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work in progress: essay

In the course of my research for an essay on the (so-called) “génocide vendéen”, I stumbled upon Claude Petitfrère’s article La Vendée en l'an II : défaite et répression, which deals with the last phase of the war in the Vendée. After arguing against the application of the term “genocide” to the repression in the Vendée, Petitfrère goes on to explore the complex enjeux of this term:

The way that we call things does not change anything about their reality. So, why fight over a matter of vocabulary? Because, surely, words are not innocent, especially the anachronistic term « genocide », due to its historical, emotional and symbolical load. Some people act as if the battle was not about the reconstruction of past events, or the understanding of them, but about the defence of a philosophy, of an ideology, about the use of historians and of their certainties, in a way, rather than about history. The intention seems evident in this phrase of Pierre Chaunu: « the Jacobin dérive appears today as nothing more than the first act, the foundational event of a long and bloody series, which goes from 1792 to our days, from the génocide franco-français of the Catholic Ouest to the Soviet gulag, to the destructions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and to the Khmer Rouge auto-genocide at Cambodia […] ».

It is not hard to see where this leads. Morally condemning the First Republic, the Revolution in its totality, even the « Enlightenment », considered as a homogeneous bloc, it is a matter of discrediting all those who, from nearby or from afar, invoke the principles of ‘89 […].

La Vendée en l'an II : défaite et répression (Claude Petitfrère), in: Annales historiques de la Révolution française, n° 300 (1995), 184f.

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During my research for an essay on the war in the Vendée and the historiography that has come to surround it, I stumbled upon a very … peculiar book: Le livre noir de la Révolution française, published on 21 January (!) 2008. Instead of attempting to write something elaborate on this publication, I will content myself with quoting Hervé Leuwers’ introduction to his review of it.

There are books of which a journal dedicated to scientific research and debate should not speak; Le livre noir de la Révolution française is one of them. But it can be found on bookshop stalls, it appears in the press and on websites… The title, the date of publication (21 January) and the content do not leave any doubt, and every historian, every informed reader, will be quick to understand its nature and to react with anger or scorn. If it was only a matter of ignorance on the part of the authors, or of a coup commercial by the editor, no doubt, silence would impose itself; but when manipulation mingles with supposedly historical discourse, silence is no longer appropriate.

Hervé Leuwers’ review of Le livre noir de la Révolution française (2008), published in Annales historiques de la Révolution française, n° 351 (2008), p. 225.

In case you are interested, I highly recommend reading Leuwers’ full review.

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24 August 1792. Two weeks earlier the monarchy had been overthrown. Within the last week, General Lafayette had defected, the Prussians had invaded, and the fortress town of Longwy had just fallen, though Paris did not yet know. In the midst of this ferment, the playwright Marie-Joseph Chénier led a delegation of Parisian citizens to the bar of the Assembly, petition in hand. He urged the deputies to offer full French citizenship to a list of “courageous philosophers who have sapped the foundations of tyranny.” The Legislative Assembly […] took time for a hot debate of Chénier’s proposal. Two days later, eighteen foreigners – ranging from British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson to writer of the United States Constitution James Madison – were pronounced French citizens, with full political rights.

Certainly, this act was meant to play on the cosmopolitan stage of the Enlightened public sphere of Europe. But this granting of citizenship was not purely performative of honorary. Three of the adopted citizens – Tom Paine, the Prussian Anacharsis Cloots, and the Englishman Joseph Priestley – were soon elected as deputies to the new Convention, though only the first two would serve. The decree’s supporters made the politics clear: if the republic was to be universal, it must be a global creation from the outset; the National Convention would be, in Chénier’s words, “a congress of the whole world.” This idea immediately provoked the resistance and anxiety of some deputies. “You are delivering the Convention to foreigners!” exclaimed the deputy Claude Basire at one point mid-debate. And invasion by outsiders was not the only threat. Lasource warned that the Assembly should not give away this glorious title of French citizenship so lightly. To build a republic was a fragile and controversial act. “If you set about giving this tile to those who have not asked for it, wouldn’t you risk suffering the humiliation of refusal?” […]

On one level, the events of 24-26 August 1792 – tied to a particular political moment – show how issues of foreigners and foreign policy became entangled with domestic policy […]. One another, broader level, this event performs crucial ideological work for the new republic. […] Historians have largely situated the origins of republican universalism in the Enlightenment discourse of natural rights. For the French revolutionaries, “universalism” meant that the legitimacy of the nation – the very sovereignty of the nation itself – rested on the defense of universal human rights and on guaranteeing equality before the law. While some scholars have stressed the exclusionary contradictions of this ideology, others have emphasized that it also enabled various groups of people to demand rights. Republican universalism had both exclusionary and liberationist potential, and the issue of inclusion/exclusion is clearly pivotal.

