by Jean-Jacques COURTEY, Doctor in Economic Geography, Ph. D
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In this new article of "Uchronic history", we are going to make notably some historical parallels and flashbacks between the France of Louis XVI (1754 - 1793 ?), the one of his far ancestor Louis VI (1081 - 1137), and ours, without forgetting the reference to the "Grand Siècle" of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715) !
We are going to make connections you probably never make between certain characters and events. And they could be different from what you thought !
Our present period is cruelly lacking of boldness and panache. So you might be astonished by what you are going to discover...or rediscover with a refreshed vision !
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Since 1793, France has never been able to recover the past glory of the "Grand Siècle". And it has lost an enormous part of its power and possessions all over the world, which will never be recovered. When France was considered as the First power of Europe, if not in the world at the time of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715), nobody knows exactly if it's still the 7th Power presently. At that time, the Kingdom of France and Navarra was quite an impressive Geopolitical Power extending to Great Louisiana, Canada, India, and Western Africa notably : it was welcome, and not the opposite. Compared to Louis XIV's time, our country is the shadow of itself : for instance at his epoch, "Shrinkflation" couldn't have been possible because of the punishment of the pillory ! Present times are insecure, and it's even dangerous to go to school now. Of course, it's not yet as dangerous as in 1793, but the political intolerance or even the ordinary intolerance of everyday life are not at all a good omen ! The present attempt of rehabilitation of Maximilien de Robespierre by some people is the renewed mark of this deception. How a mass murderer who has inspired the worst totalitarisms in the world could he be a hero of freedom ? How could he be a hope for the People, for more equity and solidarity ? It is impossible to pretend really defending human rights and supporting at the same time the memory of Robespierre (1758 - 1794). France is fed up with incoherent and selfish people who make it suffer, in their desperate search of a dictatorial power without side. Let's add that Robespierre himself was completely incoherent and inconsistent : wasn't he defending the abolition of death penalty as a deputy in 1789 ? Again, he proclaimed to fight against slavery, but when he had the opportunity to take profit of the Declaration of Rights of Woman and the Citizen in 1791 including its abolition, from Olympe de Gouges (1748 - 1793), he rejected it with disdain. As it had been approved by King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, he most likely didn't want them to be anew popular !
The time of Louis XVI, just before the Revolution is marked unspokenly by the Tax reform of the Twentieth (an income and asset tax of 5%, whatever the Order considered), which wasn't restored quickly enough by the King. The idea was to enforce anew this tax created under Louis XV the Beloved (1710 - 1774) in 1749, which had been suppressed in 1763. It was a good reform, everybody becoming again equal towards tax, and the rich paying more than the poor. It was slowly readopted in 1787 with the suppression of all exemptions, but too late to save the Royal Treasury. His ancestor, Louis VI who was able to emprison a bishop in Lille for not paying his due and other issues until the latter asked for pardon, wouldn't have hesitated about him : he would certainly have passed his Tax reform the "Kievan way" without waiting. With him, everybody would have paid his due, and the Revolution would have never occurred ! It's true at the beginning the French Revolution was bearing hope and enthusiam for many people. Because there were indeed abuses, not From the King, but from the high nobility, the high clergy...and the high bourgeoisie as well. Those ones were coming in reality from the three orders, the Third Estate included concerning the high bourgeoisie. For the latter, this aspect of things is always neglected. Just as a reminder, the bourgeoisie highly developped in France under the two reigns of Louis VI the Fat or the Vigilante : as an associate King (rex designatus) during the reign of his father, Philippe I (1052 - 1108), who had been excommunicated several times by the Pope, and while his personal reign (1108 - 1137). Philippe I had been named this original way for the time, by his mother Queen Ann of Kiev (between 1024 and 1036 in Kiev - most likely 1089 in Novgorod), in honor of her ancestor Philippe II of Macedon (381 BC - 336 BC), father of Alexander the Great (356 BC - 323 BC). As a matter of fact, Ann of Kiev had become the wife of Henri I of France (1008 - 1060) !
