I told you that my brother Jean-Pierre was about to undergo another course of chemotherapy. He will not. Nothing can be done to save his life. It would have to be a miracle.
Jean-Pierre, lower right
In the background, left to right, we have Thérèse (who may be stroking one of our black cats), my great grandmother Philomène, mémère Pomerleau, in her nineties, and my sister Diane. In the foreground, sitting next to me, is my brother Jean-Pierre, blue-eyed, blond, and wearing glasses. We lived in an old and very large brick house. We did not have hot water. Grand-maman Philomène, my father’s maternal grandmother, would take us into the forest to gather herbs she used to make medications. She was of French descent. We never met my father’s Irish grandmother, but Jean-Pierre was with me when we went to Massachusetts to meet my father’s father and Nanny, the woman whose house and farm he had bought and where he invited her to stay for the rest of her life. My grandmother would not move to the United States. I believe she divorced my grandfather. My father, his brother, and two sisters were brought up by their mother and Philomène, who earned their living as a midwife and pharmacist. She was an assistant to the village doctor. Their house sat between a railway and a river. The train left a supply of wood and coal, that my father would pick up. I never asked where the family got their water. The house is still there, but I don’t think a train runs by, just the river. I can’t believe that nothing can be done to save my brother. He’s lost about sixty pounds (27.2 kilos) and he is still losing weight. A few months ago, he was prescribed antibiotics. My brother has a beautiful rich voice: bass-baritone.
Prince Charles, in 1758 by Ulrica Pasch (Photo credit: Wiki2.org)
A Childless King
This post does not describe la Terreur, the Reign of Terror, which should be its subject matter. I have chosen instead to write a little story about Sweden’s Royal House of Bernadotte. The birth of the Swedish House of Bernadotte is associated with both the French Revolution, the demise of absolutism, and the Napoleonic wars. King Charles III was childless. His successor would be Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a general under Napoleon.
In fact, Napoleon Bonaparte had named Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte (26 January 1763 – 8 March 1844) a marshall of France(un maréchal de France) and, on 5 June 1806, the Prince of Pontecorvo, a title Bernadotte surrendered in 1810. King Charles XIII named his adopted heir Generalissimus of the Swedish Armed Forces of the King.
I am postponing a very short discussion of the Reignof Terror in order to locate the French Revolution in its European context. European monarchs did oppose the French uprising of 1789, beginning with King Gustav III of Sweden, Charles XIII’s older brother.
Following the uprising against the French monarchy in 1789, Gustav pursued an alliance of princes aimed at crushing the insurrection and reinstating his French counterpart, King Louis XVI, offering Swedish military assistance as well as his leadership.
Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI did appeal to their families during the French Revolution. It was normal. Swedish Count Axel von Fersen the Younger, Marie-Antoinette’s rumoured lover, helped the French Royal family organize the flight to Varennes. Moreover, King Louis XVI was very tall (185cm/6ft 1in)for a man of his era and a Frenchman.
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The French Revolution sent shockwaves throughout Europe. Some royals chose rigid absolutism, others, a more democratic constitutional monarchy. Gustav III of Sweden was a beloved despot. Yet, he was shot in the lower back and died 13 days later. Prince Carl and Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm were appointed regents until Gustav IV of Sweden reached adulthood, in 1796.[1]
Gustav III’s unpopular and autocratic son Gustav IV was overthrown and exiled in a coup d’état. Sweden had lost Finland to Russia. (See Finnish War, Wiki2.org.) The authority of Sweden’s Royals was vastly diminished by the Constitution of 1809 or Instrument of Government (1809). The powers of government were divided between the monarch and the Riksdag of the Estates.
Gustav III and Charles XIII would be kings of Sweden. Their brother Prince Frederick Adolf (18 July 1750 – 12 December 1803) never reigned. He died in Montpellier, France. King Charles XIII was childless and sickly, so an heir to the throne of Sweden and Norway had to be selected.
Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte
Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte would be the new and elected King of Sweden (as Charles XIV) from 1809 and King of Norway (as Charles III John) from 1814 until his death, in 1844.
