Tuesday, July 20, 2021

COUNTER-POWER TO VERSAILLES

"THOSE MAGNIFICENT GARDENS BECAME THE MEETING-PLACE OF FOREINGERS, DEBAUCHEES, IDLERS AND ESPECIALLY AGITATORS...

The most radical speeches were given in the cafés or in the garden itself. An orator would climb up on a table, and, gathering a crowd around him, excite it by the most violent language, which was never punished, for the multitude reigned. 

Men thought to be devoted to the Duke of Orleans were the most ardent... ." 
-History of the French Revolution by Adolphe Thiers, 1854 (in French)

        Paperblog, no source given; please scroll down

The phrase "Let them eat cake" was invented there as were
violent, often pornographic images against the monarchy.

Some of the milder ones:

    This and the next two images are from the web, without sources.

"Live free or die" 

"The aristocratic hydra:" Its heads are cut off. 


"The two are one:"
Louis wears a cuckold's horns and snakes spring from Marie Antoinette's coiffure.

# # #

At a time of extreme tension* Parisians thought that 30,000 soldiers called from the frontier to maintain order had come to massacre. When a young lawyer jumped up on a table and made the first call to arms, the crowd rushed off to find muskets, two days later stormed the Bastille and the French Revolution began.

The site was the Café de Foy...

Nineteenth-century illustration sold on the web / zoom

The video begins with scenes of the activity at Palais-Royal: please click

.
Sic transit. 

*    *    *

Next,




No comments: