the french revolution

so what are we polling exactly?

Talleyrand obv.

favorite, baaderonixx

recommend me a book plz

if the question would have been " which of these family lines never set foot in north-america, ever" i would have voted :Eprémesnil.

brownie this is what got me on my kick, its fiction but incredibly detailed and well researched and it owns so hard

http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Place_of_Greater_Safety.html?id=srII8V8_UTcC

tough but went with jean valjean

fuck of, troll

I can recommend this card game:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/116/guillotine

http://revolutioninfiction.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/guillotinecardgame.jpg

wrong revolution anyway

I would vote Antoine Lavoisier

i know really too little about all this

cool, thanks for the tip. it's on the shelf at my local library.

lessee, i know marat from peter weiss and jacques-louis david, grace elliott from eric rohmer, lafayette from american founding mythology, and sade from weiss again... and, like, milo manara pictures on the internet

cmon man give yourself more credit, you know robespierre from how he killed all those people

can i write-in the guillotine

tbh now that you mention it i shouldve included sanson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Henri_Sanson

really would like to read a good general history of this -- i was actually looking at the 'oxford history' version the other day but it looks a bit dense for a starter.

From the moment that the Assembly condemns him, until the moment when he stretches his neck to the knife, Saint-Just keeps silent. This long silence is more important than his death. He complained that silence reigned around thrones and that is why he wanted to speak so much and so well. But in the end, contemptuous of the tyranny and the enigma of a people who do not conform to pure reason, he resorts to silence himself. His principles cannot accept the condition of things; and things not being what they should be his principles are therefore fixed, silent and alone. To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

Saint-Just first, de Sade second.

i recall liking simon schama's citizens, although i've pretty much forgotten all the details by now

poll needs an option for 'too early to tell'

I enjoyed watching "Farewell My Queen" recently and was thinking it would be nice to read a good book about the French Revolution.

Whoa, excited about A Place of Greater Safety. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are two of my favorite books ever.

that new yorker profile of mantel made me want to read A Place of Greater Safety something fierce. french rev was the best part of high school european history, for sure. i think my source for most of what i know about it is a tale of two cities, shamefully.

A poll just as sweet: quotes by American founders and framers responding to the French Revolution.

haha me, too! xp

gonna go with de sade why because disgusting

the not-so-secret secret is that the 120 days is actually boring as fuck but i gotta admire his commitment to being boring in such a manner

watching someone else's dirty laundry spin is dull imo unless those briefs in the spin cycle are yours.

anyway my vote is either Tallyrand for a career full of witticisms and brazen insults to other countries' honor, or Sieyès, whose survivor instincts Nixon probably studied.

The Incorruptible

otm. i mean, i kinda want to vote for camille, but in the end who else could it be?

I can see no middle ground.this man must reign or die.

i don't really understand any vote that isn't for marat.

i mean dude was glenn beck in a bathtub, he's totally the best.

not familiar with nearly enough of these people but -> mme du barry

Obviously Danton was kind of a cool dude too, though I think he gets a bit of a bad rap bcz of depardieu.

i feel i know robespierre

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Well it was either going to be Sade or Robespierre so I went with Robespierre.

Sade = in prison not for saying it was okay to hit women (which was perfectly acceptable) but for saying women had orgasms

Robespierre = what a monster, killing people left right and centre, paranoid that they were agents of the monarchy! They were agents of the monarchy

I read this two weeks ago: http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/bookchat-12-terror/

was gonna vote Saint-Just then realized i already had

i feel i know robespierre

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 February 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just feel..