Historically, the creation of "Bourgs", and then bourgeoisie, was encouraged in the Kingdom of France on the basis of the Kievan model, id est with the incredible development of Communalism. The new towns ("Novgorod" in Ukrainian and in Russian) were flourishing. Bourgeois were administered by themselves and didn't depend on their proximate landlord, but directly on the King. And it was the same for the Royal serfs who were benefitting of the free schools created by Queen Ann of Kiev in Paris area - as for her mujiks : they were semi-free, had rights and could even become Mayor... or Prime Minister like the childhood friend of the King, the Abbot of Saint Denis, Suger (1081 - 1151). Louis VI always chose competent people to administer the Kingdom. And if France has still got a bit more than 35 000 communes now, it's just because Louis VI was the proud grandson of the beautiful and energetic Ann of Kiev. As an aside, Louis VI was admiring a lot his grandmother. One day, he even found a plan of attack of castle she had drawn in her missal. He used it to change his methods of attack with sappers (from the bottom then, like her), and since that he was always victorious over the lords brigands of Paris area or elsewhere ! The renovated era initiated by Louis VI, that should rather have been called the Tall (1,86 m, just like Louis XVI), was marked by the triumph of the Gothic, in a pacified Kingdom, more rich and prosperous than ever ! Louis VI is the first King who untitled himself "Roi de la France et non plus des Francs" ("King of France and no longer of the Franks"), by creating this way "la Nation Françoise". Again, it's him who made Paris the definitive capital of France !
Let's step now to the time of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of August 26th, 1789 : it is appearing well behind the American one (July 4th, 1776) ! The latter is considering freedom as a natural and imprescriptible right, when the other is not even mentioning it. It is more a reminder of already roughly existing rights for most of them. So even its article 1 proclaiming freedom and equality for all men, but not women, is stressing after the semicolon that "differences can be only founded on common utility." After all, one of his main conceptors, Armand de Vignerot du Plessis-Richelieu (1761 - 1800), was remembering he was Duke of Aiguillon, and not a commoner ! Let's add that when he abolished the privileges during the night of August 4th, 1789, the same Duke did it under the condition that peasants would buy back their freedom and feudal rights to their lords : this astute trick - to help them paying back their gambling heavy debts in particular unspokenly - lasted till 1793, and it is remaining ignored from most citizens nowadays ! Above that, there is not either any right to happiness in the Declaration of Rights of 1789, which would imply it was unattainable in the new France anyway. And those now written rights (by substitution to customary rights) were going very quickly to be violated and trampled by the Revolutionaries, one after the other. They became completely theoretical and then fictive. Moreover, Revolutionaries almost immediately stole from the People its newly acquired sovereignty (coming from the King'one) without any state of mind, for their personal interests as the new ruling class !
France is desperately looking for its saviour, but he may never come. There is not anymore any Baron Jean de Batz (1754 - 1822) nowadays. No one can fool anymore the root Destroyers, like he may have done it in fact with doubles of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (1755 - 1793 or 1834 ?) ! He operated in both cases with a "double trigger system" : first, to save himself the Royal person with a double, and second, to save the double (doppelganger) with comparses. Thus, on January 21st, 1793 in the morning, there were not one but two rescue operations : the first along 52 rue Beauregard (Bonne Nouvelle district) for the King, and then the second a little before the sedan had arrived at the Place de la Révolution (Place de la Concorde now) for the Belgian monk, when passing beside the Madeleine Church, still in Paris. And for the Queen, the saving happened on the night of August 30th, 1793 at the way out of the Conciergerie Jail in Paris. It was followed by the attempt of saving of her double, Cornélia de Galéan, by the Knight of Rougeville (renamed "de Maison Rouge" by Alexandre Dumas at his demand), on the night of 2 to 3 september 1793 ("Carnation Conspiracy"). In both cases, it was the second operation which failed : so no double could possibly be saved !
Jean de Batz was making Robespierre terribly nervous. For instance, it took almost three months for the Revolutionaries to establish the certificate of decease of the King (March 18th, 1793, at last), because there was a concealed doubt on the identity of the man really executed on January 21st, 1793. Practically as well as medically, his body which had been thrown to the mass grave couldn't be identified with an absolute certitude. So it was decided he was dead "ideologically and symbolically", at least. Robespierre could never catch the Baron saviour, who was behaving as a character of theater. Everytime, he was able to narrowly escape by disguising himself. He was too cunning for him. That's why Robespierre attacked his weak point, his beloved girlfriend, Marie-Madeleine de Grandmaison (1761 - 1794), a singer and actress in the Italian Comedy of Paris. As she refused to talk and say where was hiding "Jean", her beloved boyfriend, he ordered cruelly to deprive her of food till her execution - after a certain time. She was finally guillotined with more than fifty other poor victims (in "Red Shirts" to mark infamy), on June 17th, 1794. The Baron who attended the scene in the Parisian district of Picpus was terribly moved, and he could hardly retain his tears and anger, as he was madly in love with her, and wanted to marry her. Yet, when he was unecessarily shot in the jaw by the gendarme Merda (1773 - 1812), Maximilien de Robespierre suddenly realized that he himself was now deprived of any possibility of eating. And he intimately knew from whom it was coming ! It took only fourty days for the Baron Jean de Batz to provoke with others the fall of the bloody Robespierre, on Thermidor 9th, Year II (July 27th, 1794), and to render his "high" justice. Robespierre was guillotined the day after, with Jacobine comparses, and "Marie" was revenged in front of History, like many others !
