In more than fifty cities all across France Royalists commemorated King Louis XVI of France who was murdered on 21st January 1793 by the Jacobins.
France 3, a public TV station, reported on a Catholic Mass in its news bulletin.
Showing posts with label French Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French Revolution. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
You have to love the revolution unconditionally, otherwise ...
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) was hardly a likable politician. A fierce Jacobin to his bone he denounced his opponents without mercy. After he had banned a theatre play by Victorien Sardou at the Comédie-Française in 1891, which he deemed «pro-monarchist», he defended his action by stating his conviction that the French revolution must be accepted as a block. He had accused the play’s author to be selective on the French revolution – some aspects he liked, by others he was appalled. Clemenceau proclaimed in the French Assembly:
Once good for the revolution, always good for the revolution
For present day Jacobins the French revolution is still a sacred cow that should not be touched.
La Tour du Temple.
One recent example concerns a ten year old child that died in the infamous republican prison Le Temple. In June 2005 the council of the City of Paris expressed the wish that a place or a street should be named in the French capital after the child that died on 8th June 1795. This motion was opposed by Jean-Pierre Caffet, socialist deputy-mayor of Paris and responsible for urban development. He gave three reasons for his negative attitude – mainly because the child in matter was King Louis XVII. And obviously he was King not just for the Royalists and historians, but for the Jacobins as well. Jean-Pierre Caffet:
←«Enfant roi Enfant martyr» (Child King, Martered Child), Sculpture by Catherine Cairn.
This child will not be forgotten
The boy king’s death will be commemorated today in Paris. The association «Marais-Temple» has invited everyone to join them outside the town hall of the 3rd arrondissement this 8th June 2011 Les Manants du Roi:
«This young child was captured by the political events for which he bared no responsibility and remained primarily a victim. His ordeals did not leave the Parisians untouched.
«More than two hundred years after this tragic episode of the French revolution, Paris must act to commemorate this little boy who was only convicted because of his birth.»
This year Marais-Temple will remember those people who risked their life to support the Royal Family in their audacious prison. The plaque on a town hall wall dedicated to the Royal Family, was put there on the bicentenary of the revolution by the City of Paris. After the commemoration ceremony a requiem mass for Louis XVII and all abused children will be celebrated in the St. Elisabeth church.
Life is never only black or white - that is unless you are a republican revolutionary who has no option to differentiate.
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) was hardly a likable politician. A fierce Jacobin to his bone he denounced his opponents without mercy. After he had banned a theatre play by Victorien Sardou at the Comédie-Française in 1891, which he deemed «pro-monarchist», he defended his action by stating his conviction that the French revolution must be accepted as a block. He had accused the play’s author to be selective on the French revolution – some aspects he liked, by others he was appalled. Clemenceau proclaimed in the French Assembly:
«Messieurs, que nous le voulions ou non, que cela nous plaise ou que cela nous choque, la Révolution française est un bloc... un bloc dont on ne peut rien distraire, parce que la vérité historique ne le permet pas.He explicitly included as indispensable for the revolution the time of the terror regime (La Patrie en danger et la «première» Terreur & La Grande Terreur {juin-juillet 1794}) and the genocide in the Vendée, where ethnic cleansing wiped out whole villages, because the republican troops suspected the peasants to be royalist and catholic to the core, who could not be converted to republicanism.
«Gentlemen, if we want it or not, if we like it or not, the French revolution is a block … a block from which nothing can be distracted, because the historical truth doesn’t allow it.»
Once good for the revolution, always good for the revolution
For present day Jacobins the French revolution is still a sacred cow that should not be touched.
La Tour du Temple.One recent example concerns a ten year old child that died in the infamous republican prison Le Temple. In June 2005 the council of the City of Paris expressed the wish that a place or a street should be named in the French capital after the child that died on 8th June 1795. This motion was opposed by Jean-Pierre Caffet, socialist deputy-mayor of Paris and responsible for urban development. He gave three reasons for his negative attitude – mainly because the child in matter was King Louis XVII. And obviously he was King not just for the Royalists and historians, but for the Jacobins as well. Jean-Pierre Caffet:
- «The revolution is a «block» and by retreating from this or that episode under the terror, then the whole foundation of the revolution and therefore that of the republic would be put in doubt.Critics ask, why the City was quick to name a square in the 4th arrondissement after Marie Trintignant, an actress murdered by her lover. Or what significance Mohamed Bouazizi could have for Paris, whose name will be given to a place in the 14th arrondissement to «salute the heroism of this young man».
