Misconceptions

Tags

Enlightment, facts, France, history, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Royalty

I have studied history almost all my life, I enjoy reading on specific topics, I am not one for generalities in history or the facile comment or anecdotes to explain an event. I think that it is worth knowing exactly what happened or what was said from reliable sources who did their own research. I also love archeology and spent a lot of time studying ancient ruins to discover their secrets.

Last year a new book on Emperor Nero was published by Professor John F. Drinkwater, in his 457 page book he presents a very different picture of Nero who was Emperor of Rome for 14 years. He took every myth about Nero and goes about deconstructing it and presenting a narrative that throws doubt on what we have been told. It is fascinating reading,

Drinkwater shows that after the death of Nero who had fled Rome taking Via Nomentana, a street I know well since I lived just off it, he failed to kill himself and ask his servant to please help him out as the pretorian guards were closing in. Nera was the last of the Julio-Claudian line who were the first emperors of Rome the dynasty that succeeded him, the Flavians had good reasons to paint a black picture of him and went to great lenghts to do so, thus the awful dark image we have. To make things worse the Christian Church decided for propaganda purposes to make him out as the devil personified despite the fact that he did not persecute Christians as it as always been claimed.

Knowing historical facts is important to help us understand the world we live in and how we got here. There are numerous other events and historical figures who have suffered at the hands of popular history.

One woman who suffered to this day, is in fact a Hollywood favourite in movies and several movies have been made of her in the last 20 years. I speak of Queen Marie-Antoinette born Imperial Princess of Austria and who at the age of 14 was engaged to marry the Dauphin of France, Louis.

When she arrives in Versailles in 1770 after having travelled from Vienna in a great escort befitting her rank with many stops on the way, she had left behind her mother Empress Maria-Theresa and her family, she comes from a relatively relaxed Imperial Court to the most archaic and stultifying strict and arcane protocol laden Court of France. She is 14 years old, she is naive but also bold and thinks nothing of asking for what she wants to the horror of the Minister of King Louis XV, grandfather of the future Louis XVI.

At the Palace of Versailles she is given a room, her entire apartment is ONE ROOM which can be seen today after years of meticulously correct restoration. The room is a State Bedchamber and it is also the room where every morning all the ladies of the Court will gather to wake her up and dress her up following a complicated protocol she is quite unfamiliar with.

The decor of Versailles and her room, (she only has one room to live in), is the same since 1715 some 60 years previously and is faded and old reminiscent of the era of the Sun King Louis XIV. Being a precocious 14 year old she did not hesitate to ask the superintendant du Palais to redecorate and modernize her room. The royal architect was brought in and what followed was a lot of effort to try to twart her plans. The women around her who were ladies in waiting where much older than her and many were ancient, they had no patience with the young women, she was constantly criticized for not accepting French ways at Court. Her life was extremely boring and her fiancé Louis was not really interested in her and more in study of sciences and in build locks of all kinds. Their marriage would be for political alliance and military reasons. Madame du Barry the mistress of King Louis XV did not like her and she had her group around her who opposed the new alliance of France with Austria. However Marie-Antoinette was very popular with the common people.

Marie Antoinette portrait of 1771, age 15, said to be the favourite of her Mother Empress Maria-Theresa.

In May 1774 King Louis XV dies suddenly and she becomes Queen and with her accession to the throne she receives the Petit Trianon in the Park at Versailles from her husband King Louis XVI, where she will spend most of her time. The period 1774 to 1778 is problematic since this is the period of the greatest extravagance and spending on hundreds of dresses, jewels, etc all at enormous expense to the Treasury. Her husband doubles her annual budget to 280,000 French Pounds (Livres) which is a great sum. But all this stops suddenly in 1778 when she becomes a mother with the birth of her first child Marie-Therese Charlotte known as Madame Royale (1778-1851). Even her taste for dresses change into a new fashion from London, she also abandons jewellery and becomes a doting mother. She will have one other daughter Princesse Sophie who dies in 1787 and the ill-fated Louis XVII who will die under mysterious circumstances and disappear at age 10 in a dark jail cell in 1795. He had another brother Louis-Joseph who dies as an infant just before the revolution in June 1789.

However despite all the crisis leading to the revolution the biggest problem was one of the Kingdom’s budget and the ballooning deficit caused by 2 wars which ruined the French treasury and bad harvests causing famine. The first war with a deficit of 2.5 million pounds was the Seven year war between France/Austria against England/Prussia 1756-1763 and then the American War of Independence 1776-1783 creating another deficit of 1.7 million pounds for France, though this war was wildly popular in France and Lafayette was a National Hero. If these deficits did not exist many political problems would have been avoided.

