SECTION II
As we already possess, I had almost said, twenty thousand works, the greater number of them extending to many volumes, on the subject, exclusively, of the history of France; and as, even a studious man, were he to live a hundred years, would find it impossible to read them, I think it a good thing to know where to stop. We are obliged to connect with the knowledge of our own country the history of our neighbors. We are still less permitted to remain ignorant of the Greeks and Romans, and their laws which are become ours; but, if to this laborious study we should resolve to add that of more remote antiquity, we should resemble the man who deserted Tacitus and Livy to study seriously the "Thousand and One Nights." All the origins of nations are evidently fables. The reason is that men must have lived long in society, and have learned to make bread and clothing (which would be matters of some difficulty) before they acquired the art of transmitting all their thoughts to posterity (a matter of greater difficulty still). The art of writing is certainly not more than six thousand years old, even among the Chinese; and, whatever may be the boast of the Chaldæans and Egyptians, it appears not at all likely that they were able to read and write earlier.
The history, therefore, of preceding periods, could be transmitted by memory alone; and we well know how the memory of past events changes from one generation to another. The first histories were written only from the imagination. Not only did every people invent its own origin, but it invented also the origin of the whole world.
If we may believe Sanchoniathon, the origin of things was a thick air, which was rarified by the wind; hence sprang desire and love, and from the union of desire and love were formed animals. The stars were later productions, and intended merely to adorn the heavens, and to rejoice the sight of the animals upon earth.
The Knef of the Egyptians, their Oshiret and Ishet, which we call Osiris and Isis, are neither less ingenious nor ridiculous. The Greeks embellished all these fictions. Ovid collected them and ornamented them with the charms of the most beautiful poetry. What he says of a god who develops or disembroils chaos, and of the formation of man, is sublime.
Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altæ
Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in cætera posset.
Natus homo est…
– OVID, Metam., i, v. 76.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was man designed;
Conscious or thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest.
– DRYDEN.
Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram;
Os homini sublime dedit cœlumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
METAM., i, v. 84.
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
– DRYDEN.
Hesiod, and other writers who lived so long before, would have been very far from expressing themselves with this elegant sublimity. But, from the interesting moment of man's formation down to the era of the Olympiads, everything is plunged in profound obscurity.
Herodotus is present at the Olympic games, and, like an old woman to children, recites his narratives, or rather tales, to the assembled Greeks. He begins by saying that the Phœnicians sailed from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean; which, if true, must necessarily imply that they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and made the circuit of Africa.
Then comes the rape of Io; then the fable of Gyges and Candaules; then the wondrous stories of banditti, and that of the daughter of Cheops, king of Egypt, having required a hewn stone from each of her many lovers, and obtained, in consequence, a number large enough to build one of the pyramids.
To this, add the oracles, prodigies, and frauds of priests, and you have the history of the human race.
The first periods of the Roman history appear to have been written by Herodotus; our conquerors and legislators knew no other way of counting their years as they passed away, than by driving nails into a wall by the hand of the sacred pontiff.
The great Romulus, the king of a village, is the son of the god Mars, and a recluse, who was proceeding to a well to draw water in a pitcher. He has a god for his father, a woman of loose manners for his mother, and a she-wolf for his nurse. A buckler falls from heaven expressly for Numa. The invaluable books of the Sibyls are found by accident. An augur, by divine permission, divides a large flint-stone with a razor. A vestal, with her mere girdle, draws into the water a large vessel that has been stranded. Castor and Pollux come down to fight for the Romans, and the marks of their horses' feet are imprinted on the stones. The transalpine Gauls advanced to pillage Rome; some relate that they were driven away by geese, others that they carried away with them much gold and silver; but it is probable that, at that time in Italy, geese were far more abundant than silver. We have imitated the first Roman historians, at least in their taste for fables. We have our oriflamme, our great standard, brought from heaven by an angel, and the holy phial by a pigeon; and, when to these we add the mantle of St. Martin, we feel not a little formidable.
What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.
