This is The Siècle, Supplemental 22: The French Connection.

Welcome back, everyone!

Today I have a special holiday bonus episode for you. You might remember Supplemental 21: The French History Games, in which I was joined by fellow French history podcasters Will Clark and Everett Rummage to riff on the Olympic Games by comparing exemplary figures from the French Revolution, Napoleonic, and Restoration periods.

Well, today the three of us are back with a new discussion inspired by the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. In the conversation you’re about to hear, each of us will compare and contrast some elements of our own periods in French history to the example of the American Early Republic.

You might notice my voice sounds different. That’s because I’m recording this intro on vacation, through my travel earbuds. Don’t worry, I recorded the actual discussion you’re about to hear using my normal desktop microphone.

Thank you to Evergreen Podcasts, The Siècle’s network, and to Will and Everett for joining me. Links to both their shows are in the show notes and at thesiecle.com/supplemental22 — if you’re not listening already. Now, on to our discussion:

EVERETT RUMMAGE: Hello, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Everett Rummage, and I’m the host of a history podcast called The Age of Napoleon. Today, I’m joined by fellow history podcasters David Montgomery of The Siècle —

THE SIÈCLE: Hello!

RUMMAGE: — and Will Clark of Grey History: The French Revolution and Napoleon.

WILL CLARK: Hello everybody.

RUMMAGE: We’re here for a special episode marking the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence.

Other than obviously Britain, there is no country more intertwined with America’s revolutionary history than France. Given that all three of us study the history of France during America’s early Republican era, we thought it would be fitting to mark the anniversary in our own way, with a conversation on the French and American political systems during this period.

Each of us has prepared a few topics to discuss, and Will has agreed to start us off. So Will, take it away.

CLARK: Thank you very much, Everett. And the great thing about the French Revolution, I suppose, is that there’s so many ways that multiple regimes either mirror developments across the Atlantic or diverge from the young American republic. And one of the things — maybe this is just proof that I need some more hobbies — but one of the things that I particularly find interesting is the matter of constitutions.

Because both nations have founding fathers. I mean, the French don’t call them that, but they have founding fathers with similar backgrounds. They socialize in similar circles. Many of them know each other. They read the same philosophical and historical texts, and yet the constitutions they design are very different.

And not only for the constitutional monarchy, but also for the First French Republic as well. They both differ substantially from the American version. And so I think that these substantial differences are fascinating given how similar I suppose the founding representatives are. And I will admit that I’m happy to die on the hill that had the French copied the Americans a little more, then maybe the French Revolution might not have gone off the rails so much.

But I do appreciate in present company that that would put all three of us out of a day job, so I’m not wishing on a star too much here.

SIÈCLE: Yeah, I mean, certainly I think people were debating that at the time and have continued to debate that ever since.

RUMMAGE: Of course, the last word in this is the American Constitution, well, the one we’ll be discussing, is still in force. These French constitutions we’ll be discussing, some of them didn’t last more than a couple years. So at the end of the day, longevity tells you something, doesn’t it?

CLARK: Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s hard to make the case — I mean, I have an episode for both the Constitution of 1791 and ‘93, and the Constitution of 1791 is in effect for less than a year before the overthrow of the monarchy. And obviously there’s a variety of reasons for this, and many of them don’t revolve around the Constitution. But I do think that the foundational stone that is governing France, particularly in 1792, is really important. And it’s interesting if you look in comparisons to what the Americans choose. There’s some big structural differences, and then there’s some smaller differences that I think kind of go under the radar, but I think maybe actually have a bigger impact than you might first think.

So if I think, for example, the first obvious divergence, I suppose, is the structure and the power of the legislature. The Americans rebuff the idea of a single chamber, and they obviously create the House of Representatives and a Senate. And so they’re not only dividing power across different branches of government, but they’re dividing power within the legislative branch.

And this happens at a federal level, but this also largely happens at a state level too. I mean, when the French are debating this in late 1789, whether they should have one chamber or two, 12 of the 13 states had two chambers. So 12 of the 13 states were bicameral. And for the nerds out there trying to figure out who the odd one out is, keep in mind the following: Georgia had adopted a new constitution earlier in 1789, so it’s out. Vermont was not yet part of the Union, and so that just leaves Pennsylvania, although they will adopt a Senate the following year at the end of 1790. And for the modern political nerds out there, I believe that the only unicameral state in the Union at the moment is Nebraska. So this was a reasonable difference, and the French were debating it.

And for the Americans, if you go look at The Federalist Papers and the like, they’re deeply concerned about a tyranny of the legislature. They are worried that it might be susceptible to the impulses of a sudden, and violent passion. And while I don’t necessarily think unicameralism is a mistake that the French revolutionaries made, I do think that if you look at the history of Paris in the 1790s, there’s a lot of sudden and violent passions that are running amok over the national government in Paris.

And it is just an interesting difference that this kind of split between a single chamber to represent the single general will of the people versus the American approach of essentially trying to divide, actively divide power to protect liberties that way.

SIÈCLE: I think one of the things that pops up a lot whenever you look at any revolution, the sort of trying to write a new constitution, it is always being written in dialogue with the old system that was overthrown, and/or a past system that’s being held up as an idol. So the Americans had experienced what they called tyranny from British Parliament and from the king, and so they were concerned to limit the powers of Parliament, to limit the powers of the kings. French revolutionaries, correct me if I’m wrong, Will, it seemed like they were more concerned that the people’s will had been thwarted by the monarchy, and they were trying to make sure that that couldn’t happen again.

