#françois guizot

[illustratus]

Battle of Agincourt by Alphonse de Neuville

[lux-vitae]

Vercingetorix Before Caesar, illustration by Alphonse de Neuville for The History of France: From the Most Remote Times to 1789 by François Guizot (1872)

[geopolicraticus]

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Guizot on Progress as the Measure of Civilization 

Friday 04 October 2024 is the 237th anniversary of the birth of François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (04 October 1787 – 12 September 1874), who was born in Nîmes, France, on this date in 1787, and who went on to hold many of the highest political offices in France.

Guizot led a long and eventful life that involved both extensive literary work and engagement with the political life of his time. His histories of European civilization and French civilization are distinctive in their transmutation of the Enlightenment theme of progress, which Guizot re-interprets in the light of nineteenth century experience.

Quora:              https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ 

Discord:           https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD

Links:               https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/

Newsletter:     http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

Text post:        https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/guizot-on-progress-as-the-measure

Video:              https://youtu.be/a0jFYDbEhis  

Podcast:         https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/NlEPhXairNb

[empirearchives]

The Little Beggar, c. 1808-09, Napoleonic era

By Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, French

The Little Beggar is one of the earliest known works by the artist, who arrived in Rome a few months after her professor, Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, had been appointed director of the Academy of France in its new home in the Villa Medici. The subject is exceptional in showing a beggar in such a compassionate light; while he is clearly asking the viewer for money, he is a sympathetic, not a threatening figure, reflecting a significant change of attitude towards the less fortunate.

Literature

François Guizot, De l’état des Beaux-Arts en France et du Salon de 1810, Paris, Maradan, 1810, p. 99

Pierre François Gueffier, Entretiens sur les ouvrages de peinture, sculpture et gravure, exposés au Musée Napoléon en 1810, Paris, Gueffier jeune, 1811, p. 157

C. P. Landon, Salon de 1810, p.104

Paul Menoux, Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, Catalogue Raisonné, Paris, Arthena (to be published).

TEFAF Maastricht

[josefavomjaaga]

Happy Birthday, Marshal Soult!

This is probably a rather weird birthday post. Also, it has little to do with Napoleon. But as it sums up Soult’s life in a way, I do find it strangely appropriate: Soult’s letter of resignation to King Louis Philippe (quoted and translated from L. Muél, »Gouvernements, ministères et constitutions de la France«, 2nd edition, Paris 1891, and the memors of François Guizot).

Soult-Berg (Tarn), 15 September 1847.

Sire,

I was at the service of my country, sixty-three years ago, when the old monarchy was still standing, before the first glimmers of our national revolution. A soldier of the Republic and a lieutenant of the Emperor Napoleon, I took part unceasingly in this immense struggle for the independence, liberty and glory of France, and I was one of those who supported it until the last day. Your Majesty deigned to believe that my services could be useful in the new and no less patriotic struggle which God and France have called upon her to wage for the consolidation of our constitutional order; I thank Your Majesty for this. It is the honour of my life that my name thus occupies a place in all the military and civil activities which have assured the triumph of our great cause. Your Majesty's confidence supported me in the last services which I tried to render. My devotion to Your Majesty and to France is absolute; but I feel that my strength betrays this devotion. May Your Majesty allow me to devote what is left of it to recollection, having reached the end of my laborious career. I have dedicated to you, Sire, the activity of my last years; give me the respite from my old services, and allow me to deposit at the foot of Your Majesty's throne my resignation from the presidency of the Council with which Your Majesty had deigned to invest me. I shall enjoy this repose amidst the general safety which Your Majesty's firm wisdom has given to France and to all those who have served your Majesty and who love him. My gratitude for Your Majesty's kindnesses, my wishes for His prosperity and that of His august family will follow me in this rest until my last day; they will not cease to equal the unalterable devotion and the profound respect with which I am

Sire, of Your Majesty, the most humble and obedient servant,

Maréchal Duc de Dalmatie.