It is often asked whether the fable of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is taken from the history of Jephthah; whether the deluge of Deucalion is invented in imitation of that of Noah; whether the adventure of Philemon and Baucis is copied from that of Lot and his wife. The Jews admit that they had no communication with strangers, that their books were unknown to the Greeks till the translation made by the order of Ptolemy. The Jews were, long before that period, money-brokers and usurers among the Greeks at Alexandria; but the Greeks never went to sell old clothes at Jerusalem. It is evident that no people imitated the Jews, and also that the Jews imitated or adopted many things from the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks.
All Jewish antiquities are sacred in our estimation, notwithstanding the hatred and contempt in which we hold that people. We cannot, indeed, believe them by reason, but we bring ourselves under subjection to the Jews by faith. There are about fourscore systems in existence on the subject of their chronology, and a far greater number of ways of explaining the events recorded in their histories; we know not which is the true one, but we reserve our faith for it in store against the time when that true one shall be discovered.
We have so many things to believe in this sensible and magnanimous people, that all our faith is exhausted by them, and we have none left for the prodigies with which the other nations abound. Rollin may go on repeating to us the oracles of Apollo, and the miraculous achievements of Semiramis; he may continue to transcribe all that has been narrated of the justice of those ancient Scythians who so frequently pillaged Africa, and occasionally ate men for their breakfast; yet sensible and well-educated people will still feel and express some degree of incredulity.
What I most admire in our modern compilers is the judgment and zeal with which they prove to us, that whatever happened in former ages, in the most extensive and powerful empires of the world, took place solely for the instruction of the inhabitants of Palestine. If the kings of Babylon, in the course of their conquests, overrun the territories of the Hebrew people, it is only to correct that people for their sins. If the monarch, who has been commonly named Cyrus, becomes master of Babylon, it is that he may grant permission to some captive Jews to return home. If Alexander conquers Darius, it is for the settlement of some Jew old-clothesmen at Alexandria. When the Romans join Syria to their vast dominions, and round their empire with the little district of Judæa, this is still with a view to teach a moral lesson to the Jews. The Arabs and the Turks appear upon the stage of the world solely for the correction of this amiable people. We must acknowledge that they have had an excellent education; never had any pupil so many preceptors. Such is the utility of history.
But what is still more instructive is the exact justice which the clergy have dealt out to all those sovereigns with whom they were dissatisfied. Observe with what impartial candor St. Gregory of Nazianzen judges the emperor Julian, the philosopher. He declares that that prince, who did not believe in the existence of the devil, held secret communication with that personage, and that, on a particular occasion, when the demons appeared to him under the most hideous forms, and in the midst of the most raging flames, he drove them away by making inadvertently the sign of the cross.
He denominates him madman and wretch; he asserts that Julian immolated young men and women every night in caves. Such is the description he gives of the most candid and clement of men, and who never exercised the slightest revenge against this same Gregory, notwithstanding the abuse and invectives with which he pursued him throughout his reign.
To apologize for the guilty is a happy way of justifying calumny against the innocent. Compensation is thus effected; and such compensation was amply afforded by St. Gregory. The emperor Constantius, Julian's uncle and predecessor, upon his accession to the throne, had massacred Julius, his mother's brother, and his two sons, all three of whom had been declared august; this was a system which he had adopted from his father. He afterwards procured the assassination of Gallus, Julian's brother. The cruelty which he thus displayed to his own family, he extended to the empire at large; but he was a man of prayer, and, even at the decisive battle with Maxentius, he was praying to God in a neighboring church during the whole time in which the armies were engaged. Such was the man who was eulogized by Gregory; and, if such is the way in which the saints make us acquainted with the truth, what may we not expect from the profane, particularly when they are ignorant, superstitious, and irritable?
At the present day the study of history is occasionally applied to a purpose somewhat whimsical and absurd. Certain charters of the time of Dagobert are discovered and brought forward, the greater part of them of a somewhat suspicious character in point of genuineness, and ill-understood; and from these it is inferred, that customs, rights, and prerogatives, which subsisted then, should be revived now. I would recommend it to those who adopt this method of study and reasoning, to say to the ocean, "You formerly extended to Aigues-Mortes, Fréjus, Ravenna, and Ferrara. Return to them immediately."
SECTION III
Of the Certainty of History.
All certainty which does not consist in mathematical demonstration is nothing more than the highest probability; there is no other historical certainty.
