Pierre Lanfrey

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Pierre Lanfrey, in: Le Monde illustré , November 24, 1877

Pierre Lanfrey (born October 26, 1828 in Chambéry ( Savoy ), † November 15, 1877 in Pau ( Département Pyrénées-Atlantiques )) was a French politician and historian . In the latter capacity, he stood out primarily through his extremely critical biography of Napoleon , which also established his literary fame. In the first half of the 1870s he was a moderate republican member of the National Assembly and 1871-73 French ambassador to Switzerland. In December 1875 he became a senator of the Third Republic for life, but died two years later at the age of only 49.

Early life

Pierre Lanfrey was the son of a hussar captain who had served under Napoleon and married Thérèse Bolain, a fashion merchant based in Chambéry in Savoy. He lost his violent and irreligious father at the age of six and was carefully brought up by his sensitive and strict mother. Left behind in need, the pious mother made heavy sacrifices for her only child. Though without instruction or education, she exercised a lasting moral influence on her son. She raised him to be a self-confident and truth-loving young man, later maintained a lifelong correspondence with him and only died at the age of 86, when her son had long been a recognized scholar.

The natural beauty of the Chambéry area made a deep impression on young Lanfrey, who went for long walks there and enjoyed his youthful freedom. Although of poor health and very nervous, he was determined and energetic. He attended the Jesuit college in his hometown because his mother wanted to give him an intensive Christian education. Soon he was characterized by hard work, talent and good memory, but also displayed an anti-clerical attitude. As a 15-year-old he secretly made excerpts from some books in the college's library, but these excerpts turned into a pamphlet against the Jesuits. He was betrayed, had to hand over his manuscript, but reacted defiantly, seeing his personal freedom and the right to free thought restricted, and had to leave the college.

His mother made it possible for Lanfrey to enter another spiritual institute in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in 1844 at new personal sacrifices. However, he found the teaching there hypocritical and he felt misunderstood and cramped in the godly and mystical atmosphere; to the horror of his mother, he began to doubt the dogmas and mysteries of the Church. He repeatedly asked his mother to let him continue his studies in Paris . However, you feared the high costs and temptations of the French capital. Finally, after a lot of persuasion, Lanfrey was able to get his mother's consent and only now was able to develop fully intellectually. Count D'Haussonville judges Lanfrey that as a man he kept a lot of the child, "a certain natural, naive and outspoken ardor, excessive severity of judgment, the impossibility of keeping silent or even weakening the expression of one's thought" and one of himself and being taken with its fate; “At the age of 16 he was withdrawn and naturally inclined to loneliness; somewhat hopeful, reserved and of modest decency, he valued the views and even the good opinions of others rather low. "

But Lanfrey did not make himself the center of his world, rather he was moved by general impressions and great events of contemporary history; a great love of freedom also grew in him. So in 1846 he came to the Bellaguet Institute in Paris and soon wrote down proud dreams for the future for his mother. He wanted to become a writer and read many books that were available to him in Paris, so that he gained a great deal of knowledge. In 1847 he returned home, recovered from his studies in Paris, fell in love for the first time and went to Grenoble in 1848 to study law.

The political excitement of 1848 did not leave Lanfrey unaffected. In the monarchy he had an early tendency towards republicanism and valued great revolutionaries, but despised demagoguery . There was little worthy of the February Revolution and much painfulness in the June battle. He lived lonely in Grenoble too, because he found it difficult to make friends; he was only really close to a few friends in Paris. He did not like the study of law and did it very casually, but learned German and Italian, studied philosophy , literature and especially history , which appeared to him to be the only true philosophy and the most sublime poetry.

In 1848 and the following year, the young scholar, whom Napoleon III. named a great poet, whose longing for Italy had been, because of a life-threatening nervous disease that left lasting traces. In extravagant bitterness, he accused God of irrationality that he should let someone die before he could live a real life. After finishing his studies in Grenoble, Lanfrey was to become a lawyer in Chambéry at the request of his mother. He did not like this profession, but went to Turin at her request to pave his way into the bar. A lovely idyll of love embellished this stay of 1851; then the news of Napoleon III's coup, which he condemned, hit him hard.