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

still too early imo

strong showing for saint-just!

he and robes: bros forever

this was a great poll. i wanted to vote in it but i don't know anything. i really wanna read that martel book but i keep telling myself i'll read a general history or two first. anyway, enough of this bourgeois shit:

We Must Do Away Once and for All with this Papist-Quaker Babble about the Sanctity of Human Life: a Russian Revolution Poll

dlh come vote in my to the Finland station poll

also I'm disappointed that this poll didnt generate as good a discussion of war and revolution as the thirty years war poll did

Famous British children's series ChuckleVision has featured Robespierre as a villain trying to steal the Countess and defeat the Purple Pimple. Citizen Robespierre calls himself "the best swordsman of France". Featured in Series 17 and 18 (2005/2006).

also I'm disappointed that this poll didnt generate as good a discussion of war and revolution as the thirty years war poll did

Was revolution possible without terror, y/n

American Revolution.

Does it matter that for the American revolution the king and ruling classes were not directly in the territory - and could lose that territory whilst retaining power in homeland + India?

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution, one of my desert island books:

"Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him."

early in her book she posits that in its early stages the American Revolution was really a counter-revolution: what Franklin and the Adams cousins wanted was a restoration of their rights as Englishmen, which Parliament had ignored bit by bit.

I've always assumed that British royal power, compared to the French equivalent, was weakened since the Civil War and Cromwell, in a way that the French wasn't. So yeah, that quote makes sense.

But I still think the American and French revolutions are more different than they are similar, because one is a colony fighting for independence, that leaves the metropolis intact, whereas the other is a complete shake-up of the homeland. I don't think the Americans needed a terror because in that case the English King wasn't as bothered as the French King.

Also French revolutionary terror vs slave trade and treatment of native americans, that's another angle.

oh yeah the thesis of the book is explaining the uniqueness of the American revolution -- and why the French, Chinese, and Russian ones were bloody, protracted, and lead to various kinds of 18 Brumaires.

glorious revolution deserves some mention also, esp to the extent the american revolution is just an extension of that made more radical thru ideological bottleneck created by geography (mangling gordon wood there but whatever). there's also a post-revolution purge w/ loyalists losing property and effectively exiled iirc (and who knows maybe treaty of paris moved the goalposts to 'yeah fuck that we're taking their land' from 'yeah fuck that we're taking their heads'). you eventually even have effective one party rule from jefferson (or at the very latest hartford convention) to whenever the whigs arise (like one election before william henry harrison i think?). also obv big difference between american and french/russian revolutions: george washington.

and John Tyler came out of the closet as a Dem as soon as the old man pooped.

I don't think the Americans needed a terror because in that case the English King wasn't as bothered as the French King.

Tell that to the loyalists who were forced to emigrate

The American revolution is hardly a revolution, though, is it? More like a fight for independence. More akin to India than France.

it could plausibly be argued that america had two revolutions -- the civil war being the second and much more radical one.

ironically the british 'terror' against british civilians under pitt the younger that happened during the french revolution era -- suspension of habeas corpus, mass arrests of radicals and dissidents -- was probably much worse than anything experienced by the american colonists under george iii.

Obviously Danton was kind of a cool dude too, though I think he gets a bit of a bad rap bcz of depardieu.

― doctor, doctor, what's in my shirt (askance johnson), Tuesday, February 26, 2013 3:52 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was thinking about watching this. Bad?

also some classic zizek here on Robespierre (taken from a BBC docu on the bro which is a solid little hour of fun)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/robespierre/?insrc=hpma

hmm, can i enjoy that as poetry and hate it as history?

You have my approval :)

So Jonathan Israel has apparantly written a book about the revolution, in which he claims that Robbespierre and his cronies, rather than being thought of as left wing reformators run amok, should be thought of as proto-fascists, believing in mob rule and the ability of priviliged individuals to perceive and embody the will of the people. Then the girondists become the left wing intellectuals instead. And boy, do I want to believe in that, it makes so much sense, and put all the bloodshed on right-wing beliefs. But checking up on it, the girondists were the war-party, which really might be the central disaster of the period, as far as I can tell. So yeah, can't really get it to work out.

the ability of priviliged individuals to perceive and embody the will of the people

this is kind of the central aporia of The Social Contract tbf to the lads

Yes, Robbespierre was supremely Roussauian. Apparantly, that's a no-go in Israel's world.

