Robespierre: It Takes a Tender Man to Lead the Terror (with a nod to Mike Huckabee)

And  . . . having noted the murder of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday (1, 2), it would not be appropriate to neglect the anniversary of the fall of the Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre--"The Incorruptible."

So, I had planned to write something about this anyway, but I never thought that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee would provide the added hook.

 

It's not often one hears the term, "Supreme Being," used in modern political discourse. It was a name for the divine favored by Enlightenment deists who rejected "revealed religion," and is thus not part of the vocabulary of a Christian conservative such as Huckabee. Presumably, he just needed the parallel construction in order to drive home his anti-government message.

And how is all this connected with Robespierre?

He was a far more complex figure than the caricature propagated by his enemies would suggest.  For example: although opposed, with the majority of the revolutionaries, to any social or political role for the Church, he considered it tamed by the early reforms, and condemned the extreme "de-Christianizers" who pursued policies ranging from destruction of religious art and architecture to slaughter of priests and nuns. He did not see the individual believer as a threat, and on the contrary, successfully advocated for freedom of worship, arguing that mindless persecution of the religious would only revive the mindless fanaticism that the Revolution had sought to eliminate.

For Robespierre, atheism was an aristocratic affectation, at odds with both democracy and the emotional needs of the populace. Belief in a deistic divine presence ensuring the reward of virtue and punishment of vice was central to his worldview.

Belief in a Supreme Being had been part of the French Constitution since April 1793, but Robespierre sought to restore cultural peace and unity by clarifying and formalizing the consensus belief. He set forth his ideas in the Report to the National Convention on the Connections of Religious and Moral Ideas with Republican Principles, & on National Festivals on 18 Floréal, Year II (May 7, 1794)

Robespierre's Report, published by order of the Convention
at the National Printing Works in Paris: in-octavo, 45 pages

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Following the political and philosophical exposition, the Report set forth a 15-point decree on the cult and its festivals.

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First Article.

  The French people recognizes the existence of the Supreme Being, and the immortality of the soul.

II.

  It recognizes that the manner of worship worthy of the Supreme Being is the practice of the duties of man.

III.

  It places chief among these duties: to detest bad faith and tyranny, to punish tyrants and traitors, to assist the unfortunate, to respect the weak, to defend the oppressed, to do all the good that one can to others, and to be unjust toward no one. . . .

It concluded with the outline of a Festival of the Supreme Being, proposed by the artist Jacques-Louis David, to be held on 20 Prairial Year II (June 8, 1794)

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Festival of the Supreme Being, from Charles François Gabriel Levachez, and Son, and
Jean Duplessi-Bertaux, Tableaux historiques de la Révolution Française, 1798-1804

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Whereas Robespierre viewed the Festival as a crucial last attempt to reinvigorate the Revolution, both contemporaries and modern scholars have seen it as one of the factors that contributed to his downfall. It alienated both de-Christianizers and more traditional deists; critics accused him of megalomania and seeking to set himself up as  a new "pope" or "Mahomet" (Muhammad).

A contemporary account described him as "dressed in a sky-blue coat, with exquisite ruffles of lace, and holding a bunch of flowers, fruit, and ripe wheat in his hand."

from the first edition of Alphonse de Lamartine's History of the Girondists. The work ran to 61 "books" divided among 8 volumes, whose publication (Paris: Furne et Cie.,1847-50) coincided with the outbreak of a new revolution, in which the Romantic poet and liberal politician himself briefly played a key part. It was accompanied by 39 steel engravings of Revolutionary figures, along with a portrait of the author. The plates, drawn by Denis August Marie Raffet (1804-60), engraved by various artists, and printed by Plon, were issued separately in 13 installments costing 1 franc each, from 1848 to 1850 (sheet size: c. 19.5 x. 25.7 cm)

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This hostile engraving from the mid-nineteenth century is arguably intended to convey that view of the priggish and arrogant Robespierre. At the same time, in retrospect it perhaps inadvertently humanizes him by presenting him in a manner to which we are unaccustomed.



The rather soft-looking Frank Perdue may have laughed all the way to the bank on the slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."

Well, the Robespierre corollary is: it took a tender man to lead the Terror.

Marat, modestly medallically commemorated

Of course, having noted the assassination of Jean Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday and her subsequent execution (1, 2) it would be unseemly not to devote at least a small amount of space to her victim, the radical revolutionary journalist.

For some reason (well, I guess it's not that hard to figure out), I seem to have a respectable stock of Marat memorabilia. Here is one of the most modest items: a small (dia.: 22-3 mm.) uniface copper medal depicting a bust of Marat (with characteristic kerchief on head because of his skin disease) facing left.

