Last days of Roland

Portrait by Bonneville. Musée des beaux-arts, Lyon
File:Roland de la Platière.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Yet another sorry end from the annals of the Revolution......

At the end of January 1793, three days after the execution of Louis XVI, Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière resigned his post as Minister of the Interior.  For four months he managed to lived quietly with his wife in the rue de la Harpe.  On 31st May 1793, his arrest was ordered.  He immediately slipped out of the house and took refuge with his friend the naturalist Louis-Augustin Bosc in the rue des Prouvaires.  Manon Roland, having petitioned energetically on his behalf,  was arrested at one o'clock the following morning. 

In the forêt de Montmorency

Roland remained hidden with Bosc throughout 1st June.  On the 2nd the whole of Paris was in arms, the bells sounded their alarm, patrols were out in the streets.  With all eyes  focused on the Convention,  Roland and Bosc left Paris unchallenged and reached the forêt de Montmorency where Bosc owned a country retreat, the former Priory of Sainte-Radegonde where he would go to botanise.

The last days of Condorcet

Of all the many personal tragedies of the Revolutionary epoch, none seems more poignant than the death of Condorcet, the great exponent of human progress, alone in his prison cell.  The nature of his death remains uncertain;  did he attempt to take charge of his fate by an act of suicide or did he merely succumb, more mundanely but mercifully, to a medical condition - a heart attack or a stroke?  Here are a few notes on the lead up to Condorcet's arrest, and what is know of his final end.

In the rue Servandoni - With Mme de Vernet

On 8th July 1793 Condorcet's arrest was decreed by the Convention and his possessions seized.  A few days later, his name appeared with those of Brissot, Valazé,  Gensonné and Vergniaud, on the list of Girondin deputies condemned to death for conspiracy against the Republic. Condorcet now published an open letter, justifying his flight from "tyranny".  He immediately left his house at 505 rue de Lille and fled first to Auteuil, where he had a pied-à-terre at no.2 Grande-Rue.  The doctors Pinel and Boyer, friends of Cabanis and of Félix Vicq d'Azir managed to find  him refuge in Paris with a widow, Mme de Vernet, at 21 rue des Fossoyeurs, now 15 rue Servandoni.  

Although they were not previously acquainted, Mme de Vernet, with considerable generosity of spirit, sheltered and provided for him.  For the next eight months he lived quietly, dividing his days between working, reading and the society of the household.  His wife, who at this time made ends meet by portrait-painting, was able to visit him once or twice a week; she came on foot from Auteuil, disguised as a peasant and would mingle with the crowds from the guillotine so as not to be noticed. He was also able to receive  a few intimate friends - Cabanis, Diannyère, Cardot.  Mme de Vernet's lodger, Marcoz, who was deputy for Mont-Blanc, furnished him with books (he devoured "an enormous quantity of novels"), newspapers and news from the Convention. At the end of October, unsurprisingly, he was thrown into a state of considerable agitation by the execution of his fellow Girondists.

The Brits and the War in the Vendée

 Radio 4 Things We Forgot to Remember - The French Revolution 

Podcast:(On Internet Archive)
https://ia803108.us.archive.org/9/items/rss_twftr/04.mp3

Transcript (From the O.U.):
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/the-other-french-revolution-transcript

Here is a radio programme from the archives that still makes interesting listening.

In this series of half-hour  broadcasts, produced by the BBC in conjunction with the Open University,  Michael Portillo "revisits the great moments of history to discover that they often conceal other events of equal but forgotten importance". Portillo isn't quite the UK's answer to Franck Ferrand, but he is definitely more appealing as a presenter than he ever was as a politician.

The episode on the French Revolution, which dates from 2007,  did indeed venture onto new territory, at least for Anglo-Saxon listeners, in that it centred on the War in the Vendée.  It features the English academics, William Doyle and Alan Forrest, plus a notable contribution from Jean-Clément Martin who gets his points across admirably in heavily-accented English.