Know nothing about the French Revolution, but Israel's not an interpreter I trust, judging from the previous books – I've read good chunks of the first two Enlightenment ones (Radical/Contested), and they feel like a lot of evidence shoved together to fit a sympathetic but not particularly tenable thesis.

Rousseau's been described as a proto-Fascist since Fascism happened, so Israel's stance here isn't uncommon

unfair, but not uncommon, i meant to add

dunno if Bertrand Russell originated this line of thought but he lays the tar and feathers onto Rousseau pretty severely in his History of Western Philosophy iirc

feel like the Queen thread is appropriate

so… in Israel's terms, would Robespierre be an inheritor of the 'moderate enlightenment' (which in his eyes is bad and wrong and not actually Enlightenment)? As opposed to the radical materialist/democratic/toleration package (which iirc, for israel, is monolithic & the actual only Enlightenment) coming down through Spinoza etc?

i have always considered Robespierre to be the pragmatist overcome by contingencies, i.e. Israel's "moderate enlightenment" backed up against a wall, i guess, whereas Saint-Just wd be yr hardcore rationalist. feel like Rousseau wants to be the latter but enjoyed the finer things too much to fully follow thru?

Yeah, woof, that would be my guess. Haven't read any of his books, just the articles written by the commentator in my newspaper, who is a big Israel-fan, and writes big articles on his thougts every couple of months. It sounds to me a lot like you described it: 'like a lot of evidence shoved together to fit a sympathetic but not particularly tenable thesis.'

Reading Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution last summer, I thought the only coherent parallel between Robespierre and Hitler was his abstemiousness. Otherwise his vision for France was closer to totalitarian necrocracy: "If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue,” Robespierre wrote, “its basis in a time of revolution is both virtue and terror — virtue, without which terror is disastrous, and terror, without which virtue has no power."

not a very good book btw. I wrote at the time that it boasted the stupidest sentence I've ever seen in a preface: "“I have tried to be his friend and to see things from his point of view."

that quote itself is wracked with desperation/maybe despair, i think

Robespierre = what a monster, killing people left right and centre, paranoid that they were agents of the monarchy! They were agents of the monarchy

― cardamon, Saturday, 13 July 2013 02:32 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is closest to the truth, and beautifully put

wtf with these results

robespierre and marat over condorcet and madame roland? we should just do a poll that is like, the girondins vs. the montagne.

babeuf was pretty interesting if you prefer a more radical figure.

well, I don't know a great deal about these particulars, but if there's any truth to the Georg Buchner play then I'd put Georges Danton miles ahead of Robespierre

Idk about the play but there is a lot of truth to the proposition that robespierre was infinitely shittier than danton

I'm listening to the Simon Schama Citizens audiobook at the moment. What fun!

Idk about the play but there is a lot of truth to the proposition that robespierre was infinitely shittier than danton

Danton? Overrated. Robespierre deserves this little victory. Some important omissions though: Saint-André, Hérault de Séchelles, both Prieurs.

The Buchner was made into a Play for Today (dir by Alan Clarke btw). The speeches and detail are accurate.

LOL wiki calls it "documentary theatre"

That's because Buchner nicked them verbatim, naughty boy.

Yeah couldn't recall whether it was nicked or not.

Can't blame him for that, it's dynamite material.

Maximilien Robespierre, "On the Voting Rights of Actors and Jews",

"Things have been said to you about the Jews that are infinitely exaggerated and often contrary to history. How can the persecutions they have suffered at the hands of different people be held against them? These on the contrary are national crimes that we ought to expiate, by granting them imprescriptible human rights of which no human power could despoil them. Faults are still imputed to them, prejudices, exaggerated by the sectarian spirit and by interests. But to what can we really impute them but our own injustices? [...]?"

By the way, don't try googling Robespierre and Jews, that way lies madness.

What is the best book French Revolution book apart from Scurr or Schama?

