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Thread: The French Revolution: The Reign Of Terror

  1. #31
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    Abbé Julian Landeau: Incumbent Of Saint Lyphard.



    Source:- https://archive.org/stream/tragicepi...ge/68/mode/2up

    End.

    In constant dread, misery, and nights spent in the marsh, broke down the vigorous health of the vicar of Saint Lyphard.
    He died tended by his faithful curate, at Charles Deniaud's on June 24th 1799, aged fifty-five.

    His flock, who were not unaware of his story and looked on this sole survivor of the drowning of the priests as a miracle, wished ardently to keep his remains in the village cemetery. But Kernogan, where his death took place, is in the district of Guerande, so it was to Guerande that his body was to be carried and thrown into the common ditch, according to the regulations then in force.
    To avoid such profanation they played a last trick with the Abbé in his death; they carried his corpse by night to the hamlet of Crutier, scarcely a hundred metres from Kernogan, but forming part of the Commune of Saint Lyphard.

    It was laid, so the story runs, in the bed of an old man at deaths door, whom they carried off to Kernogan, where he died.
    The exchange thus having been affected, the common ditch of Guerande was not deprived of a body, while the cemetery of Saint Lyphards resumed its rights to that of Abbé Landaeu.

    Hence it was that the death was announced at Crutier, and the priest buried close to his old church. When in more recent times that church was pulled down and the cemetery removed, they laid his honoured remains in the chapel of the new God's acre.
    That chapel is a sort of grotto, excavated under a bluff surmounted by a Calvary.
    Abbé Landeau's grave adjoins that of M. Goujon, his curate and successor .
    From the crest of the bluff which you mount by a steep path, the eye ranges over the whole of La Briere, which begins at this point.

    The vicar of St Lyphard - his memory will live as long as men remember the "noyades" of Nantes - lies on the margin of this sleeping ocean, a sea without flood, or tide, or current, as if the element to which Carrier committed his victims here shared the eternal repose of the priest whom the Loire refused to receive.
    End.
    Frances.
    Last edited by Frances, 3rd November 2015 at 22:55.

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    To The Guilotine Goes Carrier.



    Source:- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Carrier

    To The Guilotine Goes Carrier.

    Early in 1794 Carrier was recalled to Paris. A few months later, the Thermidorian reaction led to the fall of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. Carrier's position became dangerously exposed. Prisoners he had brought from Nantes were acquitted and released, and denunciations of Carrier's actions increased.

    On 3rd September 1794 Carrier was arrested. At his trial, in the Salle de la Liberté, Carrier was quick to denounce allegations of inhumanity saying, "I took but little share in the policing of Nantes; I was only there in passing, being first at Rennes and later with the army. My principal task was to watch over and see to the victualling of our troops, and for six months I supplied 200,000 men there without its costing the State a halfpenny. Hence I have little information to offer in the matter. I know little or nothing of the accused.

    After this statement, a fellow representative (Phélippes) sprang to his feet vocally charging Carrier with drownings, wholesale executions, demolitions, thefts, pillaging, laying waste to Nantes, famine and disorder, and with the butchering of women and children.

    Men from the Marat Company (the group of soldiers that Carrier used to purge Nantes) were present during the trial, including Perro-Chaux, Lévêque, Bollogniel, Grandmaison, and Mainguet. All these men were appointed directly and indirectly by Carrier and all were part of the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes. The jury that heard Carrier's case was left dumbfounded as the trial closed and passed a unanimous vote for Carrier's execution, which took place on 16 December 1794.
    Frances.
    Last edited by Frances, 10th December 2015 at 00:34.

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  5. #33
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    My God. What are we, and what have we done?

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    Marking this thread for later reading.

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  9. #35
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    Quote Originally posted by pabranno View Post
    My God. What are we, and what have we done?
    The question is not what have we done but what is being done to us by the invisible hand of the world controllers. The French revolution was a classic case of how the hidden hand plays one side off the other to maximize human suffering.

    First was how they controlled the tyranny of absolute monarchy characterized by random executions of "enemies of the crown." Then when the absolute monarchy became untenable they flipped it. Meet the new boss same as the old boss. The random executions only continued under a new name. Instead of being branded enemies of the crown people were branded "enemies of the revolution" or "enemies of the people." What the reality was on the ground was these executions were enemies of the world controllers. The crown had merely been a front for the world controllers and likewise the revolutionaries were in the pocket of the hidden hand. The hidden hand controlled both sides so they would never be the target of retribution. Divide and conquer; they played both sides against each other to maximize human suffering. Order out of Chaos; the world controllers thrive on fear and chaos which they use to brutalize populations into submission.

    "We will not give them peace until they recognize the supremacy of our international super government." - an infamous world controller is known to have said.

    When the time came the original revolutionaries were thrown under the bus by the counter revolutionaries. Thus they too were executed in a second reign of terror. In time the counter revolutionaries were usurped by the restorationists who put Napoleon on the throne. Therein through various power plays of inciting violence against their enemies the world controllers were able to gain complete control over society. Instead of having a King. France would now have an Emperor with even greater powers to inflict violence on the innocent than ever before.



    Emperor Napoleon became the archtype for a world controller placed in the seat of power which was the goal from the start. Napoleon could get away with attacks and atrocities King Louis XVI could only dream of. The Napoleonic wars would go on to kill millions as his armies rampaged from as far away as Egypt and Russia.

    The Hidden Hand master of the second veil:



    The French revolution would be copied and exported around the world to maximize human suffering and allow the world controllers of the hidden hand to gain complete control of the planet. The Russian Revolution was pretty much an exact replay of the French revolution.
    - Start with a corrupt and hated Monarchy
    - Over throw it with an initial revolution (March and November revolutions)
    - Throw the initial revolutionaries under the bus (Lenin & Trotsky)
    - Install a world controller at the top of society after massively brutalizing the population (Stalin and 50 million dead later)

    I will say something there is a reason the plans of the world controllers have never completely worked and I will end it with this quote:

    "There is a whole lot of things the world controllers don't know;
    There is a joker in the deck and he works for the big dealer who owns the house we all play cards in.
    He is pulling leavers that aught not to be pulled and pushing buttons that aught not to be pushed.
    They know their end approaches but from where;
    Half of them denies this inescapable truth and half of them knows that something has gone terribly wrong.
    The thing about awakening is it forces certain considerations before your eyes."
    Last edited by Novusod, 15th December 2015 at 00:31.

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    While Napoleon was no saint, and Louis XVI's reign was beginning to give the 3rd Estate and common citizens more of a chance to have their complaints heard (which ultimately led to the revolution itself), the regime that the French Revolution overthrew was ideologically despotic. The church and monarchy persecuted anyone who said bad things about the clergy, pope, religion, monarchy, nobility, etc., and they executed people over it. This had been going on already more or less since the feudal period, wherever there was still a feudal system or a monarchy.

