The Mob is the mother of tyrants.
-Diogenes
Anyone who knows anything about the history of the various National Revolutions of Modernity has come across the concept of the Revolutionary Cycle. Usually, it’s taught in the context of the French Revolution, as the phases are easy to point out:
Moderate Phase - from the Opening of the Estates-General in 1789 to the end of the Monarchy in 1792
Radical Phase - from the Opening of the National Convention until the fall of Robespierre in 1794
Conservative Reaction - (also known as Thermidorean Reaction) From the fall of Robespierre to the Coup of 18th Brumaire that brought Napoleon to power.
And then, Dictator. LOL, now there’s an emperor who’s ten times as tyrannical as Louis XVI ever was! Stupid Revolutionaries!
And there the story stops. Because in high school, after we’re done with Napoleon, we have to learn about factories and miserable Victorian urchins and The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire (imagine using your society’s strengths to secure its economic gain, what monsters…), and not a single fuck is given about French political arrangements. The Revolution was over, Democracy and Stuff, Enlightenment Ideas blah blah blah.
That is, of course, not where the story stops. Not in France, not in the rest of Europe. Revolutions are not over until they’re over, and the French one didn’t end in 1799. A revolution is not truly over until a stable regime is formed.
Consider the American Revolution. Historians can mark out phases for it as well:
Moderate - The First Continental Congress to the Olive Branch Petition.
Radical - Declaration of Independence to Constitutional Convention.
Conservative - Constitutional Convention until the Election of George Washington.
And then, the Man Who Could Have Been King. The regime is now stable, and the Revolution has succeeded in its goal: not only in gaining the independence of the colonies from British Rule, but of turning said colonies into a single political entity, which it had never been.1
The American Revolution was different from the French because the project was different: instead of destroying the American ruling classes, it was creating an American nation out of constituent parts. The war had already created the impetus for national organization, so the matter could be settled with debates, voting, and a minimum of violence. The society itself didn’t need to be torn apart.
So George Washington didn’t need to become a Dictator or Emperor of the United States in order to restore order.2 The closest the USA came to that level of panic was the Newburgh Conspiracy of 1783, in which senior Continental Army officers grumbled and plotted about overthrowing Congress. This might have taken the Revolution on a very wild turn, had not Washington put his foot down. But Washington wasn’t an outsider like Napoleon, nor was he a cruel autist like Lenin, so he could be loyal to the government he had fought for. Washington’s closest analogue is Oliver Cromwell, but he didn’t have to cut George III’s head off, just remove his writ from the land, which was easily done, as George III had never set foot in America, any more than any of his predecessors had.3
Thus, the American Revolution ended in 1789 with the Revolutionary project complete, and a stable continuous regime created. This is not to say that said regime has not undergone internal variations, but that’s a subject for another essay. Overall, the government made in 1789 is still the government.
And as we love to tease our Gallic sister republic, that is not what happened to them.
In the first place, Napoleon fell from power due to the old failing of great European rulers, military hubris. It was this, and not any political error, which cost him his otherwise successful regime. As he went off to his second exile, the Bourbon kings returned with the armies of Europe at their back.
The fact of the phrase “second exile” should have been enough evidence that the Ancien Regime could not be resuscitated. Louis XVIII4 had moderation enough to maintain his throne until death, but he would be the last one so gifted. His brother Charles X burned through all the remaining goodwill by 1830, when another Revolution sent him to his second exile.
This second Revolution was really more of a dynastic shift, putting the final cadet house of the Capetians, the House of Orleans, into power. There were still enough aristocrats, and enough people who remembered the guillotines with horror, to prefer a king of some kind, and Louis-Philipe did his level best. It was not good enough. A third Revolution sent the final king away in 1848.
This Revolution gave rise to the phrase “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”, which is owed to Karl Marx. In short order, the Third Revolution gave way, after a brief Second Republic, to a Third Napoleon.5 Like his namesake, Napoleon III created a stable and orderly regime, and like his famous namesake, he lost it in battle with the Prussians, surrendering his sword to the first Kaiser Wilhelm in 1870.