When Marco Polo described the greatness and population of China, being the first, and for a time the only writer who had described them, he could not obtain credit. The Portuguese, who for ages afterwards had communication and commerce with that vast empire, began to render the description probable. It is now a matter of absolute certainty; of that certainty which arises from the unanimous deposition of a thousand witnesses or different nations, unopposed by the testimony of a single individual.
If merely two or three historians had described the adventure of King Charles XII. when he persisted in remaining in the territories of his benefactor, the sultan, in opposition to the orders of that monarch, and absolutely fought, with the few domestics that attended his person, against an army of janissaries and Tartars, I should have suspended my judgment about its truth; but, having spoken to many who actually witnessed the fact, and having never heard it called in question, I cannot possibly do otherwise than believe it; because, after all, although such conduct is neither wise nor common, there is nothing in it contradictory to the laws of nature, or the character of the hero.
That which is in opposition to the ordinary course of nature ought not to be believed, unless it is attested by persons evidently inspired by the divine mind, and whose inspiration, indeed, it is impossible to doubt. Hence we are justified in considering as a paradox the assertion made under the article on "Certainty," in the great "Encyclopædia," that we are as much bound to believe in the resuscitation of a dead man, if all Paris were to affirm it, as to believe all Paris when it states that we gained the battle of Fontenoy. It is clear that the evidence of all Paris to a thing improbable can never be equal to that evidence in favor of a probable one. These are the first principles of genuine logic. Such a dictionary as the one in question should be consecrated only to truth.
Uncertainty of History.
Periods of time are distinguished as fabulous and historical. But even in the historical times themselves it is necessary to distinguish truths from fables. I am not here speaking of fables, now universally admitted to be such. There is no question, for example, respecting the prodigies with which Livy has embellished, or rather defaced, his history. But with respect to events generally admitted, how many reasons exist for doubt!
Let it be recollected that the Roman republic was five hundred years without historians; that Livy himself deplores the loss of various public monuments or records, as almost all, he says, were destroyed in the burning of Rome: "Pleraque interiere." Let it be considered that, in the first three hundred years, the art of writing was very uncommon: "Raræ per eadem tempora literæ." Reason will be then seen for entertaining doubt on all those events which do not correspond with the usual order of human affairs.
Can it be considered very likely that Romulus, the grandson of the king of the Sabines, was compelled to carry off the Sabine women in order to obtain for his people wives? Is the history of Lucretia highly probable; can we easily believe, on the credit of Livy, that the king Porsenna betook himself to flight, full of admiration for the Romans, because a fanatic had pledged himself to assassinate him? Should we not rather be inclined to rely upon Polybius, who was two hundred years earlier than Livy? Polybius informs us that Porsenna subjugated the Romans. This is far more probable than the adventure of Scævola's burning off his hand for failing in the attempt to assassinate him. I would have defied Poltrot to do as much.
Does the adventure of Regulus, inclosed within a hogshead or tub stuck round with iron spikes, deserve belief? Would not Polybius, a contemporary, have recorded it had it been true? He says not a single word upon the subject. Is not this a striking presumption that the story was trumped up long afterwards to gratify the popular hatred against the Carthaginians?
Open "Moréri's Dictionary," at the article on "Regulus." He informs you that the torments inflicted on that Roman are recorded in Livy. The particular decade, however, in which Livy would have recorded it, if at all, is lost; and in lieu of it, we have only the supplement of Freinsheim; and thus it appears that Dictionary has merely cited a German writer of the seventeenth century, under the idea of citing a Roman of the Augustan age. Volumes might be composed out of all the celebrated events which have been generally admitted, but which may be more fairly doubted. But the limits allowed for this article will not permit us to enlarge.
Whether Temples, Festivals, Annual Ceremonies, and even Medals, are Historic Proofs.
We might be naturally led to imagine that a monument raised by any nation in celebration of a particular event, would attest the certainty of that event; if, however, these monuments were not erected by contemporaries, or if they celebrate events that carry with them but little probability, they may often be regarded as proving nothing more than a wish to consecrate a popular opinion.
The rostral column, erected in Rome by the contemporaries of Duilius, is undoubtedly a proof of the naval victory obtained by Duilius; but does the statue of the augur Nævius, who is said to have divided a large flint with a razor, prove that Nævius in reality performed that prodigy? Were the statues of Ceres and Triptolemus, at Athens, decisive evidences that Ceres came down from I know not what particular planet, to instruct the Athenians in agriculture? Or does the famous Laocoon, which exists perfect to the present day, furnish incontestable evidence of the truth of the story of the Trojan horse?