Revolutionary Ideas by Jonathan Israel

Scurr, Schama and Israel? Filthy anti-Robespierrists!!!! I don't know about the entire revolution but I recently read "Twelve Who Ruled" by R.R. Palmer, about the Committee of Public Safety, and it ruled. I'd also recommend Peter McPhee's "Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life", 'I am the unhappiest man alive'.

I liked Scurr's Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution: the mass murderer as a bore.

However, three yeas later I'm still embarrassed that a scholar wrote, “I have tried to be his friend and to see things from his point of view” in a preface.

Also reading (some of) Robespierre's speeches: full citizenship for Jews and Protestants (and, er, actors); abolition of slavery; abolition of capital punishment (irony); universal suffrage; progressive taxation; opposition to wars of conquest. Hello, Western democracy!

... though they get progessively more wild-eyed and paranoid as they go on.

I'm pretty sure the French revolution had more than enough implacable enemies, both foreign and domestic, to justify the revolutionaries' fears.

Oh definitely, I still think he'd pretty much lost his marbles by 8 Thermidor Year II.

full citizenship for Jews and Protestants (and, er, actors)

I keep think of that exchange from "The Producers":

Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They're human beings!
Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

nearly done with 'greater safety,' wanna throw a shoutout to Mirabeau. I've been thinking--if he'd survived past 1791, would he have succeeded in making the revolution a bit more moderate? the assemblymen/convention deputies seemed to respond to strong personalities, and it seems like he had enough charisma to counter Danton. and he was an effective operator, not just a mouthpiece, with the admiration on some of those who eventually reigned in terror.

then again, he might've found his head on the guillotine like Orleans did.

Being a Royalist double agent would scarcely have helped matters tbf.

it certainly turned out to be a liability, but it was certainly more excusable during his lifetime than it was shortly afterward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i45Y4Hf_so8

otm

so i'm at the point in a place of greater safety where the shadow of THE MACHINE is just starting to loom, and the charlotte corday legend took me down a terrible terrible addictive but so terrible late-night rabbit hole — which ended up (CN: severed heads) here

which is a lengthy foucault-shaped discussion of the philosophical and medico-legal debates about the biopolitics of the self when the revolution (and the guillotine) transformed the relevant rhetorics of justification in the capital punishment debate

this is the charlotte corday legend: marat’s assassin was seized, jailed, tried, sentenced and executed, all very speedily, without much resistance on her part (she believed she’d acted bravely, nobly and correctly; she entirely expected this outcome and more or less gave herself up to the authorities). as her head dropped into the basket, a fellow named legros stepped onto the platform, grabbed it and slapped it hard. the crowd — so it’s said — saw corday’s cheeks redden, as an angry scowl passed across her face…

(legros got a three-month sentence for this act btw: part of the the official executioner’s job was to ensure égalité, which meant that no one got to mess with certain bodies, however enragingly anti-revolutionary their crime)

anyway the piece is less about the modern-day science of how long a severed head retains consciousness, awareness, sensation (if it does at all: modern-day opinion remains divided), and also not much about the facts in the corday case (and several similar urban-myth type tales, from ann boleyn to the 1980s). It’s more about the specifics (and the jargon) of the philosophical debate that erupted in the late 1790s and early 1800s, in other words after the fall of robespierre, when it started maybe to be a bit safer to argue that the guillotine was (in general) bad not good. the argument in favour had after all been that (as well as equality of punishment) — it delivered a minimum of suffering (bcz death was instant), but if death wasn’t instant, this was exactly and dreadfully untrue. what if a head knew for many terrible seconds what was still going on, processing thoughts, feelings and emotions…

anyway that’s the rabbithole, and boy do I advise against diving down it

revolutionary who spent his entire tumbrel-ride to the guillotine alternately fainting and shrieking in terror: jacques hébert aka père duchesne, the bombastic leader of the enragés

also the guillotine operator did three lol-troll fake-out runs on him -- blade falls but then stops short -- before actually chopping off his head (which doesn't seem very scientific)

also i just learned that marat's death-bath was filled with cooling water rather than boiling hot

Because of his painful skin condition?

