fustel de coulanges and the action francaise

Fustel De Coulanges and the Action FrançaiseAuthor(s): Stephen WilsonSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1973), pp. 123-134Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708948 .Accessed: 02/02/2011 16:34

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FUSTEL DE COULANGES AND THE ACTION FRANCAISE.

BY STEPHEN WILSON

The year 1905 was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Fustel de Coulanges, the historian and author of La Cite Antique. Surprisingly the oc- casion was celebrated with eclat by the royalist Action Francaise movement;1 surprisingly, because homage to Fustel de Coulanges, a severe academic, came strangely from a group of writers whose main purpose was polemical; surprisingly because the object of this royalist admiration had been tutor to the Empress Eugenie, and subsequently a firm political Republican.2 But the history of the Action Frangaise was full of surprises, not least in the matter of the ideological pedigree which the movement invented for itself,3 and which historians have sometimes mistakenly taken at face value as an indication of the real intellectual origins of Integral Nationalism.4 The Action Frangaise pedigree included the obvious traditionalist royalist canon: Maistre, Bonald, Le Play, La Tour du Pin, though even here Maurras and his followers felt the need to clip the tradition into shape, and some found the master's addition of Comte to the list hard to take.5 When more exotic recruits were brought in as "mattres de la Contre-Revolution," the need for adaptation was even greater. So post-1870 Taine and Renan were admitted with reservations and warn- ings,6 Proudhon in snippets as a "populist" gesture,7 while very real influences

'Charles Maurras, La Bagarre de Fustel (Paris, 1928); E. Weber, Action Francaise (Stanford, 1962), 36-38.

2Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830-89) was perhaps the most important French historian of the post-Romantic generation. His main works include La Cite An-

tique (Paris, 1864), and Histoire des Institutions Politiques de l'ancienne France, 6 vols.

(Paris, 1875-92). For his life and works, see P. Guiraud, Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1896), and J-M. Tourneur-Aumont, Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1931).

3The major work here is Louis Dimier, Les Maitres de la Contre-Revolution (Paris, 1917); but see also Leon de Montesquiou, Pensees choisies de nos maitres (Paris, 1908); L. de Montesquiou, Le realisme de Bonald (Paris, 1908); Joseph Berenger, L'Action Francaise, ses origines, sa methode, sa doctrine (Paris, 1920); Georges Valois, L'Homme qui vient (Paris, 1923); L. de Gerin-Ricard, Les idees de Joseph de Maistre et la doctrine de Maurras (La Rochelle, 1929); R. Johannet, Joseph de Maistre (Paris, 1932); M. de Roux, Etudes pour portraits de maitres (Paris, 1936).

4C. T. Muret, French Royalist Doctrines since the Revolution (New York, 1933); A. V. Roche, Les Idees traditionalistes en France de Rivarol d Charles Maurras (Chicago, 1937).

5Maurras, L'Avenir de l'Intelligence (Paris, 1905); L. de Montesquiou, Le systeme politique d'Auguste Comte (Paris, 1907). For the opposing view, see Leon Daudet, Le

stupide dix-neuvieme siecle (Paris, 1929), 145, 148; L. Dimier, Vingt ans d'Action Francaise (Paris, 1926), 18, 25-27, 81-83, 93-100; Comte is significantly omitted from Les Maitres de la Contre-Revolution.

6For Taine, see esp. Maurras, Oeuvres Capitales (Paris, 1954), III, 505-17; Andre Bellessort, Les Intellectuels.et l'Avenement de la Troisieme Republique (Paris, 1931), 217-37; Pierre Lasserre, "Taine historien et critique," Faust en France et autres etudes

123

124 STEPHEN WILSON

such as Drumont and Nietzsche were conveniently forgotten by many of the movement's leaders.8 This context helps to explain the "kidnapping" of Fustel de Coulanges, and the affair merits attention not only because Fustel was prob- ably the most acclaimed "master" of the Action Fran;aise, but also because the attitude of the movement to him and his work and the use made of them provide interesting insights into its ideological intentions and techniques. As Maurras wrote in 1928: "Si l'on voulait savoir quel fut celui des premiers 'coups' de l'Action Frangaise, qui, definissant sa doctrine, marqua le mieux son temperament, il ne faudrait hesiter a designer la petite bagarre aca- demique et litteraire que dechaina le nom de Fustel de Coulanges. .. ."9

Fustel was adopted by the Action Frangaise as an opponent of Romanti- cism and Germanism, twin intellectual enemies in its nationalist cosmos,10 and as a man who, putting the fullest value on the past and on the unity of French history defined patriotism as the love of that past, thus quarreling with the University and the exponents of "l'histoire officielle."11 He was seen as an exponent before his time of Maurras' "empirisme organisateur," and as the historian of France par excellence.'2 This claim should be seen in the light of the movement's neo-traditionalist emphasis on historiography as a means of political argument, and its conviction that its primary dispute with the Third Republic lay in the area of public education.l3 Moreover, the claim was

(Paris, 1929), 83-92; Daudet, Etudes et milieux litteraires (Paris, 1927), 2-3, 20-23; Daudet, Du Roman a l'Histoire (Paris, 1938), 122, 179-85. For Renan, see Maurras, Oeuvres Capitales, III, 499-504; Bellessort, op. cit., 135-43, 150-59; Dimier, Les Mattres de la Contre-Revolution, 175-90.