CLARK: Yeah, so that’s really the next big difference, is kind of the powers of the various branches of government. So the Americans invest a lot of effort into trying to make sure that their judicial and executive branches do have a reasonable amount of power compared to the legislature.

And the French are coming at it from a completely different perspective, because as you said, David, they’re not prisoners of their own history, but they see the world — even though they’re reading the same philosophical texts and the same historical texts and they have the same conversations and ideas — their experience is that a privileged order, a small minority, not only the king, but you’ve had judges in terms of the parlements, you’ve had the nobility. They want to ensure that no privileged order, no small minority, no corporation, no estate could infringe on the will of the people. And so that is why they are far less concerned with kind of balancing out the various branches of government.

Now, that’s not to say that they don’t believe in separation of powers. They actually quite vehemently do believe in separation of powers. And that’s part of the reason why it takes so long to get a Committee of Public Safety established until 1793. But it just manifests itself quite differently. And there are important ramifications of this.

And I think the French really missed a trick here in thinking about how the various branches of government would interact in the system that they established. And in particular, it’s easy to focus on the executive branch compared to the legislative. It’s obviously headed up by King Louis XVI. And the model that they create, I would argue, established an executive branch under Louis XVI that was just too weak. It had insufficient power. And a great example of this, in terms of the insufficient powers, but also just how the constitution doesn’t really flow well, relates to the king’s veto.

So they give the king a suspensive veto. This was a big argument at a very similar time about whether they were debating whether they would have one chamber or two. So the king can delay legislation, but he can’t permanently block it. But importantly, the assembly, the elected assembly, wouldn’t have the ability to override the king’s veto with a supermajority, what you would call a qualified veto, which is what the American president has.

And what that means is that contentious issues, say, for example, émigrés or refractory clergy, they just stay on the agenda permanently and they just gum up the machinery of government. You can’t resolve any political crisis, in particular because the king also does not have the power to dissolve Parliament.

So the assembly can’t override the king, the king can’t override the assembly through either a permanent veto or dissolving the legislative assembly, and that just means that you just have these Groundhog Days. And I think 1792 in particular with the issue of refractory clergy, émigrés… eventually all the sides think that war is their answer, which it turns out it’s not. Specifically on the veto I think is a great example of had the French maybe copied the homework across the Atlantic a little more — I’m not saying that would’ve solved their problems. I think the Constitution of 1791 has a lot of issues. There are certain design features that I think the American system works far better than what the French designed.

RUMMAGE: I would say this. You talk about it wasn’t well thought out how the various branches of government would interact with each other, which is I think a very fair point about the French Constitution. I will say this, it’s worth pointing out: arguably the most important role of the American judiciary is constitutional review and judicial review, determining whether or not laws are constitutional, and that is not in the Constitution.

We’ve kind of all agreed on this sort of fiction that it’s implied, but there’s not a lot of evidence that that was actually how it was envisioned when the Constitution was written. So in that respect, in a sense, the Americans were more lucky than good.

CLARK: And specifically on the issue of judicial review, the French actually explicitly say in constitutional matters that is out of what they’re allowed to do. Because again, they want to protect the single will, the general will of the people that’s embodied by the singular chamber legislature.

SIÈCLE: At the same time, though, your examples also sort of bring up the importance of the unwritten part of constitutions, the norms and the shared assumptions about how the written document will be interpreted. And obviously that’s a huge issue in British historiography and British constitutional law.

But in my period, for example, the July Revolution in 1830 was kicked off by Charles X basically suspending and rewriting the constitution. But he was probably strictly legal — that was probably something he could do because there was this vague open-ended emergency clause that he cited. And it was more of a norm that nobody had thought that this could be used for such a thing. But the plain language didn’t say, “And this can’t be used to overthrow the Constitution.” They added that in after the July Revolution was over. But I imagine that certainly we’ve talked about how the Americans have had some experiences with things that aren’t quite written down in the Constitution itself but have become accepted norms —

RUMMAGE: And I think, something I actually was going to bring up later, but I think now is a perfect time to talk about it is one of the… It’s not in the American Constitution, but one of the strengths of the American Constitution is that we have The Federalist Papers, which are almost 200,000 words written by people who were very influential in shaping the Constitution.

So there is this huge — the Constitution itself is quite short, but there’s this massive body of work by people who were in the room when this stuff was decided. And especially when you look at the later periods of the French Revolution, there couldn’t be anything like The Federalist Papers because they weren’t allowing free debate around this stuff the way that the Americans were around the time of the U.S. Constitution’s writing and ratification. So —

SIÈCLE: And considerably more of the original French drafters ended up being executed than of the American drafters.

RUMMAGE: Yes, that helps.

CLARK: Not only would they not have been allowed to speak their mind, but they would’ve been so thoroughly discredited by the fact that the political center had moved so far away from where they were. If you look at 1789 versus those that return to the Convention in late 1792, there’s a few individuals that are there that have maintained their popularity — Robespierre being one of them, but obviously he wasn’t really an entity in 1789.

But those that were really popular in 1789, like say Sieyès, he kind of just sits and twiddles his thumbs for most of the convention. And granted that’s how he survives it, but there’s very few people that still have that force, that power from one assembly through to the Convention.

SIÈCLE: Yeah, the French Charter of 1814 was just a rush job. They sort of dashed out — a couple days is a bit of an overstatement, but a very short period of time — because Louis XVIII had promised a constitution, and the invading Allies wanted it done so they could leave France, and so everything had to get… it was just thrown together very hurriedly, borrowing heavily from Britain, borrowing from some of the past examples. Not only the emergency clause I talked about, but several other issues. This would come to bite them down the road because they didn’t take the time to carefully debate out and hash out all these different provisions and make sure that there weren’t any loopholes and things like that.

