the french revolution

... though they get progessively more wild-eyed and paranoid as they go on.

I'm pretty sure the French revolution had more than enough implacable enemies, both foreign and domestic, to justify the revolutionaries' fears.

Oh definitely, I still think he'd pretty much lost his marbles by 8 Thermidor Year II.

full citizenship for Jews and Protestants (and, er, actors)

I keep think of that exchange from "The Producers":

Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They're human beings!
Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

nearly done with 'greater safety,' wanna throw a shoutout to Mirabeau. I've been thinking--if he'd survived past 1791, would he have succeeded in making the revolution a bit more moderate? the assemblymen/convention deputies seemed to respond to strong personalities, and it seems like he had enough charisma to counter Danton. and he was an effective operator, not just a mouthpiece, with the admiration on some of those who eventually reigned in terror.

then again, he might've found his head on the guillotine like Orleans did.

Being a Royalist double agent would scarcely have helped matters tbf.

it certainly turned out to be a liability, but it was certainly more excusable during his lifetime than it was shortly afterward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i45Y4Hf_so8

otm

so i'm at the point in a place of greater safety where the shadow of THE MACHINE is just starting to loom, and the charlotte corday legend took me down a terrible terrible addictive but so terrible late-night rabbit hole — which ended up (CN: severed heads) here

which is a lengthy foucault-shaped discussion of the philosophical and medico-legal debates about the biopolitics of the self when the revolution (and the guillotine) transformed the relevant rhetorics of justification in the capital punishment debate

this is the charlotte corday legend: marat’s assassin was seized, jailed, tried, sentenced and executed, all very speedily, without much resistance on her part (she believed she’d acted bravely, nobly and correctly; she entirely expected this outcome and more or less gave herself up to the authorities). as her head dropped into the basket, a fellow named legros stepped onto the platform, grabbed it and slapped it hard. the crowd — so it’s said — saw corday’s cheeks redden, as an angry scowl passed across her face…

(legros got a three-month sentence for this act btw: part of the the official executioner’s job was to ensure égalité, which meant that no one got to mess with certain bodies, however enragingly anti-revolutionary their crime)

anyway the piece is less about the modern-day science of how long a severed head retains consciousness, awareness, sensation (if it does at all: modern-day opinion remains divided), and also not much about the facts in the corday case (and several similar urban-myth type tales, from ann boleyn to the 1980s). It’s more about the specifics (and the jargon) of the philosophical debate that erupted in the late 1790s and early 1800s, in other words after the fall of robespierre, when it started maybe to be a bit safer to argue that the guillotine was (in general) bad not good. the argument in favour had after all been that (as well as equality of punishment) — it delivered a minimum of suffering (bcz death was instant), but if death wasn’t instant, this was exactly and dreadfully untrue. what if a head knew for many terrible seconds what was still going on, processing thoughts, feelings and emotions…

anyway that’s the rabbithole, and boy do I advise against diving down it

revolutionary who spent his entire tumbrel-ride to the guillotine alternately fainting and shrieking in terror: jacques hébert aka père duchesne, the bombastic leader of the enragés

also the guillotine operator did three lol-troll fake-out runs on him -- blade falls but then stops short -- before actually chopping off his head (which doesn't seem very scientific)

also i just learned that marat's death-bath was filled with cooling water rather than boiling hot

Because of his painful skin condition?

In July, I read Jeremy D. Popkin's newish A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution. Quite good on the Revolution's social advances and sans-culottes hypocrisies and heresies.

(xp) That was Marat. That's why he was in the bath when Mme. Corday came a-calling.

i knew abt the condition, i just somehow always imagined the bath was very hot and that this contributed to marat's constant fury

He thought, "You know what? This will make a great painting one day".

with good reason: jacques-louis david was right there! he's the instagram influencer of the national convention

Just realized I misread J. Redd's post, I thought he was saying Hébert had a painful skin condition. Wouldn't have surprised, they were an unhealthy lot, Robespierre was forever pulling a sickie.

apparently he had a pain in the jaw before he was guillotined, that hypochondriac

The wee fella wis up tae high doh in the weeks afore Thermidor. As Boaby might say.

the lancet has opinions

"his disease did not play any part in his death" <-- hard to argue with i suppose

Believe there is an R.E.M. song that mentions the incident. This one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgTv9TvZys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0rgeQ0QD-o
🎥 Napolean XIV - They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXI9RJSgok

^Probably my favorite song related to this, DO U SEE?