Jean-Clément Martin: The Terror as "fake news"

The following is a translation/summary of an interview with Jean-Clément Martin on the theme of "the Terror", which was published in the magazine Historiens et Géographes in May 2019.

The intention of the interviews in this series is to allow historians to present their ideas in a straightforward fashion for the benefit of school teachers who need to cover the material in their classes.  As such, it gives J.-C. M. a good opportunity to summarise his highly controversial views on the Terror in a relatively abridged form. 

Most references are to J.-C.M's book Les échos de la Terreur which was published in September 2018.

Philippe Charlier on Robespierre and Marat

Here are some notes from a TV documentary broadcast on 15th February on France 5 in which Philippe Charlier outline his latest researches into the "sick men of the Revolution", Robespierre and Marat.

This is one of those documentary with an irritatingly long preamble.  Philippe Charlier introduces his work as a  forensic pathologist and anthropologist.  Historians Serge Bianchi, Olivier Coquard and Patrice Gueniffey outline biographies of Robespierre and Marat, with the aid of some, admittedly well put-together, dramatic tableaux.

Memoir of the Revolution (cont.)

We now come to 1793, the year of the Terror.  Morice mentions the assassination of Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau on the eve of the King's execution, in January 1793.  He personally had visited Le Pelletier in the place Vendôme on several occasions on legal business and recalled some disturbing ornaments in his reception room - a huge jewel on the chimney breast and, in lieu of a mantle clock, a glass dome housing a miniature guillotine with all its accessories.

The execution of Louis XVI

By this time Morice was enrolled in the National Guard, which became increasingly dominated by radical Revolutionaries.  Morice twice found himself on guard at the Temple during Louis XVI's trial when his lawyers Malesherbes and de Sèze came to confer with him.  He did not manage to see the King himself but, by an odd set of circumstances,  he witnessed his execution:

On the day of the King's execution, my company of National Guard was required, like  the rest, to furnish a certain number of guardsmen to attend and  ensure good order.  Only two or three individuals volunteered, so lots were drawn and I was among those chosen.  I had never been to an execution of any sort before.  Those who know my character, can imagine the effect that this one had on me.  I managed at first to put on a brave face.  But when the victim mounted the scaffold and had his coat removed, I could take no more; I found that I had fainted and I came round only when one of my companions offered me a few drops of eau-de-vie he had acquired from a nearby canteen.  By then it was all over.  Fortunately for me, I was surrounded by honest men who, like me, took little pleasure in the occasion.

The journée of 31st May

After the death of Louis XVI, the Revolutionary factions fell one by one.  Morice, by this time under arms, now found himself a reluctant participant in the journée of 31st May, which accompanied the proscription of the Girondin deputies.

By the first days of May 1793 the National Convention had become the puppet of the Paris Commune; it was the Commune that really ruled.  The Commune was dominated in turn by the Jacobin club. The Revolutionary Committees of the 48 sections were its eyes and ears.  It seems that the Commune had experienced opposition  from the Girondins.  A campaign of petitioning was orchestrated in the Convention, but it was finally planned to strike a decisive blow.  Thus the journée of the 31st May was organised.

At daybreak the tocsin sounded; the inhabitants of Paris were ordered to congregate in prominent locations in the sections.  The notary that I worked for responded to the call, with his entire household, the more promptly since he had already been blacklisted by the Revolutionary Committee of the Bonnet Rouge section.  Only the youngest pupil was left behind to receive callers in our absence.

All men able bear arms were ordered to assemble in the garden of the hospice des Petites-Maisons, rue de Sèvres. Guns were distributed to some,  pikes and sabres to others.  Some were forced to content themselves with sticks.  We then set off at a brisk march,  preceded by a cannon with its fuse already alight.  We took the shortest route to the garden of the Tuileries, where we arrived before seven o'clock. We were assigned a position on the terrace, beside the water.  It was cold - there had been hail in the night and conditions were still freezing at that hour of the morning.

