Part 16

At the beginning of the reign the genius of Colbert, the restorer of the national finances, was largely employed on the extension of commerce, then almost entirely in the hands of the Dutch and English. Not only a navy, but a mercantile marine was created; the West India and East India companies were both established in 1664. Almost every year of Colbert's ministry was marked by the establishment of a new industry.

Paris was lighted and paved and policed, almost rebuilt. Louis had a marked taste for architecture, for gardens, and for sculpture. The law owed many reforms to this monarch. The army was reorganised; merit, not rank, became the ground of promotion: the bayonet replaced the pike, and the artillery was greatly developed. When Louis began to rule there was no navy. Arsenals were created, sailors were trained, and a fleet came into being which matched those of Holland and England.

Even a brief summary shows the vast changes in the state accomplished by Louis. His ministers seconded his efforts admirably. Theirs is the credit for the details, for the execution; but the scheme, the general principles, were due to him. The magistrates would not have reformed the laws, order would not have been restored in the finances, discipline in the army, police throughout the kingdom; there would have been no fleets, no encouragement of the arts; none of all those improvements carried out systematically, simultaneously, resolutely, under various ministers, had there not been a master, greater than them all, imbued with the general conceptions and determined on their fulfilment.

The spirit of commonsense, the spirit of criticism, gradually progressing, insensibly destroyed much superstition; insomuch that simple charges of sorcery were excluded from the courts in 1672. Such a measure would have been impossible under Henry IV. or Louis XIII. Nevertheless, such superstitions were deeply rooted. Everyone believed in astrology; the comet of 1680 was regarded as a portent.

In science France was, indeed, outstripped by England and Florence. But in eloquence, poetry, literature, and philosophy the French were the legislators of Europe. One of the works which most contributed to. forming the national taste was the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld. But the work of genius which in itself summed up the perfections of prose and set the mould of language was Pascal's "Lettres Provinciales." The age was characterised by the eloquence of Bossuet. The "Télémaque" of Fénelon, the "Caractères" of La Bruyère, were works of an order entirely original and without precedent.

Racine, less original than Corneille, owes a still increasing reputation to his unfailing elegance, correctness, and truth; he carried the tender harmonies of poetry and the graces of language to their highest possible perfection. These men taught the nation to think, to feel, and to express itself. It was a curious stroke of destiny that made Molière the contemporary of Corneille and Racine. Of him I will venture to say that he was the legislator of life's amenities; of his other merits it is needless to speak.

The other arts--of music, painting, sculpture and architecture--had made little progress in France before this period. Lulli introduced an order of music hitherto unknown. Poussin was our first great painter in the reign of Louis XIII.; he has had no lack of successors. French sculpture has excelled in particular. And we must remark on the extraordinary advance of England during this period. We can exhaust ourselves in criticising Milton, but not in praising him. Dryden was equalled by no contemporary, surpassed by no predecessor. Addison's "Cato" is the one English tragedy of sustained beauty. Swift is a perfected Rabelais. In science, Newton and Halley stand to-day supreme; and Locke is infinitely the superior of Plato.

VI.--Religion Under Louis XIV.

To preserve at once union with the see of Rome and maintain the liberties of the Gallican Church--her ancient rights; to make the bishops obedient as subjects without infringing on their rights as bishops; to make them contribute to the needs of the state, without trespassing on their privileges, required a mixture of dexterity which Louis almost always showed. The one serious and protracted quarrel with Rome arose over the royal claim to appoint bishops, and the papal refusal to recognise the appointments. The French Assembly of the Clergy supported the king; but the famous Four Resolutions of that body were ultimately repudiated by the bishops personally, with the king's consent.

Dogmatism is responsible for introducing among men the horror of wars of religion. Following the Reformation, Calvinism was largely identified with republican principles. In France, the fierce struggles of Catholics and Huguenots were stayed by the accession of Henry IV.; the Edict of Nantes secured to the former the privileges which their swords had practically won. But after his time they formed an organisation which led to further contests, ended by Richelieu.

Favoured by Colbert, to Louis the Huguenots were suspect as rebels who had with difficulty been forced to submission. By him they were subjected to constantly increasing disabilities. At last the Huguenots disobeyed the edicts against them. Still harsher measures were adopted; and the climax came in 1685 with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, following on the "dragonnades" in Alsace. Protestantism was proscribed. The effect was not the forcible conversion of the Calvinists. but their wholesale emigration; the transfer to foreign states of an admirable industrial and military population. Later, the people of the Cévennes rose, and were put down with great difficulty, though Jean Cavalier was their sole leader worthy the name. In fact, the struggle was really ended by a treaty, and Cavalier died a general of France.