At the time he wrote this, Soult was 78 years old. He would live for another three years. As to Louis Philippe’s July Monarchy, it would last for another five months after Soult’s resignation – it’s almost as if everybody had just waited for him to leave. In February 1848, the monarchy was overthrown, and the Second French Republic installed - who, another four months later, would bloodily oppress the workers’ uprisings, killing 5,000 and incarcerating over 10,000, and who in December of the same year 1848 already would elect a certain Louis Napoléon Bonaparte as president, thus paving the way for the Second Empire.

Soult died six days before future Napoleon III’s coup d’état.

By the way, his letter of resignation would be commented on in a book called »Histoire de la révolution de 1848 et de la présidence de Louis-Napoléon«, Paris 1850, as follows:

[…] On September 19 the Moniteur published long awaited news: in a letter to the king, in which the courtier can be found in its entirety, Marshal Soult resigned from his functions as president of the council, justifying his decision on the grounds of his old age and his urgent need to rest in the general safety that the wisdom of Louis Philippe had given to France! This meant closing with a lie a career which had originally been glorious, but which had been seriously compromised by a passion for gain, by a restless ambition and by servile complacency.

[eternal-echoes]

“In the early twentieth century, Henry Goodell, president of what was then the Massachusetts Agricultural College, celebrated "the work of these grand old monks during a period of fifteen hundred years. They saved agriculture when nobody else could save it. They practiced it under a new life and new conditions when no one else dared undertake it." Testimony on this point is considerable. "We owe the agricultural restoration of a great part of Europe to the monks," observes another expert. "Wherever they came," adds still another, "they converted the wilderness into a cultivated country; they pursued the breeding of cattle and agriculture, labored with their own hands, drained morasses, and cleared away forests. By them Germany was rendered a fruitful country." Another historian records that "every Benedictine monastery was an agricultural college for the whole region in which it was located.”1 Even the nineteenth-century French statesman and historian François Guizot, who was not especially sympathetic to the Catholic Church, observed: "The Benedictine monks were the agriculturists of Europe; they cleared it on a large scale, associating agriculture with preaching.”2

- Thomas E. Woods Jr., Ph.D., “How the Monks Saved Civilization,” How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

—

1. Alexander Clarence Flick, The Rise of the Medieval Church (New York: Burt Franklin, 1909), 216.

2. See John Henry Cardinal Newman, Essays and Sketches, vol. 3, Charles Frederick Harold, ed. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1948), 264-65.

[rhianna]

The history of France from the earliest times to 1848 / by M. Guizot amd Madame Guizot de Witt ; translated by Robert Black.

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Cite this

Main AuthorGuizot, (François), M. 1787-1874.Related NamesBlack, Robert, 1830?-1915. Witt, (Henriette Elizabeth), Madame de 1829-1908. Language(s)English PublishedNew York : J. B. Alden, 1884. SubjectsFrance >  France / History. NoteIncludes index in vol. 8. Physical Description8 v. : ill., plates, ports. ; 20 cm.

APA Citation

Guizot, M. (François)., Black, R., Witt, M. de (Henriette Elizabeth). (1884). The history of France from the earliest times to 1848. New York: J. B. Alden

[gazeta24br]