    The monarchy in Russia was also despotic. Unless the Soviets themselves conspired in revising pre-revolutionary history (which I wouldn't rule out), Russians were even worse off under their monarchs than the French, Austrians, Germans, etc.

    My point here is that there were no real "good guys" in either of these revolutions, or else if there were, they came somewhere in the middle and didn't last long. For example, the French Revolution was able to force Louis XVI to agree to a constitutional monarchy, and it looked as though the revolution might actually stop there and establish a stable government. It was because Louis XVI's court and the Austrians were not satisfied with this and trying to force the old order to be restored that it opened up the opportunity for a much more radical and disastrous chain of events that culminated in the Terror and then Napoleon.

    And even though Napoleon was a despot, and censored the media when it came to criticisms of his regime, and overthrew governments all over Europe, he also allowed enough free thinking and writing to occur back in France, and things were so well in general, that the French seem to have welcomed him back pretty enthusiastically when he escaped from exile. And even moved importantly, after his final exile, the French had already had already seen enough to no longer be satisfied with monarchs, despite the rest of Europe trying to force them back on the French people.

    The morality of these kinds of events on all sides is very murky at best. Both sides in both of these revolutions committed their fair share of atrocities.

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    The "Affair Of The Diamond Necklace".



    Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Comtesse de la Motte

    Source:- http://www.joslinhall.com/diamond_necklace_affair.htm

    The "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" was the scandal which raised French hatred of Marie Antoinette to a fever pitch. As Napoleon once commented-

    "The Queen's death must be dated from the Diamond Necklace Trial".

    The trial, and the subsequent Memoirs of its chief feminine player, the Comtesse de la Motte, are also credited by many historians with being the gust of foul wind which finally fanned the long-smouldering fire of popular discontent into the uncontrollable conflagration of the French Revolution.

    The tale is long, complex and not just a little sordid; it has several different versions (depending on whose memoirs you read), and has been told many times, most recently in a beautifully costumed Hollywood version starring Hilary Swank. The movie, which includes a stirring performance by Miss Swank as the Countess, takes some (but not all) of the Countess's claims at face value, which is another way of saying that it takes extreme liberties with what most historians regard as the actual truth.

    Although she claimed to be descended from royalty, it is now generally agreed that Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Comtesse de la Motte, came of what might be termed "humble origins" and basically talked, schemed and slept herself almost all the way to the Royal Chambers at Versailles.

    Jeanne carried on an affair with the Cardinal Louis Rene Edouard, Prince de Rohan, a man more attuned to matters earthly than spiritual. Jeanne also borrowed money from the Cardinal, and was soon deep in his debt. For his part the Cardinal was out of favor with Marie Antoinette, and was anxious to get into the Queen's good graces, if not her bed. Jeanne, who was undertaking her own campaign to gain access to the Queen and have her "family estates" "returned" to her, persuaded the Cardinal that she had the Queen's ear and could arrange reconciliation.
    The gullible and perhaps somewhat oversexed Cardinal agreed and the Countess arranged a correspondence between him and the Queen. His letters to Marie Antoinette were real enough, but never delivered; the Queen's return letters were forgeries produced by Jeanne herself, or possibly her husband, or perhaps her "secretary" and lover, the gallant former-cavalier Retaux de Vilette.



    Cardinal Louis Rene Edouard, Prince de Rohan

    The Prince wanted nothing more than to win Marie Antoinette's approval. Nevertheless, the Queen shunned the Cardinal because he had attempted to thwart her marriage to Louis XVI and she was aware of his scandalous and venial lifestyle.

    The famous and scandalous Count Cagliostro, alchemist, healer and all-round man-of mystery, had been befriended by the Cardinal, and the Cardinal relied on Cagliostro's direction and ability to see into the future to direct his dealings with the "Queen". Cagliostro, apparently also taken in by Jeanne, went into trances and told the Cardinal that he saw the Cardinal being favored by the Queen and rising to a very high post in the government. The diabolical farce seemed to reach its climax with a midnight rendezvous in the Grove of Venus at the Palais-Royal Gardens, between the Cardinal and "Marie Antoinette" -actually an actress (or prostitute, or perhaps both, who could keep track at this point?) named Mademoiselle Leguay d'Olivia, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the Queen... and then the extravagant and fabulously costly diamond necklace entered the scene.

    Ah, the necklace...



    The Diamond Necklace came into being courtesy of a firm of Parisian jewelers who had, several years earlier, made it (so they had unwisely speculated) to sell to Madame du Barry. They had tried to interest Marie Antoinette in the necklace several times, and although she had been tempted, she considered it too extravagant and had refused to purchase it. Now the jewelers, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because of the interest payments on the money they had borrowed to buy the stones, approached the Countess, who openly boasted about how close she was to the Queen, and asked her to persuade Antoinette to buy the overwrought bauble which was worth as much as a full-rigged warship.

    Jeanne shrewdly took the matter to the Cardinal, who was very much inclined to negotiate a purchase he thought would endear him further to Marie. Once more the Cardinal consulted the Count Cagliostro, and once more Cagliostro went into a trance and foresaw the Cardinal enriched and rewarded by the Queen with a post at the highest rank of the government. More outrageous lies, forgeries and deception ensued, and in the end the Queen agreed to purchase the necklace, or so the lovesick Cardinal and desperate jewellers thought. The jewelers delivered the necklace to the Cardinal, and the Cardinal delivered it to a trusted servant of the Queen (or so it appeared) and then the necklace simply vanished!

    The first Marie Antoinette knew of all this was when the jewelers (most humbly and very, very anxiously) sent her a dunning letter for the gigantic unpaid bill. Then, as they say, all Hell broke loose. The scandal became public; the Cardinal was denounced, and Jeanne was arrested along with just about everybody else who had ever as much as shaken hands with the Cardinal. Acting against some very good advice, Marie Antoinette insisted on a trial for the Cardinal on the charge that he was guilty simply because he had believed that she was capable of having the sort of "relationship" with him he had thought she had. This, of course, played right into the hands of the Queen's numerous enemies who were only too happy to have publicly broadcast the exact nature of what the Cardinal had thought were the Queen's morals, or lack thereof.