The legend reads, "To Marat, The Friend of the People [both the appellation by which he was known and the title of his journal], 1793." There are remains of an attachment loop (bélière). The Stanford University/Bibliothèque Nationale de France collaboration describes this item as from 1793, though other sources suggest that there was also a recast during the Revolution of 1848, when this iconography became fashionable again. (The uniface form and toning of this piece might indeed suggest the latter.)

In any case, pause for a moment to recall one radical journalist who was murdered by an extremist at the opposite end of the political spectrum. You need not share his views in order to condemn her act. And perhaps the case speaks to our situation today.

23 July 1793: Fall of the Mainz Republic (you haven't heard of it?)

You haven't heard of this? Neither had I, at first.

When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin, I was a history major, but I had the de facto equivalent of minors in French and German literature, with undergraduate and later graduate course work in both.

I was--although I considered myself reasonably well-educated for a midwestern yokel--struck by the title of a book by one of my German professors, Jost Hermand:  Von Mainz nach Weimar (1793-1919) Studien zur deutschen Literatur (From Mainz to Weimar (1793-1919) Studies on German Literature). I of course understood the reference to the founding of the Weimar Republic. But Mainz? What was it doing in a history of German literature and democracy? As far as I knew it: the site of some great medieval edifices and home to Gutenberg. What was it doing here?

As I soon learned, it was the "first republic on German soil," proclaimed by local revolutionaries (under the auspices of French forces) on March 18, 1793, and extinguished in the summer of 1793. (And I don't think I would have learned that even if I had taken a formal course on the French Revolution rather than just "read around" in that literature on my own.) The fall of Mainz, along with the assassination of Marat and other setbacks, was one of the factors that prompted the introduction of the so-called "Terror."

Here, a depiction of the Liberty Tree erected by German revolutionaries:

Hand-colored engraving:
"Depiction of the Liberty Tree and the pikes, planted
at Mainz on 13 January 1793.
[at left:] Scale: 1 inch to 6 feet." Actual size of image: 3 x 5 inches)

Rituals and symbols were important, and the new iconography of the Revolution appeared even in the more mundane domain of the economy. Prussian Coalition forces besieged the city beginning on 31 March, and in early May, when it became clear that the crisis was going to continue, the French created special siege money:

Some examples of coins and currency over on the tumblr.


More on the Mainz Republic and its significance.

18 July 1863: Union Attack on Fort Wagner by Massachusetts 54th Infantry

18 July marks the anniversary of the assault on Fort Wagner by African-American troops of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, made famous to the present generation by the film, "Glory."

This year, instead of posting about it on that day, I earlier wrote about the changing reactions to the "Shaw Memorial" in Boston, which commemorates Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the troops that he commanded.

For today, several engraved representations of the battle over on the tumblr:

(details here) 

(details here)

Note the difference: Although both depict the assault, including a heroic bearer of the Union flag (the first bearer was hit, and then Sgt. William Harvey Carney seized it, the first Black to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor), the first was produced by a British reporter "embedded" with the Confederate troops, and thus views the attack from the inside. The second, based on a painting by Thomas Nast, presents the (to us) more familiar view of the assault seen from the perspective of the Union attackers.

This piece, from an August 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly, depicts African-American troops digging fortifications as the siege of Fort Wagner continued

 (details here)

See all posts relating to the Mass 54th regiment (including the soldiers who came from Amherst).

Charlotte Corday Medal: Well Deserved?

In contrast to the portrait prints in the previous post, numismatic commemorations of Charlotte Corday, assassin of Jean-Paul Marat, are fairly rare.

Here is one of the more refined of those exceptions:

Attributed (1, 2) to the Swedish medallist Carl Carlsson Enhörning (1745-1821), it is made of gilded bronze, with a diameter of 29 mm.

obverse

I don't know the source of the likeness, but it certainly seems to be an idealized generic representation. (I myself do not know of a single depiction in profile--so it is likely that Enhörning would not have, either--though it is possible that this one is based on the artist's interpretation of one of the full-face portraits.)

In any case, the inscription on the reverse suggests closeness to the event, at which time, presumably, few accurate representations of Corday would have been available.

The words, "bien méritée,"--well earned, or well deserved--make Enhörning's political sympathies clear, lest there was any doubt. In choosing this form, the artist also implicitly echoes the standard type of medal that governments, schools, academies, and other institutions issued for commendable achievement. For example, this small silver medal of the eighteenth-century Kingdom of Poland under Stanisław II August given to cadets:

Whether her act was justified is a matter that we can continue to debate. I keep the medal in my collection because I feel her fate rather than the act was "well deserved." Marat was a radical revolutionary leader--not unproblematic in his politics and personal views, yet also hardly the demon that his enemies claimed he was.

