Bastille Day
The French Revolution illustrates the old saying that there are two views of politics – either things happen by accident or things happen by design. Many cite the inordinate influence of Voltaire and of course, the Committee of Public Safety is well known.
Even more interesting are the connections of the principals in the revolution, tying in powerful movements of the times. Following the trail of Mirabeau, Duport, Mesmer and les Chevaliers Bienfaissants, brings us to Virieu, Turckheim and the Congress of Wilhemsbad. The bloodshed which was the French Revolution could not have been avoided if you look at the principals in the drama.
Poor France thinks it is celebrating liberty, egality and fraternity but it’s actually celebrating manipulation, bloodshed and a reordering of the peasantry for the benefit of the usual suspects.
It was a giant con. Still, vive la France! And our politicians might remember this:
Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides
L’opprobre de tous les partis
Tremblez! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix!
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre
S’ils tombent, nos jeunes héros
La France en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre.Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons
Filed under: Society & human issues
I can’t think of the Marseillaise as anything other than the music that makes Father Jack stand up!
Simon Schama’s history of those events, “Citizens”, was so frank that for many years it couldn’t get a publisher in France. (I don’t know whether it now has one.)
A very happy Bastille Day to all our friends in France. Never lose your wonderful and innate Frenchness, and help us get rid of the monstrosity that calls itself the EU!
A la votre!
Oui, d’accord.
Oui, vive la France!
The Revolution would have carried me along with it, if it had not begun criminally: I saw the first head aloft on the end of a pike, and I recoiled. Murder can never be a subject for admiration in my eyes, nor an argument in favor of liberty; I know of nothing more servile, contemptible, cowardly and stupid than a terrorist. The levelers, regenerators, and cut-throats were transformed to valets, spies, sycophants, and still more unnaturally into dukes, counts and barons.
One must be aware of what is hidden behind the liberal phraseology of devotees of the Terror: success deifies. To adore the Convention is merely to adore a tyrant. The Convention once overthrown, you pass with your bundle of freedoms to the Directory, then to Bonaparte, without suspecting your metamorphosis, without considering what you have done.
Who can foresee the strange leaps and bounds of the mercurial French spirit? Who knows why its loathings and infatuations, its blessings and curses, transform themselves for no apparent reason? Who can divine why it strays from one political system to another, how, with freedom on its lips and slavery in its heart, it can believe in one version of the truth in the morning and a contrary version by evening? Let us toss a little dust about: like Virgil’s bees, we will cease our battles and fly elsewhere.
Francois Rene de Chateaubriand