Early literary activity

Lanfrey settled in Paris at the end of 1853 when he was doing a thesis on 18th century philosophy. Paris became his new home, while he disdained the post of lawyer in Savoy. But with the oppressive press situation in those years, Lanfrey still had to experience hard times. His liberal views were frowned upon in Paris, and to his annoyance no editor wanted to publish his articles. He completed his laborious great work on the philosophers, but knocked in vain at the publishers; his mother began to have doubts about his success, which hit him very hard, and had to raise funds to have the work published at her own expense. When he had the book L'Église et les Philosophes du XVIII e siècle printed, it was difficult for him to find a bookseller ready to publish and sell.

The work published in 1857, which saw its third edition in 1879, caused a sensation; the French writer and literary critic Jules Janin found words of appreciation, and Lanfrey's literary debut was a success. He became close friends with the painter Ary Scheffer , and from the witty Countess d'Agoult , who was warmly attached to him, he got to know great writers and leaders of the republican party. Encouraged by Béranger , who wanted to lead him to poetry, he composed a five-act drama in order to burn it himself. Even after the success of his work, his position did not seem to change; the opposition journals did not dare to publish his contributions.

Lanfrey began a new historical work, as polemical as the first. In search of an explanation of the many blows which freedom had received in France since the revolution of 1789, he wrote the Essai sur la Révolution française (Paris 1858). Since he allowed himself to criticize the doctrines of the social contract and to find the ochlocracy that had grown out of Rousseau's influence far more ghastly than the despotism of an individual, since he rebuked Robespierre and praised the nobles Mirabeau and Lafayette , a number of democrats fell upon him and questioned his Republican allegiance.

Although his literary reputation rose, Lanfrey's position remained precarious. In Scheffer († June 15, 1858) he lost his best friend. With him he had met the Italian patriot Manin , had been appointed executor of his will and therefore went to Turin with Lasteyrie in 1858 to meet with the Piedmontese committee as a member of the French committee for subscriptions to a Monument Manin.

On his return to Paris, Lanfrey faced increasing political persecution. Apart from the Courrier du Dimanche , no newspaper published anything of his, and all his attempts to gain a foothold in the periodical press failed. He was already thinking of taking part in the Italian campaign in 1859, but he refused and wrote a social novel in letter form in 1860 as a misanthropic outpouring: Les Lettres d'Evérard . Here he could say a lot that had hitherto been impossible for him; Evérard's anger or suffering shown therein is an expression of his own feelings, just as Evérard's bitter sarcasm against time is his own mockery, and like Evérard, he sought eternal glory. This book ensured that Lanfrey began a successful period. He became better known and became French through the annexation of Savoy.

Gervais Charpentier offered Lanfrey to take over the biweekly chronicle for his Revue nationale . This gave Lanfrey the opportunity to finally openly express his political convictions to a wider audience and to speak to moderate republicanism. Through this journalistic activity he also obtained a secure living. From November 1860 to December 1864 he wrote this chronicle and championed the demands of the moderate republicans against imperialism without ever reducing its independence. The government noted with increasing displeasure Lanfrey's stance on domestic and foreign policy issues, the supervisory authority of the press was always on his track and the Revue nationale received repeated reprimands until Lanfrey resigned from the Chronicle at the end of 1864.

A number of larger articles, which Lanfrey had classified in the Revue nationale , he published as Études et portraits politiques (1863; 3rd edition 1874). In them, as in all his works, the bitterness is expressed against what he regards as wrong and tyrannical in times and people. He speaks of the men of the Empire , the Restoration and the July Monarchy with biting mockery and severe rebuke . He appears relentlessly against Thiers , who wrote his Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire in the imperialist spirit, and particularly likes to show him what blows he inflicts on the feeling of morality with his descriptions. Without mercy, he condemns Guizot and dares to expound Carnot's mistakes and reveal Daunou's weaknesses. On the other hand , he happily portrays Carrel , with whom he likes to be compared.

His harsh judgments about high-ranking personalities who were close to his contemporaries made the young scholar few friends, and his cold, closed nature could not captivate even in his interactions. He himself did not seek company, the slight irony of the salons repelled him, he preferred rather severe, convincing attacks against political opponents. For his diversion, he only liked to go to places where literature, art and especially music were practiced by connoisseurs for their own sake. As a proud free spirit, he did not want to place himself under the protection of a patron, but rather owe everything to himself. He was close friends with the Countess d'Agoult, whom he placed next to Sand and Staël as a writer and admired her empathically. He also cultivated other female friendships, however cool he was; numerous letters contained in the Souvenirs inédits (Paris 1879) attest to this.

