Thursday, September 25, 2014

Tocqueville and Napoleon

Alexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805, the year of Napoleon's victory over Russia and Austria at the battle of Austerlitz (one of the consequences of which was that, the following year, the Holy Roman Empire finally went out of existence).

Was Tocqueville one of the many caught up, retrospectively, by Napoleon's mystique, one of those who breathed in what David Bell (see the previous post) refers to as the "intoxicating fumes" of Napoleon's legend?  Apparently yes, at least to some extent.  In Tocqueville's Discovery of America (pb. ed., 2011), Leo Damrosch writes (p.187) that Tocqueville "was quite starstruck by the memory of Napoleon, much though he deplored his imperial rule," though Damrosch doesn't cite a passage from Tocqueville in this connection. 

Damrosch does, however, quote Tocqueville's reaction to hearing the Duke of Wellington speak in the House of Lords: "La gloire is invested with such extraordinary prestige that when I saw him take off his hat and begin to speak, I felt a shudder run through my veins" (Voyage en Angleterre, 1833).  T. evidently had a weak spot for generals, especially perhaps titled ones, who had won famous victories. Damrosch: "Tocqueville believed that only great generals, like ... Napoleon and Wellington, deserved political eminence" -- unlike Andrew Jackson, whom T. did not see in that light.

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