François Guizot
Encyclopedia
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (fʁɑ̃swa pjɛʁ ɡijom ɡizo; 1787–1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman
. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional monarchy
following the July Revolution
of 1830. He then served the "citizen king" Louis Philippe
, as Minister of Education, 1832–37, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840–1847, and finally Prime Minister of France
from 19 September 1847 to 23 February 1848. Guizot's influence was critical in expanding public education, which under his ministry saw the creation of primary schools in every French commune. But as a leader of the "Doctrinaires
", committed to supporting the policies of Louis Phillipe and limitations on further expansion of the political franchise, he earned the hatred of more left-leaning liberals and republicans through his unswerving support for restricting suffrage to propertied men, advising those who wanted the vote to "enrich yourselves" (enrichissez-vous) through hard work and thrift. As Prime Minister, it was Guizot's ban on the political meetings (called the Paris Banquets, which celebrated the birthday of George Washington) of an increasingly vigorous opposition in January 1848 that catalyzed the revolution that toppled Louis Philippe in February and saw the establishment of the French Second Republic
.
Guizot is famous as the originator of the quote "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head". This quote has been reworked many times, especially in reference to socialism and liberalism. It has been borrowed by or attributed to many notable figures who lived after Guizot, including Winston Churchill
, George Bernard Shaw
, Benjamin Disraeli, Georges Clemenceau
, Otto von Bismarck
, Aristide Briand
, Woodrow Wilson
, David Lloyd George
, Wendell Willkie
, William J. Casey
, and others.
to a bourgeois Protestant family. On 8 April 1794, when François Guizot was 7, his father was executed on the scaffold
at Nîmes during the Reign of Terror
. From then on, the boy's mother was completely responsible for his upbringing.
Madame Guizot had great influence over Francois Guizot and was part of his circle of friends. In the days of his exile in 1848 she followed him to London, and there at a very advanced age died and was buried at Kensal Green
.
Driven from Nîmes by the Revolution
, Madame Guizot and her son went to Geneva
, where he was educated. In spite of her decided Calvinistic
opinions, the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
influenced Madame Guizot. She was a strong Liberal, and she even adopted the notion inculcated in Emile
that every man ought to learn a manual trade or craft. Guizot was taught to be a carpenter, and succeeded in making a table with his own hands, which is still preserved. In the work which he entitled Memoirs of my own Times Guizot omitted all personal details of his earlier life. In 1805 he arrived in Paris and he entered at the age eighteen as tutor into the family of M. Stapfer, formerly Swiss
minister in France, and he soon began to write in a journal edited by Suard, the Publiciste. This connection introduced him to the literary society of Paris.
In October 1809, aged twenty-two, he wrote a review of François-René de Chateaubriand
's Martyrs, which won Chateaubriand's approbation and thanks, and he continued to contribute largely to the periodical press. At Suard
's he had made the acquaintance of Pauline de Meulan, a contributor to Suard’s journal. Her contributions were interrupted by illness, but immediately resumed and continued by an unknown hand. It was discovered that Francois Guizot had substituted for her. In 1812 Mademoiselle de Meulan married Guizot. She died in 1827. An only son, born in 1819, died in 1837 of consumption. In 1828 Guizot married Elisa Dillon, niece of his first wife, and also an author. She died in 1833, leaving a son, Maurice Guillaume (1833–1892), who attained some reputation as a scholar and writer.
During the First French Empire
, Guizot, entirely devoted to literary pursuits, published a collection of French synonym
s (1809), an essay on the fine arts (1811), and a translation of Edward Gibbon
's work, with additional notes, in 1812. These works recommended him to the notice of Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes
, grand-master of the university of France, who selected Guizot for the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne
in 1812. His first lecture (reprinted in his Memoirs) was delivered on 11 December of that year. He omitted the customary compliment to the all-powerful emperor, in spite of the hints given him by his patron, but the course which followed marks the beginning of the great revival of historical research in France in the 19th century. He had now acquired a considerable position in Paris society, and the friendship of Royer-Collard
and leading members of the liberal party, including the young duc de Broglie. Absent from Paris at the moment of the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he was at once selected, on the recommendation of Royer-Collard, to serve the government of King Louis XVIII
, in the capacity of secretary-general of the ministry of the interior, under the abbé de Montesquiou. Upon the return of Napoleon from Elba
he immediately resigned, on 25 March 1815, and returned to his literary pursuits.
After the Hundred Days
, he returned to Ghent
, where he saw Louis XVIII, and in the name of the liberal party pointed out that a frank adoption of a liberal policy could alone secure the duration of the restored monarchy – advice which was ill-received by the king's confidential advisers. This visit to Ghent was brought up by political opponents in later years as unpatriotic. "The Man of Ghent" was one of the terms of insult frequently used against him in the days of his power. The reproach appears to be wholly unfounded. He was acting not to preserve the failing empire, but to establish a liberal monarchy and to combat the reactionary ultra-royalists.