Almost forgot this one, close second:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXa8IXvaW0I

charlotte corday stabbing the gallagher bros in *their* bath, no committee of public safety in the land wd have guillotined her

ps not to step on a joak but the "pain in the jaw" alfred mentioned was from being shot in it when arrested (possibly by RP himself possibly by an arresting officer, the wikipedia version of events in his final 48 hours is the opposite of lucid but i also think there were several rival versions of said events)

I dunno, pretty sure that Wikipedia editor was on the scene as events unfolded

His brother jumped out a window and broke his leg(s) too I think? And somebody else did succeed in blowing their brains out which Maxie might have been trying to do.

executed alongside hébert: craz name crazy wig!

prussian-dutch rather than french, anarchist and internationalist, he shd still probably be in the OP list (esp.as these are basically the reasons he was guillotined)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Anacharsis_Cloots_-_Ecrits_révolutionnaires.jpg/800px-Anacharsis_Cloots_-_Ecrits_révolutionnaires.jpg

anyway i finished a place of greater safety, no spoilers but only a handful of the characters make it through with their heads on etc lol

based on previous mantel experience i will need to reread to get some of what's going on: also it was published in 90s but actually written in the 70s and is i think very different in how it manages material to wolf hall et al

The French Revolution was an obsession of mine a couple of years back so don't get me started on those Thermidorian so-and-so's.

les wojacques:

the best thing ive ever participated in the creation of (i selected almost all of the people and positions, tost did the actual work of photoshopping them into this) pic.twitter.com/SkYSY3tEKC

— Femboy Political Theology (@OldDreyfusard) March 18, 2022

v useful chart.

Is it? It’s of interest to me cause I’ve been reading about the revolution. But that version of the political compass just seems like a vehicle to promote libertarianism. Surely there’s some less arbitrary axis than ‘libertarian vs authoritarian’.

Just one example, the Girondins are separated from Robespierre here but weren’t they actually pretty close? Maybe that axis really just refers to the degree of fondness for the guillotine?

I don't know what the Girondins have to do with libertarianism, or why Dantonists are further left than Robespierre or why Robespierre isn't further left than the Girondins, for that matter. Or what is authoritarian about Babeuf etc.

basically i just like the faces

OTM

https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2022/11/olympic-paralympic-mascot-hero-1704x959.jpg

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/11/17/paris-french-revolution-hats-olympic-paralympic-mascots/

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/188/b26/44452f4a73fd2a6cb18f27c644c5c7a1f0-9-smurfs-1.2x.rhorizontal.w700.jpg

Reckless and Unrepentant Smurfs Continue Their Defiance

it seems like this is the thread we come to when we’re rabbitholing the revolution due to mantel’s place of greater safety

hi it’s me

this reread has convinced me i finally need to do actual history reading to get a better grasp on all the players & surrounding events etc

thinking of
- Christopher Hibbert “french revolution”
- RR Palmer “twelve who ruled”

any other recommendations?
i don’t think Schama is for me - too populist? idk. i liked his art history years ago but this seems out of his lane.

but i do need a ~good~ overview, and at least one good specific robespierre bc he intrigues me

how are we doing on this fine Ventose day

I liked Jeremy D. Popkin's 2021 A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution

i tried schama but i didn't vibe with him at _all_, he seemed to be coming from a very different place than i was and nothing he was saying seemed to make much sense to me.

from cursory research seems like a few of revolution historians disagree w him too

xxpost that looks like exactly what i’m after, thx Alfred!

schama shd turn his mind to the reckless and unrepentent smurfs imo

is Ruth Scurr's Fatal Purity any good? I bought the paperback but the print was too small and a struggle for my bad eyesight. I managed to acquire the e-book but seem to recall someone on here being unimpressed with it.