History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

All these, and similar productions, were, however, entirely eclipsed by Mezeray's History of France; the first volume of which was published in 1643, and the last in 1651.[830] It is, perhaps, hardly fair to his predecessors, to call him the first general historian of France;[831] but there can be no doubt that his work is greatly superior to any that had yet been seen. The style of Mezeray is admirably clear and vigorous, rising, at times, to considerable eloquence. Besides this, he has two other merits much more important. These are, an indisposition to believe strange things, merely because they have hitherto been believed; and an inclination to take the side of the people, rather than that of their rulers.[832] Of these principles, the first was too common among the ablest Frenchmen of that time to excite much attention.[833] But the other principle enabled Mezeray to advance an important step before all his contemporaries. He was the first Frenchman who, in a great historical work, threw off that superstitious reverence for royalty which had long troubled the minds of his countrymen, and which, indeed, continued to haunt them for another century. As a necessary consequence, he was also the first who saw that a history, to be of real value, must be a history, not only of kings, but of nations. A steady perception of this principle led him to incorporate into his book matters which, before his time, no one cared to study. He communicates all the information he could collect respecting the taxes which the people had paid; the sufferings they had undergone from the gripping hands of their governors; their manners, their comforts, even the state of the towns which they inhabited; in a word, what affected the interests of the French people, as well as what affected the interests of the French monarchy.[834] These were the subjects which Mezeray preferred to insignificant details respecting the pomp of courts and the lives of kings. These were the large and comprehensive matters on which he loved to dwell, and on which he expatiated; not, indeed, with so much fulness as we could desire, but still with a spirit and an accuracy which entitles him to the honour of being the greatest historian France produced before the eighteenth century.

This was, in many respects, the most important change which had yet been effected in the manner of writing history. If the plan begun by Mezeray had been completed by his successors, we should possess materials, the absence of which no modern researches can possibly compensate. Some things, indeed, we should, in that case, have lost. We should know less than we now know of courts and of camps. We should have heard less of the peerless beauty of French queens, and of the dignified presence of French kings. We might even have missed some of the links of that evidence by which the genealogies of princes and nobles are ascertained, and the study of which delights the curiosity of antiquaries and heralds. But, on the other hand, we should have been able to examine the state of the French people during the latter half of the seventeenth century; while, as things now stand, our knowledge of them, in that most important period, is inferior in accuracy and in extent to the knowledge we possess of some of the most barbarous tribes of the earth.[835] If the example of Mezeray had been followed, with such additional resources as the progress of affairs would have supplied, we should not only have the means of minutely tracing the growth of a great and civilised nation, but we should have materials that would suggest or verify those original principles, the discovery of which constitutes the real use of history.

But this was not to be. Unhappily for the interests of knowledge, the march of French civilization was, at this period, suddenly checked. Soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, that lamentable change took place in France, which gave a new turn to the destinies of the nation. The reaction which the spirit of inquiry underwent, and the social and intellectual circumstances which, by bringing the Fronde to a premature close, prepared the way for Louis XIV., have been described in a former part of this volume, where I have attempted to indicate the general effects of the disastrous movement. It now remains for me to point out how this retrogressive tendency opposed obstacles to the improvement of historical literature, and prevented authors, not only from relating with honesty what was passing around them, but also from understanding events which had occurred before their time.

The most superficial students of French literature must be struck by the dearth of historians during that long period in which Louis XIV. held the reins of government.[836] To this, the personal peculiarities of the king greatly contributed. His education had been shamefully neglected; and as he never had the energy to repair its deficiencies, he all his life remained ignorant of many things with which even princes are usually familiar.[837] Of the course of past events he knew literally nothing, and he took no interest in any history except the history of his own exploits. Among a free people, this indifference on the part of the sovereign could never have produced injurious results; indeed, as we have already seen, the absence of royal patronage is, in a highly civilized country, the most favourable condition of literature. But at the accession of Louis XIV. the liberties of the French were still too young, and the habits of independent thought too recent, to enable them to bear up against that combination of the crown and the church, which was directed against them. The French, becoming every day more servile, at length sunk so low, that, by the end of the seventeenth century, they seemed to have lost even the wish of resistance. The king, meeting no opposition, endeavoured to exercise over the intellect of the country an authority equal to that with which he conducted its government.[838] In all the great questions of religion and of politics, the spirit of inquiry was stifled, and no man was allowed to express an opinion unfavourable to the existing state of things. As the king was willing to endow literature, he naturally thought that he had a right to its services. Authors, who were fed by his hand, were not to raise their voices against his policy. They received his wages, and they were bound to do the bidding of him who paid them. When Louis assumed the government, Mezeray was still living; though I need hardly say that his great work was published before this system of protection and patronage came into play. The treatment to which he, the great historian of France, was now subjected, was a specimen of the new arrangement. He received from the crown a pension of four thousand francs; but when he, in 1668, published an abridgment of his History,[839] it was intimated to him that some remarks upon the tendency of taxation were likely to cause offence in high quarters. As, however, it was soon found that Mezeray was too honest and too fearless to retract what he had written, it was determined to have recourse to intimidation, and half of his pension was taken from him.[840] But as this did not produce a proper effect, another order was issued, which deprived him of the remaining half; and thus early, in this bad reign, there was set an example of punishing a man for writing with honesty upon a subject in which, of all others, honesty is the first essential.[841]