“His candidacy was advocated by Baron Carl Otto Mörner, a Swedish courtier and obscure member of the Riksdag of the Estates.” (See Charles XIV John of Sweden, Wiki2.org.)
Carl Otto Mörner so wished for Bernadotte to be elected Crown Prince that he discussed the matter with Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte himself, the dutiful Marshall of France. Bernadotte answered that if he were elected Crown Prince, he would accept his new role. As one may expect, Mörner was arrested when he returned to Sweden. He had gone too far. However, Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte proved the best candidate. Weighing in his favour, were his superior military skills.
Charles XIV John, detail of an oil painting by Fredric Westin, 1824; in Gripsholm Castle, Sweden. Courtesy of the Svenska Portrattarkivet, Stockholm (Photo credit: Britannica)
Desideria Clary, queen of Sweden by Fredric Westin (Photo credit: Wiki2.org.)
There is a Baron in the Bernadotte family, but Jean-Baptiste is a commoner. He was born in Pau, Béarn, France, to Jean-Henri Bernadotte, a prosecutor. His mother was Jeanne de Saint-Jean. Jean-Baptiste planned to study law, but…
In 1798, he married Désirée Clary, whose sister was married to Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte. Désirée would be Queen Consort of Sweden as Desideria. However, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte is not a Bonaparte. Jean-Baptiste and Désirée’s son would reign as Oscar I, King of Sweden and King of Norway.
In 1813, after Napoleon’s unrealistic and disastrous Russian campaign, Karl XIV Johan entered an anti-Napoleon alliance that probably strengthened the Sixth coalition. When Norway was awarded to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, King Carl XIV Johan proposed a “personal union” between Norway and Sweden. Both countries would have the same king, but Norway would be an independent kingdom. Bernadotte reigned as Charles XIV John of Sweden and Charles III John of Norway from 5 February 1818 until his death on 8 March 1844.
P. S. Herodote (please click to read) published articles on the history of Sweden recently. I have read these articles, but I have not inserted quotations or content from Herodote in my post.
____________________ [1]King Charles XIII may have played a role in the assassination of Gustav III (See Charles XIII, Wiki2.org.)
Capture of the Tuileries Palace Jean Duplessis-Bertaux (1747–1819) (Photo credit: wiki2.org)
Officier des Gardes suisses, lithographie du 18e siècle (Photo credit: Fr Wikipedia)
On 10 August 1792, CountPierre Louis Roederer (15 February 1754 – 17 December 1835) went to the Tuileries Palace to lead the Royal family out of a building that had been both their prison and their refuge, since the Women’s March on Versailles (5-6 October 1789). Louis XVI was expecting Antoine Galiot Mandat de Grancy. Why had monsieur Roederer come to the Tuileries? Roederer replied that monsieurMandat, Lafayette’s replacement, had been killed the night before. Lafayette had left Paris on 30 June 1792, denounced by Robespierre. As a result, the National Guard no longer had a commander and the revolutionaries had inflammed the Paris Commune. The king told Roederer that, alone, his Garde suisse could not protect him.
The Insurrection of 10 August 1792 was organized on 9 August, by revolutionaries led by Georges Danton. They took possession of the Hôtel de Ville and were recognized as the legal government of Paris on 10 August 1792, the next day.
The Bastille housed seven prisoners. Matters differed on 10 August 1792. The king and his family lived in the Tuileries Palace.
Roederer proposed that the king review his National Guard, whom, he believed, were still serving the king, but they were defecting. They were joining 1) the sans-culottes, wearing pants, not knee breeches, and sabots, clogs, as in sabotage, 2) the fédérés who had come to Paris from Marseille and Brittany to celebrate the Fête de la Fédération (= fédéré), the festival commemorating the Storming of the Bastille and 3) the insurrectional Paris commune.
Twenty-thousand fédérés were in Paris and the prospect of a république was no doubt inebriating for many of them. La Marseillaise, France’s National Anthem, first used as a “Chant de guerre pour l’Armée du Rhin,” was composed in 1792 by 32 year-old Claude-Joseph Rouget de L’Isle. It had been sung, for the first time, on 25 April 1792, in Strasbourg. (See La Marseillaise, and the Timeline of the Revolution, wiki2.org.)
