V. CRADLE OF UPHEAVAL

 5. MENU: Cradle of upheaval

PARIS IS CALLED "THE CITY OF LOVE," BUT ITS UPRISINGS TELL ANOTHER STORY 

     Ad on the Louvre

Barricade, Chaussée Ménilmontant, March 18,1871, when La Commune broke out / Zoom, musée Carnavalet

Not exhibited 

Mainstream accounts avoid them.

These pages address that gap.

In brief

• "Objective history sticks to the facts:" Which facts? 

• 1830: the people fooled

• 1848: fooled again

• The first mass working-class insurrection brings modern Europe's first mass massacre

• The historical museum and the insurrections

• Fear, unlikely promoter of urban grandeur

• Remaking the city

• Gifts of the repression

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Next,
5.1.

"Objective history sticks to the facts:" Which facts?

5.1. "OBJECTIVE HISTORY STICKS TO THE FACTS:" WHICH FACTS?

 MENU: 5.1. History: which facts?

ALL VIEWS ARE SUBJECTIVE BECAUSE ONE IS OBLIGED TO CHOOSE SOME FACTS AND LEAVE OUT OTHERS  

Choices are based on a point of view, such as identity, kinds of sociéty or drama 

 

Identity, Washington crossing the Delaware, Bonaparte at the bridge of Arcole; kinds of society, Lenin mobilizing the Proletariat, Washington at Mount Vernon); drama, L'Éxecution de Robespierre

These pages, on the other hand, 

stress underlying economic and social forces.   

       Liberty Guides the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1831 / zoom

This iconic work concerns the upheaval of 1830, which by definitively ending nobles' control of the State, let capitalism flower. That's almost never said. 

In brief

• "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" lets capitalism take wing   

• The Revolution of 1830: capitalism's neglected triumph 

• Is some history boring on purpose?

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Next:

5.1.1.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" lets capitalism take wing

"LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY" LETS CAPITALISM TAKE WING

IN PRACTICE...

• Liberty means free enterprise. 

• Equality ends the nobles' privileges that limit business growth. 

• Fraternity calls up the masses to blow those privileges away.

The French Revolution is usually explained as due to archaic systems of land ownership, taxation and government finance, plus exceptionally poor harvests, the cost of aid to American revolutionaries, the extravagance and short-sightedness of the royal court and new ideas. 

One of the web's explanations 

Causes: Inequality / The poor have no power / Absolutism / Hunger

Not said: that economic growth made conflict between hereditary landowners and nascent capitalists inevitable, and that the latter had to call up the street to win.  

Painting gone from the web. For similar images, please click. 

Middle-class leader, popular striking force: But only the man with the blue head scarf at the bottom right appears to work with his hands.

# # #

When the explorations and discoveries of the end of the 15th century bring major new revenues, an unprecedented expansion of chains of production lets new entrepreneurs challenge the ruling class of hereditary landowners, the nobles. 

In France that brings:

• Stronger monarchy, which contains the new interests.

• Arts that buttress the threatened nobles by associating them with the gods of mythology.

• "Wars of Religion," that pit popular masses against entrepreneurs who challenge traditional protections.  

Nobles' legal privileges and control of the State hamper those interests, but do not stop their growth. By the 1780's establishments employing hundreds of workers have grown up around Paris:

   Pillage de a Folie-Titon [Réveillon] au Fbg. Saint-Antoine, April 28 1789, anonymous, end 18th century / zoom

A riot at Réveillon, with 200 employees, takes place two months before the taking of the Bastille. By opposing a rumored reduction of salaries rather than the cost of bread, it announces the struggle between capital and labor. 

Similar establishments: A company with 300 employees in what is now the 13th; plants north of the Saint-Denis gate, one of which has 800 workers; manufactories in Orleans and Rouen... .

-- In the 13th:

Éléments pour une history de la Commune dans le 13e arrondissement by Gérard Conte, 1981

-- In the north:

The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé, 1959

-- In Orleans and Rouen:

Les derniers feux [fires]de la monarchie by Charles-Eloi Vial, ch. 1, 2016

Entrepreneurs resent the nobles' privileges that block their expansion, and want political power that fits their economic clout. Nobles, whose revenues come largely from peasant dues that inflation reduces and whose values and upbringing make them ill-equipped for business resist (please click and scroll down).

The street provides the force that leads to them to hide, flee or be guillotined: "What had been pretension became tragedy."

-- Adolphe Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution française,1834

 

      Illustration in La Grande Révolution française by Georges Soria (ed. Bordas), 1988

# # #

Marx's summary of the French Revolution: "The dykes to capitalism had to be broken. They were broken."

But not quite.

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Next,

 5.1.2.

The 1830 Revolution: capitalists' neglected triumph

5.1.2. THE REVOLUTION OF 1830, CAPITALISTS' NEGLECTED TRIUMPH

THREE DAYS OF STREET FIGHTING PERMANENTLY SMASH THE NOBLES' HOLD, LETTING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TAKE OFF*

*Although selling confiscated land in small lots so that the wealthier peasants can buy them means that it takes place more slowly than elsewhere.