    There followed a sensational trial, which was ostensibly about the Cardinal's actions but was really about the Queen's reputation. Jeanne's lawyer was Maitre Doillot, a respected advocate who was in somewhat over his head in dealing with Jeanne. He was the family lawyer of the Paris Police Lieutenant General, and had been recommended to Jeanne by that worthy as a favor -for what we will not speculate, though many others did at the time. The Count Beugnot, himself a lawyer (and another one of Jeanne's former lovers) had turned down her plea that he defend her, and had this to say about Maitre Doillot-

    "Doillot had been in practice before the Paris bar for many, many years, and not without renown. Deep in his sixties or beyond, he had retired to his study, where he was still consulted as an eminent jurist. Even a sage old gentleman such as this could not with impunity survive close contact with the Countess de la Motte. She completely turned his head. He believed implicitly all the tales she spun him, became emotionally involved with his client and put up an impassioned defense of her innocence, making his debut in the case with the publication of a trial brief, the most extravagant defense plea ever to flow from the pen of an attorney in all the years since attorneys first began composing defense pleas. Fantastic as a tale out of 'The Arabian Nights', it enjoyed, nonetheless, a sensational success. And to think that it was the composition of a venerable white-wig of seventy summers!".



    The Abbe Georgel called Doillot's first plea "a tissue of lies, of striking improbabilities, contradictions and anachronisms". According to Mossiker, Doillot's own brother agreed-
    "The man has either gone stark raving mad or Madame de la Motte has bewitched him as she did the Cardinal".

    After much scandal mongering in both the courtroom and the streets the Queen's enemies won and the Cardinal was acquitted. Others were not so lucky- the Count Cagliostro was exiled from France, and eventually returned to Italy where he was arrested and convicted on charges of practicing Freemasonry; he died in prison in 1795. Jeanne was convicted and whipped, branded.

    A young woman found guilty of conspiring in intrigues against the queen, Jeanne de la Motte was sentenced to be whipped, branded (with a V on each shoulder for voleuse [thief]) and imprisoned for life. She did not know this at the time as French prisoners were only told their fate immediately prior to the sentence being carried out (with the exception of the death penalty).
    Minor punishments such as beatings, whippings and branding were normally carried out by executioners' aids but due to her high status, Jeanne's punishment was undertaken by the chief executioner of France. In order to maintain court dignity the sentence was scheduled for six o'clock in the morning June 21st 1786 in the courtyard of the Palace de Justice.

    At five o'clock Jeanne was removed from her celll and taken to Parlement to hear her sentence pronounced. Haughty and scornful at first she refused to kneel whilst she heard her sentence as was customary but started screaming and thrashing about when she learned of her sentence. She had to be restrained and physically tied up abd carried down to the courtyard where a scaffold had been erected. Despite the early hour, a crowd of hundreds had gathered, for whippings of women were extremely popular entertainment. On seeing the scaffold, whips and braziers, Jeanne continued to thrash about and it took some time to remove her clothes. With much effort she was finally stripped of her attire and forced down upon her stomach whilst the executioner administered the punishment.



    Jeanne's escape from prison with her maid, Jeanne was disguised as a boy.

    Jeanne was now a favorite of the anti-Antoinette faction, which was growing quickly in France, and she was able to intrigue to escape the country and made her way, with her husband, to London.

    Once there she immediately set out on a plan of revenge against the Queen which took the form of her famous "Memoires Justificatifs de la Comtesse de Valois de la Motte". These contained her own highly slanted version of her life and the Diamond Necklace Affair, as well as some thirty pieces of correspondence she claimed had passed between the Cardinal and the Queen.

    "From the moment of my arrival in London," she wrote, "my first and only thought had been publication of my justification for the eyes of all the world... I too would have preferred to spare the honour of the Queen, and I tried to warn her Majesty that I was in Possession of certain letters...incriminating her and exculpating me... All I asked in return was restitution of property rightfully mine which had been seized, after an iniquitous verdict, to enrich the coffers of the King. But I really never considered it likely that the French court would capitulate to those terms, and besides, my main goal was public vindication. To this purpose, then, I eagerly took up my pen, denying my feeble, tortured body even the minimal physical requirements of nourishment and sleep until my memoirs should be ready for publication. Although we were obliged to borrow money to defray the costs of printing, five thousand copies in French have now come off the press, and three thousand more in English; the latter went on sale at a guinea each in New Bond Street shops."

    The readers of England and France could not get enough of the Countess's memoirs, although what you thought of them depended on which side of the Royal table you sat on- "a cesspool of calumny" was the verdict of the Abbe Georgel, friend and secretary of Cardinal Rohan. In October of 1789 a "Second Memoirs justicatif", much more barbed and venomous than the first, was rushed to the printers, another direct attack on the Queen by Jeanne, published in French and English and distributed in Paris where it stirred the mobs to a new frenzy. Mirabeau said of the Countess- "Madame de La Motte's voice alone brought on the horrors of July 14 and of October 5" (the storming of Versailles and the slaughter of the troops there by the 'Women's Army').

    Her works spawned a storm of other pamphlets, each one trying to outdo the other in decrying the licentiousness and debauchery of the Queen. Frances Mossiker, in "The Queen's Necklace", notes, however, that's Jeanne's works were the most influential-

    "There were other attacks perhaps more obscene, but they were published under noms de plume and therefore were never as pungent and convincing as those signed by a real-life name, a name famous, moreover, throughout Europe ever since the Necklace Trial".

    In 1791 the Countess's two volume "Story of My Life" came off the presses, but Jeanne would not live to enjoy its fruits. In early June the London newspapers reported that a London bailiff had appeared at her lodgings to serve an order for her mounting debts. Others said that the men were actually secret agents sent by the Duke of Orleans; that was what Jeanne believed, and to get away from them she barricaded herself in and then climbed out a third floor window, falling to the street below. Badly injured, she lingered in extreme pain through the hot weeks of July and into August, when, on August 23rd, 1791, she died. She was buried a few days later in the churchyard of St. Mary's, in Lambeth. The Queen against whom Jeanne had intrigued for so long survived her by just two years, one month, and 23 days, before mounting the steps to the guillotine in Paris to the howling delight of the mob.
    Frances.
    Last edited by Frances, 17th December 2015 at 19:32.

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    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pZHXr4FE44


    Édith Piaf - ''Ah! Ça ira!'' (vidéo)

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    Such an intriguing space in our history, Frances. So much to remember that is painful. Thank you for posting that.

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    I was greatly affected by all the pain I was reading about at the start of my walk through "The French Revolution.
    I cope better with it now, although I still need a break at times.
    The songs help, because I like them all, I play them when I am browsing through the thread.
    Frances.

