by Jean-Jacques COURTEY, Doctor in Economic Geography, Ph. D
___________________________
This new article of Uchronic history may totally surprise you, with the details we are going to give, as they are never quoted usually.
If you feel you want to take a breath, you can make a pause after each part of our narration.
So sit tight in your seat, and get ready to discover the most hidden and enigmatic secrets of French history !
******
"Ranae regem petunt" can be translated by "Frogs want a king". This famous quotation is deriving at the origin from the fable 66 of Aesop. So initially, it had nothing to do with France and French people, who didn't exist yet at his time. Clovis the Merovingian (circa 465 - 511 AD) became King of the Salian Franks of Tournai originally (Belgium Second) only in 481 or 482 AD, and his flag carried toads rather than frogs. He was the son of Childéric I (c. 436 - 481 or 482 AD), himself son of Mérovée. The singularity of Childéric I, the "Seer King", was that he most likely regained his lost throne with the successful use of his crystal ball - found in 1653 in his tumb in Tournai. About Aesop (circa 620 - c. 564 BC), he lived more than a millenium before. He was actually a famous Greek writer of fables who was a native of Phrygia (in Anatolia). And he was in vogue in all the Roman world afterwards, which is explaining why this fable was retaken by Phaedrus (c. 14 BC - C. 50 AD) in the present latin form, or far after by Jean de la Fontaine (1621 - 1695).
Yet Phrygia's memory became over suddenly very important under the French Revolution, with the famous Phrygian cap (a red cap). It was the symbol of freed slaves. During the reign of only semi-mythical Amazons, who once dominated Anatolia as well as the South of Russia and whole Ukraine till 320 BC, enslaved Gagarian men - Scythians - were allowed to wear occasionally a Phrygian cap. They wore the "bonnet phrygien" (in French) for the "Spring Festival", their special season of Love which was lasting two full months ! But usually the topic of the Phrygian cap of the Revolution, as a symbol inherited from the Antiquity, is presented in a far more evasive manner - or simplistically truncated - it's true !
Maximilien de Robespierre (1758 - 1794), like other Revolutionaries, was strongly influenced by the history of Antiquity, and often made quotations of famous sentences like the one of Aesop about Frogs : it is known he was in contradiction with himself about the idea of Republic. On September 21st, 1792, two days after the diplomatic supper of Brunswick with diamonds preceding the cannonade of Valmy, if he admitted the abolition of Louis XVI's Monarchy, he yet surprisingly refused to proclaim the Republic. When discussing and arguing with Georges Danton (1759 - 1794), he even told him that "he didn't understand this word" ! So they didn't do it, and after reaching a compromise they decided to create a pagan calendar starting from September 22nd, 1792 (beginning of the Year I), called the "Republican calendar" with weeks of 10 days. This idea was immediately retaken by the "Montagnard" Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne (1756 - 1819), who had abandoned his particle (Billaud de Varennes originally). The Ist Republic was thus born in an indirect way. And Danton, with all the efforts he had made to steal the diamonds from the "Garde-Meuble de la Couronne" for the heavily endebted Duke of Brunswick (1735 - 1806), suspected Robespierre to be an ominous hypocrit aspiring to personal power in the dynastic mode !
Robespierre who had sequels in ideas, had planned in his secret headquarters of Choisy-le-Roi, near Paris, a big surprise for France. It was for Thermidor 10th, Year II ! He wanted on that very day to put under arrest and condemn to Guillotine all his opponents (or supposed opponents) from the National Convention, and the Committee of General Safety...as well as some members of the Committee he presided, the Committee of Public Salvation. This would have been greatly facilitated by the liberticid law of Prairial 22nd, Year II (June 10th, 1794). The full list had to be written by his friend Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767 - 1794) of the Committee of Public Salvation, which was sitting in the bedroom of Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755 - 1793 or 1834 ?) in the Tuileries.
