My Thoughts Comparing the French and American Revolutions

Note from Nix: I'm feeling very keenly aware that I don't have a very professional voice yet. I'm working on it, but these are my thoughts on the contrast of the French and American Revolutions

The differences between the French and American Revolutions happened a long time before either event became conspicuous. The American's, under the English, had the Magna Carta, which had limited the power of the king, enshrined the rights of the countries free people. 1 1215 is far away from 1793. 

I think the more frightened a person, or group of persons is, the more aggressive their response to potentially life threatening situations is. The Reformation and the wars that came with it, was both physically and psychologically very threatening. Catholics and the various Protestant groups did very bad things to each other.  The physical threats were part of life. War was common. Death was common. The main psychological insulation against being overwhelmed by fear, grief, and rage responses, was the order provided by religion. Loss and fear, grief that is refreshed so frequently with war and disease, all of that is balanced by the believe in God's love and God's plan for mankind.

Deist, Atheist, Christian, explorer of the esoteric, all of them, in moments of distress could at least subconsciously fall back on society's affirmation of God's love and God's plan. It's like here in Seattle, I can find familiarity and comfort in my lights, in the endless drone of CNN, the timeliness of my buses, just the structure and order of my nice secular world with its coffee and blackberries - so many little normal things tell me that I'm okay, that I'm safe and the world is where it belongs. 

The Americans were on a different continent, far from everything their parents or grandparents had ever known. Jamestown was founded in 1606, chartered by King James, the same guy who commissioned the King's James Bible. 2  Now that would be some serious affirmation of the right to be. It was 187 years from the founding of Jamestown till Louis XVI lost his head to the guillotine.3  One hundred and eighty-seven years is a long time to flourish and see that life works just fine without a king or monarch being obvious in daily life. 

I can imagine the difference between the French and Americans like families. The Americans were teenagers from a poor family where they had to work for everything, where the parents were far away and occasionally sent home snotty letters, but really were far away and didn't look so powerful, weren't really that bad, might even be a little off their rocker. Poor King George III wasn't actually all that sane and ended up having a Regent, which gave rise to Regency England.4  George II hadn't seemed very popular and maybe not very English, in either case, he was very far from New York. 5  To me, both Georges seem like the kind of parent you go to university and complain about, but you still send home a birthday card and you don't have a whole lot of guilt about leaving home over.  That lack of guilt makes for less animosity. Less animosity means less aggression and negative emotion. They weren't that worth getting worked up over. We threw their tea in the water, told them what they could do with themselves, and we felt good about ourselves for doing it. 

The French household was different. Louis XIV would have been like having a parent that was a combination of Bill Gates and .... I can't even think of anyone who might be beautiful enough to compare to Louis XIV. He gave stability after the wars of the Reformation. He created pride and power in France. I imagine that the power of Louis XIV would be as if the adulation people gave to President Obama the day he won the American Presidency had lasted a whole reign. Louis XIV reigned for seventy-two years, longer than the life expectancy of his subjects. Life expectancy from birth in France in 1750 was 26 years.7 So you could have one generation born under XIV, to parents awed by his majesty, that generation grow, raise children, that generation have children. If you allow for breeding to start in the early teens, some families could have more than three generations under XIV.  Family members tell each other stories. Myths form. XIV was a magnificent king. I can easily see how he'd almost be a demi-god in people's imaginations. 

Under that brilliance, one will put up with a great deal of unpleasantness that one might not otherwise accept. 

Louis XV was as humble and charitable as his grandfather was brilliant and vibrant.  He was called "Louis XV le Bien-Amie" which translated to English means Louis XV the Beloved. 8 I admit that I have a bit of fear over people claiming Christianity. I'm possibly a transexual, certainly an atheist, demonstrably apostate, all things that at various times under Christian rule could have gotten me killed, sometimes in very unpleasant ways. I do truly believe that only secular rule based on reason protects both my life and my liberty. So when I say that I am utterly in awe of Louis XV's Christian morals and behavior that's a very intense admission from me. From what I've read, and I'm going to cite things much more throughly in my essay, but he cared for the sick, accepted people on their talents, not their gender or social class, forgave people who hurt him, asked people directly and gently for what he wanted, made every attempt to avoid war, put his belief in his god above his own personal pride and even his own well-being. He was promiscuous in somewhat stunning and even unsettling ways, though I have not seen anything that would have been unexpected for a wealthy and powerful man of his time, except for perhaps treating women as if they were intellectually able to be responsible for themselves. He ruled for sixty-four years. 

