The first tells about the ills nature can inflict on humans. In 1348–53 CE the Black Death had decimated Europe. Half the population of France had died when France was also at war: the One Hundred Years War (1337 to 1453). The post also tells about the harm humans inflict on themselves: war. My first republished post features Joan of Arc who was betrayed, having saved the kingdom of France. Charles d’Orléans was a “prisoner” in England when Joan of Arc was tried, convicted, and executed.
The second post is about Charles, Duc d’Orléans, a prince detained in England for nearly 25 years after the Battle of Agincourt (1415). He was a “prince of the blood” and could therefore be crowned. His son would grow to be king Louis XII.
During his years of detention, Charles started to write poetry. As a poet, he is Charles d’Orléans. Therefore, in my eyes, he was, for a very long time, the poet who had written « Le temps a laissé son manteau… » It is a beautiful poem. Charles also wrote « En la forêt de longue attente» and poems in English. Finally, Charles d’Orléans is associated with Valentine’s Day.
Charles d’Orléans is an important figure to the Dutch.
Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918)
Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans
Corbeille de fleurs by Eugène Delacroix(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“A Basket of Flowers” by Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863)
The Salon
The world that followed the French Revolution was a new world, but it had kept many of the institutions of the Old World, or l’Ancien Régime. One of these institutions was the salon. The first known French salon was seventeenth-century Catherine de Rambouillet’s Chambre Bleue. Guests enjoyed making believe they were shepherds and shepherdesses and they wrote poems, at times very tricky ones. La Chambre bleuewas a magnet. Even Richelieu was inspired to visit.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, Catherine de Rambouillet‘s salon was replaced by Mademoiselle de Scudéry‘s. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was a prolific writer and her favourite subject was love. She drew the map of Tendre, Tendre being the land of love.
In the eighteenth century, the Golden Age of the salon, the most famous was Madame Geoffrin‘s (June 1699 – 6 October 1777). Dignitaries visiting Paris were infinitely grateful for being invited. It was such a privilege, but salons were not as they had been in the seventeenth century. The French eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment, so ideas were discussed.
On Monday, Madame Geoffrin received artists and, on Wednesday, men of letters. Ideas were discussed, but never too seriously. That would have been a breach of etiquette. L’honnête hommeand the Encyclopédisteswere awitty group. All were treated to a fine meal. However, even at Madame Geoffrin‘s salon, love remained a favourite subject.
After and even during the French Revolution, except for the “Reign of Terror,” people, gentlemen mainly, flocked to salons such as Madame Récamier’s and Madame de Staël‘s. It is also at that time that François-René de Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817) inaugurated French Romanticism, a literary movement that gave primacy to sentiment.
Goethe‘s Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) was published in 1774, so France lagged behind both German and English Romanticism. François-René de Chateaubriand would soon publish René and Atala, novellas included in his Génie du christianisme, or Genius of Christianity(1802). It fact, although he is not included in David’s portrait of Madame Récamier, chances are Chateaubriand is looking at the “divine” Madame Récamier. In the early 1800’s, Chateaubriand was the most prominent author in France and Madame Récamier’s finest guest, but as he grew older, he lived like a recluse in a Paris apartment and visited one person only, Madame Récamier, Juliette.
As for Germaine de Staël, a prominent theorist of Romanticism, Napoleon often banished her from France, causing her to spend several years at Coppet, her family’s Swiss residence. She was the French-born daughter of Swiss and Protestant banker James Necker, Louis XVI’s director of finance. Finding a husband for Germaine was not easy. Her father did not want her to marry a Catholic. Although she lived in the company of men who were fascinated by her extraordinary intellectual gifts and charm, most could not be serious candidates because Frenchmen are Catholics. She therefore married baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, a Swedish diplomat.