7Dimier, Les Maitres de la Contre-Revolution, 236-58; Maurras, La democratie religieuse (Paris, 1921), 476-87; Daudet, Flammes (Paris, 1930), 52-69, 83; H. Vaugeois, Notre Pays (Paris, 1916), 102-06; for a critical view, see G. Sorel, Materiaux d'une theorie du proletariat (Paris, 1921), 434-49.

8For Drumont, see Daudet, La France en alarme (Paris, 1904), 196-203; Daudet, "Edouard Drumont ou le sens de la race," Revue Universelle (Jan. 1, 1921). For Nietzsche, see Maurras, "Le Tien et le Mien dans Nietzsche," Quand les Francais ne s'aimaient pas (Paris, 1926), 111-22; Lasserre, "Reflexions sur Frederic Nietzsche," Revue Universelle (15 June, 1921); also G. Bianquis, Nietzsche en France (Paris, 1929), 48-52; Pedro Descoqs, A travers l'oeuvre de M. Charles Maurras (Paris, 1913), 392- 403; Jules Pierre, Reponse d M. Maurras: L'Action Francaise et ses directions paTennes (Paris, 1914); R. Virtanen, "Nietzsche and the Action Francaise," JHI, 11 (April 1950), 191-214.

9Maurras, La Bagarre de Fustel, 5. 1'Ibid., 10-11. 1For the Action Francaise campaign against the "official" history of the Univer-

sity, see Dimier, Les PrOjuges ennemis de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1927); Lasserre, La Doctrine officielle de l'Universite (Paris, 1921); and my The Historians of the Ac- tion Francaise (unpublished thesis; Cambridge, 1966), Ch. 4.

"2In addition to books by Maurras, Dimier, and Bellessort already cited, see L. de Gerin-Ricard, L'Histoire des institutions politiques de Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1936); Daudet, Le stupide dix-neuvieme siPcle, 122-25. As A. V. Roche points out (op. cit., 86), the Action Francaise writers seem to have had a rather limited knowledge of Fustel's more serious work.

'3Note 11 above; and my "The 'Action Francaise' in French Intellectual Life," The Historical Journal, 12, 2 (1969).

COULANGES AND L'ACTION FRANCAISE 125

naively given a concrete basis in a kind of alleged apostolic succession. Frederic Amouretti, one of the inspirers of the Action Frangaise, and a powerful influence on its ideas, had, it was said, been acclaimed by Fustel shortly before his death as his only true disciple.'4 Amouretti did not live to fulfill this destiny, but the tradition passed, according to Maurras and others, to the Ac- tion Frangaise school of historians as a whole, and the movement was thus the guardian and true interpreter of "cette haute doctrine de Fustel de Coulanges que nous avons dO exhumer et restaurer de nos mains .. ."15 The Action Frangaise writers referred to the "doctrine" of Fustel de Coulanges despite his firm rejection of preconceived ideas in history: "L'esprit de recherche et de doute est incompatible avec toute idee preconcue, toute croyance exclusive, tout esprit de parti. II faut n'avoir de prejuge ni en politique, ni en religion. Il faut n'etre ni r6publicain, ni monarchiste....."6

F. Lot, an undisputed pupil of Fustel, suggested that he was as much an "avocat" as an historian, that behind his facade of disinterested erudition lay a passionate desire to convince.17 If so, the error of the Action Fransaise writers was not to suppose that Fustel was more "committed" than he himself had allowed, but to mistake the nature of the commitment. They were con- cerned not to lift the veil of objectivity, so dear to Fustel and his contempo- raries, but only to fit his work into their own nationalist categories. They based this attempt very largely on Fustel's essay in the Revue des Deux Mondes (September 1872): "De la manitre d'Ecrire l'histoire en France et en Allemagne depuis cinquante ans."18 There Fustel contrasted the German method of writing history, which in spite of its facade of pure erudition was nationalistic, with the French, which was the very opposite, praising and elevating Germany and England at the expense of France.

