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This second part of "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" will consist of two volumes. - Popular insurrections and the laws of the Constituent Assembly end in destroying all government in France; this forms the subject of the present volume. - A party arises around an extreme doctrine, grabs control of the government, and rules in conformity with its doctrine. This will form the subject of the second volume.
A third volume would be required to criticize and evaluate the source material. I lack the necessary space: I merely state the rule that I have observed. The trustworthiest testimony will always be that of an eyewitness, especially
* When this witness is an honorable, attentive, and intelligent man,
* When he is writing on the spot, at the moment, and under the dictate of the facts themselves,
* When it is obvious that his sole object is to preserve or furnish information,
* When his work instead of a piece of polemics planned for the needs of a cause, or a passage of eloquence arranged for popular effect is a legal deposition, a secret report, a confidential dispatch, a private letter, or a personal memento.
The nearer a document approaches this type, the more it merits
confidence, and supplies superior material. - I have found many of
this kind in the national archives, principally in the manuscript
correspondence of ministers, intendants, sub-delegates, magistrates,
and other functionaries; of military commanders, officers in the
army, and gendarmerie; of royal commissioners, and of the Assembly;
of administrators of departments, districts, and municipalities,
besides persons in private life who address the King, the National
Assembly, or the ministry. Among these are men of every rank,
profession, education, and party. They are distributed by hundreds
and thousands over the whole surface of the territory. They write
apart, without being able to consult each other, and without even
knowing each other. No one is so well placed for collecting and
transmitting accurate information. None of them seek literary
effect, or even imagine that what they write will ever be published.
They draw up their statements at once, under the direct impression
of local events. Testimony of this character, of the highest order,
and at first hand, provides the means by which all other testimony
ought to be verified. - The footnotes at the bottom of the pages
indicate the condition, office, name, and address of those decisive
witnesses. For greater certainty I have transcribed as often as
possible their own words. In this way the reader, confronting the
texts, can interpret them for himself, and form his own opinions; he
will have the same documents as myself for arriving at his
conclusions, and, if he is pleased to do so, he may conclude
otherwise. As for allusions, if he finds any, he himself will have
introduced them, and if he applies them he is alone responsible for
them. To my mind, the past has features of its own, and the
portrait here presented resembles only the France of the past. I
have drawn it without concerning myself with the discussions of the
day; I have written as if my subject were the revolutions of
Florence or Athens. This is history, and nothing more, and, if I
may fully express myself, I esteem my vocation of historian too
highly to make a cloak of it for the concealment of another.
(December 1877).
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