A FRENCH REVOLUTION THAT IS ALMOST PEACEFUL

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

*"Without breeches," artisans who made up the Revolution's striking force. They wore trousers adapted to physical work as opposed to the breeches and silk stockings 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

• An unreadable proclamation behind glass and an unexplained funerary accessory, the portrait alone having interest.  

• For the guillotine, this image alone:

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 

Seizure of the Tuileries Palace. This painting is at the Musée du Château de Versailles: At the Carnavalet there is no reference to the event that ended monarchy. 

And this famous picture of a sans culotte —  absent for five of my six visits — finally appeared in a dark corner:

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

The presentation is not only arid, but hard to see.

Otherwise one finds them only at the back of the last room, behind proclamations, portraits of middle-class leaders... 

And a much more obvious game for kids.

# # #

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