Foreigners, Cosmopolitanism, and French Revolutionary Universalism (S. Desan), in: The French Revolution in Global Perspective (edited by S. Desan, L. Hunt, W. M. Nelson).

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In the first months of their occupation of Egypt [in 1798], the French launched an extraordinarily ambitious program of social and political transformation, creating a central consultative body called the Diwan, composed of Muslims, Copts, and Syrian Catholics, to rule the country, with a local equivalent in each province. They began reshaping the urban fabric of Cairo and other cities, demolishing buildings, clearing boulevards, erecting bread ovens, restaurants, and theaters, dredging canals, and constructing windmills. The large body of scholars, along with at least one local participant, was immediately formed into an academy – the Institut d’Égypte – which met regularly. Its reports were printed by a press that also produced Egypt’s first newspapers, Le Courier de l’Égypte and La Décade Égyptienne. As in France, the year was divided up into ten-day weeks, marked not by religious holidays, but by revolutionary festivals. These days were celebrated in Egypt, with all the republican trappings – tricolor flags, sashes and cockades, liberty trees, and fireworks.

On the first day of Vendémiaire, Year 7 (22 September 1798), a festival to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the republic was ordered in Ezbekkiya Square, in a great field “decorated with as many columns as there are departments in the French republic, in the centre of which a pyramid will be erected with seven sides on which the names of those brave soldiers killed in liberating Egypt from the tyranny of the Mamluks will be inscribed.” The authorities “both French and Turkish” were ordered to process toward the palace of the general in chief, Bonaparte, who would appear on a platform with an obelisk, to the acclaim of the troops singing hymns and patriotic songs “to the prosperity of the French republic and the friendly republics [républiques amies].” The festival was celebrated not only in Cairo but in all the towns and villages where the French contingents were stationed. In the town of Atfiéli, the Courier de l’Égypte reported, French officers, members of the Divan, and the aga of the Janissaries gathered with a crowd of inhabitants: “The general read to the Arabs in a speech written in their language, containing an account of the principal events of our Revolution and bearing witness to the wish and hope to see these peoples enjoy the same happiness as the French, and return to their former greatness.” This was as ambitious an installation as had been attempted in any of the other territories annexed or invaded by the French at that time.

Egypt in the French Revolution (Ian Coller), in: The French Revolution in Global Perspective (edited by Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, William Max Nelson).

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The Revolution wanted to change everything, from top to bottom; returning man to nature and nature to man in an immense gesture of parthenogenesis, in a permanent movement of total regeneration, in a spiral of infinite perfectibility. […] Thirteen years [after 1789], […] gradually emerging in its complexity, in its novelty, the question of animal rights appeared to a small enlightened minority; and thus, logically, the question of the right to eat animals arose.

This was not a new question. Without going back to the ancient thinkers […], since the start of the troubles, the policier-philosophe Peuchet had sensed that the Revolution could go even further in its changes of the world. Amidst the pages dedicated to the police in L’Encyclopédie méthodique, in the article « Animal », published from 1790, the reader grasps a very modern thought and a radical political ambition for the police in the city regenerated by the destruction of the Ancien Régime. Peuchet develops a vegetarian thought and proposes it to the police officers as a civic and civil ethic. At least, he constructs his political system on the fact that all imbalances of the social world and all the violence of civilisation have begun with the first of transgressions, which has denatured the essence of man when he dared to eat an animal:

But what have we done to reward these services [of the working animals]? We have abandoned them to hunger and to pain when illnesses or old age made them useless to us, or we have killed them, slaughtered them in order to satisfy our voracious and denatured appetite, I say denatured because it is against the natural order that a living and sensitive being becomes the food of another of the same type. […] If a kind of necessity, a barbarous custom forces us to make the animals serve for our nourishment, if, in spite of all the ills attached to this deterioration of the primitive character of man who was surely not born to life on meat, we are in some way forced to form cities, [and to commit] so many killings, to outrage nature everyday in order to satisfy our precarious needs, let us at least content ourselves with these disorders, and not voluntarily add others.