Whereas German erudition had prepared for the Franco-Prussian war by suggesting that Alsace, Holland, or Lombardy, if need be, were German, French scholarship, by dividing Frenchmen at home and earning them scorn abroad, had enervated national defence. Fustel went on to say that, in time of war, French historians could not be blamed for resisting German erudition which was invading "... les frontieres de notre conscience nationale." This was a familiar Action Frangaise theme, but the Action Frangaise ignored the fact that Fustel restricted its validity to wartime, and his reservation: "Nous continuerons a professer, en depit des Allemands, que l'erudition n'a pas de

patrie." Fustel was not setting up German nationalist historiography as a model in the way that the anti-German Action Francaise writers paradoxi-

'4Amouretti's original version of the story was published in the Revue d'Action Francaise (Nov. 1, 1900); it was repeated in A. Cottez, Frederic Amouretti (Paris, 1937), 14-15; Maurras, Quand les FranCais ne s'aimaient pas, 42-61; Gerin-Ricard, op. cit., 116-20.

15Maurras, Gaulois, Germains, Latins (Paris, 1926), 81-82. 16Fustel de Coulanges, "Fragments sur le methode historique," Revue de synthese

historique, 2 (1901), 262, cited by Tourneur-Aumont, op. cit., 221. 17F. Lot, Letter to Marc Bloch (April 17, 1930), "Psychologies d'historiens. Deux

lettres de Fustel de Coulanges a Gabriel Monod et une lettre de Ferdinand Lot sur Fustel," Annales, 9 (1954), 149-56.

18Reprinted in Fustel de Coulanges, Questions historiques (Paris, 1893), 3-16.

126 STEPHEN WILSON

cally supposed. They quoted from his 1872 article again and again, and Maurras twice republished a piece written in November 1902 in which he paraphrased Fustel's article at length, with long quotations.19

According to Maurras, Fustel taught that the first duty of a great nation was to love itself in its past. He welcomed Fustel's attack on liberal historians who preferred other cduntries, Germany or England, to France, who saw the Germans as virtuous though in fact they were depraved, as regenerators of Gaul though in fact they disturbed a peaceful and established civilization. French historians were indulgent towards the German Emperors who pillaged Italy and exploited the Church in the struggle of the Empire and the Papacy, yet they condemned the Italian wars of Charles VIII and Francois Ier; they favored the Reformation against the Renaissance; they believed Saint-Simon when he said that Louis XIV waged war for frivolous reasons; they did not reproach William III with destroying the Republic in Holland, nor the Elector of Brandenburg for waging aggressive war for forty years, yet they attacked Louis XIV for taking Lille from the Spaniards and for accepting Strasbourg when it freely gave itself to him; they were for Frederick II against Louis XV. These were all reproaches that Action Frangaise writers were to take up in their attack on "l'histoire officielle." Maurras went on to quote with relish: "Notre patriotisme ne consiste le plus souvent qu'a honnir nos rois, a detester notre aristocratie, a medire toutes nos institutions. Cette sorte de patriotisme n'est au fond que la haine de tout ce qui est francais.... Ils brisent la tradition franpaise et ils s'imaginent qu'il restera un patriotisme franCais.... Chacun fait son ideal hors de France.... Le veritable patriotisme, c'est l'amour du passe, c'est le respect pour les generations qui nous ont precedees."20 As a declaration in a time of national crisis this was legitimate enough and need not, as Fustel himself pointed out, have been prejudicial, as an attitude, to genuine scholarship. Fustel was not advocating that French historians should be for Louis XV against Frederick, or for the Renaissance against the Ref- ormation. It was rather the whole attitude of being for and against that he was condemning. Nor was he condoning the wars of Louis XIV, as Maurras might have discovered by turning to another essay reprinted with "De la maniere," in Questions Historiques, which appeared in fact at a far more critical time than the other: January 1, 1871. There Fustel damned the "esprit de conquete" of Louis XIV and of Louvois, which was contrary to the will of the nation expressed by Colbert and others, and he saw in Louvois and Louis the ancestors of Bismarck and William I.

Fustel was lamenting French lack of patriotism, but he considered that real

patriotism was being seriously undermined by the French post-revolutionary tradition of using history as a means of political propaganda: "Ecrire l'histoire

19Maurras, Oeuvres Capitales, III, 527-32. 20These "saintes paroles d'or," Maurras, Pour un jeune Francais (Paris, 1949), 56

were often quoted by the Action Francaise; Dimier read them at the 1905 celebration where they were greeted with applause: Dimier, "Discours prononce a la commemoration du 75e anniversaire de la naissance de Fustel de Coulanges," Les Prejuges ennemis de l'histoire de France, 439-66; also Maurras, La Bagarre de Fustel, 82-92, and Louis Dunoyer, "Discours," Cahiers du Cercle Fustel de Coulanges (Oct. 1928).