It could be said that Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël founded French Romanticism, a literary movement that spread to the fine arts and music. She is the author, among several books and treatises, of Delphine (1802)and Corinne (1807), novels.But her most fascinating work is De l’Allemagne, or Germany (1810-1813). It is, to a large extent, a manifesto of Western European Romanticism. She discussed L’Allemagne with her excellent friend and lover, Swiss-born novelist Benjamin Constant, or Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), a descendant of Huguenots (French Protestant Calvinists).
However, if French Romanticism has a manifesto, it is Victor Hugo‘s Préface de “Cromwell,” a play published in 1827. The 12-syllable noble verse, called l’alexandrin, had long been broken into two hémistiches of 6 syllables, or “pieds.” Victor Hugo used such alexandrins, but he also divided the 12-syllable verse into 3 groups of 4 syllables or “pieds.”
Je-mar-che-rai//les-yeux-fi-xés//sur-mes-pen-sées, 4 x 3 (3 trimètres)Sans-rien-voir-au de-hors,//sans-en-ten-dr’ au-cun-bruit, 6 x 2 (2 hémistiches)
Seul,-in-con-nu,//le-dos-cour-bé,//les-mains-croi-sées, 4 x 3
Trist’,-et-le-jour//pour-moi-se-ra//com-me-la-nuit. 4 x 3
from Hugo’s “Demain, dès l’aube…”
Hugo also brought back things medieval, which he did with Notre-Dame de Paris or The Hunch Back of Notre-Dame. Chateaubriand felt seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature was somewhat borrowed, which it was. French authors emulated the Anciens or Greco-Roman literature.
*our characters may not be at Café Procope, but they could have been
The Cafés
In cafés, however, men of letters discussed more freely. Cafés had become popular in the seventeenth century. Le Café Procope, established in 1686, has never closed shop except for occasional renovations.
Conclusion
During the French Revolution, Chateaubriand spent 10 years outside France. For one year he was in the United States and then joined anémigré army at Coblenz, Germany. By and large, years émigrés spent abroad were disruptive.
Madame de Staël enjoyed diplomatic immunity in Paris as the wife of Sweden’s ambassador to France. However she lived in England in 1893-1894 with her lover Louis de Narbonne, an émigré. She returned to Paris, via Coppet, her family’s Swiss residence, as soon as the Terreur was over, in the summer of 1794.
She was a successful salonnière under the Directoire (1795-1799), a government toppled by Napoleon’s 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799) coup d’État. She fared poorly under the Consulat, with Napoleon as first Consul. He banished her for nearly a decade but could not prevent her from thinking and writing. Coppet was a beehive. I still enjoy reading Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne.
The French Revolution deprived France of tens of thousands of its citizens. But, somehow, tens of thousands survived as did the institutions, salons and cafés, where they congregated to discuss such ideas as liberté, égalité, fraternité.
—ooo—
Sources:
Aurelian Craiutu: Faces of Moderation: Mme de Staël’s Politics during the Directory
Jacques-Louis David‘s portrait of Madame Récamier (1748 – 29 December 1825) is rather puzzling. It was painted in 1800, after Napoleon Bonaparte‘s coup d’État of 18 Brumaire Year VIII (9 November 1799). Yet Madame Récamier, a society lady who had a salon, is wearing an Empire-style dress. These dresses were simple dresses compared to the heavily girded gowns worn before the French Revolution. Empire-style dresses were often made of mousseline (muslin), a gossamer-like fabric. They were low-neck dresses gathered below a woman’s breasts.[i]
Moreover, Madame Récamier is reclining on a récamier sofa, an Empire-style piece of furniture as is the torchère lamp to the left of David’s painting. There are bookcases in the background, but Jacques-Louis David has left them out of his portrait, focussing on Madame Récamier. In 1802, François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard, a celebrated French artist, also made a portrait of Madame Récamier sitting on an Empire-style “spoon chair,” a modified bergère, i.e. an armchair without arms.