O surgimento da impressão em meados do século XV foi um evento de grande ruptura para o mundo ocidental. Seu impacto, extremamente amplo, prenuncia o nascimento de uma cultura impressa que ainda permanece, pois estabelece as condições para o nascimento da mídia, tem implicações na vida social, na história das línguas, das ciências, da educação, das artes gráficas, entre outros. Mas o que, de fato, sabemos sobre a invenção de Gutenberg, e por que meios, essa tecnologia foi aperfeiçoada a ponto de permitir o estabelecimento de um novo ecossistema de comunicação, produção e circulação de textos e, consequentemente, de ideias? Desta forma, o CPF Sesc promove a palestra, que abordará a extraordinária história do livro, da invenção da escrita à revolução digital. Realizada por ocasião do lançamento do livro História do Livro e da Edição, publicação em coedição pelas Edições Sesc e Ateliê Editorial. Data: 18/09/2023 Dias e Horários: Segunda, 19h30 às 21h30. Curso Presencial Inscrições a partir das 14h do dia 28/8, até o dia 18/9. Enquanto houver vagas. Local Rua Dr. Plínio Barreto, 285 - 4º andar} Bela Vista - São Paulo. Grátis Palestrantes Marisa Midori Deaecto Professora livre-docente em História do Livro na Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA-USP). Doutora Honoris Causa pela Universidade Eszterházy Károly, Eger (Hungria). Autora de “Império dos Livros - instituições e práticas de leituras na São Paulo oitocentista” (Edusp/Fapesp, 2011; 2019), vencedor do prêmio Jabuti da CBL (1º lugar em Comunicação) e o Prêmio Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, pela Fundação Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro na categoria melhor ensaio social. Publicou, recentemente, “História de um livro. A Democracia na França, de François Guizot” (Ateliê Editorial, 2021) e organizou a edição bilíngue de “Bibliodiversidade e preço do livro. Da Lei Lang à Lei Cortez. Experiências e expectativas em torno da regulação do mercado editorial (1981-2021)” (Ateliê Editorial, 2021). Yann Sordet Historiador do livro e curador geral de bibliotecas na França (Paris). Formou-se na École Nationale des Chartes (turma de 1997), depois na École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l'Information et des Libraries (ENSSIB). Foi curador do Departamento de Manuscritos e Livros Raros da Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (1998-2009), e, desde 2011, é diretor da Biblioteca Mazarina, a biblioteca pública mais antiga da França. Desde 2021, é Diretor Geral das Bibliotecas do Institut de France. Suas pesquisas concentram--se na história das bibliotecas e da bibliofilia, nas práticas bibliográficas, nos incunábulos, na produção e distribuição de livros sobre espiritualidade nos tempos modernos, bem como em edição de música. Lecionou história da edição na Universidade de Paris XIII (1999-2006) e história das bibliotecas na École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (2007-2009). É encarregado pelos cursos de formação na área patrimonial junto à ENSSIB. É editor-chefe da revista Histoire et Civilisation du Livre. Publicou recentemente História do Livro e da Edição: Produção e Circulação, Formas e Mutações (Paris, Albin Michel, 2021, posfácio de Robert Darnton), atualmente em tradução no Brasil. (Foto: Acervo Pessoal) Sobre o CPF Sesc Com uma programação bastante diversa, o Centro de Pesquisa e Formação do Sesc São Paulo (CPF Sesc), localizado na Bela Vista, promove uma série de encontros, cursos, vivências, lançamentos de livros, ciclos, seminários e outras atividades. Muitas dessas atrações, que acontecem de forma presencial ou online, têm entrada gratuita e outras custam até R$50. As inscrições podem ser no site do CPF Sesc ou presencialmente na unidade. Serviço Centro de Pesquisa e Formação – CPF Sesc Rua Dr. Plínio Barreto, 285 – 4º andar. Tel: 3254-5600 Programação completa em https://centrodepesquisaeformacao.sescsp.org.br/

[wikipediabot]

wikipedia fact

He had an unusually strong and fascinating personality -- I never met anyone even remotely coming close to what he was like. Just to give you an idea: he was all that one might associate with François Guizot, very much aloof, very intelligent, both impossible to get close to and yet very much accessible and blessed with the rhetorical powers of a Pericles. If he had decided for a political career, the recent history of my country would have been completely different from what it is now. It rarely happened, but if he really felt that this was necessary he could raise a rhetorical storm blowing away everything and everybody. Indeed, when thinking of him, I never am sure what impressed me most, his scholarship or his personality. He was a truly wonderful man.

[grompf3]

Encore une excellente vidéo d'Histony

"Dans les années 1840, la vie politique française semble stagner sous le ministère de François Guizot. Mais cette période ne manque pourtant pas de dynamisme, comme on va le voir dans cet épisode."

La chaîne Histony consacre une série de vidéos à la période allant de 1814 à 1848.

