Who is Marion Sigaut?
According to Wikipedia, Marion Sigaut was born in Paris in 1950 and has lived in the Bourgogne since 1991. She was formerly a freelance writer and journalist. She is associated the with extreme right-wing organisation Égalité et Réconciliation, founded in June 2007 by Alain Sorel, and publishes under Sorel's imprint Éditions Kontre Kulture. She has also edited several of Sorel's own works. In 2001, when already past fifty, Sigaut gave up her writing career to take up the advanced study of history first at the university of Besançon, and subsequently in Paris. Opponents debate whether she really deserves the title "historian" since she does not have an academic post or a doctorate, but only a DEA [Diplôme d'études approfondies]. A book based on her research into the 18th-century Hôpital général in Paris was published in 2008. She has also written monographs on Damiens, David and Voltaire. Sigaut's format of preference in recent years has been conference lectures on video. (Sceptics have sometimes contended that the conferences are fabrications and she is all alone in front of the camera; this is not true, - but some of the venues are pretty obscure.). Thanks to the Right-wing press, she has a formidable publicity machine at her disposal.
Since 2011 Sigaut has been president of the association of the musée Colette in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye.
Reading about Marion Sigaut, I learned a cool new French term: l'entartage. Sigaut suffered this indignity on 13th January 2017, when one of her conferences, in Espinas, Tarn-et-Garonne, was invaded by "une vingtaine de personnes et une certaine quantité de mousse à raser".
What are her view on the 18th-century?
I didn't want to spend a long time on this - and it is not easy to find a simple summary. The French academic establishment has largely ignored Sigaut's published works; as a result there are not many book reviews. As to her "conferences", there are literally dozens of videos, ranging over a bewildering number of different historical subjects. I decided to leave those to native French speakers and/or the seriously interested!
This is from an (admittedly very hostile) article in the online newspaper Lundimatin:
In search of lost paradise
Point of departure: Marion Sigaut's historical vision is constructed around the concept of "rural France". She sees the Revolution as destroying of the idyllic rural communities of the 18th century. In the Ancien régime the political power of the Bourbon monarchy was counterbalanced by the spiritual power of the Roman Catholic Church. This equilibrium served to protect rural communities, characterised as organic, industrious, peaceful and perfectly organised. The Crown defended the weak against the strong; the Church maintained good order and morality.
A disruptive element: No surprises here - this was the Enlightened bourgeoisie, represented by various groups - merchants, intellectuals, Freemasons. They infiltrating rural communities and proposed to destroy the equilibrium of Monarchy and Church in the name of a mysterious "power of the people", which no-one but the bourgeoisie themselves really wanted. The result was various peasant insurrections which sought to preserve the status quo, but were used by the bourgeoisie as weapons against the Ancien régime.
The drama: Rural Catholic France succumbed before the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. The Church was annihilated by the Revolution. Without this safeguard, morality fell prey to the destructive force of advancing global capitalism. The Chouans were exterminated.
The conclusion: The French people (for Sigaut synonymous with the peasantry) did not want the Revolution. But it was this Revolution, lead by an elite disconnected with the people, which destroyed rural communities in a brutal manner.
The Epilogue. The political dream of the French Right. Morality must be re-establshed on the basis of a theocratic power, which links the moral, political and economic order. France and her identity are natural entities and, as such, have the force of law.
"Marion Sigaut: grandeur et decadance d'une VRP d'Alain Soral", lundimatin#91, 30th January 2017.
https://lundi.am/Marion-Sigaut-grandeur-et-decadence-d-une-VRP-d-Alain-Soral
Lately Sigaut has welcomed the protests of the gilets jaunes which she likens to the pre-Revolutionary popular violence of the rural jacqueries and the guerre des farines. She sees the movement as heralding the end of a two-hundred-year cycle of dominance by bourgeois capitalism.
