3. CHAPTER III
THE ACTION OF GOVERNMENTS IN REVOLUTIONS
1. The feeble resistance of Governments in time of
Revolution.
MANY modern nations—France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Poland,
Japan, Turkey, Portugal, &c.—have known revolutions within the
last century. These were usually characterised by their
instantaneous quality and the facility with which the governments
attacked were overthrown.
The instantaneous nature of these revolutions is explained
by the rapidity of mental contagion due to modern methods of
publicity. The slight resistance of the governments attacked is
more surprising. It implies a total inability to comprehend and
foresee created by a blind confidence in their own strength.
The facility with which governments fall is not however a
new phenomenon. It has been proved more than once, not only in
autocratic systems, which are always overturned by palace
conspiracies, but also in governments perfectly instructed in the
state of public opinion by the press and their own agents.
Among these instantaneous downfalls one of the most
striking was that which followed the Ordinances of Charles X.
This monarch was, as we know, over
thrown in four days. His minister Polignac had taken no measures
of defence, and the king was so confident of the tranquillity of
Paris that he had gone hunting. The army was not in the least
hostile, as in the reign of Louis XVI., but the troops, badly
officered, disbanded before the attacks of a few insurgents.
The overthrow of Louis-Philippe was still more typical,
since it did not result from any arbitrary action on the part of
the sovereign. This monarch was not surrounded by the hatred
which finally surrounded Charles X., and his fall was the result
of an insignificant riot which could easily have been repressed.
Historians, who can hardly comprehend how a solidly
constituted government, supported by an imposing army, can be
overthrown by a few rioters, naturally attributed the fall of
Louis-Philippe to deep-seated causes. In reality the incapacity
of the generals entrusted with his defence was the real cause of
his fall.
This case is one of the most instructive that could be
cited, and is worthy of a moment's consideration. It has been
perfectly investigated by General Bonnal, in the light of the
notes of an eye-witness, General Elchingen. Thirty-six thousand
troops were then in Paris, but the weakness and incapacity of
their officers made it impossible to use them. Contradictory
orders were given, and finally the troops were forbidden to fire
on the people, who, moreover—and nothing could have been more
dangerous—were permitted to mingle with the troops. The riot
succeeded without fighting and forced the king to abdicate.
Applying to the preceding case our knowledge of
the psychology of crowds, General Bonnal shows how easily the
riot which overthrew Louis-Philippe could have been controlled.
He proves, notably, that if the commanding officers had not
completely lost their heads quite a small body of troops could
have prevented the insurgents from invading the Chamber of
Deputies. This last, composed of monarchists, would certainly
have proclaimed the Count of Paris under the regency of his
mother.
Similar phenomena were observable in the revolutions of
Spain and Portugal.
These facts show the rôle of petty accessory
circumstances in great events, and prove that one must not speak
too readily of the general laws of history. Without the riot
which overthrew Louis-Philippe, we should probably have seen
neither the Republic of 1848, nor the Second Empire, nor Sedan,
nor the invasion, nor the loss of Alsace.
In the revolutions of which I have just been speaking the
army was of no assistance to the government, but did not turn
against it. It sometimes happens otherwise. It is often the
army which effects the revolution, as in Turkey and Portugal.
The innumerable revolutions of the Latin republics of America are
effected by the army.
When a revolution is effected by an army the new rulers
naturally fall under its domination. I have already recalled the
fact that this was the case at the end of the Roman Empire, when
the emperors were made and unmade by the soldiery.
The same thing has sometimes been witnessed in modern
times. The following extract from a news
paper, with reference to the Greek revolution, shows what becomes
of a government dominated by its army:—
“One day it was announced that eighty officers of the
navy would send in their resignations if the government did not
dismiss the leaders of whom they complained. Another time it was
the agricultural labourers on a farm (metairie) belonging
to the Crown Prince who demanded the partition of the soil among
them. The navy protested against the promotion promised to
Colonel Zorbas. Colonel Zorbas, after a week of discussion with
Lieutenant Typaldos, treated with the President of the Council as
one power with another. During this time the Federation of the
corporations abused the officers of the navy. A deputy demanded
that these officers and their families should be treated as
brigands. When Commander Miaoulis fired on the rebels, the
sailors, who first of all had obeyed Typaldos, returned to duty.