de France etait une faton de travailler pour un parti et de combattre un ad- versaire.... L'un etait republicain et se croyait tenu a calomnier l'ancienne monarchie; l'autre etait Royaliste et calomniait le regime nouveau. Aucun d'eux ne s'aper;evait qu'il ne reussissait qu'a frapper la France.... L'histoire ainsi pratiquee n'enseignait aux Frangais que l'indifference, aux etrangers que le mepris."21 The Action Francaise writers were of course great practitioners in this tradition, but in their eyes Fustel's criticism of it applied only to their

republican opponents. They took his remarks in favor of an understanding of the ancien regime to imply as a natural corollary the condemnation of the French Revolution, a crude deduction that Fustel's letter to Mommsen, for example, disclaims.22 The Action Francaise ignored this, resting their case instead on the general implications of Fustel's work, and particularly on his thesis that the Germanic invasions of Gaul were of negligible importance. In his quotations from L'Histoire des Institutions, Maurras concentrated on passages that minimize the impact of the barbarian invasions, and stress the Roman framework of Gaul.23 The Action Fran9aise writers, in fact, took

quite seriously the ancient aristocratic theory of Boulainvilliers, which saw French history in terms of the struggle of two races, and Fustel was hailed by Maurras and his school as the man who had finally liberated French history by refuting the theory of "two races" from the documents, thus reestablishing the unity of French history.24 Till then "l'histoire officielle" had been able to maintain and propagate a history of mutual hate and civil war: "Elle se sert des Albigeois et des Camisards, des Bagaudes et des Templiers, de la Saint- Barthelemy et des Dragonnades: ces incidents, ces accidents, ces antiques blessures vite cicatrisees par le bienfait des hommes et par la fortune du

temps, on y insiste, on les avive, on y verse le flot acide et bouillonant de nos divisions d'aujourd'hui, on s'efforce d'y retenir l'attention pour mieux rejeter dans l'oubli les ^ages de paix et d'union qui precederent et suiverent. II n'est pas question de l'ensemble de notre passe, mais uniquement, selon la penetrante expression de notre ami M. Rend de Marans, de nos 'schismes'."25 The theory of "two races" had served above all to consecrate the Revolution as the just revenge of a subject race, or a "holy war"; Fustel reduced it, as Pierre Gaxotte wrote in 1928, to the vulgar and loathsome muddle of outbreaks and crimes that it really was.26 Fustel's history was the only one that did not authorize class struggles between Frenchmen, that presented "l'Utile," "le Bon," and "le National," with "le Vrai."27

The Action Francaise suggested that this fundamental criticism of the Revolution, added to Fustel's hostility to Germanism, incensed the "official historians" of the University who still clung to Boulainvilliers, to the tradition

21Fustel de Coulanges, Questions historiques, 6. 22Ibid., 509. 23Maurras, La Bagarre de Fustel, 14-36.

24Maurras, Dictionnaire politique et critique (Paris, 1932-33), II, 114-19; Jean

Heritier, "Fustel de Coulanges et 1'idee de conquete," Revue Universelle (1 aout 1930). 25Maurras, La Democratie religieuse, 205. 26Pierre Gaxotte, "Fustel de Coulanges," The Criterion, 8 (Dec. 1928). 27Maurras, La Bagarre de Fustel, 10-11; Daudet, Moloch et Minerve (Paris, 1924),

163.

128 STEPHEN WILSON

of the Enlightenment, to Montesquieu, Thierry, and Guizot.28 Hence they, at first, attacked Fustel's work mercilessly, driving him to an early death, and then more subtly forced his work into oblivion.29 The main agent in this work of Republican defence, for whatever threatened the Revolution threatened the Republic, was Gabriel Monod, "le sentinelle allemand dans l'universite."30 Fustel was only rescued from this neglect by the Action Francaise celebration of 1905. The Action Francaise position here invites at least two important criticisms. Fustel's main thesis, that there were really no Barbarian invasions in the popularly-imagined sense, that feudalism was mainly the product of so- cial and political disintegration and owed nothing in particular in its charac- ter to the Germans who happened to provoke it, that the Merovingian govern- ment was more than three-quarters Roman, met with basic criticism in his day, and is now largely discredited. D'Arbois de Jubainville claimed that Fustel ignored the proven falsity of several Merovingian dipl6mes, upon which he based part of his thesis, and suggested that he was led to this obstinacy by the fact that his motive was not disinterested study, but a desire to disprove the romantic theories of Thierry.31 Monod, though he accepted the main thesis on the nature of the invasions, suggested that the Germans did not have that respect for the Empire that Fustel attributes to them, and criticized Fustel for assuming that Thierry's theories were "l'opinion regnante."32 Marc Bloch, more recently, has pointed out that the theory of the invasions being carried out by mere "bandes," does not tally with the documentary, let alone the archeological and place-name evidence.33 There is no evidence that Fustel's critics, in rejecting his theory, which was not original, had to fall back on that of Boulainvilliers and the Romantics. The only two prominent French thinkers of the late nineteenth century who did maintain the theory of "two races" were Gobineau and Drumont.34 Bloch has indicated how study of the problem was vitiated by posing it in the artificial terms: Roman or German?