On the second restoration, Guizot was appointed secretary-general of the ministry of justice under de Barbé-Marbois, but resigned with his chief in 1816. Again in 1819 he was appointed general director of communes and departments in the ministry of the interior, but lost his office with the fall of Decazes
in February 1820. During these years Guizot was one of the leaders of the Doctrinaires
, a small party strongly attached to the charter and the crown, and advocating a policy which has become associated (especially by Émile Faguet
) with the name of Guizot, that of the juste milieu
, a middle path between absolutism and popular government. Adhering to the great principles of liberty and toleration, they were sternly opposed to the anarchical traditions of the Revolution. They hoped to subdue the elements of anarchy through the power of a limited constitution based on the suffrage of the middle class and promoted by the literary talents of the time. They were opposed alike to the democratic spirit of the age, to the military traditions of the empire, and to the bigotry and absolutism of the court. The Doctrinaires fell out of influence following the July Revolution
in 1830
In 1820, when the reaction was at its height after the murder of the Duc de Berry, and the fail of the ministry of the duc Decazes, Guizot was deprived of his offices, and in 1822 even his course of lectures were interdicted. During the succeeding years he played an important part among the leaders of the liberal opposition to the government of Charles X
, although he had not yet entered parliament, and this was also the time of his greatest literary activity. In 1822 he had published his lectures on representative government (Histoire des origines du gouvernernent représentatif, 1821–1822, 2 vols.; Eng. trans. 1852); also a work on capital punishment for political offences and several important political pamphlets. From 1822 to 1830 he published two important collections of historical sources, the memoirs of the history of England in 26 volumes, and the memoirs of the history of France in 31 volumes, and a revised translation, of Shakespeare
, and a volume of essays on the history of France. Written from his own pen during this period was the first part of his Histoire de la révolution d'Angleterre depuis Charles I à Charles II (2 vols., 1826–1827; Eng. trans., 2 vols., Oxford, 1838), which he resumed and completed during his exile in England after 1848. The Martignac administration restored Guizot in 1828 to his professor's chair and to the council of state. During his time at the University of Paris
his lectures earned him a reputation as a historian of note. These lectures formed the basis of his general Histoire de la civilisation en Europe (1828; Eng. trans. by William Hazlitt
, 3 vols., 1846), and of his Histoire de la civilisation en France (4 vols., 1830),
In January 1830 he was elected by the town of Lisieux
to the Chamber of Deputies
, and he retained that seat during the whole of his political life. Guizot delivered an address in March 1830 calling for greater political freedom in the Chamber of Deputies. The motion passed 221 against 181. Charles X responded by dissolving the Chamber and called for new elections which only strengthened opposition to the throne. On his returning to Paris from Nîmes on 27 July, the fall of Charles X was already imminent. Guizot was called upon by his friends Casimir Perier
, Jacques Laffitte
, Villemain
and Dupin
to draw up the protest of the liberal deputies against the royal ordinances of July, while he applied himself with them to control the revolutionary character of the late contest. Personally, Guizot was always of opinion that it was a great misfortune for the cause of parliamentary government in France that the infatuation and ineptitude of Charles X and Prince Polignac rendered a change in the hereditary line of succession inevitable. Once convinced that it was inevitable, he became one of the most ardent supporters of Louis Philippe. In August 1830 Guizot was made minister of the interior, but resigned in November. He had now joined the ranks of the conservatives, and for the next eighteen years was a determined foe of democracy, the unyielding champion of "a monarchy limited by a limited number of bourgeois."
In 1831 Casimir Perier formed a more vigorous and compact administration, terminated in May 1832 by his death; the summer of that year was marked by a formidable republican rising in Paris, and it was not until 11 October 1832 that a stable government was formed, in which Marshal Soult was first minister, Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie
took the foreign office, Adolphe Thiers
the home department, and Guizot the department of public instruction.Guizot, however, was already unpopular with the more advanced liberal party. He remained unpopular all his life. Yet never were his great abilities more useful to his country than while he filled this office of secondary rank but of primary importance in the department of public instruction. The duties it imposed on him were entirely congenial to his literary tastes, and he was master of the subjects they concerned. He applied himself in the first instance to carry the law of 28 June 1833, which established and organized primary education in France.
The branch of the Institute of France known as the "Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques," which had been suppressed by Napoleon, was revived by Guizot. Some of the old members of this learned body – Talleyrand, Sieyès
, Roederer and Lakanal
– again took their seats there, and a host of more recent celebrities were added by election for the free discussion of the great problems of political and social science. The Société de l'histoire de France
was founded for the publication of historical works; and a vast publication of medieval chronicles and diplomatic papers was undertaken at the expense of the state.
The July Monarchy
was threatened in 1839 by Louis-Mathieu Molé, who had formed an intermediate government. Guizot and the leaders of the left centre and the left, Thiers and Odilon Barrot
worked together to stop Molé, Victory was secured at the expense of principle, and Guizot's attack on the government gave rise to a crisis and a republican insurrection. None of the three leaders of that alliance took ministerial office, and Guizot was not sorry to accept the post of ambassador in London, which withdrew him for a time from parliamentary contests. This was in the spring of 1840, and Thiers succeeded shortly afterwards to the ministry of foreign affairs.
Guizot was received with distinction by Queen Victoria
and by London society. His literary works were highly esteemed, and sincerely attached to the alliance of the two nations and the cause of peace. He also secured the return of Napoleon’s ashes to France at the insistence of Thiers. As he himself remarked, he was a stranger to England and a novice in diplomacy; the embroiled state of the Syrian War
question, on which the French government had separated itself from the joint policy of Europe, and possibly the absence of entire confidence between the ambassador and the minister of foreign affairs, placed him in an embarrassing and even false position. The warnings he transmitted to Thiers were not believed. The treaty of 15 July was signed without his knowledge and executed against his advice. For some weeks Europe seemed to be on the brink of war, until the king ended the crisis by refusing his assent to the military preparations of Thiers, and by summoning Guizot from London to form a ministry and to aid his Majesty in what he termed "ma lutte tenace contre l'anarchie."
, he became prime minister. His first care was the maintenance of peace and the restoration of amicable relations with the other powers of Europe. His success gave unity and strength to the conservative party, who now felt that they had a great leader at their head.
During Guizot’s tenure as foreign minister, he and Lord Aberdeen
, the foreign secretary to Sir Robert Peel
, carried on well and thus they secured France and Britain in the entente cordiale
. Part of the formation of the entente came about when Guizot secured the transfer of Napoleon’s ashes from St. Helena to the French government. The opposition in France denounced Guizot's foreign policy as basely subservient to England. He replied in terms of unmeasured contempt: "You may raise the pile of calumny as high as you will; vous n'arriverez jamais a la hauteur de mon dédain!" In 1845 British and French troops fought side by side for the first time in the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata
.
