“Bonapartism” As Hazard and Promise." Caesarism in the Post-Revolutionary Age
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Prutsch, Markus J. "“Bonapartism” as Hazard and Promise." Caesarism in the Post-Revolutionary Age. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 47–66. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 26 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474267571.ch-003>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 26 September 2021, 09:26 UTC. Copyright © Markus J. Prutsch 2020. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 3 “ B o n a p a r t i s m ” a s H a z a r d a n d P r o m i s e 3.1 Political Legitimacy in Post-Napoleonic Europe At fi rst glance, the general political situation in Europe seemed to be quite clear in 1814/1815: with Napoleon’s military defeat, the Revolution had fi nally been overpowered, its ideological foundations shattered, and the victorious anti-Napoleonic forces could feel free to turn the clocks back. Practically all over Europe the practice and language of “Revolution” was compromised, and among conservatives and liberals alike the concept of “popular sovereignty” served to denote—and indeed demonize—all the burdens, crises and sacrifi ces Europe had suff ered in the previous quarter of a century. It was hard to fi nd active advocates of radical political, social or economic change; instead, the main discourse of the time was about durable peace, reconstruction, or at most reform. Despite the fact that the partisans of the Revolution were on the defensive, however, hardly anywhere on the continent did restoration policies have the character of pure reaction or a return to pre-revolutionary conditions. For the most part, the old—or, as in the case of France, “new old”—monarchical elite of Europe was aware that trying to undo the fundamental changes in practically all areas of public life that had been taking place during the previous decades was a dangerous if not impossible endeavor.1 Th ere was widespread agreement that albeit in diff erent forms and to diff ering extents, all European states had to face up to the legacies of the Revolution, no matter how much the traditional elites might loathe this heritage. A particular challenge was to fi nd a way of reconciling post-revolutionary societies’ expectations of both a constitutional state and the preservation of the political as well as legal innovations generated since 1789 with monarchical claims for personal government and sovereignty characteristic of the previous centuries. Th is challenge gave rise to the concept of “monarchical constitutionalism”, which might justifi ably also be characterized as “constitutional monarchism”; 2 fi rst of all in France, where the need to come to terms with the Revolution was most immediate. Th e new monarchical constitutional order made the monarch the dominant political power and declared him the sole holder of the pouvoir constituant , yet was based at the same time on a written constitution providing for civil liberties and allowing citizens to partake in the political, and above all legislative, process. Th e restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 on the basis of the Charte constitutionnelle 3 thus became, as the Revolution itself had been, an act of European importance; an act which might now serve as a key to coming to terms with the revolutionary epoch permanently. 47 48 Caesarism in the Post-Revolutionary Age Constitutional monarchism became a nineteenth-century model on a European scale, and constitutional systems following the example of the Charte were set up, e.g., in the United Netherlands (1815), Congress Poland (1815), the Southern German states of Bavaria (1818), Baden (1818) and W ü rttemberg (1819), or later Spain (1834) and Greece (1844). 4 A key element of the Charte and its successors was the—at least formal—repossession of constituent power and hence sovereignty by the monarch. Seen from this angle, the traditional legitimacy of the Ancien R é gime in terms of the doctrine of divine right seemed to have been reinstated, and the constitutional guarantees a mere means to disguise this radical break with the revolutionary past. Such a view, however, is misleading and ignores the Janus-like nature of constitutional monarchism, which was the institutionalized acknowledgment that the way in which monarchical rule could be legitimized had fundamentally changed. In France, where the ties between the former dynasty and French society were of a highly fragile nature, the monarchy had to be given new foundations. Accordingly, Louis’ guarantee to uphold the achievements of the Revolution in the Charte was a political necessity: concessions had to be, and were made.5 In so doing, the main source of legitimacy essentially shift ed from “tradition” to “law” and thus became “rationalized”, despite the fact that the political rhetoric of the Restoration continued to play on the topoi “custom” and “divine right”. Th is ambivalence did not go unnoticed, especially among those who had hoped for a complete departure from the “revolutionary spirit” aft er Napoleon’s fall. One such person was Joseph de Maistre, who in a letter from St. Petersburg, dated July 18, 1814, referred to the contradictions of the Restoration by emphasizing that it would be entirely wrong to believe that Louis XVIII had returned to the throne of his ancestors. Rather, he had only jumped in Napoleon’s seat and continued the Revolution by other means. 