Napoleon et les Juifs by Robert AnchelReview by: Henry E. BourneThe American Historical Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Oct., 1928), pp. 123-125Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1836499 .

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Anchel: Napoleon et les Juifs 123

by which armies moved without magazines or supplies " (pp. 31, 35, 39, 40, 41). To the military reader Colonel Phipps's chapter (III.) on

The Amalgame" is of great interest, but lack of space precludes an anialysis here.

The future twenty-five marshals he divides into three classes, viz., the officer class, the soldier class, and the civilian class. Of the first the most noteworthy were Berthier, Kellermann, Davout, Macdonald, and Marmont; of the second, Ney, Murat, Soult, Bernadotte, and Massena; of the third, Bessieres and Lannes, the last being the only Gascon by birth. Nine were officers of the Royal Army (regulars) and others be- longed to the class which ordinarily furnishes the rank and file, so that they can not be properly "described as a mass of leaders rising from a rough soldiery '', particularly as "almost all were, or ought to have been, well or fairly educated" (pp. 4I-48). If rapidity of promotion be any criterion of their merits it is not surprising that Bernadotte, who was the only Protestant, ended on the throne of Sweden, considering that he was a lieutenant in November, I79I, and a general of division in December, I794 (PP. 55, 6o).

Colonel Phipps describes the three armies formed on December 14, 1791, to defend the north-eastern frontier of France, the " Armee clu Nord ", the most important until 1794; the " Armee du Centre " uncler La Fayette, and the " Armee du Rhin" under Luckner; and he gives an interesting account of the successive commanders of the first, Rocham- beau, Jourdan, who resumed his trade as a haberdasher in January, 1794 (P. 273), Pichegru-" one of the most interesting figures of this period " (P. 74), whose extraordinary daring in standing in 1792 with his back to the Argonne, which he styled "the Thermopylae of France" (p. iI8), even Napoleon considered too audacious (p. I31)- and Moreau, who assumed command in March, 1795. He also traces through the manifold changes of the campaigns the careers and services of the future marshals and generals who belong to history, and who, by I794, began to " emerge from the crowd" (p. 3I8).

There is so much "meat" in Colonel Phipps's book that it is im- possible to do it justice in a brief co itique. The reader who is intereste(d in the period of which he treats or who desires to understand why Napoleon was able to organize such magnificent fighting machines as lie possessed in the campaigns of Italy, Egypt, and Marengo, as well as in the " Grande Armee ", wher-eby he dazzled the entire world, can find in no other book so much to afford him that understanding as he will in Colonel Phipps's remarkable work.

FREDERIC L. HUIDEKOPER.

Napoleon et les Juifs. Par ROBERT ANCHEL. (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France. 1928. PP. xxxi, 598. 75 francs.) NAPOLEON may have been a son of the Revolution, as he declared,

but in his treatment of the Jews he was in part moved by the prejudices

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I24 Reviews of Books

and suspicions characteristic of the Old Regime. Practical considerations also influenced him, for the situation in the departments of the Upper and Lower Rhine had become critical. The peasants had apparently fallen into the hands of Jewish money-lenders, and wild rumors were abroad that all the farms would soon be controlled by usurers. The local au- thorities talked of the danger that the peasants would rise and massacre their tormentors. Napoleon, as M. Anchel explains, had been made aware of the trouble long before he became emperor, but after the Austerlitz campaign, on his way back to Paris, he stopped at Strasbourg and heard the complaints more directly. M. Anchel also says: " Son instinct d'organisateur methodique devait le porter a retablir l'ordre interieur du culte juif." The need of this appears plainly from the author's first chapter, dealing with the consequences of the Revolution for the Jews and with the situation until i8O6. The Constituent As- sembly, true to its mission of liberty, had endeavored to free the Jews, but it had not comprehended the effects of freedom upon communities so unique, which had been restricted and regulated not only by hostile leg- islation, but also by their own protective habits and taboos. They formed a foreign substance in the body politic. Moreover, there were Jews and Jews. Those of eastern France, commonly called " German ", lived on a distinctly lower level than the "Portuguese" Jews of the south. That the " German " Jews were the plague of the Alsatian peasant was not, as the author shows, altogether their fault. Money-lending had been one of the few occupations permitted them, and even in Napoleon's day cer- tain bishops tried to maintain the earlier Christian prohibition against taking interest. It is also true that no legal rate of interest was estab- lished in France until as a consequence of this very question. M. Anchel believes that the fundamental cause for the troubles in Alsace was the financial disorders which followed the collapse of the assignats. He thinks the evil greatly exaggerated and that it would have corrected it- self, without Napoleon's decrees. His account of the effect of the Revo- lution upon the Jewish communities, upon their religious life, as well as upon their trade practices, in short upon the transition from the earlier oppression to the newer freedom, should interest the sociologist quite as much as the historian.