This is no longer the harmonious Greece of Pericles and
Themistocles. It is a hideous camp of Agramant.”
A revolution cannot be effected without the assistance or
at least the neutrality of the army, but it often happens that
the movement commences without it. This was the case with the
revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and that of 1870, which overthrew
the Empire after the humiliation of France by the surrender of
Sedan.
The majority of revolutions take place in the capitals,
and by means of contagion spread through the country; but this is
not a constant rule. We know that during the French Revolution
La Vendée,
Brittany, and the Midi revolted spontaneously against Paris.
2. How the resistance of Governments may overcome
Revolution.
In the greater number of the revolutions enumerated above, we
have seen governments perish by their weakness. As soon as they
were touched they fell.
The Russian Revolution proved that a government which
defends itself energetically may finally triumph.
Never was revolution more menacing to the government.
After the disasters suffered in the Orient, and the severities of
a too oppressive autocratic régime, all classes of
society, including a portion of the army and the fleet, had
revolted. The railways, posts, and telegraph services had
struck, so that communications between the various portions of
the vast empire were interrupted.
The rural class itself, forming the majority of the
nation, began to feel the influence of the revolutionary
propaganda. The lot of the peasants was wretched. They were
obliged, by the system of the mir, to cultivate soil which
they could not acquire. The government resolved immediately to
conciliate this large class of peasants by turning them into
proprietors. Special laws forced the landlords to sell the
peasants a portion of their lands, and banks intended to lend the
buyers the necessary purchase-money were created. The sums lent
were to be repaid by small annuities deducted from the product of
the sale of the crops.
Assured of the neutrality of the peasants, the government
could contend with the fanatics who
were burning the towns, throwing bombs among the crowds, and
waging a merciless warfare. All those who could be taken were
killed. Such extermination is the only method discovered since
the beginning of the world by which a society can be protected
against the rebels who wish to destroy it.
The victorious government understood moreover the
necessity of satisfying the legitimate claims of the enlightened
portion of the nation. It created a parliament instructed to
prepare laws and control expenditure.
The history of the Russian Revolution shows us how a
government, all of whose natural supports have crumbled in
succession, can, with wisdom and firmness, triumph over the most
formidable obstacles. It has been very justly said that
governments are not overthrown, but that they commit suicide.
3. Revolutions effected by Governments.—Examples:
China, Turkey, &c.
Governments almost invariably fight revolutions; they hardly
ever create them. Representing the needs of the moment and
general opinion, they follow the reformers timidly; they do not
precede them. Sometimes, however, certain governments have
attempted those sudden reforms which we know as revolutions. The
stability or instability of the national mind decrees the success
or failure of such attempts.
They succeed when the people on whom the government seeks
to impose new institutions is composed of semi-barbarous tribes,
without fixed laws, without solid traditions; that is to say,
without a settled
national mind. Such was the condition of Russia in the days of
Peter the Great. We know how he sought to Europeanise the semi-Asiatic populations by means of force.
Japan is another example of a revolution effected by a
government, but it was her machinery, not her mind that was
reformed.
It needs a very powerful autocrat, seconded by a man of
genius, to succeed, even partially, in such a task. More often
than not the reformer finds that the whole people rises up
against him. Then, to the contrary of what befalls in an
ordinary revolution, the autocrat is revolutionary and the people
is conservative. But an attentive study will soon show you that
the peoples are always extremely conservative.
Failure is the rule with these attempts. Whether effected
by the upper classes or the lower, revolutions do not change the
souls of peoples that have been a long time established. They
only change those things that are worn by time and ready to fall.
China is at the present time making a very interesting but
impossible experiment, in seeking, by means of the government,
suddenly to renew the institutions of the country. The
revolution which overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns
was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by
reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to
ameliorating the condition of China. The suppression of opium
and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools,
involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms
themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.
A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited
by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic,
an institution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.
It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has
given birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction.
The word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his
European education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of
the yoke of laws, rules, and long-established restraints.
Cutting off his pigtail, covering his head with a cap, and
calling himself a Republican, the young Chinaman thinks to give
the rein to all his instincts. This is more or less the idea of
a republic that a large part of the French people entertained at
the time of the great Revolution.