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    Robespierre & The Terror



    Maximilien Robespierre

    Source:- http://www.historytoday.com/marisa-l...rre-and-terror

    Robespierre and the Terror

    By Marisa Linton

    Maximilien Robespierre has always provoked strong feelings. For the English he is the ‘sea-green incorruptible’ portrayed by Carlyle, the repellent figure at the head of the Revolution, who sent thousands of people to their death under the guillotine. The French, for the most part, dislike his memory still more. There is no national monument to him, though many of the revolutionaries have had statues raised to them. Robespierre is still considered beyond the pale; only one rather shabby metro station in a poorer suburb of Paris bears his name.

    Although Robespierre, like most of the revolutionaries, was a bourgeois, he identified with the cause of the urban workers, the sans-culottes as they came to be known, and became a spokesman for them. It is for this reason that he came to dominate the Revolution in its most radical phase. This was the period of the Jacobin government, which lasted from June 1793 to Robespierre’s overthrow in July 1794; the months when the common people became briefly the masters of the first French republic, which had been proclaimed in September 1792. It is also known, more ominously, as the Terror.

    The enigmatic figure of Robespierre takes us to the heart of the Revolution, and throws light both on its ideals, and on the violence that indelibly scarred.

    Born in Arras in 1758, Robespierre suffered loss early in his life. His mother died when he was six, and soon after, his father abandoned the family. The children were brought up by elderly relatives who continually reminded them of their dependent situation and their father’s irresponsibility. Maximilien was the eldest, a conscientious, hardworking scholarship boy. As soon as he was able he shouldered the burden of caring for his younger siblings. He became a lawyer, leading a quiet and blameless life in his native town. He was best known for defending the poor, and for some rather lengthy and tedious speeches at the local academy.

    In 1789, when he was in his early thirties, the Revolution transformed his destiny. He launched himself into the political maelstrom that would immerse him for the rest of his life. He was elected as a deputy for the Third Estate in the Estates General in May, and he witnessed the onset of the Revolution that broke the power of the absolute monarchy two months later. Painstakingly, he worked to forge a reputation for himself as a public speaker in the Assembly. He had his power base in the Jacobin Club, the most important of the revolutionary clubs where people debated events.

    From the first, Robespierre was a radical and a democrat, defending the principle that the ‘rights of man’ should extend to all men – including the poor, and the slaves in the colonies. This stance won him a reputation among the sans-culottes and the radical left, but the earlier years of the Revolution were dominated by men who had no wish to see power in the hands of the propertyless. Robespierre was undaunted. As a spokesman for the opposition and critic of government, he was tireless and consistent. He was also for a long time a vehement opponent of the death penalty. Why did he later change his mind and become an advocate of Terror? Part of the answer to this question lies in the deterioration of the political situation between 1789 and 1792, and the failure of the attempt to set up a workable constitutional monarchy, under Louis XVI.

    From the spring of 1792 onwards France was involved in a spiral of war, revolt and civil war. Counter-revolutionaries were plotting the restoration of the absolute monarchy with the support of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (succeeded in March by Francis II). The Girondins, then the dominant revolutionary faction in the Legislative Assembly, spearheaded the drive for an aggressive war with the Empire, declaring war in April 1792. The avowed intention of their leader, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, was to polarize French politics, oblige the counter-revolutionaries to emerge into open opposition, and force the monarchy either to capitulate to the revolutionaries or to face its own destruction. In these circumstances, political views hardened, suspicion and fear increased, and the early optimism of the Revolution vanished.



    Sans-Culottes

    Robespierre himself had long warned of the dangers of provoking counter-revolution. He had tried to oppose the war, because he thought it would divide France and rally support for the counter-revolutionaries. Nor did he believe, as Brissot did, that the ordinary people of Europe would welcome an invading French army, even one that claimed to deliver liberty and equality. ‘No one,’ said Robespierre, ‘welcomes armed liberators.’ He stuck doggedly to this position, though it was deeply unpopular and he became politically isolated.

    By the summer of 1792, his worst fears were realized. The French army, far from being victorious, was on the verge of defeat and suffered from disorganization and raw and inexperienced troops. Many people thought (not without reason) that Louis was secretly on the side of the Austrian and Prussian armies, which were now threatening Paris itself. Many now felt that Robespierre spoke for them when he declared that the aristocrats were plotting a conspiracy to destroy the Revolution. In August the monarchy was overthrown in a pitched battle at the Tuileries palace. A new government, the National Convention, was formed in September 1792, which promptly declared France to be a republic. By now Robespierre’s ascendancy in the Jacobin club was unrivalled. The Jacobins identified themselves with the popular movement and the sans-culottes, who in turn saw popular violence as a political right.

    The most notorious instance of the crowd’s rough justice was the prison massacres of September 1792, when around 2,000 people, including priests and nuns, were dragged from their prison cells, and subjected to summary ‘justice’. The Convention was determined to avoid a repeat of these brutal scenes, but that meant taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government.

    When the Convention debated the fate of Louis XVI, now a prisoner of the revolutionaries, Robespierre and his youthful colleague, Saint-Just (1767-94) – also once an opponent of the death penalty – led the way in claiming that ‘Louis must die in order for the Revolution to live’. Robespierre had not abandoned his libertarian convictions, but he was coming to the conclusion that the ends justified the means, and that in order to defend the Revolution against those who would destroy it, the shedding of blood was justified.

    In June 1793, the sans-culottes, exasperated by the inadequacies of the government, invaded the Convention and overthrew the Giron*dins. In their place they endorsed the political ascendancy of the Jacobins. Thus Robespierre came to power on the back of popular street violence. Though the Girondins and the Jacobins were both on the extreme left, and shared many of the same radical republican convictions, the Jacobins were much more brutally efficient in setting up a war government. A Committee of Public Safety was established to act as a war cabinet. It became the chief executive power, with Robespierre – now moving from opposition to government for the first time – one of its twelve members. Like so many politicians making such a move, Robespierre’s attitude to political power was to change dramatically from this moment. In June the Jacobins drafted a new constitution, the most libertarian and egalitarian the world had yet seen. Yet for some months they hesitated to implement it, as the pressures of war with Austria and Prussia, and of full-blown civil war in the Vendée in the west were compounded by revolts across the country by départements rejecting the authority of the radical government in Paris.



    Mass shootings at Nantes, 1793

    In September 1793, the impatient sans-culottes once again invaded the Convention to exert pressure on the deputies. They wanted economic measures to ensure their food supplies, and the government to deal with counter-revolutionaries. A delegation of the forty-eight sections of sans-culottes urged the Convention to ‘make Terror the order of the day!’ The Jacobins responded: the Law of Suspects was passed on September 17th, 1793, giving wide powers of arrest to the ruling Committees, and defining ‘suspects’ in broad terms. In October the Convention passed the Decree on Emergency Government. This authorized the revolutionary government to suspend peacetime rights and legal safeguards and to employ coercion and violence. Saint-Just decreed that the government ‘would be revolutionary until the peace’. The constitution was shelved: the libertarian ideals of the Revolution were suspended, indefinitely. Sans-culottes formed armed militias to go out into the provinces to requisition supplies for the armies and the urban populace and to root out counter-revolutionaries. In October Brissot and other Girondin leaders, as well as Marie-Antoinette went to the guillotine.

