[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]

 

The phrase history is but a fable agreed upon, and its variants, mean that history is not an objective, absolute truth, but rather a narrative (often influenced by the powerful) based on selected events, interpretations and biases, which becomes accepted as fact through collective agreement.

The phrase history is but a fable agreed upon is a loan translation from French l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue—cf. in particular, below, quotations English-1 and English-2.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the French phrase l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue and variants that I have found:

French-1-: From De l’esprit (Paris: Chez Durand, 1758), by the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771) [Discours IV. Des différents noms donnés à l’esprit. Chapitre XIII. Esprit de conduite, page 592]:

Les motifs qui, dans ces cas, déterminent les sultans, sont presque toujours cachés ; les historiens ne rapportent que les motifs apparents, ils ignorent les véritables ; & c’est, à cet égard, qu’on peut, d’après M. de Fontenelle ¹, assurer que l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue.

This passage was translated as follows in De l’esprit; or, Essays on the mind, and its several faculties (London: Published by M. Jones, 1807), by the British author and translator William Mudford (1782-1848) [Essay IV. Of the different faculties of the human mind. Chapter XIII. Of the spirit of conduct, page 458]:

The motives, which in this case determine the sultans, are almost constantly concealed; historians relate only the apparent motives, they are ignorant of the true ones; and, in this respect, we may, after M. de Fontenelle ¹, assert, that history is only a fable, which people consider as true.

¹ This refers to the French man of letters and scientist Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), who, apparently, did not use the phrase l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue, but expressed a similar idea—cf., in this regard, Quote Origin: What Is History But a Fable Agreed Upon?, by ‘Garson O’Toole’.

French-2-: From a letter, dated Ferney, Friday 15^th July 1768, that the French philosopher, playwright, poet, historian and polemicist François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire, wrote to the English author and politician Horace Walpole (1717-1797)—as published in the Mercure de France (Paris, France) of May 1769 [Lettre de M. de Voltaire à M. Horace Walpole, page 135]:

J’ai toujours pensé, comme vous, qu’il faut se défier de toutes les histoires anciennes. Fontenelle, le seul homme du siécle de Louis XIV qui fût à la fois poëte philosophe & sçavant, disait qu’elles étaient des fables convenues.

The translation of the letter dated Friday 15^th July 1768 that Voltaire wrote to Horace Walpole is as follows in Historical Memoirs of the Author of the Henriade. With some original Pieces. To which are added, Genuine Letters of Mr. de Voltaire. Taken from his own Minutes, Translated from the French (London: Printed for T. Durham, G. Kearsly and J. Murray, 1777) [Letter XV. To Horace Walpole, page 207]—I have not been able to identify the translator:

I have constantly been of your opinion, Sir, that we ought to distrust all ancient histories. Fontenelle, the only man of the age of Louis XIV, who united poetry, philosophy, and learning, declared that they were fables agreed upon.

French-3-: From a letter to the Editors, by ‘Cerutti’, published in the Journal de Paris (Paris, France) of Thursday 13^th November 1788 [page 1356, column 1]:

Que penser des récits qui nous viennent à travers les passions, les sectes, les partis, les préjugés, les nuages de toute espèce ? En traversant cette atmosphère immense & orageuse, quelles réfractions, quelles altérations ne doit pas éprouver la lumière ? Le sage Fontenelle n’avoit-il pas raison d’appeler l’Histoire une fable convenue ?
     translation:
What to think of the stories that come to us through passions, sects, parties, prejudices, clouds of all kinds? When going through that immense and stormy atmosphere, what refractions, what distortions must not the light go through? Was not the wise Fontenelle right to call history a fable agreed upon?

Incidentally, the French expression fable convenue has occasionally occurred in English texts: cf., below, English-2, and the following from Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford (London: Printed for T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1798), by the English historian William Coxe (1748-1828) [volume 1, 4^th period, chapter 31, page 272]:

Some of the French writers call history la fable convenue, and not without some degree of reason; for most histories are written either by authors who have been themselves interested in the events which they relate, and gloss over the transactions of their own party, or are composed by writers who have not access to original papers, know little more than common occurrences, and derive the principal source of information from uncertain publications, traditional information, gazettes, and news-papers.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase history is but a fable agreed upon and variants that I have found:

English-1-: From the above-quoted translation of the letter dated Friday 15^th July 1768 that Voltaire wrote to Horace Walpole—cf. French-2.

