Europe: A History (140 page)

The
Kritik der reinen Vernunft
(Critique of Pure Reason, 1781) denies that rationalist metaphysics can be accepted as a perfect science like mathematics. It insists that every phenomenon existing outside time and space has its own inscrutable source of being. Each such source was called
das Ding-an-sich
, ‘the thing-in-itself’. ‘I had to abolish knowledge’, he wrote apologetically, ‘in order to make room for faith.’ Reason is to be complemented by belief and imagination. The
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft
(Critique of Practical Reason, 1788) is a treatise of moral philosophy, elaborating Kant’s theory of the ‘categorical imperative’. It is sympathetic to traditional Christian ethics and stresses duty as the supreme criterion of moral conduct. The
Kritik der Urteilskraft
(Critique of Evaluation, 1790) is a treatise on aesthetics. It makes the famous distinction between
Verstand
(intellect) and
Vernunft
(reason) as instruments of judgement. Kant argues that art should serve morality and should avoid the portrayal of nasty objects. ‘Beauty has no value except in the service of man.’

Kant was deeply interested in the philosophy of history. Like his contemporary, Gibbon, he was impressed by the ‘tissue of folly’, the ‘puerile vanity’, and the ‘thirst for destruction’ which filled the historical record. At the same time, he strove to find sense amidst the chaos. He found it in the idea that conflict was a teacher which would extend rationality from a few noble individuals to the conduct of all mankind. He wrote in his
Concept of Universal History
(1784), ‘Men may wish for concord, but Nature knows better what is good for the species. [Nature] wants discord.’ Kant’s politics advocated republicanism. He welcomed the French Revolution though not the Terror, denouncing both paternal government and hereditary privilege. In
Zum ewigen Frieden
(On Perpetual Peace, 1795) he called for the creation of a
Weltbürgertum
or ‘World Community’ which would commit itself to universal disarmament and bury the Balance of Power. None of these views was particularly fitting for a subject of the King of Prussia.
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J. G. Herder (1744–1803), born at Mohrungen (Morag), started his career as an enthusiastic reader of Rousseau, giving up a job at Riga in order to sail to France. He later settled in Weimar, under Goethe’s patronage. His fertile mind produced a whole crop of original thoughts about culture, history, and art. He made an anti-rationalist contribution to the epistemological debate, propounding the idea that perception is a function of the total personality. In his
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit
(1784–91), he developed Vico’s cyclical concept of the birth, growth, and death of civilizations, but conceiving of progress as something much more complex than mere linear advancement. In his own estimation, however, his most important undertaking lay in a lifelong devotion to the collection and study of folklore and folksong, both German and foreign. Here was a subject that would play a central role not just in Romantic literature but in the whole story of national-consciousness (see pp. 816–17).

All the arts responded to the shifting climate. In music, both Mozart and Haydn stayed devoted to the classical canon of orderly form, delicacy, and harmony. But Beethoven, who had quickly mastered the classical conventions, moved steadily on into the musical equivalent of revolutionary storm and stress. He had already reached it by the time of his Symphony no. 3, the ‘Eroica’ (1805), originally dedicated to Napoleon. Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), sometime opera-master at Dresden, was to become a stereotype of the Romantic artist. His first successful opera,
Das Waldmädchen
(1800), presented the touching story of a dumb girl communing with the mysteries of the forest. The melodic genius of Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was cut short, like his Unfinished Symphony, by disease and an untimely death, but not before he had compiled a matchless œuvre of over 600 songs. Alongside the acknowledged masters, there was a strong supporting cast of almost forgotten names such as J. K. Dussek (1761–1812), Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), M. K. Ogiński (1765–1833), J. N. Hummel (1778–1837), John Field (1782–1837), or Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831)—the latter unusual in her day as a female performer and composer.

In painting, the appeal of neo-classicism was only partially overtaken. The most influential of French painters, Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), never ceased to address classical subjects. But Romantic pathos crept into even early pictures such as
Saint Roch
(1780), inspired by the plague at Marseilles; and it furnished an important element in his heroic portrayal of the Napoleonic saga. Yet the most radical innovations appeared elsewhere. In Germany, the portraitist P. O. Runge (1777–1810) sought ‘symbols of the eternal rhythm of the universe’. In England, the animals of George Stubbs (1724–1806) passed from their classical pastures of utter calm and restraint to agitated scenes such as the much admired
Horse Attacked by a Lion
. J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) took the first steps along the road which would lead him all the way to Impressionism. He visited Switzerland for the first time in 1802, and painted
The Reichenbach Falls
. From the start he was drawn to the tempestuous powers of Nature, especially at sea. His contemporary, the landscapist John Constable (1776–1837), brought a gentler temperament but no less talent to the study of Nature’s moods. William Blake, as illustrator, entered the world of fantasy and the supernatural. His illustrations of Dante pointed to a Romantic taste that spread across Europe. In Spain, Francisco Goya (1746–1828), royal painter from 1789, found his
métier
recording all the nightmares and horrors of war and civil strife. ‘The Sleep of Reason’, he said about one of his pictures, ‘engenders monsters.’
¹⁰

