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Wednesday, July 18. 2012

Why does France celebrate Bastille Day?

Why do they celebrate it? One might think their revolution would be a source of historical shame.


Bastille Daze:



The French Revolution proved a dry-run for the twentieth century. Fanatics systematically liquidated internal enemies. They exported revolution to those unlucky enough to share their borders. They ignored all of history and believed all of posterity would see them as the starting point. Words, such as “Committee of Public Safety,” conveyed the very opposite of their meanings. The inability to attain the glorious ends that rationalized their terrible means left just the terror.


Posted by The Barrister at 13:14 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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As I recall, the whole hubbub freed a total of eight prisoners, one of whom was the Marquis de Sade.
Didn't quite fit the narrative, after all.
#1 PacRim Jim (Link) on 2012-07-18 13:26 (Reply)
I believe it's the principles, rather than the reality, which drives them to continue celebrating it. As PRJ notes, they only freed a few people.

The Bastille simply represented something reprehensible in their lives at the time, making the original act purely symbolic. The fact that events which followed were equally (or more) reprehensible makes the continued celebration just as symbolic.
#2 Bulldog on 2012-07-18 14:46 (Reply)
I've read a lot of history of Russian and to a lesser degree Chinese communism, but only recently have I started reading up on the French revolution. What struck me like a 2x4 between the eyes was the similarity between much of the rhetoric of the French Revolution and that of the Russian one; truly frightening.
#3 Gene on 2012-07-18 14:55 (Reply)
The Barrister: Why does France celebrate Bastille Day?

In France, the holiday is La Fête Nationale, and dates to the July 14, 1790 Fête de la Fédération, which celebrated the establishment of constitutional government.
#4 Zachriel on 2012-07-18 19:05 (Reply)
They set up portable guillotines and traveled the country executing people from various groups. Successful business people, aristocrats, and priests were fed to the guillotine to prevent them from opposing the new "democratic" government, or out of revenge, or just for the hell of it.

Celebrating day one of the Reign of Terror never made sense to me either.

Awesome Rush song though.
#5 NJSoldier on 2012-07-18 22:48 (Reply)
Gene is right --including the selection of a exemplary genocide.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=vendee+atrocities&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox

Vendee is the area of the Plantagenets, iirc --source of so many English kings up thru one of the early Henry's (dunno details other than that the later Henry's were not Plantagenets).
#6 buddy larsen on 2012-07-20 13:00 (Reply)
Many cautionaries from the French Revolution --one of them is that the storming of the Bastille was at the front end, in 1789 --but the Reign of Terror wasn't until 1793. It had taken awhile for the HopenChange rhetoric to die --and when it did, the population found it had no means to resist the Jacobin units of the army. NO SECOND AMENDment i shout --because the news out of Colorado is going to cause another run at it.

Anyhoo, the Reign began with the 1793 decap of Marie Antionette by order of Robespierre, and ended with the Committee --worrying that the finger was coming round to them, acted first and pointed at the Reign's leader, Robespierre himself --accusing his harsh rule of being the creator of its own pre conditions.

So in 1794 his head rolled, too, and became opposite Marie Antoinette's head the official bookend of his own Reign of Terror.

And his Big Idea likewise became its own rebuttal: "The End Justifies The Means" --became, upon the author getting the chop, "Maybe the end can justify the means, depending".

And then the Vendee Genocide didn't start for another two years, that is, until 1796, when it became time for the people's refresher course in euphemisms for the beautiful language of 1789.
#7 buddy larsen on 2012-07-20 13:49 (Reply)
another item for remembrance, the Catholic church's opposition to the Revolution (which caused the notorious mass executions of priests across the countryside) was far less religious doctrine and far more a matter of the clergy being forced to take a state loyalty oath that made them agents not of the Divine but of the state --of the state's political leadership.

Sound familiar?
#8 buddy larsen on 2012-07-20 14:03 (Reply)
If they're celebrating constitutional government, a better date would be the repeal of the Law of 22 Prairial.

I wonder when we'll repeal ours and have constitutional government again.
#9 John David Galt on 2012-07-22 01:05 (Reply)
Ben Franklin was well aware yet wisely kept to himself the fact that the French (God bless 'em) are a romantic lot, entranced by the "noble savage" and his imaginary utopian world. Thank heavens the technology for a modern "terror" did not yet exist in the late 18th century and the Guillotine was the best they could devise!
#10 Tony Gramsci on 2012-07-25 10:58 (Reply)

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