See:
http://christroi.over-blog.com/2018/12/gilets-jaunes-ancien-regime-et-revolution.html
Her latest works are a series of popular "history manuals" which have appeared from 2011:
De la centralisation monarchique à la révolution bourgeoise: L'Absolutisme royal et ses opposants. (2014)
La chasse aux sorcières et l'Inquisition (2014)
La Mort du roi et les secrets de Saint-Fargeau, (2015)
Le Tournant de la Régence (2017)
The content of the first book - or some of it - appears in a collection of articles on the Égalité et Réconciliation website:
Here is a bit more on her individual publications:
1. 18th-century foundlings
La Marche rouge, les enfants perdus de l'Hôpital général (2008) Originally published in 2008. Reissued by KontreKulture
https://www.kontrekulture.com/produit/la-marche-rouge-les-enfants-perdus-de-l-hopital-general
This is the published version of Segaut's postgraduate research project on the Hôpital général (ie. the prisons of the Salpétrière, Bicêtre and la Pitié ). Her starting point is the popular unrest which took place in Paris in 1749-50 as a result of one of the periodic police attempts to rid streets of vagabonds and beggars; rumours circulated at this time that children were being taken, sold into prostitution or sent to the Americas. Sigaut's researches in the archives of the Salpétrière uncovered a catalogue of mismanagement and cruelty, which she laid squarely on the Jansenist directors of the institution. She credited the idea that was a real paedophile traffic, though according to her most vigilant critic, Olivier Marshall, her most recent videos downplay this aspect of her thesis.
2. The execution of Damiens
Mourir à l’ombre des Lumières, l’énigme Damiens ( Arles, Actes Sud, 2010) - a historical novel. See slso: Damiens: la véritable histoire (BD)
The original book takes the form of a fictional memoir of one of Damiens' judges le prince Emmanuel de Croy. Sigaut sees an attempt by the Parlement of Paris to make Damiens into a scapegoat and hush up his Jansenist connections. There is also an argument about Damiens's daughter, paedophiles and Louis XV that I didn't really follow. As Olivier Marchal points out, lamentable though his treatment was, the unstable Damiens was hardly the "model valet" and "loving husband" of Sigaut's imagination.
3. David, Lepeletier and the Jacobin agenda
Le Mystère du tableau de David (December 2010) Dijon, Éditions de Bourgogne, 2010.
In Sigaut's analysis Lepeletier was not a "Martyr of Liberty", but a counter-revolutionary/Girondin agent, who was assassinated because he failed to vote against the king's death. His famous plan for education is dismissed as "a totalitarian programme of forced labour for the children of the Republic"(I'm confused - was he a wicked Jacobin or not?) .The final chapter, based largely on the researches of Arnaud de Lestapis is a discussion of David's famous picture and the possible reasons behind its disappearance.
Reviewed by Marcel Dorigny in Dix-huitième siècle 1/2011 (n° 43) , p. 725..
https://www.cairn.info/revue-dix-huitieme-siecle-2011-1-page-725.htm?try_download=1&contenu=plan#s2n132
4. Voltaire and the Enlightenment
Voltaire - un imposteur au service des puissants KontreKulture, 2014
in 2013 Sigaut began a series of conferences on the Enlightenment. Her interpretation again oddly echoes the Marxist viewpoint: Enlightenment thought is a bourgeois ideology: enlightened liberalism had as its goal an economy which impoverished the people of France; Turgot's unhappy experiment with free trade in grain inevitably provides the exemplar. The Catholic Church, guardian of traditional morality, fell victim to an unholy alliance of Jansenism and the Encyclopédistes. The Revolution marked the triumph of capitalism over spirituality.
"Marion Sigaut s'attaque aux Lumières", Discussion on the forum Passion-Histoire, December 2013.
http://www.passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=35107
It comes as no surprise that Voltaire, his reputation now riding high in left-wing circles, is singled out for attack. As well as a substantial book Sigaut has produced literally hours of video. I don't think she likes Voltaire much; he could be a tad bitchy but "odieux, vindicatif, vipérin, rapace" is going a bit far.... According to Sigaut, the Treatise on Tolerance is a tissue of lies, and Calas might have been guilty after all...
Here she is on her book:
In this work of 262 pages, of which a hundred are devoted to the Calas affair, the reader will be able to discover the lies used by Voltaire to defame his contemporaries, malign the Church and strangle the truth. Thanks to the 122 footnotes, he will be able to find the sources for my assertions and verify what I have said.