28E.g., Bellessort, op. cit., 208-17. 29Gaxotte, op. cit.; Daudet, Etudes et milieux litteraires, 20-23; Maurras, Reflexions

sur la Revolution de 1789 (Paris, 1948), Introd. 30See Maurras's article of this title, Quand les Franqais ne s'aimaient pas, 62-92;

also Maurras, Gaulois, Germains, Latins, 81-82. 31H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, Deux manieres d'ecrire l'histoire. Critique de Bossuet,

d'Augustin Thierry et de Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1896), 7-9, 94-102. D'Arbois de Jubainville (1827-1910) was a distinguished Celtic scholar in his day, but not free from a polemical tendency.

32G. Monod, Revue Historique, 47 (1891), 334-39; idem, "Du role de l'opposition des races et des nationalites dans la dissolution de l'empire carolingien," Annuaire de la Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes (1895).

33M. Bloch, "Sur les Grandes Invasions (1945)," Melanges historiques (Paris, 1963), I, 90-109. Maurras had argued that place-names could not be used as evidence of the size or extent of invasions: "Plus une race est etrangere, mieux son passage est accuse dans la nomenclature des lieux . . . le nom general de toutes nos provinces, la France, ne designe pas le caractere gallo-romain qu'elles ont en commun, mais la petite horde franke qui leur a donne quelques rois." Maurras, Anthinea (Paris, 1920), 240-41.

34The Action Francaise attitude towards Gobineau and racist theories was on the whole hostile; see Maurras, "Le systeme de Gobineau," Gaulois, Germains, Latins, 29-30; J. Heritier, "L'histoire dans les romans de Gobineau," Revue du Siecle (1 Mai 1925).


Fustel was not unaware of this, for he expressly claimed that he was not a Romanist. But Fustel would surely have rejected the interpretation put upon his thesis by the Action Francaise. He did not see it as the pretext for any con- temporary political argument. The nationalist arguments from history which sought to prove that the Rhineland was Celtic and Roman, for example, would seem to be explicitly disavowed by his letter to Mommsen, in which he said that ethnographical or philological considerations had nothing to do with the case of Alsace: "Ce qui est actuel et vivant, ce sont les volontes, les idees, les interets, les affections. L'histoire vous dit peut-etre que l'Alsace est un pays allemand; mais le present vous prouve qu'elle est un pays francais." Alsace was French because it wanted to be. Fustel attacked the German idea of the principle of nationalities, which would justify her conquering Holland, Switzerland, parts of Austria and Russia, and put in its place the liberal principle that a people has the right to resist and free itself from a foreign power.35 Although the Action Francaise, particularly in its attack on Pangermanism, condemned the principle of nationalities, it never made so clear a definition of what was intended by the term, perhaps because it was unable to adopt Fustel's contrasting principle.36

It is clear then that Fustel's critics were not criticizing a view of France, which he had built on his particular interpretation of her origins, for he would not have based his view on those grounds. As he told Mommsen, they had each left their studies to discuss the problem of Alsace. Fustel's view of the influence of the past on the present was far more subtle and less doctrinaire, as we shall see later. Nor is it true that the University attacked Fustel out of hand and then condemned him to oblivion because his ideas challenged its orthodoxy. Fustel's exasperation at the criticisms of his Histoire des Institu- tions, which led him to rewrite and alter the plan of his original work, exasperation aggravated by illness, led him to obstinacy in his views and bitterness towards those who opposed them, but this attitude was not always recipro- cated.37 Fustel was employed and esteemed by the University where he was an influential teacher;38 Monod reviewed his works, as they appeared, in the Revue Historique, and with his criticisms always expressed his admiration for their author. When he died, he wrote: "La mort de M. Fustel de Coulanges est un des coups les plus sensibles qui puissent frapper la science et les lettres fran:aises...," and concluded, "... il restera par ses livres comme par sa vie un sujet d'admiration et d'enseignement pour les gens a venir." Elsewhere he said: "... il etait incapable de laisser les preoccupations politiques influer son jugement historique."39 Fustel too, had been a fairly regular contributor to

35Fustel de Coulanges, Questions historiques, 504-12. 36See my The Historians of the Action Francaise, ch. 8. 37E.g., Fustel de Coulanges, La Monarchie franque (Paris, 1888), Preface; also

"Psychologies d'historiens. Deux lettres de Fustel de Coulanges a Gabriel Monod . .," Annales, loc cit.

38He taught at the University of Strasbourg, at the Ecole Normale in Paris, and at the Sorbonne, where a chair in medieval history was especially created for him: Tourneur-Aumont, op. cit., 13-18. Lot, loc. cit., testifies to his influence as a teacher.