The Château de Malmaison (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Joséphine de Beauharnais at Malmaison
By 1800, Napoleon was not an emperor. He did not install himself as Emperor until 1804, when he also bestowed the title of Empress, impératrice, on his Créole and aristocratic wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, née Tascher de La Pagerie. The paintings at the top of this post are by David and Gérard, therefore suggest that, by 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), although Napoleon had yet to become an emperor. He was First Council and his government was the Consulat. he had already made himself the leader of the French, which is precisely the case. A picture is worth a thousand words. In fact, by 18 May 1799, the Law of 22 Floréal Year VI, a much later even, deprived 106 left-wing deputies of their seat on the Council of Five Hundred, the lower-house.
Although the Consulate may have seemed a triumvirate, it wasn’t. As self-proclaimed premier Consul, Napoleon would be the sole ruler of France. The other two Consuls,Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François Lebrun, would have little power. In other words, the Consulat would be a form of dictatorship, except that Napoleon was already a hero to the French and was seen as a leader through military might.
In other words, Napoleon was not Place de la Révolution, in Paris, knitting as he watched heads fall. He was on a battlefield fighting foreign powers who had threatened to wage war against France in order to save Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their two children.
Marie Antoinette en chemise, portrait of the queen in a “muslin” dress, by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1783) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The War in the Vendée, or la Chouannerie
However, Napoleon did not join the Army of the West (1793), the army that would attempt to suppress Royalist uprisings known as la Chouannerie. Paradoxically, the leaders of Revolutionary France were caught somewhat unawares by the War in the Vendée, Brittany. It is as though they did not realize that there were Royalists in France. This war, a civil war, was triggered by thelevée en masse, or mass conscription, decreed on 23 August 1793 by the National Convention.
General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was called upon to help quell la Chouannerie, Royalistuprisings. Thomas-Alexandre accepted this assignment, as generals normally do, except Napoleon. Tom Reiss[ii] tells us that Alex Dumas was a “‘good’ Republican” and “Mr Humanity,” which he may have be, but the War in the Vendée, la Chouannerie, remains the first genocide in modern history.
The Need for Officers: Opportunity
For Napoleon, opportunity was knocking at the door. Although France had a Grande Armée, its military officers, members of the nobility, had been guillotined or had fled France. There was a gap: no one could lead the Grande Armée. It was therefore possible for Napoleon Bonaparte to rise to power mainly on his own, which he did. By 22 December 1793, at the age of 24, an ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte was a general defending France from angry counter-revolutionary forces. As stated above, unlike Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Napoleon refused to serve in the Army of the West, against the Chouans, because it would deprive him of the visibility he needed to rise to power.
Instead, he fought the English, by pushed back English royalist forces at Toulon. Furthermore, in 1795, he also defeated royalist rebels marching against the National Convention (13 Vendémiaire year IV; 5 October 1795), “thereby saving the National Convention and the Republic.”[iii] He was then given command of the Army in Italy. Consequently, when he returned to France in 1797, he did so “as the nation’s brightest star, having fully emerged from the need for a patron.”[iv]
Napoleon then went to Egypt. You may remember that Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the “Black Count,” had words with Napoleon when la Grande Armée was in Egypt. One could not disagree with Napoleon, so Thomas-Alexandre Dumas eventually loaded an unsafe boat and set sail for France. He was captured and thrown into a dungeon in 1798, more than one year before the Consulate.
The royal family’s unsuccessful flight to Varennes (June 20-21, 1791) was construed as counter-revolutionary. It helped radicalize the French Revolution. Two events were particularly portentous. The first was the Declaration of Pillnitz, signed on 27 August 1791 by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, Marie-Antoinette’s brother. As for the second, it was the Brunswick Manifesto (21 July 1792).
Leopold II did not intend to invade France because England would not have joined him, but the French did not know that the Declaration of Pillnitz was a ploy. On 20 April 1792, the French Assembly declared war against Austria.
On 23 August 1793, at the beginning of the Reign of Terror (1793-1794),
“[a]ll unmarried able-bodied men between 18 and 25 were requisitioned with immediate effect for military service. This significantly increased the number of men in the army, reaching a peak of about 1,500,000 in September 1794, although the actual fighting strength probably peaked at no more than 800,000.” (See levée en masse, Fordham University.)
