3. The Hesitations of recent Historians of the
Revolution.
The historians whose ideas we have examined in the preceding
chapter were extremely positive in their special pleading.
Confined within the limits of belief, they did not attempt to
penetrate the domain of knowledge. A monarchical writer was
violently hostile to the Revolution, and a liberal writer was its
violent apologist.
At the present time we can see the commencement of a
movement which will surely lead to the study of the Revolution as
one of those scientific phenomena into which the opinions and
beliefs of a writer enter so little that the reader does not even
suspect them.
This period has not yet come into being; we are still in
the period of doubt. The liberal writers who used to be so
positive are now so no longer. One
may judge of this new state of mind by the following extracts
from recent authors:—
M. Hanotaux, having vaunted the utility of the Revolution,
asks whether its results were not bought too dearly, and adds:—
“History hesitates, and will, for a long time yet,
hesitate to answer.”
M. Madelin is equally dubious in the book he has recently
published:—
“I have never felt sufficient authority to form, even
in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a
phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more
difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and
consequences seem to me to be still extremely debatable
subjects.”
One may obtain a still better idea of the transformation
of the old ideas concerning the Revolution by perusing the latest
writings of its official defenders. While they professed
formerly to justify every act of violence by representing it as a
simple act of defence, they now confine themselves to pleading
extenuating circumstances. I find a striking proof of this new
frame of mind in the history of France for the use of schools,
published by MM. Aulard and Debidour. Concerning the Terror we
read the following lines:—
“Blood flowed in waves; there were acts of injustice
and crimes which were useless from the point of view of national
defence, and odious. But men had lost their heads in the
tempest, and, harassed by a thousand dangers, the patriots struck
out in their rage.”
We shall see in another part of this work that the first
of the two authors whom I have cited is, in spite
of his uncompromising Jacobinism, by no means indulgent toward
the men formerly qualified as the “Giants of the
Convention.”
The judgments of foreigners upon our Revolution are
usually distinctly severe, and we cannot be surprised when we
remember how Europe suffered during the twenty years of upheaval
in France.
The Germans in particular have been most severe. Their
opinion is summed up in the following lines by M. Faguet:—
“Let us say it courageously and patriotically, for
patriotism consists above all in telling the truth to one's own
country: Germany sees in France, with regard to the past, a
people who, with the great words `liberty' and `fraternity' in
its mouth, oppressed, trampled, murdered, pillaged, and fleeced
her for fifteen years; and with regard to the present, a people
who, with the same words on its banners, is organising a
despotic, oppressive, mischievous, and ruinous democracy, which
none would seek to imitate. This is what Germany may well see in
France; and this, according to her books and journals, is, we may
assure ourselves, what she does see.”
For the rest, whatever the worth of the verdicts
pronounced upon the French Revolution, we may be certain that the
writers of the future will consider it as an event as
passionately interesting as it is instructive.
A Government bloodthirsty enough to guillotine old men of
eighty years, young girls, and little children: which covered
France with ruins, and yet succeeded in repulsing Europe in arms;
an archduchess of Austria, Queen of France, dying on the
scaffold,
and a few years later another archduchess, her relative,
replacing her on the same throne and marrying a sub-lieutenant,
turned Emperor—here are tragedies unique in human history. The
psychologists, above all, will derive lessons from a history
hitherto so little studied by them. No doubt they will finally
discover that psychology can make no progress until it renounces
chimerical theories and laboratory experiments in order to study
the events and the men who surround us.
7