While man can live on insensitive substances, contrary to carnivorous animals, he has accustomed himself to tolerating the cries of the animals that he kills, to see their blood flow, to feast on their flesh. For Peuchet, the consequence is obvious:

Can this be surprising when one sees men slaughtering each other, taking vengeance of some kind on each other, through this barbarism, excesses of which they make themselves guilty towards the other creatures? Or let us rather consider this ardour of murder, this hostile character, this desire, this thirst for blood, as the terrible effect of the habit of killing animals, as the necessary consequence of the barbarous custom of enjoying their torments.

Thus, for the policier-philosophe, every homicidal crime has its origin in the murdering of animals. Having broken down this first barricade, the one of the lawful killing of animals, humans have come to accept murdering each other, like wild beasts.

L’Animal en République (Pierre Serna), p. 187-189.

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Historiography of the Revolution

Taking inspiration from one of my lecturers at university, I want to offer a brief overview of contemporary historiography of the French Revolution by introducing its most prominent historians, as well as their respective focuses of research and some of their works.

History does not exist in a vacuum, it is written and (in some sense) created by humans; it is dynamic, living and breathing – particularly the history of the French Revolution. My intention is to introduce some of the excellent people behind this history: academics who contribute to our understanding of the Revolution, and who shape the way we see the revolutionary era. Additionally, I hope that I can help in making the French historiography of the Revolution a bit more overseeable and accessible for those who are interested in learning more about it.

I will concentrate exclusively on contemporary French / Francophone historians, since they often receive relatively little attention in an international context, compared to their Anglo-American counterparts. Furthermore, I will confine myself to established academics who have already written several books on the Revolution, and who have published within the last few years. (If you have any ideas for further additions to this list, let me know.)

Michel Biard (*1957)

university: Université de Rouen

focus of research: cultural history, history of the National Convention

notable works: Missionnaires de la République (2002), La liberté ou la mort (2015), Terreur et Révolution française (2016), La Révolution hantée (2017)

Hervé Leuwers (*1963)

university: Université Lille 3

focus of research: history of justice and law, biographies of revolutionaries

notable works: L'invention du barreau français (2006), La Révolution française et l'Empire (2011), Robespierre (2014), Camille et Lucile Desmoulins (2018)

Sophie Wahnich

focus of research: foreignness, “terrorism”, history of emotions & sensibilité

notable works: L'impossible citoyen (1997), La liberté ou la mort (2003), La longue patience du peuple (2008), La Révolution française n'est pas un mythe (2017)

Michel Vovelle (*1933)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (emeritus)

focus of research: cultural history, histoire des méntalités, dechristianisation

notable works: La mentalité révolutionnaire (1985), 1793. La Révolution contre l'Église (1986), La découverte de la politique (1993), La bataille du Bicentenaire de la Révolution française (2017)

Jean-Clément Martin (*1948)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (emeritus)

focus of research: war in the Vendée, counter-revolution, gender history

notable works: La Vendée et la France (1987), Violence et Révolution (2006), Robespierre: la fabrication d'un monstre (2016), La Terreur (2017)

Dominique Godineau (*1958)

university: Université Rennes-II

focus of research: women’s history

notable works: Citoyennes tricoteuses (1988), S'abréger les jours (2012), Les femmes dans la France moderne (2015)

Pierre Serna (*1963)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne

focus of research: the Atlantic Revolutions, the “extreme centre”, animal rights

notable works: La République des girouettes (2005), L'animal en République: genèse des droits des bêtes (2016), Comme des bêtes (2017)

Bernard Gainot

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne

focus of research: colonialism & colonial history, the abolition of slavery

notable works: 1799, un nouveau Jacobinisme? (2001), Les officiers de couleur dans les armées de la République et de l'Empire (2007), L'Empire colonial français (2015), La Révolution des esclaves (2017)

Annie Jourdan

university: Universiteit van Amsterdam

focus of research: transnational political & cultural transfers

notable works: Mythes et légendes de Napoléon (2004), La Révolution, une exception française? (2005), La Révolution batave (2008), Nouvelle histoire de la Révolution (2018)

Yannick Bosc

university: Université de Rouen

focus of research: republicanism, droit naturel, historiography

notable works: Les voix de la Révolution française (1990), Robespierre. La fabrication d’un mythe (2013), La terreur des droits de l’homme (2016)