Such conduct as this showed what historians were to expect from the government of Louis XIV. Several years later, the king took another opportunity of displaying the same spirit. Fénelon had been appointed preceptor to the grandson of Louis, whose early vices his firmness and judgment did much to repress.[842] But a single circumstance was thought sufficient to outweigh the immense service which Fénelon thus rendered to the royal family, and, if his pupil had come to the throne, would have rendered prospectively to the whole of France. His celebrated romance, Telemachus, was published in 1699, as it appears, without his consent.[843] The king suspected that, under the guise of a fiction, Fénelon intended to reflect on the conduct of government. It was in vain that the author denied so dangerous an imputation. The indignation of the king was not to be appeased. He banished Fénelon from the court; and would never again admit to his presence a man whom he suspected of even insinuating a criticism upon the measures adopted by the administration of the country.[844]

If the king could, on mere suspicion, thus treat a great writer, who had the rank of an archbishop and the reputation of a saint, it was not likely that he would deal more tenderly with inferior men. In 1681, the Abbé Primi, an Italian, then residing at Paris, was induced to write a history of Louis XIV. The king, delighted with the idea of perpetuating his own fame, conferred several rewards upon the author: and arrangements were made that the work should be composed in Italian, and immediately translated into French. But when the history appeared, there were found in it some circumstances which it was thought ought not to have been disclosed. On this account, Louis caused the book to be suppressed, the papers of the author to be seized, and the author himself to be thrown into the Bastille.[845]

Those, indeed, were dangerous times for independent men; times when no writer on politics or religion was safe, unless he followed the fashion of the day, and defended the opinions of the court and the church. The king, who had an insatiable thirst for what he called glory,[846] laboured to degrade contemporary historians into mere chroniclers of his own achievements. He ordered Racine and Boileau to write an account of his reign; he settled a pension upon them, and he promised to supply them with the necessary materials.[847] But even Racine and Boileau, poets though they were, knew that they would fail in satisfying his morbid vanity; they, therefore, received the pension, but omitted to compose the work for which the pension was conferred. So notorious was the unwillingness of able men to meddle with history, that it was thought advisable to beat up literary recruits from foreign countries. The case of the Abbé Primi has just been mentioned; he was an Italian, and only one year later a similar offer was made to an Englishman. In 1683, Burnet visited France, and was given to understand that he might receive a pension, and that he might even enjoy the honour of conversing with Louis himself, provided he would write a history of the royal affairs; such history, it was carefully added, being on the ‘side’ of the French king.[848]

Under such circumstances as these, it is no wonder that history, so far as its great essentials are concerned, should have rapidly declined during the power of Louis XIV. It became, as some think, more elegant; but it certainly became more feeble. The language in which it was composed was worked with great care, the periods neatly arranged, the epithets soft and harmonious. For that was a polite and obsequious age, full of reverence, of duty, and of admiration. In history, as it was then written, every king was a hero, and every bishop was a saint. All unpleasant truths were suppressed; nothing harsh or unkind was to be told. These docile and submissive sentiments being expressed in an easy and flowing style, gave to history that air of refinement, that gentle, unobtrusive gait, which made it popular with the classes that it flattered. But even so, while its form was polished, its life was extinct. All its independence was gone, all its honesty, all its boldness. The noblest and the most difficult department of knowledge, the study of the movements of the human race, was abandoned to every timid and creeping intellect that cared to cultivate it. There was Boulainvilliers, and Daniel, and Maimburg, and Varillas, and Vertot, and numerous others, who in the reign of Louis XIV. were believed to be historians; but whose histories have scarcely any merit, except that of enabling us to appreciate the period in which such productions were admired, and the system of which they were the representatives.

To give a complete view of the decline of historical literature in France, from the time of Mezeray until early in the eighteenth century, would require a summary of every history which was written; for all of them were pervaded by the same spirit. But, as this would occupy much too large a space, it will probably be thought sufficient if I confine myself to such illustrations as will bring the tendency of the age most clearly before the reader; and for this purpose, I will notice the works of two historians I have not yet mentioned; one of whom was celebrated as an antiquary, the other as a theologian. Both possessed considerable learning, and one was a man of undoubted genius; their works are, therefore, worth attention, as symptoms of the state of the French intellect late in the seventeenth century. The name of the antiquary was Audigier; the name of the theologian was Bossuet: and from them we may learn something respecting the way in which, during the reign of Louis XIV., it was usual to contemplate the transactions of past ages.

The celebrated work of Audigier, on the Origin of the French, was published at Paris in 1676.[849] It would be unjust to deny that the author was a man of great and careful reading. But his credulity, his prejudices, his reverence for antiquity, and his dutiful admiration for everything established by the church and the court, warped his judgment to an extent which, in our time, seems incredible; and, as there are probably few persons in England who have read his once famous book, I will give an outline of its leading views.