Elster Jon, Goldhammer Arthur. Tocqueville: The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (ENG)
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
I.4 The Same Institutions in All of Europe
an object of contempt for some. It is striking to see how everything old is
now judged negatively. The new ways of looking at things have insinuated
themselves into our families and sown trouble in our homes. Even our
housewives are unwilling to put up with their old furniture any longer.”
Yet in Germany, as in France at this time, society was on the move and
prosperity was steadily on the rise. But mark the following point well, for
it completes the picture: everything that was vital, active, and productive
was new, and not simply new but in contradiction with the old.
The monarchy, for instance, no longer had anything in common with
the monarchy of the Middle Ages. It wielded different powers, occupied
a different place, exhibited a different spirit, and inspired different senti-
ments. The administrative apparatus of the state expanded everywhere,
establishing itself on the ruins of local authorities. A hierarchy of state
ofcials increasingly replaced the government of nobles. All these new
powers employed methods and adhered to precepts of which the Middle
Ages had either known nothing or else rejected, precepts associated with
a state of society of which medieval men simply had no inkling.
In England, where one might be tempted at rst glance to say that the
old European constitution remained in force, things were no different.
Once you look past the old names and set aside the archaic forms, you
nd that the feudal system had in substance been abolished in England
by the seventeenth century. Classes mingled, the nobility faded, the aris-
tocracy opened its gates, and wealth became power. Equality before the
law existed, as did equality of taxation, freedom of the press, and public
debate. All these new principles were unknown in the Middle Ages.
Moreover, it was these innovations, introduced gradually and skillfully,
that made it possible to revive the old body without risk to its integ-
rity, giving it a new lease on life while preserving its ancient forms. The
England of the seventeenth century was already a fully modern nation
that merely preserved within it, embalmed as it were, a few relics of the
Middle Ages.
This brief glance beyond the borders of France was necessary to lay
the groundwork for understanding what follows, for I venture to say that
he who has seen no other country and who studies only France will never
understand the French Revolution.
I.5 – What Was the Essential Achievement
of the French Revolution?
The aim of the preceding chapters was simply to illuminate the subject
and lay the groundwork for an answer to the question that I posed at the
outset: What was the true purpose of the Revolution? What, in the end,
was its intrinsic character? Why exactly did it occur? What did it do?
The purpose of the Revolution was not, as some have thought, to
break religion’s grip on human beliefs. It was, in spite of appearances,
essentially a social and political revolution. In contrast to other, similar
institutions, its effect was not to perpetuate disorder, somehow to make
it stable, or, to borrow a phrase from one of its principal adversaries, to
“impose method” on anarchy. Rather, it tended to increase the power and
prerogatives of public authority. It was not obliged, as others have sup-
posed, to change the character of our civilization or halt its progress or
even modify in any essential way any of the fundamental laws underlying
our western societies. When we isolate the Revolution from all the con-
tingencies that momentarily altered its aspect in various times and places
and consider it only as it was in itself, we see clearly that its sole effect
was to abolish the political institutions, usually called feudal, that had for
centuries reigned unopposed in most of the nations of Europe, and to
replace them with a simpler and more uniform social and political order
based on equality of conditions.
That sufced to constitute an immense revolution, for quite apart
from the fact that these old institutions were still ingrained in, not to
say intertwined with, all of Europe’s religious and political laws, they
had also given rise to a host of ideas, sentiments, habits, and mores from
I.5 The Essential Achievement of the Revolution
which they were all but inseparable. A terrible convulsion was required
to destroy all of these and at one stroke extract from the body of society
what was in this sense a constituent element of all its organs. This made
the Revolution appear to be even greater than it was. It seemed to destroy
everything, because what it did destroy was connected to, indeed part of,
everything else.
However radical the Revolution may have been, it was nevertheless far
less innovative than is generally assumed, as I will show later. What is true
is that it completely destroyed, or is in the process of destroying (for it
endures to this day), every aspect of the old society that derived from aris-
tocratic and feudal institutions, everything that was in any way associated
with those institutions or bore the slightest impression of them. Of the old
world it preserved only what had always been alien to those institutions
or could exist without them. What the Revolution was least of all was
an accident. To be sure, it took the world by surprise, yet it was merely
the culmination of a long labor, the sudden and violent end of an effort
to which ten generations had contributed. Had it not taken place, the old
social edice would still have collapsed sooner or later everywhere, but it
would have continued to crumble piece by piece rather than collapse all
at once. The Revolution brought to a sudden conclusion, without transi-
tion, precaution, or regard, what would eventually have come about little
by little on its own. That was its achievement.