Mass conscription was intended to protect France from attacks by monarchies outside France. Marie-Antoinette’s brother was Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, so the French could not and did not ignore the Declaration of Pillnitz. As a result, they first declared war on Austria and, a year later, the National Convention decreed the levée en masse caused a civil war while providing Napoleon with a Grande Armée that would become his Grande Armée. The Napoleonic era can be traced back to the levée en masse or Mass Conscription of 23 August 1793:
“[a]s a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they [the Napoleonic wars] revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly owing to the application of modern mass conscription.” (See Napoleonic Wars, Wikipedia).
In other words, by 1800, because of the Revolutionary wars and “mainly owing to the application of modern mass conscription,” Napoleon was ready to install himself as first Consul and, a few victories later, he would have himself sacred as Emperor of an expansionist himself France. The First Republic had collapsed.
Coronation of Napoleon (detail), by Jacques-Louis David(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Empire Style
Salons
Madame Récamier
Now we know why Madame Récamier is reclining on an Empire-style récamier, wearing an Empire-style gown. There’s no puzzle. Napoleon’s ascendancy had started years before the Consulate (late 1799) and so had the Empire style. Napoleon had proven invaluable when foreign monarchies threatened to rescue the ill-fated French monarchy, which is the message the French received when they were apprised of the Declaration of Pillnitz (August 1791). As of that day, the young Republic needed a Napoleon, and Napoleon was at the ready.
—ooo—
Napoleon would remarry because Joséphine (née Tascher de La Pagerie), who had given birth to two children as the wife of guillotined Alexandre de Beauharnais, could no longer conceive. Napoleon wanted a son and married Marie-Louise of Austria, the mother of Napoleon II or Franz, Duke of Reichstadt (20 March 1811 – 22 July 1832) who died at 21, probably of tuberculosis. Contrary to other reports, Joséphine’s divorce from Napoleon did not break her heart, at least not altogether. For one thing, she would now reside at Château de Malmaison, which she had bought for Napoleon. It is a lovely castle, located twelve kilometers away from Paris and decorated in the new style: the Empire style.
At the Château de Malmaison, Joséphine cultivated roses and entertained such dignitaries as kings and tsars. The style she introduced in fashion, lovely light gowns, was comfortable and flattering. Gone were the girded gowns of yesteryear. Joséphine died in 1814, before Napoleon’s demise at Waterloo.
As I noted in my post, entitled The Tennis Court Oath, Napoleon ruled alone, but he respected, to a point, the ideals of the Revolution: liberté, égalité and fraternité. These ideals were perhaps too lofty to be attainable, but they were inspiring and under the ancien régime a young man from Corsicawould not have been given the opportunity to transform himself into an emperor. Merit played a role in Bonaparte’s ascendancy.
Moreover, a style emerged which to a certain extent was in the image of an Emperor, except that Madame Récamier had a salon. The French salon, a revered institution, had survived the Revolution and so had Cafés. Everyone, from Voltaire to Robespierre, was a regular, un habitué, of Le Café Procope that has not closed shop since its establishment in 1689.
We have entered a new world.
_________________________
[i] To be precise, muslin dresses had been introduced by Marie-Antoinette.
[ii]Tom Reiss, The Black Count: revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2013)
This is a compilation of my posts on Valentine’s Day—the first four posts—or posts related to Valentine’s Day. I would suggest you open Valentine’s Day: Martyrs & Birds first, particularly if you do not have the time to read more than one post. Originally these posts did not feature an embedded video. I have now embedded my melodies.
As we know, Valentine’s Day was not a romantic day until Chaucer made it so. In The Parlement of Foules (1882), Chaucer wrote
For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
[“For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”]
The above illumination is from one of the 86 manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, the Ellesmere Manuscript. Included among these 86 manuscripts is William Caxton’s printing of the Tales, one of the earliest printed books: 1478. Very early printed works, published between 1450 and 1501, are called incunables.
