Tea at Trianon: Myths About the French Revolution

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Myths About the French Revolution

A fairly accurate assessment from Lessons from History:

Confusingly, the Revolution did not begin on 14 July 1789 when a mob tore down the Bastille a notorious Paris prison. Yet, France celebrates the destruction of the Bastille as the beginning of the Revolution. Instead, historians mark the beginning of the Revolution as the great Fiscal Crisis that came to a head in 1788. Essentially, the French Monarchy could not raise enough money to pay its bills. The crisis began because the Monarchy lacked the legal power to impose the taxes needed to finance the government.
Instead, the fiscal crisis forced King Louis XVI to take drastic action. The drastic action was to convene the first meeting of France’s parliament, the Estates General, since 1614. No king had convened an Estates General for 175 years because the body theoretically had the power to rewrite France’s constitution. Yet, Louis XVI felt he had no choice because the government needed money. (Read more.)

From Mental Floss:

When the Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789, there were only seven inmates. One was a wayward relative sent by his family, four were serving time for forgery, and two had been committed due to insanity—not the political prisoners you might have imagined. But if the goal wasn’t to free prisoners, why attack a prison? The real reason, according to most historians, was for ammunition.

At the time, it was clear to everyone that France was in serious debt, in part because they had just helped the U.S. win the American Revolution. Back in France, it was the already-worse-off citizens who were suffering from the fallout of that financial crisis, including inflation, food shortages, and so on.

Two months before the attack on the Bastille, King Louis XVI had convened the Estates-General to figure out a game plan. There were three estates: The First was clergy; the Second was nobility; and the Third comprised everyone else—which mostly consisted of the bourgeoisie and peasants. The Third Estate was raring for serious reform, and its members were worried that the more conservative elements of France would try to tamp them down.

Those worries escalated in July, when Louis XVI fired Jacques Necker, a finance minister who had enjoyed the Third Estate’s support. That, combined with the fact that troops had moved into positions surrounding Paris, made Third Estate members think the king was plotting against them.

So on July 14, about 2000 people raided Paris’s Hôtel des Invalides for weapons and then marched to the Bastille to seize its ammunition. Guards tried to resist, but the Bastille’s governor, Bernard-René de Launay, finally gave in. It didn’t turn out great for Launay—he was beaten badly, and when he kicked someone in the crotch, the mob cut his head off and paraded it around town.

It didn’t take long for the storming of the Bastille to take on an almost mythic significance. Revolutionaries considered the fortress a symbol of monarchical overreach and oppression, and they slowly tore it down over the coming months. (Read more.)