In July, I read Jeremy D. Popkin's newish A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution. Quite good on the Revolution's social advances and sans-culottes hypocrisies and heresies.

(xp) That was Marat. That's why he was in the bath when Mme. Corday came a-calling.

i knew abt the condition, i just somehow always imagined the bath was very hot and that this contributed to marat's constant fury

He thought, "You know what? This will make a great painting one day".

with good reason: jacques-louis david was right there! he's the instagram influencer of the national convention

Just realized I misread J. Redd's post, I thought he was saying Hébert had a painful skin condition. Wouldn't have surprised, they were an unhealthy lot, Robespierre was forever pulling a sickie.

apparently he had a pain in the jaw before he was guillotined, that hypochondriac

The wee fella wis up tae high doh in the weeks afore Thermidor. As Boaby might say.

the lancet has opinions

"his disease did not play any part in his death" <-- hard to argue with i suppose

Believe there is an R.E.M. song that mentions the incident. This one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgTv9TvZys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0rgeQ0QD-o
🎥 Napolean XIV - They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXI9RJSgok

^Probably my favorite song related to this, DO U SEE?

Almost forgot this one, close second:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXa8IXvaW0I

charlotte corday stabbing the gallagher bros in *their* bath, no committee of public safety in the land wd have guillotined her

ps not to step on a joak but the "pain in the jaw" alfred mentioned was from being shot in it when arrested (possibly by RP himself possibly by an arresting officer, the wikipedia version of events in his final 48 hours is the opposite of lucid but i also think there were several rival versions of said events)

I dunno, pretty sure that Wikipedia editor was on the scene as events unfolded

His brother jumped out a window and broke his leg(s) too I think? And somebody else did succeed in blowing their brains out which Maxie might have been trying to do.

executed alongside hébert: craz name crazy wig!

prussian-dutch rather than french, anarchist and internationalist, he shd still probably be in the OP list (esp.as these are basically the reasons he was guillotined)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Anacharsis_Cloots_-_Ecrits_révolutionnaires.jpg/800px-Anacharsis_Cloots_-_Ecrits_révolutionnaires.jpg

anyway i finished a place of greater safety, no spoilers but only a handful of the characters make it through with their heads on etc lol

based on previous mantel experience i will need to reread to get some of what's going on: also it was published in 90s but actually written in the 70s and is i think very different in how it manages material to wolf hall et al

The French Revolution was an obsession of mine a couple of years back so don't get me started on those Thermidorian so-and-so's.

les wojacques:

the best thing ive ever participated in the creation of (i selected almost all of the people and positions, tost did the actual work of photoshopping them into this) pic.twitter.com/SkYSY3tEKC

— Femboy Political Theology (@OldDreyfusard) March 18, 2022

v useful chart.

Is it? It’s of interest to me cause I’ve been reading about the revolution. But that version of the political compass just seems like a vehicle to promote libertarianism. Surely there’s some less arbitrary axis than ‘libertarian vs authoritarian’.

Just one example, the Girondins are separated from Robespierre here but weren’t they actually pretty close? Maybe that axis really just refers to the degree of fondness for the guillotine?

I don't know what the Girondins have to do with libertarianism, or why Dantonists are further left than Robespierre or why Robespierre isn't further left than the Girondins, for that matter. Or what is authoritarian about Babeuf etc.

basically i just like the faces

OTM

https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2022/11/olympic-paralympic-mascot-hero-1704x959.jpg

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/11/17/paris-french-revolution-hats-olympic-paralympic-mascots/

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/188/b26/44452f4a73fd2a6cb18f27c644c5c7a1f0-9-smurfs-1.2x.rhorizontal.w700.jpg