Johannes Gutenberg (1398 – February 3, 1468) is considered the first printer (c. 1439). Early printers, printers of incunables, sometimes left blank spaces where enluminures or illuminations were inserted. Historiated first letters are quite common in incunables.
I have been trying to work, but I am not feeling well enough to do so. Therefore, please accept this lovely bouquet of flowers painted by one of France’s finest artists: Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863), rumored to be the illegitimate son of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754 – 1838), a French prince and one of the most enigmatic diplomats in the history of Europe.
My kindest regards to all of you,
Micheline
Chopin, by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
Eugène Delacroix (Romanticism)
0:20 – Liberty Leading the People 0:40 – Ovid Among the Skythen 0:50 – Frédéric Chopin (Unfinished) 1:00 – George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucille Dupin – Unfinished) 1:15 – The Massacre of Chios 1:25 – The Barque of Dante 1:35 – Andromeda 1:55 – The Sultan of Morocco and His Entourage 2:05 – Tiger (Drawing) 2:15 – Aspasia (Drawing) 2:25 – Mounay ben Sultan 2:35 – Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret 2:45 – Tasso in the Madhouse 2:50 – Cleopatra and the Peasant 3:00 – An Arab Horseman at the Gallop 3:30 – The Death of Sardanapalus 3:35 – Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi 3:45 – Girl Seated in a Cemetery 3:55 – Self-Portrait
Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No.2 Frédéric Chopin
1810 – 1849
Philip Scott Johnson
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Tennis Court Oath: 20 June 1789
The Estates General (May-June 1789)
The Tennis Court Oath (17-20 June 1789)
The Storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789)
The End of Feudalism (4 August 1789)
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (26 August 1789)
The Abolition of Slavery (4 February 1794)
We owe Revolutionary France the abolition of feudalism (4 August 1789), the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), a rather ugly separation of State and Church, the abolition of the tithe (one tenth of one’s yearly income paid to the Church) and a temporary abolition of slavery (4 February 1994). Napoleon revived slavery, but the struggle for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery had acquired a momentum of its own. It could not be stopped. Haiti declared its independence in 1804.
In other words, Revolutionary France adopted John Locke‘s theory of the natural rightsof man to life, liberty and property. The Estates General were convened for the first time since 1614. However, one morning, the delegates to the already embattled Estates-General found themselves locked out of the room where the future of France was being discussed.
Undeterred, the delegates regrouped in an indoor jeu de paume: a tennis court, and made an oath that may well have ended Absolute Monarchy. It happened unofficially, but the people of France (peasants and a growing middle-class, i.e. the Third Estate), made an oath that showed genuine resolve.
I rather doubt that the delegates realized the importance of their oath, but they were of a mind that precluded the continuation of absolutism. Never again would l’État be the king’s playground: “l’État, c’est moi” (Louis XIV). Let me tell that story.
The Oath of the Tennis Court, by Auguste Clouder. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
On 20 June 1789, 577 members of the Third Estate, the first and second being the Church (l’Église) and the Nobility (la noblesse), took refuge in an indoor tennis court, a jeu de paume[i] and, fearing the worst, 576 of the 577 delegates to the Estates General constituted a General Assembly and made an oath of solidarity remembered as the Tennis Court Oath. They swore
not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations. Such was the ‘spirit’[ii]of the Revolution.
The Storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789)
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (26 August 1789)
The Abolition of Feudalism (4 August 1789)
The Convention (1792 – 1795)
The “Terror”
The Revolution had just begun, and it had begun peacefully. This would change. On 14 July 1989, citizens stormed the Bastille in disorderly fashion, but a few weeks later, on 26 August 1789, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was proclaimed, in orderly fashion. The pendulum had swung but it would swing again culminating in the “Terror” (1793 – 1794).
