Benjamin Franklin, upon being asked what sort of government the delegates to the Constitutional Convetion had created.
“A tradition cannot be inherited — it has to be earned.”
Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Societies that are growing or strengthening are characterized by populations who not only believe in such growth and strengthening, but act upon it.
And a critical component of “acting upon our tradition” is to know it. And to know it requires that we study it.
Professor Harold Berman, in his magisterial Law and Revolution, provides the following analogy:
“From the eleventh and twelfth centuries on, monophonic music, reflected chiefly in the Gregorian chant, was gradually supplanted by polyphonic styles. Two-part, three-part, and eventually four-part music developed. The contrapuntal style exemplified in the thirteenth-century motet evolved into the harmonic style of the fourteenth century ars nova, exemplified in the ballade. Eventually, counterpoint and harmony were combined. The sixteenth century witnessed the development of the great German Protestant chorales, and these, together with Italian and English madrigals and other forms, provided a basis for opera …. Eventually Renaissance music gave way to Baroque, Baroque to Classical …. etc. No good contemporary musician, regardless of how off-beat he may be, can afford not to know this story….”
Not too long ago, American citizens, and certainly lawyers, judges, and justices were required, in a similar way, to know the story of the development of our institutions and their great debt to Christianity.
For example, about a century ago, in the early 20th Century, just about everyone in the United States understood that [church] canon law constituted the first modern Western legal system. Eventually, canon law and royal law complemented each other and formed a basis for the Western legal tradition. It was understood, at least inchoately, that rejecting the religious heritage of the West has always led to tyranny.
However, today, the above is not only generally unknown but should it be even mentioned it is only to have it dismissed outright, even by clergy who delight in writing books or preaching sermons denying our Christian legacy. In so doing, we greatly err and worse: we join forces with those who would destroy our legal and social foundations.
It is no mystery that many who most despise the American heritage have an undisguised hatred for the Christian religion because that religion places man and his institutions under an eternal, Triune God and His law. And this is unacceptable.
Once we understand this philosophical enmity, much of the violence and chaos in our era becomes intelligible.
But no need to take my word for it. I’ll conclude this post by quoting the heroes of so many of today’s usual suspects.
Engels: “We … reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatever as eternal, ultimate, and forever immutable moral law ….”
Lenin: “We repudiate all morality derived from non-human and non-class concepts. We say it is a deception, a fraud in the interest of the landlords and the capitalists … We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the toilers around the proletariat … We do not believe in an eternal morality.”
Marx: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man … The abolition of religion as an illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness….
Anyone who has read the execrable Communist Manifesto will recognize the above sentiments, and more.
Such sentiments, so fashionable today, are the polar opposite of those of our colonial and early republic era; i. e., our founding era. Put another way, engaging and promoting the convictions of those who hate Christianity will accelerate the undermining of our foundations, increase the overt despising of ordered liberty, and openly promote a topsy turvy view of humanity and society, which further dismantles our bedrock.
It is a vicious cycle, a circling of the drain that can only be stopped by refusing to live by lies and insisting on speaking the truth.
“To understand the Mexican situation it must be understood in the beginning that the present is more or less the normal condition of Mexico; the era of peace during the Díaz regime from 1876 to 1910 was an abnormal period in the [post-colonial] history of that country. All revolutions in Mexico work along conventional lines and the present series of revolutions are in no material sense different from those that beset the country from 1810 to 1876; the abnormal element of the present series of revolutions is the active participation in them by the American Government [emphasis mine].” — William F. Buckley, Sr., testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Relations, December 6, 1919 (7 years before the major outbreak of the Cristiada)
Mike Ashe will soon be posting on the unjustly memory-holed Mexican Cristiada or Cristeros War of the early 20th Century.
However, events do not simply “occur” by spontaneous generation or by a sudden explosion of sentiment or rebellion. There are leaders and, more importantly, philosophies that have taken root or to which key elements of society have submitted, which in turn can lead a culture or civilization to heights of achievement or depths of torment and depravity.
To better grasp the immensity and the nature of the calamity which befell Mexico and, by extension, the United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is worthwhile — and necessary — to take a moment to review what went before.
