THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IS ALMOST PEACEFUL

FIVE ROOMS WHERE VIOLENCE AND THE SANS-CULOTTES* ARE ALMOST ABSENT

*"Without breeches," artisans who made up the striking force that brought the Revolution's success. The wore trousers adapted to physical work as opposed to the breeches associated with the privileged.

Some ferocity can't be left out...

• The fame of taking the Bastille forces the museum to include this image... 

Taking the Bastille by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, toward 1789 / zoom

"The entire world knew, hated the Bastille. Bastille, tyranny, were synonyms in all languages. At the news of its ruin all nations believed themselves delivered.   

In Russia, in that empire of mystery and silence, that monstrous Bastille between Europe and Asia, the news had barely arrived before men of all nations shouted, cried in the squares, threw themselves in each others' arms while stating the news: 'How not cry from joy? the Bastille is taken !' " 

-- History of the French Revolution by Jules Michelet, 1847 (my trans.)

...but all that surrounds it is peaceful:

 

Demolition

• One feels the tragedy of the royal family from knowing the story, not from the dry presentation:

Furniture from their prison at the Temple

Why give so much space to an unreadable proclamation? Is the black object a garter? No explanation and except for the portrait, little interest.

• For the guillotine, this image only:

A rare work in which the crowd appears.

# # #

Nothing is shown of the hate, the fear, the dramatic events... 

       Storming the Tuileries palace on August 10, 1792 by Jacques Bertaux / zoom 

The seizure of the Tuileries Palace brings kingship to an end. This painting is at the Musée du Château de Versailles: Here the event goes unnoticed. 

...and this famous picture, absent for five or my six visits, finally appeared in a dark corner:

Portrait of a Sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1792 

The pike and a vestige of the red bonnet are technically legitimate, but the arid presentation calls up no response. 

The only other reference to them is buried at the back of another room... 

...behind proclamations, portraits of middle-class leaders and a game for children:

# # #

The night before taking the Bastille:

"History returned that night, a long story of suffering, in the vengeful instinct of the people. The soul of fathers who, after so many centuries, suffered, died in silence, returned to their sons and spoke.

Strong men, patient men, so pacific until then, who on a single day struck a grand blow for Providence, the sight of your families, without resources except for you, did not soften your heart. On the contrary, on seeing for the last time your sleeping children, those children whose destinies the new day would change, your uplifted thought embraced the free generations that would arise from their cradles, and felt in that dawn the combat of the future." 

-- Jules Michelet

That is not the message

 that the museum seeks to transmit. 

*    *    *

Next,

Insurrections as shown before the renovation