In short, the only protection afforded the king was his Swiss Guard and his only shelter, the National Legislative Assembly, which would be suspended on 10 August 1792, as well as the authority of the king.
Commanding the Swiss Guards, the day of the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, was Karl Josef von Bachmann. He accompanied Pierre-Louis Roederer who was leading the king and his family to the National Assembly. (He is not shown in the video I have inserted, which is otherwise excellent). When Louis heard shots, he sent a note instructing his Garde suisse to run to safety. They didn’t.
As for the king and his family, if the National Assembly was their only refuge, they had no refuge. The king told his son that, from then on, France no longer had a king.
Out of a total of 900 men, 600 Swiss Guards were killed or fatally wounded on 10 August 1792. Karl Josef von Bachmann was tried and guillotined on 3 September 1792. Other Swiss guards were also guillotined.
By 6 September, half the prison population of Paris had been summarily executed: some 1200 to 1400 prisoners. Of these, 233 were nonjuring Catholic priests who refused to submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
The French Revolution was a turning-point in both the history of France and that of other European countries. In 1806, there would no longer be a Holy Roman Empire.
As noted above, I have inserted a video. It is a French-language video showing Roederer speaking to the king and to Marie-Antoinette. It also shows the king’s failed attempt to review the National Guard, and the Royal family being led to the National Assembly by Pierre Louis Roederer. Roederer was accompanied by Karl Josef von Bachmann, the commander of the king’s Swiss Guard who is not featured in the video I have selected.
Estates General by Auguste Couder(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Louis XVI convenes the Estates-General
NOTRE AMÉ ET FÉAL, nous avons besoin du concours de nos fidèles sujets pour nous aider à surmonter toutes les difficultés où nous nous trouvons, relativement à l’état de nos finances, et pour établir, suivant nos vœux, un ordre constant et invariable dans toutes les parties du gouvernement qui intéressent le bonheur de nos sujets et la prospérité de notre royaume. Ces grands motifs nous ont déterminé à convoquer l’assemblée des Etats de toutes les provinces de notre obéissance, tant pour nous conseiller et nous assister dans toutes les choses qui nous seront mises sous les yeux, que pour faire connaître les souhaits et les doléances de nos peuples : de manière que, par une mutuelle confiance et par un amour réciproque entre le souverain et ses sujets, il soit apporté le plus promptement possible un remède efficace aux maux de l’Etat, et que les abus de tout genre soient réformés et prévenus par de bons et solides moyens qui assurent la félicité publique, et qui nous rendent à nous, particulièrement, le calme et la tranquillité dont nous sommes privés depuis si longtemps.
OUR BELOVED AND LOYAL, we need the participation of our faithful subjects to help us overcome all the difficulties we are facing with respect to the state of our finances and to establish, according to our [everyone] wishes, lasting and steady order in every aspect of government that concern happiness and prosperity in our realm. These important motives have led us to convene a meeting of the Estates of each province under our rule, both to advise and assist us in every area that will be brought before our eyes, as well as to let us know the wishes and grievances of our people, so that, through mutual trust and deep affection [amour] between the king and his subjects, a remedy may be found, as promptly as possible, to the ills of the land and reforms may be effected that will prevent abuses of all kinds using good and solid means that will ensure the satisfaction [félicité] of the public and give us [the king] the calm and tranquillity we have been denied for such a long time.
(24 January 1789)
The above translation is mine. It is not an official translation. Louis XVI wrote his Notice of Meeting on 24 January 1789, which seems a late date. However, Étienne-Charles de Loménie de Brienne, the king’s minister of finance in 1788, had announced this meeting of the Estates-General on 8 August 1788 and set the opening of the Estates-General for 5 May 1789.
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The Estates-General
In the last quarter of the 18th century, France was on the brink of bankrupty. It had incurred debts that could not be paid unless taxes were levied from the First and Second Estates, the clergy and the nobility. The king appointed various finance ministers, all of whom were serious individuals and some extremely competent. Each came to the conclusion that France had to levy taxes from sources other than the Third Estate.