We will conclude unexpectedly with the Letter to the French people of June 20th, 1786 from the Count Alexandre de Cagliostro refuged in England after the famous "Queen's necklace case" : "someone asked me if I would return to France, in the event that the defenses which prevent me to do so would be lifted. Certainly, I replied, provided that La Bastille became a public promenade...It is worthy of your parliaments to work for this happy revolution. Yes my friend, I announce it, there will reign over you a prince who will put his glory to the abolition of the letters of cachet, to the convocation of your Estates general, and especially to the restoration of the true religion."
Strangely, as Great Master (or "Great Cophte") of the Egyptian Freemasonry he created around 1780 - with mixity, for the first time -, he is clearly appearing as a definitive Monarchist, on the British model ! His reference to La Bastille is connected to the fact he stayed over there for a while in 1785 and early 1786, like his pupil in Alchemy, the Cardinal Louis-René de Rohan (1734- 1803) : they were involved in the famous "Queen's necklace case" ! Nowadays, La Bastille has really become a public promenade. And paradoxically, the Prince who convocated the Estates General for May 5th, 1789, and wanted to restore the true religion with religious people really devoted to God was...Louis XVI. The Cardinal of Rohan, also Bishop of Strasbourg and great Chaplain of France, in that acception wasn't a really religious man : he was a womanizer, and the King knew he was already trying to push himself with his wife, Marie-Antoinette, when she was a young Archduchess in Vienna. And the fact he was done by a first double of the Queen, named Oliva (Nicole in fact), in the "Queen's necklace case", was just showing he was quite an insisting man !
Let's recall that the Great Cophte Cagliostro (from his real name Joseph Balsamo or Baume in French, 1743 - 1795) had been a disappointed seminarian in Italy... where he finally died after multiples peregrinations. He recklessly came back to his country with his wife, but he was arrested by the Pontifical authorities in 1789 under the accusation of practicing Freemasonry. Firstly emprisoned in Roma (Castel San Angelo), he ended up walled up alive in his new cell in the Fortress of San Leo (Central Italy)... like the real false Louis XVII was in the Temple Jail of Paris after January 19th, 1794 ! But there is another version of his death : his attachment to a balanced Royalty for France wasn't to everyone liking. And he would have been strangled by a French soldier of the Year III, during the French invasion of the Papal States, on August 26th, 1795. Thus, no Revolutionary freed him !
Nowadays, a certain number of people would like to restart the fateful year 1793 : they should be careful about their stupid wishes, as they may harm themselves in reality, just like Robespierre the Dictator. He was neither the "New Messaiah" nor the Pope of the Supreme Being. Just pleasing Catherine Théot (1716 - 1794), the weird "Mother of God", appeared hopeless. And he discovered it very quickly after the festivities he had pompously organized on June, 8th 1794, in the Champ de Mars in Paris. The Great Terror initiated in 1793 ended up in Thermidor 1794 by terrorizing the Jacobine Terrorists themselves, who had recklessly supported Robespierre ! Nowadays, the ex-dominant ruling class of 1789 and 1793, and its offsprings are worried about their becoming : a good part of them are paradoxically taking cover or giving the change into movements which seem opposed to their interests of class... or even worse, among black blocks. It's a way to exorcise their fear of downgrading : hence, they think that the Revolution is still theirs, even if they have misplaced it !
The French Revolution has been many times rewritten, to give it a meaning it probably never had. But it's true this helped a lot to build a mythology, yet not totally seducing. And more and more people, especially among the young generation, are thinking : all this bloody mess for that ! Today, the Chouans are respected for their faith, their courage to have resisted to oppression, and their panache. May be is it explaining why people are unconsciously looking for their future...in the past ? When people have to struggle to just live or survive, they think more with their gouts than their brain. They need a not too expensive food or affordable goods (with prices non inflated by profiteers with impunity), a minimum of welfare and respect, and being able to take true holidays. Of course, having a great hope for the future is also very important. So, they don't feel reassured when everything is falling around them. The magic thinking of repeating always the same "words to catch" (catchwords), will never replace the reality of everyday life. Don't forget French people, under the rule of a now almost dominating capitalist ecology, are more than ever afraid that the Sky will fall on their head, like the Gauls !