The fall of Peel's government in 1846 changed these intimate relations; and the return of Palmerston to the foreign office led Guizot to believe that he was again exposed to the passionate rivalry of the British cabinet. A friendly understanding had been established at Eu between the two courts with reference to the future marriage of the young queen of Spain
. The language of Lord Palmerston and the conduct of Sir Henry Bulwer (afterwards Lord Dalling) at Madrid led Guizot to believe that this understanding was broken, provoking the Affair of the Spanish Marriages
after Guizot came to believe that Britain intended to place a Coburg on the throne of Spain. Determined to resist any such intrigue, Guizot and the king plunged headlong into a counter-intrigue, wholly inconsistent with their previous engagements to Britain, and fatal to the happiness of the queen of Spain. By their influence she was urged into a marriage with a despicable offset of the house of Bourbon, and her sister
was at the same time married to the youngest son of the French king, in direct violation of Louis Philippe
's promises. This transaction, although it was hailed at the time as a triumph of the policy of France, was in truth as fatal to the monarch as it was discreditable to the minister. It was accomplished by a mixture of secrecy and violence. It was defended by subterfuges. By the dispassionate judgment of history it has been universally condemned. Its immediate effect was to destroy the Anglo-French alliance, and to throw Guizot into closer relations with the reactionary policy of Metternich
and the Northern courts.
His first object as prime minister was to unite and discipline the conservative party, which had been broken up by previous dissensions and ministerial changes. In this he entirely succeeded by his courage and eloquence as a parliamentary leader, and by the use of all those means of influence which France too liberally supplies to a dominant minister. No one ever doubted the purity and disinterestedness of Guizot's own conduct. He despised money; he lived and died poor; and though he encouraged the fever of money-getting in the French nation, his own habits retained their primitive simplicity. But he did not disdain to use in others the baser passions from which he was himself free. Some of his instruments were mean; he employed them to deal with meanness after its kind.
In 1846 the opposition accused the government of buying the votes of the electorate. Guizot acknowledged that corruption happened but the government could not really prevent it. Non-voters exaggerated the occurrences of corruption to point to their need for enfranchisement. Guizot utterly failed to satisfy the demand for expansion of suffrage. Some scholars point out that corruption, while certainly present, did not have a large effect on the voting records of those in the Chamber of Deputies.
The strength of Guizot’s oration was his straightforward style of speaking. He was essentially a ministerial speaker, far more powerful in defence than in opposition. Nor was he less a master of parliamentary tactics and of those sudden changes and movements in debate which, as in a battle, sometimes change the fortune of the day. His confidence in himself, and in the majority of the chamber which he had moulded to his will, was unbounded; and long success and the habit of authority led him to forget that in a country like France there was a people outside the chamber elected by a small constituency, to which the minister and the king himself were held responsible.
Guizot's view of politics was essentially historical and philosophical. His tastes and his acquirements gave him little insight into the practical business of administrative government. Of finance he knew nothing; trade and commerce were strange to him; military and naval affairs were unfamiliar to him; all these subjects he dealt with by second hand through his friends, PS Dumon (1797–1870), Charles Marie Tanneguy, Comte Duchâttel (1803–1867), or Marshal Bugeaud
. The consequence was that few measures of practical improvement were carried by his administration. Still less did the government lend an ear to the cry for parliamentary reform.
On this subject the king's prejudices were insurmountable, and his ministers had the weakness to give way to them. It was impossible to defend a system which confined the suffrage to 200,000 citizens, and returned a chamber of whom half were placemen. Nothing would have been easier than to strengthen the conservative party by attaching the suffrage to the possession of land in France, but blank resistance was the sole answer of the government to the just and moderate demands of the opposition. Warning after warning was addressed to them in vain by friends and by foes alike; and they remained profoundly unconscious of their danger till the moment when it overwhelmed them. Strange to say, Guizot never acknowledged either at the time or to his dying day the nature of this error; and he speaks of himself in his memoirs as the much-enduring champion of liberal government and constitutional law. He utterly fails to perceive that a more enlarged view of the liberal destinies of France and a less intense confidence in his own specific theory might have preserved the constitutional monarchy and averted a vast series of calamities, which were in the end fatal to every principle he most cherished. But with the stubborn conviction of absolute truth he dauntlessly adhered to his own doctrines to the end.
should be invested with full power, and ordered to take the necessary military measures, and as your Majesty
has at this moment no minister, I am ready to draw up and countersign such an order." The marshal, who was present, undertook the task, saying, "I have never been beaten yet, and I shall not begin to-morrow. The barricades shall be carried before dawn." Adolphe Thiers
and Barrot
decided to withdraw the troops. Guizot found a safe refuge in Paris for some days in the lodging of a humble miniature painter whom he had befriended, and shortly afterwards effected his escape across the Belgian
frontier and thence to London, where he arrived on 3 March. His mother and daughters had preceded him, and he was speedily installed in a modest habitation in Pelham Crescent, Brompton.
The society of England, though many persons disapproved of much of his recent policy, received the fallen statesman with as much distinction and respect as they had shown eight years before to the king's ambassador. A professorship at Oxford was spoken of, which he was unable to accept. He stayed in England about a year, devoting himself again to history. Back in Paris in 1850, Guizot published two more volumes on the English revolution--Pourǫuoi la Révolution d'Angeterre A-T-Elle Reussi? and Discours sur l'Histoire, de la Révolution d'Ang. In February 1850 Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels co-wrote a critical assessment of this two-volume history. In 1854 Guizot published his Histoire de la république d'Angleterre et de Cromwell
(2 vols., 1854), then his Histoire du protectorat de Cromwell et du rétablissement des Stuart
s (2 vols., 1856). He also published an essay on Peel
, and amid many essays on religion, during the ten years 1858–1868, appeared the extensive Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de mon temps, in nine volumes. His speeches were included in 1863 in his Histoire parlementaire de la France (5 vols. of parliamentary speeches, 1863).
After having resigned as Prime Minister of France, he left politics. He was aware that the link between himself and public life was broken for ever; and he never made the slightest attempt to renew it. The greater part of the year he spent at his residence at Val Richer, an Augustine monastery near Lisieux
in Normandy, which had been sold at the time of the first Revolution
. His two daughters, who married two descendants of the illustrious Dutch family of De Witt
, so congenial in faith and manners to the Huguenot
s of France, kept his house. One of his sons-in-law farmed the estate. And here Guizot devoted his later years with undiminished energy to literary labour, which was in fact his chief means of subsistence. Proud, independent, simple and contented he remained to the last; and these years of retirement were perhaps the happiest and most serene portion of his life.