[basileestudoorientadoaulaspartic]

"A música oferece à alma uma verdadeira cultura íntima e deve fazer parte da educação do povo." François Guizot Basile Estudo Orientado - Aulas Particulares 📌Apoio e suporte total para você passar de ano ou se preparar para as matérias específicas e para a REDAÇÃO da FUVEST. De janeiro a janeiro você pode contar com a Basile. 📝Vestibulares 📚Vestibulinhos 23 anos de experiência no ensinar e orientar a aprender! 📍RECUPERAÇÕES 📌Aulas Particulares de todas as matérias 3022-2263 e 3022-2264 www.basileestudoorientado.com.br Novo site: www.aulasparticularesbasile.com.br Pierre Auguste Renoir Jeune filles au piano Museu D'Orsay Paris https://www.instagram.com/p/CosGzTgOXjm/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[illustratus]

Charlemagne anxiously observes the approach of ships carrying Norman raiders by Alphonse de Neuville

[focusmonumentum]

“Le Quai d’Orsay”

Le quai d'Orsay court le long de la Rive Gauche de la Seine, embrassant la totalité du 7ème arrondissement (bien avant la répartition actuelle des arrondissements de Paris, actée en 1860). De fait, les travaux de construction du quai d'Orsay débutent en 1707, lors de la présidence du Parlement de Paris par le Prévôt des Marchands de l'époque: Charles Boucher, seigneur d'Orsay, qui lui laissa son nom. Bien plus tard, deux parties du quai furent renommées, à l'ouest quai Branly en 1941, à l'est quai Anatole-France en 1947. Depuis, la première adresse officielle du quai d'Orsay devient le Palais Bourbon, siège de l'Assemblée nationale. Séparé de celui-ci par l'Hôtel de Lassay, résidence du président de l'Assemblée, se trouve un bâtiment voué à abriter les services diplomatiques et des relations extérieures de la France : l'Hôtel du ministre des Affaires étrangères.

Le ministère des Affaires étrangères trouve son origine en 1547, lors de la nomination par le roi Henri II de Claude de l'Aubespine comme secrétaire d'Etat des Affaires étrangères. Passant de ministère des Relations extérieures à celui des Affaires étrangères (aléatoirement, en fonction des changements de gouvernements), ce ministère régit la politique extérieure de la France ainsi que ses relations avec les autres États, via ses représentations diplomatiques implantées à l'étranger que sont ambassades et consulats. La construction de cet Hôtel abritant ses services fut décidée par le ministre François Guizot dès 1844, sous la Monarchie de Juillet. Retardés par la révolution de 1848, les travaux sont finalement achevés en 1856, sous le Second Empire, ce qui explique son style dit "Napoléon III", adapté par son architecte Jacques Lacornée. Destiné à accueillir souverains et diplomates étrangers, une grande attention a été apportée à sa décoration, intérieure comme extérieure, souhaitant être représentative du faste de la France. Ses salons d'apparat, au lustre (et aux lustres!) éclatant(s), accueillirent nombre de délégations, sous un Second Empire finissant puis sous 3 républiques lui succédant. En 1856, le Traité de Paris, mettant un terme à la Guerre de Crimée, fut signé dans la "galerie de la Paix". En 1938, des salles de bains royales sont créées dans le "Style paquebot" (inspiré par l'architecture de luxe des transatlantiques de l'Entre-Deux-Guerres), dernière expression -avant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale- du mouvement Art Déco, à l'occasion de la visite du roi George VI et de son épouse la reine Elizabeth. Le 9 mai 1950, Robert Schuman (alors ministre des Affaires étrangères de la IVème République), prononça au salon de l'Horloge sa fameuse déclaration éponyme, considérée depuis comme l'acte fondateur de la construction européenne. Chaque année, le 9 mai est d'ailleurs fêté comme étant la "Journée de l'Europe".