6 Since 1814 marked a “royal Revolution”, but a revolution nevertheless, the Bourbon Restoration was a project far from perfect in the eyes of de Maistre and of other reactionaries and conservatives: the granting of comprehensive legal guarantees, the constitutional restriction of monarchical power, but above all acknowledging the social order created during the revolutionary and Napoleonic age, were just too far removed from their anti-revolutionary ideology. Th e restoration of the monarchy, which de Maistre had intended to become the exact “opposite of the Revolution”,7 h a d now turned into a political compromise. Post-Napoleonic constitutional monarchism left rulers with diff erent playing cards, giving political legitimacy a new character. It was no longer possible to found rule exclusively upon the idea of an “authority of the past” that had been distinctive for the pre-modern age and served as a regulator for political life. Rather, political institutions were now forced to reassert their legitimacy by continuous action, activity and innovation. Monarchs, favored by their legal abstraction into “constitutional bodies”, were increasingly judged from a rational perspective, in which former awe for the offi ce holder was now replaced by pragmatic respect. Within an increasingly “functional” understanding of monarchy,8 the main factor of legitimacy of the rulers was their ability to meet public expectations. In former days, indeed, monarchs might tell and write about freedom or constitutional government, and yet go on governing like a “Bonapartism” as Hazard and Promise 49 despot; but in the nineteenth century “the royal amateurs would now be taken at their word, and their pleasant speculations turned into anxious realities”. 9 Th e framework within which monarchical power could be exercised aft er the revolutionary experiences was aptly characterized by Talleyrand in his fi nal report on the Congress of Vienna, addressed to Louis XVIII and written immediately aft er Napoleon’s Hundred Days.10 Th e “principle of legitimacy”, Talleyrand pointed out there, was endangered most by those of its supporters who confused “source” and “exercise” of state power and would therefore mistake “legitimate” for “absolute” authority. 11 He stressed that it was of vital importance that the exercise of power was adjusted to the Zeitgeist . Fighting the spirit of the time was doomed to failure: the nature of legitimacy had changed, and “divine right” was no longer a reliable basis for monarchical rule. 12 A t t h e present stage of history, only rule that guaranteed the happiness and peace of its subjects would be legitimate. Th e virtues and positive traits of the sovereign monarch alone would not suffi ce. It was stable institutions which had to be set up as reliable cornerstones of trust. In Talleyrand’s eyes, yet more was needed to ensure their durability: It would be pointless for institutions to guarantee people happiness. Even if they did, they could not inspire confi dence without establishing that form of government that contemporary general opinion considers the only one capable of reaching this goal. 13 Yet which form of government would indeed correspond best with public opinion and be thus truly “legitimate” and most apt to achieve the aim of guaranteeing the “luck of the peoples” was anything but self-evident, remaining a matter of fi erce debate even during the Restoration period. It was in the context of debates on forms of political legitimacy and how to organize political—and particularly monarchical— power that politico-theoretical refl ections on the classifi cation and assessment of the Napoleonic experience continued and advanced aft er 1814/1815. At the end of the day, “Napoleonism” shared a fundamental similarity with constitutional monarchism notwithstanding obvious diff erences between the two: while they were diametrically opposed in terms of defi ning the ultimate holder of “sovereignty” and “constituent power”, they equally represented attempts to reconcile the legacy of the Revolution with monocratic rule. In De l’esprit de conqu ê te et de l’usurpation of 1814, 14 Constant suggested that despotism was an antiquated form of domination. He argued that what had been created in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic age were regimes that penetrated and controlled society far more than ever before, their power to mobilize citizens deriving from revolutionary and democratic energies unleashed in this form for the fi rst time.