Calvinism is the parent of civil wars. It shakes the foundations of states. Jansenism can excite only theological quarrels and wars of the pen. The Reformation attacked the power of the Church; Jansenism was concerned exclusively with abstract questions. The Jansenist disputes sprang from problems of grace and predestination, fate and free-will--that labyrinth in which man holds no clue.

A hundred years later Cornells Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, revived these questions. Arnauld supported him. The views had authority from Augustine and Chrysostom, but Arnauld was condemned. The two establishments of Port Royal refused to sign the formularies condemning Jansen's book, and they had on their side the brilliant pen of Pascal. On the other were the Jesuits. Pascal, in the "Lettres Provinciales," made the Jesuits ridiculous with his incomparable wit. The Jansenists were persecuted, but the persecution strengthened them. But full of absurdities as the whole controversy was to an intelligent observer, the crown, the bishops, and the Jesuits were too strong for the Jansenists, especially when Le Tellier became the king's confessor. But the affair was not finally brought to a conclusion, and the opposing parties reconciled, till after the death of Louis. Ultimately, Jansenism became merely ridiculous. The fall of the Jesuits was to follow in due time.

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DE TOCQUEVILLE

The Old Régime

Born at Paris on July 29, 1805, Alexis Henri Charles Clérel de Tocqueville came of an old Norman family which had distinguished itself both in law and in arms. Educated for the Bar, he proceeded to America in 1831 to study the penitentiary system. Four years later he published "De la Démocratie en Amérique" (see Miscellaneous Literature), a work which created an enormous sensation throughout Europe. De Tocqueville came to England, where he married a Miss Mottley. He became a member of the French Academy; was appointed to the Chamber of Deputies, took an important part in public life, and in 1849 became vice-president of the Assembly, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. His next work, "L'Ancien Régime" ("The Old Régime"), translated under the title "On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789; and on the Causes which Led to that Event," appeared in 1856. It is of the highest importance, because it was the starting point of the true conception of the Revolution. In it was first shown that the centralisation of modern France was not the product of the Revolution, but of the old monarchy, that the irritation against the nobility was due, not to their power, but to their lack of power, and that the movement was effected by masses already in possession of property. De Tocqueville died at Cannes on April 16, 1859.

I.---The Last Days of Feudal Institutions

The French people made, in 1789, the greatest effort which was ever attempted by any nation to cut, so to speak, their destiny in halves, and to separate by an abyss that which they had heretofore been from that which they sought to become hereafter.

The municipal institutions, which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had raised the chief towns of Germany into rich and enlightened small republics, still existed in the eighteenth; but they were a mere semblance of the past.

All the powers of the Middle Ages which were still in existence seemed to be affected by the same disease; all showed symptoms of the same languor and decay.

Wherever the provincial assemblies had maintained their ancient constitution unchanged, they checked instead of furthering the progress of civilisation.

Royalty no longer had anything in common with the royalty of the Middle Ages; it enjoyed other prerogatives, occupied a different place, was imbued with a different spirit, and inspired different sentiments; the administration of the state spread in all directions upon the ruin of local authorities; the organised array of public officers superseded more and more the government of the nobles.

This view of the state of things, which prevailed throughout Europe as well as within the boundaries of France, is essential to the comprehension of what is about to follow, for no one who has seen and studied France only can ever, I affirm, understand anything of the French Revolution.

What was the real object of the revolution? What was its peculiar character? For what precise reason was it made, and what did it effect? The revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was essentially a social and political revolution; and within the circle of social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate and give stability to disorder, or--as one of its chief adversaries has said--to methodise anarchy.

However radical the revolution may have been, its innovations were, in fact, much less than have been commonly supposed, as I shall show hereafter. What may truly be said is that it entirely destroyed, or is still destroying--for it is not at an end--every part of the ancient state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal institutions.

But why, we may ask, did this revolution, which was imminent throughout Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere? And why did it display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or, at least, have appeared only in part?

One circumstance excites at first sight surprise. The revolution, whose peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish the remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break out in the countries in which these institutions, still in better preservation, caused the people most to feel their constraint and their rigour, but, on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were least felt; so that the burden seemed most intolerable where it was in reality least heavy.