On power, its nature and the history of its growth; by Jouvenel Bertrand de 1903-1987

Author:Jouvenel, Bertrand de, 1903-1987
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Authority, State, The
Publisher: Boston, Beacon
Published: 1962-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

of books and speeches, irony and argument, about politics. Qui learned men, with infinite care and subtlety, have constructed genealogical trees for the ideas of the century down to their final flowering. They make stimulating studies. For the elucidation of history, however, it is less important to listen to what men say than to observe what they do.*

Action in politics is in the last resort administration. Let who will open the administrative dossiers from the reign of Louis XIV to that of Napoleon. The continuity of Power will then strike his eye; the obstacles which it encountered and the true direction of events will then stand revealed.

The officials of the monarchy had one constant policy: that of Richelieu and Mazarin; it consisted of the struggle, going back to Louis XI, against the House of Habsburg. The deep-laid schemes of Mazarin, adapted and realized by Louis XIV, had driven the Habsburgs from the throne of Spain. In both Spain and Italy Bourbons were installed in the place of Austrian princes. Vienna still had to be opposed, not from need to destroy a state that was no longer dangerous, but because, in opposing her, France became the natural rallying-point of the German princes, who feared the Emperor, and in that way not only prevented the union of Germany under the Habsburgs, who were no longer formidable, but also and above all its crystallization around an internal centre of resistance, Prussia, which would, it was certain, fill the role of protector from the moment that France abandoned it.

In that policy, as simple as it was far-sighted, the French officials never wavered. But they could not maintain it, because noble wirepullers, having made their way into the employments of ambassador and minister, worked against French policy, whether because vanity made them want to cut a figure or because, as in the case of Choiseul, they made of a foreign court a rallying-point for the defence of themselves and their faction against the incessant intrigues of Versailles.

If Marie Antoinette was hated as was no other queen of France before her, the main reason for it certainly was that she represented the Austrian alliance, which had brought on France the disasters of

* "We cannot," said Dr. Johnson, "pry into the hearts of men, but then-actions are open to observation."

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