Then we have Louis XIV who is demonstrably more average than either the the Sun King or Louis le Bien-Amie. I can well imagine the nobles being older siblings in my imaginary family that was France. In the imaginary American family, the older siblings and the younger were both just as poor and in need of self-reliance. In my imaginary families, in France, the older siblings had been utterly depowered under the Sun King, and henpecked and even taxed under Louis le Bien-Amie. In both cases, they were overshadowed by strikingly powerful and dangerous men.  Louis XVI was neither a brilliant statesman, nor a cunning man devoted to god and the love of his people. He was a twenty-year-old man being told he was the owner of a property more powerful than Microsoft is to us now. If Bill Gates had a son, and he was told, he was now the richest man in his known world, and he could do anything he wanted, could he please try to be a new Sun King?  We won't be surprised if he failed. 

And the sibling rivalry, bent around Enlightenment ideals... having come through the reign of Louis XIV where country was his personal bonsai tree and the nobles were pretty leaves to be used as he saw fit, then a gentle and loving king who very quietly let flourish ideas of equality the Christian God's love for every person, which in itself applied a huge force to culture... bursting free of that you have both the Second and Third estate, the older and younger siblings in this imagery family of mine, bursting free. Now they have a parent that can't supply the order of either of the previous parents. He has not the devious and seemingly gentle political maneuvering of le Bien-Amie or the brilliant and ostentatious power of the Sun King. He gave it ago. He had financial reforms that what would have been good for the family planned. Louis XVI's first financial minister, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), had a plan. 9 The older sibling wasn't buying it though. He'd had enough of being told what to do. The financial reforms failed. The parent threw up his hands. He didn't know what to do.  Social order suddenly went into free fall. 

In America, when that free fall hit, people thought... "I need firewood. Who will milk the cow?" The parent had been gone for a long time. 

In France the younger sibling thought... "You beat me! You stole from me! You made fun of me! You took everything for yourself!"

And the older sibling thought, "You should be grateful for everything I have done for you!     I'm going to tell Dad! You're a stupid little kid! What do you know?"

The parent actually tried to run away.10 Probably justified as there was a serious concern that the kids were going to burn down the house!  

There had never been a Magna Carta in France.  It's all well land good for a college age person to recognize that they need to pay the rent, buy the bread, write the essay, but it's a very frightening transition from child to adult. It's frightening for an adult to let a child grow into a peer, rather than a satellite. If that dynamic is unpleasant at the family level, how frightening and terrifying would it be on a country level where there is real starvation and real death?  Suppressed rage at perceived injustice, the fight for survival roared to a voracious fire, consuming and destroying everything.  A fire, once started, burns until it runs out of fuel. It wasn't like the younger siblings in France could just thumb their nose at the older, walk off a little to the west and start a new farm. 

I also gave some thought to the differences in diet between the two populations as well. When I took the Washington State Mixologist permit, we learned that even a small amount of alcohol can affect the way the brain interprets data. If a person has a history of repressed resentments and they have wine with breakfast, they're going to be more likely to act on that resentment than if they had had tea. 

1"Magna Carta Preserved Argon Gas," Livescience,  http://www.livescience.com/history/magna-carta-preserved-argon-gas-100831.html.

2 "Rediscovery," Preservation Virginia, http://www.preservationvirginia.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=6 . 

3 "Louis Trial," History Guide, http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/louis_trial.html .

4 "George III," Royal.gov.uk,  http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensoftheUnitedKingdom/TheHanoverians/GeorgeIII.aspx . 

5 "George II," Royal.gov.uk, http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/ KingsandQueensoftheUnitedKingdom/TheHanoverians/GeorgeII.aspx .

6 "Louis XIV," Louis XIV.de, http://www.louis-xiv.de/.

7 Robert William Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2 http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521808781&ss=exc

8 Delormel, La Convalescence de Louis le Bien-Aime. Ode Irreguliere  au Roy (Paris: Delormel, 1744. 1 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5696354c.image.hl.r=louis+xv+bien-aim%C3%A9.f4.langEN

9 "Louise XVI," Washington State University, http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REV/LOUISXVI.HTM .

10 "Louis Trial," History Guide, http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/louis_trial.html .

Undocumented history rant

Wild speculation, as good as any rag sheet anywhere.

Finding primary sources seems to be not the easiest thing to do for Louis XV and his ladies. 

There must be some way to find better information about these people and this age.  

I can find nothing much about Imbert de Saint-Amand, Arthur Léon, baron, 1834-1900. 

