Louis, de Beaufort

Statut : Author

1703-1795

Notes : Little is known about the life of Louis de Beaufort before the appearance of the “Dissertation sur l’incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’Histoire romaine”, published under the initials L.D.B. From September 1739 to February 1742, Louis de Beaufort was tutor to the young prince of Hesse-Homburg, whom he accompanied to the University of Leiden. In 1740-1741, he was enrolled in the congregation of the Church at Leiden on the recommendation of that of Utrecht. In 1741, he published the “Histoire de César Germanicus”, which was dedicated to his pupil. His duties over, he returned to Utrecht for several years. In 1746, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Beaufort, belonged in a long tradition which runs from Cluver to Dodwell and Perizonius by way of Pierre Bayle and Jean Le Clerc; in the “Dissertation” he systematised the arguments set out by Lévesque de Pouilly for the “Académie des Inscriptions” concerning the unreliability of the sources for the early centuries of Rome, and became the supreme representative of historical pyrrhonism. Beaufort emphasises on the one hand the almost total absence of historical sources from the period before the arrival of Pyrrhus in Italy, and the untrustworthy evidence for later sources (the pontifical annals, the acts of the senate, the records of the censors). On the other hand he underlines the uncertain status of the events between the arrival of Aeneas in Italy and the death of Regulus. In the course of this he sifts through the accounts of the historians, notably Polybius, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, Suetonius and Plutarch, with the aim of exposing their contradictions and assessing the reliability of their evidence. The Dissertation acquired a certain fame in England when the English translation appeared anonymously in 1740. Nathaniel Hooke devoted thirty pages to it in his “Roman History” (« A dissertation on the Credibility of the History of the First 500 Years of Rome », in which he reproaches Beaufort for his excessive scepticism, before offering his readers a more nuanced examination of the uncertainties surrounding the first centuries of Rome. His most important critic was Christoph Gottlob Sachs (or Christophorus Saxius) who attacked him from 1741 in a series of articles published in Latin in the “Nova Acta eruditorum” (June 1741, June 1742, April 1743, September 1744), the “Ephemerides Lipsienses” of 1744 and especially the “Miscellanea Lipsiensia nova ad incrementum scientiarum”, where in 1742 he published a pamphlet entitled « Επίκρισις φιλολογική, sive stricturae in nuperum Franci cuiusdam libellum de incerto historiae Romanorum antiquissimae » (1,1, pp. 40-79 ; 2,3 pp. 409-495 ; 2,4, pp. 620-712 ; 3,2 pp. 235-329 ; 3,4, pp. 743-749). Saxius, who presents himself as the defender of the historical tradition of the ancients, offers in his articles a genealogy of pyrrhonism, accusing Beaufort of taking his critical approach from the works of Cluver, Dodwell, Perizonius and de Pouilly, and his historical perspective from abridgements of Roman history like the “Selecta bibliotheca historica” (1705) of B. G. Struve. Louis de Beaufort replied by implication in the preface to the second edition of the “Dissertation” (Utrecht, 1750, 2 vols) and very explicitly in a text inserted at the end of this same edition under the title « Remarques sur l’écrit d’un certain Allemand, intitulé Christophori Saxii, A.M., Επίκρισις φιλολογική… », (p. 437-484), in which he responds point by point to the accusations de Saxius. The “Dissertation” was nevertheless very favourably received by the “Bibliothèque impartiale” of Formey (whose readership consisted mainly of enlightened Protestants), in a review published in the number for January-February 1751. It is significant that Gibbon also in his “Essai sur l’étude de la literature” (London 1760, in French) relies on Beaufort, and in recapitulating the debate on the reliability of the Roman sources, emphasises the need to avoid the two extremes, of embracing either a strict pyrrhonism which confines itself to « estimating the weight of opposed probabilities » or « systems » which scarcely stand up to « the test of a free and critical examination », with the purpose instead of elaborating a historical approach founded on « the philosophical knowledge of antiquity », based on the theoretical foundations of Montesquieu. In the nineteenth century Beaufort’s work was regarded as a forerunner of modern historical criticism : thus Michelet for example wrote, « ce livre (the Dissertation) a jeté le vieux roman par terre. Le relève qui pourra » “De l’Esprit des lois” by Montesquieu appeared in 1748. Beaufort was able to use the work with great profit, since he found in it a way of conceiving the reconstruction of the historical narrative, and in effect escaping from the dead end of pyrrhonism, without at the same time being obliged to deny the point of his criticism of the ancient sources. His debt is well described in the preface to the “République romaine”, where Beaufort explains the manner in which Montesquieu has served him as a guide in « untangling the relations that existed between all aspects of the government of Rome ». By « untangling the relations (démêler la liaison) » he means enabling him to escape from the field of events and dates – which can of course admit of uncertainty – in order to enter into the unquestionably real world of the institutions of Rome. In addition the study of the origins and development of primitive Roman religion, the Senate, the equestrian order or the tribunate of the plebs, gave Beaufort the possibility of reflecting on the « causes » which were at the basis of the « rapid and surprising progress » of the Roman Republic and of proposing a general view of the « springs » of Roman government, which allowed him to relegate to second place discussion of the certainty or uncertainty of the facts which composed them. In the portrait of the Roman Republic which Beaufort presented, he was able, in contrast to other historians, to underline the importance of the Roman plebs at the expense of the aristocracy : if the causes of the greatness of the Republic lie in the religious sincerity and the virtue of the former, the causes of its decadence are to be sought in the corruption and immorality of the latter. “La république romaine” was published in 1766, simultaneously in the Hague and in Berne ; in 1767 there was a new impression of the Hague edition. The « Discours préliminaire » with which the book begins is composed of the following articles : Article I : « Du travail des Modernes sur l’Histoire & les Antiquités Romaines ». Article II : « Règles que l’Auteur se propose de suivre pour distinguer le certain de l’incertain ». Article III : « Sur les Rois de Rome ». Article IV : « De la Révolution. » Article V : « Sur les guerres des Romains en général ». Article VI : « De l’intérieur de Rome lors de la Révolution ». We reproduce here the first two articles which set out the theoretical views of the author. The German translation of Beaufort’s “République romaine”, was undertaken by Friedrich Klose (1728-94), who was first a preacher in the reformed parish of Thorn, then a pastor in his home town of Lissa, and finally became the general superintendent of the south Prussian parishes in Posen. His «Die Römische Republik oder allgemeiner Plan der ehmaligen Regierung Roms von dem Herrn von Beaufort, Mitgliede der königlichen Societät in London» was published in four volumes by Flörke in Danzig from 1775 to 1777. The text has no translator’s preface. Klose translated from French and Polish, and a history of Poland by Jean Baptiste Des Roches de Parthenay (published in German in 1771) as well as letters from Portuguese and German Jews to Voltaire (published in German in 1773) are among the other texts he undertook.

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