But Will, you’ve talked a lot about the constitutional monarchy — the little-known, I think, constitutional monarchy of France during the first French Revolution. What about what happened next when that initial constitutional monarchy went away and there was the French Republic?

CLARK: Yeah, so I suppose you could argue the French have a king, the Americans have a president, how much of the system’s gonna look alike. But come 1793, when the French are designing their first republican constitution, you have another opportunity to borrow heavily from what has been designed across the Atlantic.

And once again, the French don’t do it. And again, the executive branch is… pretty much everything I’ve discussed previously kind of holds true. You have this incredibly powerful legislature. And the executive branch, instead of adopting a presidential system like what the Americans do, they adopt this kind of faceless committee, which will have all these various executive committee members, and their job is strictly just to enforce the law. It’s far more impersonal than what the Americans do, and obviously they’re never going to create a like-for-like.

And again, David, this is in reference to what you were mentioning earlier, where you have a different starting point, you have different worldviews. The French are not going to create a federal system. They’re not going to create states. Even if you go look at the federalist revolts and the proclamations that are being published in Lyon, in Normandy, in Marseille, in Bordeaux, etc., very, very few people are even hinting at the idea of creating a proper federal system.

So there’s a range of things that aren’t going to be copied from the American model no matter what. But the things that could be imported, like say a presidential system, are again rejected. So it’s not just in the constitutional monarchy that the French are kind of ignoring what’s happening across the Atlantic. They are very much doing their own thing, even when they are starting with a bit more of a blank slate for designing their first republic.

SIÈCLE: You talk about how they have these sort of faceless committees, but there were some sort of cults of personality that did emerge despite that. Some of the names that we know even to this day, Robespierre, Danton, Marat — some of those people, despite the fact that the system was set up to sort of be faceless, reflect the general will, you still had these personalities emerging. What role does personnel have in terms of implementing these early constitutions?

CLARK: Yeah, so I think personnel is really interesting, and I suppose I’ll answer this in two ways. The first is that it’s important to remember that the republican Constitution of 1793 is never implemented. So while we do have these very dominant personalities — and believe me, I’ve got this episode that’s staring at me, slowly coming down the pipeline, unpacking Robespierre’s role and power and influence — he’s the most obvious example.

But the Committee of Public Safety — this is an era of revolutionary government. Normal government has been suspended, so it’s not the Constitution of 1793 in effect. So in that way, that’s part of the reason why we do have these people that are kind of occupying the executive branch of revolutionary government as opposed to the ordinary government as envisioned.

But I do think Robespierre is actually a really good bridge to the role of personnel here, because people — or potentially the lack thereof — I think are a big part of the divergence of experiences between the young French and young American republics and even the young French constitutional monarchy.

And I mean this beyond personalities because the National Assembly does something that I think is really important, and of Robespierre’s initiative. It’s one of his perhaps well-intentioned but ill-advised ideas. He proposes something called the “Self-denying Ordinance.” And essentially anyone that was involved in designing the constitutional monarchy that sat in the National Constituent Assembly, which ended in 1791, they’re barred from sitting in the first Legislative Assembly, and current and former deputies are barred from becoming ministers of the king.

And what this means is that none of the constitutional midwives can actually help raise the child. And this is the opposite approach that the Americans take. And this is why I said I kind of die on the hill that the French really should have learnt a little bit from what was happening across the Atlantic.

If you think about your Founding Fathers — so many of them are presidents, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices. The men who devised the system then go on to implement it. They establish it. They kind of steady and sail the ship that they helped to build. And that is a huge difference from the French approach.

And I think that lack of personnel, in particular that Self-denying Ordinance, is a really big deal. And nowhere I think is that more obvious than the issue of whether to go to war with Austria, when many of the leading anti-war politicians from the National Assembly cannot be elected to the Legislative Assembly. And that kind of provides an open goal for Brissot and those around him to drum the beat for war.

So personnel is a big deal, and the other thing I’d sneakily slide in at the end, I suppose, is that you guys in America don’t have this “foreign plot” idea where everyone is working for William Pitt or the Prussian king or whatever, and that lack of suspicion and that goodwill goes a very, very long way.

SIÈCLE: Everett, I’d asked Will about cult of personality, and obviously you cover an area where perhaps the largest cult of personality — maybe ever — existed, for Napoleon. Could you talk a little about that and maybe how that relates to some of the major figures in the U.S.?

RUMMAGE: Yeah. So Napoleon — this is sort of one of my personal hobby horses more than anything else. I don’t think this is very widely known or widely discussed when people talk about Napoleon, but he had this very tortured relationship with George Washington, a person who he had grown up admiring.

Remember, Napoleon is from the generation after the people who fought the American Revolution. He’s a child when the war is declared and then is still quite young when it’s over. So he grew up, as a man of the Enlightenment, idolizing Washington. Then, of course, goes into the military.

Washington was a soldier as well. And then he sweeps into power, sort of proclaiming himself as a unifying figure who can sort of stand above politics, which is very similar to Washington’s image in America at the time. And yet, what’s the one thing people admire most about Washington?