The other terraces, the adjacent bridges, the place du Carrousel, the place de la Concorde and most of the boulevards were suddenly occupied, as if by magic, by armed bands like ours.  Professionals reckon that there were more than 100,000 men under arms.

What was the purpose of this expedition?  What were we going to do?  We asked these questions to anyone whose appearance inspired confidence, but no-one could give us a reply.  It was only two or three days later that we finally discovered the answer to the riddle....

Who would have believed that all these carefully planned measures were to prove  a complete waste of time?  We stayed shivering on our miserable terrace from seven in the morning until midnight...Such were our exploits on the 31st May and 2nd June. But so it was that the Girondin party was destroyed.

Guarding the Temple prison

Anonymous engraving,Musée Carnavalet
https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/node/110957

Again as a National Guardsman, Morice was  stationed at the gate of the Temple prison where Marie-Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth, Louis XVII and Madame Royale were imprisoned. He was able to catch a memorable glimpse of the royal family.

On the first occasion, the gate stayed open for an hour or so, and I was able to see them, since the screen which was normally positioned inside the gate had become displaced.  The municipal officer on duty seemed less unpleasant that most of his colleagues.  He allowed them as much liberty as his duty permitted.  The dauphin, who  was no more than six years old at that time, jumped and ran around in the small space. He came up close to me and seemed ready to respond to the advances I made in the hope of amusing him. But Madame Elisabeth took him by the hand and led him back inside the apartment.

Care was taken to choose guns which were smaller than normal when patrolling the Temple tower, as the roof was so low.  The one given to me was also very light; it wasn't even loaded; I admit, to my shame,  that I didn't trouble overmuch with my military duties.  A book in my hand seemed much less inconvenient than a gun over my shoulder and, when my superior officers were not looking,  I passed my patrol reading.   That was how I was peacefully occupied that day, when the dauphin approached me.  My gun, leaning against the wall, seemed to catch his attention.  He dared not touch it, but he seemed  drawn to it.  I was about to show it to him when his aunt fetched him away. 

A Memoir of the Revolution

I came across the memoirs of J-G-P Morice when I was looking for material on the section of the  Bonnet-Rouge  -  reading more, I became totally engrossed.  This seemed to me a source worth sharing.  Extracts from the text were published in the Revue des questions historiques in 1892 but, as far as I can tell, it has never been produced in a modern edition.  There is certainly no English translation, so here is my version, translated (fairly loosely) from the 1892 article.

We read in the introductory notes that the author was a certain Jean-Gabriel-Philippe Morice, who died on 15th October 1847.  His daughter bequeathed the manuscript to the academician Xavier Marmier, who in turn confided it to the 1892 editor, the vicomte de Broc.  The complete manuscript occupied 227 pages of quarto, in a regular legible handwriting (p.445-6). 

Morice was born in Paris on 21st February 1776.  In 1789, at the start of the Revolution, he was working as a clerk in a notary's office. His employer later became suspect due to his aristocratic clients and counter-revolutionary opinions -  he escaped death, but not imprisonment - and the young clerk, left without resources, found employment in the offices of the Committee of Public Safety.  His position enabled not only to make a living but to survive the vicissitudes of the Terror.  After Thermidor his office came under the Committee of Legislation presided over by Cambacérès, which dealt with many of the denunciations of former Terrorists. As head of the division of émigrés, Morice later had as his superiors Merlin de Douai and Fouché. 

Morice was witness to a number of memorable events.  On 10th August he was an unwilling participant in the attack on the Tuilleries;  he saw the execution of Louis XVI and glimpsed Marie-Antoinette in the tumbril on her way to the scaffold.  He also met both Robespierre and Carrier, as well as, at a later moment, trembling in the presence of Napoleon as First Consul.

Memoirs of J-G-P Morice, published in:  Revue des questions historiques, vol. 52 (1892), p.453-498.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=anJOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA453#v=onepage&q&f=false.