1810 — We begin with a brief allusion to 1810, which is the date usually associated with the initiation of Mexico’s independence from Spain. Invariably, historians generalize with comments such as, “revolt against a large reserve of resentment” or “the pressure cooker finally exploded” and more such terminology. This is found in scholarly as well as popular, Wikipedia type essays.
However, the first thing one must notice about the date, 1810, is that it is barely two decades after the storming of the Bastille and the ensuing French Revolution, which Lenin, a century later, criticized because the Jacobins stopped the terror, something he (Lenin) was determined not to do. And his disciple, Stalin, agreed and fully proved his devotion to Lenin’s counsel. Even after tens of millions of deaths later, large swathes of American colleges and elites indulge their love affair with the French Revolution and its Communist progeny.
Clarence B. Carson wrote, “What particularly intrigued revolutionary socialists, Karl Marx among them, about the French Revolution was the drastic changes it made in the lives and ways of a people. It demonstrated, at least for them, in embryo form, the potentialities for changing man and men in society by revolution…. In sum to … totally reconstruct society.”
With that background, let us briefly consider what happened in 1810 when “Father Hidalgo” allegedly shouted his call for independence from Spain. “During the siege of Guanajuato, his followers captured the city granary in which nearly five hundred Spaniards and criollos [descendants of Spaniards] had taken refuge, many of them women and children. The massacre that followed shocked [all] throughout Mexico….” This event, and others like it, identify the atrocities in Mexico with those in France and with the rest of South America and the Caribbean, as witness Haiti and Venezuela.
In other words, Mexico and Hidalgo were no different than Venezuela and Bolivar and the denouement of each is unsurprisingly similar: massacres, rapes of women, girls, and boys, cold blooded murders of prisoners, invalids, hospital patients, and other defenseless men and women, blighted fields, mines and manufactures burned and buried, homes and offices delivered to pillage, and much more.
In my childhood and youth I invariably heard comments expressing alarm or marvel at the alleged Spanish propensity for cruelty and pillage as seen in the Spanish colonies’ 19th century revolutions. Well, in the first place, a propensity to evil is in all men; however, more importantly, what those comments alluded to were acts that were totally alien to the Spanish colonies. To see such acts in Europe, one would have to visit revolutionary France, not Spain. It is truly a wonder how France and its nefarious, hateful Jacobin ideology gets a free pass.
Just as it can be mystifying to contemplate today’s college professors and their benighted students’ dangerous infatuation with modern Jacobinism, including an overriding hatred of Christianity.
This explains Mr. Buckley’s comments on Mexican revolutions from 1810 to 1876 quoted above.
1876 – 1911 — This was the “Porfiriato” the rule of Porfirio Díaz. As alluded to in Mr. Buckley’s testimony (see quote above), this was a time of post-colonial peace and order not seen before or since.
The Cristero period, which officially began in 1926 under the Plutarco Calles administration, was actually sown in 1911 with the Francisco Madero administration. Madero was opposed to Christianity, or at least any ecclesiastical manifestation of it. He was deposed and allegedly murdered in 1913.
But we must briefly consider how Francisco Madero became president of Mexico.
Madero had launched a revolution from San Antonio, Texas, declaring himself president in November, 1910. Men such as Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco rallied to him in northern Mexico, creating and fomenting turmoil and mayhem, which eventually culminated in the resignation of Porfirio Díaz in May, 1911, who sincerely wished to avoid further bloodshed.
Francisco Madero was elected president in October, 1911, hailed as the “apostle of democracy”. However, discontent with his administration set in almost immediately and rebel factions erupted throughout Mexico. For example, Zapata rebelled against Madero in November, 1911, barely a month after the elections.
Similar to like men in politics today, Madero was an aristocrat, having been schooled by private tutors in Paris and in the United States. He had little in common with the peon classes that he waxed lyrical about. He had promised everything to everyone and therefore pleased no one.
More worrisome, disorder and lawlessness were such that the Mexican ambassador to the United States resigned in December, 1912, saying, “I lied to the American government for ten months telling them that the Mexican revolution would be over in six weeks…. The truth is that the situation is desperate.”