That he turned down the crown and that he gave up power peacefully, in accordance with the system. And of course, Napoleon did not follow in his footsteps on either count. And so I thought I’d actually read — if you guys don’t mind, if you’ll indulge me. This is from the Memoirs of Saint Helena, which — people debate how much we can take that literally and how much we can trust that it’s been relayed faithfully. But anyway, with those caveats, here we go. This is something — a very out of character, I would say, statement by Napoleon, when he brought this up unbidden, which is very defensive, as you’ll see. So quoting from Napoleon:

“When I acquired the supreme direction of affairs, it was wished that I might become a Washington. Words cost nothing, and no doubt those who were so ready to express this wish did so without any knowledge of the times, places, persons, or things. Had I been in America, I would willingly have been a Washington, and I should have had little merit in so being, for I do not see how I could have reasonably acted otherwise.

But had Washington been in France, exposed to discord within and invasion from without, I would have defied him to have been what he was in America. At least, he would have been a fool to attempt it and would have only prolonged the existence of evil. For my own part, I could only have been a crowned Washington.

It was only in a congress of kings, in the midst of kings, yielding or subdued, that I could become so. Then and there alone I could successfully display Washington’s moderation, disinterestedness, and wisdom. I could not reasonably achieve this but by means of the universal dictatorship. To this I aspired.

Can that be thought a crime?”

End quote. So it’s very rare to see Napoleon kind of directly defending himself and his legacy that way. It’s a very defensive comment, I think. I also think it’s very interesting — quite self-serving, obviously, like almost everything Napoleon said.

But he does bring up the idea that the differences between the French and American systems have to do more with conditions than with high ideals or personalities, which I think is not an entirely unfair point.

CLARK: No, I think it’s quite a reasonable point. I suppose I’m curious — I agree that Napoleon definitely feels like he’s got his back up a little bit about this statement, but the Australian education system doesn’t really talk about George Washington all that much. So I’m curious for both of you — Napoleon seems to imply there that had the situations been reversed and had Washington been in France, that he wouldn’t have behaved the way he did. Do you two have an opinion on that? My very limited understanding of Washington — it kind of feels to me like he might not have even been in the position to be able to grab, to kind of seize power necessarily in the wake of the French Revolution. I’m just kind of curious on your thoughts there.

SIÈCLE: I think it’s a fair concession to make that the situation in France after their revolution was more complicated and maybe more dangerous than the situation in the U.S.. Not that I think a lot of the troubles that the U.S. faced in the first decade or two of the early republic have been a little smoothed over with the passage of time.

But that said, Napoleon is clearly going too far when he says that Washington would have had no choice — or I think in the more telling statement, that he would have been a fool for doing so. I think that’s the one that really says where Napoleon’s mind is at that point. I don’t think he’s proven — and I think it’s difficult to prove — that even the more complicated situation in France would have required what Napoleon did. Which is not to say that Napoleon was necessarily wrong to do what he did, merely that it’s not obvious that it was right and that Washington’s approach wouldn’t have been better.

RUMMAGE: I will say this about Washington. There’s an anecdote about him that I’ve always found to be incredibly revealing about how he operated, what his view of politics was, which is from very early in the American Revolution. They’re debating who is going to lead the Continental Army, which is obviously a massively important decision.

Washington’s a delegate to this assembly, and he shows up to it wearing a general’s uniform that he’d had made himself — by his tailor to his own specifications — which is meant to evoke the uniform he wore in the French and Indian War, in which he was a big hero as a young man, obviously.

And why is he wearing a uniform? Well, no one told him he couldn’t. They introduced the debate. Washington immediately calls for the floor, stands up in his uniform and says, “Look, obviously I am one of the leading candidates for this role, given my history and, you know, you all know me and what I’ve done for the cause,” and gives this big speech — basically a stump speech for his candidacy to be general.

And then he says, “Given all that, I obviously cannot be in the room while you guys discuss this. I have to be held above this debate, because I am such an obvious candidate. I shouldn’t even be here for this,” and he walks out. So he is sticking to a high ideal — that I need to be a totally disinterested decision. I don’t wanna be influencing you in the least. But in doing so, he is politicking, and it’s a kind of a shameless thing to do in some ways, even though it is sort of following the letter of these unwritten mores of American politics at that time.

And Napoleon was never that subtle.

SIÈCLE: I think it was common — like in the Bourbon Restoration, it was very common for candidates to officially deny they had any interest in running for the Chamber of Deputies. But they had to be careful not to deny it too much. It was a very fine line to walk — to give the expected social denial of ambition, while still letting it be known that, yes, you actually want this and your supporters should push for you.

We see that in American history, in French history.

CLARK: I’ve been enjoying that — that happens just every day here in Australian and British politics. Someone asks if they wanna be prime minister and they go, “Oh no, absolutely not. I’m just interested in representing my constituents,” and give it a couple of weeks.

SIÈCLE: Well, I think one thing that really comes out with that Napoleon quote you read, and it mimics a quote I found in my own research for this conversation, was this sense that was very prevalent in France and I think other European countries at the time — a sort of condescension toward the new United States of America, toward the early republic.

François Guizot, a prominent figure in the July Monarchy, a conservative liberal, referred to the U.S. — said, “The U.S. is good. I like the U.S. Constitution, but the U.S. is an infant society. Its rules could never work in the mature old world of Europe.” There are some diplomatic moments where people like Metternich sort of treat U.S. diplomats like kids trying to sit at the adults’ table.

Even for things like conferences discussing the Americas, they sort of disdain the United States. Which of course the Americans did not take well, but I think it sort of goes to show — when you’re talking about the way in which the U.S. was an inspiration, they were fighting against this sort of lack of respect, that they were either something lesser or at least something qualitatively different. And there’s this argument that the comparisons weren’t valid because the U.S. was just so different from everything back in Europe and in France.