39G. Monod, "Fustel de Coulanges," Revue Historique, 41 (1889), 277-85, and 47 (1891), 334; idem, Portraits et Souvenirs (Paris, 1897), 148.

130 STEPHEN WILSON

the Revue. Maurras saw in Monod's tribute the purest hypocrisy and pictured him as making use of his position as director of the Revue, as maitre de con- ference d'histoire at the Ecole Normale and as directeur des etudes histo-

riques at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes to damn Fustel to obscurity.40 This claim must be seen in the context of Maurras' attacks on the Monod family as the prime example of the meteque Protestant family established in France at the expense of the French, and, like all Action Franqaise excursions into "l'histoire occulte," cannot be taken very seriously.41 Nor was Monod the ig- noramus that Maurras claimed he was, for, in fact, Monod was especially well-qualified to criticize and judge Fustel's work.42 The Academy crowned the ensemble of Fustel's work; he was elected to the Institut; and his posthumous works were published faithfully by Camille Jullian, a pupil who, in the spirit of his master, was free with his criticisms.43 La Cite Antique was generally recognized as a classic. The Action Frangaise commemoration did perhaps help to bring Fustel back into public notice, and his centenary was celebrated at the Sorbonne in the presence of the President of the Republic.44 But on a profounder level public recognition or the lack of it was unimportant. Fustel's lasting influence was as a writer, and lay, as Bloch and others have remarked, in his compelling style rather than in any message he had to convey.45

The Action Frangaise, however, adopted Fustel for partisan reasons; they took from their reading of him a confirmation of the unity of French history, a unity that in their view excluded the Revolution and most of the nineteenth century, and a belief in the Latin origins of France.46 They based their read-

40The historian, Auguste Longnon, who expressed sympathies for the Action Francaise, and who took part in the 1905 celebration taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, and Funck-Brentano, a committed Action Francaise writer was a pupil of Monod: Annuaire de la Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes (1896, 1912-13); these facts qualify the sharp distinction made by Maurras between the Action Franqaise and the University.

41Maurras, "Les Monod peints par eux-memes," (Oct. 1899), Au signe de Flore (Paris, 1931), Bk. IV.

42Monod was the author of Etudes critiques sur les sources de l'histoire meroving- ienne (Paris, 1872 & 1885); and Etudes critiques sur les sources de l'historie carolingienne (Paris, 1898). Fustel fully recognized his competence and suggested his name as sup- pleant to Lavisse when the latter went from the Ecole Normale to the Sorbonne: Annuaire de la Bibliotheque de I'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1912-13).

43The Action Francaise attitude towards Jullian fluctuated. In 1901, Maurras was favorable (Gaulois, Germain, Latins, 15), but later he called him a "romantic" and a bad disciple of Fustel, Pour un jeune FranCais, 51-59. Jacques Bainville satirized his Celticism in Couleurs du temps (Paris, 1928), 231-34.

44According to Gaston Dodu, Revue des Etudes Historiques (Jan.-Feb. 1933), 66, the 1930 celebration attracted little notice.

45M. Bloch, "Fustel de Coulanges historien des origines francaises," Revue Interna- tionale de l'Enseignement (July 15, 1930); F. Lot, op. cit.

46"Nous nous sommes faits latins il y a dix-huit siecles; nous sommes rest6s latins pendant toute notre histoire . . . aujourd'hui encore nous sommes latins, par le genre d'esprit, par les gouts, la maniere de penser." Fustel de Coulanges, Lecons a I'Imperatrice sur les origines de la civilisation francaise (Paris, 1930), 119; compare Maurras: "Je suis Romain par tout le positif de mon etre, par tout ce qu'y joignent le


ing mainly on writings produced in the circumstances of the Franco-Prussian war. They learnt little historical method from Fustel; they ignored the fact that he used the very "German" methodology that they condemned. Louis Di- mier may have adopted his reverence for the document, but his narrow conception of what a document was, as indeed the whole Action Francaise ob- session with its own ancient texts, annotated and rehashed to the point of absurdity, are as far as possible from the spirit of an historian, whose ultimate aim was the widest synthesis.47 There are, however, affinities, which deserve attention, between Fustel's historical views and attitudes and those of the Ac- tion Frangaise. First, the Action Frangaise shared Fustel's belief in the over- whelming influence of ideas in history, a belief that was developed in France in the nineteenth century particularly by the Catholic Right, but which was also a basic assumption of liberals and Republicans with their emphasis on pure politics and education. The force of ideas and beliefs in society is the thesis dominating La Cite Antique: "La nature physique a sans nul doute quelque action sur l'histoire des peuples, mais les croyances de l'homme en ont une bien plus puissante."48 Maurras' view was similar;49 the Action Fran- gaise, for example, attributed the outbreak of the French Revolution mainly to the influence of the ideas of thephilosophes, and saw modern French history as a process of decline and disintegration caused by "les idees fausses." This presumption explains the movement's own emphasis on propaganda, and Dimier, in one of the movement's important doctrinal works, made it the basis of his historiography. The modern historical school, which held sway in France, distrusted "les temoignages" in favor of "les monuments," he claimed, which was to substitute archeology for history; for the past was preserved essentially in human memory; human memory, tradition in effect, was the historical fact par excellence, and the role of the historian was to trace and thus preserve tradition. Dimier quoted approvingly Fustel's plea for Plutarch: "... nous pensons que, si contestes que puissent etre les renseignements donnes par les anciens, ils valent mieux que nos conjectures modernes...."50 But whereas Fustel made this plea in the cause of genuine understanding of the past, Dimier was able to turn it into a condemnation of the Free-Thought stemming from the Revolution.