English-2-: From Review of a French paper, published against the London journals, published in Bell’s Weekly Messenger (London, England) of Sunday 28^th March 1802 [page 1, column 1]:

Since history itself, as Fontenelle wisely remarked, is nothing more than une fable convenue—a fable agreed upon—it cannot be matter of wonder that newspaper writers are guilty of fiction: Our journalists may easily retort the animadversions of the French, and substantiate against them many charges of gross ignorance.

English-3-: From Memorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon ² at Saint Helena (London: Printed for Henry Colburn and Co., 1823), by the French author Emmanuel de Las Cases (1766-1842) [volume 4, part 7, Wednesday 20^th November 1816, page 251]—I have not been able to identify the translator:

“It must be admitted, my dear Las Cases,” said the Emperor to me to-day, “it is most difficult to obtain absolute certainties for the purposes of history. […] The truth of history, so much in request, to which every body eagerly appeals, is too often but a word. At the time of the events, during the heat of conflicting passions, it cannot exist; and if, at a later period, all parties are agreed respecting it, it is because those persons who were interested in the events, those who might be able to contradict what is asserted, are no more. What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon.”

The original text by Emmanuel de Las Cases is as follows in Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, ou, Journal où se trouve consigné, jour par jour, ce qu’a dit et fait Napoléon durant dix-huit mois (Paris: L’auteur, 1823) [volume 7, Wednesday 20^th November 1816, page 311]:

« Il faut en convenir, me disait aujourd’hui l’Empereur, les véritables vérités, mon cher, sont bien difficiles à obtenir pour l’histoire. […] Cette vérité historique, tant implorée, à laquelle chacun s’empresse d’en appeler, n’est trop souvent qu’un mot : elle est impossible au moment même des événemens, dans la chaleur des passions croisées ; et si, plus tard, on demeure d’accord, c’est que les intéressés, les contradicteurs ne sont plus. Mais qu’est alors cette vérité historique, la plupart du temps ? Une fable convenue. »

² This refers to Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of the French as Napoléon I from 1804 to 1815. He was exiled in 1815 to the remote South-Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he spent the last six years of his life.

English-4-: From Essays: by R. W. Emerson, of Concord, Massachusetts. With preface by Thomas Carlyle (London: James Fraser, 1841), by the U.S. poet, essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) [Essay I. History, page 9]—here, the reference to Napoléon Bonaparte is explicit:

The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon and Troy and Tyre, and even early Rome, are passing already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the Sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, when we have thus made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way. “What is history,” said Napoleon, “but a fable agreed upon?” This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonisation, Church, Court, and Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay.

English-5-: From the Public Ledger (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) of Tuesday 9^th July 1844 [page 2, column 2]:

Principles.—The most important duty of a writer is the discussion of principles. Facts are useful as they elucidate or fortify principles. Otherwise they may amuse or excite but they do not instruct. They neither affect the destiny of the individual, nor of communities. Facts recorded are fables agreed upon. Without the moral, they suit children, not men.

English-6-: From a review of Orissa, the Garden of Superstition and Idolatry (1850), by William Ferguson Beatson Laurie (1819-1891)—review published in The Indian News, and Chronicle of Eastern Affairs (London, England) of Thursday 21^st February 1850 [page 87, column 2]:

Napoleon styled history “a fable agreed upon;” it appears difficult to perceive the force or entire truth of this assertion. History—when not solid—when it does not bear upon the reader’s mind the force of truth—when it merely boasts the stamp of a fanciful production from an imaginative and frenzied author—may then warrant Napoleon’s remark; for then it becomes merely chronicles of events held forth in the romantic dress of “ideal perfection.” But good, sound history—history which accords with the present nature and progress of things around us—can never allow the ideal and romantic to overshadow the political progress, and importance, and future prospects of nations. Truly, “there is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time.” ³

³ This is a quotation from History, by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

English-7-: From a review of the September 1850 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, published in The Weekly News (London, England) of Saturday 31^st August 1850 [page 832, column 2]—here, the phrase is misattributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“The Mysteries of History” is founded on Professor Bulau’s work; in it many striking episodes are added to the book of history, and sometimes such a new light is thrown upon the past as verifies Emerson’s remark, that much of man’s “history is but fable agreed upon.”