IV. THE CITY OF REVOLT AND MASSACRE

 4. MENU: The city of revolt and massacre

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

Ad on the Louvre

Painting gone from the web

Mainstream accounts mention the as little as possible. These pages address that gap.

In brief

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

• Fear, promoter of urban grandeur

• Modern Europe's first great massacre

• Remaking the city

• La Commune

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Next,
4.1.

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

IV. 1. "OBJECTIVE HISTORY STICKS TO THE FACTS:" WHICH FACTS?

 MENU: 4.1. History: which facts?

ALL VIEWS ARE SUBJECTIVE BECAUSE ONE MUST CHOOSE WHAT FACTS TO INCLUDE OR LEAVE OUT  

Typical choices emphasize identity (Washington crossing the Delaware, Bonaparte at the bridge of Arcole), kinds of society (Lenin mobilizing the Proletariat, Washington at Mount Vernon) or drama (The Execution of Robespierre).  

This section contrasts narrating political facts with no or little tie to tangible interests, and stressing underlying economic forces.

It uses the French upheavals of 1789-1830 as examples.

        Liberty Guides the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1831 / zoom

Many people think the most famous work created in France concerns the French Revolution. In fact it celebrates the Revolution of 1830, its often overlooked conclusion.

In brief

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

• The Revolution of 1830: capitalism's forgotten triumph 

• Boring history, a political weapon

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Next:

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" lets capitalism take wing

"LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY" LETS CAPTALISM TAKE WING

IN PRACTICE...

• Liberty means free enterprise. 

• Equality brings the end the nobles' privileges that limit business growth. 

• Fraternity calls up the rank and file to blow those privileges away.

Zoom

Middle-class leader, underclass striking force

The reasons usually given for the French Revolution are a background of archaic systems of land ownership, taxation and government finance, to which were added exceptionally poor harvests, the cost of aid to American revolutionaries, the extravagance of the royal court and new ideas. 

Not said: that economic growth made conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners inevitable — one way or another. 

• When the explorations and discoveries of roughly 1500 bring unprecedented expansion of chains of production, new entrepreneurs  — producers of supplies, cloth, ships, sails, nails, raisers of horses and mules — threaten the ruling class of hereditary landowners, the nobles. 

That evolution leads in France to stronger monarchy, which contains the new interests; to associating nobles with the gods of mythology; to "Wars of Religion," that pit popular masses against entrepreneurs who challenge traditional protections.  

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

   Pillage of la Folie-Titon [Réveillon] on 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 reacting against 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; several plants north of the Saint-Denis gate, one of which has 800 workers; manufactories in Orleans and Rouen... .

-- In the 13th:

Elements for a History of the Commune in the 13th Dstrict by Gérard Conte, 1981 (in French)

-- In the north:

The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé, 1982

-- In Orleans and Rouen:

The Monarchy's Last Fires by Charles-Eloi Vial, ch. 1, 2016 (in French)

• Those entrepreneurs resent the nobles' privileges that block their expansion, and want political power that fits their economic clout. Nobles, whose revenues come from peasant dues that inflation reduces and whose values and upbringing make them ill-equipped for business, resist. 

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

-- Adolphe Thiers, History of the French Revolution,1834 (in French)

      Illustration in The Great French Revolution by Georges Soria (ed. Bordas) in French, 1988

# # #

Marx's summary:

 "The dykes to capitalism had to be broken. 

They were broken." 

But not quite.

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Next,

The 1830 Revolution: capitalists' forgotten triumph

THE REVOLUTION OF 1830, CAPITALISTS' FORGOTTEN TRIUMPH

MOST FOREIGNERS HAVE NOT HEARD OF IT AND MOST

FRENCH PEOPLE BARELY RECALL IT 

This schoolbook of 1966 presents a list of political facts that have no link with underlying issues.* 

*A translation appears at the end of the page.

Why should elections bring a "hostile majority?" What pressures lead the king to dissolve the Chamber, change voting laws and suppress the press? 

Instead of a struggle between emerging capitalists and nobles that the economic evolution weakens, teens learn the term "Four Ordinances" — and to reject history as a whole. 

Recent textbooks split the same facts into themes that though easier to remember are as incomprehensible. The economy is described in another chapter, which is unconnected.

# # #

Now try this:

The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners just described, which has been gathering steam since the 16th century and explains the Revolution itself, takes place over five years of drama (1789-1794). Abolishing their privileges and confiscating the lands of those who have fled greatly reduces

nobles' power.

Capitalists win. But Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (from roughly 1800 to 1815). Then the victorious foreign monarchies impose the Restauration, and the old authorities return.

Those developments 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 to be 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 full-time marketplace, launched just before the Revolution, is completed in the early 1820's.

