. Oeseldelde der Enropalerhen Maiden. Herauegegeben von A. C. L. Hearse, F. A, Alkert, and W. von Gleaebreeht. Geseldelde Franlereiche (1E80-1871). Von Karl liillebrand. Erster Then. Gotha: P. A. Pertheo. 1977. as whose political life is ruled by theories, constructed artistically, like a tragedy of Racine or the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe,—who makes no love-match, neither with a wife nor with a. sovereign,—w hose naturally passionate temper is restrained by a rationalistic education, which makes him a sceptic instead of an enthusiast,—and whose private virtues, whose temperance, love of work, and devotion to his family, have till now counterbalanced the evil influences of his political condition. Even the holiest feeling of all, the religious feeling, is characterised by Hillebrand as being, for the French, not an impulse of the soul, but an amour de tete, a belief in a personal God and in a life to come, like the religion of Voltaire, but which, among the educated classes, submits to the conventionalities and traditions of the Church, and makes use of the religious creed as an antidote against the revolutionary doctrine. The under-current of scepticism which lies hidden beneath the surface of the French character, which is one of the marked features of the philosophy of Pascal, and is not entirely wanting even in the authoritative teaching of Bossuet, is of course well known to IIillebrand, who also does full justice to time exemplary moral bearing and influence of the French clergy. It is all the more astonishing that, after having studied the French so assiduously in every phase of their life, he should have failed to notice one of their most striking peculiarities. Or how could he otherwise make the avowal that he bad never solved the riddle how it was that the severest of all monastic Orders, La Trappe, had been founded, and prospered ever since, in France ? His astonishment would be justifiable, if such an event were an isolated one in French history. But this is by no means the ease As since the establishment of Christianity no other great Euro- pean nation has rivalled the French in their occasional cruelties, so their religious history is marked by a stern, unrelenting spirit, which sometimes influences the whole national life, at other times fades more into the background, but never entirely disappears. Without entering into particulars, it will be sufficient here to re- mind the reader of the French origin of the Dominicans, the Inquisition, the war of the Albigenses, and to recall to his memory the fact that it was not the more genial spirit of Lutheran Protestantism, but the fatalistic, absolute ideas of Calvin which were adopted by the French ; that they gave the greatest extension to the Carmelite Order, created Port Royal and Jansenism, and that to this very day, they furnish the greatest number of religious congregations and missionaries to Catholicism. This severe, ascetic spirit penetrated from the Church into the world, chose its most striking examples of penitence in the midst of the corruption of the Court, and created the great types of French parliamentary magistracy and nobility, De Thou, Mathieu Mold, D'Aguesseau, -who represent just as much one side of the French nature as Retz, Voltaire, or the Regent represent another. Here also the abyss of 1789 has divided the present from the past, and driven back that spirit from politics into religion, which alone now affords shelter to the sometimes narrow-minded, but lofty, energetic natures, whose strong wills and deeply-set convictions refuse to bend to the ever-varying conditions of the hour. Hillebrand's attention having been more closely attracted by modern than by ancient France, it is only natural that a personage like Guizot, who intellectually belongs to that old French magistracy, should appear to him an anomaly, a stranger among his countrymen ; whereas he recognises in M. Thiess the typical Frenchman, witty, keen, sharp, and overflowing with intellectual life and activity. Little as we may have succeeded in giving an adequate idea of Ilillebrand's merits, it may be sufficient to show how happy was the choice of those who confided to him the task of writing the French history of the last fifty years for the Europiiisehe Staatengesehichte, by Heeren und Ukert. This great collection, begun by Perthes in 1829, has been continued of late under the direction of W. von Giese- brecht, and comprises first-rate works, such as Bernhardi's History of Russia, Zinkeisen's History of the Ottoman Empire Dahlmann's History of Denmark, and Geyer's History of Sweden Wachsmuth had carried the History of France up to the year 1830. A continuation by A. Schmidt, down to 1848, no longer answered its purpose, and so Hillebrand had to fill up the whole space between 1830 and 1870. The material accumulated in France alone is enormous, besides public docu- ments, Parliamentary papers, and official reports,the memoirs of the chief actors themselves relate their participation in public affairs. The memoirs of Guizot, 0. Barrot, Lafayette, Chateaubriand, D'Alton-Shee, Gisquet, the letters and speeches of Berryer, Broglie, Lamartine, Renausat, the historical works of Nettement, Duver- gier De Hauranne, Viel-Castel, Capefigue, Crdtineau - Jolly, Nouvion, L. Blanc, Billault de Gdrainville, Rottman, the letters
of Lord Palmerston, the diary of Stockmar, the diplomatic history of Bianchi and that of the French foreign policy under Louis Philippe, by D'Haussonville, have been more or less made use of by Hillebrand, who has added to them the results of new sources of information found in the archives of Turin and Berlin, in the first of which he chiefly profited by the despatches of Prtdormo and Brignole-Sale, the Sardinian Ministers at Vienna and Paris ; in the second, by those of Werther and Ancillon.
In this first volume it is Hillebrand's object to give the history of the foreign policy of the July monarchy, to describe the organisation of parties, and the changed attitude and alliances of European Powers, during the first years after the Revolution of 1830. The internal and intellectual history of those years, the financial and commercial development, the religious and socialistic movements are reserved for the next volume. New sources of information will then be opened to Hillebrand by various and partly very important collections of letters, such as those of Tocqueville, Doudan La Mennais, B6ranger, and many others, of which he has till now quoted only the correspondence of Doudan. What seemed of primary im- portance to him was to give his readers a true insight into the inner connection of events, and instead of entering into every detail, to indicate the important and decisive moments. So also, when speaking of persons, he prefers psychological
analysis to richly-coloured pictures. The first of his bio- graphical sketches is that of the King himself, "who would have refrained with indignation from committing a crime, or even an act of violence, but who lacked the moral cour- age to abstain through a higher feeling of self-control from profiting by the occasion which offered itself to him. He failed to see that kingship requires qualities he did not possess, and that these qualities were precisely the essential ones. He over- rated the power of the Revolution, as he underrated the power of traditional monarchy. The integrity of Louis Philippe, as well as his personal bravery, are above suspicion, not so the nobility of his feelings and his moral power. He neither knew how to sacri- fice his personal interests, nor how to meet revolt in the full con- sciousness of the rights, the duties, and the responsibility of a king."
To this first part of Hillebrand's history we have only the one important objection that, in a short note to page 86, he seems to adopt the view that Art : XIV. of the Charte justi- fied the conduct of the Ministers of Charles X., a question so momentous in the constitutional history of France, that it ought not to be mentioned incidentally, if it is mentioned at all. That Casimir Perier, "chic Feldherrnnatur," is a favourite with Hille- brand will not surprise our readers after what has been said. The history of the Italian movement of 1830 and of the Belgian Revolution is most elaborately told, and the romantic enterprise of the Duchesse the Berry spoken of with great tact and feeling as to what belongs and does not belong to the domain of history. The Ministry of October 11, 1832, which included Guizot and Thiers, leads him to analyse the characters of both statesmen (pp. 39 -396). He does full justice to the intellectual capacities, the conscientiousness, the political and mofal principles and eloquence of Guizot; he respects the man, but he evidently does not sympathise with him, but with his rival. When speaking of 'riders, he says that the King, who at first had felt no attraction whatever for him, preferred him for a time to Guizot, whose severity repulsed him, till ex- perience taught him how much more easy it was in reality to use the stern Puritan than his bright, genial colleague, and how, in political life, principles and theNlies bend more readily to the pressure of outer circumstances than predilections and instincts.
This volume brings the history of the July monarchy up to the time when its interior difficulties had been removed, its international position strengthened by the conquest of Algiers, and by the conclusion of desirable family alliances ; while after the fall of Thiers, the King had at last realised his personal wish not only to reign, but to govern. The four coming volumes are to treat of the development of French Parliamentary Government (1838-1847), the second Republic (1848-1851), the Empire in the time of its successes (18524860), and of its failures (1861- 1870), and a final chapter is to be devoted to the catastrophes up to May, 1871.
Previous page