General Victoriano Huerta was a soldier and natural leader. His drinking was legendary — think Ulysses S. Grant. One example of his fearlessness occurred in Cuernavaca. He was in a hotel when a group passed in the street shouting, “Death to Huerta!” The General “heard the cry, got up, and walked to the door — alone, ‘Here is Huerta,’ he said. ‘Who wants him?'”
General Huerta had been a loyal and dedicated soldier, having fought under three presidents: Porfirio Díaz, Francisco de la Barra (interim president between Díaz and Madero), and Francisco Madero. In over 40 years of service, he had applied for only two leaves.
After putting down multiple rebellions against Madero, General Huerta was once again called upon to defeat yet another insurrection in Mexico City, in February, 1913. It was during this event that he decided to work to depose President Madero. He saw that lawlessness persisted in Mexico and lives and properties of citizens as well as foreigners were continually in danger. The fighting in Mexico City was frightful but is beyond the scope of this post.
Suffice it to say that the government forces were defeated after much property damage and human carnage. Americans as well as diplomats from other nations flocked to the American embassy for shelter. The ambassador demanded that all combatants respect American rights. The patience of the ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson (no relation to Woodrow Wilson, who was to be inaugurated as president in March, 1913) was exhausted and he worked to seek a permanent solution that would protect American and foreign interests and people in Mexico, believing that would also protect the Mexican people.
“This situation is intolerable … I am going to bring order,” declared the ambassador, who then worked with British, Spanish, and German ministers, whose countries had the largest colonies in Mexico City. In addition, twenty-five Mexican senators urged President Madero to resign. Madero rebuffed all approaches.
Concurrently, General Huerta was completing his preparations for a coup which took place February 18, 1913. At 5:10 P. M., the cathedral bells sounded and a large crowd assembled. The people “wildly cheered” Huerta and a general air of celebration prevailed. American newspapers reported that President Taft and his cabinet showed “great relief”.
There were many delicate negotiations between the factions which are beyond the scope of this post. In sum, negotiations were concluded but General Huerta refused to declare himself president. He wished to follow constitutional norms. While Madero was prisoner, he was technically still the president, since he had not resigned.
Huerta, although “in de facto control, cooperated with Congress and the Foreign Minister to secure legal title to the presidency.” He requested Congress to convene and expressed a desire to “place himself in accord with the National Representation” to “find a legal solution” to the crisis.
On February 19 Francisco Madero signed his resignation, which was submitted to the Congress later that morning. The Congress, which had a Maderista majority, accepted the resignation by an overwhelming vote and at 11:15 A. M. the Congress confirmed Huerta as constitutional president by a vote of 126-0.
Thus Huerta assumed the presidency not at the time of the coup, but upon the resignation of Madero and the vote of the Congress, in accordance with Mexico’s constitution at the time.
Turmoil still persisted as several factions refused to recognize Huerta or even the Congress. Added to the tensions were rumors of Madero’s ambitions to foment yet another revolution akin to his actions against Porfirio Díaz in 1910.
On February 22, 1913, after 10 P. M. Francisco Madero and the former vice president, José María Pino Suárez, were shot as they were being transferred from the presidential palace to the penitentiary. There were several “versions” purporting to explain the assassinations, including that relatives of persons killed on orders of Madero’s government attacked the convoy transporting the prisoners. However, there is general agreement that, at the least, President Huerta should have taken more serious precautions to protect Madero. Of course, the most accepted version is that Huerta’s cabinet, including Huerta, ordered the shooting.
Whatever the truth, the fact of repercussions became clear upon the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson, whose actions led directly to the Cristiada.
(To be continued)
Expected to be released in March, 2023. Pictured: William F. Buckley Sr. (1881-1958) Francisco Madero (1873-1913) Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson (1857-1932) Victoriano Huerta (1854-1916)
The fall of the Bastille and its attendant, macabre events (see here) were a sinister foreshadowing of what was to come to Paris and to all of France, not to mention much of the world in the ensuing centuries, including the bloodletting in Spanish America.
The King, Louis XVI, had been awakened long before dawn in Versailles to receive the news of the Bastille. The Assembly had been meeting in Versailles. In the morning, as the deputies listened to themselves give speeches, the King was announced, entered, and spoke, “You have been afraid, well it is I who have confidence … in you.”