This time there was no Concert of Europe to settle the country’s fate. This time, the people of France were left to themselves. This time, the National Government, after settling with the new German Reich and making an obligatory consideration of the Bourbon Pretender,6 created, in 1875, a Third Republic. This regime, characterized by it’s first president, Adolphe Thiers, as the government which “divides us least”, became France in it’s nearly-final form: a Parliamentary democracy with a popularly-elected President and ongoing changes of Premiers. Other than the Nazi-imposed Vichy Regime and a few more Constitutional do-overs, it remains that to this day.7
Thus, if one defines the Revolutionary Project of France as a transition from a monarchy to a stable republic (and what else would you define it as?), then the French Revolution was nearly a century in its life-cycle, a tornado of political currents and counter-currents that slowly resolved itself into equilibrium, an accurate representation of the power structure in the nation.
What do we draw from this? First, that the Revolutionary Cycle, as currently discussed, is incomplete. Just as a tornado isn’t done until it’s spent all its energy, neither is a Revolution. A proper Revolutionary Cycle will allow for Restoration Phases, Retrenchment Phases, Secondary and Tertiary Revolts, and always recognize that no nation’s politics, especially not in Europe, occur in a vacuum.
If one applies this logic to 17th Century Britain, one can perceive a British Revolution that began with the calling of the Long Parliament in 1640 and ended with the coronation of William and Mary in 1688. Here we find Moderates, Radicals, Conservatives, a Dictator, a Restoration8, and a Secondary Revolt, ending with Britain established as a Constitutional Monarchy with the Monarch as a primarily sacral figure and an elected Parliament as the primary political engine. Britain has remained stable in this form for over 300 years.
We can also propound the form of a German Revolution, beginning with the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918 and ending with the foundation of of the Bundesrepublik in 1949. The Nazis at last find context as a counter-revolt, a Thermidorean overreaction to Weimar Bourgois-cracy, complete with Napoleonic military hubris and a Wagner/Ragnarok-inspired Reign of Burning directed at Europe’s ancient Other.
The Russians, of course, were nerding about the phases of their Revolution while it was happening. Trotsky was so ready to call Stalin a Thermidorean Red Napoleon that he forgot to do anything to prevent his takeover of the Communist Party. Unless it was Kruschev who was the True Thermidorean, taking his foot off the gas of Stalin’s Terror. Unless it was Lenin, who took his foot off the gas by replacing War Communism with the New Economic Policy in 1921.
But by my logic, none of this matters, because the Soviet Union is gone, so the Revolution can’t be over (never mind that the USSR lasted longer than the Third Republic did). I have hit the limits of my own hermeneutic.
Which is fine. I am fond of saying that You Cannot Solve Politics, let me add to this the obvious precept that History Does Not Stop. Each revolt and counter-revolt feeds the one that follows, like body-blows in a street-fight with endless people behind you ready to tap in. If there is Always Revolution, then there’s always a New Phase to find yourself in, tearing down the monsters before they tear down you.
Enjoy the Barricades, kameraden.
It is tempting to imagine what might have happened if the British had thought to create a single Dominion of America, with a Governor-General. But by the time they might have perceived the need for it, it was already too late.
Which is good, as he had no children to pass an imperial title to. His stepson would not have served.
The closest thing to royalty that ever came to America were the Calvert family, who ruled Maryland as a kind of Earldom Palatinate.
The son of the guillotined Louis XVI, who survived his father by two years before dying in prison is counted as Louis XVII, despite never being crowned or ruling the country, just as Richard III’s unfortunate nephew, whom he overthrew and most likely murdered in the Tower of London, is counted as Edward V.
Like Louis XVII and Edward V, Napoleon II reigned only briefly and in theory.
Who, had he been willing to accept the tricolor as a national flag, could have become King Henri V. But he was not.
Under the Fifth Republic, the President has considerably more power than under the Third and Fourth iterations, but otherwise, the system is much the same.
Charles II is the most successful dynastic restorer of the modern age, giving the Stuarts another 50+ years on the throne after their overthrow.
Great post, right up my alley with the history. Bravo.
Enjoyed this