trends in international affairs. The French participation in the
Crimean War angered and humiliated him. He saw it as ‘an
imperial, conservative, capitalist, Catholic, anti-democratic, anti
nationalist, anti-Greek war,’ and declared that Napoleon III was
trying to become the head o f a new Holy Alliance, not against
the Tsar, but against the Revolution. ‘The triumph of the allies,’
he told Edmond in April, 1855, ‘means much less the abasement of
Russia than the consolidation o f the military regime in France
and in all Europe.’ He wanted ‘no victory... no military glory,’
and took up the traditional standpoint of revolutionary defeatism
when he added: ‘If it were necessary that France should be beaten
and humiliated so that liberty should be saved, would you
hesitate? Personally, I know no such scruples.’
It was while the war was still at its height that he heard once
again from Alexander Herzen, who invited collaboration in
his first expatriate paper, The North Star, then about to start
publication. Proudhon was delighted at the renewal o f their
association. ‘Our ideas, I believe, are the same, our causes are
in solidarity, all our hopes are mingled.’ And he went on to a
discussion o f their common problems and o f the question of
Russia which demonstrated forcibly the extent to which he had
removed himself from revolutionary as well as from any other
orthodoxy.
‘While you are preoccupied with governments above all,’ he
said, ‘I for my part see the governed. Before attacking despotism
among princes, is it not more often necessary that we should
begin by combating it among the soldiers of freedom? D o you
know anything that more resembles a tyrant than a popular tri
bune? And has not the intolerance of the martyrs more than once
appeared to you just as odious as the rage of the persecutors?
Is it not true that despotism is only so difficult to overcome
because it rests on the intimate feelings o f its antagonists— I
should say its competitors— to such an extent that the sincerely
liberal writer, the true friend o f the Revolution, very often does
not know on what side he should direct his blows, on the coalition
o f the oppressors or the bad morality of the oppressed?
‘Do you believe, for example, that Russian autocracy, is merely
a product of brute force and dynastic intrigues? Has it not
hidden bases, secret roots, in the heart o f the Russian people?
Oh, my dear Herzen, most frank o f men, have you never been
THE PALADIN OF JUSTICE