AUTHORITIES CONSULTED

AN immense advantage offered to the historian by the modern and popular way of writing history lies in the fact that he is able to dispense with any reference to the authorities he has consulted. Both public and critics object to notes and quotations which interrupt the flow of the narrative ; therefore notes and quotation marks have gone out of fashion. This convenient plan not only facilitates enormously the author’s task, since it enables him to write down anything that comes into his head without troubling to remember where he read it, but also provides the unscrupulous historian with unlimited scope for misrepresentation, for by pandering to this popular prejudice he is able to propound theories absolutely at variance with fact, to attribute to historical personages sentiments they never entertained, and even words they never uttered, and so to present a period in precisely the colours that best suit his purpose.

In this book, however, at the risk of giving to its pages a ponderous appearance, I have reverted to the old-fashioned system of notes, since my object is not to weave fanciful word pictures around the great scenes of the Revolution, but to tell as simply and clearly as possible what really happened. Now since the whole story of these great revolutionary days is a series of disputed points, no book on the subject is of the slightest historical value that does not give chapter and verse for every controversial statement.

Further, it is essential to indicate the political faction to which the authorities quoted belonged, and also the value of their evidence. For to condemn an individual or a party on the word of their enemies, or to absolve them on the testimony of their accomplices, is as absurd as if one were to accept evidence at a trial without inquiring into the identities of the witnesses. Criminology plays no small part in understanding the true causes of the revolutionary outbreaks, and for this purpose contemporaries alone must be consulted, and the identity of these contemporaries must be clearly defined. The following résumé will show the political standpoint of the authorities quoted most frequently throughout the course of this book, whilst the policy of those referred to on particular events will be given in the context :—http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_00.html (5 of 8)5.4.2006 10:39:25

 

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CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES (REVOLUTIONARY)

 

1. Histoire de la Révolution par Deux Amis de la Liberté, in nineteen volumes.—The first six volumes, violently revolutionary in tone and filled with grotesque fables current at the time, have been attributed to the bookseller Clavelin, and to Kerverseau, but this surmise rests on no evidence whatever (see Bibliographie de la Révolution, by Maurice Tourneux, i. 3). Montjoie stated that the work was dictated and paid for by the Duc d’Orléans ( Conjuration de d’Orléans, ii. 97), and it is no doubt strongly Orléaniste in its point of view. After the sixth volume, however, it makes a complete volte-face and becomes moderate, even Royalist in opinion, and at the same time less interesting. As an anonymous publication the history of the Deux Amis carries none of the weight that attaches to signed work, but since it was on the early part of the series that Carlyle mainly based his account of the first stages of the Revolution, and also his accusations against the Old Régime, it should be read if one would realize how flimsy was the evidence that Carlyle blindly accepted as the truth.

2. The Moniteur, a journal edited by Panckoucke, first made its appearance on November 24, 1789. The numbers relating to events anterior to this date were written up afterwards, and the accounts of the great revolutionary tumults in July 1789 are copied verbatim from the Deux Amis. Its policy throughout the Revolution is always that of the dominating party—at first Orléaniste, then Girondiste, and finally Montagnard.

3. Prudhomme.—The paper known as Révolutions de Paris, published weekly throughout the whole course of the Revolution by this indefatigable journalist, is the most genuinely democratic record of the period, since it attaches itself to no political party, but identifies itself with the revolutionary element amongst the people and supports the demagogues only as representative of the popular cause. Later on, however, Prudhomme realized that he had been duped by these men, and in his Histoire impartiale des Crimes et des Erreurs de la Révolution Française, published in 1797, completely gave away his former associates and showed up the intrigues of the Revolution more thoroughly than any Royalist has done. The former work— Les Révolutions de Paris—is freely quoted by revolutionary writers ; on the second— Crimes de la Révolution—they are strangely silent.

4. The Histoire Parlementaire, by Buchez et Roux, contains reports of the debates that took place in the Assembly (mainly abbreviated from the Moniteur), and also in the Jacobin Club, besides reprints of various contemporary pamphlets, etc. But the opinion of the authors, strongly biassed in favour of the revolutionary leaders rather than of the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_00.html (6 of 8)5.4.2006 10:39:25

 

Nesta Webster, The French Revolution

people, should be accepted with caution.

