La Liberté guidant le peuple par Eugène Delacroix, 1830 (Wiki2.org)

Eugène Delacroix‘ “Liberty Guiding the People,” is a symbol of France and, perhaps, its main pursuit: liberté. Delacroix, an illegitimate son of Talleyrand, chronicled the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire.

However, “Liberty Guiding the People” is associated with the July Revolution, when France toppled Charles X. The Revolution lasted three days. The new king would be Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans. The Orléans were the cadet branch of the Bourbon kings. Louis-Philippe was the son of Philippe Égalité who espoused early objectives of the French Revolution: equality. He voted in favour of the execution, by guillotine, of Louis XVI, his cousin. Louis-Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, was guillotined on 6 November 1793.

On 14 July 1789, a crowd stormed the Bastille Prison. But the Revolution had begun on 20 June 1789. Delegates to the Estates General had found the door to the room where they met locked. They took refuge in an interior tennis court and vowed “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established.” (See Tennis Court Oath, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, Wiki2.org.)

RELATED ARTICLES 

• Abbé Sieyès’ “Third Estate” (6 August 2018)
• The Tennis Court Oath  (8 February 2014)

—ooo—

Love to everyone 💕

Hector Berlioz‘s La Marseillaise

Earliest known picture of Jeu de Paume from a Book of Hours (c. 1300) (commons.wikimedia)

© Micheline Walker
14 July 2019
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