That's not said. This schoolbook of 1966 presents a list of political facts with no ties to tangible interests.* 

*A translation appears at the end of the page.

Recent textbooks divide the same facts into themes that are exclusively political. The economy appears in an unconnected chapter.  

# # #

Compare with this. Background:

• The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners, brewing since the 16th century, comes to a head with the French Revolution (1789-1794). Nobles lose their legal privileges and many of their lands, and a business-friendly society replaces that based on hereditary rank. 

• Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (1800-1815) and when he is defeated foreign monarchies impose a government that nobles, though they are weakened, take over again (1815-1830). 

Those events slow growth but do not stop it: 

• The Saint Martin canal, started in 1805 and stopped in 1809, is rebooted with peace in 1815 and finished in 1824. The industrialization of northern Paris, and the fortunes made from it, begin.  

Postcard, end of the 19th century / zoom

• The cemetery of the Holy Innocents undergoes a similar evolution. The plan to make it a marketplace only, launched just before the Revolution, is completed toward 1824.

• Developers build the maze of covered passages at the same time. "Vero-Dodat," is named after the two butchers who finance it:

     Zoom

# # #

Capitalists' pressure on the government grows.

•  When king Charles X loses elections he "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by suppressing voting power and press. That is the essence of the Ordonnances the textbook mentions.

*René de Chateaubriand, royalist writer. This account is based on his memoir, Souvenirs d'outre-tombe, 1848.

• Street fighting breaks out. 

Combat devant l'Hôtel de Ville le 28 juillet 1830 by Jean-Victor Schnetz, official commission, 1830  / zoom  

Like the picture with which this section begins, the assailants are shown as middle-class, though in fact they were almost entirely plebeian: more later.

• Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, the king plays cards in his château across the river. He does not even supply his troops. The famished soldiers do not defend the bridge and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack. He abdicates.

• Bankers make up the only organized force. They offer the throne to Louis-Philippe, head of the Bourbon monarchy's junior branch. 

          Louis-Philippe quitte Palais-Royal pour les Tuileries le 31 juillet 1830  by Horace Vernet / zoom

# # #

The upheaval brings the transformation that the infinitely more famous French Revolution began : 

• The deposed king and returned nobles are inseparable from the Church and the past, that is, to economic immobility:

               La Mort [death] de Charles X, print, 1836 / zoom

Charles X joins kings and heroes linked to them in Heaven.

• The gaze of this newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime exudes the authority that association with economic dynamism brings.

Portrait de Monsieur Bertin by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1832 / zoom

The seat emphasizes domination and the fingers look like claws.

Louis-Philippe is the son of despised Equality Philip, who voted for the death of Louis XVI, his cousin. Without legitimacy by heredity or election, he depends on the financiers who handed him the throne.

Calling the insurgency "The Three Glorious Days"

shows capitalists' jubilation at taking power at last.  

# # #

The schoolbook text:

"Did Polignac have to retire?The Charter did not oblige the king to choose his ministers among the Chamber's majority. Rather than cede, Charles X preferred dissolution, but the electors returned a hostile majority. Then the king, by the Four Ordinances pronounced the dissolution of the new Chamber, modified the electoral regime and the regime of the press by his own authority. It was a veritable coup d'état: the Charter did not allow the king to make up the law (July 25, 1830).

Pushed by secret societies where young republicans were numerous, by journalists, by patrons exciting their workers, the people of Paris revolted against the ordinances. The rebels flew the tricolor. After three days of street fighting (the "Three Glorious Days," July 27,28, 29 1830) in which the royal guard was engaged — the rest of the army abstained from fighting — the capital was lost for Charles X."

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Next,

 5.1.3.

Is some history purposely boring?

V.1.3. USELESS HISTORY'S UNWILLED EFFECT

TRIVIAL ANECDOTES AND STRINGS OF FACT DIVORCED FROM CONTEXT BUTTRESS THE RIGHT 

"Louis XIV wasn't very tall" said a guide in front of the king's statue at the musée Carnavalet. Details to which one can say "So what?" lighten up facts that make no sense, as in the textbook with which the preceding page begins.

Such narration discredits History itself, erasing a tool that helps identify real problems and deadly opponents.

It — involuntarily — protects the powerful. 

End of this section.

*    *    *

Next section,

V.2.

1830: The people fooled

 

SOCIAL CLASSES WHOSE GOALS DIVERGE

ALL REBELS OF 1830 WANT A REPUBLIC — WITH OPPOSING GOALS

The unity between the humble and the middle class in the painting that the new government commissioned lasts for about six months.

           Le duc d'Orléans en route vers l'Hôtel de Ville croise la place du Châtelet, 31 juillet 1830 by Prosper Lafaye, 1830 / zoom

By "republic" all meant a government without a king, but for...