Probably the greatest cause of the unpopularity of Marie-Antoinette was her resistance to any idea of change or political modernization proposed by the leaders of the various parties at the time. Since she had been brought up in a system of Absolute Monarchy, she could not imagine any other system of government, despite was she saw in America and in England with the Constitutional Monarchy with a Parliament. She also adopted the same strict religious Catholic attitude of the religious bigots at Court. This did not help her at all and her glacial austere attitude towards the revolutionaries made her a marked woman.

In the end her name was blackened by the revolutionaries who really had no case against her, the trial was a farce with trumped up charges. After the death of her husband in January 1793 the revolution had achieved their goal. So a case had to be made and political events in Europe with foreign armies massing on the French border from Prussia, Austria and England was enough to convince the population that she was the author of their misery. However on the day of her execution instead of taking her directly to her place of execution, the revolutionaries thought they could parade her around in the street to rouse public anger. They soon realize this was a big mistake politically speaking, the people in the street were silent, many kneeling in prayer for the Queen and men taking their hats off. For the people she was a mother and public opinion was not in favour of killing a woman who had children. She died age 37.

Marie-Antoinette lived in the age of Enlightenment, in England Queen Charlotte was a close personal friend. In Prussia, Frederick II the Great ruled, in Russia Catherine the Great was Tsarina. The age of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. Napoleon Bonaparte was still an unknown Corsican.

Here is some music composed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Le devin du Village which would have been familiar to Queen Marie-Antoinette, she may have seen a production of this operette.royal

Bourreaux de l’Etat

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Bourbon, Civil war, executioner, France, Louis XVI, profession, Revolution, Sanson

I follow a blog written in French by Marie-Christine Pénin called www.tombes-sepultures.com which specialize in locating the tombs of famous people in France. The period covered is usually 17th, 18th  and 19th centuries. I often wonder where is so and so buried, a famous name does not necessarily have a famous grave. Each entry gives you the story of the person and how it ended with often some strange family detail about the burial. One entry recently was about the French Revolution (Civil War) and how the Kings and Queens of France buried in the St-Denis Cathedral were dug up and their tombs smashed. Some with vivid description of the cadaver, like that of Louis XV whose body was black and gave out a powerful stench despite the fact that he had died some 17 years prior.

This week it is about the family Sanson, who for 7 generations where the Official Executioner of France, from 1688 to 1847. A profession that no longer exist, but a profession nonetheless required for putting to death the great and the not so great of France who had been condemned by the State. Official Executioner was a title given by the King and then at the Revolution by the Committee in charge. It was  a paid job with honours and benefits. One benefit was on the death of the Executioner, he was entitled to a Funeral Mass with full Civilian Honours. So for 159 years the Sanson, from fathers to sons where in charge of executing by whatever means decreed, prisoners. They not only exercised their profession in Paris but also in several other cities of France. The head of the Family usually had Paris and his sons had other cities, some  sons were also helpers in the putting to death of a condemned person. They were responsible for maintaining the tools of their trade and setting up the scaffolds etc ensuring that all would go well.

A very grim business and not always a quick affair, sometimes in the 17th and 18th centuries executions which were a public spectacle required some showmanship. However amongst the duty of the Executioner, he had to meet with the condemned prior to the execution, they would have a surreal conversation about what was to take place and the condemned could make a request that he be dispatched quickly if possible, often giving the Executioner a sum of money. One of the Sanson was known for his consideration and kindness toward the condemned person, his job was to put them to death not to make them suffer unduly or turn a public execution into butchery.

It was Charles-Henri Sanson who had to execute King Louis XVI. Though he had been a revolutionary in 1789 by 1793 he had lost his appetite for the revolution and turned against it. In his opinion far too many innocent people had been condemned by comedy show trials, where the results were more important than the facts or the truth. When he was given the paper ordering the execution of the King, Charles-Henri Sanson said he felt faint and wanted to run. He knew the trial had been rigged against the Sovereign and Sanson was hoping for a last minute reprieve or a plot to free the king. This royal execution would haunt him for the rest of his days and in his will he left money so that a Mass could be said  monthly to ask God for forgiveness for this horrible business.

Sanson’s son would execute 9 months later Queen Marie-Antoinette, who was leaving behind two young children. The day of the execution the Parisian crowds were in an ugly mood and sullen, very much against putting the Queen to death. He also dispatched other revolutionaries like Danton and Robespierre. He like other members of his family are buried around Paris in churches or in cemeteries amongst other dignitaries.  We do not know much about the Sanson family except for the journals and correspondence they left behind, they had a job to do and it required a certain amount of discretion.

