To What Extent Did The Heritage Of The French Revolution, For Nineteenth-century Nationalists, Revolve Around The Creation Of Two Frances?

During the Insurrections of the 31^st May to the 2^nd June 1793, Robespierre noted that there must be one will this will must be either republican or royalist [1]. It would appear that from the outset of the French Revolution, two Frances had developed: one that identified with the Revolution and another that opposed it. This was being reiterated at the end of nineteenth century, where Georges Clemenceau, leader of the Radical Party in the Third Republic, stated in 1891 that it is always the same men struggling with the same enemies . Similarly, this sentiment was expressed by the Bishop of Amiens in 1895: There are two Frances, and theirs is the bad one [2]. However, this was not necessarily uniform across the period. Whilst the idea of two Frances did become more apparent towards the end of the nineteenth century, there was also a theme of presenting France as one and indivisible.

Before examining this properly, it is first necessary to define certain terms. When discussing who the nineteenth-century nationalists were, it is revealing to examine the origins of nation in France. Abb Siey s first popularised the French notion of nation by placing sovereignty within the people or nation instead of the nobility and clergy. For the purpose of this essay, these will be enemies of the Revolution and the criteria to be analysed. It is also important to differentiate how heritage manifested itself. Robert Gildea has argued for the importance of how the French remembered their past, which places emphasis on the intangible cultural heritage of the French Revolution. Robert Tombs has been right to also emphasise the underlying political heritage of the French Revolution in creating two Frances . These two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and assist in elucidating each other. When discussing the French Revolution, it should not necessarily be treated as one single event. Francois Furet has argued that the French Revolution was a series of revolutions, which has great explanatory value. These series of revolutions meant that there were multiple heritages of the French Revolution, which different nationalists could subsequently identify with.

With these series of revolutions as the bedrock, this essay will argue that the creation of two Frances was the legacy of a specific heritage of the French Revolution that became increasingly explicit by the end of the nineteenth century. However, other invocations of the nation were to present France as one and indivisible.

This concept of the two Frances is most explicitly expressed when analysing the role of war against the Revolution s enemies, which makes a logical starting point. This is particularly apparent when considering war in the traditional sense against its foreign enemies. Jacques-Louis David s Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801) depicts Napoleon as a magnificent figure, where his outstretched hand gestures the inevitability of the French victory against the Revolution s enemies. This is enhanced by the inscri ptions on stones, where the name Bonaparte being above Hannibal placed Napoleon within the long legacy of other conquerors. The imagery of war was also utilised against France s internal enemies. Eug ne Delacroix s Liberty Leading the People (1830) depicts an idealised female representing Liberty holding the tricolour flag and wearing a Phrygian cap that symbolised liberty during the first French Revolution. The people that she is leading are from a mixture of social classes, as indicated by the bourgeois man wearing a top hat and the urban worker. They are unified through the nation against the Bourbon monarch. In reality, the July Revolution of 1830 just saw the transition from one monarch to another, but Delacroix emphasised the role of French people and saw the July Revolution as a legacy from the French Revolution. This use of war against France s internal enemies became increasingly apparent by the end of the century through the development of an anti-republican tradition. Charles Maurras captured this when he differentiated between legal France and real France . The institutions of the Republic had removed the essential elements of French society. One interpretation of what this real France consisted of was paramilitary organisations saw the army as the source of virtue. One example being those that saw the French Revolution was the adulation of the soldiers of the Year II that were successors to the amcien regime. These three examples demonstrate that throughout the nineteenth century, war was intertwined with the legacy of the French Revolution and utilised by both of the two Frances , which split people between the Revolution and its enemies. However, another discourse existed that attempted to interlink the Revolution and monarchy to create a single France.

In a circular letter to French diplomats in 1848, Alphonse de Lamartine, minister for foreign affairs, stated that the Republic was for peace, as war was not a principle of the French Republic [3]. Alponse de Lamartine is an interesting example of an individual that attempted to reconcile monarchy with the revolution. However, there are earlier examples of this project. Adolphe Thiers, a young journalist and historian, saw the Revolution and monarchy as being indispensable to the other . In 1829, he established Le National as a liberal platform and campaigned for Louis-Philippe to gain the crown in July 1830. Thiers believed that Louis-Philippe represented the reconciliation of monarchy and Revolution [4]. However, this sentiment is most clearly expressed by Lamartine in his History of the Girondists. Lamartine believed that that there would be an inevitable revolution, but the History of the Girondists was meant to give the people a moral lesson to conduct themselves during the revolution. He detailed how the Jacobins attempted to wrest power from the Girondists in order to execute the king. Whilst the Girondists believed that the monarchy should end, they resisted the spiralling nature of the French Revolution. This was disputed by people like Robespierre: Let Louis perish that the country may live! [5]. This was published just before the nationalist revolutions that swept Europe in 1848 and sought to inherit the tradition of the Girondists to allow for peaceful Revolution that would not harm the monarchy. The next question must be whether this tradition continued into the end of the nineteenth century.