Sa façade, héritière du précédent style néoclassique (en vogue sous la Restauration monarchique puis sous Louis-Philippe), nous présente moult colonnes engagées et pilastres ioniques, soutenant un attique plat, inspiré des toits-terrasses des palais italiens. Côté jardin (bordé par la rue de l'université), sa façade s'inspire de l'architecture palladienne. Côté Seine (Quai d'Orsay, sic), quinze médaillons en marbre blanc, nus aujourd'hui, sont des témoins de l'adjonction de la construction européenne au ministère des Affaires étrangères. En effet, en 1995, l'Europe étant constituée alors de 15 états-membres, quinze bas-reliefs en marbre furent créés, représentant chacun un des pays membres de l'U.E. L'élargissement de l'Europe à d'autres États, dès 1997, rendirent caduque ce nombre de quinze; ils furent alors déposés, chacun ayant été offert à l'ambassade française correspondante sur le territoire de ces dits (quinze) États. Le ministère se nomme officiellement depuis "de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères".

La cocarde diplomatique française, aux cercles concentriques "Bleu-Blanc-Rouge", arborant le sigle R.F. (République Française), est présente partout sur le bâtiment, ainsi que sur son portail, comme à chaque entrée d'ambassade ou de consulat français à l'étranger.

Par métonymie, le "Quai d'Orsay" est devenu l'appellation consacrée de la diplomatie française. Une célèbre bande-dessinée prit ce nom (sous-titrée Chroniques diplomatiques), co-écrite en 2010/11 par l'ancien diplomate Antoine Baudry, adaptée au cinéma par Bertrand Tavernier en 2013, avec Thierry Lhermitte dans le rôle-titre, pastiche assumé du ministre Dominique de Villepin, d'une décade antérieure. 

A l'extrémité orientale de la grille de l'Hôtel se trouve un monument dédié à Aristide Briand, qui exerça (entre autres charges gouvernementales d'importance) plusieurs mandats de ministre des Affaires étrangères sous la IIIème République, notamment dans les années 20, où il déploya toute son énergie dans la réconciliation entre les nations belligérantes, au sortir de la Première Guerre Mondiale. Récipiendaire du Prix Nobel de la Paix en 1926 pour son rôle joué dans les Accords de Locarno, appliquant le concept de sécurité collective en Europe, il fut également, avec l'américain Frank Billings Kellogg, à l'origine du Pacte de Paris, signé en cet Hôtel le 27 août 1928, dans le même salon de l'Horloge qui connaîtra le déclaration Schuman en 1950. Visant à mettre la guerre "hors-la-loi", ce pacte inspira à l'Etat ce monument, orchestré par l'architecte Paul Bigot, réunissant les ciseaux de Paul Landowski pour la sculpture en ronde-bosse représentant "la Paix entre les Nations" et d'Henri Bouchard pour le bas-relief sur plaque de bronze, montrant "La procession des Nations", conduite par la France, écoutant le message de conciliation d'Aristide Briand, à droite au premier plan. Ce groupe sculpté pour la paix, inauguré en 1937, ne fut représentatif que d'une courte période d'illusion de paix, dûe à un diplomate utopiste à la construction idéaliste finalement freinée par la crise économique de 1929, puis par la montée des totalitarismes en Europe au début des années 30... Nous connaissons la suite...  Mais la paix, malgré tout, fut finalement restaurée sur le territoire français dès juin 1944. Après quatre longues années d'occupation, Paris est finalement libérée le 25 août, au prix de nombreux actes de guerre héroïques, notamment lors des rudes combats pour la libération du ministère, tenu par les nazis. Cinq soldats français de la 2ème D.B. trouvèrent ici la mort dans l'explosion du char "Quimper". Le prix de la liberté... 

Crédits : ALM's

[winterhalters]

PICK A DECADE → the 1830s (requested by musicalheart168)

[jaimelire-france]

Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe est un livre écrit par l'historien, homme politique et académicien français François Guizot.

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

Les Misérables is written about three or four different time periods depending on the given chapter and the level on which you're reading it (literally versus historically versus philosophically, etc.). I don't think I appreciated until episode 7.13 of Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast when he broke down how intensely all of the political factions involved in the 1848 revolutions were influenced by their opinions of the French Revolution, however, how much Les Mis talks about 1848.