In his discreet GHQ of Choisy-Le-Roi, Robespierre had also previously secret meetings with "the Mother of God", Catherine Théot (1716 - 1794), who was considering him as the new Messaiah, the Sovereign Pontiff of the Supreme Being ! This strange medium had initiated him to her new cult, recalling partly the "Cybel cult" of Phrygia, and for the rest the Catholic religion. It was an eminently synthetic cult, as she liked to be called also "the new Eve". And the magnificent Festival of the Supreme Being of Prairial 20th, Year II (June 8th, 1794) on the Champ de Mars in Paris, was just a foretaste. He was foretold to bring back the "Golden Age" in France... and even on Earth ! It seems he quoted the famous sentence derived from Aesop on one of those occasions : "Ranae regem petunt "! The plan, according to Vadier who denonciated him to the tribune of Convention on Thermidor 9th, Year II (July 27th, 1794), was to put an end to the Revolution, with a puppet Monarchy lead for a very short time by the installed Louis XVII (1785 - 1795 or 1860 ?).
By marrying quickly with his sister, the Princess Marie-Thérèse (1778 - 1851), who was kept prisoner in the Temple Jail in Paris, he would have entered the Capetian family. And with the death to come of the very ill Child of the same Temple Jail [who wasn't really the Dolphin, already secretely saved by the Count of Courtenay and his assistant from the British Secret Services, Miss Barett - Editorial Note], he would have been able to become the new King of France. Marc Guillaume Vadier (1736 - 1828) didn't hesitate to harangue the National Convention, because he knew he was among the first ones to be eliminated on the list of Saint-Just, as president of the General Safety Committee ! Above that, Robespierre who was behaving like a dictator had protected Catherine Théot and her surrounders, by forbiding to guillotine them, after they had been arrested in between under the order of Vadier. Vadier was nicknaming his enemies, "Toads of the marshes", with a clear allusion to the Frank origins of French Monarchy, and in analogy with "the Frogs" of Robespierre !
As many people know, Robespierre was put on accusation by the National Convention on that very day of Thermidor 9th, Year II : it was unluckily for him just one day before his planned secret Coup, we could call "Ranae" as a code name ! And instead of triumphing on Thermidor 10th, Year II (July 28th, 1794), he was guillotined with his smashed jaw. He died with his younger brother Augustin nicknamed "Bonbon", Saint-Just, Georges Couthon (1755 - 1794), and his main supporters. Even if the Revolution wasn't totally over yet, Thermidor is often considered as the very beginning of its end. Everybody felt released after all those symbolic executions, and tongues loosed ! The People was mainly calling for Bread and the King ! The year after, a new regime was created to establish a transition and appease France : the Directory ("Directoire" in French). It was followed by the Consulate (1799- 1804). And it lead finally to a new kind of Monarchy, the Ist Empire of Napoléon Bonaparte (1804 - 1814 and "the Hundred Days" in 1815).
During the Restoration which ensued (1814 - 1815 ~ 1815 - 1830), the Bourbon brothers of Louis XVI (1754 - 1793 ?) tried to resettle French traditional Royalty, with arrangements. And one of the most surprising decision of Louis XVIII (1755 - 1824), was concerning Charlotte de Robespierre (1760 - 1834), the sister of the deceased Maximilien de Robespierre : she was noticeably served a trimestrial grant on the Royal Treasure for rendered services (which ones ?). He also made an enquiry about Cornélia (Cornélie) de Galéan, Marchioness of Janson. He wanted to know who she was exactly : the real one who wanted to save the Queen, or Marie-Antoinette herself who had escaped from the Conciergerie Jail on August 30th, 1793, during the very strange "Carnation Conspiracy" attributed to the bold Baron Jean de Batz (1754 - 1822) ?