The principal theme of the work is the origin and character of the decrees of May 30, i8o6, and of March 17, i8o8. The first struck a blow at usurers in eight departments, especially in the Upper and Lower Rhine, while the second checked and controlled Jewish money-lending through an elaborate system of restrictions. On March 17 also laws provided for the reorganization of Jewish religious institutions. In the discussions preparatory to the decrees of i8o8 the Jewish Assembly of i8o6 and the Grand Sanhedrin of 1807 played a reluctant part, and to these the author gives four of his chapters. His narrative is based upon very extensive manuscript material, much of which has passed in recent years into the national archives from the former ministry of worship.

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Miller: Greece I25

The bibliography, containing not only lists of manuscripts, but also of books and pamphlets, with comments on their value, will serve as a guide to other students of the subject.

One of the most interesting facts brought out in M. Anchel's chapters is the struggle for influence over Napoleon's opinion between liberals like Beugnot and Champagny, who cherished the tradition of 1789, and con- servatives like Mole, whose words illustrated the prejudices of the Old Regime. Sometimes Napoleon himself talked like a " fundamentalist" of the period; saying, for example, on one occasion that he did not propose to relieve the race from the effects of the curse which rested upon it. One of the most curious notions which Napoleon entertained was that the "handpicked" body, called the Grand Sanhedrin, would be accepted by the whole Jewish world as capable of modifying Jewish teaching and tradition. However, so far as religious re-establishment was concerned, M. Anchel believes that the Jews benefitted by the Napoleonic measures. They did not suffer greater loss of freedom than did the Catholics by the Organic Articles; quite the contrary. In his other legislation of i8o8, two considerations besides the problem of usury seem to have moved Napoleon. He was anxious to put an end to the practice among the Jews of finding substitutes when they were conscripted. He thought the army an excellent school for their youth. He also desired to break down the resistance of the Jewish authorities to mixed marriages. His legislation upon Jewish credits M. Anchel thinks did more harm than good. Indeed he calls the period immediately following the decree of MTarch I7, i8o8, the "Re'gime of Oppression ". Its rigors were soon modified, but the law was to run ten years, so that the system outlasted Napoleon. One of the most interesting chapters in the volume deals with the supplementary law of July 20, i8o8, which compelled the Jews to regularize their names, making the system similar to that in use among Christians.

HENRY E. BOURNE.

Greece. By WILLIAM MILLER, LL.D. [Modern World.] (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1928. PP. 350. $5.00.) IN the series known as the Modern World the aim of the editor and

authors is rather less historical than descriptive. While history regularly takes the first place, and in Young's Egypt is carried through the whole book, ordinarily a picture of present circumstances is given, with only sufficient narrative to introduce the reader to conditions since the Great War.

In Dr. Miller's Greece less than one hundred pages may be accounted narrative history. Chapter II. sketches the one hundred years from the beginning of the Greek Revolution in 1821, chapter III. covers the troubled period from 1920 to the abdication of King George II. in 1924, and chapter IV. discusses the subsequent three years of the Greek re- public. The other fourteen chapters are descriptive, each dealing with

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XXXIV.-9

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