Madame du Pompadour died in 1776. Imbert, who maybe actually have been Arthur Leon, and I can't say that using a pen name really strikes as the most respectable behavior for a historian, but in any case, he was born seventy years after Pompadour died. His writings are laced with the sentiments of the nineteen century. His writing echos some of the worst propaganda that was put out about her and her king during the reign of Louis XV. Such writings were scandalous at the time of their creation and meant to libel and defame the targets of their songs and prose. 

I suspect he wrote sensational books for the purpose of notoriety and financial gain. He'd hardly have said that Madame du Pompadour was an elegant, intelligent human being who virtually ran France for some time, arranged international treaties, sponsored the enlightenment, and nurtured a gentle and kind many who doubted the doctrine and spectacle of his father. 

Louis XV became king at the age of five. I have read translated letters of his, from a source that did his research in the Bibliothque Nationale of France that show him as a king who, even after he'd won battles, made arrangements for the wounded on both sides. 

On his death, he was a man who came to the conclusion that he had small pox, even though everyone feared to tell him. He is said to have reqretted exposing Madame de Barry, who had never had small pox. From his own letters, when he struggled to have this last mistress accepted, he wrote of trust and gave his reasons simply that she made him happy. 

I understand that one of the jobs of an historian is to look at primary sources, to look at events and facts, the words of those who have preceded us and to understand them as seen through the eyes of our own times and experiences. 

Louis XV likely read Voltaire. Could have known David Hume... I'd be surprised if he had not read John Locke, Livy, Herodotus, perhaps Sappho?  Shakespeare.. do you really believe that if you were Louis XV, with the wealth of the world, every brilliant mind flocking to your court and a love of theater you had not seen every play of Shakespeare produced or read? I wonder what he thought of Henry IV, one of my favorites.  "And once more into the fray, on this Saint Crispen's Day!" I don't know that he understood English, though he'd probably be a fool not to have at least the basics.. and I see nothing in any of the reputable sources I've found to suggest that he was a fool.  All sources though agree that he was rich and a translator won't have been too expensive. There had to be quite a few decent speakers of English in the Palace of Versailles, a palace which could hold twenty thousand nobles...

It is said that du Pompadour had a library over over three thousand books. 

We have a man and a woman in Louis XV and de Pompadour who had access to the history of Western civilization, the music, ballet, poetry, theater, art of a myriad varieties...

A man who finds love and kindness to be paramount values, who will go against four hundred years of tradition to have the love and companionship he desires is neither weak nor incapable of making decisions. A man who can quietly chose humanist values, while holding stable what was probably the most powerful country in Europe, at that time, is not weak. To seek out and listen to sound advice without regard to the advisors genitalia is a sign of intelligence. He did not love war. He did not love misery. He did not love arrogance and brutality. 

I have only begun my study of Louis XV,  de Pompadour, du Barry, Voltaire, and their whole age. They are a breath of life to me. 

Also...I found this pic of Louis XVI

http://www.visitvoltaire.com/v_louis_xvi.htm 

Does  he not seem like the poster child for arrogance? Lips drawn tight, staring down his nose...

Here's another of him: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/kat_anna/louis.html

The spellings on the site are not what I'm used to.. but it seems to be an educational site. 

So much work and study to do! Isn't it invigorating!?

Nix

Jeanne Becu; a life too short

Jeanne Bécu:

A Life Too Short

Nix Winter

August 11, 2010

We fear that which we desire. That which we fear, we strive to diminish.  As much as human beings have achieved a position of top predator in our environment, we are still, in our individual  and undefended-from-the-hungry-night vulnerabilities as much prey as we ever have been.  The life and death of Madame du Barry etch a story of social achievement, predatory rivalries, and a life ended without acquiescence.  

Jeanne Bécu came into this world on April 19, 1743. Her mother, Anne, declined marriage, even after she became a single parent.  While many members of her family took employment in established households, Anne continued a path of independence and flirtatious opportunistic survival.

 Joan Haslip's biography of Jeanne paints a picture of a young girl raised in non-conventional environment where she was loved, protected, and encouraged by non-family members, outside of  proper family organization.  She came of age in a convent, but in a world filled with new and daring ideas.

In England, the Henry's Anglican's defied the weight and might of the Catholic church. Newton dared describe the order of the universe. A completely new land was solid in the imagination of those living when she was born.  The New World was  land of savages, strange beasts, from whence came exquisite poisons like sugar and cocoa came from. Thomas Jefferson was born in the same year as Anne Bécu.  Her age was a time of the ascendancy of  human freedom and self-determination. That she would reach for all that she could attain only made her a person of her age. 