Ceremonies and annual festivals observed universally throughout any nation, are, in like manner, no better proofs of the reality of the events to which they are attributed. The festival of Orion, carried on the back of a dolphin, was celebrated among the Romans as well as the Greeks. That of Faunus was in celebration of his adventure with Hercules and Omphale, when that god, being enamored of Omphale, mistook the bed of Hercules for that of his mistress.
The famous feast of the Lupercals was instituted in honor of the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus.
What was the origin of the feast of Orion, which was observed on the fifth of the ides of May? It was neither more nor less than the following adventure: Hyreus once entertained at his house the gods Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, and when his high and mighty guests were about to depart, the worthy host, who had no wife, and was very desirous of having a son, lamented his unfortunate fate, and expressed his anxious desire to the three divinities. We dare not exactly detail what they did to the hide of an ox which Hyreus had killed for their entertainment; however, they afterwards covered the well-soaked hide with a little earth; and thence, at the end of nine months, was born Orion.
Almost all the Roman, Syrian, Grecian, and Egyptian festivals, were founded on similar legends, as well as the temples and statues of ancient heroes. They were monuments consecrated by credulity to error.
One of our most ancient monuments is the statue of St. Denis carrying his head in his arms.
Even a medal, and a contemporary medal, is sometimes no proof. How many medals has flattery struck in celebration of battles very indecisive in themselves, but thus exalted into victories; and of enterprises, in fact, baffled and abortive, and completed only in the inscription on the medal? Finally, during the war in 1740, between the Spaniards and the English, was there not a medal struck, attesting the capture of Carthagena by Admiral Vernon, although that admiral was obliged to raise the siege?
Medals are then unexceptionable testimonies only when the event they celebrate is attested by contemporary authors; these evidences thus corroborating each other, verify the event described.
Should an Historian ascribe Fictitious Speeches to his Characters, and sketch Portraits of them?
If on any particular occasion the commander of an army, or a public minister, has spoken in a powerful and impressive manner, characteristic of his genius and his age, his discourse should unquestionably be given with the most literal exactness. Speeches of this description are perhaps the most valuable part of history. But for what purpose represent a man as saying what he never did say? It would be just as correct to attribute to him acts which he never performed. It is a fiction imitated from Homer; but that which is fiction in a poem, in strict language, is a lie in the historian. Many of the ancients adopted the method in question, which merely proves that many of the ancients were fond of parading their eloquence at the expense of truth.
Of Historical Portraiture.
Portraits, also, frequently manifest a stronger desire for display, than to communicate information. Contemporaries are justifiable in drawing the portraits of statesmen with whom they have negotiated, or of generals under whom they have fought. But how much is it to be apprehended that the pencil will in many cases be guided by the feelings? The portraits given by Lord Clarendon appear to be drawn with more impartiality, gravity, and judgment, than those which we peruse with so much delight in Cardinal de Retz.
But to attempt to paint the ancients; to elaborate in this way the development of their minds; to regard events as characters in which we may accurately read the most sacred feelings and intents of their hearts – this is an undertaking of no ordinary difficulty and discrimination, although as frequently conducted, both childish and trifling.
Of Cicero's Maxim Concerning History, that an Historian should never dare to relate a Falsehood or to Conceal a Truth.
The first part of this precept is incontestable; we must stop for a moment to examine the other. If a particular truth may be of any service to the state, your silence is censurable. But I will suppose you to write the history of a prince who had reposed in you a secret – ought you to reveal that secret? Ought you to say to all posterity what you would be criminal in disclosing to a single individual? Should the duty of an historian prevail over the higher and more imperative duty of a man?
I will suppose again, that you have witnessed a failing or weakness which has not had the slightest influence on public affairs – ought you to publish such weakness? In such a case history becomes satire.
It must be allowed, indeed, that the greater part of anecdote writers are more indiscreet than they are useful. But what opinion must we entertain of those impudent compilers who appear to glory in scattering about them calumny and slander, and print and sell scandals as Voisin sold poisons?
Of Satirical History.