Bien méritée? As I said in the previous post, the verdict of "the Raging Reporter" Egon Erwin Kisch seems the most congenial.  Introducing a piece by Marat in his anthology, Klassischer Journalismus (Berlin, 1923), he explains, "the agitated hysteric, Charlotte Corday, a stupid person, stabbed him to death."

Portraits of Charlotte Corday: From Counter-revolutionary Soft Porn to the Picture that Churchill Used to Chide DeGaulle

On 13 July 1793, Charlotte Corday stabbed the French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat to death in his bathtub. On July 17, she went to the guillotine.

For counterrevolutionaries, she was a great heroine and tyrannicide. Even many French and foreign supporters of a moderate Revolution viewed her with some sympathy, though the issue of assassination remained a moral and political dilemma that they did their best to finesse. Personally, I've always favored the terse characterization of the episode by the great radical journalist Egon Erwin Kisch (1923):  "the agitated hysteric, Charlotte Corday, a stupid person, stabbed him to death."

counter-revolutionary soft porn

Portraits of Corday issued soon after the event, and especially in the nineteenth century, tended to romanticize or infantilize her, as this selection from an earlier post will show.




I described one of them as "Victorian counter-revolutionary soft porn: a little bondage, a little rain and wind—Joan of Arc in a wet t-shirt."

By contrast, this engraving, based on a sketch that the artist Jean-Jacques Hauer made while she was in prison, is the most distinctive if not most attractive. Both she and her contemporaries regarded as the most accurate.

And the best thing about it is that it had a strange second life. Winston Churchill had this engraving on display in his home in order, when dealing with de Gaulle, to remind him of the fate of arrogant Frenchmen.

Q: Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? A: Often, near Samoa

We are all familiar with the dramatic scenes of the fiery takeoffs of US space vehicles. We are arguably somewhat less familiar with the landings, though I'd wager many of us have seen a space shuttle landing on television.

And before that? Those of us of a certain age can probably remember both ends of the launch cycle very well. When we were kids, before these things became routine, they were broadcast live on the major television networks (nowadays, only on CNN and the like). In fact, teachers would wheel a portable television into classrooms so that students could watch history being made. Again, the blastoff was probably the main attraction.

And the landings? From the Mercury through the Apollo program, they took place on water, giving rise to the term, "splashdown." For a variety of complicated, partly contingent reasons, the USSR always opted for recovery of its space vehicles on land, whereas the US chose water landings.

So here are some philatelic artifacts of the Apollo program.

The splashdown of Apollo 11, like other Apollo landings, took place in the Pacific Ocean, most near American Samoa. This stamp from Western Samoa commemorates the moon landings. (The depiction of the space suit is not accurate.) [kickstarter project to restore and display Neil Armstrong's space suit]

Another Western Samoa stamp with the same image but a higher denomination is used on this commemorative cover marking the safe return of Apollo 16, the second-to-last manned moon mission.

For those of you not around at the time, here's what these splashdowns looked like:

As for the title of this post? It, too, is a historical artifact:

• (a) either something someone of a certain age knows and fondly recalls, or
• (b) something one picked up while exploring retro culture, or
• (c) something one does not know but really should.

It's a great satirical song by the great Tom Lehrer, bitterly poking fun at Wernher von Braun. Again, those of us of a certain age remember the latter as a perennial talking head whenever the US space program was in the news (including Walt Disney productions, before my time). Snapped up at the end of World War II by "Operation Paperclip," in which the US sought to grab German rocket scientists before the Soviets could do so, von Braun went from designing Nazi V-2 rockets used in terror attacks against London to becoming the father of the US space program without skipping a beat. Hence this little ditty. And so, without further ado:

[restored video]

The Moon Landing in the Service of Advertising, Anno 1969

I always thought this was a very clever advertising strategy.

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Back in 1969, when the Apollo 11 moon landing took place, Spoo & Son, a well-established Madison, Wisconsin clothing store on Capitol Square, had the clever idea of purchasing a whole load of first-day-of-issue covers of the commemorative stamp for use in promoting its big fall sale. The custom cachet, with the words, “in celebration of a great event,” in white against the image of the moon, thus appropriated the glory of the technological achievement in the service of commerce.

It had a sufficiently light touch to be amusing, and the prospective customer got a nice keepsake.

Moon Landing Anniversary (and animation, space toilets, and cheese)

If it's July 20, it's time to haul out my old post, which combines lunar exploration, zero-gravity toilets, animation humor, and the Jeffersonian politics of cheese.

But I also realized that the old posts did not include any images directly related to the moon landing, so I will redress that omission with the Apollo moon landing stamp.