France may have been an absolute monarchy, but once absolutism reached Louis XVI, it was diluted. The king and his finance ministers could not circumvent the Parlements.
The beginning of the proposed radical changes began with the Protests of the Parlement of Paris addressed to Louis XVI in March 1776, in which the Second Estate, the nobility, resisted the beginning of certain reforms that would remove their privileges, notably their exemption from taxes. The objections made to the Parlement of Paris were in reaction to the essay, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses(‘Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth’) by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot.
Finally, as we have seen, the sale of offices had turned a significant segment of the population of France into a bourgeoisie:petite, moyenne (middle) and haute bourgeoisie. Many bourgeois were rich and some worked at court. I have mentioned that Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a bourgeois, was Louis XIV’s Minister of Finances, from 1661 to 1683. So l’abbé Sieyès’ Third Estate differed from the Third Estate that was convened in the Estates-General of 1614, 175 years before 1789. France had changed.
In short, Louis XVI should not have been compelled to convene the three estates. But he and his ministers of finance were ruled, and overruled, by the Parlement of Paris.
[The] Parlement of Paris, though no more in fact than a small, selfish, proud and venal oligarchy, regarded itself, and was regarded by public opinion, as the guardian of the constitutional liberties of France. [I underlined constitutional.] [1]
When delegates arrived at Versailles, there was confusion. Would they sit by ordre (estates), or would estates be mixed? Would they vote by ordre (estate), or by head? Delegates got so bogged down in such matters as representation that Louis would no longer hear them. On 20 June 1789, the king had the doors to the rooms where delegates met locked down. The deputies were not focussing on replenishing France’s empty coffers, the matter that so preoccupied Louis XVI.
We are familiar with the rest. Finding that the doors to Versailles had been locked, delegates met in a neighbouring Tennis Court, where 576 out of 577 delegates swore:
“not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established.”
(See The Tennis Court Oath, wiki2.org.)
The only delegate who did not take the oath was Joseph Martin-Dauch (26 May 1741 – 5 July 1801), from Castelnaudary, “who would only execute decisions made by the king.” (See Joseph Martin-Dauch, wiki2.org.)
Could it be that Joseph Martin-Dauch was the only deputy who looked upon the Assembly as a self-appointed government?
Mirabeau’s defiance in front of the marquis de Dreux-Brézé on 23 June 1789 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By 17 June 1789, delegates had started calling themselves the National Assembly, on a proposal of l’abbé Sieyès. In fact, on 13-14 June, nine priests had joined the Assembly. Therefore, the self-proclaimed National Assembly lasted from 13 June to 9 July 1789, but was replaced by another Assembly. Henceforth, underlying the problematic of the French Revolution was the co-existence of a monarchy and an assembly, which the creation of a Kingdom of France confirms.
As noted above, I suspect that delegate Martin-Dauch voted differently than other delegates because he looked upon the monarchy as the government. The Estates-General had not been convened since 1614, but it existed. So did the Assembly of Notables, who had come to Versailles in 1787. Finally, France had its Parlements. Not only was the assembly self-proclaimed but its relationship with the king was confrontational which may have caused the king to invalidate decisions made by the Assembly that he would recognize a few days later. I have borrowed the words “confrontation” and “recognition” from wiki2’s entry on the National Assembly.
For instance, on 23 June 1789, the king invalidated decisions made by the Assembly, which led the comte de Mirabeau to shout, defiantly:
“[W]e are assembled here by the will of the people” and will “leave only at the point of a bayonet.” (See Timeline of the French Revolution, wiki2.org.)
“The will of the people?”
Under the National Assembly entry (wiki2.org.), Mirabeau is quoted as follows:
“A military force surrounds the assembly! Where are the enemies of the nation? Is Catiline at our gates? I demand, investing yourselves with your dignity, with your legislative power, you inclose yourselves within the religion of your oath. It does not permit you to separate till you have formed a constitution.” (See National Assembly, wiki2.org.)