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

Zoom

Faced with elections that go against him, the king "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by the measures just mentioned. Street fighting breaks out. Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, he plays cards until his famished troops are pushed back and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack him in his chateau across the river (Saint-Cloud). He abdicates.

*René de Chateaubriand, an important royalist writer and a rare perceptive member of the king's entourage.

Combat Before City Hall on July 28, 1830 by Jean-Victor Schnetz, official commission, 1830  / zoom  

Bankers offer the throne to Louis-Philippe, head of the Bourbon monarchy's junior branch. 

Louis-Philippe Leaves Palais-Royal for the Tuileries on July 31 by Horace Vernet / zoom

Without the legitimacy of heredity or election and son of the execrated Equality Philip, the regicide who voted for the guillotining of his cousin Louis XVI, the new king depends on them.

The Industrial Revolution takes off.

# # #

Compare the overthrown ruler and the victorious elite: 

•  Figures of the monarchy that royalists admire welcome the king to Heaven.

The Death of Charles X, print, 1836 / zoom

•  A newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime: The armchair underscores power and the fingers look like claws.

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

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,

 History, a political tool

BORING HISTORY, A POLITICAL TOOL

BEING YAWN-INSPIRING ERASES UNDERSTANDING THE PAST — AND A WAY TO DECODE THE PRESENT   

End of this short section.

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Next section,

IV.1.1.

Republican misunderstandings

IV. 1.1. REPUBLICAN MISUNDERSTANDINGS

MENU: 4.1.1. Republican misunderstandings

THE REBELS OF 1830 WERE ALL REPUBLICANS, THE HUMBLE FOLLOWING THE BOURGEOIS... FOR AWHILE

Liberty Guides the People (detail) by Eugène Delacroix,1831 / zoom

Placing the worker behind the man in the top hat reveals the artist's prejudice (please scroll down). But it corresponds to the reality of 1830, when thousands of street fighters followed about 200 students.

In brief

• Social classes whose interests diverge 

• Faceless poor and bourgeois heroes

• More on bourgeois heroes

• An intelligent ogre checks in

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Social classes whose interests diverge

SOCIAL CLASSES WHOSE INTERESTS DIVERGE

ALL THE REBELS OF 1830 WANTED A REPUBLIC — WITH CONTRARY GOALS 

A painting the new government commissioned shows the humble and the middle class united:

The Duke of Orleans, on the way to City Hall, crosses place du Châtelet on July 31 1830 by Prosper Lafaye, toward 1830 

 For more on this work of propaganda, please click.

That would not last. For students, journalists and intellectuals a "republic" meant government without a king, with universal male suffrage, a free press and legal but not social equality.

•  Many assumed that the poor must work so that an elite (that is, themselves) could create.

-- Writers against the Commune by Paul Lidsky, 1999

• Their models were figures of Antiquity, whose societies were based on slavery. 

For "the people," who were usually shopkeepers, artisans and employees...* 

* Opponents call them the dregs of humanity ("la lie du peuple") but police records show that marginals were rare ( The crowd in the French Revolution by Georges Rudé (1959). That conclusion applies to later times as well.

• It meant a more just society.

• Their models were egalitarian jacobins of the French Revolution, who might be their grandparents. 

# # #

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

• Republicans are "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." 

-- Memories of the year 1848 by Maxime du Camp, 1876 (in French)

-- Nineteenth-century illustration, Internet, source not said

• They associate republicans with anarchy and monarchy with 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 ironically critical novel 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 his truthful remarks shock his interlocutors. But 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,

Faceless poor and bourgeois heroes

FACELESS POOR AND BOURGEOIS HEROES

THE HUMBLE: IN PAINTINGS THEY ARE AN ANONYMOUS MASS, IN LITERATURE CLICHÉS OR THREATS

Paintings on 1830 show the few middle-class rebels in the center and full-face, the humble as part of a crowd, as in paintings of war (please scroll down).

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

Fighting on rue Rohan, July 29, 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 are seen from behind:

Taking the Louvre, July 29, 1830, Massacre of the Swiss Guards 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:

• The Mysteries of 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:

• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). The hero is so notoriously docile that among Blacks it is an insult to be called an "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:

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

• The History of City Hall. A second-rate novel interesting for its platitudes, contrasts middle-class hero and underclass criminal:

       The Dungeons of the Grand-Châtelet by Jules Beaujoint / 1882 (in French) 

# # #

Chain of thought: the contempt of a middle-class battalion commander for his working-class colleague...

"How great was our astonishment when we we learned that, not knowing how to wield the sword, our battalion commander sought to sooth his ignorance by trying to wield 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 abandoned for a sword to 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,

More on bourgeois heros