Although historians like Robert Tombs have argued that the development of two Frances only became apparent by the end of the nineteenth century, a similar sentiment that Lamartine had tried to capture was expressed by Ernest Renan at the end of the century. Renan s What is a Nation? in 1886 attempted to portray France as a single entity. According to Renan, nations were bound by a spiritual principle that was constituted by the past and the present. The former is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories , whereas the latter is the desire to live together [6]. Whilst this could be interpreted as just constituting the revolutionary spirit, it becomes clear that this spiritual principle could also incorporate the monarchy by placing What is a Nation? within the rest of Renan s oeuvre. In 1869, he defended constitutional monarchy in his article Constitutional Monarchy in France . In this, he outlined the primacy of the French Revolution within French society, where it was the starting-point of any systematic consideration of the affairs of our own times [7]. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, he became increasingly authoritarian, but still reluctantly accepted the Third Republic. Therefore, Renan s spiritual principle had its legacy within the French Revolution, but similar to Lamartine, had tried to reconcile the monarchy and the Revolution to present a single projection of France. With this established, it is now necessary to contemplate how religion became an opposing force to the Revolution.

As previously mentioned, Robert Tombs has placed emphasis on the underlying political developments that led to development of two Frances . This is particularly apparent, as the political heritage of the French Revolution led to a state that attempted to centralise, where Catholicism became its main enemy. Prior to the 1870s, the religious dimension was particularly contentious for creating two Frances , as they wrestled for control of the educational system. With education, there had been a belief amongst revolutionaries that education should be secular and often anti-religious. Thiers stated in 1849 that the State must strike youth in its own effigy and prevent young Frenchmen [from being taught] to hate the government of their country [8], which represented up until this point the Universit monopoly over education. After the 1848 revolution, Catholics won the right to freedom of education . The creation of a mass electorate in 1848 changed the scene. When the Conservatives won control of parliament in 1849, the introduced the Loi Falloux on 15^th March 1850. Local authorities could hand their primary schools over to the Church, where the costs would be paid by the State. However, after 1870, the Republic wanted to undermine the Church as the underlying moral force in society. Ferdinand Buisson stated that this should be a secular religion of moral idealism, without dogmas, without miracles, without priests [9]. This led to an attack on the Church, where civil funerals became a symbol to reject religion. The Pantheon was taken from the Church to enshrine its secular heroes. There was a significant backlash from the Vend e counter-revolutionaries due to this. During the French Revolution, a Catholic and Royalist Army emerged in the Vend e as a counter-revolutionary force, where thousands had been massacred by the republican forces. The myth of the Vend e had motivated action in 1815 and 1832, but mainly during the revolutions of 1870-1. The aforementioned centralising political processes stimulated the collective memory of Vend e, where the attack on Church schools by the Third Republic was compared to the persecution of the Church during the Revolution. In response, a state of Henri de la Rochejacquelein (youngest general of the Vend an insurrection) was put up in 1895 by three bishops and three hundred priest. During this centralising process, there were also attempts to reconcile religion into the legacy of the Revolution.

There were efforts to integrate Catholicism into the revolutionary spirit. Alphonse de Lamartine tried reconcile these two apparently opposing forces into one single France by trying to discredit the Jacobin legacy of the French Revolution. Lamartine argued that Paris and the departments had presented the spectacle of saturnalia of liberty , where the intoxication of the masses led to hideous excesses against the temples . Most Jacobins intoxicated themselves with these theories of atheism . The leaders of the commune, like H bert, encouraged being against worship and a couple of months, the material of the Catholic Church disappeared over a couple of months[10]. This sentiment was welcomed by certain sections of the clergy in France at this time. In a circular letter to the clergy of his diocese on 27^th February 1848, Cardinal de Bonald, a staunch defender of ultamontanism, encouraged the clergy to give a lead to the faithful in obedience and submission to the Republic , as the liberty that the clergy used to long for will now be yours [11]. Ernest Renan, who was also deeply religious, attempted to Catholicism within the revolutionary framework. He argued that religion cannot form the basis of a modern nationality. In earlier times, religion was a state religion. However, masses no longer believe in a perfectly uniform manner , where a state religion no longer exists, as in one can be French and be Protestant. To Renan then, religion has been individualised, where various religions could exist under one state[12]. These examples demonstrate that whilst the political heritage of the French Revolution did create division between revolutionaries and religion to form a specific two Frances , other nationalists did utilise the heritage of the French Revolution in order to integrate the two.

These points have demonstrated that the heritage of the French Revolution was multifarious, where nationalists pitted themselves against each other to present their own interpretation as correct. Therefore, whilst one heritage of the French Revolution did follow the Jacobin tradition of defining the Revolution against its enemies, there was also a distinctive heritage that attempted to integrate the Revolution s perceived enemies into its collective framework. Despite Francois Furet s insistence on France trying to remove itself purely from the tradition of the French Revolution, its legacy continued to define the political climate of the twentieth century and continues to define France.

[1] Lamartine, A. (1847) History of the Girondists, Vol. III, p. 293

[2] Tombs, R. (1996) France, 1814-1914, p. 145

[3] Price, R. (1975) 1848 in France, p. 70

[4] Gildea, R. (1994) The past in French history, pp. 32-34

[5] Lamartine, A. (1847) History of the Girondists, Vol. III, p. 301

[6] Renan, E. (1996) What is a nation? , in Eley, G. and Suny, R. G. (ed.) Becoming national: a reader, p. 52

[7] Furet, F. (1996) The French Revolution 1770-1814, preface

[8] Tombs, R. (1996) France, 1814-1914, p. 136

[9] Ibid, p. 140

[10] Lamartine, A. (1847) History of the Girondists, Vol. III, pp. 296-8

[11] Price, R. (1975) 1848 in France, p. 68

[12] Renan, E. (1996) What is a nation? , in Eley, G. and Suny, R. G. (ed.) Becoming national: a reader, p. 51