CLARK: What I would say to that is that it’s also interesting that that belief continues to hold further and further, because the period of time that you’re studying, David, is several decades away from the period that I study in the French Revolution. And at least for the French revolutionaries, I think you can cut them a bit more slack.

George Washington takes the presidency just a couple of months before the storming of the Bastille. The American Constitution is only ratified essentially immediately before the French Revolution, and that’s because — and we kind of forget about this, and I suspect a lot of American listeners will not even know this is a thing at all — there is a different constitutional arrangement. It’s not called that, but there is a different arrangement for the first several years of independence that completely just doesn’t work, and that’s how you get the Constitution of the United States. So the French revolutionaries, to give them a little slack in 1789, what the Americans have produced is very much in its infancy, and it’s very much an experiment.

The total population of the United States would only be a few multiples of the city of Paris, and so I’m less inclined to give them slack once you’re in the 19th century where you are in your main narrative, David, where they are several decades in now. I understand the perspective that these individuals have about the New World being very different from the old and all the rest of it.

But the Constitution of the United States is no longer something that’s just been around for a year or two. It has not descended into dictatorship. I feel by that point in time it has proven durable. They might not have anticipated that “here we’d be 250 years later” durable, but it had proven itself I think by that point in time as something that should warrant further consideration and respect.

RUMMAGE: And I think the real turning point there actually is the War of 1812, because the Articles of Confederation, which you brought up, obviously had seen the United States through the War of Independence, but there had been huge problems related to the war effort due to the just total inefficiency of the Articles of Confederation.

And so the War of 1812 comes around, and there is still this idea in a lot of quarters that, yeah, these Americans, they got free from the British, but there’s every chance that the British will be back or that the French will be back, or that America will sort of unofficially fall into a sort of protectorate status of one of the other European powers.

And the War of 1812 is the first time that the new system is really tested. I mean, the war went quite badly for the Americans in a lot of ways, but winning the last battle does a lot of good things. And then they are able to hold their own at the negotiating table. And so the combination of this — not entirely successful but not disastrous war effort — and then forming a united front, negotiating with the British, in a sense it’s a war won at the negotiating table.

And that, I think, is when you really can look and say, “This is no flash in the pan. The Americans have built something here that has some kind of staying power, at least a couple decades, and they’ve managed to stand up to the British Empire again.” I think that’s when you sort of maybe stop giving the benefit of the doubt to people who are saying, “Oh, this is a recent experiment.”

SIÈCLE: Everett, you talked about the example of how George Washington sort of carefully crafted his public image while also trying to act like he wasn’t trying to craft his public image — which is also something that Napoleon very actively engaged in. Can you maybe contrast the two, both the things they actually did and the things the people around them did to build up these heroic men on horseback into figures?

RUMMAGE: Well, Washington was genuinely uncomfortable with that in a way that I don’t think Napoleon was. Part of that’s their contrasting backgrounds. Washington coming from the very upper, the cream of one of the richest milieus in the American colonies, and those Virginia planters are probably the closest you’ll find — hell, even today, those people’s descendants are probably the closest you’ll find to the British aristocracy. And so Washington grows up with this very strict — I mean, you can actually read, he wrote as a young man kind of a guide to how a young man should act, written by another young man.

And so he’s got this sort of rigid, upright character about him that’s extremely — almost, sometimes to the point where it’s a problem. Napoleon, not so much. Napoleon does not see himself as a gentleman of the Virginia planter class. He thinks he’s a reincarnation of the ancient Romans.

And so that’s just a different self-image. And I think Napoleon found it quite natural because he had this idea of being a Roman statesman. They didn’t shy away from being dictators in ancient Rome. They had emperors. A lot of people in ancient Rome were praised for being good dictators.

And so he has this idea that it’s perfectly natural — from the American perspective, we would call it abusing power — but he sees it as, in a time of national emergency, that’s what heroic individuals do. Whereas Washington has this very strict, genteel upper-class connection to that sort of old-time British political culture, in which something like that would be totally unthinkable.

And I think that’s the key difference where Washington’s sort of almost uncomfortable accepting this mantle. To Napoleon, it’s destiny, and so he’s not uncomfortable with it at all.

CLARK: It’s almost like one of them prefers to read the history of the Roman Republic and the other prefers to read the history of the Roman Empire — and the model behavior and what one should aspire towards. Different lessons of what one should emulate.

RUMMAGE: Yeah, Cincinnatus versus Augustus.

SIÈCLE: I think we should be careful to acknowledge that while certainly Washington was less self-aggrandizing than Napoleon, he wasn’t an entirely innocent little flower when it came to self-promotion. The uniform example is a classic one. And he did things like that throughout where he was always playing the role of George Washington, which he had helped craft. And the role of George Washington was a different one — a more republican one — than the role Napoleon Bonaparte crafted.

But for all that, I think it’s a comparison that goes in many ways to Washington’s benefit, but he wasn’t innocent in all that either.

RUMMAGE: True. And I think it’s a very astute point that they are both playing roles. There’s a great line about Napoleon that he was the first postmodern dictator because he’s not just acting — he’s seeing himself acting from the perspective of future posterity.

And I think he very much had that in common with Washington. Washington is imagining how will people in 100 years want to think about the person who is the father of this country, and what’s the expected behavior, and what am I trying to model for future American leaders?