I'm gonna be making a post later with a theory about Hugo's characters and structure they pertain to this history and these factions and most especially Cosette's future, but in the meantime, I've transcribed from around 13:10 to nearly the end of the episode so that you all can also appreciate how many levels were involved and have it in writing to refer to and research as you like, because I think it also summarizes pretty well the non-Bonapartist political forces in play at any point in the bricc.

(I also cannot recommend this podcast highly enough for jumping into not just the world of French Revolutions but also Western Revolutions in general.)

So at one end of the spectrum, we have those who looked back at the French Revolution with nothing but horror and disgust and who believed that above all and no matter what the cost, Europe must be kept free of the menace of revolution.  But this category of anti-revolutionaries divided up into three broad groups who agreed on practically nothing but the fact that revolution was abhorrent.

First and most obviously, we had the conservative absolutists who returned to power after the Congress of Vienna. The chief leading light of this group was Metternich, and the spectre of the French Revolution haunted no man so much as Metternich. Men like Metternich were so opposed to revolution that they were even opposed to reform. King Louis XVI had invited reform in 1789, and look what had happened to him. So across Europe in 1848 there were conservative writers and members of the clergy and major landowners who believed that you could not even let three guys sit down for a drink or they'd start plotting revolution. You certainly couldn't have a free press. You had to be stubborn, unfair, and ruthless. It was simply too dangerous to be anything less. And this extended to things even as seemingly banal as allowing a kingdom to have a nominal constitution, because in the conservative mind, once you granted the premise that rights came up from the people, rather than down from God through the king, you could just kiss the whole thing goodbye. These conservatives still pined for the days before 1789, and they hated the memory of even the most moderate of French revolutionaries, whose seemingly innocent and earnest appeals for reform had simply been the thin end of the wedge.

But absolutist conservatives were not the only ones who recoiled at the memory of the French Revolution and who wanted to do everything in their power from ever letting it happen again. So this second group of anti-revolutionaries were constitutional liberals who worshiped the rule of law and for whom revolution was anathema to everything they held dear. In France, we would put both Louis Philippe and François Guizot into this category, even if they had oh-so-ironically come to power thanks to the July Revolution [of 1830]. Both men admired the principles that had animated the men of 1789 but who had nonetheless concluded, no less than Metternich, that acquiescing to reform was only the beginning of a very slippery slope. Guizot himself had written a history of France and believed that the king's concessions in the early days of the Estates-General had led directly to the Reign of Terror — and remember, Guizot's father had perished in the Terror, as had King Louis Philippe's [Louis Philippe II, Philippe Égalité]. By the mid-1840s, both men had become stubbornly convinced that everything that needed to be achieved had been achieved and that any further reform would invite that slip into radicalism and the return of Madame la Guillotine. This kind of thinking could also be detected in the minds of rulers over in [modern-day] Germany, where we've discussed that there were these constitutional regimes — Ludwig in Bavaria, Leopold of Baden, and Frederick Augustus in Saxony. Those constitutions existed more as a stopper to prevent revolution than any kind of liberal expressionism.

Finally, there was a third group that cringed at the idea of the French Revolution but who drew the opposite conclusion from Guizot and Metternich: where Guizot and Metternich thought that reform was an invitation to revolution, they felt that reform was a necessary release valve to prevent revolution.  So in this category you would find Odilon Barrot and the dynastic left in France who wanted to save the monarchy by reforming the monarchy.  You would also find in here a guy like Alexis de Tocqueville, who would go on to write his own book on the French Revolution where he would argue that all of the quote-unquote “gains” of the French Revolution had already started under the Ancien Régime and that basically you didn’t need revolution to change society, you just needed continuous, gradual improvement.  We’ve also discussed so far two massively influential reformers in [modern-day] Italy and Hungary who fit this same basic mold.  In Italy, we talked about the Count of Cavour in episode 7.09, and in episode 7.08 I introduced István Széchenyi.  Both of these guys have broad, sweeping visions for the futures of their respective countries.  They believed in liberal constitutional government, economic modernization and social improvement, they simply did not believe revolution was the means of achieving their ends; in fact, this was the very lesson they had drawn from the French Revolution, that the ends had been just, but the means counterproductive.  The attempt to cram a century’s worth of work into a single year had not just had disastrous consequences, but they had upset the whole project of reform.  I would also throw into this group of anti-revolutionary reformers all of the Austrian liberals in Vienna, who we also talked about in episode 7.08. They believed that the stubborn brittleness of Metternich’s government was inviting a revolutionary upheaval that could be headed off by intelligent and necessary reform.