During the “Terror,” heads fell incessantly; approximately 16,000 citizens were guillotined in a period of nine months, in Paris alone. By the summer of 1894, the Revolution had in fact, turned into the tyrant it was pursuing. The Convention (1792-1795) dissolved itself on 26 October 1795 having ended the “Terror.” Some view the execution of Maximilien de Robespierre (6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794 and Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794), called Saint-Just, as the end of the Revolution. But France had guillotined Louis XVI, so its Revolution could no longer lead to the constitutional monarchy envisaged by the signatories of the Tennis Court Oath.
The Republic’s next government would be the Directoire, the Directory (1795-1799), which is currently looked upon as the last phase of a revolution that both betrayed and served the ideals of the Enlightenment. France did not have a constitution “established and affirmed on solid foundations,” so the program set forth by the Tennis Court Oath was still unfolding. In fact, the fledgling Republic was at war.
The Levée en masse: Conscription
The Royal family had attempted to flee, but was arrested at Varennes on 21 June 1791. (See Flight to Varennes, Wikipedia.) However, France was being attacked by ‘enemies,’ outside and inside its boundaries. Therefore, on 23 August 1793 a levée en masse (conscription) of some 800,000 men was called. European countries, monarchies, opposed the French Revolution and, particularly, the detention of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their two children. Marie-Antoinette was the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Leopold did little for his sister. Yet France was attacked and it was on the attack. Moreover, the Revolution was a civil war.
A levée en masse may have seemed a duty to some, but to others, Royalists, it was an affliction. The people of the Vendée could not be persuaded to betray the monarchy. They therefore opposed levées en masse such as the conscription ordered on 23 August 1793, thereby causing other levées en masse. It is at this point that Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, or Alex Dumas, would be called upon to suppress Monarchist rebellions in the Vendée, Brittany. The War in the Vendée or la Chouannerie is now considered the first modern genocide.
The End of the First Republic
Thermidorian Reaction (end of the “Terror”)
The Directory (November 1795 – November 1799)
18 Brumaire (9 November 1799; coup d’état)
The Consulate
In short, the Revolution played itself out beyond the Thermidorian Reaction (27 July 1794) that ended the Convention (1792-1795). It continued through the Directory, from November 1795 until 10 November 1799, at which point Napoléon’s coup d’état of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) created the Consulat, with Napoleon as first Consul. So the French Revolution ended officially on 18 Brumaire, or 9 November 1799, except that, in 1804, Napoleon made himself an emperor.
General Bonaparte during the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire in Saint-Cloud, painting by François Bouchot, 1840 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Conclusion
The French Revolution shook Europe profoundly, the “Terror” especially. That was a sin. Yet l’Ancien Régime was deeply flawed. Feudalism alone dictated a new order and the Third Estate had to be heard.
Therefore, although Napoleon made himself an Emperor, the Ancien Régime ended in both 1799 and June 1789, the day 576 delegates, members of the Third Estate, called themselves an Assembly and swore “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations.” (See the Tennis Court Oath, Wikipedia.)
On 4 August 1789, the Assembly, called the Constituent National Assembly, “decreed the abolition of the feudal regime and of the tithe.” On 26 August 1789 “it introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming liberty, equality, the inviolability of property, and the right to resist oppression.”[iii] Finally, on 4 February 1994, slavery was abolished.
The Tennis Court Oath, was a strong expression of the indomitable “spirit” of Revolutionary France and much had been achieved. But the ideals of the Revolution, i.e. liberté, égalité, fraternité were perhaps too lofty. Or is it that humankind is too imperfect?
Moreover, what of Napoleon who was about to turn himself into an Emperor? Had anything changed? Allow me to close by quoting Britannica:
“The Revolutionary legacy for Napoleon consisted above all in the abolition of the ancien régime’s most archaic features—“feudalism,” seigneurialism, legal privileges, and provincial liberties.”
“Napoleon also accepted the Revolutionary principles of civil equality and equality of opportunity, meaning the recognition of merit.”[iv]
F. A. M. Miguet’s History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 is a Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #9602]
____________________
[i]The word paume, the palm of the hand, would suggest that tennis had rather humble, and somewhat painful, beginnings.