Two institutions may be said even under the second empire to have retained their freedom-the Institute of France and the Protestant Consistory. In both of these Guizot continued to the last to take an active part. He was a member of three of the five academies into which the Institute of France is divided. The Academy of Moral and Political Science owed its restoration to him, and he became in 1832 one of its first associates. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres elected him in 1833 as the successor to M Dacier
; and in 1836 he was chosen a member of the French Academy, the highest literary distinction of the country. In these learned bodies Guizot continued for nearly forty years to take a lively interest and to exercise a powerful influence. He was the jealous champion of their independence. His voice had the greatest weight in the choice of new candidates; the younger generation of French writers never looked in vain to him for encouragement; and his constant aim was to maintain the dignity and purity of the profession of letters. In 1842, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
.
In the consistory of the Protestant church in Paris Guizot exercised a similar influence. His early education and his experience of life conspired to strengthen the convictions of a religious temperament. He remained throughout his life a firm believer in the truths of revelation, and a volume of Méditations on the Christian Religion was one of his latest works. But though he adhered inflexibly to the church of his fathers and combated the rationalist tendencies of the age, which seemed to threaten it with destruction, he retained not a tinge of the intolerance or asperity of the Calvinistic
creed. He respected in the Church of Rome the faith of the majority of his countrymen; and the writings of the great Catholic prelates, Bossuet
and Bourdaloue
, were as familiar and as dear to him as those of his own persuasion, and were commonly used by him in the daily exercises of family worship.
In these literary pursuits and in the retirement of Val Richer years passed smoothly and rapidly away; and as his grandchildren grew up around him, he began to direct their attention to the history of their country. From these lessons sprang his last work, the Histoire de France racontée à mes petits enfants. The history came down to 1789, and was continued to 1870 by his daughter Madame Guizot de Witt from her father's notes.
Down to the summer of 1874 Guizot's mental vigour and activity were unimpaired. He died peacefully, and is said to have recited verses of Corneille
and texts from Scripture
on his death-bed.
Statesman
A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...
. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a constitution, whether it be a written, uncodified or blended constitution...
following the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830. He then served the "citizen king" Louis Philippe
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
, as Minister of Education, 1832–37, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840–1847, and finally Prime Minister of France
Prime Minister of France
The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...
from 19 September 1847 to 23 February 1848. Guizot's influence was critical in expanding public education, which under his ministry saw the creation of primary schools in every French commune. But as a leader of the "Doctrinaires
Doctrinaires
Doctrinaires was the name given during the Bourbon Restoration to the little group of French Royalists who hoped to reconcile the Monarchy with the Revolution, and power with liberty...
", committed to supporting the policies of Louis Phillipe and limitations on further expansion of the political franchise, he earned the hatred of more left-leaning liberals and republicans through his unswerving support for restricting suffrage to propertied men, advising those who wanted the vote to "enrich yourselves" (enrichissez-vous) through hard work and thrift. As Prime Minister, it was Guizot's ban on the political meetings (called the Paris Banquets, which celebrated the birthday of George Washington) of an increasingly vigorous opposition in January 1848 that catalyzed the revolution that toppled Louis Philippe in February and saw the establishment of the French Second Republic
French Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...
.
Guizot is famous as the originator of the quote "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head". This quote has been reworked many times, especially in reference to socialism and liberalism. It has been borrowed by or attributed to many notable figures who lived after Guizot, including Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Benjamin Disraeli, Georges Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the...
, Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
, Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...
, Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
, Wendell Willkie
Wendell Willkie
Wendell Lewis Willkie was a corporate lawyer in the United States and a dark horse who became the Republican Party nominee for the president in 1940. A member of the liberal wing of the GOP, he crusaded against those domestic policies of the New Deal that he thought were inefficient and...
, William J. Casey
William J. Casey
William Joseph Casey was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agency ....
, and others.
Early life
François Guizot was born at NîmesNîmes
Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...
to a bourgeois Protestant family. On 8 April 1794, when François Guizot was 7, his father was executed on the scaffold
Gallows
A gallows is a frame, typically wooden, used for execution by hanging, or by means to torture before execution, as was used when being hanged, drawn and quartered...
at Nîmes during the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
. From then on, the boy's mother was completely responsible for his upbringing.
Madame Guizot had great influence over Francois Guizot and was part of his circle of friends. In the days of his exile in 1848 she followed him to London, and there at a very advanced age died and was buried at Kensal Green
Kensal Green
Kensal Green, also referred to as Kensal Rise is an area of London, England. It is located on the southern edge of the London Borough of Brent and borders the City of Westminster to the East and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the South....
.
Driven from Nîmes by the Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, Madame Guizot and her son went to Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, where he was educated. In spite of her decided Calvinistic
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
opinions, the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
influenced Madame Guizot. She was a strong Liberal, and she even adopted the notion inculcated in Emile
Emile: Or, On Education
Émile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Émile was be...
that every man ought to learn a manual trade or craft. Guizot was taught to be a carpenter, and succeeded in making a table with his own hands, which is still preserved. In the work which he entitled Memoirs of my own Times Guizot omitted all personal details of his earlier life. In 1805 he arrived in Paris and he entered at the age eighteen as tutor into the family of M. Stapfer, formerly Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
minister in France, and he soon began to write in a journal edited by Suard, the Publiciste. This connection introduced him to the literary society of Paris.
In October 1809, aged twenty-two, he wrote a review of François-René de Chateaubriand
François-René de Chateaubriand
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...
's Martyrs, which won Chateaubriand's approbation and thanks, and he continued to contribute largely to the periodical press. At Suard
Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard
Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard was a French journalist, translator and man of letters during the Age of Enlightenment....
's he had made the acquaintance of Pauline de Meulan, a contributor to Suard’s journal. Her contributions were interrupted by illness, but immediately resumed and continued by an unknown hand. It was discovered that Francois Guizot had substituted for her. In 1812 Mademoiselle de Meulan married Guizot. She died in 1827. An only son, born in 1819, died in 1837 of consumption. In 1828 Guizot married Elisa Dillon, niece of his first wife, and also an author. She died in 1833, leaving a son, Maurice Guillaume (1833–1892), who attained some reputation as a scholar and writer.