    For the first time in history terror became an official government policy, with the stated aim to use violence in order to achieve a higher political goal. Unlike the later meaning of ‘terrorists’ as people who use violence against a government, the terrorists of the French Revolution were the government. The Terror was legal, having been voted for by the Convention.

    Robespierre, like a number of the Jacobin government, had been a lawyer. He clung to the form of law partly in order to prevent the sans-culottes taking the law into their own hands through mob violence. As fellow revolutionary Danton said, ‘let us be terrible in order to stop the people from being so’. The resort to Terror also emerged out of relative weakness and fear. The Jacobins had only a shaky legitimacy and innumerable opponents throughout France, ranging from intransigent royalists to more moderate revolutionaries who had seen power centralized and their ideas superseded. Many people in France were already indifferent, if not openly hostile, to the Revolution. For many the Revolution now meant requisitioning of supplies, military conscription and the constant threat to their traditional ways of life, churches, even time – for the revolutionaries had even invented a new calendar. Throughout the year of Jacobin rule, it was the sans-culottes who kept them in power. But the price of that support was the blood-letting.

    The number of death sentences in Paris was 2,639, while the total number during the Terror in the whole of France (including Paris) was 16,594. With the exception of Paris (where many of the more important prisoners were transferred to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal) most of the executions were carried out in regions of revolt such as the Vendée, Lyon and Marseilles. There were wide regional variations. Because on the whole the Jacobins were meticulous in maintaining a legal structure for the Terror clear records exist for official death sentences. But many more people were murdered without formal sentences imposed in a court of law. Some died in overcrowded and unsanitary prisons awaiting trial, while others died in the civil wars and federalist revolts, their deaths unrecorded. The historian Jean-Clément Martin, suggests that up to 250,000 insurgents and 200,000 republicans met their deaths in the Vendée, a war which lasted from 1793-96 in which both sides suffered appalling atrocities.

    Today the civil war in the Vendée is largely forgotten except by specialists. It is of the guillotine that most people think when they hear about the Terror. After so many bloodlettings of the twentieth century, why does that image still have the power to shock us? The historian Lord Acton once famously said that in terms of the time, the deaths under the Terror were relatively few in number (he was thinking of the official death sentences). As Acton pointed out, many millions were to die in Napoleon’s wars for no better reason than his own glory. Yet the aura of the hero still clings to Napoleon, while Robespierre’s name is synonymous with violence and horror.

    Perhaps it is because of the stark contrast between Robespierre’s ideals and what he became that the question of the Terror remains shocking. In the mind of Robespierre and many of his colleagues, the Terror had a deeper moral purpose beyond winning the civil war: to bring about a ‘republic of virtue’. By this he meant a society in which people sought the happiness of their fellow humans rather than their own material benefit. France must be regenerated on moral lines. ‘What is our aim?’ he asked in a speech of February 1794:

    The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws are written, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of all men, even in that of the slave who forgets them and of the tyrant who denies them.
    He came to the conclusion that in order to establish this ideal republic one had to be prepared to eliminate opponents of the Revolution. The irony of this idea rings through in the same speech, when he justified the Terror. He said:

    If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.
    Throughout his time in government Robespierre conducted his private life as a man of virtue. Far from living in palaces, amassing treasure, or allying himself with royalty, as Napoleon was to do, Robespierre lived a celibate life as a lodger, occupying simple rooms in the house of a master carpenter. He was known as ‘the Incorruptible’ for, unlike many politicians, he refused to use a public position for private gain and self-advancement. He lived simply on his deputy’s salary. He walked everywhere, never taking a carriage. He enjoyed walks in the country and musical soirées with his landlord’s family.

    Yet the other side of this benign, if dull, domestic life, was the public role he undertook as a spokesman for the Committee of Public Safety and the guiding hand on the policy of Terror. He had become an astute political tactician, and he used these means finally to achieve political power. He could be accused, justly, of political ambition, but he himself did not see this as inconsistent with his dedication to the Revolution. He had an unshakable belief that his own aims coincided with what was best for the Revolution. He was a man of painful sincerity. He was not a hypocrite. He really did believe that the Terror could sustain the republic of virtue. But he was naturally self-righteous, suspicious and unforgiving. All these qualities came to the fore as it became evident that while the Terror played a key part in winning the war and quelling the counter-revolution, it was having the reverse effect as far as installing the republic of virtue was concerned, undermining any genuine enthusiasm for the Revolution. Even Saint-Just, Robespierre’s most loyal friend on the Committee of Public Safety, could not be blind to the way the Terror, with its neighbourhood surveillance committees and denunciations, encouraged an atmosphere of duplicity, cynicism and fear, even among the Revolution’s most fervent supporters, the Jacobins. ‘The Revolution is frozen’, he wrote dispairingly in a private note in 1794.



    Le Vieux Cordelier: launched by Desmoulins

    Some of the victims of the last months of the Terror were Robespierre’s former friends and colleagues, stalwarts of the Jacobin Club. They included Camille Desmoulins, Robespierre’s comrade from his schooldays. Desmoulins had taken the fateful step of supporting Georges Danton, another former friend of Robespierre, in his call that the Terror be wound down, and the power of the Committee of Public Safety broken. In December 1793  he launched a journal, Le Vieux Cordelier, arguing that the Revolution should return to its original ideals. Up to a point Robespierre had supported Desmoulins and his campaign against the more violent extremism of the sans-culottes, led by the journalist, Hébert. Robespierre read, and approved, the first two issues of Le Vieux Cordelier in proof. But in the third issue of the journal, Desmoulins parodied the notorious Law of Suspects and its wide range of people who could be considered ‘counter-revolutionary’. Under the Roman Empire, he said, paraphrasing Tacitus, people could be condemned as counter-revolutionary for being ‘too rich ... or too poor ... too melancholy ... or too self-indulgent’. Robespierre saw this satire – rightly – as a veiled attack on the Committee of Public Safety itself. Robespierre tried to persuade Desmoulins to burn the journal publicly in the Jacobin Club. Desmoulins refused, recklessly citing the words of Robespierre’s hero, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, against him: ‘burning is not an answer’. Robespierre was stung, and stopped trying to help his friend. When the Committees decided to arrest Danton and Desmoulins in March 1794, Robespierre used his personal knowledge of the two men to supplement his notes for the official indictment against them. Desmoulins’ wife, Lucille, tried to agitate for his release but she too was accused of conspiracy against the Revolution and followed her husband to the guillotine in April. The letter from her heart-broken mother to Robespierre, begging for his intervention to save her daughter, went unanswered. Robespierre had said that a man of virtue must put the good of la patrie before private loyalty, even to his friends. Never had his own virtue seemed so appalling and inhuman as at that moment.