1789: The Start of the Revolution

Morice was only thirteen years old in 1789, sixteen at the time of the Terror.  Unlike the majority of his peers, he never supported the Revolution:

Whether through the principles instilled in me by my mother, whom I had recently lost, or through some other cause, I did not share the enthusiasm for the Revolution which was more or less universal among my contemporaries - an enthusiasm which was understandable when you consider how we were taught in the colleges.  Our young heads were continually filled with accounts by Tacitus and others of the revolutions in Ancient Rome.  Was it surprising that this generation, nourished by the milk of liberty,  fell under the spell of a revolution that presented itself under the banner of liberty?  Almost all my fellow pupils considered themselves to be so many Romans.

Morice's place of work was in the rue de Grenelle, not far from the rue des Saints-Pères, in a house which, by the 1890s, had long since been demolished.  The notary, M. Denis de Villières, had been in practice there since 1780, and was to continue until 1822, so at this time he was still at the beginning of his career:  seated in his bureau, bewigged and powdered after the fashion of the time, he would received his clients gravely.  In 1789 business was much disrupted by the uncertainties of the political situation.

Morice visited the States-General at Versailles on several occasions -  he was even present at the famous session in the Jeu de Paume - but he found himself only tired and bored by events.  One day, however, he witnessed a scene which was still vivid in his memory years later:

I was crossing the place de Grève with my father, at the very moment when they took down the lifeless body of the unfortunate Foulon from the fatal lantern... I can still see his naked corpse, dragged along by the feet, his head bouncing on the cobbles, on its way along the quais to the Palais Royal... I can still hear the shouts of the men and woman who formed that horrible cortege... My father, who could not suppress an exclamation of horror, was almost struck over the head... He had the good fortune to escape death by losing himself in the crowd, and it was only with difficulty that I managed to rejoin him... 

Supplice de Foulon a la Place de Grève, le 23 Juillet 1789, engraving after Pierre Gabriel Berthault.
https://exhibits.stanford.edu/frenchrevolution/catalog/cd267jy5088

Three months later, on 5th October, I again found myself on the square when an uncontrolled crowd forced General Lafayette to accompany them to Versailles to bring back the royal family.  If the brave general ever needed a witness to the horror he felt when he was forced to concede to this mob, I would be happy to provide it....His face was as white as the linen at his neck...his  appearance was a far cry from the proud show he put on when he reviewed the National Guard on the Champ de Mars.

Gabriel's "clubbists"

Here is a set of fifteen sketches by Georges-François-Marie Gabriel, from the Carnavalet, said to represent "clubbists" from the Revolutionary era.  They were shown to the Friends of the Carnavalet as new acquisitions in 2010, but I can't find out any more details.

The individuals depicted are perhaps stock Revolutionary types rather than  real people.  Maybe Gabriel used them for reference to add hats and hairstyles to his portraits.

Musée Carnavalet, D.16398 à D.16412.  

Entries on the Musées de Paris website: 
https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/portrait-d-homme-portant-un-bonnet-phrygien-profil-gauche#infos-principales

The drawings are about 7.5 cm x 5.5 cm. 
Black crayon and wash.

Displayed in uniform mounts.

ALBUM

Gabriel: Revolutionary caricatures

 

The musée Carnavalet possesses a striking series of small portraits of famous Revolutionaries, the work of the miniaturist and illustrator Georges-François-Marie Gabriel (1775-1865).  There are thirteen in total, each measuring about 10 cm by 7 cm.

An interview with Jean-Clément Martin

Here is a translation/ summary of an interview with Jean-Clément Martin published last year in the Italian magazine Historia Magistra.  J.-C. M reflects on his career and some of the major themes of his work.

How did you become a specialist on the French Revolution?

J.-C. M:  In 1978 I began work on a thèse d’Etat [an advanced Doctorate] on the wars in the Vendée.  I was a teaching at a lycée in Nantes at the time.  My previous research, under Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, had been a quantitative study of  bankruptcies in Les Deux Sèvres in the 19th century. I found that incidences of bankruptcy did not simply reflect business failure, but were used by the business community to regulate membership and to curb innovation.  Twenty years later I brought this insight to a study of rape in the Vendée in the 19th century based on legal dossiers. In the 1830s and 1840s, rapes were not more frequent, but new social norms encouraged the peasants of the Vendée to denounce individuals who had raped their daughters 10 or 20 years previously.