Marc Belissa

university: Université Paris-Nanterre

focus of research: international relations, diplomacy, droit des gens

notable works: Fraternité universelle et intérêt national (1998), Repenser l'ordre européen (2006), Robespierre. La fabrication d’un mythe (2013)

Florence Gauthier

university: Université Paris-Diderot

focus of research: droits naturels, the abolition of slavery, colonial history

notable works: La voie paysanne dans la révolution française (1977), L'aristocratie de l'épiderme (2007), Triomphe et mort de la révolution des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (re-edition, 2014)

Jacques Guilhaumou (*1948)

focus of research: revolutionary language

notable works: La langue politique et la Révolution française (1989), L'avènement des porte-parole de la république (1998), Cognition et ordre social chez Sieyès (2018)

Guillaume Mazeau (*1975)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne

focus of research: Charlotte Corday, the assassination of Marat

notable works: Le bain de l'histoire (2009), Pour quoi faire la Révolution (2012), Un révolutionnaire malgré lui (2016)

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Historiography of the Revolution

Michel Biard (*1957)

university: Université de Rouen

focus of research: cultural history, history of the National Convention

notable works: Missionnaires de la République (2002), La liberté ou la mort (2015), Terreur et Révolution française (2016), La Révolution hantée (2017)

Hervé Leuwers (*1963)

university: Université Lille 3

focus of research: history of justice and law, biographies of revolutionaries

notable works: L'invention du barreau français (2006), La Révolution française et l'Empire (2011), Robespierre (2014), Camille et Lucile Desmoulins (2018)

Sophie Wahnich

focus of research: foreignness, “terrorism”, history of emotions & sensibilité

notable works: L'impossible citoyen (1997), La liberté ou la mort (2003), La longue patience du peuple (2008), La Révolution française n'est pas un mythe (2017)

Michel Vovelle (*1933)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (emeritus)

focus of research: cultural history, histoire des méntalités, dechristianisation

Jean-Clément Martin (*1948)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (emeritus)

focus of research: war in the Vendée, counter-revolution, gender history

notable works: La Vendée et la France (1987), Violence et Révolution (2006), Robespierre: la fabrication d'un monstre (2016), La Terreur (2017)

Dominique Godineau (*1958)

university: Université Rennes-II

focus of research: women’s history

notable works: Citoyennes tricoteuses (1988), S'abréger les jours (2012), Les femmes dans la France moderne (2015)

Pierre Serna (*1963)

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne

focus of research: the Atlantic Revolutions, the “extreme centre”, animal rights

notable works: La République des girouettes (2005), L'animal en République: genèse des droits des bêtes (2016), Comme des bêtes (2017)

Bernard Gainot

university: Université Panthéon-Sorbonne

focus of research: colonialism & colonial history, the abolition of slavery

Annie Jourdan

university: Universiteit van Amsterdam

focus of research: transnational political & cultural transfers

notable works: Mythes et légendes de Napoléon (2004), La Révolution, une exception française? (2005), La Révolution batave (2008), Nouvelle histoire de la Révolution (2018)

Yannick Bosc

university: Université de Rouen

focus of research: republicanism, droit naturel, historiography

notable works: Les voix de la Révolution française (1990), Robespierre. La fabrication d’un mythe (2013), La terreur des droits de l’homme (2016)

Marc Belissa

university: Université Paris-Nanterre

focus of research: international relations, diplomacy, droit des gens

notable works: Fraternité universelle et intérêt national (1998), Repenser l'ordre européen (2006), Robespierre. La fabrication d’un mythe (2013)

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A reader of La Décade, the quasi-official government newspaper under the Directory between 1795 and 1799, narrates a fait divers of which he has been a witness and a participant. When three horses did not manage to pull a load to the top of the rue de la Harpe, in spite of the invectives of their carter, the author and other city-dwellers lent their support. At the top of the slope, one of the horses collapsed. The carter lost his temper and struck the animal with his whip and his staff. In spite of the criticisms that arose from the group of assembled people, it was of no use, and the violence against the horse continued. The arrival of a new actress suddenly changed the scene. « A marchande de légumes, who had been stopped by curiosity like many others, stepped out of the crowd all of a sudden, placed the basket that she carried on a boundary stone, looked around her without uttering a single word, grabbed a cobblestone that she could get her hands on, lunged at the charter like a lighting, [and] held the terrible stone under his nose: “So, strike it now, dare to strike it, inhuman monster!” At the same time, she wrested the whip from him and broke it into pieces, which she threw twenty feet away from herself. Cowardice is the loyal companion of cruelty: stunned by this unexpected verbal attack, the charter grew pale and backed away from the cobblestone, which was pressed against his jaw. All spectators applauded: only one of them, bien poudré, bien frisé, dared to rebuke my heroine: “Everyone should mind his own business; the horse belonged to the charter, he had the right to do with it whatever would seem good to him, even to kill it if he pleased… will one never succeed in teaching these principles to the rabble?”. »