So those are the guys who desperately wanted to avoid another French Revolution, who instantly shuddered at the idea of ever having something like that happen again. But is that how everyone felt? Oh my goodness, no. There were those who had picked up the thesis of Adolphe Thiers and believed that the revolution of 1789 had been a good thing, a project launched for noble reasons and in fact launched because the existing regime was simply too stubborn to change without revolutionary energy. In this telling, men like Lafayette and Mirabeau were heroes to be emulated while you kept on constant guard against villains like Robespierre and Saint-Just. As you can imagine, this was a very attractive thesis among liberals in Germany and the Austrian empire who saw their own situation as analogous to the Ancien Régime of 1789. Their kingdoms were reeling from an economic crisis, their governments were financially shaky, their natural rights were trampled on by tyrants. So the French Revolutionary project that unfolded between 1789 and 1792 was absolutely a model to be emulated. Bring the liberal, educated intellectuals of the country together and force the kings to grant them a constitution and to guarantee basic civil rights. If they were going to be denied a constitutional place in government, if their local assemblies were going to be neutered, if they were not allowed to vote, if the government was unresponsive, then it was perfectly acceptable to look to 1789 and say, “Yes, we want that too. A moment when men of good will and conscience join together to define the rights of man and the citizen.” Now of course, these neo-1789ers knew the lesson of history well, and they knew that they would need to guard against the villains of 1792, but they did not believe that the Reign of Terror was necessarily inevitable. It had simply happened that way in France thanks to a variety of coincidences, mistakes, and bad luck, so liberals across Europe believed that they could forge constitutional governments that defined civil rights and popular sovereignty without falling prey to the Reign of Terror. Thus, the spectre of the French Revolution would loom very large indeed in the minds of these liberal revolutionaries as the course of 1848 rapidly progressed faster than they could keep up with. As we will see, they will all hit a moment of truth where they have to decide whether to keep pushing and join with more radical forces or quit the whole project, reconcile with the old conservative order, and fight against those radical forces that might lead to the new Reign of Terror.

But there were also those who rejected this whole contrived moralizing of the “good” revolution of 1789 and the “bad” revolution of 1792.  They did not recoil from the insurrection of August the 10th, the First French Republic, or the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety.  They idolized not the buffoon Lafayette and hypocritical traitor Mirabeau, but rather, the steely resolve of men like Danton and Robespierre and Saint-Just and Marat.  These had been men who saw the tyrants of Europe for what they were and knew that one must stand up when the going got tough, not go hide in the corner.  These more radical republicans further believed that there was just as much injustice perpetrated by comfortable liberals as conservative absolutists, so they saw the Revolution of 1789 as merely the precursor for the much more important, much more glorious, and much more necessary Revolution of 1792.  So though they were enemies of each other, these radicals actually agreed with Metternich that reform really was just the thin edge of the wedge, that it would lead to a greater revolution that would overthrow the despotic monarchies of Europe.  In their minds, the widespread slandering of the First French Republic and even the portrayal of the Reign of Terror as the most terrible crime in the history of the world was the nefarious propaganda of the comfortable classes, whether of conservative or liberal stripe.  Their propaganda emphasized the dramatic horror of the guillotine in order to cover up the horrors the common people of Europe lived with every day, and the best summation of this argument actually comes from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain. 

