This accounts for much in the 'Romans' which, to the English reader, is wearying; they appeal to what he does not possess, a knowledge of the state of parties from '89 downwards. Every one, however, must appreciate the way in which the rise of Napoleon is shown to have been due to the corruption, the gross corruption, as well as imbecility of the Directory. No wonder Bonaparte despised mankind, when such poor specimens—vain, self-seeking, blindly conceited—were presented to him as the pick of republican France. Thus politics, as well as national character and habits (the habits, be it remembered, of that Alsace which is now to become the Ireland of Germany), are abundantly illustrated in these novels. We do not mean to analyse any of them, or to give samples which would be about as satisfactory as a single stone picked out of a Greek temple. The most touching of them is 'Madame Thérèse,' which, showing as it does how heartily the Germans on the frontier sympathized with the ideas of which Hoche was the expounder, bears on the question, 'How will the annexed districts get on under Junker rule?' Quiet Dr. Jacob, the hero of the story, is already so smitten with revolutionary ideas, that when he hears them commented on by the wounded vivandière whose life he has saved, he forgets that she is only the daughter of a village schoolmaster who had volunteered and had fallen, with his three sons, at Valmy, and, marrying her, joins Hoche as army surgeon. Men of this stamp are found on both sides of the Rhine; and to force Junkerism upon them would provoke a speedy break-up of the German empire. German optimists say that this danger is imaginary: acknowledging the disagreeable features in the Prussian character, they say that 'Germany will open Prussia out.' If not, trouble must ensue.
The 'Blocus' is, perhaps, the most picturesque of the whole series. The old Jew who, despite his timidity and his hatred of war, gradually becomes an effective national guard, is admirably drawn; the details of the siege, the misery, the excitement, are told so differently from the half flippant, half bombastic manner of even the best of 'our own correspondents.' The old soldier who, churl as he is supposed to be, meets the Jew's kindness with still greater kindness, and who, long refusing to believe in the Emperor's abdication, shoots himself when the truth is forced upon him, is a finished picture of which any artist might be proud. And the town thus immortalised is Phalsbourg, which henceforth is to be German. But we hope our readers will go to the books themselves: their appearance marks an era in novel-writing; it has done much more, for they are all novels with a purpose, and have been very powerful in pulling down the Napoleonic idol, in hastening the decay of the imperial idea.
The idol is overthrown; what will be reared in its place is doubtful. Political wisdom is not to be learned in six months, no matter how sternly its lessons may be enforced. The France which accepted Louis Napoleon, which gloried in the absurd boast, 'When France is satisfied the world is at rest,' which suffered itself to be kept in leading-strings for twenty years, giving full control over its wealth, its resources, its foreign and domestic policy, to an unscrupulous adventurer and his stock-jobbing associates, is not likely to rise at once to the dignity of a free people. 'Unstable as water' has hitherto been the curse of France's efforts at free government. The mission she has chosen has been to teach ideas to others, not to work them practically out for herself. When we read in old files of the approving Times of the revels at Compiègne, the luxury, the extravagance, we are reminded of the answer made to the first Napoleon, when he asked, 'Have I not got back the old system in toto?' 'Yes, but you forget that two million Frenchmen died to root out that old system; and you can't bring them to life again.'
Why is France, as a whole, sick of 'ideas?' Why, although they could dance round the statue of Strasburg when they ought to have been making peace and husbanding their strength for by-and-by, were the besieged Parisians incapable of any serious effort? Why was Trochu paralysed by the fear of Blanqui? Why should Bourbaki's wretched army have behaved so differently from that of Hoche, which was equally shoeless, and almost as much in want of everything, and which its enthusiastic leader kept at fighting point by allowing no tents during the bitterest winter that had been known for years? Man for man, Germans have always been superior to the French; to succeed, these last must move in masses welded together by one overmastering idea. They had no idea, no union, last year. Will this terrible lesson give them that unity of sentiment which Germany, since 1808, has been gradually feeling after, and has only just attained? Let us hope that sad experience may, at any rate, teach them the insufficiency of the very grandest of all merely human ideals. The noble thoughts of the 'Marseillaise'—
'Nous entrerons dans la carrière quand nous aînés ne seront plus,
Nous y trouverons leur poussière et la trace de leur vertus,'
led to the brutal Carmagnole and the sickening excesses of the Terror, because, though noble, they were not sanctified. The sickness that comes from aiming at too much brought on a reaction which has lasted ever since; and the fact that Romanism is the hereditary religion of the French masses increases the difficulty of hearty national union. No earnest political reformer can ever look on the priests as more than temporary allies; no ultramontane can ever be an honest Republican.
What may come if Rome changes in the direction indicated by the Abbé (so he styled himself) and now lately by Père Hyacinthe, we cannot say; anyhow, such changes must be slow. At present the French priesthood must be reckoned among the bitter opponents of all free constitutional development.
The next few months will better enable us to determine whether Paris will still hold its own against France, or whether M. Leclercq's hope will be realized.[218] We may be quite sure that thousands of Frenchmen feel what he so well expresses—that it is Paris which made Louis Napoleon possible, even as it was Paris which enabled his uncle to be what he was. They both, indeed, used 'France' against Paris; but it was Paris which gave them a status at the outset. Those who think thus will feel that in the changed character of the capital is the best safeguard for the good government as well as for the moral regeneration of France; and if this change of character seems hopeless, the dangerous experiment must be tried of moving the Legislature out of such an unhealthy atmosphere.
We have thus striven to trace the growth and decay of Imperialism—which in its re-establishment was the practical expression of the Napoleonic idea—and to contrast it indirectly with the old régime, and with the sad delusion which, beginning so nobly in 1789, too soon ended in perhaps the bloodiest tyranny that modern Europe has ever seen. We decline to draw any horoscope of the future; such prophesying is always useless. Let us hope that God, who 'fulfils Himself in many ways,' will comfort the faith which this cruel satire on modern progress has so rudely shaken, by showing plainly that good has come out of all the evil. We cannot hope that nations will yet recognise the truth that war is organised crime; but we may hope that for a long time imperialism, based, as we have shown it to be, on lawlessness and on the glorification of the individual, will be impossible.