A FRENCH REVOLUTION THAT IS ALMOST PEACEFUL

IN FIVE ROOMS AND A FULL FLOOR, VIOLENCE AND STRIKING FORCE* ARE ALMOST ABSENT AND NOTHING INDICATES ITS DRAMA OR IMPORTANCE

The impact of taking the Bastille:

"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 translation)

The museum has this painting in its reserves... 

Taking the Bastille July 14 1789 by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, no date  / zoom (please scroll down)

 

Buy it shows a model, keys and its peaceful demolition:

 

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Sole reference to the Terror, the guillotine and the execution of the king...

Photo of king before scaffold

And for Marie-Antoinette, an undecipherable proclamation and an accessory overwhelm the poignant portrait of a woman whom calamity led to finding herself:  

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There is nothing about the attack on Versailles that forced the king's transfer to Paris, about his failed flight or about the seizure of the Tuileries palace that brought the end of monarchy, though for that too, the museum has at least one work in its reserves. 

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The sans-culottes* are almost completely left out. Yet it was that rank and file that defeated the nobility. As well, its egalitarianism is what makes the French Revolution famous, setting it apart from the "bourgeois revolutions" that came with industrialization everywhere.

-- Albert Soboul, La Révolution française, 1965 

• This famous picture, absent for five of my six visits, finally appeared in a dark corner in an arid presentation that was hard to see:

  

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

 

• Otherwise the sans-culottes are shown only at the back of the last room, behind proclamations, portraits of middle-class leaders... 

• And a game for kids.

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The night before taking the Bastille:

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, History of the French Revolution

A message opposite to that of the museum.

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Next,

Nineteenth-century insurrections as shown before the renovation