Now the book wasn’t published until 1889, but in it, Twain writes a passage that would have had a lot of radicals nodding their heads in 1848.  He wrote, “There were two reigns of terror, if we would but remember and consider it.  The one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood.  The one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years.  The one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons; the other, upon a hundred million.  But our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor terror, the momentary terror so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of the swift ax compared with lifelong death from cold, hunger, insult, cruelty, and heartbreak?  What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake?  A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror, which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over.  But all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real terror, that unspeakably bitter and awful terror, which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” 

(Sounds an awful lot like like a certain conversation our favorite bishop has with a certain conventionist, no?)

Now granted, I don’t think many of these radicals were actively pursuing a new Reign of Terror, but they were also not planning to settle for a constitutional monarchy bought by and for the richest families of their country.  And as we’ve already seen in France, these guys were not going to let the blood of patriots be spilled simply so they could swap one Bourbon for another and give another hundred thousand bankers and industrialists the right to vote.  What in that represented the nation?  Where in that were the people?  Where was liberty leading the people?  Oh right, that painting was locked now in the attic so it did not offend the forces of order.  In Italy, these radical republican forces who celebrated 1792 rallied around Giuseppe Mazzini and later Garibaldi; in Hungary they would rally around Lajos Kossuth, and when I get back from the book tour, I will introduce you to the radical leaders in Germany, who would not be satisfied by the mere token reforms promised by men who celebrated 1789 but feared 1792, men like Friedrich Hecker, Robert Blum, and Gustav Struve.  Everywhere, they would find their support not solely in the salons and cafés but among artisans and workers and students.  Those who would mount the barricades not just for the right to publish an article or to mildly criticize the government or the right to vote if you made a gargantuan amount of money: they fought to topple the king and to bring power to the people — all of the people.

So, so far we have men who idolize the conservatives of 1788, men who idolize the liberal nobles of 1789, and men who idolize the Jacobin republicans of 1792.  Well, there was also in 1848 also [sic] now emerging a small clique of men for whom even 1792 was not enough.  These guys believed that 1789 had been merely a step to 1792, but also believed that 1792 was simply a step to something greater.  So where did these guys look?  That’s right: they looked to 1796.  “1796?” you say.  “  What are you talking about?  The Directory?  Surely not.  Nobody says, ‘Ah, yes, the good old days of the French Directory, let’s definitely go back to that.’”  And no, of course I’m not talking about the directory, I’m talking about Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals.  With the small but ever-growing, increasingly influential spirit of socialism and communism beginning to take root, men like Louis Blanc and Karl Marx looked to Babeuf and his gang as the first example of what the force of history was aiming to make of humanity.  Communities and nations that shared not just political rights but the wealth of the nation.  How indeed are you going to sit back and say, “Ah, yes, the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen, and one citizen should have one vote,” and then call it a day when so few had so much and so many had so little?  The vote was nothing to an entire family — dad, mom, children, who were all stuck working eighteen hours a day for starvation wages.  It was thus not the spirit of 1789 or the spirit of ‘92 that moved them, but the spirit of 1796; and it was not the name Robespierre that got their hearts thumping, but rather Babeuf.  Babeuf had been among the very first of the socialist revolutionaries who had not stopped short at merely answering the political question, but who wanted to answer the social question as well.  And as we’ll see as we move further down the road on 1848, that the memory of Gracchus Babeuf was not simply a matter of picking some obscure hero out of the historical record: there was actually a direct line of revolutionary succession, because one of Babeuf’s fellow conspirators in the Conspiracy of Equals was an Italian revolutionary socialist named Phillipe Buonarroti [Filippo Buonarroti].  Buonarroti was in prison but later released and would then go onto a long and active career inside the revolutionary secret societies that sprang up after the Congress of Vienna, and we’re gonna talk more about the role that Buonarroti played in kindling and spreading this revolutionary socialism, but for his small cadre of disciples, the revolutions of 1848 would be a chance not to complete the work of Lafayette in 1789 or Robespierre in 1792, but the work of Babeuf in 1796.