HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

1870-1900

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BOOK I 1870-1873

BOOK II 1873-1875

BOOK III (1875-1877)

BOOK IV 1877-1890

 

The men of the Third Republic:

THE DUC DE BROGLIE

(1821-1901)

 

THE Due de Broglie, who does not quite lead, but aspires to lead, the Orleanist party, is a very finished type of the class of noblemen who would be ruling France at this hour if the Revolution of 1830 had never taken place. Supposing Charles X had become suddenly prudent and retained the Martignac Ministry, there is a probability that the Bourbon dynasty might have struck new roots; the hereditary House of Peers, a much more liberal and popular body than the Chamber of Deputies of that period, would have continued to flourish ; and the Duc de Broglie, after sitting a few years in the Lower House for his department, the Eure, would in due course have succeeded his father and distinguished himself in the Upper Chamber as a French Whig. This might even have happened, though less certainly and smoothly, if the Orleans monarchy had survived. Had the Republic of 1848 lasted, the results would have been the same, for the Republic threw a broad road open to talent in all its forms, and the influence of clever dukes was quite as much felt as under the Royalty. But the Empire, which put the whole political machinery of France out of gear, flung all such educated and obnoxious Constitutionalists as the Broglies, d'Haussonvilles, R´rmusats, and Montalivets vio- lently out of their grooves. They became as exiles on their own soil, a small, well-read, and much-hated band, whom the Empire feared and combated with all the weapons of its unscrupulous arsenal, and whom, in drawing-rooms where Bonapartist wits lisped their jokes, it was thought funny to laugh at as le parti des parapluies or le parti Buloz. This last name was, of course, an allusion to the Revue des Deux Mondes, which, with the Journal des Debats, formed the two pulpits whence the parti des parapluies made their voices heard, not loudly, but patiently and eloquently, during eighteen years, for the enlightenment of a very light-needing community.

One must never forget the good that was done by the Orleanists, or rather by the Constitutionalists, under the Second Empire. They were the chief educators of the next generation. Imperialism had little to dread from the Legitimists, who sulked and educated nobody—not even themselves ; nor did it much fear the Republicans, who, being a disunited body, often visionary and generally too plainspoken, were easy to defame and suppress. But it was not easy to suppress men who launched their criticisms under cover of historical essays or academical speeches. This Minister might frown at reading a very knowing paper on Tiberius, and that other might bite his lips on hearing the institutions of the Empire pulled to pieces under the cupola of the Institute ; but there was no handle for a prosecution in either of these offences, and the Ministers had to bear the appreciative smiles of the literate among the public as visitations not to be avoided. Looking back upon those days, one must own that despotism almost had its compensation in the exquisite pleasure people felt in reading the attacks against it. A new book, a clever article full of demure irony, M. Eugene Forcade's fortnightly bulletins, the reception of a new Orleanist at tlie Academy, some double-edged lecture by one of the Professors at tbe Sorbonne—all these were treats to which there is no parallel where press and tongue are free. Paris revelled in them ; and it must have often occurred to the inhabitants of the Tuileries that it would be almost worth while to have a conspiracy once a year, and a street riot every six months, to be free from that pestilent swarm of moderate Liberals who were always setting their stings on the sore places.