If Plutarch censured Herodotus for not having sufficiently extolled the fame of some of the Grecian cities, and for omitting many known facts worthy of being recorded, how much more censurable are certain of our modern writers, who, without any of the merits of Herodotus, impute both to princes and to nations acts of the most odious character, without the slightest proof or evidence? The history of the war in 1741 has been written in England; and it relates, "that at the battle of Fontenoy the French fired at the English balls and pieces of glass which had been prepared with poison; and that the duke of Cumberland sent to the king of France a box full of those alleged poisonous articles, which had been found in the bodies of the wounded English." The same author adds, that the French having lost in that battle forty thousand men, the parliament issued an order to prevent people from talking on the subject, under pain of corporal punishment.
The fraudulent memoirs published not long since under the name of Madame de Maintenon, abound with similar absurdities. We are told in them, that at the siege of Lille the allies threw placards into the city, containing these words: "Frenchmen, be comforted – Maintenon shall never be your queen."
Almost every page is polluted by false statements and abuse of the royal family and other leading families in the kingdom, without the author's making out the smallest probability to give a color to his calumnies. This is not writing history; it is writing slanders which deserve the pillory.
A vast number of works have been printed in Holland, under the name of history, of which the style is as vulgar and coarse as the abuse, and the facts as false as they are ill-narrated. This, it has been observed, is a bad fruit of the noble tree of liberty. But if the contemptible authors of this trash have the liberty thus to deceive their readers, it becomes us here to take the liberty to undeceive them.
A thirst for despicable gain, and the insolence of vulgar and grovelling manners, were the only motives which led that Protestant refugee from Languedoc, of the name of Langlevieux, but commonly called La Beaumelle, to attempt the most infamous trick that ever disgraced literature. He sold to Eslinger, the bookseller of Frankfort, in 1751, for seventeen louis d'or, the "History of the Age of Louis XIV.," which is not his; and, either to make it believed that he was the proprietor, or to earn his money, he loaded it with abusive and abominable notes against Louis XIV., his son, and his grandson, the duke of Burgundy, whom he abuses in the most unmeasured terms, and calls a traitor to his grandfather and his country. He pours upon the duke of Orleans, the regent, calumnies at once the most horrible and the most absurd; no person of consequence is spared, and yet no person of consequence did he ever know. He retails against the marshals Villars and Villeroi, against ministers, and even against ladies, all the petty, dirty, and scandalous tales that could be collected from the lowest taverns and wine-houses; and he speaks of the greatest princes as if they were amenable to himself, and under his own personal jurisdiction. He expresses himself, indeed, as if he were a formal and authorized judge of kings: "Give me," says he, "a Stuart, and I will make him king of England."
This most ridiculous and abominable conduct, proceeding from an author obscure and unknown, has incurred no prosecution; it would have been severely punished in a man whose words would have carried any weight. But we must here observe, that these works of darkness frequently circulate through all Europe; they are sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Leipsic, and the whole of the North is overrun with them. Foreigners, who are not well informed, derive from books of this description their knowledge of modern history. German authors are not always sufficiently on their guard against memoirs of this character, but employ them as materials; which has been the case with the memoirs of Pontis, Montbrun, Rochefort, and Pordac; with all the pretended political testaments of ministers of state, which have proceeded from the pen of forgery; with the "Royal Tenth" of Boisguillebert, impudently published under the name of Marshal Vauban; and with innumerable compilations of anas and anecdotes.
History is sometimes even still more shamefully abused in England. As there are always two parties in furious hostility against each other, until some common danger for a season unites them, the writers of one faction condemn everything that the others approve. The same individual is represented as a Cato and a Catiline. How is truth to be extricated from this adulation and satire? Perhaps there is only one rule to be depended upon, which is, to believe all the good which the historian of a party ventures to allow to the leaders of the opposite faction; and all the ills which he ventures to impute to the chiefs of his own – a rule, of which neither party can severely complain.
With regard to memoirs actually written by agents in the events recorded, as those of Clarendon, Ludlow, and Burnet, in England, and de la Rochefoucauld and de Retz in France, if they agree, they are true; if they contradict each other, doubt them.
With respect to anas and anecdotes, there may perhaps be one in a hundred of them that contain some shadow of truth.