23 July 1793 Fall of Mainz to Coalition Forces

The conquest and then loss of the fortified city of Mainz by French troops in a span of some nine months constituted two turning points in the history of the Revolution and moreover came to symbolize stillborn prospects for German democracy.

Ironically, it was the moderate faction of the Girondins rather than the radicals who had recklessly led the French into war in April, 1792 (Robespierre famously warned that people tend not to be fond of missionaries with bayonets). Initially, the conflict went badly. As the situation deteriorated in August, the people of Paris overthrew the monarchy. The fall of two key frontier fortresses left the country open to invasion, and led to the “September Massacres” of suspected counterrevolutionaries.

The situation changed dramatically when the revolutionary army held its ground and scored a stunning symbolic victory over the seasoned Prussian troops at Valmy on 20 September. The National Convention declared France a republic two days later. Thereafter, the French went over to the offensive. General Custine’s Army of the Vosges captured Speyer, Worms, Mainz (21 October), and Frankfurt in barely a month, mainly because the easily panicked French troops faced little opposition.

The Mainz episode came to epitomize, for contemporaries and later generations alike, the perils and promise of revolution, not least the political engagement of “intellectuals.” Then as now, internal developments commanded the most attention, and the political significance outweighed the military. Debates over the past have a way of becoming arguments about the present and future.

Local radicals founded their own Jacobin Clubs and, in collaboration with the French troops now promising liberation to all peoples seeking assistance (19 Nov.), set about overthrowing the old social order on the left bank of the Rhine. The results were mixed: a bold experiment in democracy that drew support from a wide social spectrum but never became truly populist or practically successful. The conditions were not auspicious. As the idealism of the revolutionary leaders, many of them intellectuals or former officials, collided with the reality of public skepticism or hostility, frustration and French power-political needs led to ever more coercive measures, recapitulating the transition of the Revolution itself from liberalism to authoritarianism. Finally, the new “Rhenish-German National Convention” declared an independent republic (18 March) and then humiliatingly and almost immediately (21 March) sought union with France, which had discovered a belief in “natural” frontiers.

Emergency coinage from the siege of Mainz,  issued by decree of May 1793

coins of similar design were struck in three denominations—1, 2, and 5 sols—in copper, bronze, and bell metal

left: obverse, derived from a coin of the constitutional monarchy, adapted with republican language

right:  reverse, denoting the denomination, and bearing the legend, coinage of the siege of Mainz

Within a fortnight, the high hopes seemed a cruel illusion. Threatened by Coalition forces, Custine had been forced to withdraw the bulk of his troops. The Allies encircled Mainz on March 30, invested it on April 14 and began shelling it on June 18. The bombardment became a sort of horrible spectacle for the population of the surrounding region.

 The city finally fell on July 23. Physical damage was tremendous.  The author Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who accompanied the Coalition troops in 1792 and 1793 observed:

Here we found the most lamentable state of things.  Ashes and ruins were all that was left of what it had taken centuries to build. . . . The mind became distracted at the sight—a much more melancholy scene than that of a town burnt down by accident."

The departing French pledged not to engage the Allies for one year, and many joined the revolutionary armies of the west, where their skill contributed greatly to the crushing of the Vendéan revolt. The fate of their German collaborators was less gentle, ranging from harassment to prison terms, exile, and lynching. The most celebrated primary source is the account by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who accompanied the besiegers but displayed great empathy for all participants (especially civilians) and a spirit of reconciliation all too rare among the victors.  He several times intervened to protect local revolutionaries from attack.  Confronting a man who "swore deadly vengeance against the Clubbists,"

I advised him to use milder language, and represented to him that the return to a peaceful and domestic state of things should not be destroyed by a new war between fellow-citizens, and by feelings of hatred and revenge, as otherwise our misfortunes would never end;

The fall of Mainz, combined with other blows that summer, from the assassination of Marat to the spread of bloody rebellion in both the west and south of France, precipitated the levée en masse and escalation of the incipient Terror. The siege of the city marked the beginning of a series of foreign military setbacks that would stretch from April 1793 to June 1794. Not coincidentally, the turn in the tides of military fortune eventually brought about a softening of support for the Terror and the overthrow of Robespierre and his faction in July. Mainz changed hands several times in 1794-1795, but under the Treaties of Campo Formio (1797) and Lunéville (1801) returned to France and became the Prefecture of the Department of Mont-Tonnerre. In 1814, Mainz was restored to German sovereignty.


Although one should beware of exaggerating the importance of the Mainz revolution, it was the first modern German democratic movement. The problems it posed—the strengths and limitations of both force and idealism, the challenge of implanting democracy under occupation, and the dilemma arising when the majority will rejects democracy—remain topics that we continue to debate in both the military and political realms.

(adapted from a piece I published earlier in another setting)