Lectures on the French Revolution

by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

After much partial and contentious writing, sagacious men attained a reasonable judgment on the good and evil, the truth and error, of the Revolution. The view established by constitutional royalists, like Duvergier de Hauranne, and by men equidistant from royalist or republican exclusiveness, such as Tocqueville and Laboulaye, was very largely shared by intelligent democrats, more particularly by Lanfrey, and by Quinet in his two volumes on the genius of the Revolution. At that time, under the Second Empire, there was nothing that could be called an adequate history. The archives were practically unexplored, and men had no idea of the amount of labour serious exploration implies. The first writer who produced original matter from the papers of the Paris Commune was Mortimer Ternaux, whose eight volumes on the Reign of Terror came out between 1862 and 1880. What he revealed was so decisive that it obliged Sybel to rewrite what he had written on the scenes of September.

When I describe the real study of the Revolution as beginning with Tocqueville and Ternaux, I mean the study of it in the genuine and official sources. Memoirs, of course, abounded. There are more than a hundred. But memoirs do not supply the certainty of history. Certainty comes with the means of control, and there is no controlling or testing memoirs without the contemporary document. Down to the middle of the century, private letters and official documents were rare. Then, in the early summer of 1851, two important collections appeared within a few weeks of each other.

First came the Memoirs of Mallet du Pan, a liberal, independent, and discerning observer, whom, apart from the gift of style, Taine compares to Burke, and who, like Burke, went over to the other side.

This was followed by Mirabeau's Secret Correspondence with the Court. His prevarication and double-dealing as a popular leader in the pay of the king had long been known. At least twenty persons were in the secret. One man, leaving Paris hurriedly, left one paper, the most important of all, lying about in his room. Unmistakable allusions were found among the contents of the Iron Chest. One of the ministers told the story in his Memoirs, and a letter belonging to the series was printed in 1827. La Marck, just before his death, showed the papers to Montigny, who gave an account of them in his work on Mirabeau, and Droz moreover knew the main facts from Malouet when he wrote in 1842. For us the interest of the publication lies not in the exposure of what was already known, but in the details of his tortuous and ingenious policy during his last year of life, and of his schemes to save the king and the constitution. For the revolutionary party, the posthumous avowal of so much treachery was like the story of the monk who, dying with the fame of a saint, rose under the shroud during the funeral service, and confessed before his brethren that he had lived and died an unrepentant hypocrite.

Still, no private papers could make up for the silence of the public archives; and the true secrets of government, diplomacy and war, remained almost intact until 1865. The manner in which they came to be exhumed is the most curious transaction in the progress of revolutionary history. It was a consequence of the passion for autographs and the collector's craze. Seventy thousand autographs were sold by auction in Paris in the twenty-eight years from 1822 to 1850. From the days of the Restoration no letters were more eagerly sought and prized than those of the queen. Royalist society regarded her as an august, heroic, and innocent victim, and attributed the ruin of the monarchy to the neglect of her high-minded counsels. It became a lucrative occupation to steal letters that bore her signature, in order to sell them to wealthy purchasers. Prices rose steadily. A letter of the year 1784, which fetched fifty-two francs in 1850, was sold for one hundred and seven in 1857, and for one hundred and fifty in 1861. In 1844 one was bought for two hundred francs, and another for three hundred and thirty. A letter to the Princess de Lamballe, which fetched seven hundred francs in 1860, went up to seven hundred and sixty in 1865, when suspicion was beginning to stir. In all, forty-one letters from the queen to Mme. de Lamballe have been in the market, and not one of them was genuine. When it became worth while to steal, it was still more profitable to forge, for then there was no limit to the supply.

In her lifetime the queen was aware that hostile émigrés imitated her hand. Three such letters were published in 1801 in a worthless book called Madame de Lamballe's Memoirs. Such forgeries came into the market from the year 1822. The art was carried to the point that it defied detection, and the credulity of the public was insatiable. In Germany a man imitated Schiller's writing so perfectly that Schiller's daughter bought his letters as fast as they could be produced. At Paris the nefarious trade became active about 1839.

On March 15, 1861, a facsimilist, Betbeder, issued a challenge, undertaking to execute autographs that it would be impossible to detect, by paper, ink, handwriting, or text. The trial came off in the presence of experts, and in April 1864 they pronounced that his imitations could not be distinguished from originals. In those days there was a famous mathematician whose name was Chasles. He was interested in the history of geometry, and also in the glory of France, and a clever genealogist saw his opportunity. He produced letters from which it appeared that some of Newton's discoveries had been anticipated by Frenchmen who had been robbed of their due fame. M. Chasles bought them, with a patriotic disregard for money; and he continued to buy, from time to time, all that the impostor, Vrain Lucas, offered him. He laid his documents before the Institute, and the Institute declared them genuine. There were autograph letters from Alexander to Aristotle, from Cæsar to Vercingetorix, from Lazarus to St. Peter, from Mary Magdalen to Lazarus. The fabricator's imagination ran riot, and he produced a fragment in the handwriting of Pythagoras, showing that Pythagoras wrote in bad French. At last other learned men, who did not love Chasles, tried to make him understand that he had been befooled. When the iniquity came to light, and the culprit was sent to prison, he had flourished for seven years, had made several thousand pounds, and had found a market for 27,000 unblushing forgeries.

About the time when this mysterious manufacture was thriving, Count Hunolstein bought one hundred and forty-eight letters from Marie Antoinette, of a Paris dealer, for £3400, and he published them in June 1864. Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugénie, whose policy it was to conciliate legitimists whom the Italian Revolution offended, exhibited a cultivated interest in the memory of the unhappy queen; and it happened that a high official of their Court, M. Feuillet de Conches, was zealous in the same cause. He began his purchases as early as 1830, and had obtained much from the Thermidorean, Courtois, who had had Robespierre's papers in his hands. Wachsmuth, who went to Paris in 1840 to prepare his historical work, reported in German reviews on the value of Feuillet's collection; and in 1843 he was described as the first of French autographophiles—the term is not of my coining. It was known that he meditated a publication on the royal family. He travelled all over Europe, and was admitted to make transcripts and facsimiles in many places that were jealously guarded against intruders. His first volume appeared two months later than Hunolstein's, and his second in September. During that summer and autumn royalism was the fashion, and enjoyed a season of triumph. Twenty-four letters were common to both collections; and as they did not literally agree, troublesome people began to ask questions.

The one man able to answer them was Arneth, then deputy keeper of the archives at Vienna, who was employed laying down the great history of Maria Theresa that has made him famous. For the letters written by Marie Antoinette to her mother and her family had been religiously preserved, and were in his custody. Before the end of the year Arneth produced the very words of the letters, as the Empress received them; and then it was discovered that they were quite different from those which had been printed at Paris.

An angry controversy ensued, and in the end it became certain that most of Hunolstein's edition, and part of Feuillet's, was fabricated by an impostor. It was whispered that the supposed originals sold by Charavay, the dealer, to Hunolstein came to him from Feuillet de Conches. Sainte Beuve, who had been taken in at first, and had applauded, thereupon indignantly broke off his acquaintance, and published the letter in which he did it. Feuillet became more wary. His four later volumes are filled with matter of the utmost value; and his large collection of the illegible autographs of Napoleon were sold for £1250 and are now at The Durdans.