    Perhaps he thought so too, and the strain of what he had become was beginning to tell. In the last few weeks of his life he shut himself in his rooms, and did not attend the meetings of the Committee or the Convention. He was losing his grip, both on himself and on power. In his absence it is notable that it was ‘business as usual’ for the Terror: in Paris the executions intensified, based on the notorious Law of 22nd Prairial (June 10th, 1794) which, by depriving the accused of counsel and removing the need for witnesses to substantiate accusations, removed the vestige of justice from the Tribunal.

    Robespierre was never the head of the government, nor the only terrorist: he was one man on the Committee – albeit its most high-profile member. Other members of the Committee, together with members of the Committee of General Security (responsible for the police, prisons and most of the arrests), were as much responsible for the running of the Terror as Robespierre. Some of his colleagues were hard, ambitious men, not averse to political corruption unlike Robespierre, and scornful of his dream of a virtuous republic. There were aspects of the Terror with which Robespierre disagreed. He was an opponent of dechristianization – a policy carried out by some militant sans-culottes of forcibly closing churches and preventing any kind of religious activity. In June 1794 he organized the festival of the Supreme Being, based on Enlightenment deist beliefs, intended to unify the people around broadly moral and vaguely religious principles. It made him a laughing stock with the atheists among the deputies and failed to conciliate devout Catholics, long since alienated from the Revolution by its anti-clericalism.

    Robespierre also deplored the violent excesses of some of the Jacobin deputies sent out ‘on mission’ from the Convention to oversee the implementation of policy in the provinces and with the armies. While many of the deputies on mission were conscientious and restrained, others misused their powers to arrest, intimidate and execute local populations. Robespierre had some of these deputies, including Tallien, Fouché, Fréron, Barras and Collot d’Herbois, in his sights when he went to the Convention for the first time in more than four weeks on the July 26th (8 Thermidor by the revolutionary calendar). It was the turning point. He had already quarrelled with men on both the ruling Committees, and, having rejected the reconciliation
    which Saint-Just tried to broker, he was left with little alternative but to try to destroy his enemies before they could do the same to him. He made a long speech in which he sought to justify the stand he had taken as a defender of virtue. But he also took the opportunity to demand another purge of suspect deputies. In a fatal miscalculation, he failed to name these men. Not unnaturally, many of the fearful deputies thought he might mean them. ‘The names!’ they shouted. But he refused. His enemies among the Jacobins spent that night in organizing their conspiracy. The next day Saint-Just was shouted down when he tried to speak in his friend’s defence. Robespierre and his closest associates were arrested and, after a futile attempt to rally the sans-culottes to defend them at the town hall, they were executed the following day.



    The execution of Robespierre

    The men who overthrew Robespierre were more ruthless and cynical terrorists than he. They included Vadier, Elie Lacoste, Billaud-Varenne and Collot d’Herbois on the Committees, as well as the deputies who had carried out atrocities whilst ‘on mission’. Initially they wanted the Terror to continue. But it rapidly became clear that the public had sickened of it. Since the overwhelming victory over the Austrians in the Low Countries at Fleurus on June 26th, the military justification for it had also diminished. In the reaction after Thermidor, as the coup is known, terrorist politicians rapidly restyled themselves. Members of the Committees now claimed that they had concerned themselves exclusively with the war: it was only the Robespierrists who had been terrorists.

    In the popular imagination Robespierre the enigma rapidly became the embodiment of the Terror. Yet he would never have been so influential had he not spoken for a wide swathe of society and government. When he spoke of conspiracies against the Revolution, of the threats to ‘the patrie in danger’, and the need for extreme measures, he voiced the fears of many at that time that France was about to be overwhelmed by foreign and internal enemies. The policies of the Jacobin Committees had, after all, been endorsed by the deputies of the Convention. Perhaps this is why he has been so vilified: in holding one individual culpable for the ills of the Terror, French society was able to avoid looking into its own dark heart at that traumatic moment. Robespierre, you might say, took the rap.

    Marisa Linton is Senior Lecturer in History at Kingston University and the author of The Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France (Palgrave, 2001).
    Frances.

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    A curiosity about Robespierre is that while he was a prominent member of the revolutionary government, he was actually styling himself among those close to him as a messianic figure. One of his colleagues discovered some letters to him that were addressing him as if he were a deity, and embarrassed him publicly about the ordeal, which stifled any schemes he had to become something like a Napoleon figure (or worse) himself.

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    Memoirs Of Madame Tussaud : Witness To The French Revoloution



    Madame Tussaud, age 20
    A Portrait Study by John T. Tussaud

    Source:- https://archive.org/stream/11499676....ge/n7/mode/2up

    Memoirs Of Madame Tussaud : Witness To The French Revoloution.

    Part 1.

    Story starts with Madame Tussaud and her mother going to stay in Paris with her uncle, John Christopher Curtius, who had, for some years previously been practising his profession as a medical man at Berne, when the Prince de Conti, happened to be sojourning in that city, and having accidentally seen some portraits and anatomical subjects modelled in wax by M. Curtius, the Prince was so struck with the exquisite delicacy and
    beauty which these ingenious specimens of art displayed, that he called upon the artist, and personaly complimenting him upon his talent, offered to give not only his own patronage, but secure him the support of many members of the royal family and the principal nobility in France if he would take up his residence in Paris, and further, that at the outset his royal highness would provide for him at his own cost suitable apartments.

    M. Curtius, who had hitherto considered himself only an amateur in the art of modelling, was over- joyed at the approbation of a royal prince, especialy one so wealthy and powerful as the Prince de Conti was at that period, and he at once profited by so favourable opportunity. Renouncing, therefore, the medical profession, he proceeded to Paris, where he found that his royal patron had selected for him handsome apartments at the Hotel d'Allegre, in the Rue St. Honore. The artist's time was for a considerable period wholly occupied in executing orders for the prince, whose liberality and kindness not only equalled but rather surpassed his promises.
    The art of modelling wax was at that period in France considered a fashionable accomplishment, and M. Curtius's studio became one of the lions of Paris.