It is surprising that what seems so easy to see today remained so mud-
dled and veiled, even in the eyes of the most perspicacious observers.
“You wanted to correct the abuses of your government,” said Burke to
the French, “but why start from scratch? Why not cling to your ancient
traditions? Why not limit yourselves to regaining your former liberties?
Or, if it was impossible for you to make out the shape of your ancestral
constitution, why not cast a glance in our direction? There you would
have found the old common law of Europe.” Burke failed to behold what
was before his eyes, namely, that it was the Revolution that was in fact
destined to abolish this old common law. He did not recognize that this
and nothing else was what it was truly about.
But why did this Revolution break out in France rather than some-
where else, when the groundwork for it was laid and the threat loomed
everywhere? Why did it take on certain characteristics in France
that elsewhere emerged only partially, if at all? This further question
surely deserves to be asked. Its examination will be the subject of the
books that follow.
Book II
II. – Why Feudal Prerogatives Had Become
More Odious to the People in France Than
Anywhere Else
At rst glance, it is surprising that the Revolution, whose essential object
was to abolish what remained of medieval institutions everywhere, did
not break out in countries where those institutions, being better pre-
served, made people more aware of their oppressiveness and rigor, but
rather in countries where these things were felt the least. Thus their yoke
seemed most unbearable where in fact its burden was lightest.
Throughout nearly all of Germany, serfdom had yet to be completely
abolished by the end of the eighteenth century, and in most of the country
the people were still attached to the soil, as in the Middle Ages. Almost all
the soldiers in the armies of Frederick the Great and Maria Teresa were
true serfs.
In most German states in 788, a peasant could not leave his lord’s
domain, and if he did leave he could be pursued wherever he went and
forcibly returned. He was subject to the jurisdiction of his lord, who kept
an eye on his private life and punished his intemperance and laziness. He
could not improve his position, change his profession, or marry without
his master’s approval. Much of his time was devoted to the service of his
lord. Several years of his youth had to be spent in domestic service to the
manor. The institution of compulsory labor service to the lord remained
in full force and in some countries consumed as many as three days per
week of a peasant’s labor. It was the peasant who rebuilt and maintained
the lord’s buildings, hauled his produce to market, drove his carriage,
and carried his messages. Although serfs could own land, their title was
Book II
always far from perfect. They were obliged to cultivate their elds in a
certain way, under the lord’s supervision. They could not sell or mort-
gage their property at will. In some cases they were forced to sell what
they produced, in others prevented from selling. For the serf, farming the
land was obligatory. His estate did not even pass entirely to his children;
a portion of it was usually retained by the lord.
To discover these regulations I did not have to scour obsolete law
books. I found them in the code prepared by Frederick the Great and
promulgated by his successor just as the French Revolution began.
Nothing like these things had existed in France for quite some time.
Peasants came, went, bought, sold, negotiated, and worked just as they
pleased. The last vestiges of serfdom had disappeared, except in one or
two provinces of the east – conquered provinces. Serfdom had completely
vanished everywhere else, and its abolition lay so far in the past that
the date had been forgotten. Recent scholarship has proved that by the
thirteenth century it was nowhere to be found in Normandy.
Another, very different revolution in the status of the people had also
occurred in France, however: the peasant had not only ceased to be a serf;
he had become a landowner. This fact is still so little known and, as we
shall see, had such important consequences that I beg the reader’s indul-
gence if I pause a moment to explore it further.
It was long believed that the division of landed property dated from
the Revolution and was solely a consequence of it. In fact, all sorts of evi-
dence shows that the contrary is true.
At least twenty years before the Revolution, agricultural societies were
already deploring the excessive subdivision of the land. At about the
same time, Turgot said, “inheritances are sliced up so much that a parcel
big enough to support but a single family is divided among ve or six
children. Consequently, these children and their families can no longer
live solely on the land.” A few years later, Necker said that there was an
immense number of small rural properties in France.
