EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

by

D. G. O. Ayerst, M.A. (December, 1939)

Headmaster of King Edward VII School, Lytham; Formerly Senior History Master at Blundell’s School.

PART ONE

REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE

1789 TO 1815

1. THE SUNSET KINGS

France, the model for Europe.  In the eighteenth century all continental Europe copied France as closely as it could. Louis XIV, the great king who at the end of the previous century had made France by far the most powerful country in the world, had built himself a magnificent palace at Versailles. In the eighteenth century every king and prince from Naples to Potsdam built himself a miniature Versailles. Louis XIV had taken his nobles from their country life and local interests to live a butterfly life at his court. He was ‘le roi soleil’, the sun king, and their only business was like planets to revolve around him. They gained pleasure but they lost power, which was what the king wanted. The work of local government was taken from them and given to Intendants and other officers, paid servants of the king who had to do as they were told. Henceforth Louis could quarrel with any noble, no matter how distinguished, without fear of a breakdown of local government or of a rebellion led by the courtier in disgrace. A non-resident landowner, known to his tenants only as a grasping rent collector, has no following. The other kings of Europe copied as far as they could this method by which Louis XIV had made himself the only political power in France.

In art and manners, as well as in government, France set the fashion for Europe. In St Petersburg and Berlin society talked French more than Russian or German; and French replaced Latin as the language of diplomacy, which it long remained. Frederick the Great of Prussia devoted almost as much energy to writing French verse, which he did badly, as to governing his country, which he did well. Only music escaped the French domination. The language of opera was Italian and the best composers were German. The music of the ‘Frenchified’ courts of Germany (‘courts’ for Germany was not one state but many) was the work of Mozart or Haydn.

Concentration of power. The concentration of political power in the hands of the king was used on the whole for the good of the people, but for four reasons it failed to satisfy their desires. First, nothing could be done without the consent of the central government and the government was far too busy to attend to a quarter of the things which needed doing. Secondly, the concentration of power was not complete. Although nobody could over-rule the king if he was determined to have his way, the thirteen ‘parlements’ of France could and did delay reforms almost indefinitely.

The ‘Parlements’. These ‘parlements’ were the supreme law courts, filled with hereditary judges, of the various districts of France. They were far more than ordinary law courts. They could make trade regulations of their own and no royal order was binding until it had been regulated by the ‘parlements’, which could place many difficulties in the way of registration. They were the only real check on the king’s absolute power and, as such, they were sometimes popular; but they were a check which protected abuses and hindered reforms. The royal government in the years just before the revolution tried at intervals to remove some of the worst abuses. It was opposed by the ‘parlements’, which thus must share some of the responsibility for the revolution. The third reason why men disliked the king’s absolute power was that the wishes of the governed were not consulted; and, lastly, although the nobles’ power had been taken away, their privileges had not.

In politics all except the king were virtually powerless. The richest noble had no more hope than the poorest peasant of successful opposition to the king’s will. But in privileges there was no equality. It was this inequality which made the sun king’s system unstable and soon led France from the glories of Louis XIV to the stormy sunset of Louis XVI’s reign. The inequality of privileges both weakened the government and enraged the people.

Privileges. The taxes, for instance, were paid by those least able to bear them, for in France the nobles and the clergy were largely exempt from direct taxation. The peasant still had to pay tithes to a church, whose bishops had as likely as not ceased to believe in Christianity, and feudal dues to the ‘seigneur’, who had long ceased to do any of the local government work for which originally they were a payment. Then the best careers were reserved for the best blood and in most regiments only nobles could hope to be officers.

In the towns trade was still largely controlled by the guilds, which in the middles ages had enforced decent standards of workmanship and living conditions, but which were now mainly concerned with preventing competition and making it difficult for any but the fortunate few to earn a living. It was not only the guilds which hampered traders. Each province had its own customs barriers. A consignment of wine from Provence to Paris had to pay duty forty times on its journey. In addition to the national frontiers of France there were 3600 miles of these provincial frontiers each with its own customs houses. Trade between the provinces was hindered also by the fact that there was not one law for all France. The provisions had their own local customs, so that what was legal in one was illegal in another.