L’Animal en République: 1789-1802, genèse du droit des bêtes (Pierre Serna), p. 7f.

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If Collot’s responsibility in the severe repression that struck Ville-Affranchie [i.e. the city of Lyon, in 1793 / 1794] is thus well-established, the one of Fouché, but also the ones of Laporte and Albitte must in no case be forgotten. Furthermore, […] has the Convention not allowed this severity through its decrees? In October 1793, who protested against a text which explicitly devoted a city to destruction? Finally, a tradition, carefully maintained by various historians [who are] generally favourable towards Robespierre’s action, places the latter in profound disagreement with the repression of Lyon […]. How many books affirm that he was behind the recalling of the sanguinary proconsuls, notably of Collot d’Herbois! Yet, it was he who wrote a letter to Collot’s predecessors, accompanying the decree of 12 October, which stigmatised their excessive indulgence:

It seems that you have given way to a people which flatters the victors, and the manner in which you speak of such a great number of traitors […], of the punishment of a very small number and of the departure of almost all, had to alarm the patriots […] It is necessary to unmask the traitors and to strike them without pity […]; execute, with inexorable severity, the salutary decrees that we address to you.

[…] Several testimonies arrived in Paris in order to describe the situation of Ville-Affranchie in Frimaire, starting with the letters sent by Collot himself! How could he have written to Duplay in order to congratulate himself for the executions, if he had thought to be condemned by Robespierre? The repression in Ville-Affranchie did not occur in secret, as, on the contrary, all those who carried it out wanted the numbers and the names of the executed persons to be as publicly known as possible.

How can one not cite these two fundamental texts of the Incorruptible on this subject? In his undated speech against Fabre d’Églantine, one can read:

These are the same men who welcomed with such tender care the insulting women of the conspirators of Lyon, who came to the bar in order to offend [and] to menace the patriots of the Montagne, the victors of federalism and royalism, these are the same men who, not content with proscribing the revolutionary army and its leaders [that have been] sent to Lyon in order to contain this rebel city, slandered the intrepid representatives of the people who executed the salutary decrees of the National Convention against it.

Robespierre, hostile to the repression of Lyon? This is what he said on Ville-Affranchie on 22 Messidor, Year II, well after the events:

There is another cause for the impunity of the conspirators, namely that the national justice has not been exercised with the degree of force and action that are required and commanded by the interests of a great people. The temporary commission deployed energy at first, but it soon ceded to the human weakness which soon gets tired of serving the patrie […].

Such a text can barely stem from a quill [that was] nauseated by the excessive severity of the repression… Furthermore, if Robespierre and, a fortiori, the majority of the Committee had disapproved of the conduct of their emissaries to Commune-Affranchie, we would have testimonies of that. […] Finally, if the forms could be contestable and, incidentally, were contested by Collot himself, in substance the repression that devastated the great city of the Rhône was not fought by the Committee of Public Safety.

Collot d'Herbois: légendes noires et révolution (Michel Biard), p. 116f.

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Since the publication of Carnot’s Mémoires, it is classic to divide the Committee of Public Safety into several categories and various political tendencies, [and], notably, to oppose « généralistes » and « spécialistes ». The former would determine the political orientations of the government, whereas the latter would withdraw into their area of expertise. [In his Dictionnaire des membres du Comité de Salut Public,] Bernard Gainot recently reminded us that this division must not be overstated, and that the assignment of a member of the Committee to a particular role often had only a very formal side. […]

The members of the Comittee deliberated most matters in common, as and when they came up, without having a precise agenda. Prieur de la Côte-d’Or evokes a work that began around seven o’clock in the morning for the early risers, in order to continue until late afternoon, interrupted for some members by the sessions of the Convention or the meetings of the Jacobins. After a brief meal, the present members came together again around eight o’clock in the evening for a meeting that went on deep into the night, sometimes until one or two o’clock in the morning, which barely left more than five or six hours of rest for the most hardworking members. Carnot, for his part, estimates the number of matters treated on a single day at several hundred, adding, almost as a corollary, « nights without sleep, indescribable fatigues, endured in order to pull the State out of its terrible crises […] ».