SIÈCLE: Speaking of the model in the U.S., I think it sort of brings it to what I was prepared to talk about today. My narrative in _The Siècle_, which sort of takes over after the fall of Napoleon — the first fall in 1814 — and I’m currently in the July Monarchy period after the revolution of 1830. And sort of by coincidence, several of the major figures there had had formative experiences in the Americas, in either what became the United States or the U.S. before it became the United States.

You had Chateaubriand, the great romantic writer, who was a bit past his time there, but he was sort of a leading figure of liberal royalism and cultural supremacy. And then you had King Louis-Philippe, the new king of the July Monarchy, who had spent several years in exile in the U.S. after he was driven into exile for the various revolutionary politicking.

And then most significantly, you had Lafayette — the one character who I think binds all our eras together — who was famously a war hero in the War of Independence, maintained close ties with many of the American leaders in the first generation, and played a role in both the French Revolution and in the Restoration, and then was as significant as anyone in the birth of the July Monarchy.

And so all these figures, especially Louis-Philippe and Lafayette, had this experience of having lived in the U.S. for a number of years and experiencing firsthand what the U.S. was like rather than reading reports from overseas. And this is just simmering in the background during all these debates, especially in the heady days of the early July Monarchy, when it’s still up in the air what this new regime is going to look like.

RUMMAGE: And I think in some ways the July Monarchy is a kind of very American-feeling regime. Certainly, of all of these governments — this whole block of French history — to me that’s the one that kind of… I mean, it’s not a literal one-to-one, but it kinda has the most American feel with the sort of hybrid system, politically moderate.

And then of course that’s an era where Louis-Philippe is like the idol of the bourgeoisie and the bankers and the businessmen, who of course are such an important part of the American scene. And so it’s fitting, I think, that so many of these guys have American roots, ‘cause it’s kind of an American regime.

SIÈCLE: Yeah, I think the Second Republic is probably the stronger comparison, with its strong president and —

RUMMAGE: But of course, that ended a different way.

SIÈCLE: Yes, for sure. What’s interesting about the July Monarchy is that it was essentially a continuation of the Restoration. They took the Restoration’s constitution, the Charter of 1814, and they revised it, but they didn’t change its basic structure.

They sort of went through and tried to close up all the loopholes and get rid of the parts they really didn’t like, but they largely kept the… France essentially had the same constitution from 1814 — minus the Hundred Days — through to 1848, which is, by French standards, a very long-lasting constitution.

And the U.S., and the experience of the U.S., the comparison was front and center as this was being decided. There’s a really famous… I’m also going to read a little bit here, if you’ll bear with me. Right after the July Revolution, when the barricades are still littering Paris, Louis-Philippe and Lafayette meet up and have a little conversation.

There’s the idea… Louis-Philippe is, at this point, sort of the leading candidate to become the next King of France, but it’s not a done deal, and there’s still this possibility that France could go for a republic. And Lafayette sits down with Louis-Philippe and says, “You know that I am a republican and that I regard the Constitution of the United States as the most perfect that ever existed,” which is very in-character for Lafayette. Huge U.S. fanboy.

And Louis-Philippe — the Duc d’Orléans — replies, “I think as you do, it is impossible to have spent two years in America and not to be of that opinion. But do you believe that in France’s situation, in the present state of opinion, it would be proper for us to adopt that constitution?”

And then Lafayette replies, “No, what the French people must have today is a popular throne surrounded by republican institutions, completely republican.” “That is precisely what I think,” replied Louis-Philippe. Which is a really important conversation, in part because it’s ambiguous enough that Lafayette and Louis-Philippe will come out of that interpreting what commitments were made in very different ways.

Lafayette imagining putting more of an emphasis on the strength of the republican institutions surrounding the throne, and Louis-Philippe rather less. But compared to a lot of other European aristocrats, Louis-Philippe, from his time living in the U.S. and, in general, his time sort of being down and out as an _émigré_ for many years, didn’t have quite the same sneering condescension toward the U.S. that a lot of aristocrats of his station had in this time.

And another anecdote from yet another Frenchman who was obsessed with the U.S.: Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote his _Democracy in America_, wrote one time that being summoned by Louis-Philippe, who wanted to ask him questions about America. And the king sat him down and started talking and kept talking and kept talking, and by the time the 45-minute interview was over, Tocqueville hadn’t gotten three words in before Louis-Philippe said, “Well, thank you very much for this conversation. It’s been very enlightening,” and sent him on his way.

This is a guy who led France for 18 years as king, clearly thought a lot about the U.S., admired it in many ways, but there’s the sense that we’ve talked about before — that people in Europe didn’t necessarily think that the U.S. system could be ported directly over into France, with all its legacy institutions and things like that.

CLARK: I wonder, David — not to rob you of your great content for what you’re going to be speaking about for the next few episodes now that you’re in the July Monarchy — but listeners will have heard that quote, and they would have heard Louis-Philippe agree about the benefits and the adoption of republican institutions.

But you mentioned before that the Constitution adopted by the July Monarchy really had very few changes in the grand scheme of things. And obviously Louis-Philippe is not entirely responsible for what happens in 1848. There’s a range of other kings around Europe that also lose their crowns.

But I was wondering if you could maybe give us a teaser for some of the stuff that you’re about to be discussing — in the sense of, why is it that you’ve got this king who has lived in the U.S. firsthand, who agrees — or at least pays lip service — to the idea of American institutions and the way of operating the government, but then once he’s actually in power, it doesn’t seem that long until he starts to kind of drift back into some old bad Bourbon habits.