How did you progress from the Vendée to the Révolution more generally?

J.-C. M: When I took up a post in Nantes in 1978, Le Roy Ladurie advised me to work on the Revolution in Nantes, but the archive proved too disorganised for a single researcher.  A year or so later I was shocked to discover that one of my teachers at the University of Nantes participated in meetings of the Souvenir vendéen and commemorations of the wars in the Vendée; yet his course stopped at the 10th August 1792. I admit that I was also vexed by my own ignorance.

I therefore proposed to Le Roy Ladurie that I would work on the wars in the Vendée and their place in memory.  This was at the beginning of the 1980s, well before the bicentennial commemorations.  "Memory" was organised through conventional means (associations, publications) but many people also observed family rituals in which they commemorated their ancestors from the time of the wars.  As well as using archives and documents, I collected oral traditions.  I spoke to people who were in their seventies in 1980, so born between 1900 and 1910. These people's grandparents would have born between 1850 and 1860, and may have had older siblings born as early as 1840.  This meant that in the 1920s those still living could have met individuals born in 1840 who, in turn, knew individuals born in or just after the wars.

       

Memory was favoured by the geographic stability of the population.   Intensive dairy farming encouraged strong family structures, often with 10-15 members, centred on the male head of household.  These structures were valued by local notables and curés.  An ethos of self-sufficiency, which asked nothing of the state, placed a positive value on their predecessors' struggle against the Republican government. 

I myself comes from a Vendéen family.  My grandparents left the region and settled in an area which was nearby but very anticlerical. My researches have helped me to appreciate my own family heritage.

In 1984 the Ministry of Culture offered me the opportunity to research  migrants from the Vendée in the region of  Les Landes.  Here I found identical family structures, also similar distinctive  attitudes towards the State, work, numbers of children.  

In a paper in Les lieux de mémoire, edited by Pierre Nola (vol.1, 1984),  I characterised my work as the historical and anthropological study of  "une région-mémoire".

In the meantime I found that I  agreed less and less with what was written about the war itself.  I set myself to read systematically contemporary newspapers.  In 1793, there were risings against the Revolution in a quarter of France, notably in Brittany.  The worst insurrections did not take place in the Vendée.  But everywhere else resistance was crushed.  It is significant that the Frenchmen of 1793 talked about a "war" in the Vendée, a word that was not used elsewhere.

The movement started with the victory of the insurgents against Revolutionary troops sent from La Rochelle in March 1793.  This success was due to the poor preparation of the army. When the news arrived in Paris, it was viewed through perspective of the Girondin-Jacobin conflict; the Jacobins blamed their enemies for the defeat.  Events were read in the Convention as a "war", though the situation did not really justify the terminology:  a competent general with well-disciplined troops could have restored order in a few months.  But the Revolutionaries escalated the stakes; they demanded action which was symbolic rather than realistic:  the whole of French must punish the Vendée.  Hence troops were sent to the region from all around France, that hated each other, were useless, failed militarily and fanned the flames of war.

As long as there wasn't a well-organised central power, the war in the Vendée was allowed to develop. The symbolic edge made the battles more and more important, more bloody, and the political discourse more and more radical.

What were the demands of the Vendéens themselves?

J.-C. M: The Catholic and Royal Armies fought to defend their churches and their property, not to restore the Monarchy, even though they sometimes invoked Louis XVII.  The situation was the same in Brittany, Alsace, the Basque country and the Massif Central;  it was just that the royalist armies were victorious south of the Loire and not elsewhere. In the summer of 1793 the sans-culottes steered the Ministry of War against the Convention, exacerbating the weakness of the Republican armies.

