No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Extract
‘The French Empire’, wrote one historian, ‘was doubtless the forerunner of the modern police state.’ The same historian wrote elsewhere: ‘The ancien régime was brought down by violence, and the governments which had followed each other in France, since 1789, had been dictatorships : the dictatorship of the ‘Patriots’ in the Constituent Assembly, of the Girondins in the Legislative Assembly, of the Paris Commune after 10 August; then of the Committee of Public Safety; finally the dictatorship of the Directory, which destroyed, by means of coups d'état the majorities in the Legislative Assembly which displeased them.’
The police-Empire was not unrelated to the dictatorships which preceded it, and in order to understand it, we must first try to grasp the thread which links these successive dictatorships together.
- Type
- Original Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1966
References
1 Godechot, Jacques, Les institutions de la France sous la Rrvolution et I’Ernpire, Paris, 1951, p. 530.Google Scholar
2 Godechot, Jacques, Les Revolutions (1770–1799), Paris, 1963, p. 231.Google Scholar
3 Necker, J., De l’administration des finances de la France, Paris, 1784, Tome II, Chap. XII, art. 36. cf. Helvetius, De I’homme, London, 1773, Vol. I, Section I, Chap. X.Google Scholar
4 L’Esprit des Loix, XI. 4.
5 Du Contrat Social, II,7.
6 Emile, The Hague, (1st ed.), IV, 328.
7 Histoire politique de la revolution francaise, 5th ed., Paris, 1913, p. 390.
8 Meillan, representant du peuple, germinal an 111, pp. 96–7.
9 The word faction today has almost the same meaning as the word party, but with a strongly pejorative flavour. At the timc of the revolution the two words were synonymous and both were pejorative. It is curious to see that the 6th edition of the Dictionnaire de I’Académie française (1835) takes note of the unfavourable meaning attached to the word during the revolution: to its preceding definitions it added that ‘I'homme departi’ is credulous and emotional, that ‘I'esprit de parti’ is blind and unjust. This addition was already sketched in an edition which appeared at the beginning of 1814.
10 Oeuores inedites, Paris, 1821, tome 111, pp. 19–202. The article is attributed to the beginning of 1792, but the dating is doubtful.
11 Benjamin Constant: Des reactions politiqrtes, an V, 1797, pp. 13–16.
12 In November 1793 when Lyons rose and was recaptured by the troops of the Republic, Fouch6 was sent, with Collot d’Herbois to carry out the Convention’s terrible decree: ‘The city of Lyons must be destroyed (…) Upon its ruins will be raised a column which will attest to posterity the crimes and the punishment of the royalists in that city, with these words: Lyons made war onliberty—Lyons no longer exists.’ The repressive measures were vcry harsh, but it was Collot, a member of the comite de saluf public who was in charge of them. Perhaps FouchP did not dare to oppose his savage colleague, whose most violent orders he countersigned. Madelin thinks that in his case there was more cynicism than cruelty.
13 Machiavelli: Ditcorsi, I, 16
14 Madame de Stael, op. cit., p. 39.
15 Discorsi, I, 18.
16 Thus in France todav one can hear omonents of the sth ReDublic condemn the new institutions in th; name of 1iberty.But neither dcthey accept the possi‐ bility of returning to the earlier institutions, nor do they propose any new solution. In such circumstances, the word liberty sadly lacks institutional content and becomes an empty concept.
17 Published in its entirety by Henry Buisson: La Police, son histoire, Vichy, 1949, pp. 100–6
18 Quoted by d’Hauterive, E., Napoleon et sa police, Paris, 1994, pp. 52 and 68.Google Scholar
19 Madelin, L., Fouche, I, p. 448.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., p. 502.
21 Pelet (de la Lozere), Opinions sur Napoldon recueillies par un membre de son Conseil d’Etat, Paris, 1833, p. 82.
22 Memoires du chancelier Pasquier, Paris 1893, I, p. 414.
23 In October 1812, General Lahorie, whom General Malet had just released from prison, came to the Ministry of Police. He told Savary that Napoleon was dead and that a provisional government had been formed. Savary allowed himself to be led away to the La Force prison where he remained locked up for some hours.
24 Memoires du chancellier Pasquier, I, pp. 496–7.
25 Notably in IL Principe, Chap. XIV.
26 Quoted by A. Vandal, L’avdnetnent de Bonaparte, I, p. 521.
27 The letter to Fouchk is dated 24 February 1802, that to Regnault 26 February 1809.
28 Quoted by Pariset in I’Histoire de France contmporaine, Lavisse, III, p. 241. This grandiloquent metaphor seems to be an amplification of Fontenelle’s text on d’Argenson, quoted above.
29 Memories de M. Gisguet, ancien prefer de police. The first edition is dated 1840. I have quoted from the Brussels copy of 1841, Vol. I, pp. 197–214