[ii] I seldom mentionMontesquieu, but if liberalism were to be given a father, Montesquieu would be shortlisted. His full name was Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu.
Rouget de Lisle
The Army of the Rhine
Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich (guillotined)
Dinner in Strasbourg
25 April 1792 (composed)
14 July 1795 (National Anthem)
I would like to commemorate a event, the birth of La Marseillaise.[i]La Marseillaise, adopted by the Convention on 14 July 1795, is the current national anthem of France, but it was composed in 1792, in Strasbourg, by Rouget de Lisle (10 May 1760, Lons-le-Saunier – 26 June 1836, Choisy-le-Roi). There would be modifications to the Marseillaise, but it outlived the French Revolution and had an interesting career.
Rouget de Lisle was asked to compose a Chant de guerre pour l’Armée du Rhin (a War song for the Army of the Rhine) by the mayor of Strasbourg, Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich (14 November 1748-29 – December 1793; by guillotine). Rouget de Lisle composed La Marseillaise on 25 April 1792, during one night of patriotic enthusiasm. La Marseillaise as national anthem was suppressed during certain periods, such as the Napoleonic era (Napoleon I), and there would be modifications, but La Marseillaise is the current national anthem of France. La Marseillaise was published in Rouget’s Essays in Verse and Prose, 1797.
Ironically, Rouget de Lisle was a Royalist who was jailed in 1793 and not released until the Thermidorian Reaction, i.e. when Maximilien de Robespierre and Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just were guillotined, on 28 July 1794. Rouget was not guillotined, due, perhaps, to his composition: La Marseillaise.
La Marseillaise as represented on the Arc de Triomphe(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Composed in Strasbourg (northeast France), Rouget de Lisle’s anthem was entitled La Marseillaise, which doesn’t make much sense, geographically speaking. But it so happens that the anthem had been adopted by Provençal volunteers led by Charles-Jean-Marie Barbaroux. Barbaroux went to Paris and the song spread. It was inspirational and compelling. volunteers led by Charles-Jean-Marie Barbaroux. Barbaroux went to Paris and the song spread. It was inspirational and compelling.
The naming of La Marseillaise had little to do with geographical location. Provençal volunteers, under the command of Charles-Jean-Marie Barbaroux, had adopted the Marseillaise as their chant de guerre, their war song. Armies have always marched to of the sound music. Barbaroux (6 March 1767 – 25 June 1794), a Freemason and a victim of the guillotine, went to Paris and dissemination of La Marseillaise, by that title,began. Given that the above-mentioned dinner, when Dietrich asked Rouget de Lisle to write an army song for the Army of the Rhine, took place in Strasbourg, at the mayor’s house, the house of Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich, but the song had acquired a life of its own.
In 1879, La Marseillaise became the official anthem of France (Third Republic) and an official version was composed in 1887. Former French President Valérie Giscard d’Estaing (b. 2 February 1926; in office from 1974 to 1981) criticized it and asked that the rhythm of the national anthem be slower (see L’Élisée, France and L’Express).
Hector Berlioz, however, composed an orchestrated version of the Marseillaise that gave it dignity. In fact, there were many delightful arrangements, transcriptions and quotations of La Marseillaise, despite its rather gruesome lyrics.
Arrangements, Transcriptions and Quotations
Rouget de Lisle is remembered for his Marseillaise. However, what is particularly interesting is the career of that one piece of music. Wikipedia’s entry La Marseillaisehas a long list of arrangements, transcriptions and quotations of Rouget’s composition.
Among arrangements of La Marseillaise, Hector Berlioz‘s 1830 arrangement for soprano, chorus and orchestra is very dramatic and has a Russian flavour. I wish I had found a better recording—better sound—than the one inserted below.