Reckless and Unrepentant Smurfs Continue Their Defiance

it seems like this is the thread we come to when we’re rabbitholing the revolution due to mantel’s place of greater safety

hi it’s me

this reread has convinced me i finally need to do actual history reading to get a better grasp on all the players & surrounding events etc

thinking of
- Christopher Hibbert “french revolution”
- RR Palmer “twelve who ruled”

any other recommendations?
i don’t think Schama is for me - too populist? idk. i liked his art history years ago but this seems out of his lane.

but i do need a ~good~ overview, and at least one good specific robespierre bc he intrigues me

how are we doing on this fine Ventose day

I liked Jeremy D. Popkin's 2021 A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution

i tried schama but i didn't vibe with him at _all_, he seemed to be coming from a very different place than i was and nothing he was saying seemed to make much sense to me.

from cursory research seems like a few of revolution historians disagree w him too

xxpost that looks like exactly what i’m after, thx Alfred!

schama shd turn his mind to the reckless and unrepentent smurfs imo

is Ruth Scurr's Fatal Purity any good? I bought the paperback but the print was too small and a struggle for my bad eyesight. I managed to acquire the e-book but seem to recall someone on here being unimpressed with it.

i enjoyed mike duncan's revolutions podcast on this particular revolution: he was good at clarifying who was thinking what and how this or that group's political stance could be genuinely radical one month and then cofusedly reactionary the next without having changed much in-between

I think "Twelve Who Ruled" was the first thing I read on the French Revolution - I've never read the Hilary Mantel novel - anyway it rules. "Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life" by Peter McPhee is also very good. Both are fairly favourable towards Robespierre. I wouldn't go anywhere near Simon Schama on this particular subject.

is Ruth Scurr's Fatal Purity any good? I bought the paperback but the print was too small and a struggle for my bad eyesight. I managed to acquire the e-book but seem to recall someone on here being unimpressed with it.

― calzino, Saturday

I mentioned it upthread. Solid as research but his identification with Robespierre gave me the creeps.

omg i forgot abt mike duncan’s revolutions podcast! i love him. maybe i’ll give that a go

i was listening to a different podcast abt the revolution but he keeps likening things to star wars & lord of the rings & game of thrones & it makes me deeply eyerolly

the haiti season of revolutions is short and dovetails nicely with the French Revolution one

update: i finished Popkin’s “A New World Begins” - it was exactly the kind of overview i needed
and really well-written. he has a lovely light touch that i appreciated

thx for the recommendation Alfred!

now i am digging into RR Palmer’s “Twelve Who Ruled” and i am loving it

it’s surprising that his conversational-style narrative was written in the 1940’s. Quite a fresh take for the times!

Forgot about TWELVE WHO RULED.

omg it’s so freaking good!!
i’m halfway through

I am reading Hazan’s History of the Barricade and I realize I need to read more on the French Revolution in order to understand basic things.

the Popkin book i mentioned upthread is a v good overview without being super dense

“A New World Begins” is the title

Reading about the Thermidorians right now. I wouldn't have thought it possible for the French Revolution to get any more confusing but...

yeah buckle up!

Reading about the Thermidorians right now. I wouldn't have thought it possible for the French Revolution to get any more confusing but...

― Please play Lou Reed's irritating guitar sounds (Tom D.),

it gets heated

I just finished "The Thermidorians" by Georges Lefebvre, which is a fairly short book but every single page is a barrage of facts, figures, places, names (surnames only), dates (particularly confusing because he alternates between the Republican calendar and the Gregorian calendar). For most of the book I was struggling to work out who he was referring to when he was talking about terrorists and patriots - they appear to be one and the same... I think?!?!? Very dry stuff, maybe it was more readable in French. Trying a different book tomorrow.

ugh that seems like a surefire way to make a confusing thing even more confusing lol

A fun fiction book I read recently set in revolutionary France is The Glutton by AK Blakemore

A revolutionary time for fashion!

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n04/rosemary-hill/no-more-corsets

Dreadful Thermidorians though. Tallien's girlfriend and later wife!