During the First French Empire
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
, Guizot, entirely devoted to literary pursuits, published a collection of French synonym
Synonym
Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...
s (1809), an essay on the fine arts (1811), and a translation of Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
's work, with additional notes, in 1812. These works recommended him to the notice of Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes
Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes
Louis-Marcelin, marquis de Fontanes was a French poet and politician.-Biography:Born in Niort , he belonged to a noble Protestant family of Languedoc which had been reduced to poverty by the revocation of the edict of Nantes. His father and grandfather remained Protestant, but he was himself...
, grand-master of the university of France, who selected Guizot for the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
in 1812. His first lecture (reprinted in his Memoirs) was delivered on 11 December of that year. He omitted the customary compliment to the all-powerful emperor, in spite of the hints given him by his patron, but the course which followed marks the beginning of the great revival of historical research in France in the 19th century. He had now acquired a considerable position in Paris society, and the friendship of Royer-Collard
Pierre Paul Royer-Collard
Pierre Paul Royer-Collard , was a French statesman and philosopher, leader of the Doctrinaires group during the Bourbon Restoration .-Biography:...
and leading members of the liberal party, including the young duc de Broglie. Absent from Paris at the moment of the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he was at once selected, on the recommendation of Royer-Collard, to serve the government of King Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
, in the capacity of secretary-general of the ministry of the interior, under the abbé de Montesquiou. Upon the return of Napoleon from Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...
he immediately resigned, on 25 March 1815, and returned to his literary pursuits.
"The Man of Ghent"
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
, he returned to Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
, where he saw Louis XVIII, and in the name of the liberal party pointed out that a frank adoption of a liberal policy could alone secure the duration of the restored monarchy – advice which was ill-received by the king's confidential advisers. This visit to Ghent was brought up by political opponents in later years as unpatriotic. "The Man of Ghent" was one of the terms of insult frequently used against him in the days of his power. The reproach appears to be wholly unfounded. He was acting not to preserve the failing empire, but to establish a liberal monarchy and to combat the reactionary ultra-royalists.
On the second restoration, Guizot was appointed secretary-general of the ministry of justice under de Barbé-Marbois, but resigned with his chief in 1816. Again in 1819 he was appointed general director of communes and departments in the ministry of the interior, but lost his office with the fall of Decazes
Élie, duc Decazes
Élie Decazes, 1st duc Decazes and 1st Duke of Glücksbierg , was a French statesman, known from 1815 to 1820 as 1st comte Decazes in France, 1st Duke of Glücksbierg in Denmark in 1818, and 1st duc Decazes in France in 1820 .-Early life:Élie Decazes was born at Saint-Martin-de-Laye, Gironde, son of...
in February 1820. During these years Guizot was one of the leaders of the Doctrinaires
Doctrinaires
Doctrinaires was the name given during the Bourbon Restoration to the little group of French Royalists who hoped to reconcile the Monarchy with the Revolution, and power with liberty...
, a small party strongly attached to the charter and the crown, and advocating a policy which has become associated (especially by Émile Faguet
Émile Faguet
Auguste Émile Faguet was a French author and literary critic.Faguet was born at La Roche-sur-Yon, and educated at the École normale supérieure in Paris. After teaching for some time in La Rochelle and Bordeaux, he returned to Paris to act as assistant professor of poetry in the university. He...
) with the name of Guizot, that of the juste milieu
Juste Milieu
The Juste Milieu art movement is a term originally used to describe a form of painting and philosophy that reconciled two dominant art movements in 19th century France between the conservative, academic artists and the independent artists known as the Impressionists.- Prominent Juste Milieu...
, a middle path between absolutism and popular government. Adhering to the great principles of liberty and toleration, they were sternly opposed to the anarchical traditions of the Revolution. They hoped to subdue the elements of anarchy through the power of a limited constitution based on the suffrage of the middle class and promoted by the literary talents of the time. They were opposed alike to the democratic spirit of the age, to the military traditions of the empire, and to the bigotry and absolutism of the court. The Doctrinaires fell out of influence following the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
in 1830
In 1820, when the reaction was at its height after the murder of the Duc de Berry, and the fail of the ministry of the duc Decazes, Guizot was deprived of his offices, and in 1822 even his course of lectures were interdicted. During the succeeding years he played an important part among the leaders of the liberal opposition to the government of Charles X
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
, although he had not yet entered parliament, and this was also the time of his greatest literary activity. In 1822 he had published his lectures on representative government (Histoire des origines du gouvernernent représentatif, 1821–1822, 2 vols.; Eng. trans. 1852); also a work on capital punishment for political offences and several important political pamphlets. From 1822 to 1830 he published two important collections of historical sources, the memoirs of the history of England in 26 volumes, and the memoirs of the history of France in 31 volumes, and a revised translation, of Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, and a volume of essays on the history of France. Written from his own pen during this period was the first part of his Histoire de la révolution d'Angleterre depuis Charles I à Charles II (2 vols., 1826–1827; Eng. trans., 2 vols., Oxford, 1838), which he resumed and completed during his exile in England after 1848. The Martignac administration restored Guizot in 1828 to his professor's chair and to the council of state. During his time at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
his lectures earned him a reputation as a historian of note. These lectures formed the basis of his general Histoire de la civilisation en Europe (1828; Eng. trans. by William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
, 3 vols., 1846), and of his Histoire de la civilisation en France (4 vols., 1830),
In January 1830 he was elected by the town of Lisieux
Lisieux
Lisieux is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.Lisieux is the capital of the Pays d'Auge area, which is characterised by valleys and hedged farmland...
to the Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of Deputies of France
Chamber of Deputies was the name given to several parliamentary bodies in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:* 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the Lower chamber of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage.*...
, and he retained that seat during the whole of his political life. Guizot delivered an address in March 1830 calling for greater political freedom in the Chamber of Deputies. The motion passed 221 against 181. Charles X responded by dissolving the Chamber and called for new elections which only strengthened opposition to the throne. On his returning to Paris from Nîmes on 27 July, the fall of Charles X was already imminent. Guizot was called upon by his friends Casimir Perier
Casimir Pierre Perier
Casimir Pierre Perier was a French statesman, President of the Council during the July Monarchy, when he headed the conservative Parti de la résistance .-Life:...