 

 

 

Books I am reading

Tags

Beria, France, Louis XVI, Russia, Stalin, Stefan Zweig, USSR

Well I am finishing the great big book on Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a lesson on why the Soviet Union collapse, it was doomed from the beginning. I remember a professor in one of my Political Science classes in University telling us that when Karl Marx wrote his book Das Kapital, he was thinking of industrial Germany not agricultural Russia. What has been depicted in movies and books as a glorious revolution by the people was in fact what we see today in Syria with ISIS. The government of the Tsar collapsed in 1917 when Nicholas II abdicates, the country is at war with Germany and all authority disappears. A group of adventurers styling themselves as revolutionaries “Bolsheviks” take over by simply killing anyone who might have been connected with the Tsarists regime. Russia then falls into a long 10 year Civil War which ends in 1928, after all opponents have been summarily shot, Lenin has died of cancer and Stalin grabs all the power for himself by shooting is old comrades and will launch purges against all manner of imaginary enemies, no one is safe, including his own family and the family of those comrades who managed not to be purged. Stalin’s wife who suffers from mental illness, shoots herself because she cannot live with this monster,  his reaction is How could she do this to me, he then proceeds to kill family members who he thinks conspired against him. Millions will die this way in an unending blood bath which will last until 1939.

So how or who is running the country, the industries, the army etc. well no one really, Stalin appoints incompetent people most of whom cannot read nor write but are Commissars in charge of everything and their first job is to shoot any worker or manager who does not produce ridiculous quotas of goods no one wants nor could use because the production is so shoddy. Famine ensues and millions die in vast areas of Russia.

As the war in Europe approaches, Stalin makes a secret pact with Hitler to divide Europe and the World. Stalin is secretly hoping that the Nazis will destroy the capitalists in France and England and will not attack Russia. He will make a more public pact to divide the world in 1945 in Yalta with Truman and Churchill, the beginning of the Cold War. Poland is sacrificed in the deal and 10% of its population will be killed, the country divided and disappear, the ultimate plan was to kill all the Poles, Stalin and Hitler hated them.

The same applies for Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.   Finland manages to save parts of its territory after a ferocious battle against the Soviets. Because of the purges of Stalin, the Soviet Army has no Senior officers in command, no modern armament, Stalin is still in favour of a 19th century style army with horses and old cannons, unable to understand that Germany has modern weapons and no one uses cavalry anymore and certainly not against tanks and machine guns. The Soviets have no planes, while Germany has a modern air fleet. The few planes Russia has are so poorly built that they are described as flying coffins. Again Stalin does not want to hear about it, his battle is against his own family, relatives and anyone he thinks might oppose him, a death sentence for many. When Hitler finally attacks Russia in 1941, in the first 48 hours despite the quickly advancing German army and aerial bombardments of cities, pleading by army officers like Zhukov to do something, Stalin refuses to believe the war is on, he thinks it is only a provocation by a lone German General, Hitler his friend would never do that to him. It is all conspirators around him who created this mess, he cannot be responsible for this disaster.

At the time of the pact with Nazi Germany, Stalin to please Hitler and later after 1945 for various reasons will purge (kill) all the Jews from the Soviet government, all of whom are committed Bolsheviks from 1905. They form a majority of all senior comrades in most government departments and in diplomacy. His henchmen is Lavrenti Beria who will outlive Stalin by one year and he himself will be arrested and shot by the new Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev in 1953. The master executioner was the peasant Vasily Blokhin who was in charge of all high profile execution and torture, he killed thousands and had a special squad to ensure efficiency in mass murders, he will commit suicide in 1955 after being disgraced by the new Soviet Leader.

So this is Josef V.Stalin, a Georgian peasant, who came from a dysfunctional family, poorly educated, suffering from various mental problems, his a reign of crimes, depravity and massacres against his own people, there was no communist ideal, no program, no policies, just a lot of purges of people to ensure that no one would ever topple him. Millions died at the hands of his secret police. If the purges stopped once Stalin died, the idea of a Soviet Union was forever doomed, no one, not Khrushchev, not Leonid Bhreznev, no one was able to reform the government and make social progress. Until it finally collapsed in 1989. In other words 72 years of utter misery and mismanagement, so much for the glorious revolution of the people. Problem is no one bothered to invite the people to their own revolution.

The book is well researched but after a while the reader is nauseated with the utter cruelty and nonsense of such a regime which brought nothing to Russia.

The other book I finished reading was the biography of Queen Marie-Antoinette by Stefan Zweig, a very detailed work, giving us a graphic picture, one I had not encountered before of the last 15 years of the Ancient Regime, the story of a monumental failure of the State, of an incompetent King Louis XVI and a Queen Marie-Antoinette who was unable to understand her role being a selfish, spoiled woman and the dangers around her despite many warnings. Missed opportunities at many crucial moments in history. The old Monarchy is swept away by a Bourgeois uprising again done in the name of the people and arranged or staged managed by the brother of the King, the Duke of Provence and his cousin Duke of Orleans, the problem is they (the people) are not aware of it. Only to be replaced by an Imperial regime under Napoleon I and a restoration of the same old monarchy in 1814. A Republican regime is only born in France in 1871, some 82 years later.

I am now going to read another of Stefan Zweig’s books The World of Yesterday.