Part 12 (1/2)
LAMARTINE AND THE SECOND REPUBLIC.[1]
[Footnote 1: For the subject-matter of this chapter I am largely indebted to Mrs. Oliphant's article on Lamartine in ”Blackwood's Magazine.”]
The Provisional Government hastily set up in France on Feb. 24, 1848, consisted at first of five members; but that number was afterwards enlarged. M. Dupin, who had been President of the Chamber of Deputies, was made President of the Council (or prime minister); but the real head of the Government and Minister for Foreign Affairs was Alphonse de Lamartine. He was a Christian believer, a high-minded man, by birth an aristocrat, yet by sympathy a man of the ma.s.ses. ”He was full of sentimentalities of vainglory and of personal vanity; but no pilot ever guided a s.h.i.+p of state so skilfully and with such absolute self-devotion through an angry sea. For a brief while, just long enough to effect this purpose, he was the idol of the populace.” With him were a.s.sociated Cremieux, a Jew; Ledru-Rollin, the historian, a Red Republican; Arago, the astronomer; Hypolite Carnot, son of Lazare Carnot, Member of the Directory, father of the future president; General Casaignac, who was made governor of Algeria; Garnier-Pages, who a second time became, in 1870, member of a Provisional Government for the defence of Paris; and several others.
The downfall of Louis Philippe startled and astonished even those who had brought it about. They had intended reform, and they drew down revolution. They hoped to effect a change of ministry: they were disconcerted when they had dethroned a king. There were about thirty thousand regular troops in Paris, besides the National Guard and the mounted police, or Garde Munic.i.p.ale. No one had imagined that the Throne of the Barricades would fall at the first a.s.sault.
There were no leaders anywhere in this revolution. The king's party had no leaders; the young princes seemed paralyzed. The army had no leader; the commander-in-chief had been changed three times in twenty-four hours. The insurgents had no leaders. On February 22 Odillon Barrot was their hero, and on February 23 they hooted him.
The republicans, to their own amazement, were left masters of the field of battle, and Lamartine was pushed to the front as their chief man.
I may here pause in the historical narrative to say a few words about the personal history of Lamartine, which, indeed, will include all that history has to say concerning the Second Republic.
The love stories of the uncle and father of Alphonse de Lamartine are so pathetic, and give us so vivid a picture of family life before the First Revolution, that I will go back a generation, and tell them as much as possible in Lamartine's own words.
His grandfather had had six children,--three daughters and three sons. According to French custom, under the old regime, the eldest son only was to marry, and the other members of the Lamartine family proceeded as they grew up to fulfil their appointed destinies.
The second son went into the Church, and rose to be a bishop. The third son, M. le Chevalier, went into the army. The sisters adopted the religious life, and thus all were provided for. But strange to say, the eldest son, to whose happiness and prosperity the rest were to be sacrificed, was the first rebel in the family. He fell in love with a Mademoiselle de Saint-Huruge; but her _dot_ was not considered by the elder members of the family sufficient to justify the alliance. The young man gave up his bride, and to the consternation of his relatives announced that he would marry no other woman. M. le Chevalier must marry and perpetuate the ancestral line.
Lamartine says,--
”M. le Chevalier was the youngest in that generation of our family.
At sixteen he had entered the regiment in which his father had served before him. His career was to grow old in the modest position of a captain in the army (which position he attained at an early age), to pa.s.s his few months of leave, from time to time, in his father's house, to gain the Cross of St. Louis (which was the end of all ambitions to provincial gentlemen), and then, when he grew old, being endowed with a small provision from the State, or a still smaller revenue of his own, he expected to vegetate in one of his brothers' old chateaux, having his rooms in the upper story, to superintend the garden, to shoot with the _cure_, to look after the horses, to play with the children, to make up a game of whist or tric-trac,--the born servant of everyone, a domestic slave, happy in his lot, beloved, and yet neglected by all. But in the end his fate was very different. His elder brother, having refused to marry, said to his father: 'You must marry the Chevalier.' All the feelings of the family and the prejudices of habit rose up in the heart of the old n.o.bleman against this suggestion. Chevaliers, according to his notions, were not intended to marry. My father was sent back to his regiment, and his marrying was put off from year to year.”
Meantime, the idea of marriage having been put into the Chevalier's head, he chose for himself, and happily his choice fell on a lady acceptable to his family. His sister was canoness in an aristocratic order, whose members were permitted to receive visits from their brothers. It was there that he wooed and won the lovely, saint-like mother of Alphonse de Lamartine.
The elder brother, as he advanced in life, kept up a truly affecting intercourse with Mademoiselle de Saint-Huruge. She was beautiful even in old age, though her beauty was dimmed by an expression of sadness. They met every evening in Macon, at the house of a member of the family, and each entertained till death a pure and constant friends.h.i.+p for the other.
No wonder that when the Revolution decreed the abolition of all rights of primogeniture, and ordered each father's fortune to be equally divided among his children, that M. le Chevalier refused to take advantage of this new arrangement, and left his share to the elder brother, to whom he owed his domestic happiness. In the end, all the property of the family came to the poet; the aunts and uncles--the former of whom had been driven from their convents--having made him their heir.