I was just wondering if you could maybe flesh out that disconnect between — again, that conversation with Lafayette of, “Oh, yeah, I couldn’t agree more,” but then in reality, very little is changing from a constitutional perspective or from the way that the government actually operates.

SIÈCLE: Yeah. First of all, for all that these principal figures — Louis-Philippe and Lafayette — had this experience with the U.S., most of the people who were active in writing both the 1814 charter and then its 1830 revision were much more inspired by the British Constitution, the British system of government.

People like Guizot and others like that really admired the British system, which seemed to them much more stable. Many of them admired the role of the House of Lords, as they thought an aristocracy properly structured played a constructive role in society. The July Monarchy did, as a concession to popular opinion, make the Chamber of Peers non-hereditary, as it had been under the Restoration.

But there wasn’t a lot of direct borrowing from the U.S. Constitution, in part because as I said, they sort of kept the initial document, which had been mostly inspired by Britain.

Louis-Philippe’s just a really complicated character because he’s in many ways a sort of shape-shifter. He’s very responsive. He’s not a Napoleon type who will charge headlong at a problem. Louis-Philippe always wants to do the flanking attack. He always wants to avoid the picked fight and come at it from the side — talking politically, of course. Louis-Philippe came to abhor violence by the time he was king.

But he starts out seeming fairly genuinely enthusiastic about his role as sort of the citizen king. He goes on these famous walks throughout Paris, carrying an umbrella and wearing a suit, shaking hands with everyone he meets. And this seemed like it was a little thrilling at the time — this idea that there’s this revolutionary energy in the air and that he was popular and people were excited to see him, and that he was happy to democratize the court and to genuinely be surrounded by these republican institutions.

But a couple things happened. One, there’s a significant faction in France who’s not satisfied with the July Monarchy, with keeping a constitutional monarchy instead of going to a republic. And so you have continued street agitation, as well as people who are upset for completely different reasons.

Like, a lot of the Parisian workers get into their head that the success of the revolution and throwing out the Bourbons means that they can have more economic freedoms. And a lot of the elite bourgeois people who had welcomed the overthrow of the Bourbons are like, “Whoa, whoa, wait a second here. Let’s not get crazy.” So you have these tensions growing, which sort of leads to a retrenchment, a pulling back a little bit. And then Louis-Philippe’s first real ministry — outside the first sort of unity government that he has — is from a center-left figure, Jacques Laffitte, whose idea was that he wanted to expand on the July Revolution, sort of keep it going, keep the reforms going.

And Laffitte, frankly, isn’t terribly good at being a prime minister. He’s not very assertive. He’s in a bad situation and doesn’t make it any better. And by the time Laffitte finally resigns, there’s this sense that the left doesn’t have the answers to the situation that France is in.

And then people start shooting at Louis-Philippe, trying to assassinate him, and sort of his freedom wandering the city disappears. And just gradually, very gradually over time — with some left and right pulls — by the time you get to the 1840s and the 1848 revolution is drawing near, he’s not quite as flexible a figure as he was as a younger man, and becomes a bit more set in his ways and less willing to consider alternative opinions.

And then he’s hit by a series of setbacks. His son and heir dies, who was very popular. His sister, who was sort of his advisor — someone more progressive than he was, always urging him to take a little bit more of a progressive approach — she dies a few months before the 1848 revolution. So there’s lots of things that happened, but it takes a king who was at one time very excited about being this constitutional monarch, this citizen king, and ossifies him a little bit into a conservatism that doesn’t respond to the real pressure, that tries to suppress and ignore the demands for expanded suffrage and things like that.

And that’s sort of the high-level overview. I’m really looking forward to getting into the nuances, and I’m sure there’ll be reversals and moments where choices were made that didn’t have to be made. I’m looking forward to getting into all that in future episodes. But I think a lot of people read the July Monarchy backwards — from how it ended to how it began — and sort of assume that the way it ended up was the way it was always intended to be.

You see that with the Restoration too. Its reputation as a really arch-conservative reactionary regime is in some ways informed by how it ended, with Charles X trying to launch a coup. And I think as a historian, it’s really important to try to resist that backward teleological reading and be aware of the ways that how these regimes evolved was contingent, and there were choices that were made that didn’t have to be made.

And sometimes looking at these bad choices, you can see — if these people had only been smarter, if they’d only followed the U.S. more, to your point, Will — maybe things could have turned out differently.

CLARK: No, I agree that we always, in what we do, have to be very wary about looking at the end point and almost letting that cloud your judgment that that was the natural way in which something would develop. Recently I’ve been down the rabbit hole of abolition in the French Revolution, and I’ve always kind of assumed that that was the natural place they would end, given everything that was happening in the French colonies at the time.

And having just come out of that rabbit hole, I’ve actually got a completely different conclusion now — it’s more or less a fluke that abolition occurs in 1794, and there are some very butterfly-effect moments that allow that to occur. And so I agree, we do need to be wary of looking at 1848 and back-solving, as you say.

RUMMAGE: And of course, on the topic of abolition — we’re now into 1848, mid-19th century, and the middle and second half of the 19th century, the American model is maybe not looking so hot. There’s this horrible civil war, the slavery issue in the lead-up to the Civil War totally intractable.

And actually, by the eve of the Civil War, the Southern planters have… we talked earlier about The Federalist Papers. So much of The Federalist Papers are warning against faction and interest — the idea that a small minority will sort of monopolize the political system.

And the Southern planters very much did that, where it’s a tiny group of people, but because of their economic power and the distribution of that economic power through all of the Southern states, they are able to become… I mean, they effectively shut down the American government many times and twisted it to their own ends.