, Jacques Laffitte
Jacques Laffitte
Jacques Laffitte was a French banker and politician.-Biography:Laffitte was born at Bayonne, one of the ten children of a carpenter....
, Villemain
Abel-François Villemain
Abel-François Villemain was a French politician and writer.-Biography:Villemain was born in Paris and educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He became assistant master at the Lycée Charlemagne, and subsequently at the École Normale. In 1812 he gained a prize from the Academy with an essay on Michel...
and Dupin
André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin
André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin , commonly called Dupin the Elder, was a French advocate, president of the chamber of deputies and of the Legislative Assembly....
to draw up the protest of the liberal deputies against the royal ordinances of July, while he applied himself with them to control the revolutionary character of the late contest. Personally, Guizot was always of opinion that it was a great misfortune for the cause of parliamentary government in France that the infatuation and ineptitude of Charles X and Prince Polignac rendered a change in the hereditary line of succession inevitable. Once convinced that it was inevitable, he became one of the most ardent supporters of Louis Philippe. In August 1830 Guizot was made minister of the interior, but resigned in November. He had now joined the ranks of the conservatives, and for the next eighteen years was a determined foe of democracy, the unyielding champion of "a monarchy limited by a limited number of bourgeois."
A minister of the Citizen-King
Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie
Achille-Léonce-Victor-Charles, 3rd duc de Broglie, called Victor de Broglie was a French statesman and diplomat. He was twice President of the Council during the July Monarchy, from August 1830 to November 1830 and from March 1835 to February 1836...
took the foreign office, Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
the home department, and Guizot the department of public instruction.Guizot, however, was already unpopular with the more advanced liberal party. He remained unpopular all his life. Yet never were his great abilities more useful to his country than while he filled this office of secondary rank but of primary importance in the department of public instruction. The duties it imposed on him were entirely congenial to his literary tastes, and he was master of the subjects they concerned. He applied himself in the first instance to carry the law of 28 June 1833, which established and organized primary education in France.
The branch of the Institute of France known as the "Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques," which had been suppressed by Napoleon, was revived by Guizot. Some of the old members of this learned body – Talleyrand, Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès , commonly known as Abbé Sieyès, was a French Roman Catholic abbé and clergyman, one of the chief theorists of the French Revolution, French Consulate, and First French Empire...
, Roederer and Lakanal
Joseph Lakanal
Joseph Lakanal was a French politician, and an original member of the Institut de France.-Early career:...
– again took their seats there, and a host of more recent celebrities were added by election for the free discussion of the great problems of political and social science. The Société de l'histoire de France
Société de l'histoire de France
The Société de l'histoire de France was established on 21 December 1833 at the instigation of the French minister of Public Instruction, François Guizot, in order to contribute to the renewal of historical scholarship fuelled by a widespread interest in national history, typical of the Romantic...
was founded for the publication of historical works; and a vast publication of medieval chronicles and diplomatic papers was undertaken at the expense of the state.
The July Monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
was threatened in 1839 by Louis-Mathieu Molé, who had formed an intermediate government. Guizot and the leaders of the left centre and the left, Thiers and Odilon Barrot
Odilon Barrot
Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot was a French politician.-Early life:Barrot was born at Villefort Lozère. He belonged to a legal family, his father, an advocate of Toulouse, having been a member of the Convention who had voted against the death of Louis XVI. Odilon Barrot's earliest recollections...
worked together to stop Molé, Victory was secured at the expense of principle, and Guizot's attack on the government gave rise to a crisis and a republican insurrection. None of the three leaders of that alliance took ministerial office, and Guizot was not sorry to accept the post of ambassador in London, which withdrew him for a time from parliamentary contests. This was in the spring of 1840, and Thiers succeeded shortly afterwards to the ministry of foreign affairs.
Guizot was received with distinction by Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
and by London society. His literary works were highly esteemed, and sincerely attached to the alliance of the two nations and the cause of peace. He also secured the return of Napoleon’s ashes to France at the insistence of Thiers. As he himself remarked, he was a stranger to England and a novice in diplomacy; the embroiled state of the Syrian War
Syrian War
The Syrian War is the name generally given to the war of 1839-40 fought in the Middle East, also known as the Second Syrian War, mainly on territory that is now Lebanon, between the Allied Powers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire and the...
question, on which the French government had separated itself from the joint policy of Europe, and possibly the absence of entire confidence between the ambassador and the minister of foreign affairs, placed him in an embarrassing and even false position. The warnings he transmitted to Thiers were not believed. The treaty of 15 July was signed without his knowledge and executed against his advice. For some weeks Europe seemed to be on the brink of war, until the king ended the crisis by refusing his assent to the military preparations of Thiers, and by summoning Guizot from London to form a ministry and to aid his Majesty in what he termed "ma lutte tenace contre l'anarchie."
The second Soult government
Thus began, under dark and adverse circumstances, on 29 October 1840, the important administration in which Guizot remained the master-spirit for nearly eight years. He himself took the office of minister for foreign affairs, and upon the retirement of Marshal SoultNicolas Jean de Dieu Soult
Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, 1st Duke of Dalmatia , the Hand of Iron, was a French general and statesman, named Marshal of the Empire in 1804. He was one of only six officers in French history to receive the distinction of Marshal General of France...
, he became prime minister. His first care was the maintenance of peace and the restoration of amicable relations with the other powers of Europe. His success gave unity and strength to the conservative party, who now felt that they had a great leader at their head.
During Guizot’s tenure as foreign minister, he and Lord Aberdeen
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen KG, KT, FRS, PC , styled Lord Haddo from 1791 to 1801, was a Scottish politician, successively a Tory, Conservative and Peelite, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1852 until 1855.-Early life:Born in Edinburgh on 28 January 1784, he...
, the foreign secretary to Sir Robert Peel
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
, carried on well and thus they secured France and Britain in the entente cordiale
Entente Cordiale
The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a millennium of intermittent...