No family was more quietly active than that of the Broglies in this work of discomfiting the Imperial dynasty and propagating opposition to it by literary and social means. Descended from a family which during the last century alone counted three field-marshals on its roll, the present Duke's father was a proved Liberal, who had inherited his love of freedom from that Prince Victor de Broglie, his sire, who, after adopting the principles of the Revolution, had been guillotined under the Terror, less as an aristocrat than as a hater of injustice. It was of no use for Bonapartists to call such a man either a Jacobin or a bigot. He was simply a cultivated, accomplished, and patriotic nobleman, who was as adverse from Royalist as from Democratic excesses, and had proved this throughout his whole career. It was he who, almost alone in the House of Peers, and being then the youngest member of it, had stood up for Ney. In 1816 he had spoken and voted for a full amnesty of all the Republicans and Bonapartists whom the Bourbonists judges had condemned. In 1817 his voice had been raised repeatedly and vigorously in favour of the liberty of the press. Both as a peer under the Restoration and as a Minister under Louis Philippe, his ideal had been to endow France with a political system like that of England, and there is little doubt that if there had been more Frenchmen like him to assist in the experiment the thing would have become possible. But his crowning work, and that which he regarded with the greatest pride, was the education which he gave his sons. M. Guizot, in a recent memoir, has recorded how full, painstaking, and judicious this education was ; and it may be added in a general way, that when French noblemen are educated—which, thanks to the clergy, is less often than might be—they are taught to a pitch of perfection not common in other lands. Besides, the young Broglies had not only the advantage of their father's teaching ; their gifted mother, Madame de Stael's only daughter, imparted to them many of the qualities of her own generous heart and beautiful mind, so that the boys grew up to be, if not paragons, at least young Frenchmen of no ordinary promise. In 1848, whilst the late Duc de Broglie was sitting in the Legislative Assembly on the benches of the Moderate Royalists, his eldest son started in journalism with as much diligence as though he had his bread to win by his pen, and soon his name was classed among the foremost of the rising generation which it was then thought would guide France for the next thirty or forty years. It is difficult to realise the full bitterness of the disappointment which must have fallen upon men who, like Prince Albert de Broglie, then saw their newly opening careers suddenly closed to them by the coup d'état, and perhaps the bitterness was the greater in this particular case, as no efforts were spared by the Imperial dynasty in endeavouring to conciliate the Broglies. Just as the First Napoleon, very anxious to see a field-marshal of the old nobility at the head of his parvenu staff, sent a special ambassador to Münster, where the Maréchal de Broglie was living since the Revolution, to invite him to return to France, so Napoleon III would have esteemed it no mean triumph if the great family, whose name had been in Frenchmen's mouths any time these two hundred years, had consented to accept honours and places from him. It happened that during most of the Second Empire the department of the Eure was governed by that gallant and expensive M. Janvier de la Motte, who has since become notorious : and this gentleman was as glib-tongued a missionary as any that could have been selected for the work of proselytising. "What did the names of dynasties signify after all ? Had not the Bonapartes done as much for French glory as the Orleans family ? And liberty—what did that mean ? Had not the friends of liberty murdered M. le Duc's father in '93, and overturned the King he loved in '48, and would not they go on murdering and overturning so long as their hands and tongues were free ? Surely, then, it was the mission of all patriotic and liberal noblemen to rally round the Sovereign whom the people had selected, and to co-operate with him in establishing institutions which should be really suited to the character of the nation," &c. Underlying this lurked more than one hint that if "M. le Duc" pleased, a seat in the Senate was ready for him, and that his heir, the Prince Albert, could begin life either as a councillor of state, an official deputy, or a minister plenipotentiary. But the Broglies were never to be caught. Theirs was not a constitutionalism which, like that of the Dupins and the Larochejacqueleins, could compound with Csesarism under the specious pretext of its having been submitted to by the nation. They loved liberty as a religion ; they courteously rebuffed M. Janvier ; and without descending to factious plots, they made of their house the resort of all the eminent men of France who thought like them. As a result, the letters they wrote to each other were (as has since been irrefutably proved) carefully opened and read in the Postal ''Cabinet Noir;" all M. Janvier's screw-power was brought to bear against their nominees at election time, and they were now and then treated to a domiciliary visit like that one in 1861, when the police seized all the copies of a work lithographed by the late Duke for private circulation, and entitled, Mes Vues sur le Gouvernement de la France. In 1870, at the time of the Ollivier fervour, it was rumoured that Prince Albert de Broglie, who in that year succeeded to his father's title, was about to accept a high diplomatic post ; and had he done so, it would certainly have been from no abating of Liberalism on his part, but from the belief that the Empire had at length come round to parliamentary views. As it turned out, however, the rumour was unfounded. More cautious than poor Prévost-Paradol, his friend, the new Duke was afraid to trust in Parliamentarism, Caesar-born and only a few weeks old.

The Empire is dead and buried now, the Republic has succeeded it, and the Duc de Broglie, who was elected to the National Assembly as deputy for the Eure in 1871, has served the new regime as ambassador and legislator. It is pretended by many, especially among the very Liberal, that in this twofold capacity he has not quite fulfilled what was expected of him ; but this is not so disappointing as it would appear. Imagine a man sculling in a very fast outrigger, and keeping ahead of a boatful of people seated in a "tub;" then imagine the people in the tub getting out of this slow contrivance on to a fast steamer which will overtake the outrigger, and soon leave it out of sight. The position of the man in the outrigger is that of the Duc de Broglie. A couple of years ago he was considerably in advance of the French nation, huddled in the Napoleonic tub ; but since then the tub's crew have got on board the Republican steamer, and it is now the Orleanist outrigger's turn to lag behind. Keeping up the metaphor, one may say that the Duke's reason for not deserting his outrigger is chiefly a want of confidence in the pilot who is guiding the steamer. The Broglies were never Thiersists. Under Louis Philippe, the late Duke was Guizot's supporter ; under the present system, his heir is one of those who hold to monarchism from the conscientious belief that it can give more freedom than a Republic. This inference he draws from England, which, in all things is his model ; but one may trust he will end by perceiving that the crown which fits one nation is not necessarily made to cap another, and that having arrived at this discovery he will lend his name and his talents to found that form of free government under which alone France can hope for stability. Under Bourbonism, Orleanism, or Bonapartism, the country can only count upon one-third of its children—that is, only put forth a third of its strength ; under the Republic it should be able to rely, and generally does rely, upon all. M. de Broglie can scarcely wish for a more convincing proof of the eclectic nature of Republicanism than the fact that M. Thiers's Cabinet comprises men of all shades of opinion, and that if he—M. de Broglie—is not seated there, the fault is his, and not that of the President, whose parliamentary proclivities he is doubtless too hasty in suspecting.

The family of Broglie, or Broglia, came to France in the suite of Mazarin ; they are of Italian origin, and the name is pronounced Broille. They were admitted as princes of the Holy Empire in 1759. The present Duke was born on the 13th of June, 1821 ; and was married on the 19th of June, 1845, to Mademoiselle Pauline- Eleonore de Galard de Béarn. He had five sons. His principal literary work is "L'Eglise et l' Empire Romain an IVm Siecle", which has passed through five editions. It is rather a bald history of the reign of Constantine, written from the Catholic point of view ; and was followed by two other books, "Julien I'Apostat " and " Theodore le Grand," neither of which attracted much attention. He was elected a member of the French Academy as successor to Father Lacordaire

 

Duc de Broglie (1821-1901)