Collot estimates his average workday at the Committee at fifteen hours, [and] also mentions the « long works which often consumed entire nights », an activity which:

… offered such a continuity of details, that I saw myself deprived for eight months of eating at my home. Hastily, I ate a frugal meal everyday in the vicinity of the Committee. Carnot was forced to act likewise, as was Prieur (de la Côte-d’Or). They know about my assiduousness; only theirs and the one of Lindet could surpass it.

All members of the Committee bore testimony to this, signatures en second gave each other confidence and the responsibility was collective. Consequently, the areas that were reserved to one member or another could prove to be very theoretical.

Collot d'Herbois: légendes noires et révolution (Michel Biard), p. 116f.

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Robespierre’s 260th birthday

Today marks the 260th anniversary of Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre’s birthday. He was born on 6 May 1758 in Arras, and executed on 28 July 1794 in Paris.

So long as the French Revolution is regarded, not as the “suicide of the eighteenth century” but as the birth of ideas that enlightened the nineteenth, and of hopes that still inspire our own age; and so long as its leaders are sanely judged, with due allowance for the terrible difficulties of their task; so long will Robespierre, who lived and died for the Revolution, remain one of the great figures of history.

Robespierre (J. M. Thompson), 1935.

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Acrostic dedicated to Philippe Lebas

La mort est pour le juste une palme immortelle ; Death is an immortal accolade for the just [individual] ;

En mourant il vécut pour la postérité, In dying, he lived for posterity,

Bon citoyen, bon père, époux, ami fidèle, A good citizen, good father, husband, faithful friend,

Apôtre de nos droits et de la liberté, The apostle of our rights and of liberty,

Son triomphe est complet, il s’immola pour elle. His triumph is complete, he sacrificed himself for it.

Gabriel (16 Messidor, Year IV), cited in: Cousin, Alexandre: Philippe Lebas et Augustin Robespierre. Deux météores dans la Révolution française, Paris 2010, p. 151.

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As all French schoolchildren know, La Marseillaise – originally the Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin – was written by Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an army officer stationed in Strasbourg in 1792. A constitutional monarchist and amateur composer who was exalted by war fever and an evening’s champagne, Rouget reputedly produced his hymn in a single night after hearing Strasbourg’s Mayor Dietrich and other local elites complain that Ça ira and La carmagnole were vulgar songs unfit for soldiers. […]

[La Marseillaise], written within days of the declaration of war, focuses on powerful and threatening enemies. Although the song begins by declaring that “the day of glory is upon us,” it immediately continues with a fierce reminder of the real subject: “against us, the bloody standard of tyranny is raised.” The lyrics conjure up an invading horde that will not simply overrun the countryside but “come into your very midst,” killing sons and wives before enslaving the nation. In the end, the song does promise victory, but a victory that may be achieved only at great cost: “All are soldiers to battle you. If the fall, our young heros, the earth will produce new ones.” […]

[Its] rhythm is slower [than the one of Ça ira], closer to the pace of marching. Obviously a more formal composition, the tune is more complicated than the simple, repetitious melody of its predecessor; its steady rhythm and swelling notes ameliorate the fearful images conjured by the lyrics. This music lends greater sensibility to a song whose learned lyrics are difficult and likely to be confusing when heard in performance: the brief pause before the chorus and the swelling of the voice as the singer declaims “To arms, citizens, form your battalions” make absolutely clear the song’s central message.

Singing the French Revolution (Laura Mason), p. 94ff.

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Napoleon, the Saviour of the Revolution? Considering the work that he undertook, and which, for the most part, completed the works that had been initiated since 1789 (the Civil Code, the Penal Code, the administration, the Bank of France, the prefects, etc), one would be tempted to think so; but when one sees how national sovereignty was scorned, police control intensified and the political participation of the French people reduced to a strict minimum; when one sees the Emperor incapable of making a durable peace and the sister republics being transformed, from 1806 onwards, into satellite kingdoms with sovereigns appointed by Napoleon at their heads, it is legitimate to doubt [this viewpoint], or at least useful to nuance it.