Lanfrey's work on Napoleon

Lanfrey's Histoire politique des papes (new edition 1880) was published in 1860 , in which he expresses his independent and independent opinion, but which he did not have as completely in his power as the subjects that were as congenial to him as those previously chosen . In 1863 he wrote Le rétablissement de la Pologne .

In the years following 1864 Lanfrey dealt intensively with the work that established his literary fame, the Histoire de Napoléon I (5 volumes, 1867–75; German by C. v. Glümer, 5 volumes, Berlin 1869–76; volume 6, finished by von Kalckstein, Minden 1885). For the creation of this document he used extensive material, namely the recently completed publication of the emperor's correspondence. In an obvious conflict with Thiers, Lanfrey approached the figure of the great Corsican, and in addition to the story, the refutation and correction are very important. Thiers saw in Napoleon the greatest genius of modern times, whose personality he drew with great admiration, Lanfrey regarded him as the worst tyrant and enemy of the freedoms of his people as well as of the individual. In an often one-sided representation, he attacks Napoleon's arbitrary regiment and his system of privileged lies, tries to destroy his nimbus and presents him as a limitless egoist. But he characterizes Napoleon all too unfavorably by not even doing justice to his admirable general and administrative genius. Lanfrey also recognizes the virtues and achievements of the nations with which Napoleon waged his wars; He speaks approvingly of the struggle of the Spaniards, Portuguese and Germans for their national independence, praises a stone , a Schill as real patriots and great personalities, which many French people bitterly resented.

Lanfrey died too early to complete his work on Napoleon, so that it only lasted until December 1811, when the French emperor threatened to break with Russia. The work was very popular, and in 1880 it was already the ninth edition in five volumes. Lanfrey's book involuntarily makes repeated references to contemporary conditions; often when he speaks of Napoleon I, he also means the imitator, Napoleon III. “The little one”, and the readership, who recognized this immediately, devoured the work all the more eagerly.

Role in the Franco-Prussian War

Lanfrey gradually became more conservative on questions of domestic policy, and extremely dissatisfied on foreign affairs; in Napoleon III. and to Bismarck he saw two despots who set foot on Europe’s neck; If both succeed in their project, he said in 1866, this would be one of the most shameful epochs in history, a slap in the face for justice and truth.

In the 1866 election, Lanfrey was pretty hopeless. He spoke contemptuously of Gambetta , seeing in him a charlatan, while he feared that the future would belong to the flatterers of the mob. He looked at the state of the country with growing resentment. He abstained from the vote on the 1870 plebiscite, and his letter to Parent informing him of this was printed in Le Patriote Savoisien . He saw the Franco-German War of 1870/71 with sorrow , cursed the German victories and was angry with Wilhelm I and Bismarck. Soon in Chambéry, now in Paris, he experienced this year as a French patriot full of bitterness.

As soon as the empire was overthrown (September 4, 1870), Lanfrey spoke out in favor of appointing elections to the constituent national assembly . The Patriote Savoisien also advocated it and hoped to get Lanfrey through as a member. Lanfrey wrote many essays for this magazine, as always moderately republican, anti-Jacobin and without fantasy. He tried in vain to get back to Paris, which had been shrouded by the Germans. In order to contribute personally to the defense of his fatherland, despite his poor health, he allowed himself to be included among the mobilized volunteers of Savoy without the prior knowledge of his mother, but did not fight because the war came to an end in February 1871.

The Patriote Savoisie had meanwhile passed entirely to the service of the Delegation of Tours to the Government of National Defense, which the level-headed Lanfrey was antipathetic; therefore his essays have now appeared in the Gazette du Peuple . He continued to rail relentlessly against Gambetta and his government, calling them the “dictatorship of incompetence”. As long as Gambetta was at the helm, he fought him, which enraged all the exalted against Lanfrey. Gambetta wanted to win his clever opponent for France's good, but Lanfrey vigorously rejected the prefecture of the northern department that was offered to him and did not accept a political role under Gambetta.