Louis XV did not sparkle like 'The Sun King'. He didn't die like his grandson, Louis XVI.  He supported the arts primarily through the efforts of Madame de Pompadour, not from any driving need of his own passions.

   He seems to have been a mild man, less inclined to winning battles by degree and more inclined to simply reasoning with people. Choiseul, who governed France for twelve years, even if he were Chief Minister in everything except the official title, opposed Madame du Barry with his strongest efforts.

 Even though Louis XV was king and his minister was simply a minister, Louis XV wrote him reassuring him that he trusted him, pleading in away for Choiseul to accept du Barry on the grounds that the king liked her company.

 Cowardice is not the only motive to prompt negotiation. Sometimes negotiation arises from internalized values that recognize the equality and value of others. The attempt to achieve consensus, to esteem practical pleasures above the need to support the absurdities of previous generations seems to echo a modern mind. 

In du Barry there was not to be found the powerful and managerial mind of du Pompadour. Critics of du Barry accused her of being a small minded creature longing only for extravagant pleasures, treasures, and comforts. At various times she has been written about in the most disparaging ways.  In 'the Women of the Court of Louis XV' .... writes about Louis XV's mistresses, of which du Barry was the last one, "...on all sides I see dissipation and debauchery, no signs of real love."

  That this book is titled, 'The Women of the Court of Louis XV,' it is a morality tale of lurid accusations put into print in Boston, of all places, in 1892.  The French nobility had long since lost what hold they had to 'the divine right of kings', they were a  continent away at a time when that meant something, and the dead mistresses of a seemingly unimpressive king were easy targets to complain about the morality of a different time. It is useful to point out the appropriation of characters in one time for the use of another time's myths and morality because that is what history is made of. If the history read is not written in the hand of the person who lived it, we are likely to know as much about the person who writes the history as we do about the events and personages they write about. 

At her trial, Jeanne Bécu, who was listed as 'the woman called La Dubarry' she struggled and maintained hope, attempting with all her resources and creativity to find a path to continued life.

 The woman born to a willful seamstress and a handsome monk, who had married the brother of her pimp, and nurtured the heart of a king, she embraced life in a most human of ways, through sexuality, companionship, and survival.

  She may well have been guilty of the  royalist sympathies which contributed to her death, but the life she lead, sensual, hedonistic, kind, loyal, and daring epitomizes the willful and chaotic spirit of the age which was to follow her.  France would not settle into a steady government until de Gaul's presidency after WWII. Each struggling movment in the soul that was France could have claimed Jeanne's supposed last words, "Encore un moment, monsieur le bourreau, un petit moment." 

One more moment, please.  Far from casting her as a harlot or dismissing her successes in life or her desire for life to continue as that of a mere woman or of an unbeliever, she a genuine voice for the human condition. A person can rise from nothing to the pinnacles of power, only to fall into danger again and what is most desirable is simply one more moment of life. 

  

Bibliography

Bernier, Oliver. Louis the Beloved.  New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984.

Caffieri, Jean Jacques. Portrait of Madam Du Barry.  The Hermitage Museum. Photo of a sculpture, marble.  http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/descrPage.mac/descrPage?selLang=English&indexClass=SCULPTURE_EN&PID=N.SK.-376&numView=1&ID_NUM=1&thumbFile=%2Ftmplobs%2FIZGB865NLWHXNT3Q6.jpg&embViewVer=noEmb&comeFrom=quick&sorting=no&thumbId=6&numResults=2&tmCond=du+barry&searchIndex=TAGFILEN&author=Caffieri%2C%26%2332%3BJean%26%2332%3BJacques  (August 11, 2010)

de Saint-Amand, Imbert. The Women of the Court of Louis XV. Cambridge: University Press,1892. 

G. Goyau. Etienne-François, Duc de Choiseul. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03694a.htm  (August 12, 2010)

Haslip, Joan. Madam du Barry: The Wages of Beauty. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.

de Saint-Amand, Imbert.  The Women of the Court of Louis XV. Cambridge: University Press, 1892.

Sainte-Beuve, C. A.. Portraits of the Eighteenth Century Historic and Literary. Translated by Katharine P. Wormeley.  New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1906.

Spawforth, Tony. Versailles A Biography of a Palace. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008. 

Williams, H. Noel. Madam du Berry. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909.