He then announced further that the troops would be removed not only from Paris, but from Versailles as well. As if to say, “You see? No need to fear me at all.” The announcement was greeted with thunderous applause and cheers.
Two days later, the king journeyed to Paris to further demonstrate his goodwill. But Maximilian Robespierre, one of history’s most blood-soaked names, in a surviving letter to a friend, wrote, “The present Revolution has produced in a few days greater events than the whole previous history of mankind…”
“A patriotic army of 300,000 men, composed of every class of citizen, accompanied by Gardes Françaises, Suisses, and other soldiers, has captured the Bastille and punished its Governor and the Prévost des Marchands for their treachery. The fear that this army might march to Versailles has decided the Revolution.”
That’s how the more astute revolutionaries saw, interpreted, and described the king’s supine actions.
The crowds had been admonished, upon pain of death, to not dare shout out, “Vive le Roi“. Unsurprisingly, they humbly obeyed.
After touring the city, surrounded by deputies and armed crowds, he returned to Paris.
The following is from Otto Scott’s Robespierre. I quote it as a microcosm of what was to follow throughout the country and, through the next two centuries, many corners of the entire globe, but especially Eurasia and China:
“Five days later … on July 22, 1789, ex-Minister Foullon [whom the newspapers had accused of saying the ‘people could eat hay’; this was never proved or sourced] was … surrounded … a bundle of straw [tied] to his back and … a necklace of nettles and thistles around his head. He was dragged to City Hall….”
“The new Mayor Bailly orated about the law. Lafayette, summoned to the scene, argued that if Foullon was taken in safety to prison instead of being summarily lynched, he could be brought to disclose his ‘confederates’. After several hours of this the fiery crowd seemed placated. But when the old man — he was seventy-four — and his guard emerged from City Hall, a man suddenly jumped forward, caught Foullon by the neck, and three him into the crowd. A cluster closed around [him] immediately. Beating him energetically … [dragged him] across the Place de Greve to the lamp iron at the corner of the rue de la Vannerie. A noose was thrown over him; one man hoisted him up while others pulled on the lower end of the rope. After he was strangled to death his cadaver was lowered, his head cut off and stuck onto a pitchfork. The rest of the body was stripped, mutilated, and carved into pieces. A horrid parade through the streets started.”
A side note, Alexander Hamilton had expressed concerns about the nature of the French Revolution to his friend Lafayette, who paid no heed as he hastened back to France. Hamilton’s warning likely rang in his ears a few short years later, when he escaped just ahead of the mob.
Many men and women, including the king and queen, were executed after days, months, and years of imprecations and insults hurled at them, culminating with the same accusations painted on placards and posters as people trudged behind them, shortly before their lynchings.
Words are powerful. And effective. All revolutionaries understand that.
Clarence B. Carson wrote, “What particularly intrigued revolutionary socialists, Karl Marx among them, about the French Revolution was the drastic changes it made in the lives and ways of a people. It demonstrated, at least for them, in embryo form, the potentialities for changing man and men in society by revolution. The relentless thrust to equality especially caught the attention of socialists….
“In sum, society would be completely reconstructed.”
The French Revolution expressed those ideas loudly and made attempts at such. It moved to change the calendar with Year 1 being the first year after the Convention of 1792. But the most virulent attacks were on the church and its priests, nuns, adherents, and property. In Nantes the guillotine could not kill priests quickly enough so the representative-on-mission there, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, conjured up an even more effective way to rid the revolution of clergy, and entire families of men, women, and, children too. “Wolflings grow to be wolves,” he explained.
Boatloads of people were towed to the middle of the Loire and scuttled. Other boatloads were merely emptied into the river and, should any unfortunate attempt to grasp the side of the boat, his or her fingers or hands were slashed or cut off, ensuring drowning. Reports survive of many cases where Carrier ordered men and women stripped, tied together, and thrown into the river. “Republican Marriages” he called them. Modern historians tend to discount this, although they cannot deny the fact of thousands of cruel, inhumane deaths.
Carrier later became yet another fulfillment of Jacques Danton’s exclamation at his execution, “The Revolution, like Saturn, devours her own children!”