In short, speaking of a Saviour comes down to adopting the point of view of Napoleon himself, and only strengthens the myth conceived under the Consulate and the Empire. […] [According to this narrative,] Bonaparte had thus protected the essential gains of the Revolution, and the French Republic owed (nearly) everything to him. […] This representation has been spread for decades, and it pays scant regard to the true gains of the Revolution, since those can surely not be limited to a few monuments, laws or institutions. The French Revolution also lay in the principles of liberty, of equality, of fraternity and in the rights of man – duly suppressed in the Constitution of the Year VIII; it was also in the democratic practices. The people, in fact, made its apprenticeship of citoyenneté in the framework of clubs, societies, constitutional circles, and elections. The press played an non-negligible role here, since its liberty was respected […] and made it possible to give an account of the discussions and the ideas en vigeur on a national level.

All of this disappeared under the Consulate. Above all, the people now had duties: notably conscription and the droits réunis – […] indirect taxes on essential products. [State] control increased; [the press] was muzzled; equality was violated by the new privileges and by the Civil Code, inasmuch as it placed women and workers under the supervision of husbands and bosses, respectively, while it introduced a suffrage that was advantageous only for notables and while career opportunities were progressively closed to talented persons. Under the Empire, it was even worse, as evidenced by the creation of State prisons; the military tribunals, without juries; the return to peines infamantes and preliminary investigations – that is to say, a justice without jury and behind closed doors; the selling of common land for the benefit of the State and the total disregard of constitutional bodies. In spite of the constitutional oath that was sworn during the coronation, Napoleon trampled civil liberties underfoot and transformed the “republican” constitutional monarchy […] into a monarchy that was more absolute than the one of Louis XIV.

Mythes et légendes de Napoléon: Un destin d'exception, entre rêve et réalite… (Annie Jourdan), p. 125ff.

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In the same way that early 19th century British caricaturists portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte as a devilish tyrant, British parents and teachers used Napoleon as a threat to scare children into good behaviour during the Napoleonic Wars. […]

Betsy Balcombe, an English girl who befriended Napoleon when he was in exile on St. Helena, noted in her memoirs:

The earliest idea I had of [him] was that of a huge ogre or giant, with one large flaming red eye in the middle of his forehead, and long teeth protruding from his mouth, with which he tore to pieces and devoured naughty little girls, especially those who did not know their lessons.

English humorist Gilbert à Beckett described Napoleon’s malign effect on his life at a preparatory school near Kensington in 1815.

Bonaparte had just escaped from Elba, and Miss Frounce, like an admirable politician, took advantage of this important event to overawe the ‘young gentlemen from three to eight’ who were under her guidance. On all occasions, Bonaparte was held up as the great bugbear, and there was not a boy in the school who was not firmly convinced that Miss Frounce had Napoleon under her thumb – that, in fact, if any of ‘the young gentlemen’ should prove refractory, Miss Frounce had it in her power to send for Bony with as much facility as she could order the sweeps or the dustman. If a boy, when spelling, knocked an i out of the word annihilate, he was threatened with being handed over to the tender mercies of Bonaparte; and every one of the pupils of Miss Frounce felt assured that, if Napoleon invaded England, he would knock at the door of the ‘establishment for young gentleman from three to eight’ the very morning after his arrival. […]

Such impressions as those I have related are strange and absurd; but there are many now living who, if they happened, during the time of the Bonaparte panic, to be inmates of a preparatory school […] will recognize the fidelity of the feelings I have described.

Boney the Bogeyman: How Napoleon scared children (Shannon Selin)

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In her book Mythes et légendes de Napoléon: Un destin d'exception, entre rêve et réalité… (2004), the French historian Annie Jourdan cites a publication of François-René de Chateaubriand when examining the anti-Napoleonic myth that took shape after Bonaparte’s first abdication.

One had reached the point of contempt for the life of men and for France to call the conscripts the first material and the meat for the cannon. Sometimes, one discussed this great issue among the suppliers of human flesh: knowing how long a conscript would last; some claimed that he would last thirty-three months, others [claimed] thirty-six. Buonaparte himself said: I have three hundred thousand men of revenues. In the eleven years of this reign, he made more than five million Frenchmen perish […]. Absurd in administration, criminal in politics, what did he thus have to seduce the French, this foreigner? His military glory? Well, he is stripped of it. He was indeed a great winner of battles; but apart from that, the smallest general was more skilled than him […]. And so many massacres, so many sufferings, for whom? For an abominable tyrant, for a Corsican, for a foreigner, who is so generous with French blood only because he does not have one drop of this blood in his own veins.