• Students, journalists and intellectuals it meant universal male suffrage, a free press and legal but not social equality. Their models were figures of Antiquity, whose societies were based on slavery. Many assumed that the poor must work so that an elite (that is, themselves) could create.

-- Writers against the Commune by Paul Lidsky, 1999

• "The people," who were usually shopkeepers, artisans and employees* it simply meant a society that was more just. Their models were egalitarian jacobins of the French Revolution, who might be their grandparents. 

*George Rudé's analysis for the sans-culottes in the French Revolution applies to later times as well (The crowd in the French Revolution, 1959).  

# # #

Adversaries of both: The victors of 1830, who were bankers, industrialists, top officials and the privileged as a whole.

• Republicans were "those degraded offspring of the bourgeoisie, who to fruitful and calming work prefer deceptive political discussions in the taverns, and raising, exciting, guiding the worker who, without them, would stay quietly at his labor." 

-- Souvenirs de l'année 1848 by Maxime du Camp, 1876 

-- Nineteenth-century illustration, Internet, source unknown

• A republic meant anarchy, monarchy meant order: "The dike against the torrent that will sweep us away is the king, only the king...

-- Lucien Leuwen by Stendhal, 1836, unpublished in his lifetime because he feared that his critical irony would cost him his job as a government official. 

 "44 francs for the frame and five for the lithograph"

Portrait of Louis-Philippe in Lucien Leuwen 

The young, honest, inexperienced protagonist is sent by his minister to the provinces, where he shocks interlocutors by truthful remarks. Next day "Lucien was so tired that he said nothing out of place, and was found entirely acceptable."  

Knowing little about each other

and faced with a common enemy,

republicans with divergent goals ally.

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Next,

 5.2.2. 

Faceless poor and bourgeois heroes

FACELESS POOR AND BOURGEOIS HEROES

THE HUMBLE APPEAR AS AN ANONYMOUS MASS, AS CLICHÉS OR AS THREATS

Paintings about the 1830 upheaval show bourgeois rebels full-faced and individual, and the humble as a crowd, as in traditional representations of war (please click and scroll down).

• The profile of an underclass fighter appears on the left, while three middle-class figures emerge full-face in the right:

Combat à la rue Rohan, 29 juillet 1830 by Hypolyte Lecomte, 1831, zoom

 

• Figures with recognizable faces are two student leaders, a well-dressed corpse, someone with a top hat, a man in an elegant brown jacket fighting a guard and three guards. The white shirts of two plebeians* light up the center, but they themselves are seen from behind:

*For the association of those shirts with the working class, please click and scroll down to the drawing of the furious militant.

La Prise du Louvre, le 29 juillet 1830, massacre des gardes suisses by Louis Bezard, 1832 / zoom

# # #

In fiction "good poor" are saints, victims, devoted servants or grateful beneficiaries of upper-class charity.

• Les Misérables (1862). The hero is a former peasant and escaped convict, who has spent 14 years in the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sick and starving sister. He lifts a cart to save a victim, though he knows that will identify him and send him back to prison:

• Les Mystères de Paris (the first French crime novel, a best seller in 1848). The heroine, an angelic former prostitute, turns out to be the daughter of a prince. To atone for her former profession, which she exercised only for a week and under duress, she becomes a nun. Then she dies. ("Fallen women" are always punished, even if they repent.)

• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). The hero is so notoriously docile that an insult among Black is "Uncle Tom."

• Little Women (1866). The girls give their Christmas breakfast, which a loyal servant has prepared, to a poor woman with small children and a newborn. "Angels!" she exclaims. "Funny angels in mittens and scarves," says the heroine, whose humor does not hide the author's complacency:

Zoom

# # #

The poor who do not fit these stereotypes are threats:

• Les Mystères de Paris. The villainess who forces the heroine into prostitution represents the criminal poor, without background or nuance:

• L'Histoire de l'Hôtel de Ville. A second-rate novel interesting for platitudes on the middle-class hero and underclass criminals:

Les Oubliettes [dungeons] du Grand-Châtelet [the main prison] by Jules Beaujoint, 1882

# # #

The contempt of a middle-class battalion commander for his working-class colleague...

How astonished we were when we learned that, without the least knowledge of how to handle a sword, the head of our battalion sought to console himself of his ignorance in trying to handle the pen.   

Citizen Varlin, allow me to tell you that the 193rd battalion forgives you, easily and without rancor, for the strange mind warp of which you are subject; we perfectly understand that the sudden transformation of a man who trades the tools that he never should have left for a sword too heavy for his forces would confuse the most solid mind." 

-- Extract of a letter to Eugène Varlin (please scroll down) 

during the siege of Paris in 1870,

cited in My Paris Commune (in French)

The alliance between republicans

 cannot last. 

 

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Next,

5.2.3. 

More on bourgeois heros