As the "Marchioness of Janson", who was living in Paris, told his police that Queen Marie-Antoinette had finally abandoned the idea of a substitution with her (who was her very obvious Double), he chose to let it go. He had already another problem to solve with a Belgian Monk, who was proclaiming to be the real Louis XVI, saved along the 52 rue Beauregard in Paris by the Baron de Batz too, on January 21st, 1793. He ignored the divine threat of his "potential" brother, predicting the final fall of his royal brothers who had constantly betrayed him ! But he nevertheless recognized in Jean de Batz an eminent Royalist. And he rewarded him with the cross of Saint Louis, and the title of Marschal of France like D'Artagnan (Charles de Batz - 1611 ~ 1615 - 1673) ! The double dynastic and familial problem caused by "the Marchioness of Janson", and the "Black Monk in grey" predicted by Nostradamus (1503 - 1566) in his Centuries - Quatrain IX-20 -, were buried and forgotten in the superior interest of the restored Monarchy. To be precise, "Black Monk" was an allusion of Nostradamus to the fact Louis XVI would want to abolish Slavery as "non-Christian" in the French colonies overseas, which would bring him the fateful enmity of the Settlers' Party. For Louis XVIII, his elder brother and his sister-in-law would thus always remain two thorns planted in his aching feet !
To conclude, it's important to notice that the Revolutionary co-leadership between Danton and Robespierre ended justly on September 21st, 1792. If on the morning of that day, Danton could appear to be triumphant, things were quite different for him at the end of the same day with the refusal of Robespierre mentioned above. The latter who had still some strong principles, didn't like the disloyal way Danton had used to get rid of Louis XVI's Monarchy with the questions of the stolen diamonds of the Crown and of the Valmy tangle. Hence, from September 21st, 1792, Robespierre emerged as the only top leader of the Revolutionary France !
Robespierre was an incredible activist for the Abolition of the Death Penalty since 1789 : he was so "incredible" that he sent a huge number of people to the Guillotine ! And this included his ex-comrade Danton together with his ex-childhood friend from the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand in Paris, Camille Desmoulins (1760 - 1794). For memory, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand was the
very place Robespierre was congratulated in person by Louis XVI on a visit, for his very good
results as a scholarship student ! And Camille Desmoulins was the one who harangued successfully the crowd - in spite of his usual stuttering -, in the gardens of Palais Royal (Paris) to stir up against the King after the dismissal of Necker (July 12th, 1789)...which lead two days after to the Storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789 !
As an epilog to the post-Robespierre period, the advent of Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans (1773- 1850), as "King of French people" and not anymore "King of France" in 1830, demonstrated the weakness of the Bourbons' Monarchy since the disappearing of King Louis XVI. The question of Louis XVI 's line was entangled deliberately. Hence, his cousin branch was given the throne for a while, because of the sudden reinvolvement of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1757 - 1834) !
Very astonishingly, it has to be quoted something usually not noticed or passed over under silence about the "Glorious Three" (July, 27th - July 29th, 1830), when Charles X was dethroned : if you pay enough attention to the dates, it clearly started on Thermidor 9th, just like the unexpected fall of Robespierre ! Was it by the whim of the sky, or in accordance with the fateful warning of the "Black Monk in grey" ?
Ever since, France has always been hesitating in its political system, inherited both from the time of Royalty and the ones of Revolution and Empire very paradoxically. That's why our present system may appear as the result of this dialectical synthesis, and then particularly hybrid. Thus, the only remaining finding is the persistence of the antic fable quoted by Robespierre : "Ranae regem petunt" ("Frogs want a king") !Nowadays, you may call presumably this king a "monarch-president" under the Gaullist Constitution of 1958, after the Referendum of 1962 for his election by universal suffrage. And the fact is that political struggle for the supreme power in France, is becoming suddenly very hot when the presidential elections are approaching. It's then the time for renewed catchwords and utopia, but also for pragmatic realism to avoid the irretrievable dislocation of the Frank base and inheritage - in the most astonishing occurences !