. Part of the formation of the entente came about when Guizot secured the transfer of Napoleon’s ashes from St. Helena to the French government. The opposition in France denounced Guizot's foreign policy as basely subservient to England. He replied in terms of unmeasured contempt: "You may raise the pile of calumny as high as you will; vous n'arriverez jamais a la hauteur de mon dédain!" In 1845 British and French troops fought side by side for the first time in the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata
Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata
The Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata was a five-year long naval blockade imposed by France and Britain on the Argentine Confederation ruled by Juan Manuel de Rosas. It was imposed in 1845 to support the Colorado Party in the Uruguayan Civil War and closed Buenos Aires to naval commerce...
.
The fall of Peel's government in 1846 changed these intimate relations; and the return of Palmerston to the foreign office led Guizot to believe that he was again exposed to the passionate rivalry of the British cabinet. A friendly understanding had been established at Eu between the two courts with reference to the future marriage of the young queen of Spain
Isabella II of Spain
Isabella II was the only female monarch of Spain in modern times. She came to the throne as an infant, but her succession was disputed by the Carlists, who refused to recognise a female sovereign, leading to the Carlist Wars. After a troubled reign, she was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of...
. The language of Lord Palmerston and the conduct of Sir Henry Bulwer (afterwards Lord Dalling) at Madrid led Guizot to believe that this understanding was broken, provoking the Affair of the Spanish Marriages
Affair of the Spanish Marriages
The Affair of the Spanish Marriages was a series of intrigues between France, Spain, and the United Kingdom relating to the marriages of Queen Isabella II of Spain and her sister the infanta Luisa Fernanda in 1846...
after Guizot came to believe that Britain intended to place a Coburg on the throne of Spain. Determined to resist any such intrigue, Guizot and the king plunged headlong into a counter-intrigue, wholly inconsistent with their previous engagements to Britain, and fatal to the happiness of the queen of Spain. By their influence she was urged into a marriage with a despicable offset of the house of Bourbon, and her sister
Infanta Luisa Fernanda, Duchess of Montpensier
Infanta María Luisa Fernanda of Spain was Infanta of Spain and Duchess of Montpensier. She was the youngest daughter of king Ferdinand VII of Spain and his fourth wife Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, the queen-regent, who was also his niece.-Biography:-Heiress-presumptive:When her elder...
was at the same time married to the youngest son of the French king, in direct violation of Louis Philippe
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
's promises. This transaction, although it was hailed at the time as a triumph of the policy of France, was in truth as fatal to the monarch as it was discreditable to the minister. It was accomplished by a mixture of secrecy and violence. It was defended by subterfuges. By the dispassionate judgment of history it has been universally condemned. Its immediate effect was to destroy the Anglo-French alliance, and to throw Guizot into closer relations with the reactionary policy of Metternich
Klemens Wenzel von Metternich
Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich was a German-born Austrian politician and statesman and was one of the most important diplomats of his era...
and the Northern courts.
His first object as prime minister was to unite and discipline the conservative party, which had been broken up by previous dissensions and ministerial changes. In this he entirely succeeded by his courage and eloquence as a parliamentary leader, and by the use of all those means of influence which France too liberally supplies to a dominant minister. No one ever doubted the purity and disinterestedness of Guizot's own conduct. He despised money; he lived and died poor; and though he encouraged the fever of money-getting in the French nation, his own habits retained their primitive simplicity. But he did not disdain to use in others the baser passions from which he was himself free. Some of his instruments were mean; he employed them to deal with meanness after its kind.
In 1846 the opposition accused the government of buying the votes of the electorate. Guizot acknowledged that corruption happened but the government could not really prevent it. Non-voters exaggerated the occurrences of corruption to point to their need for enfranchisement. Guizot utterly failed to satisfy the demand for expansion of suffrage. Some scholars point out that corruption, while certainly present, did not have a large effect on the voting records of those in the Chamber of Deputies.
The strength of Guizot’s oration was his straightforward style of speaking. He was essentially a ministerial speaker, far more powerful in defence than in opposition. Nor was he less a master of parliamentary tactics and of those sudden changes and movements in debate which, as in a battle, sometimes change the fortune of the day. His confidence in himself, and in the majority of the chamber which he had moulded to his will, was unbounded; and long success and the habit of authority led him to forget that in a country like France there was a people outside the chamber elected by a small constituency, to which the minister and the king himself were held responsible.
Guizot's view of politics was essentially historical and philosophical. His tastes and his acquirements gave him little insight into the practical business of administrative government. Of finance he knew nothing; trade and commerce were strange to him; military and naval affairs were unfamiliar to him; all these subjects he dealt with by second hand through his friends, PS Dumon (1797–1870), Charles Marie Tanneguy, Comte Duchâttel (1803–1867), or Marshal Bugeaud
Thomas Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.-Early life:...
. The consequence was that few measures of practical improvement were carried by his administration. Still less did the government lend an ear to the cry for parliamentary reform.
On this subject the king's prejudices were insurmountable, and his ministers had the weakness to give way to them. It was impossible to defend a system which confined the suffrage to 200,000 citizens, and returned a chamber of whom half were placemen. Nothing would have been easier than to strengthen the conservative party by attaching the suffrage to the possession of land in France, but blank resistance was the sole answer of the government to the just and moderate demands of the opposition. Warning after warning was addressed to them in vain by friends and by foes alike; and they remained profoundly unconscious of their danger till the moment when it overwhelmed them. Strange to say, Guizot never acknowledged either at the time or to his dying day the nature of this error; and he speaks of himself in his memoirs as the much-enduring champion of liberal government and constitutional law. He utterly fails to perceive that a more enlarged view of the liberal destinies of France and a less intense confidence in his own specific theory might have preserved the constitutional monarchy and averted a vast series of calamities, which were in the end fatal to every principle he most cherished. But with the stubborn conviction of absolute truth he dauntlessly adhered to his own doctrines to the end.