This internal conflict between groups of Revolutionaries is an essential factor, often minimised by certain of my colleagues.  At the outset troops of sans-culottes were sent out who were badly trained and out of the control of the Convention.  The result was extortion, rape, massacre and pillage.

The particular contingencies of the military situation permitted the Vendéens to resist until October, when they were crushed at Cholet.  The sans-culottes at this time lost their power and were no longer able to rival the deputies of the Convention.  In December 1793 the Convention established "revolutionary government", suspending the constitution and the exercise of democracy;  power was centralised and the nature of the Revolution itself changed.

The "classic" history of the Sorbonne insists on the unity of the Revolution and on the will to defend the Revolution, against both external and internal enemies, which came to a peak in 1793.  I do not find this.

My interpretation emphasises the interplay of forces and reappraises the effects of the fall of Robespierre and the start of the Directory.  In 1793 and at the beginning of 1794 the State was contested and the Convention torn between different factions.  However, the war in the Vendée facilitated the elimination of the Girondins, then the sans-culottes to the profit of the Jacobins - who finally also eliminated the "robespierrists".   I thus traced a trajectory which led me to consider the history and  memory of the Revolution as a whole.

Why do you reject the idea of a "genocide" in the Vendée,  when you yourself have shown that there were more victims than previously admitted?

J.-C. M: There was no genocide, even though 200,000 died.  The idea of a genocide in the Vendée has been around a long time, but came to the fore in 1985 when Reynald Secher defended his thesis, directed by Pierre Chaunu.  The media seized on his work up immediately as an absolute revelation disproving the official history, which had long neglected the Vendée.  He was taken up by the press - notably Le Canard enchaîné - and television; on eve of the bicentenary,  it seemed a propitious moment to condemn the Revolution as the antecedent of the gulags, and of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism.

A similar thing happened in Italy on the 150 anniversary of unification;  here "neo-bourbons" historians uncovered a "genocide" by the army of Savoy in Southern Italy, which had not been much talked about before.

It is no coincidence that this talk of genocides began in the 1970s and '80s.  This was the period of crisis in Marxism, of the discovery of the genocide in Cambodia, and of Simon Leys's denunciations of Maoist China.  Hannah Arendt died in 1975 and her theses were taken up, notably by François Furet.  I was still working with Le Roy Ladurie and was close to Furet.  Thanks to him, I was leading a seminar at the École des Hautes Études. on the Counter-revolution. However,  I opposed the thesis of genocide and distanced myself from Furet.  When you look at the sources closely, there is no evidence for a "genocide" which supposes a system to destroy an entire population. The Convention gave funds to  refugees in the Vendée and protected the property of recognised Republicans.  The Revolution wanted only to exterminate its enemies, the "brigands de la Vendée"

I am not contesting the validity of debate over the question of genocide, which is worth posing as it promotes reflection.  There was no genocide, but there were war crimes, even crimes against humanity.  

Can one use the concept of "war crime", which was not admitted at the time?

J.-C. M: History itself is anachronistic.  It is mediated by our present-day concepts.  This worries me less when one notes that military regulations of the period stipulated that soldiers caught committing rape must be tried and executed.  The laws of war at the time anticipated our later preoccupations.

We can speak of massacres, but not of genocide. 

"Le Dernier Panache", a show at Le Puy de Fou based on the life of Charette

To resume the story of my career, in the Vendée I became interested in the Puy du Fou theme park, which was created in 1977.  I myself had been responsible for an exhibition on the memory of the wars  under the regional museum director Francis Ribémont, but I played no part part in Philippe de Villiers's design team. In 1984 Villiers was invited to appear on the programme Vive la crise introduced by Yves Montant: the French public discovered a modern entrepreneur making his mark in the cultural sphere. He gave an image of commercial success.  In 1991, with a colleague who was a sociologist, I published a book on the Puy du Fou [Le Puy du Fou en Vendée, l'Histoire mise en scène (en collaboration avec Charles Suaud), reissue L'Harmattan, 2000].  By this time it had ceased to be the project of an organisation of volunteers and had become a commercial concern with numerous employees.  The book led to several démêlés with the Association du Puy du Fou.