Marion Sigaut, "Voltaire et le mensonge Calas", RéHistoire, post of15.02.2017.
http://re-histoire-pourtous.com/voltaire-et-le-mensonge-calas/
One day, I might indeed try to read this book; but, I think I will leave it for now......
This is from an (admittedly very hostile) article in the online newspaper Lundimatin:
In search of lost paradise
Point of departure: Marion Sigaut's historical vision is constructed around the concept of "rural France". She sees the Revolution as destroying of the idyllic rural communities of the 18th century. In the Ancien régime the political power of the Bourbon monarchy was counterbalanced by the spiritual power of the Roman Catholic Church. This equilibrium served to protect rural communities, characterised as organic, industrious, peaceful and perfectly organised. The Crown defended the weak against the strong; the Church maintained good order and morality.
A disruptive element: No surprises here - this was the Enlightened bourgeoisie, represented by various groups - merchants, intellectuals, Freemasons. They infiltrating rural communities and proposed to destroy the equilibrium of Monarchy and Church in the name of a mysterious "power of the people", which no-one but the bourgeoisie themselves really wanted. The result was various peasant insurrections which sought to preserve the status quo, but were used by the bourgeoisie as weapons against the Ancien régime.
The drama: Rural Catholic France succumbed before the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. The Church was annihilated by the Revolution. Without this safeguard, morality fell prey to the destructive force of advancing global capitalism. The Chouans were exterminated.
The conclusion: The French people (for Sigaut synonymous with the peasantry) did not want the Revolution. But it was this Revolution, lead by an elite disconnected with the people, which destroyed rural communities in a brutal manner.
The Epilogue. The political dream of the French Right. Morality must be re-establshed on the basis of a theocratic power, which links the moral, political and economic order. France and her identity are natural entities and, as such, have the force of law.
"Marion Sigaut: grandeur et decadance d'une VRP d'Alain Soral", lundimatin#91, 30th January 2017.
https://lundi.am/Marion-Sigaut-grandeur-et-decadence-d-une-VRP-d-Alain-Soral
Lately Sigaut has welcomed the protests of the gilets jaunes which she likens to the pre-Revolutionary popular violence of the rural jacqueries and the guerre des farines. She sees the movement as heralding the end of a two-hundred-year cycle of dominance by bourgeois capitalism.
See:
http://christroi.over-blog.com/2018/12/gilets-jaunes-ancien-regime-et-revolution.html
Some bibliographic notes
To date, Marion Sigaut has published seventeen books, including novels, children's books and two bandes dessinées. Her first five books are autobiographical accounts of the time she spent in occupied Palestine.Her latest works are a series of popular "history manuals" which have appeared from 2011:
De la centralisation monarchique à la révolution bourgeoise: L'Absolutisme royal et ses opposants. (2014)
La chasse aux sorcières et l'Inquisition (2014)
La Mort du roi et les secrets de Saint-Fargeau, (2015)
Le Tournant de la Régence (2017)
The content of the first book - or some of it - appears in a collection of articles on the Égalité et Réconciliation website:
"De la centralisation monarchique à la Révolution bourgeoise"(2011)
https://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/-L-absolutisme-royal-et-ses-opposants-.html
Here Sigaut charts the rise of absolutist monarchy, which was achieved in alliance with the noblesse de robe - "les legistes du Tiers-Etat issus de la bourgeoisie". Venal office holding allowed the robins to usurp the prerogatives of the traditional nobility. By embracing Jansenism, the magistrates created resistance to royal authority, ushering the Revolution and the triumph of bourgeois values over the society of the Ancien régime.https://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/-L-absolutisme-royal-et-ses-opposants-.html
Here is a bit more on her individual publications:
1. 18th-century foundlings
La Marche rouge, les enfants perdus de l'Hôpital général (2008) Originally published in 2008. Reissued by KontreKulturehttps://www.kontrekulture.com/produit/la-marche-rouge-les-enfants-perdus-de-l-hopital-general
This is the published version of Segaut's postgraduate research project on the Hôpital général (ie. the prisons of the Salpétrière, Bicêtre and la Pitié ). Her starting point is the popular unrest which took place in Paris in 1749-50 as a result of one of the periodic police attempts to rid streets of vagabonds and beggars; rumours circulated at this time that children were being taken, sold into prostitution or sent to the Americas. Sigaut's researches in the archives of the Salpétrière uncovered a catalogue of mismanagement and cruelty, which she laid squarely on the Jansenist directors of the institution. She credited the idea that was a real paedophile traffic, though according to her most vigilant critic, Olivier Marshall, her most recent videos downplay this aspect of her thesis.
