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Thursday, July 15, 2004

July 14 is Bastille Day, a national holiday in France that commemorates 215 years from the day a Parisian mob stormed the "infamous" prison and commenced the upheaval of the French Revolution. The collapse of Soviet communism should not deter the invocation of the dreadful legacy of the French Revolution, the same revolution that a century later inspired the even bloodier Russian Revolution and its communist aftermath.


This was convincingly demonstrated in the Assembly of Notables in February 1787, a gathering of wise men that King Louis XVI (photo, right) called for and convened to help him solve economic problems afflicting France, particularly the lack of solvency. This Assembly of Notables, in turn, advised the King to call the Estates General, the body which traditionally had the authority to raise taxes but which had not been summoned since 1614 during the reign of the popular king, Henry IV.


The insurrection spread from there to the countryside with desultory grain riots, flaming more deliberately (from March through April of 1789) in the concerted defiance and in protest of the hated game laws protecting birds and animals for the hunting sport of the King and the Storming of the Bastillenobility. Thereafter, the mobs also learned to command the streets after the Réveillon Riots (April 1789) so that by mid-summer of 1789, they had had ample practice for the storming of the Bastille (photo, left).

Regardless of what the reader has been led to believe, the earliest revolutionaries were not bourgeoisie, but nobility and high clergy, many of them functionaries in the old regime, including some of the king's ministers and advisors. Intoxicated by idealism and Rousseau's sublime concepts of virtue, reason, equality, etc., they had set out to correct real or perceived iniquities in France. King Louis XVI's loyal ministers saw the dangers lurking ahead, but seemed impotent to effectively protect the monarchy and solve the problems afflicting France, particularly the serious financial problem and the threat of national bankruptcy.





Suffice it to say, it wasn't the bourgeoisie and working class who led the revolution without recognizing the perilous nature of their actions, but the nobility and clergy who were making war against their own class that set the revolution in motion. Simon Schama provided ample evidence for this in his widely acclaimed book, Citizens (1989). This fiery revolution became a Charlotte Cordaytumbling, violent cascade that later they were unable to control. In the end, for thousands of them, if they didn't escape as émigrés from the revolution they had helped to create - they paid the ultimate price in the guillotine.

Charlotte Corday and the Girondins


The guillotine, though, was already covering the ground red with blood at the Place de la Révolution. The story is beautifully told in Stanley Loomis' masterpiece, Paris in the Terror (1964).  Marat's direct participation in the bloody conspiracy to eliminate the Girondin Party was prevented by the fateful deed of the heroine from Caen, Charlotte Corday. However, his demise also served to further fuel the fire of the gathering conflagration - and ignite the Reign of Terror. Marat would turn into a revolutionary martyr, his body interred along with Mirabeau, Descartes, and Voltaire.

The Girondins, led by Madame Manon Philipon, her husband Roland de la Platiere, the journalist Pierre Brissot and the orator Pierre Vergniaud, were divided and remained oblivious to the mortal threat of Maximilien Robespierre in late 1792 and early 1793; they were for the most Madame Rolandpart young patriots and idealists, not conniving politicians or statesmen. As a party, they failed to recognize the need, or rather the necessity, for them to forge an alliance with Georges Danton, not just to win politically against the treacherous Robespierre, but for their very own survival. Some of the Girondins led by Madame Roland (photo, right) could not forgive Danton for his involvement in the brutal September Massacres of 1792.


The mobs were incited by the likes of Marat (L'Ami du Peuple) and René Hébert (Pére Duchesne) to apply pressure from below. The revolutionary mobs would intimidate the Assembly with their swords, clubs, muskets, and pikes marching outside the halls of the Tuileries, demanding more radical political, social and economic change, more Georges Dantongovernment largesse, or else blood. The leaders of the Cordeliers Club, Georges Danton (photo, left), and the Jacobin Club, Maximilien Robespierre, used threats and exhorted the people to violence in rhetorical speeches or through the printed words in the numerous revolutionary pamphlets and newspapers.



In the social democracies of the 20th century, this strategy, in a milder form wrapped in "compassionate" public welfarism and social concern, is still used today effectively to bring change and increase the size, scope and power of the central government - socialism, at the expense of individual liberties and freedom. This still happens today in our society, when the media go searching for victims to parade in front of television cameras while leftist politicians call for more government to protect those same alleged victims who have "fallen through the cracks."Pierre Vergniaud

Before the ushering in of the Terror, the French revolutionary government was not a true republic, despite its appellation, but violent "democracy" in action, degenerating brutally and chaotically into mob rule, mobocracy. The revolutionists  — led by Marat, Danton, Saint-Just, Hébert, and Robespierre — unleashed a horrible monster, a monster that, in the end, they could not control, for as Pierre Vergniaud (photo, right) said, "The revolution, like Saturn, is devouring its' own children." One by one, indeed, they would be devoured by the revolutionary monster.




In Part II of this essay, we will describe the legacy of Maximilien Robespierre, "The Incorruptible."


This article may be cited as: Faria MA. Bastille Day and the French Revolution (Part I): The Ancien Regime and the Storming of the Bastille. Newsmax Media. July 15, 2004. Available from:


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Comments on this post

Scissors strategy

This scissors strategy of applying simultaneous pressure from above and below to force political change is still used today in politics. I'm a political consultant and know better. David Contarino

"Let them eat cake!"

A lady talking about politics, Mitt Romney, economic misery and the lack of sympathy of the rich for the poor, finally cited the old cliche about Queen Marie Antoinette, once again, "if there is no bread, let them eat cake!"

Madame D. C., Marie Antoinette never made that callous statement! It was a fable invented by those who demonized her– and later cut off her head! She went to the guillotine bravely as did her husband, King Louis XVI, like the courageous and fair monarchs they were.

I wonder how you would fare, madame, if it were you taken to the guillotine? When radicals like Rene Hebert (i.e., leader of the "enraged ones" during the French Revolution) were taken to the guillotine (by their former left-wing friends) they were taken kicking and screaming like the cowards, left wing radicals usually become, when it is their time to die!

And Romney's insensitivity comment was truncated by the liberal media. This is what he actually said:

"I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there," Romney told CNN. "If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

And he is largely correct (except perhaps for his percentages); we need to worry about the Middle class and small businesses that are struggling and tired of pulling the welfare cart uphill, madame! And when are the welfare recipients going to start helping to pull the cart, proving they have a stake in the system, and do anything, their fair share?