- «Since two centuries the City of Paris has re-baptized places that were once named after Louis XV and Louis XVI – and not the other way round.
- «Naming a street is an honour for a person who has rendered imminent services to the City of Paris, which is not the case with Louis XVII.»
←«Enfant roi Enfant martyr» (Child King, Martered Child), Sculpture by Catherine Cairn.This child will not be forgotten
The boy king’s death will be commemorated today in Paris. The association «Marais-Temple» has invited everyone to join them outside the town hall of the 3rd arrondissement this 8th June 2011 Les Manants du Roi:
«This young child was captured by the political events for which he bared no responsibility and remained primarily a victim. His ordeals did not leave the Parisians untouched.
«More than two hundred years after this tragic episode of the French revolution, Paris must act to commemorate this little boy who was only convicted because of his birth.»
This year Marais-Temple will remember those people who risked their life to support the Royal Family in their audacious prison. The plaque on a town hall wall dedicated to the Royal Family, was put there on the bicentenary of the revolution by the City of Paris. After the commemoration ceremony a requiem mass for Louis XVII and all abused children will be celebrated in the St. Elisabeth church.
Life is never only black or white - that is unless you are a republican revolutionary who has no option to differentiate.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Royalist uprising
On 12th March 1793 the population of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil rose against the French republic and the Jacobin terror regime.
Jean-François Michael sings the Royalist battle song Chouans en avant in a powerful modern version:
A history of the War of the Vendée here in French. Wikipedia as vague as usual: Estimates of those killed in the Vendean conflict - on both sides - range between 117,000 and 450,000, out of a population of around 800,000.
A more radical approach, calling the republican response a genocide, put it like this:
A bas la république!
Vive le Roi!
On 12th March 1793 the population of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil rose against the French republic and the Jacobin terror regime.
Jean-François Michael sings the Royalist battle song Chouans en avant in a powerful modern version:
A history of the War of the Vendée here in French. Wikipedia as vague as usual: Estimates of those killed in the Vendean conflict - on both sides - range between 117,000 and 450,000, out of a population of around 800,000.
A more radical approach, calling the republican response a genocide, put it like this:
What the French Revolution invented, 150 years before Auschwitz, was industrialized murder.
In Vendée, a city that had revolted against the central Revolutionary government, over 100,000 people, including women and children, were murdered, executed in part by grapeshot and by tying them to boats that were sunk in the Loire River. ("No nation," wrote Friedrich Engels in a diatribe against the Czechs, "can tolerate a Vendee in its heart.") A similar, somewhat smaller outrage took place in Lyons, a city that had rebelled and was to be erased for good. By some estimates, 14,000 houses were demolished.
During this sombre extermination drive, two sinister shadows stand out: those of General Turreau and of Carrier - known as "the drowner of Nantes".
Two thousand Vendeans - half of them women - were shot at Angers; 1,500 on the island of Noirmoutier; 1,800 in the quarries of Gigant, near Nantes.
Carrier had 4,000 prisoners drowned in the river Loire.
Still it was not enough. On 19th January 1794, Turreau presented his extermination plan to the Convention: 24 columns of men would be sent to the Vendée with orders to penetrate every corner of the rebellious département and to burn and destroy everything they found. The Vendée was put to fire and sword.
On just one day, 28th February 1794, at Les Lucs sur Boulogne, a column under the command of Cordellier killed 563 people.
But it was not over yet. The exhausted survivors regrouped behind two battle-hardened leaders: Charette and Stofflet. The death-squads were massacred in their turn at Chauché, at Les Clouzeaux and elsewhere.
A Republican column led by Crouzat - who, in the absence of Stofflet, killed 1,500 people in the forest of Vezins on 25th March - was cut down three days later at Les Ouleries.
Turreau's plan had failed. The Vendée was wounded, but with its endless programme of guerrilla warfare was still a threat. The wooded bocage provided a maze of sunken lanes where a single strategically-placed Vendean could easily pick off his opponents and into which Republican troops ventured at their peril. Reprisals, though, were often enacted on civilians. "The incredible Vendée still survives," wrote back the angry Republican commanders to the Convention.