Dimier was more of a scholar than most of the Action Franqaise historians, among whom a certain journalistic scorn for scrupulous documentation seems to have prevailed, justified often by an appeal to the common memory. Di-

plaisir, le travail, la pensee, la m6moire, la raison, la science, les arts, la politique et la

po6sie des hommes vivants et reunis avant moi." La politique religieuse (Paris, 1914), 396.

47Henri Berr, a pupil of Fustel, founded the Revue de Synthese Historique in 1900. Tourneur-Aumont, op. cit., 184-86. See M. Siegel, "Henri Berr's Revue de Synthese Historique," History and Theory, 9 (1970).

48Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite Antique (Paris, 1870), 241.

49Stephen Wilson, "History and Traditionalism: Maurras and the Action Francaise," JHI, 29 (July-Sept. 1968), 365-80.

50Dimier, Les Maitres de la Contre-Revolution, 196-206; Fustel de Coulanges, Nouvelles Recherches sur quelques problemes de l'histoire (Paris, 1891), 56.

132 STEPHEN WILSON

mier's narrow conception of what constituted historical source material points to another aspect of Action Francaise historiography hard to reconcile with Fustel's method and practice. The Action Franqaise slogan "Politique d'abord," however unrealistic in the context of its general activity, certainly informed its historiographical enterprises. Action Francaise history was political history, viewed usually from a national level. Nevertheless, Action Franqaise writers felt an attraction towards Fustel's socio-historical stand- point. Like de Maistre, like Taine, Fustel stressed the inescapable historical foundations and framework of societies. "Je vais vous parler des choses tres vieilles," he told the Empress Eugenie, "mais, qui, toutes vieilles qu'elles sont, durent encore et vivent encore a l'epoque oii nous sommes, de choses qui datent de deux a trois mille ans, et que nous retrouvons soit autour de nous dans nos institutions politiques et nos habitudes de societe, soit en nous-memes dans nos idees, dans nos arts, dans notre pensee."51

Fustel was here giving voice to the kind of traditionalism which was developed later by Barres and by Maurras himself and which explains their wide- spread intellectual appeal. Fustel's belief in the influence of the past on the present meant a belief which the Action Frangaise shared, in the influence of institutions rather than of individuals. "Ne croyons pas ... que nous pensions avec notre raison propre. L'instrument de notre pensee, c'est l'heritage de millions d'hommes qui nous ont precedes," wrote Dimier;52 and Amouretti said of Fustel: "... comme il etait clairvoyant et raisonnable, l'histoire des hommes de France qu'il a ecrite s'est appelee Histoire des Institutions."53 For the Action Francaise, of course, France's political and cultural salvation could only come from the institution of monarchy. Fustel's emphasis on institutions was therefore very welcome, and passages could be found that seemed to lead in a specifically royalist direction; for example: "Les institutions politiques ne sont jamais l'oeuvre de la volonte d'un homme; la volonte de tout un peuple ne suffit pas a les creer. Les faits humains qui les engendrent ne sont pas ceux que le caprice d'une g6enration puisse changer. Les peuples ne sont pas gouvernes suivant qu'il leur plait de l'etre mais suivant que l'ensemble de leurs interets et le fonds de leurs opinions exigent qu'ils le soient.... I1 faut plusieurs ages d'homme pour fonder un regime politique et plusieurs autres ages pour l'abattre."54 Fustel's historical conservatism does not have the same pessimistic tone as Maurras's, but he did, without advocating any specifically Right-wing solution, draw specific political conclusions from it similar to those of the Action Francaise, although of course these were not systematic, and they were not public utterances. He put the same kind of pre- mium on success in politics as did Maurras; he was hostile to any active form of political democracy, and he also expressed antiparliamentary opinions.55 The Action Frangaise was able to claim, too, that Fustel was a national Re-

5"Fustel de Coulanges, Lemons a l'lmperatrice sur les origines de la civilisation

francaise, 1. 52Dimier, Les PrMjuges ennemis de l'histoire de France, 464. 53Maurras, La Politique (Paris, 1928), 18. 54Fustel de Coulanges, La Gaule romaine (Paris, 1891), xii. 55Tourneur-Aumont, op. cit., 60, 117; Guiraud, op. cit., 244.