Therefore, on 27 June 1789, “Louis XVI reverses course, instructs the nobility and clergy to meet with the other estates, and recognizes the new Assembly. At the same time, he orders reliable military units, largely composed of Swiss and German mercenaries, to Paris.” (See Timeline of the French Revolution, Wiki2.org.)
In the meantime, on 25 June 1789, 48 nobles had joined the Assembly. The group’s leader was Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, or Philippe Égalité, Louis XVI’s first cousin who would vote in favour of the King’s execution.
The Kingdom of France
But the Assembly itself was of two minds. On 17 July 1791, after the flight to Varennes (20-21 June 1791), the National Constituent Assembly issued a decree that the king, Louis XVI, would retain his throne under a constitutional monarchy. In other words, the Assembly had decided that Louis XVI was “inviolable.” He could not be tried. Royalists had won a victory.
However, Republicans, in the unicameral Assembly, demanded the removal of the king. A petition was signed by 6,000 persons and 50 persons were killed when Lafayette quelled the demonstration. This event is remembered as the Champ de Mars Massacre. (See 17 July, Timeline of the French Revolution, wiki2.org.) Moreover, on 16 May 1791, “on a proposal of Robespierre, the Assembly [had voted] to forbid members of the current Assembly to become candidates for the next Assembly,” (See 16 May, Timeline of the French Revolution, wiki2.org.) which suggests that Robespierre opposed supporters of a reformed French Monarchy.
Louis XVI was forced to sign the Constitution of 1791, but for one year the National Legislative Assembly ran concurrently with the Kingdom of France. Louis XVI found fault with the new Constitution. For, instance, it was unicameral (one chamber), rather than bicameral, thus differing from Britain’s Constitutional Monarchy, which had been the model. The king also bemoaned the removal of his right to veto. How would he protect émigrés? Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire, the king’s aunts had left for Rome. During the French Revolution, Republicans forever asked that those who had left be forced to return home. Under the Constitution of 1791, all the king could do was choose his ministers, which was viewed as a separation of powers. However, on 13-14 September 1791, the king accepted the new Constitution formerly.
But sovereignty effectively resided in the legislative branch, to consist of a single house, the Legislative Assembly, elected by a system of indirect voting. (‘The people or the nation can have only one voice, that of the national legislature,’ wrote Sieyès. ‘The people can speak and act only through its representatives.’) [2]
“Dismayed at what he deemed the ill-considered radicalism of such decisions, Jean-Joseph Mounier, a leading patriot deputy in the summer of 1789 and author of the Tennis Court Oath, resigned from the Assembly in October.”
A similar view was expressed in the 20th century by François Furet (27 March 1927 – 12/13 July 1997, go to restructuring France) of the French Academy. (Also see François Furet, wiki2.org.)
They [persons who drafted the new constitution] effectively transferred political power from the monarchy and the privileged estates to the general body of propertied citizens. [3]
However,
Under this system about two-thirds of adult males had the right to vote for electors and to choose certain local officials directly. Although it favoured wealthier citizens, the system was vastly more democratic than Britain’s. [4]
Conclusion
Louis XVI convened the Estates-General because he wanted the people of France to allow its government to effect tax reforms so a debt would be eliminated. But the comte de Mirabeau was not part of the people whose help the king needed? He was a self-agrandizing agitator.
“[W]e are assembled here by the will of the people” and will “leave only at the point of a bayonet.” (See Timeline of the French Revolution, wiki2.org.)
He, Mirabeau, was the people.
Regarding the flight to Varennes, it has been suggested
[t]hat royalists should have seen in this escape the means [of] placing the King in safety, and of crushing the Revolution at the same time, was but natural. [5]
The Third Estate needed to be something. Privilege, tax exemption particularly, had to be revised. As well, the time had come to declare the rights of citizens. But regicide and the Terreur? Radicals took over.
____________________ [1]Alfred Cobban (1957). A History of France. 1. p. 63. see also Cobban, “The Parlements of France in the eighteenth century.” History (1950) 35#123 pp 64-80. (Quoted under Parlement, wiki2.org.)
Swiss Guards
Estates General by 
