Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/140

 132 REVIEWS OF BOOKS revoke his decision, previously arrived at, to abandon the Berlin and Milan decrees. Unfortunately the evidence he gives that his own writings had induced Napoleon to consider revocation is not very convincing. D'lvernois was a'lso employed semi-officially on a mission to Russia in 1812, and in the negotiations at Reichenbach leading to subsidy treaties between Great Britain, Russia, and Prussia. M. Karmin had previously published the documents connected with these missions. 1 This book gives careful summaries of the transactions, but it would have been more useful to give references to the documents themselves, instead of only to the Revue articles. D'lvernois's most original idea in war finance was to substitute for the weakened credit of the state the credit of individuals. He advocated a forced loan from all owners of property, payable not in cash but by way of mortgage, repayable by the state after the war. He thought that Austria and Spain in 1809, and Russia in 1812, if they had adopted this plan, could have withdrawn much of their depreciated paper money, and that the mortgages would have been good security for large issues of treasury bills by the respective states. In no case was his scheme adopted. In 1806 he went to Sweden, and some interest attaches to a project he elaborated with Armfelt. It is set out in a letter to Vansittart from Stralsund (11 April 1806). The proposal was for a joint expedition of British and Swedish forces against the colonies first of France, and then of France's tributaries, Holland and Spain. Conquests were to be shared. This scheme was warmly embraced by Gustavus IV, but there is no record of any reply from British ministers. M. Karmin suggests that D'lvernois may have been sent expressly to sound Sweden on this proposal, but this seems improbable. . British naval power was so preponderant in 1806 that there was no temptation to call in a naval ally, to share conquests, and to risk the alienation of Russia by the aggrandizement of Sweden. Vansittart in 1806 was only secretary to the treasury. WALFORD D. GREEN. Histoire Religieuse de la Revolution Frangaise. Par PIERRE DE LA GORGE. Tome iv. (Paris : Plon-Nourrit, 1921.) THIS volume brings M. de la Gorce's history down to the eve of the 18 Brumaire. M. de la Gorce is one of the group of French historians who have become classics in their own lifetime ; everything he writes is planned on a grand scale and executed with a sureness of touch and a magnificence for which we seek parallels in centuries other than our own. He claims a full right to interpret motives as well as to describe actions, and in his general method he is often nearer to Thomas Hardy's Dynasts than to M. Aulard or M. Sorel. His strong sympathies (as an artist, rather than a partisan) sometimes lead him to exaggerate. Thus he makes great play with the banal hypocrisy of the official revolutionary jargon. One can, indeed, have little patience with officials who, after ten years of constant political and constitutional change and equally constant persecu- tion of opinion, could report with gravity upon a small catholic school, ' Pas un seul eleve n'a ete capable de nous dire en quoi consiste la liberte ' ; but the language of edification did not begin with the persecutors of 1 Revue Historique de la Revolution Francaise, vols. x, xi, and xii.