In a secret report submitted to an intendant a few years before the
Revolution, I found the following: “Inheritances are alarmingly subdi-
vided into equal shares, and since each heir wants a piece of every parcel,
every plot is endlessly divided and subdivided.” Might this not have been
written today?
I went to great lengths to reconstruct as well as I could the cadaster
of the Ancien Régime, and in this I was partially successful. Under the
law of 790, which established a tax on land, each parish was required
II.1 Feudal Prerogatives More Odious in France
to prepare a list of existing properties within its borders. Most of these
lists have vanished. I was nevertheless able to locate the lists for a certain
number of villages, and by comparing these with tax rolls from our own
time, I was able to determine that the number of landowners in 790 was
as high as half or even two-thirds of the present number. This is quite
remarkable, given that the total population of France has increased by
more than a quarter since that time.
The peasant’s love of his property in land was already as extreme as
it is today, and all the passions kindled by land ownership were already
aame. “Land today sells for more than it is worth,” wrote an excellent
contemporary observer, “owing to the passion of all the inhabitants to
become landowners. All the savings of the lower classes, which elsewhere
are invested with private individuals or public funds, in France go to
purchase land.”
Among all the novel things that Arthur Young saw in this country
when he visited us for the rst time, none struck him more than the great
division of land among the peasants. He states that they owned half the
land in France. “I had no idea that anything like this existed,” he said
often, and indeed, nothing of the kind could be found anywhere except in
France and immediately contiguous regions.
In England, some peasants owned land, but their numbers had already
diminished. In Germany, as we have seen, in all periods and parts of the
country there were some free peasants who enjoyed full ownership of
tracts of land. The special and often bizarre laws that governed peasant
property can be found in the oldest surviving records of German custom-
ary law. But this type of property was always the exception rather than
the rule, and the number of these small landowners was quite limited.
The parts of Germany where peasants in the late eighteenth century
owned their own land and were almost as free as in France were mostly
situated along the Rhine. This was also where the revolutionary passions
of the French spread most rapidly and have always been strongest. By
contrast, the parts of Germany that were for a long time most impervious
to those passions were those in which nothing similar had yet been seen.
These points are worth noting.
To believe that the division of landed property in France dates from
the Revolution is therefore to repeat a common error. In fact, it occurred
much earlier. To be sure, the Revolution sold off all land belonging to the
clergy and much of what had been owned by nobles. But if you consult the
records of those sales, as I had the patience to do in a few cases, you will
Book II
nd that most of these properties were purchased by people who already
owned others, so that even though property changed hands, the number
of owners increased far less than one might imagine. To repeat Necker’s
histrionic but accurate phrase, their number was already “immense.”
The effect of the Revolution was not to divide the land but to liberate
it for a time. All these smallholders were in fact highly constrained in
the exploitation of their land, which was subject to numerous obligations
from which there was no escape.
These burdens were undoubtedly heavy, but what made them seem
unbearable was precisely the circumstance that one might have thought
would lighten the load. In France more than anywhere else in Europe,
peasant landowners were exempt from seigniorial government. This was
a revolution no less great than the one that had made them landowners.
Although the Ancien Régime is still quite close to us, since we daily
encounter people born under its laws, it already seems to be receding
into the night of time. The radical Revolution that stands between it and
us had the same effect as the passage of centuries: what it did not destroy
it plunged into obscurity. Hence, few people today can give a precise
answer to this simple question: How was the countryside administered
before 789? Indeed, the question can be answered accurately and in
detail only after studying not the books but the administrative archives
of that time.
I have often heard people say that while the nobility had long since
ceased to take part in governing the state, it continued to administer
the countryside to the very end. The lord governed the peasants. This
appears to be a mistaken view.
In the eighteenth century, all parish affairs were in the hands of of-
cials who were no longer the lord’s agents or appointees. Some were
named by the provincial intendant, while others were elected by the
peasants themselves. It was up to these ofcials to apportion taxes, repair
churches, build schools, and convoke as well as preside over the parish
assembly. They supervised and regulated the use of communal property
and brought and prosecuted lawsuits in the name of the community. Not
only was the lord no longer in charge of all these minor local affairs, but
he did not even oversee their administration. All parish ofcials were
supervised or controlled by the central government, as I will show in
the next chapter. More than that, the lord seldom acted as the king’s
representative in the parish, as the intermediary between the king and
its inhabitants. No longer was he the person in charge of enforcing the