Berlioz’s Marseillaise was ‘quoted’ by Daniel Barenboim in the version of the Marseillaise inserted in my last post, 2 February 2014. We also have a piano transcriptions by Liszt and other pieces.
Musical Quotations
La Marseillaise has in fact been quoted frequently. Tchaikovsky‘s use of the Marseillaise in his 1912 Ouverture is masterful. I have included a movement of Tchaikovsky’s at the bottom of this post.
La Marseillaise has inspired millions. But would that the French Revolution had ended with the Tennis Court Oath, a meeting of representatives of the Third Estate that took place in a jeu de paume, an indoor tennis court. It didn’t. From the moment it began, the Revolution could not be contained. It had gathered the momentum that led to the “Terror.”
The French Revolution is an event one can understand. Its aims were noble: liberté, égalité, fraternité. But the Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794) seems incomprehensible. It was a period of unparalleled savagery that ended on 27 July 1794. The following day, 28 July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794) were guillotined. Saint-Just was the main instigator in the excesses of the Terror, or its “Angel of Death.”
Contradictions
Yet, it is during this horrible period of the French Revolution that slavery was abolished. (See Maximilien de Robespierre, Wikipedia)
On the 4th of February 1794 under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, the French Convention voted for the abolition of slavery.
In his Black Count, Tom Reiss[i] writes that
“[t]he story of General Dumas brilliantly illuminates the first true age of emancipation: a single decade during which the French Revolution not only sought to end slavery and discrimination based on skin color but also broke down the ghetto walls and offered Jews full civil and political rights, ending a near-universal discrimination that had persisted since ancient times. (Reiss, p. 11)”
But, in chapter 13 of The Black Count, entitled “The Bottom of the Revolution” (pp. 175-187), Reiss also tells about the “Terror.”
The Death of Henri de La Rochejacquelein (aged 26), by Alexandre Bloch(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The War in the Vendée: la Chouannerie
General Dumas was called upon to suppress the royalist uprisings in the west of France: the Vendée. (See War in the Vendée, Wikipedia). According to Tom Reiss, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, now called Alex Dumas, “risked his career to oppose the bloodshed he saw all around him.” Later, a pro-royalist wrote that Dumas was one of those rare generals who were “always ready bravely to sell their lives on the battleground, but resolved to break their swords than consent to the role of executioners” (Reiss, pp. 11-12).
These royalist uprisings are called “chouanneries,” after Jean Chouan (Jean Cottereau’snom de guerre). They started during the Revolution, but continued beyond 1799. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was sent to the Vendée in 1794 but he proved a “generous republican.” (Reiss, p. 12) and was called “Mr Humanity” (Reiss, pp. 146-159).
The chouanneries killed nearly 600,000 Royalists.
Honoré de Balzac & Victor Hugo
French novelist Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) wrote Les Chouans, in 1829, one of two novels that brought him “to the brink of success,”[ii] and Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) wrote Ninety-Three(Quatrevingt-treize) in 1874.[iii] These are extraordinary books.
Robespierre abolished slavery, but, ironically, once he stood on the top rung of the ladder, he gave himself permission to kill those he had the power to kill. He in fact acted like a slave owner. However, when it hit bottom, the Revolution also ended. It hit bottom on 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794). It had exhausted itself and there was no one left to kill. During the “Reign of Terror,” 16,594 were executed by guillotine, and 25,000, in summary executions all over France.
—ooo—
In closing, I should tell you that the 1833 translation of The Slave-King (simply click on the title), from Victor Hugo’s Bug-Jargal, is online. A more recent translation is available, but it is not online.
“The novel follows a friendship between the enslaved African prince of the title and a French military officer named Leopold d’Auverney during the tumultuous early years of the Haitian Revolution.” (See Bug-Jargal, Wikipedia.)
Moreover, Toussaint Louverture’s story was told by C. L. R. James in his 1989 The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.
Sources:
Balzac: Les Chouans is a Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #1921] EN
Hugo: Quatre-vingt-treize is a pdf publication FR (on the French Revolution, the Terror)
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