But the main objective must be kept in sight at all times: the de-Christianization of France. In this hatred of Christianity, revolutionaries have been consistent throughout the centuries. And this hatred is very knowledgeable, it not only attacks the church and churches, it attacks the home. One of the first acts of Revolutionary France was to make it much easier to dissolve the marriage bonds. It also decriminalized abortion. This was re-criminalized in 1810 with the Napoleonic Code.
As noted before, all this was studied with great interest by Karl Marx. As for Vladimir Lenin, an absolutely pitiless man, he said that he had learned much from the French Revolution, but that the revolutionaries had made one major mistake which he would not make: they had ended the Terror. This he was determined to not do.
The king and the queen were executed by guillotine. Their young son, born in 1785, died in prison ten years later, in 1795, days before physicians were called to perform an autopsy which revealed countless scars reflecting indescribable torture. The people whom the king loved and trusted had repaid him with their own currency.
It pains me to say, yet again, that Venezuela, the land of my birth, had its own birthing pangs in the philosophies and anti-clerical fervors of the French Revolution, however much lip service her revolutionaries paid to the American Declaration of Independence.
Simón Bolivar said, “We need equality to recast, so to speak, into a single whole, the classes of men, political opinions, and public custom,” thereby neatly encapsulating The One while ignoring The Many. His executions of defenseless prisoners of war, his pitiless emptying of Caracas, and his Declaration of War to the Death follow logically from such sentiments.
May Venezuela see better days soon. Meanwhile, may those of us in the USA, learn to push back and not acquiesce so easily as did Louis XVI.
Whenever you hear lofty sounding words and ideals, be sure to check the fruit. That’s always a dead giveaway.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité, sounds marvelous. But the fruit is seen in the original’s last three words: ou la mort.
Joseph-Foullon shortly before strangling and beheading.
Depiction of executions by drownings in Nantes. Jean-Baptiste Carrier is in the center. King Louis XVII, the dauphin in captivity. He died at 10, likely of torture, certainly of neglect. Some believe he was poisoned. Simón Bolivar. His political philosophies were steeped in Rousseau and other French thinkers. Maximillian Robespierre. An absolutely ruthless politician utterly convinced of his own virtue and superiority to other men while proclaiming equality for all. His political thinking was steeped in Rousseau. He too fulfilled Jacques Danton’s cry, “The Revolution, like Saturn, devours her own children!”
In recent posts we have documented the fact that Communist activity in Cuba and Venezuela did not begin with Fidel Castro, let alone Hugo Chavez.
Communism did not arise in Cuba as a reaction to Batista or in Venezuela in revulsion to Gómez or Pérez Jiménez. Nor did it come because of the “horrors” of the United States’ invasion of Cuba or her “exploitation” of Venezuela (or insert any south-of-the-border country). The usual shibboleths insisted upon by our betters simply will not hold under more than casual examination.
Communistic ideals, preached in the Paris communes in the 19th century predated the Spanish American War as did Lenin’s radicalism and destructive activism as well as his admiration for the French Revolution. His initial hateful attitude was directed to the Russian Tsarist regime. His glee at the outbreak of the First World War had nothing to do with the United States, which entered that cavalcade of horrors towards its end. He wanted war and mayhem because he was convinced it would enable the overthrow of the Tsarist dynasty and the consolidation of power under a Communist regime. In this he was correct.
But the United States did not enter into his fevered dreams at that stage.
Neither did she enter into the fevered imagination of another admirer of the French Revolution: Simón Bolívar. Like Lenin, Bolívar was an acolyte of the Jacobins and, initially, of Napoleon, who was seen as the one who would ensure the Revolution would endure and advance. If one is to judge Bolívar by his fruits, one would inevitably be confronted with the parallels between the bloodshed and mayhem in France and that in South America. One would see that in both cases, the fruit was bitter, and the deleterious effects, long-lasting, persisting to this very day. The power and glory of late 18th and early 19th Century France and South America are no more, and no comeback is on the horizon.
And neither, at the time, vocalized any blame to America for their own disastrous policies and actions. The rationalizations and blame-game came much later by way of their advocates and fellow travelers seeking to justify the savagery and terror as well as their own consolidation of power and overarching control over people: their own and others. (For this, American universities and high schools will One Day give an account.)