    Little Marie Gresholtz was then but six years of age, but no sooner did her uncle's eyes fall upon her than he said, " From this time you are my adopted daughter."
    It was indeed a wonderful change from the quiet homeliness of her mother's residence at Berne to be introduced, child as she was, to all the great and noble in France, for the house of M. Curtius at that period was the resort of the most talented men of the day, particularly as regarded the literati and artists. Amongst those who were frequently in the habit of dining at her uncle's, Madame Tussaud specially remembered Voltaire, Rousseau, Dr. Franklin, Mirabeau, and La Fayette.



    Voltaire

    Marie Gresholtz however, did not employ the whole of her time in entertaining guests or in contemplating upon men and manners. She early imbibed not only a taste but an interest
    for that art in which M. Curtius so much excelled and so closely did she imitate her uncle that after a few years it was impossible to distinguish as to the degree of excellence between their performances. At that period modelling in wax was much in vogue, in which representations of flowers, fruit, and other subjects were often most beautifully executed ; and to such a perfection had the niece arrived in giving character and accuracy to her portraits, that, whilst still very young, to her was confided the task of taking casts from the heads of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Mirabeau, and the principal men of the day, who most patiently submitted themselves to the hands of the fair artist. The cast which she took from the face of Voltaire was only two months before he died.



    Rousseau

    Now we arrive at the crowning feature in Madame Tussaud's history—one which ever after- wards attached her to the royal family of France, which led her, in her zeal for the royal cause, to be herself imprisoned, to deeply sympathize with the sufferings of many innocent persons, and finally to leave the country of her adoption and settle in England, thankful to be free from the dreadful acts committed by all parties during the period of the French Revolution.

    Amongst the numerous members of the royal family who were often accustomed to visit M. Curtius's apartments, and admire his works and those of his niece, was Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister. The princess, being desirous herself to learn the art of modelling in wax, sought the services of Marie Gresholtz, and her royal highness became so attached to her young instructress that she applied to M. Curtius to permit his niece to reside at the palace of Versailles, and become her companion and friend.



    Benjamin Franklin

    Madame Tussaud never forgot the kindness she received within the palace, nor the amiable qualities of the members of the royal family. She says in her Memoirs, " Had not the rank and misfortunes of Madame Elizabeth claimed the sympathy of posterity, her virtues alone so endeared her to those who knew the royal lady, that her memory would still have been indelibly impressed upon the hearts of those who enjoyed her friendship. She was strictly religious and charitable, in the purest sense of the word, in all her thoughts and actions ; benevolence and a sense of generosity characterized all she did." In fact, so amiable does Madame Tussaud represent the princess to have been, that up to the close of her own life she could never speak of Madame Elizabeth without shedding tears.

    The palace of Versailles, where Madame Elizabeth with the rest of the royal family resided, was specially celebrated at that day as one of the most magnificent in the world. At the period when Madame Tussaud was a guest at this palace, the Court was revelling in the acme of its gaiety.
    In the preceding reign, pleasure, luxury, dissipation, and even debauchery, had arrived at their climax; but when Louis XVI., with Marie Antoinette, ascended the throne, although all that was splendid, with every display of wealth and grandeur.



    Gardens in the Palace of Versailles

    Such a Court, presided over by a queen whose personal charms were only equalled by the elegance and affability of her deportment, operated as a magnet which attracted the majority of the French nobility. All strove to pay their court to the rising sun ; all were endeavouring to outvie each other in the strain of compliment with which they addressed their royal mistress, whose superior qualifications justly comanded their admiration, while a constant attempt at expressing their deep sense of her perfections created a high-flown style of language and an habitual tone of gallantry, until it became the necessary style in high society for ladies to be addressed in an exalted tone of imagery ever intended to convey flattery.

    Whatever could be added to the fascination of the colloquial powers by adorning the person was not neglected ; the expense and richness displayed in costumes far exceeded that which is exhibited in the present day, particularly as regards male attire. The rich and costly embroidery with which the gentlemen's drapery was then bedecked had a far more brilliant effect than the plain coats and waistcoats of our own times ; lace frills, powder, a sword, and diamond buckles much contributed to give eclat to the male costume of that day, whilst the stomachers of the females were often one blaze of diamonds.
    Frances.


    To be continued....
    Last edited by Frances, 10th January 2016 at 21:59.

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    Madame Tussaud

    Hope you don't mind Frances.

    This is from the museum in London, The Madame herself as she appeared later in life.

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    Elen

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    Memoirs Of Madame Tussaud : Witness To The French Revoloution



    Marie Antionette

    Source:- https://archive.org/stream/11499676....ge/n7/mode/2up

    Memoirs Of Madame Tussaud : Witness To The French Revoloution.

    Part 2.

    With the soft and gentle manners of the women, and the gallant and chivalrous tone of the men, a constant air of extreme gaiety was united, moving, as they were, in a vortex of pleasure. Their minds were employed upon nothing beyond devising new inventions for varying their enjoyments ; but whilst experiencing a succession of these luxurious delights, whilst following a career of extravagant dissipation, and whilst basking in the lap of voluptuous ecstasy, it must not be imagined that the pleasant vices were wholly banished from the palace of Versailles.

    Gaming, in particular, predominated to an excess, the queen and princess losing deeply, whilst the Duke of Orleans won to an immense amount. Intrigues of various descriptions were by no means strangers, although not so prevalent as during the reign of Louis XV Constantly conforming to the habits and etiquette of the Court had engendered a love of dress and a degree of effeminacy in the men which lowered them in the estimation of other nations.

    It is necessary to say this before we turn to the other side of the picture which Madame Tussaud so graphically describes in the Memoirs she has left behind her. She says, " Let us turn awhile from those scenes of revelry, from those gorgeous assemblies where wealth was lavished with a reckless hand, where profusion and luxury abounded even to satiety, where the cup of pleasure was quaffed till its votaries were bewildered with delirium of enjoyment ; and let us behold the source from whence came the means to supply these costly banquets.



    And what do we see but an impoverished country, a peasantry in the last stages of deprivation and misery, by the people being so oppressively and injudiciously taxed that the cultivator, on whom the burden principally fell, could scarcely, even by his own hard-earned labour, obtain a miserable sustenance, the major part of his produce being absorbed by the exactions of the State ? An English author who travelled in France at that period stated that he had seen a plough drawn by a wretched horse, a cow, a donkey, and a goat, whilst a peasant without shoes and stockings guided it, as a half-naked urchin was endeavouring to whip his miserable team forward." This, Madame Tussaud thinks, must be an exaggerated picture, but she is ready to admit that the excessive extravagance of the French Court was paid at that period by the sweat of the peasant's brow.