De Buonaparte, des Bourbons, et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes pour le bonheur de la France et celui de l'Europe, Paris 1814.

Using striking expressions (matière première, chair à canon, trois cent mille hommes de revenus), Chateaubriand denounces the cold and calculating inhumanity of Bonaparte and his allies, as well as their extraordinary contempt for human lives in their quest for military glory. At the same time, he emphasises Napoleon’s Corsican – and thus distinctly non-French – origins by using the name Buonaparte in the title of the pamphlet and throughout the entire text. In total, Chateaubriand’s intentions are clear: publishing immediately after Bonaparte’s (first) abdication in the spring of 1814, he seeks to utterly discredit the former Emperor while arguing in favour of a Bourbon restoration. He could not foresee, of course, that Bonaparte would return from his exile on Elba in the spring of 1815 … only to be defeated once more roughly 100 days after that.

civique

Boissy d'Anglas was one of the primary theorists of [the Constitution of 1795] which broke with the theory of revolution, and more precisely with the conception of a universal droit naturel […]. The new constitution established a censitary system, attaching political rights not to the person, but to wealth. The newly liberated citizens thereby lost their political rights, upon a decision of the colonialist metropolis, a measure that was ultimately accepted by the deputation of Saint-Domingue itself […].

In his important report on the colonies which he presented to the Convention on 17 Thermidor (4 August 1795), Boissy legitimised a trade relationship of domination founded on unequal exchange, within the framework of a competitive system between the European powers for the dominion of the world. He advanced the idea that political liberty was not an universal right, but depended on the climate, and [more precisely] on the climate of the North. The North, according to Boissy, was limited to Europe and the United States, whose industry and needs necessitated the submission of the colonies. These colonies […] had suddenly become unfit for liberty and sovereignty because of the climate, and had to content themselves with being governed wisely and peacefully by just and humane men that had come from the North.

The French government was, according to Boissy, just and humane, which is why it would not re-establish slavery. The colonies would be subject to the same laws as the metropolis, and would send deputies, elected in accordance with censitary suffrage. to sit in the metropolitan assembly.

Boissy d'Anglas was, as one sees, an important modern theorist of assimilationist colonialism, […] a colonialism without slavery.

Against the droit universel, Boissy established a hierarchy between the peoples and dismissed the revolutionary postulate of humankind’s unity in order to justify the return to power politics. Nevertheless, it will be noted that the justification of inequality between the peoples through the climate is a prejudice, if not a vulgarity, and constitutes an intellectual regression in relation to […] the thought of the Enlightenment. Let us add that his theory of climates cannot be compared to the one of Montesquieu […]: Montesquieu was not a theorist of colonialism or power politics.

The new hierarchy of humankind that Boissy d’Anglas proposed was expressed in the terms of the « rights of man ». But these new rights of man were reserved to the self-proclaimed just and free part of the governments of the North. Boissy replaced the aristocracy of the skin of the colonial Ancien Régime with the aristocracy of civilisation of the upper classes of the North, charged with dominating and civilising the rest of the world.

Boissy here reveals an interesting transformation in the history of the rights of man and of the citizen: to the concept of a universal droit naturel, Boissy opposed the rights of the rich man from the North. He thereby territorialised and geographically limited the concept of the rights of man. And in this sense, his concept of the rights of the man from the North breaks with the one of the universal droit naturel that was at work in the Declarations of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of both 1789 and 1793. Indeed, the universal droit naturel of 1789 and 1793 was conceived as a property of the individual and of humankind, and not of a thing (wealth) or of a place (the North). As one sees, the Constitution of 1795 did not reconnect in any way with the Constitution of 1789-1791 […].

Finally, even if the principle of the abolition of slavery was maintained with the Constitution of the Year III, the political will was lacking, and no new realisation of the abolition was effected by the Thermidorian Convention. It is true that the counter-revolutionary colonists expressed their refusal to maintain the abolition, by opposing this new constitution, and their agitation during the spring of 1795 led to the insurrection of Vendémiaire, where one rediscovered counter-revolutionary colonists among the organisers of this movement.

La Convention thermidorienne et le problème colonial (F. Gauthier), in Le tournant de l’an III: Réaction et Terreur blanche dans la France révolutionnaire, p. 117f.

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