Madame de Lamartine had received part of her education from Madame de Genlis, and had a.s.sociated in her childhood with Louis Philippe and Madame Adelade. But though the influence of Madame de Genlis was probably not in favor of piety, Madame de Lamartine was sincerely pious. In her son's early education she seems to have been influenced by Madame de Genlis' admiration of Rousseau. Alphonse ran barefoot on the hills, with the little peasant boys for company; but at home he was swayed by the discipline of love. He published nothing till he was thirty years of age, though he wrote poetry from early youth. His study was in the open air, under some grand old oaks on the edge of a deep ravine. In his hands French poetry became for the first time musical and descriptive of nature. There was deep religious feeling, too, in Lamartine's verse, rather vague as to doctrine, but full of genuine religious sentiment. As a Christian poet he struck a chord which vibrated in many hearts, for the early part of our century was characterized by faith and by enthusiasm.
Scepticism was latent, but was soon to a.s.sert itself in weary indifference. ”As yet, doubt sorrowed that it doubted, and could feel the beauty of faith, even when it disbelieved.”
From 1820 to 1824 Lamartine was a good deal in Italy; after the death of an innocent Italian girl, which he has celebrated in touching verse, he married an English lady, and had one child, his beloved Julia. He was made a member of the French Academy, and Charles X.
had appointed him amba.s.sador to Greece, when the Revolution of 1830 occurred, and he refused to serve under King Charles's successor.
In 1832, partly for Julia's health, he visited the Holy Land and Eastern Europe. Poor little Julia died at Beyrout. On the father's return he published his ”Souvenirs of his Journey.” Books descriptive of Eastern countries were then rare, and Lamartine's was received with enthusiasm.
In 1833 Lamartine began his political career by entering the Chamber of Deputies. Some one said of him that he formed a party by himself,--a party of one. He pleaded for the abolition of capital punishment, for the amelioration of the poorer cla.s.ses, for the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves in the colonies, and for various other social reforms; but he was never known as a republican.
In 1847 he published his ”Histoire des Girondins,” which was received by the public with deep interest and applause. It is not always accurate in small particulars, but it is one of the most fascinating books of history ever written, and has had the good fortune to be singularly well translated. Alexandre Dumas is said to have told its author: ”You have elevated romance to the dignity of history.”
When the revolution of February, 1848, broke out, Lamartine, being unwell, did not make his way on the first day through the crowds to the Chamber of Deputies, nor did he go thither on the second, looking on the affair as an _emeute_ likely to be followed only by a change of ministry. But when news was brought to him which made him feel it was a very serious affair, he went at once to the Chamber. On entering, he was seized upon by men of all parties, but especially by republicans, who drew him into a side-room and told him that the king had abdicated. He had always advocated the regency of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans in the event of Louis Philippe's death, in place of that of the Duc de Nemours. The men who addressed him implored him, as the most popular man in France, to put himself at the head of a movement to make the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans regent during her son's minority, adding that France under a woman and a child would soon drift into a republic. Lamartine sat for some minutes at a table with his face bowed on his hands. He was praying, he says, for light. Then he arose, and after saying that he had never been a republican, added that _now_ he was for a republic, without any intermediate regency, either of the d.u.c.h.ess or of Nemours.
With acclamations, the party went back into the Chamber to await events.
We know already how the d.u.c.h.ess was received, and how a mob broke into the Chamber. A provisional government was demanded, in the midst of indescribable tumult; and by the suffrages of a crowd of roughs quite as much as by the action of the deputies, a provisional government of five members (afterwards increased to seven) was voted in, the names being written down with a pencil by Lamartine on the spur of the moment. The five men thus nominated and chosen to be rulers of France were Lamartine, Cremieux, Ledru-Rollin, Garnier-Pages, and Arago.
Meantime in the Hotel-de-Ville the mob had set up another provisional government under Socialistic leaders, and the first thing the more genuine provisional government had to do was to get rid of the others.
Lamartine says of himself that he felt his mission was to preserve society, and very n.o.bly he set himself to his task. When he and his colleagues reached the Hotel-de-Ville, where the mob was clamoring for Socialism and a republic, a compromise had to be effected; and thus Louis Blanc, the Socialistic reformer, came into the Provisional Government. It was growing night, and the announcement of this new arrangement somewhat calmed the crowd; but at midnight an attack was made on the Hotel-de-Ville, and the new rulers had to defend themselves by personal strength, setting their backs against the doors of the Council Chamber, and repelling their a.s.sailants with their own hands. But the Press and the telegraph were at their command, and by morning the news of the Provisional Government was spread all over the provinces. ”The mob,” says Lamartine, ”was in part composed of galley slaves who had no political ideas in their heads, nor social principles in their hearts, and partly of that sc.u.m which rises to the surface in popular commotions, and floats between the fumes of intoxication and the thirst for blood.”