Tea at Trianon: The Trial of Pétain

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

Saturday, October 28, 2023

The Trial of Pétain

Pétain should not be compared to either Charles I or Louis XVI. They were kings and died as kings; Pétain had become a lackey. From The Interpreter:

France’s trial of a doddery, geriatric war hero is an eccentric entry to this eclectic list of examples. Marshal Pétain, who doggedly refused to lose the Battle of Verdun in 1916, took power in 1940, signed an armistice with the Nazis and presided over France’s collaborationist Vichy regime for the next four years. Just as the Liberation liberated the French from memories of their often-shameful collusion with Germany, so too did Pétain’s trial supply a scapegoat for the errors and crimes committed between 1940 and 1944.

Putin could hardly be tried by his compliant, corrupt Duma, but Pétain had precedent on his side in expecting a trial by parliament. Charles I and Louis XVI were both accorded that right, albeit with purged and cowed assemblies sitting in judgment. Instead, Pétain’s guilt was appraised by an unlikely, unwieldy combination of former parliamentarians and former members of the resistance. Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny might as well be enlisted as a juror for Putin.

Stalin’s purges are conventionally denounced as show trials because of the absence of due process, the foregone conclusions and the seemingly random selection of many victims.

Nonetheless, any war crimes trial, including those of Albert Speer, Hideki Tojo and Adolf Eichmann, contains an element of show and tell. Julian Jackson in France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain designates them as “exercises in national pedagogy”. Their process and record are meant to teach morals, not least by setting limits on acceptable behaviour. For France, Pétain’s trial also provided a biased, partial explanation of why France had suffered the most rapid and total defeat of any Great Power in history.

During his trial, Pétain’s answers blended “evasion, blame-shifting, amnesia and perplexity”. He maintained that, absent an armistice and without a puppet government, France’s fate would have been worse (like Poland’s, say). “If I could no longer have been your sword, I have wanted to be your shield.” Imagine how much more defiantly articulate Napoleon would have been had he been brought to trial. (Read more.)