On 13th May 1794 Turreau was relieved of his duties. Needing troops to fight on its frontiers, the Convention pulled out of the Vendée.
A bas la république!
Vive le Roi!
Saturday, August 15, 2009
"Viva la revolution"
The headline “Viva la revolution” is not mine, heaven forbid, but The Sunday Age chose this title (without an exclamation mark) for a letter to the editor. It is possible that The Sunday Age just wanted to show their wide range of tolerance, when they printed a letter sent in by “Joseph Toscano, spokesperson, Anarchist Media Institute”. And although anarchist Jo swaggered about the “revolutionary impact” of the World Wide Web and “the throes of a revolution that will lead to the democratisation of every aspect of our lives”, I cannot find "Viva la revolution" in his letter, and I doubt he had chosen the headline.
I am afraid I must blame the editor of The Sunday Age for the mistaken headline. It is wrong for various reasons, but first of all, because it is a mix of several languages. “Viva” is Spanish, but “la revolution” is French. Or you could say “la” is Spanish and French, but “revolution" could be English. A clever combination of three world languages? Oh no, you overestimate the subtlety of The Sunday Age.
It is more likely that it is pure ignorance that led to this headline. Like in the republic question the media don’t know, where they want us to got to. They could have chosen “Vive la revolution!” (with an exclamation mark), which would have been the French grammatical form of the Subjonctif, which is used, when a wish should be expressed, like: ”We wish that the revolution lives!”. The Sunday Age may very well think that, I can’t possibly comment.
The French Subjonctif has an equivalent in Spanish, the subjuntivo, which also expresses wishful thinking, but the English/French word “revolution” has a different spelling in Spanish: "revolución".
The Sunday Age did not bother about these minor language problems. Which poses the question, why The Sunday Age wishes to have a revolution/revolución? Certainly, the anarchist spokesperson would not mind having one, neither a French nor a Spanish/Cuban/Venezuelan etc., but the owners of a weekly publication that is interested in generating money (among other things by charging for access to online content) would be appalled should the profit decline. Republican or revolutionary rhetoric aside, journalists, editors and shareholders want cash first, a republic second.
We could put the language tawdriness aside and just say: God save the Queen! That is easy and simple and cannot be confused with other languages. And it is in a language that even journalists of The Sunday Age should master.
The headline “Viva la revolution” is not mine, heaven forbid, but The Sunday Age chose this title (without an exclamation mark) for a letter to the editor. It is possible that The Sunday Age just wanted to show their wide range of tolerance, when they printed a letter sent in by “Joseph Toscano, spokesperson, Anarchist Media Institute”. And although anarchist Jo swaggered about the “revolutionary impact” of the World Wide Web and “the throes of a revolution that will lead to the democratisation of every aspect of our lives”, I cannot find "Viva la revolution" in his letter, and I doubt he had chosen the headline.
I am afraid I must blame the editor of The Sunday Age for the mistaken headline. It is wrong for various reasons, but first of all, because it is a mix of several languages. “Viva” is Spanish, but “la revolution” is French. Or you could say “la” is Spanish and French, but “revolution" could be English. A clever combination of three world languages? Oh no, you overestimate the subtlety of The Sunday Age.
It is more likely that it is pure ignorance that led to this headline. Like in the republic question the media don’t know, where they want us to got to. They could have chosen “Vive la revolution!” (with an exclamation mark), which would have been the French grammatical form of the Subjonctif, which is used, when a wish should be expressed, like: ”We wish that the revolution lives!”. The Sunday Age may very well think that, I can’t possibly comment.
The French Subjonctif has an equivalent in Spanish, the subjuntivo, which also expresses wishful thinking, but the English/French word “revolution” has a different spelling in Spanish: "revolución".
The Sunday Age did not bother about these minor language problems. Which poses the question, why The Sunday Age wishes to have a revolution/revolución? Certainly, the anarchist spokesperson would not mind having one, neither a French nor a Spanish/Cuban/Venezuelan etc., but the owners of a weekly publication that is interested in generating money (among other things by charging for access to online content) would be appalled should the profit decline. Republican or revolutionary rhetoric aside, journalists, editors and shareholders want cash first, a republic second.
We could put the language tawdriness aside and just say: God save the Queen! That is easy and simple and cannot be confused with other languages. And it is in a language that even journalists of The Sunday Age should master.
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