And then of course, after the Civil War — David’s getting now into the “Social Question,” as they liked to call it back then — America had by far the most violent and chaotic repression of the labor movement of any of the — at that time they would’ve called them the progressive great powers.

The British and the French did some terrible things to their working classes, but there was never the same level of violence that there was in America. And so I think, when we’re now more in the postscript, that American model is quite a bit tarnished by the end of this period.

SIÈCLE: If the U.S. had been broken up in the Civil War and disintegrated, we might not view people like Lafayette or Will Clark as so prescient in arguing that the French should have followed the American model. Or if the French had made some better decisions, maybe we’d be talking up more the wisdom of the Charter of 1814.

The Brits end up looking really well because they passed the Reform Act in 1832 and headed off revolt. But that was a near-run thing.

RUMMAGE: Yeah, people — the Chartists are a very underrated force in this period and actually went on — not only in Britain. The Chartists had a huge impact all over the English-speaking world, including in the U.S..

CLARK: I suppose it goes back to that contingency — or predetermined — question that we were talking about earlier, where none of this is predetermined and there’s a lot of choices, and sometimes just individual choices that people do make a great difference, as well as the broader social questions and social issues.

And as you say, a few Sliding Doors moments and maybe we wouldn’t be talking about the U.S. Constitution… here we are, doing this episode in part because we’re at 250 years. A few other decisions or moments and maybe — maybe David and Everett, you would’ve been joining us from two different countries.

RUMMAGE: Very true. It’s also worth mentioning, 250 years is not a terribly long time in the grand scheme of things. In a certain sense, jury’s still out. Maybe this conversation — hell, 50 years from now this conversation could be completely different depending on how history unfolds from here.

In a certain sense, this is still an experiment over here. Lincoln in the 1860s asked if a nation so dedicated can long endure. Well, it’s been, what, two lifetimes since then? Is that enduring long? I’m not so sure.

CLARK: I’m not sure, but it sounds like you wanna put the Google Calendar invite in for 50 years from now. I believe that will make schedules a little easier.

SIÈCLE: By that time I might have gotten to the Franco-Prussian War, so — well, thank you both for this. It’s been a great conversation. Just for any listeners who might not be familiar with all of us, do you wanna each go around and just talk briefly about our shows and projects that you’re working on?

CLARK: So I run Grey History, G-R-E-Y, the British spelling — Grey History: The French Revolution and Napoleon. It is a show very similar to David’s and Everett’s, focused on the revolutionary era. We’ve just started in 1794, so we’ve just wrapped up the de-Christianization campaign. And the episode that I recorded yesterday is really kind of the return of Danton on the political scene and the rise of the Indulgents and kind of kicking off the Jacobin civil war that will consume multiple faction leaders in the first half of 1794.

So there’s plenty to catch up on, and by the time you catch up, you’ll be in the thick of it, to say the least.

RUMMAGE: I’m Everett Rummage, host of Age of Napoleon. Age of Napoleon goes through Napoleon’s life and career, but Napoleon’s really more of an entry point to just talk about this whole era of history. I’ve been doing this 10 years now, coming up on the 10th anniversary beginning of next year.

So there is plenty of material to catch up on if you have not heard me before. And this is the type of thing we discuss. I mean, presumably if you’re listening to this or watching this, you’re familiar with at least one of our shows, and they’re all in the same vein, as Will said.

SIÈCLE: Hi, and my name’s David Montgomery. I’m the host of _The Siècle_, which is also a narrative history podcast covering France from 1814 to 1914. I’ve also been at this for a number of years, and I’m in 1831, the immediate aftermath of the July Revolution, in the birthing pains of the July Monarchy.

And you can find _The Siècle_ at thesiecle.com.

RUMMAGE: Will, you’ve actually got something that’s not podcast related going on that people might wanna be hearing about.

CLARK: Yeah. So I’ve actually just come back from France. I run a tour company called Chase History Tours, which is small group tours for history enthusiasts. For example, we’ve just come back from Paris and the Loire Valley — a trip dedicated to the French Revolution. We actually got access to the king’s private apartments at Versailles, so none of this kind of can of sardines situation.

We had those rooms all to ourselves. And we like to do special things like that. We’re doing a tour in Nuremberg later this year that’s not French Revolution-related, but we’ll actually be attending Courtroom 600 where the trials were held before it’s open to the public.

So again, we’ll have the whole place to ourselves. We like to do things like that. Next year there’ll be a range of French history tours that we’re running — another French Revolution tour. Looks like we’ll do a young Napoleon’s tour in Corsica, Marseille, and Toulon. And we look like we’re going to be doing a Norman history tour, which will be everything from the history of the Normans and Joan of Arc through to D-Day.

I have just returned from Normandy. I’ve got the best apple cidery confirmed. So if any of that sounds of interest, do check out chasehistorytours.com and you can put your name on one of the wait lists or on the email newsletter.

SIÈCLE: Sounds like a fun time. Looking forward to what each of you guys have in your upcoming episodes.

RUMMAGE: Yeah, same here. Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation. I think it was a lot of fun.

CLARK: Sounds great, and we’ll see you for the 300th anniversary in 50 years.

RUMMAGE: Set the date.

CLARK: July 4, I’ve been told.

Thank you to Everett Rummage and Will Clark for joining me for this conversation! You can find Everett’s show, The Age of Napoleon, at ageofnapoleon.com, and Will’s show, Grey History: The French Revolution and Napoleon, wherever you get podcasts. Will also runs Chase History Tours at chasehistorytours.com.