2. The execution of Damiens
The original book takes the form of a fictional memoir of one of Damiens' judges le prince Emmanuel de Croy. Sigaut sees an attempt by the Parlement of Paris to make Damiens into a scapegoat and hush up his Jansenist connections. There is also an argument about Damiens's daughter, paedophiles and Louis XV that I didn't really follow. As Olivier Marchal points out, lamentable though his treatment was, the unstable Damiens was hardly the "model valet" and "loving husband" of Sigaut's imagination.
3. David, Lepeletier and the Jacobin agenda
In Sigaut's analysis Lepeletier was not a "Martyr of Liberty", but a counter-revolutionary/Girondin agent, who was assassinated because he failed to vote against the king's death. His famous plan for education is dismissed as "a totalitarian programme of forced labour for the children of the Republic"(I'm confused - was he a wicked Jacobin or not?) .The final chapter, based largely on the researches of Arnaud de Lestapis is a discussion of David's famous picture and the possible reasons behind its disappearance.
Reviewed by Marcel Dorigny in Dix-huitième siècle 1/2011 (n° 43) , p. 725..
https://www.cairn.info/revue-dix-huitieme-siecle-2011-1-page-725.htm?try_download=1&contenu=plan#s2n132
4. Voltaire and the Enlightenment
Voltaire - un imposteur au service des puissants KontreKulture, 2014
in 2013 Sigaut began a series of conferences on the Enlightenment. Her interpretation again oddly echoes the Marxist viewpoint: Enlightenment thought is a bourgeois ideology: enlightened liberalism had as its goal an economy which impoverished the people of France; Turgot's unhappy experiment with free trade in grain inevitably provides the exemplar. The Catholic Church, guardian of traditional morality, fell victim to an unholy alliance of Jansenism and the Encyclopédistes. The Revolution marked the triumph of capitalism over spirituality.
"Marion Sigaut s'attaque aux Lumières", Discussion on the forum Passion-Histoire, December 2013.
http://www.passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=35107
It comes as no surprise that Voltaire, his reputation now riding high in left-wing circles, is singled out for attack. As well as a substantial book Sigaut has produced literally hours of video. I don't think she likes Voltaire much; he could be a tad bitchy but "odieux, vindicatif, vipérin, rapace" is going a bit far.... According to Sigaut, the Treatise on Tolerance is a tissue of lies, and Calas might have been guilty after all...
Here she is on her book:
In this work of 262 pages, of which a hundred are devoted to the Calas affair, the reader will be able to discover the lies used by Voltaire to defame his contemporaries, malign the Church and strangle the truth. Thanks to the 122 footnotes, he will be able to find the sources for my assertions and verify what I have said.
Marion Sigaut, "Voltaire et le mensonge Calas", RéHistoire, post of15.02.2017.
http://re-histoire-pourtous.com/voltaire-et-le-mensonge-calas/
One day, I might indeed try to read this book; but, I think I will leave it for now......
http://marionsigaut.com/
On the Égalité et Réconciliation website
https://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/_Marion-Sigaut_.html
Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXP1NPWj6uJE2cS8BbeX_A
Facebook site
https://www.facebook.com/marion.sigaut
Wikipédia article, "Marion Sigaut"
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Sigaut
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Marion_Sigaut
The writer and historian Olivier Marchal is Sigaut's most dedicated critic - to date he has clocked up 95 blog posts!
https://oliviermarchal.blogspot.com/2018/08/marion-sigaut-propos-des-lumieres.html
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