Liberté, égalité, fraternité

_LS_ · January 27, 2016 at 6:50 AM Official Post

I realize this is kind of an esoteric topic for a Zelda forum, but @Lexatom and I were chatting about this earlier, and I was curious if anybody else here is a fan of the French Revolution? Despite its ultimate failure to produce lasting results, I find it to be one of the most beautiful and inspiring events in history. Not to mention instructive. There are corners of tumblr that look an awful lot like The Mountain right now, amirite? Isn't there a saying about those who don't know history being doomed in some fashion or another?

The whole thing starts in the same place that the American revolution did: a bunch of rich fucks who don't want to pay their taxes. But UNlike the American revolution, it actually evolves beyond that. It becomes something that's really about benefiting the people. Of course it all ends terribly, with Robespierre cutting errybody's heads off, the Sancoulat exerting too much influence in favor of quick action and benefiting Parisians rather than all of France, and eventually Napoleon rolling back most of the cool stuff that got accomplished.

None the less, I find the whole thing inspiring, despite its tragedy.

**Kaynil** · January 27, 2016 at 2:06 PM Official Post

I am ignorant of the details on the French Revolution. I might recall a bit more than I give myself credit for, buried with my school years and spanish terms. What I remember is that it was something massive and with different layers that affected different things culture, social classes, laws. I think even literature and other arts got shaped by this. Heck, I am almost sure that their eccho reached Mexico and a lot of the ideals were huge detonators for "new Spain" to decide to fight for their own independance and constitution.

Silent Lion · January 27, 2016 at 3:05 PM Official Post

There's a really neat book by Christopher Hibbert on the French Revolution. Although a little biased in areas, it is half-way between a history and a novel. Since lapping it up five or six years ago, a lot of the historical details have left me. I am left, though, with two lasting impressions. First, it is often romanticised a little too much. Don't get me wrong, it's a really cool part of history, but at all phases of the Revolution there is a little 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' and a lot of gratuitous unjustified (almost random) violence, particularly on the streets of Paris. In the great earthquakes of political revolution, the everyday atrocities of the mob tend to be forgotten (the rapes, the looting etc etc etc). That's what happens when order breaks down and people start to get smug. A necessary purgatory to bring about change? Maybe.

But more importantly, and despite the messy historical reality and its seeming ultimate failure, it DID succeed in altering the psychology of the world. It opened up questions and possibilities that before did not exist or were unthinkable. Many of our modern values stem directly from the events and discussions of that period, and from the many spectators from other countries that brought the romanticised ideals home with them. This is where I think the romanticisation is a good thing - the distortions of storytelling have filtered and forgotten the crud and left us the pure ideals, which in turn have inspired great progress. I think a very similar thing happened with the hippy movement - many documentaries call it an ultimate failure, but I think its spirit and some of its values found their way into society at large. In this way, the ghost of the revolution affected far more than the Revolution itself.

And as an aside, there was a radio series not that long ago about Napoleon, and how he wasn't the complete dickwad everyone seems to think he was. Yes, he was a dictator, which wasn't all that unthinkable for the age, but I think he gets a bad ride. Bare in mind that the people who defeated Napoleon, ruled the world for the next hundred years and got to write all the history books, was us the Brits. And we Brits can be a devious bunch of shits. (poetry on the house)

_LS_ · January 28, 2016 at 6:09 AM Official Post

I tend to think the opposite, Silent. I think the violence of the revolution tends to be UNDERstated.

Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of violence. And MOST of it was unjustified. But the whole first phase of the revolution was almost completely peaceful, aside from the occasional threat of force that didn't lead to anything. (And of course, wars against other countries don't count).

In my experience, people tend to think of the Reign of Terror when they think of the French Revolution, when in fact the Reign of Terror only lasted a few months.

I do wish the Revolution had managed to quit while it was ahead. If they'd just stopped changing everything for long enough to let things settle down (maybe wrap up a few of their wars), they might have proceeded a little more wisely. If they'd thought and acted with a little more tolerance, and moderation, maybe they could have stopped the Revolution from eating its children.

BUT, you're right. It didn't change as much as it could have, but it did change a whole lot.

I actually quite like Napoleon, for the same reason I like Caesar. Yes, they took ostensibly free societies and turned them into dictatorships. But if they hadn't done it, those societies (Rome and The Directorate) would likely have collapsed completely within just a few decades. Instead, they managed to forge their charges into powerful and successful nations.