 

CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES (ROYALIST)

 

1. Montjoie.—Félix Christophe Louis Ventre de la Touloubre (1756-1816), known as Galart de Montjoie (or Montjoye), was the author of an Histoire de la Révolution de France et de l’Assemblée Nationale which appeared in the Royalist journal L’Ami du Roi, of a history of the Orléaniste conspiracy, Histoire de la Conjuration de Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans (1796), and of an inferior work, L’Histoire de la Conjuration de Maximilien Robespierre. Montjoie as an eyewitness of the earlier revolutionary tumults is extremely interesting, but owing to his violent animosity towards the Orléanistes his accusations against them should not be accepted unless confirmed by other contemporary evidence. In most instances, however, this is forthcoming. Both by Taine and by Jules Flammermont, a strongly revolutionary writer, Montjoie is regarded as an important authority on the period.[3]

2. Beaulieu.—Claude François Beaulieu (1754-1827) edited several papers during the Revolution, and, according to Dauban, was the author of the Diurnal, of which Dauban reprinted a large part in La Demagogie à Paris en 1793. But this is not conclusively proved. In 1803 Beaulieu published his history of the French Revolution in six volumes, entitled Essais historiques sur les Causes et les Effets de la Révolution de France. This is undoubtedly the best contemporary work on the subject, and is quoted by historians of every party. Although a Royalist, Beaulieu displays the greatest impartiality ; he advances nothing without proof. Personally acquainted with most of the leading Revolutionaries, he speaks of what he himself saw and heard, and never allows himself, like Montjoie, to be carried away by his feelings. Beaulieu was arrested on the 29th of October 1793, and imprisoned first at the Conciergerie, then at the Luxembourg, from which he was released after the fall of Robespierre. Between 1813 and 1827 he collaborated with Michaud in compiling the great Biographie Universelle, for which he wrote articles on several of the Revolutionaries he had known.

3. Ferrières.—The Mémoires of the Marquis de Ferrières, though more frequently quoted by English writers than the Essais de Beaulieu, are of far less original value, as they are largely composed of quotations from the writings of other contemporaries.

Ferrières was a disaffected noble, and, although a Royalist, does not err on the side of over-indulgence for the Court, but as an ardent anti-Orléaniste throws an interesting light on the intrigue at work behind the earlier revolutionary movement.

 

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The above are the authorities mainly consulted for the purpose of this book ; the evidence of historians is only quoted in the case of those who had access to the archives of France or other contemporary documents not to be found in this country. In this respect Taine, Granier de Cassagnac, Mortimer Ternaux, Edmond Bire, Gustave Bord, Chassin, Dauban, Wallon, Campardon, and Adolphe Schmidt are particularly valuable.

The opinion of M. Louis Madelin is also occasionally referred to as being founded on the most recent researches, and as representing the last word in modern French thought on the vexed questions of the Revolution.

 

1 No English writer was better acquainted with the dessous des caries of the French Revolution than John Wilson Croker. Born in 1780, he talked with people who had taken part in the movement, and spent many years in forming and studying the magnificent collections of revolutionary pamphlets that he afterwards sold to the British Museum.

In 1816 the publisher, John Murray, offered him the sum of 2500 guineas to write the complete history of the Revolution, but Croker never found time to do this, and his Essays, reprinted from the Quarterly Review, are all that he has left us of his stores of knowledge. These, though too controversial to appeal to the general public, throw more light on the hidden causes of the revolutionary movement than any book in the English language.

2 Lord Acton in his Essays on the French Revolution apparently caught a stray glimmer of this truth when he wrote these words : “ The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organization. The managers remain studiously concealed and masked ; but there is no doubt about their presence from the first. They had been active in the riots of Paris, and they were again active in the provincial risings.” Having delivered himself, however, of this profound reflection, Lord Acton seems to have lost it from sight, for he proceeds to describe all the tumults of the Revolution without any further reference to organization or design—his chief concern being to absolve all the leaders from complicity.

3 “ Montjoie is a party man, but he dates and specifies, and his evidence, when elsewhere confirmed, deserves to be admitted ” (Taine, La Révolution, iii. 37). M. Flammermont draws an interesting comparison between Montjoie and the Deux Amis de la Liberté, pointing out that the latter is in reality a patchwork of current rumours, the authors “have no settled system, they have not criticized each of the sources of which they have made use ; on every point they content themselves with choosing the version which seems to them most likely, thereby arriving at the strangest contradictions… . En résumé, this considerable work has no original value, at any rate for the narrative of the 14th of July. In Galart de Montjoye we meet at last a man who has the courage of his opinions, and who signs his work, which was not without danger at the period when he published it. Indeed, he loudly proclaims he is a Royalist, and takes up his stand as a declared adversary of the Revolution, but at the same time he is nearly always moderate in his language, and he takes pains to support his opinions and his judgements by the most authoritative testimony ” ( La Journée du 14 Juillet, p. cxxxvii). See also the opinion of the English contemporary, John Adolphus, Biographical Memoirs of the French Revolution, ii. 205.

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Nesta Webster, The French Revolution

The French Revolution

Nesta Webster