For a long time historians sought the roots of the Revolution primarily in the intellectual and political conflicts of the preceding age. The
philosophes
were seen to have undermined the ideological foundations of the Ancien Régime, whilst the ministers of Louis XVI—Turgot, 1774–6, Necker, 1776–81 and 1788–9, Calonne, 1783–7, and Archbishop Loménie de Brienne, 1787–8—led France to national bankruptcy. Historians saw the calling of the Estates-General and the subsequent storming of the Bastille as the straightforward consequence of popular grievances,
of excesses perpetrated by court, church, and nobility, and of reform pursued ‘too little, too late’. Burke suspected a conspiracy of the ‘swinish multitude’; Thiers, writing within memory of the Revolution, stressed the injustices of absolute government; Michelet stressed the miseries of ‘the people’.

An important finesse to the debate was provided by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59). In his
Ancien Régime et la Révolution
(1856) he showed that the dynamic of reform and revolution was no straightforward matter. Many aspects of government were actually improving under Louis XVI, who had always been genuinely committed to reform. ‘The social order destroyed by a revolution,’ he wrote, ‘is almost always better than that which preceded it; and experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform …’
¹¹
The slightest acts of arbitrary power under Louis XVI seemed harder to endure ‘than all the despotism of Louis XIV.’
¹²

More recent research has given precision to many of these assertions. It has revealed the role of the Paris Parlement in blocking the King’s reforms, of the Parlement’s pamphleteers in spreading the ideas of the
philosophes
, and of ideology as a force in its own right. One study even claims that Necker had succeeded in balancing the budget during his first ministry. This would suggest that the financial crisis following the War of American Independence, which precipitated the calling of the Estates-General, was the result not of systemic collapse but of simple mismanagement.
¹³

At one stage in the debate, prime emphasis was placed on the economic and social problems which were judged to underlie the political upheaval. Marx had been an historical sociologist, who belonged to a vintage for whom the French Revolution remained the focus of all historical discussion; and many Marxists and quasi-Marxists followed suit. In the 1930s C. E. Labrousse published quantitative evidence both for cyclical agrarian depressions in late eighteenth-century France and for an acute food shortage and price catastrophe in 1787–9.
¹⁴
In the 1950s a long interpretative war between the followers of Lefebvre and Cobban only served to give prominence to their sociological preoccupations.
¹⁵
A consensus appeared to emerge about the primacy of ‘bourgeois’ interests. ‘The revolution was theirs,’ concluded Cobban, ‘and for them at least it was a wholly successful revolution.’
¹⁶
‘The French Revolution’, wrote another participant, ‘constitutes the crowning point of a long social and economic evolution which made the bourgeoisie the mistress of the world.’
¹⁷
But then the bourgeois theory was challenged, and investigations shifted to the artisans and the sans culottes. Much of this class analysis retains a strong Marxian flavour, especially with those who deny any Marxist connections. In one view, the ‘bagarre des profs’ over the French Revolution ‘has become the Divine Comedy of the modern secular world.’
¹⁸

As always in a crisis, psychological factors were paramount. The King and his ministers did not have to be told that disaster loomed; but, unlike historians, they did not have 200 years in which to study it. Indeed, with no popular representation in place they had no reliable means of gauging public attitudes. Similarly, in the depths of a serf-run countryside, or of proletarian Paris, there was no means
of regulating the waves of poverty-led fear and of blind anger. The combination of indecision at the centre and of panic amidst large sections of the populace was a sure recipe for catastrophe. Above all, violence bred violence. ‘From the very beginning … violence was the motor of revolution.’
¹⁹

There is much to be said for exploring the Revolution’s international dimensions from the very earliest point.
²⁰
When one considers the mechanisms which transformed generalized ferment into explosive revolution, political and military logistics have to be taken into the equation. There were several casks in the European cellar which were ready to blow their corks, and which actually did so. But in the case of the lesser casks, the corks could be swiftly replaced. It was only when one of the bigger barrels threatened to explode that the cellar as a whole was in danger. It is for this reason that historians have paid almost exclusive attention to events in Paris. Yet in terms of chronology and precedence, several other centres of ferment have to be brought into the reckoning. Extremely important, though not always mentioned, were developments in the Netherlands, first in the United Provinces and later in the Austrian Netherlands. Important, too, was the advanced disaffection of several French provinces, notably in the Dauphiné. Crucial for the whole of Eastern Europe was the meeting of the Great Sejm of Poland-Lithuania, bent on reform at all costs. Each of these stress-points acted to some degree on the others. Together, they showed that the revolutionary ferment had assumed transcontinental proportions before the explosion occurred.