#georges lefebvre

[lemurious]

"The Third Estate, driven to the wall, had to choose between resistance and surrender, so that in fact insurrection became inevitable, considering that fundamentally the Third was resolved to stand its ground.

The insurrectionists knew the risks they took and a few dozens of them felt the rigors of the provosts' courts. In the last analysis nothing except their own audacity, courage and readiness for sacrifice can explain theri determination to put their lives in jeopardy and prefer death to eternal submission. Other men with the same reasons to fight have resigned themselves. Revolutionary action takes place in the realm of the spirit."

Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution

Highly recommended! The book is clear, compellingly written and pays a lot of attention to a) the Third Estate on the whole and its subjects ranging from the rich bourgeois to the artisans and the peasants; and b) the ideals; including the Declaration explained both as "a direction of intention" and as a direct response to the political and social situation in which it was written (and not a thought exercise).

It ends with a call to the youth of France in 1939, when it was written - for "freedom as an invitation to a life of courage", which undoubtedly more than a few have heard, have accepted, then and in years after.

(The Declaration, the letters, the speeches - so many words still remain heard; are still able to inspire, to provide comfort and understanding; a dialogue over the centuries; I wish they could've known this when they thought that all had been lost.)

[lemurious]

Reading George Lefebvre's The Coming of the French Revolution, translated by R R Palmer, and it is clear and insightful and will merit proper post(s), but - a note on the author.

There is that constant reminder of how young everyone was during the Revolution and how infuriating and tragic it is that their lives were lost to history, to their new Republic that was about to crumble in their absence. For me, it has been intermixed with the pervasiveness of the feeling and I am *mumble* years old and what have I done in the world? yes, but is it enough? is there enough time to achieve anything still? etc.

A note. Lefebvre's doctoral work was "severely interrupted" by WWI, so he finally defended his (highly influential) thesis at the age of 50, became a professor at the age of 60, and a major authority on the Revolution, and continued his research and writing, with notable success, until his death at the age of 86 (and through another world war and personal tragedies). I admit that this gives me an entirely different sort of hope; one reminding me that there is time.

Also: "as long as one thinks it to have been wise, feasible or legitimate to try to introduce a kind of political democracy in France in the eighteenth century, one must regard as necessary, in the judgment of the present translator, virtually all the steps taken by the revolutionaries down to the dictatorship of 1793-1794. To consider these steps unnecessary, deploring them as excesses, requires one to say that the objective of political democracy in France at the time was a false or impossible one...". I love you R R Palmer

[titusandronicusonice]

Happy to announce that the two volumes of Georges Lefebvre’s The French Revolution I ordered off the latest Oxfam sale arrived in the mail

Here’s also this nice old Vintage edition of Lefebvre’s The Coming of the French Revolution I found at a second hand book stall a few months back

Soon enough I will be sansculottemaxing

[feignedremote]

In any case the mind of the Third Estate is of capital interest in showing the historian that events have their immediate roots not in their antecedents but in the men who intervene by interpreting those events.

Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793

[powerbook145]

Grad school fucks with your brain, man.

[gregor-samsung]

“ Piccolo, di gambe corte, abbastanza muscoloso, sanguigno e ancora magro a trent'anni, ha un corpo resistente e sempre pronto, una sensibilità, e una resistenza di nervi meravigliose, reazioni d'una prontezza fulminea, illimitata capacità di lavoro; il sonno gli viene a comando. Ma ecco il rovescio: il freddo umido gli provoca, oppressione, tosse, disuria; la contrarietà gli suscita collere spaventose; lo strapazzo, nonostante bagni caldi e prolungati, e nonostante l'estrema sobrietà e l'uso moderato ma costante del caffè e del tabacco, gli produce talvolta brevi languori che arrivano fino al pianto. Il cervello è uno dei più perfetti che siano mai esistiti: l'attenzione, sempre sveglia, afferra a volo infaticabilmente i fatti e le idee; la memoria li registra e li classifica; l'immaginazione li rielabora liberamente e, con una tensione permanente e segreta, inventa, senza stancarsi, i temi politici e strategici che si manifestano in improvvisi lampi, paragonabili a quelli del matematico e del poeta — di preferenza la notte, in un improvviso risveglio, ciò che lui stesso chiama « la scintilla morale », « la prontezza di spirito di dopo la mezzanotte ». Attraverso gli occhi folgoranti codesto ardore spirituale illumina il viso — un viso ancora « sulfureo » quando il « Còrso dai capelli lisci » sale al potere. È questo ardore a renderlo insocievole, e non già, come volle far credere Taine, una non si sa quale brutalità di condottiero un po' tarato, selvaggiamente scatenato per il mondo. Egli si rendeva giustizia « Sono anche abbastanza bonaccione », ed è vero : si mostrò generoso e perfino amabile con coloro che gli stavano vicini. Ma fra gli uomini ordinari, che sbrigano al più pesto il loro còmpito per abbandonarsi al riposo e allo svago, e Napoleone Bonaparte, che era tutto tensione e concentrazione, non esisteva metro comune né alcun vero rapporto. Una costituzione fisica e cerebrale, la sua, donde scaturisce quell'irresistibile impulso all'azione e alla potenza che si chiama ambizione. Egli vide chiaro in se stesso : « Si dice che io sia ambizioso, ma è un errore : non lo sono o, almeno, la mia ambizione è così intimamente unita al mio essere, da non potersene distinguere ». Come si poteva dir meglio? Anzitutto Napoleone è un temperamento. “

Georges Lefebvre, Napoleone, (traduzione di Giuseppe Sozzi e Luigi Faralli) Laterza (collana Biblioteca Universale n.105), 1991; pp. 69-70.

[Edizione originale: Napoléon, éd. Félix Alcan, coll. Peuples et civilisations, (1935, rééd. 1955)]

[vperyod93]

It is a sad and even pitiful fact that the policies of the crown con­tributed very largely to the aggravation of the crisis which played so important a part in the fall of the ancien regime. The edict of 1787 had removed all form of control from the corn trade; until then, all producers had been obliged to take their corn to market, but after the edict, they were allowed to sell direct to consumers; corn could be sent anywhere by land or by sea and it could even be exported with no restrictions whatsoever. The intention had been to encourage agriculture by thus guaranteeing profitable returns. But when the harvest failed in 1788, granaries were found to be empty and prices shot irresistibly upwards; they did not reach their height till July 1789 . . . During the same period, the government's lack of foresight caused a crisis in unemployment. In 1786, France and England had signed a trade agreement which made considerable reductions in the customs dues imposed on manufactured products imported into France. The idea was basically sound: it was considered vital to adopt the English 'mechanical systems' and it was felt that the only way to impose these on French industrialists was to force some form of competition. In the circumstances, it would have been wiser to introduce this plan gradually and preserve some suitable protection for national products during the adaptation period. This sudden opening of French frontiers to English industry (whose superiority was quite overwhelming) caused terrible distress.

Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear

[vperyod93]

In the strict sense of the word, a Republic is a government whose leaders are elected and not hereditary. But elected by whom? The Republic of Venice was then an aristocratic Republic; that of the United Provinces and several of the cantons of Switzerland were governed by urban patriciates. Even in the United States, which, in 1789, attracted everyone's attention, suffrage was not universal, and government was in the hands of Virginian planters whose wealth was derived from the labor of slaves. Robespierre did not want any such Republic.

Georges Lefebvre, "Sur la pensée politique de Robespierre” (trans. George Rudé)