Political career at the beginning of the Third French Republic

Despite all the efforts of his friends, Lanfrey failed in the elections to the constituent national assembly in his fatherland Savoy, which were scheduled after the provisional armistice with Germany, but he was elected on February 8, 1871 in the Bouches-du-Rhône department and took his place in Bordeaux one without treating Gambetta in an offensive manner like many others. Gambetta seemed to have given him all credit; Thiers, Favre , Picard, et al. a. thanked Lanfrey for the brave way in which he tore the country out of its illusion about him. He entered the constituency without any obligation , independent, free master of his statements and views, moderate republican and reformist, but not a partisan.

From Versailles , where the National Assembly moved in March 1871, Lanfrey went almost daily to Paris, where the Commune , as a revolutionary government, tried to administer the capital according to socialist ideas. One day he was imprisoned here and only managed to escape six weeks later. The tone prevailing in the Constituent Assembly displeased him; but in some letters he softened his judgment so as not to discredit the assembly in the eyes of the world. Although Thiers was a bitter opponent in the literary field, he admired his services as the current President of the Republic (since the end of August 1871), and at Jules Simon's suggestion , Thiers Lanfrey offered the diplomatic mission to Switzerland as a republican. Lanfrey would have preferred the one in Italy, but accepted and, glad to be away from Versailles, went to Bern in October 1871 as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary , where he quickly gained general sympathy. From Bern, he followed with a frown what was happening in his home country; he went to Versailles for important votes.

Lanfrey never interfered, as Swiss party men had hoped for in vain, in internal affairs of the Confederation and in religious conflicts. When Thiers resigned from his presidency on May 24, 1873, Lanfrey submitted his departure, but the new ministry refused to accept him, especially not the Duke of Broglie . Since the Federal President attached particular importance to Lanfrey remaining in office, he held the post of ambassador until November 29, 1873. He looked with disgust at the diseases of "radicalism, socialism, clericalism and Caesarism" which were destroying France, more badly than the Bonapartists he condemned the Gambettists, and with disgust he spoke of the "clerical plague" brought about by the merger of the Bourbons and Orléans .

Soon afterwards Lanfrey said goodbye to Bern, returned to Paris, resumed his parliamentary activities and voted a. a. against the Septennat , since Mac-Mahon's regiment seemed to him an illogical and bastard-like combination; his work Le Septennat was not published until 1880 in the Œuvres complètes . He was still in the left center, of which he became vice-president, working on Napoleon's history and writing several essays. The pamphlets d'église in the Revue des Deux Mondes (January 1867) were followed by La Politique ultramontaine (February 1874).

On behalf of the Center Left Electoral Committee, Lanfrey edited the party's electoral manifesto in a manifesto published by the newspapers in December 1875, in which he consistently appealed to the moderation, wisdom, independence and liberalism for a republic on solid ground built to see. Of course, he himself feared that things might turn out differently, and his wish that the elections would lead to the victory of “a good and healthy constitutional majority” did not come true. He suspected that the new assembly would commit violence and error and be unable to direct the fortunes of the Republican regiment. A few days before he raised this concern, he had become a member of the Senate for life on December 15, 1875, without any effort. He never went to the speaker's platform, either in the Chamber or in the Senate.

Lanfrey became close friends with Thiers, without allowing himself to be influenced in his historical judgment. Since 1876 he had been part of its inner circle, where there were, of course, many arguments, but peace always returned. He continued to dislike Gambetta. Serious ailments, which increasingly prevented him from participating in political decision-making processes and repeatedly led him to the south of France to seek healing, worsened noticeably. In 1877 friends at the Mont-Joli Castle near Billière near Pau prepared him for a lovely stay in hospital . Here in the face of the Pyrenees , Lanfrey saw death approaching in great pain. Sometimes he longed for a longer happy life, but never felt discouraged or angry and gratefully accepted the self-sacrificing care of his surroundings. Here he died unmarried on November 15, 1877 at the age of only 49 years. His Œuvres complètes appeared in 1879ff. in 12 volumes, his Correspondance 1885 in two volumes.

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personal data
SURNAME Lanfrey, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician and historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1828
PLACE OF BIRTH Chambéry , Savoy
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1877
Place of death Pau , Pyrénées-Atlantiques department