In 1987 I defended my thesis and in 1989 I published a book on the memory of the Vendée which covered the period 1800 to 1980.  I have since updated my study to take account of the fact that after 1989 the situation changed completely, particularly through the influence of Philippe de Villiers in the 2000s.

How do you explain Emmanuel Macron's visit to the  Puy du Fou during his presidential campaign in 2017?

J.-C. M: The message was ambiguous;  Villiers has transformed the local economy of a rural department with modern technological industry.  He is a great communicator and has attracted many celebrities. Macron was certainly testing out the possibility of forging links with the Right.  However for the past two decades Villiers has only been on the margins of Vendéen politics, despite his media importance.  I have not observed any real links between Villiers and Macron.

You have written that the work of the historian requires the exercise of asceticism ["un relève de l’ascèse"]?

The idea that the study of history demands "asceticism" doesn't quite translate into English. J.-C.M. seems to have in mind an combination of intellectual rigour and abstinence from personal bias.

J.-C. M:   Firstly, it is not easy to teach the history of the Revolution.  I have written several works of popularisation and it is extremely difficult to convey complex ideas.  In 1990 school textbooks presented the war in the Vendée with one page devoted to me and another to Secher and the idea of genocide.  A true  understanding of what happened  has taken several decades of publications.  Colleagues in the classic tradition have asked me to give a total death toll for the Revolution, something which  would have been impossible twenty or forty years ago, when such questions were the exclusive preserve of the Right.

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Secondly, I have participated in conferences on the Revolution and the Vendée in the widest possible range of political settings, from extreme Left to extreme Right; but I have always used the same vocabulary.  The massacres of the Vendée were neither a genocide nor "legitimate vengence".  My position has satisfied no-one - but  a historian can no doubt never be popular.

Thirdly, technical "asceticism" means one should never arrive at an explanation without considering the full complexity of the evidence.  Thus a public speech must be examined not only for overt content but for context and underlying intent. 

We must always remember that the "mentalities" of the Revolutionary era were very different from our own.  For instance, what were the aims of the sans-culottes?  Were they harbingers of political modernity? Viewed close up, I see individuals defending community interests, with a millenarian perspective which was very archaic.  They had habit of violence and were formed by inherited beliefs.  They  did not belong to the world of the Enlightenment but to the universe of popular tradition.

I found the people of the Vendée to be in fact very similar.  They were archaic, communal in outlook, influenced by superstition, and with no concept of the modern state.  They believed in a "pact" between the people and the sovereign: when the sovereign broke the pact, they rose against him;  it was no more complicated than that. This was not the revolt of one part of France against another: it was a revolt by people who did belong to the nation at all against the Modern French state.  Yet those who opposed them had scarcely more notion of a national community; they too were defending themselves against foreigners.

What is the connection between the Terror and terrorism?

J.-C. M: The word "terrorist" was born in September 1794.  It was used for the followers of Robespierre, the participants in  "the Terror", as defined by the Thermidoreans.  They suffered a brutal repression - at least 2000 were killed in Paris and in the Rhône Valley.  Under the Directory, Left-Wing radicals, viewed as terrorists, were suspected a priori of advocating political violence. Some (Babeuf, Buonarroti) went underground.  After 1796 the Left attempted to recreate Republican circles throughout France.

The word "terrorist" was not use before this time, and it is not known who invented it.  Its meaning changed radically in the 1820s.  This was the period when memoirs of the Revolutionaries were diffused by the Carbonari/Charbonnerie, notably in Italy.  The word "terrorist" was then used for those who tried to "terrorise" public opinion.  A Left-Wing tradition which lasted through the Empire, was favoured by the Hundred Days, continued under the Restoration through  "Republican banquets", then through the Charbonnerie.  All these currents saw themselves as Republicans but not Robespierrists.