1848 and after
In the afternoon of 23 February 1848 the king summoned his minister from the chamber, which was then sitting, and informed him that considering the situation in Paris and elsewhere in the country during the Banquet agitation for electoral reform, and the alarm and division of opinion in the royal family, led him to doubt whether he could retain Guizot as his prime minister. Guizot instantly resigned, returning to the chamber only to announce that the administration was at an end and that the king had sent for Louis-Mathieu Molé. Molé failed in the attempt to form a government, and between midnight and one in the morning Guizot, who had according to his custom retired early to rest, was again sent for to the Tuileries. The king asked his advice. "We are no longer the ministers of your Majesty," replied Guizot; "it rests with others to decide on the course to be pursued. But one thing appears to be evident: this street riot must be put down; these barricades must be taken; and for this purpose my opinion is that Marshal BugeaudThomas Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.-Early life:...
should be invested with full power, and ordered to take the necessary military measures, and as your Majesty
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
has at this moment no minister, I am ready to draw up and countersign such an order." The marshal, who was present, undertook the task, saying, "I have never been beaten yet, and I shall not begin to-morrow. The barricades shall be carried before dawn." Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
and Barrot
Odilon Barrot
Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot was a French politician.-Early life:Barrot was born at Villefort Lozère. He belonged to a legal family, his father, an advocate of Toulouse, having been a member of the Convention who had voted against the death of Louis XVI. Odilon Barrot's earliest recollections...
decided to withdraw the troops. Guizot found a safe refuge in Paris for some days in the lodging of a humble miniature painter whom he had befriended, and shortly afterwards effected his escape across the Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
frontier and thence to London, where he arrived on 3 March. His mother and daughters had preceded him, and he was speedily installed in a modest habitation in Pelham Crescent, Brompton.
The society of England, though many persons disapproved of much of his recent policy, received the fallen statesman with as much distinction and respect as they had shown eight years before to the king's ambassador. A professorship at Oxford was spoken of, which he was unable to accept. He stayed in England about a year, devoting himself again to history. Back in Paris in 1850, Guizot published two more volumes on the English revolution--Pourǫuoi la Révolution d'Angeterre A-T-Elle Reussi? and Discours sur l'Histoire, de la Révolution d'Ang. In February 1850 Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Frederick Engels co-wrote a critical assessment of this two-volume history. In 1854 Guizot published his Histoire de la république d'Angleterre et de Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
(2 vols., 1854), then his Histoire du protectorat de Cromwell et du rétablissement des Stuart
House of Stuart
The House of Stuart is a European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century, and subsequently held the position of the Kings of Great Britain and Ireland...
s (2 vols., 1856). He also published an essay on Peel
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
, and amid many essays on religion, during the ten years 1858–1868, appeared the extensive Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de mon temps, in nine volumes. His speeches were included in 1863 in his Histoire parlementaire de la France (5 vols. of parliamentary speeches, 1863).
After having resigned as Prime Minister of France, he left politics. He was aware that the link between himself and public life was broken for ever; and he never made the slightest attempt to renew it. The greater part of the year he spent at his residence at Val Richer, an Augustine monastery near Lisieux
Lisieux
Lisieux is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.Lisieux is the capital of the Pays d'Auge area, which is characterised by valleys and hedged farmland...
in Normandy, which had been sold at the time of the first Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. His two daughters, who married two descendants of the illustrious Dutch family of De Witt
Johan de Witt
Johan de Witt, heer van Zuid- en Noord-Linschoten, Snelrewaard, Hekendorp and IJsselveere was a key figure in Dutch politics in the mid 17th century, when its flourishing sea trade in a period of globalization made the United Provinces a leading European power during the Dutch Golden Age...
, so congenial in faith and manners to the Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
s of France, kept his house. One of his sons-in-law farmed the estate. And here Guizot devoted his later years with undiminished energy to literary labour, which was in fact his chief means of subsistence. Proud, independent, simple and contented he remained to the last; and these years of retirement were perhaps the happiest and most serene portion of his life.
Two institutions may be said even under the second empire to have retained their freedom-the Institute of France and the Protestant Consistory. In both of these Guizot continued to the last to take an active part. He was a member of three of the five academies into which the Institute of France is divided. The Academy of Moral and Political Science owed its restoration to him, and he became in 1832 one of its first associates. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres elected him in 1833 as the successor to M Dacier
Bon-Joseph Dacier
Bon Joseph Dacier was a French historian, philologist and translator from ancient Greek. He became a Chevalier de l'Empire , then Baron de l'Empire...
; and in 1836 he was chosen a member of the French Academy, the highest literary distinction of the country. In these learned bodies Guizot continued for nearly forty years to take a lively interest and to exercise a powerful influence. He was the jealous champion of their independence. His voice had the greatest weight in the choice of new candidates; the younger generation of French writers never looked in vain to him for encouragement; and his constant aim was to maintain the dignity and purity of the profession of letters. In 1842, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
.
In the consistory of the Protestant church in Paris Guizot exercised a similar influence. His early education and his experience of life conspired to strengthen the convictions of a religious temperament. He remained throughout his life a firm believer in the truths of revelation, and a volume of Méditations on the Christian Religion was one of his latest works. But though he adhered inflexibly to the church of his fathers and combated the rationalist tendencies of the age, which seemed to threaten it with destruction, he retained not a tinge of the intolerance or asperity of the Calvinistic
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
creed. He respected in the Church of Rome the faith of the majority of his countrymen; and the writings of the great Catholic prelates, Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist....
and Bourdaloue
Louis Bourdaloue
Louis Bourdaloue was a French Jesuit and preacher.He was born in Bourges. At the age of sixteen he entered the Society of Jesus, and was appointed successively professor of rhetoric, philosophy and moral theology, in various Jesuit colleges...
, were as familiar and as dear to him as those of his own persuasion, and were commonly used by him in the daily exercises of family worship.
In these literary pursuits and in the retirement of Val Richer years passed smoothly and rapidly away; and as his grandchildren grew up around him, he began to direct their attention to the history of their country. From these lessons sprang his last work, the Histoire de France racontée à mes petits enfants. The history came down to 1789, and was continued to 1870 by his daughter Madame Guizot de Witt from her father's notes.
Down to the summer of 1874 Guizot's mental vigour and activity were unimpaired. He died peacefully, and is said to have recited verses of Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
and texts from Scripture
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
on his death-bed.
Quotes
- "You may raise the pile of calumny as high as you like; it will never reach the height of my disdain" (#The second Soult government)
- "The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty"
- "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head".
External links
- Works by or about François Guizot at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books original editions) (plain text and HTML) - "The History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe"
- Condition of the July Monarchy, 1830–1848 at the Modern History Sourcebook.