In spite of these handicaps the middle class was growing richer and the peasants were buying their farms to which they were passionately devoted. ‘The peasant sows his heart with his grain’, as a French historian put it. Unlike the English gentry the French nobles were not to any great extent themselves farmers. They merely received money or produce in the form of feudal dues and rent from the real landed class, the peasants. The revolution when it came, therefore, did not so much redistribute the land as free it from the various payments which farmers had to make to the lord.

Both the peasants and the middle class were conscious that the state could not get on without them; both claimed that they were, therefore, entitled to equality if treatment with the nobles and the clergy. Many of these two privileged classes agreed with them in theory, more particularly since men like Lafayette had come back from the American War of Independence full of enthusiasm for the simple equality of the young republic. They had ceased to believe that their privileges were justified, for they had read and enjoyed the books in which Voltaire had exposed the pretence on which society rested and Rousseau had expounded the virtues of a free and equal society which he imagined to exist among primitive peoples. They continued, however, to enjoy their admittedly unjust privileges just because they were too enjoyable to surrender.

The bankrupt government. The king allowed the privileged classes to retain the immunities because socially the king and his courtiers were one world. He shared their social outlook, their opinions and prejudices. The king’s inclinations made him uphold his courtiers, his interest was to sacrifice them. Their privileges were fatal to the monarchy because they made it impossible for the government to avoid bankruptcy. The fact that the nobles and clergy could not be taxed meant that the king could never get sufficient revenue to pay for the government, even though in pre-revolutionary France it was not uncommon for a peasant to pay rather more than half his income away in taxes, besides being liable for the ‘corvée’ or forced labour at road-making. The king was therefore always in need of ready money and it had become the practice to anticipate taxes. Instead of collecting them himself the king ‘farmed’ many taxes out to tax-gatherers who paid the kind a lump sum and collected that and as much more as they could from taxpayers. After the ‘taille’, a sort of income tax, the most oppressive tax was the ‘gabelle’. Salt was a government monopoly and every family had to buy seven pounds of salt a year at exorbitant prices whether it wanted to or not. Each year some four thousand people were sentenced to prison, flogging, the galleys or exile for breaking the ‘gabelle’ laws.

But in spite of this severity, and although the taxation was more than taxpayers could bear, the government was unable to pay its way because there were too few taxpayers and too many expenses. The magnificent palace at Versailles cost Louis XIV £30,000,000 to build, while Louis XV spent a tenth of that sum on one mistress alone. More expensive still were the great wars which France fought against England during the eighteenth century. The government had to live by borrowing. At last the money which the government received in taxes was insufficient even to pay the interest on the money which it had already borrowed. The government was bankrupt and the revolution had come. The government was bankrupt not because France was too poor to pay its way but because those who could have afforded to pay went untaxed. It was not poverty but privilege which caused the revolution.

France’s relative prosperity. Certainly it was not poverty which caused the revolution. The French middle class was more prosperous and more numerous in 1789 than in 1689; the peasants were less downtrodden then they had been. They were gradually becoming peasant proprietors instead of feudal serfs. In fact personal serfdom had almost died out in France—in this respect France was one of the more fortunate European countries—but the peasants still had to pay many feudal dues which were a relic of the old system.

The revolution came first in France and not in Austria or Prussia or Russia, not because social conditions were worse but because they were slightly better. The people of central and eastern Europe were too downtrodden to dream of revolting; they were so oppressed that they could hardly ever dream of a better future. The peasants of France were improving their condition; they had gained sufficient to know that there was more to be gained. They were angry because their efforts to gain more were frustrated by the government and the social system. The French middles class was energetic, frugal and ambitious. They saw almost unlimited possibilities open to them if the barriers erected by the government and the social system could be removed. The French revolution was not so much the product of despair as of a belief that with a little energy and common sense things could easily be made a great deal better.