publican, and that he had written a devastating analysis of democracy in the republics of antiquity.56

Another feature of Fustel's work that the Action Frangaise writers held up for praise was its positivism. Maurras wrote an article: "L'Histoire de Fustel verifiee par la philosophie de Comte."57 Maurras found in Fustel's work the same conflict between ideas and institutions, the individual and the past, will and determinism, which bedevilled his own attempts to give his political doctrine a "positivist" base. Maurras greatly admired the way Fustel resolved this conflict, at least on a personal level, through his instructions for his funeral: "Je desire un service conforme a l'usage des Francais, c'est-a-dire, un service a l'eglise. Je ne suis, a la verite, ni pratiquant, ni croyant, mais je dois me souvenir que je suis ne dans la religion catholique et que ceux qui m'ont precedC dans la vie etaient aussi catholiques. Le patriotisme exige que si l'on ne pense pas comme les ancetres, on respecte au moins ce qu'ils ont

pense."58 Such an attitude was of course very similar to Maurras' own. What is striking, all in all, in comparing Fustel and Maurras is how close in attitude and modes of thought were these two men born nearly forty years apart. Maurras' intellectual climate was in many ways not that of the 1890's, when he in fact came to intellectual maturity, but that of the 1870's or even the 1860's. Intellectually the Action Francaise was ultraconservative in a way that it did not declare.

The Action Francaise set itself up as the heir to Fustel de Coulanges. Jacques Bainville, Pierre Gaxotte, Franz Funck-Brentano were regarded as his disciples in spirit, as Amouretti and Augustin Cochin had been his disci-

ples in fact.59 Homage was paid to Fustel at the Institut of the Action Fran-

gaise, and, most important, the "Cercles Fustel de Coulanges" were created in 1928 in order to apply his methods and ideas to the teaching of history in schools.60 Since the historiographical propaganda of the Action Francaise was aimed precisely at undoing and replacing the history teaching in State

schools, this put Fustel's work, or the Maurrasian interpretation of it at the

very centre of the movement's concerns and its action. As Left-wing critics

pointed out,61 there was an irony in this situation, for the neo-traditionalists were advocating for the future a model of society, with emphasis on the family and the cult of ancestors, which had received its classic expression in La Cite

Antique, where, of course, it was irrevocably located in the distant past. There were other ironies too. The Action Francaise writers were blind sup- porters of Fustel's thesis that there had really been no barbarian invasions, yet

56Maurras, Les chefs socialistes pendant la Guerre (Paris, 1918), 140-41; Belles- sort, op. cit., 204-06.

57Maurras, Dictionnairepolitique et critique, II, 114-19. 58Guiraud, op. cit., 266; L. de Gerin-Ricard, op. cit., 57. 59J. H&ritier, "Fustel de Coulanges et l'idee de conquete," loc. cit.; L. de Gerin-

Ricard, op. cit., 122-23; A. Dufourcq, "Pourquoi nous aimons Fustel de Coulanges," Revue des Questions Historiques (July 1, 1930).

60See Cahiers du Cercle Fustel de Coulanges (1928-39). 6"E.g., J. Jaures, L'Humanitg (Mar. 13, 1905); A. Thibaudet, Les Idees de Charles

Maurras (Paris, 1919), 265.

134 STEPHEN WILSON

the concept of the barbarian invasions is one which they frequently in- voked.62 The Action FranCaise, finally, very often quoted Fustel's remark that "L'histoire imparfaitement observee nous divise; c'est par l'histoire mieux connue que l'oeuvre de conciliation doit commencer."63 By their own

lights, this was the assumption which the Action Frangaise writers acted on. The historian, however, observing the half-century long "fronde" of the Action Francaise, must point out that, with rare exceptions, Maurras and his movement served neither the cause of political consensus nor that of historical understanding.

University of East Anglia.

62It was an axiom of Action Francaise propaganda that the Germans were ir-

revocably barbarian and thus always potential invaders of France. Bainville wrote

typically in 1906: "Devenus forts comme nation, delivres de la tutelle europeenne, les Allemands se sont vautres dans leur barbarie. Ils se sont retournes a leur etat primitif, a leur fonction de hordes envahissantes." Journal (Paris, 1948), I, 45. For a fuller de-

velopment of this thesis, see Bainville, Histoire des Deux Peuples continue' jusqu'' Hitler (Paris, 1933).

63Fustel de Coulanges, Revue des Deux Mondes (Aug. 1, 1871), 538, cited by J.

Berenger, op. cit., 27-29; Dimier, Les Prejuges ennemis de l'histoire de France, Epigraph.

fustel de coulanges and the action francaise

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