FRENCH TROOPS DELIBERATELY DEVASTATE PART OF WESTERN GERMANY
(IN 1674 AND STILL MORE IN 1689)
Louis wants a desert to protect the French frontier.
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French schoolbook:
L'Incendie du château de Heidelberg by Maurice Leloir in "Le Roy Soleil" by Gustave Toudouze, 1931
That laying waste should be carried out without hate or ideological fervor by relatively disciplined troops shocked more than at other times.
- Proof of deliberateness: Certain populations were given a week's notice to leave, and helped with wagons and supplies. Some became the ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the United States (article in French, note 11).
- Pillaging had always been a way to pay troops, and devastation reduced the adversaries' resources. During the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) religious fanaticism had made things worse, but it was not a thought-out practice.
Combat d'infantrie avec un village en feu by Sebastian Vrancx (toward 1640) / zoom
- In the 18th century, that warfare was supposed to be limited is shown by the famous line, « Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers » ("English gentlemen, shoot first"), though the English would be helpless as they recharged their muskets.
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How remembered in Germany: Heidelberg castle
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| Heidelberg Castle by Gerrit Berckheyd, 1670, zoom |
- Anonymous pamphlet, 1693
"The Residence of the Prince-Electors, Lamentably Damaged and Abandoned by the Barbarous French: the Town of Heidelberg"
- German schoolbook, 1858
"The Destruction of Heidelberg by the French in 1689"
- The château was never repaired and its ruins stoked the wish for revenge.
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The power the arch proclaims was real for 15 years: "The great king of Christendom asserted his law as far as Sweden and Brandenburg. He ruled over the universe, less by force than by admiration. I loved him timidly."
-- L'Allée du roi, respected historical novel by Françoise Chandeneggor, 1981 (slightly changed)
Then it brought an alliance that almost crushed the kingdom. On his deathbed Louis expressed his regret:
By Maurice Leloir in Le Roy Soleil
"He had the Dauphin approach and said,
'My child, you will be a great king; do not imitate me [...] in the taste I had for war; try on the contrary, to have peace with your neighbors [...] and to relieve your subjects, which unfortunately I did not do.' "
-- Journal de la maladie du roi, "Louis XIV et sa cour par le duc de Saint-Simon,"
1994 ed, p. 259 (shortened)
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Ripples:
"The French used to be thought honest, humaine, civil, of a spirit opposed to barbarism; but today neighbors think a French person and a cannibal are about the same."
-- Attributed to Pierre Jurieu, a Calvinist pastor: for a full account in French, please click
So...
- During the Franco-Prussian war (of 1870-1871) Prussian troops bombarded Paris with particular violence in the hours before the armistice, and Bismarck emphasized revenge by proclaiming the German Empire in Versailles's Hall of Mirrors, under a painting of victorious Louis XIV (please click and scroll down).
The Seven Years' War and Napoleon's invasion did not leave comparable memories.
- German annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine was said to prevent another French invasion.
- The French wish to retake the "lost provinces" contributed to World War I.
Monument à Jeanne d'Arc by Emmanuel Frémiet, place des Pyramides |
- That led to the deliberately humiliating Treaty of Versailles and occupation of the Rhineland, acts that encouraged Hitler's rise to power.
- Germans were terrified of the French army re-entering the country in 1944, fearing a repetition of the 17th-century horrors.
Yet on a tour I guided to the Normandy Landing Beaches some French visitors refused to leave the bus to visit German soldiers' tombs, and my 20-year-old German cousins fear being called Nazis if they come to France.
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Imagine the effect of the arc when houses were lower:
Advancing toward the arc leads to pondering hubris.
If one knows a story
that has been largely forgotten.
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Next,
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