As to Robespierre himself, it was not until the 1850s that he began to acquire a positive image, notably through the work of Louis Blanc. Robespierre then became a romantic hero, embodying the idea of individual action.

Thirty years after the Bicentenary, what place does the Revoluton have in political discourse and the teaching of history in France?

J.-C. M: The bicentenary itself was a failure.  I had no desire to attend Jean-Paul Goude's parade on the Champs-Elysées.  To me, this pseudo-commemoration was indecent since it stopped short at December 1789.  Mitterand did not want to acknowledge the September massacres of 1792 but he allowed a completely distorted  commemoration of the Battle of Valmy.   The celebrations were adapted by  different agendas.  The Left transformed Trees of Liberty into "Trees of Ecology" whilst the Right observed classic Counter-Revolutionary commemorations.  I felt that the result was not really positive.  The great outpouring of books and entertainments on 1789-1790 hasn't had much lasting legacy.  In contrast, I found great significance in the wave of courageous commemorations which took place in the West to remember the wars of the Vendée; these took place without taboo or propaganda - I participated with much conviction.

Ironically, I think that the principal result of the Bicentenary has been a media saturation.  This has  benefited younger scholars, aged between 30 and 40, who can work peacefully on the subject without editorial pressure.  Maps have been redrawn.  Links between European and extra-European historiography have been consolidated.  One unexpected example is in China, where the death of Mao  led to a "normalisation" of scholarship; Chinese historians became interested in the politics of Thermidor at the same time that we did in France!

The interest offered by the study of history is to understand how we live today.  Since 7.11 "Terrorism" has become synonymous with the Twin Towers.  The world, its imagery and symbols change rapidly.  I was involved in the production of Assassin's Creed Unity, which has been played by 10 million people.  Mélenchon, the leader of the Insoumis, took up cudgels against Ubisoft in the name of French tradition.  He has forgotten that this is a game for the worldwide market, created according to American/Canadian expectations - regrettable as that might be.  

And in the discourse of French politicians?

J.-C. M: There is an awareness in political reference that the Revolution gave France not only the "Rights of Man" but also the guillotine.  Only Mélenchon still sees Robespierre as a pure romantic hero. At the other end of the spectrum extreme Royalists count for little, even in the ranks of the Right. 

Are the gilets jaunes the new Revolutionaries?

For me this is just figure of speech.  I am always dismayed when politicians talk about "cahiers de doléances" - these were huge failures in 1789, piled up and never even opened.  Perhaps the gilets jaunes are better seen as part of a French popular tradition of protest?  The people have always opposed "les Messieurs". We are seeing a revolt like that of the Nu-pieds (1639) or, more recently, the Bonnet rouges (1675 or 2013). Analogies with the Revolution just shows a  lack of historical understanding.

The fundamental question posed by the French Revolution, is the relationship between legality and legitimacy. The attack on the Bastille was totally illegal but it was given legitimacy.   In 2019-2020 the gilets jaunes acted illegality, believing they had a legitimacy, which public opinion debates with them. 

The Institut de l'histoire de la Révolution has been closed.  Does this suggest a lack of interest in the Revolution?

The Institut disappeared for administrative reasons, as as result of rivalries between different centres.  What concerned me was the lack of any political move to save it; in fact there was a political preference for the new centre devoted to the Republic at the École des Hautes études. The lack of professional co-operation is worrying. I attempted to create an Institut Révolution-Empire but this initiative failed.  The IHRF Library is protected by influential individuals for the present, but risks dispersal in the future.  Universities concerned with the Revolution spend more time in-fighting than co-operating.  In 2020  output on the Revolution has been dominated by popular histories, novels and comic-books.

Reference

Parler de Révolution: entretien avec Jean-Clément Martin réalisé par Alessandro Giacone pour la revue Historia Magistra, 2020, N°32.  [Reproduced  by J.-C. M. on his blog]
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jean-clement-martin/blog/070820/parler-de-revolution-entretien-avec-jean-clement-martin.