And they both probably let it go to their heads a little too much. Napoleon just happened to live long enough to dress himself in white robes and crown himself emperor. =P

Silent Lion · January 29, 2016 at 7:44 AM Official Post

Quote from LinkSkywalker

I tend to think the opposite, Silent. I think the violence of the revolution tends to be UNDERstated.

Either you meant OVERstated, or I'm being a verry slow. What did you mean? Wouldn't saying the violence is understated be agreeing with me??

I love the story about Napoleon drinking way too much suicide juice at Waterloo because he thought he was invincible, and because he drank too much he vomited it and survived. It's probably bollocks, but I like the yarn too much to actually find out. But yeah, the Napoleonic Code is quite a liberal one. Napoleon might be history's least nasty dictator.

But in the interest of a good ol' rough and tumble, here are some examples of (mostly) unjustified violence that took place before the Reign of Terror.

14th July 1789 - Vainqueurs de la Bastille

The justification for storming the Bastille is based almost purely on its reputation. The sinister behemoth, with its 14th century military fortifications, the secret building where the guards had to face the wall so as not to see the identity of incoming prisoners, where countless wretches were meant to be languishing in chains in the dungeons.
Well, actually the Bastille was one of Paris' least unpleasant prisons. By many accounts, the food was adequate, prisoners were allowed to bring in their own possessions, and the feared dungeons, far from being full of wretches in chains, had lain unused for years. There was no crowding, there being rarely more than ten inmates. Not long before the attack on the Bastille, there had been discussions about maintaining such an expensive establishment to hold so few prisoners. By spring of 1789 the notion of its demolition was becoming popular, and architects and contractors had began drawing up plans to replace it with a pleasant public square. Especially as at that time its population had dwindled to seven prisoners and none of them were considered particularly dangerous.
So, in the end, despite all the noise about the Bastille being the symbol of an intolerable regime, and the event's legendary status, the whole affair was a pointless exercise of violence. But, on the other hand, it was the mob attacking trained soldiers, so maybe it's not entirely gratuitous.

"Explicit"

1789 - la Grande Peur

Most rebellions and revolutions in history seem to start with poor harvests. One would be mistaken for thinking the people initially rose up purely to reduce the price of bread. Blaming the harvest itself just didn't satisfy the need to find blame for the cruelty of starvation. Unfortunately, just as with the Bastille, the common people thought little about evidence and all sorts of wild rumours led to violence. Riots erupted. Millers and farmers suspected of hoarding grain were assaulted (there are no trials for any of this, as far as I can make out, just pumped-up lynch mobs). Manor houses are burnt down, infrastructure destroyed. In Paris, police had to be deployed to keep order in the bakeries - many of them were assaulted. Suspicions spread like plague. Anybody with a name was meant to be conspiring to bring down the revolution or be inviting in foreign mercenaries or otherwise being hateful. The lieutenant of St. Denis in Paris, for claiming to be unable to force a reduction in bread prices, was chased into a church belfry were he was stabbed and decapitated. They then lobbed the head off his son-in-law, put the heads of both on pikes, and dancing through the streets, patted the faces together to cries of 'Kiss Papa! Kiss Papa!' From here on in, violent riots continue to be commonplace.

2-7 September 1792 - les Massacres du Septembre

Once again driven mainly by rumour and the spurious pamphlets that lended them credibility, these five days saw the massacring of countless prisoners. It began with the killing of priests, who had been imprisoned or were on the way to prison for revolutionary reasons, but soon extended to all manner of prisoners. The executions were often gruesome, their painful inefficiency the mark of violent self-gratification rather than the cold efficiency you would expect from the self-righteous servants of justice. These massacres began with no trials, and then, presumably to satisfy the assailants' sense of moral superiority, makeshift monkey trials were enough to condemn the doomed. Soon, hundreds of mutilated corpses were piled in great heaps.

There are doubtless many acts of violence made possible and unrecorded because of the chaotic breakdown of order. I remember reading about a wave of aristocratic women being jumped and their breasts cut off in the streets, but I didn't have time to track it down or confirm it. I've also left out examples of violent force that was purely political - the storming of the Palace of Versailles, for example, when Marie Antoinette fled through secret passages to cries of 'Take out her entrails! I'll pin her liver on my wall!' I've left those out because, although terribly violent (and many of the unarmed maids were butchered - collateral, you might say), you could make some sort of argument about it being policitally justified, killing the aristocracy and all that. Although if you did decide those things were also overly violent, a lot of it happens before the Reign of Terror.