China will soon discover the fate that awaits a society
deprived of the armour slowly wrought by the past. After a few
years of bloody anarchy it will be necessary to establish a power
whose tyranny will inevitably be far severer than that which was
overthrown. Science has not yet discovered the magic ring
capable of saving a society without discipline. There is no need
to impose discipline when it has become hereditary, but when the
primitive instincts have been allowed to destroy the barriers
painfully erected by slow ancestral labours, they cannot be
reconstituted save by an energetic tyranny.
As a proof of these assertions we may instance an
experiment analogous to that undertaken by China; that recently
attempted by Turkey. A few years ago young men instructed in
European schools and full of good intentions succeeded, with the
aid of a
number of officers, in overthrowing a Sultan whose tyranny seemed
insupportable. Having acquired our robust Latin faith in the
magic power of formulæ, they thought they could establish
the representative system in a country half-civilised, profoundly
divided by religious hatred, and peopled by divers races.
The attempt has not prospered hitherto. The authors of
the reformation had to learn that despite their liberalism they
were forced to govern by methods very like those employed by the
government overthrown. They could neither prevent summary
executions nor wholesale massacres of Christians, nor could they
remedy a single abuse.
It would be unjust to reproach them. What in truth could
they have done to change a people whose traditions have been
fixed so long, whose religious passions are so intense, and whose
Mohammedans, although in the minority, legitimately claim to
govern the sacred city of their faith according to their code?
How prevent Islam from remaining the State religion in a country
where civil law and religious law are not yet plainly separated,
and where faith in the Koran is the only tie by which the idea of
nationality can be maintained?
It was difficult to destroy such a state of affairs, so
that we were bound to see the re-establishment of an autocratic
organisation with an appearance of constitutionalism—that is to
say, practically the old system once again. Such attempts afford
a good example of the fact that a people cannot choose its
institutions until it has transformed its mind.
4.
Social elements which survive the changes of
Government after Revolution.
What we shall say later on as to the stable foundation of
the national soul will enable us to appreciate the force of
systems of government that have been long established, such as
ancient monarchies. A monarch may easily be overthrown by
conspirators, but these latter are powerless against the
principles which the monarch represents. Napoleon at his fall
was replaced not by his natural heir, but by the heir of kings.
The latter incarnated an ancient principle, while the son of the
Emperor personified ideas that were as yet imperfectly
established in men's minds.
For the same reason a minister, however able, however
great the services he has rendered to his country, can very
rarely overthrow his Sovereign. Bismarck himself could not have
done so. This great minister had single-handed created the unity
of Germany, yet his master had only to touch him with his finger
and he vanished. A man is as nothing before a principle
supported by opinion.
But even when, for various reasons, the principle
incarnated by a government is annihilated with that government,
as happened at the time of the French Revolution, all the
elements of social organisation do not perish at the same time.
If we knew nothing of France but the disturbances of the
last hundred years and more we might suppose the country to live
in a state of profound anarchy. Now her economic, industrial,
and even her political life manifests, on the contrary, a
continuity that seems to be independent of all revolutions and
governments.
The fact is that beside the great events of which history treats
are the little facts of daily life which the books neglect to
tell. They are ruled by imperious necessities which halt for no
man. Their total mass forms the real framework of the life of
the people.
While the study of great events shows us that the nominal
government of France has been frequently changed in the space of
a century, an examination of the little daily events will prove,
on the contrary, that her real government has been little
altered.
Who in truth are the real rulers of a people? Kings and
ministers, no doubt, in the great crises of national life, but
they play no part whatever in the little realities which make up
the life of every day. The real directing forces of a country
are the administrations, composed of impersonal elements which
are never affected by the changes of government. Conservative of
traditions, they are anonymous and lasting, and constitute an
occult power before which all others must eventually bow. Their
action has even increased to such a degree that, as we shall
presently show, there is a danger that they may form an anonymous
State more powerful than the official State. France has thus
come to be governed by heads of departments and government
clerks. The more we study the history of revolutions the more we
discover that they change practically nothing but the label. To
create a revolution is easy, but to change the soul of a people
is difficult indeed.