    This was written after years of reflection ; but still Madame Tussaud insists in saying that Louis XVI. was kept in ignorance of his people's sufferings ; that Marie Antoinette, his queen, combined every attribute which could be united to constitute loveliness and amiability in woman, possessing youth, grace, and elegance to a degree never surpassed, a sweetness and fascination in her manners enchanting all who ever had the hapiness to be greeted by the beam of her smile, in which there was a witchery that has more than once converted the fury of her most brutal enemies into admiration.

    She was above the middle height, and had a commanding air, such as did not exact but that won obedience ; her complexion was so extremely fair that Madame Le Brun, the celebrated portrait painter of that period, observed, when taking the picture of the queen, that it was impossible for the art of colouring to render justice to the exquisite delicacy and transparency of her skin. So fair a being, and one who occupied so exalted a position, could not fail to constantly meet with the poison of adulation, but it never sullied the purity of her heart, at least as far as Madame Tussaud was enabled to judge, and she formed her opinion from a thorough knowledge of the character of Marie Antoinette, which she conceived she had the best opportunity of acquiring from having so long lived under the same roof as her royal mistress.
    That She was fond of pleasure, dress, and admiration there can be no doubt, and that to the latter she might lend too willing an ear is possible, but that she ever was induced to be guilty of any dereliction from morality Madame Tussaud regards as the foulest calumny.

    Louis XVI. was a man of portly appearance, rather handsome than otherwise ; he was nearly five feet ten in height, but perhaps stouter than is consistent with our ideas of a handsome figure. He was an intellectual man, however he might lack that nerve and decision of character which was so peculiarly demanded by the extraordinary events which took place during his reign, and the very critical positions in which he was placed. He did not enter freely into all the extravagance and dissipation of the Court, but wanted firmness and resolution to repress those costly banquets and expensive nights of revelry in which he would not participate. Instead of joining the gay throng he would often retire to his studies.



    King Louis in his forge

    Though hunting was said to be his favourite pursuit, Madame Tussaud says lock-making was his darling recreation, and that he would be occupied hours each day in making locks, and that many of those on the doors of the palace of Versailles were made by his own hands.

    So much did the taste for resemblances in wax prevail during the reign of Louis XVI. that his majesty, the queen, and all the members of the royal family, and most of the eminent characters of the day submitted to M. Curtius and his niece whilst they took models of them ; and when the ambassadors of Tippoo Sahib were at Paris, the Court amused themselves in a singular manner with the credulity of the Indians. After they had seen the exhibition of M. Curtius's wax figures, they were shown, as they supposed, wax figures of the members of the king's household at the palace of Versailles ; but instead of being wax models the courtiers themselves entered the glass cases, and the king and queen were highly amused at the remarks of the Indians, who were forcibly struck with the life resemblance.


    Of all the interesting characters who visited Madame Elizabeth, Madame Tussaud says she was most charmed with the Princesse de Lamballe, whose misfortunes and fatal end afterwards excited so deep a sympathy that her name can scarcely be pronounced without causing an involuntary shudder. She was rather under the middle stature, remarkable for the extraordinary fairness of her skin, had light hair, a good colour, aquiline nose, and blue eyes, the chin rather too long and promi- nent.and altogether more pleasing than handsome. But her amiable qualities and sweetness of manners endeared her to all who had the opportunity of appreciating her merits This unfortunate princess was born in 1749, at Turin, and was christened Marie Therese Louise de Savoie-Carignan. She married the Prince de Lamballe, son of the Due de Penthievre; and only six weeks after they were united, he was killed in a duel by the Prince de Conde in the gardens of the Temple, for which the latter was temporarily exiled to his estates. She consequently became a widow, and remained so. She was a very intimate friend of Madame Elizabeth and the queen, and used frequently to visit them.



    Marie Therese de Savoie, princesse de Lamballe by Louis-Édouard Rioult

    Whilst in the palace all was gaiety, all was splendour, without there were murmurings, but these never appeared to have reached the royal ear. Madame Tussaud says that, on reflecting upon those days spent at the Palace of Versailles, she considers it remarkable how little notice was apparently taken at Court of the disturbances and political storms which were raging and fomenting without. She,however, remembers so often to have seen Madame Elizabeth weeping, and she could only suppose that these tears were caused by the increasing troubles which menaced her brother's kingdom.

    She Well recollects the circumstance Of the king banishing his Parliament, but no conversation was held upon the subject at the palace, although she remembers her most intimate friend, Madame Campan (afterwards appointed governess to the children of the Legion of Honour), observing in confidence how important a bearing it would have on the future progress of State affairs, how dangerous was such a measure, and how much she dreaded the consequences. But there appeared generally a sort of understanding, even amongst the attendants in the palace, that politics should be a forbidden subject ; so that it was only by accident that Madame Tussaud ever heard of the transactions which were occurring relative to the Government, and threatening its dissolution, with that of the monarchy, and in fact of all social order.
    Indeed, it would seem that the courtiers did all they could to keep Louis XVI. in the dark concerning the democratic feeling of the nation, and until too late the king believed his subjects were loyal and his actions generally approved.

    Many and great had been the changes in the public mind during the many months that the young artist remained in the Palace of Versailles, but she was entirely ignorant of these matters. At the commencement to of the year 1789, M. Curtius was anxious to have his niece once more under his own roof ; accordingly, he repaired to Versailles and made arrangements for her departure, and with much reluctance she took leave of her kind friend and patron, Madame Elizabeth. Soon after being installed again as her uncle's housekeeper, Madame Tussaud found that his guests were of a different stamp from those who had formerly visited him, and that he himself had very much changed his views in regard to loyalty. Formerly, philosophers and the amateurs and professors of literature, the arts, and sciences, ever resorted to the hospitable dwelling of M. Curtius ; but they were replaced by fanatic politicians, furious demagogues, and wild theorists, for ever thundering forth their anathemas against monarchy, haranguing on the different forms of government, and propounding their extravagant ideas on republicanism.

    The mob appearing to increase every hour in number and strength, the National Assembly sent a representation to the king of the state of excitement existing in Paris, and imploring his majesty to remove the troops surrounding the city, who, being so obnoxious to the people, caused such irritation as to be dangerous to the public welfare. The king foolishly answered, " I am the best judge of the necessity of the troops remaining where they are."
    The populace soon became cognizant of the king's intention to retain the hated troops, and they became desperate ; they congregated about the Bastille. " There can be no liberty," said one, " whilst that prison stands." The words had a magical effect, and on the celebrated 14th of July, 1789, it was taken by the people, after a tremendous conflict, which would have done credit to a better cause. This strong fortress was taken by an armed rabble and rebel troops in a few hours.




    To be continued....
    Last edited by Frances, 12th January 2016 at 18:50.

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