So, as for instance, we have the Cuban, Paul Lefargue (Lefargue), one of the most influential Communists who predated the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Lefargue was born in Cuba in 1842 and died in Paris in 1911. He married Karl Marx’ daughter, Jenny, and the two of them were indefatigable in their successful promotion of the Communist virus in France and Spain, from whence it sailed back to the Caribbean and South America where the successful infiltrators, the Polish Comintern agent, Fabio Grobart (1905-1994), and the Venezuelan Comintern agent, Gustavo Machado (1898-1983) (agents) both were enthusiastic carriers, having promoted the objective conditions necessary for its propagation: hatred for the colonial past and for the United States present.
Hugo Chávez was born in 1954. His first overt coup attempt was in 1992. However, to understand him, his actions, and the worldview that motivated them, one must review well over a generation before, as this blog has striven to do.
Fidel Castro was born in 1926. His first overt coup attempt was in 1953 (ignoring the aborted 1947 attempt to overthrow Trujillo in the Dominican Republic). However, here too, one must provide a broader context well beyond Castro, to understand his actions and motivations, setting aside the psychological aspects.
Absent the actions and evangelistic fervor of Paul Lefargue, Fabio Grobart, or Gustavo Machado, there would have been no Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, or Nicolás Maduro regardless of what the United States did or did not do. Special mention must also be accorded to Douglas Bravo, the Venezuelan guerrilla and erstwhile Castro ally, whose long-term strategy of infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces and the use of Simón Bolívar as a euphemism for Marxist ideology enabled and ensured the rise of Chávez and Maduro and continues to pay dividends to this day. (Gustavo Machado had the same idea but was discovered during the Gómez dictatorship, resulting in his exile.)
Of course, these men did not act alone: the Comintern keenly sought and aided their success in the Americas; women of means and influence as well as United States reporters, bureaucrats, academics, and politicians were devoted disciples and promoters. Whether knowingly or duped is irrelevant; the results were horrible just the same.
Last photo taken of Lenin (1870-1924) in 1923. By this time he had had 3 strokes and was mute. Fabio Grobart (1905-1994), circa 1990 Gustavo Machado, circa 1980 (1898-1983) Douglas Bravo, circa 2020 (1932-2021)
The fall of the Bastille and its attendant, macabre events (see here) were a sinister foreshadowing of what was to come to Paris and to all of France, not to mention much of the world in the ensuing centuries, including the bloodletting in Spanish America.
The King, Louis XVI, had been awakened long before dawn in Versailles to receive the news of the Bastille. The Assembly had been meeting in Versailles. In the morning, as the deputies listened to themselves give speeches, the King was announced, entered, and spoke, “You have been afraid, well it is I who have confidence … in you.”
He then announced further that the troops would be removed not only from Paris, but from Versailles as well. As if to say, “You see? No need to fear me at all.” The announcement was greeted with thunderous applause and cheers.
Two days later, the king journeyed to Paris to further demonstrate his goodwill. But Maximilian Robespierre, one of history’s most blood-soaked names, in a surviving letter to a friend, wrote, “The present Revolution has produced in a few days greater events than the whole previous history of mankind…”
“A patriotic army of 300,000 men, composed of every class of citizen, accompanied by Gardes Françaises, Suisses, and other soldiers, has captured the Bastille and punished its Governor and the Prévost des Marchands for their treachery. The fear that this army might march to Versailles has decided the Revolution.”
That’s how the more astute revolutionaries saw, interpreted, and described the king’s supine actions.
The crowds had been admonished, upon pain of death, to not dare shout out, “Vive le Roi“. Unsurprisingly, they humbly obeyed.
After touring the city, surrounded by deputies and armed crowds, he returned to Paris.
The following is from Otto Scott’s Robespierre. I quote it as a microcosm of what was to follow throughout the country and, through the next two centuries, many corners of the entire globe, but especially Eurasia and China:
“Five days later … on July 22, 1789, ex-Minister Foullon [whom the newspapers had accused of saying the ‘people could eat hay’; this was never proved or sourced] was … surrounded … a bundle of straw [tied] to his back and … a necklace of nettles and thistles around his head. He was dragged to City Hall….”
“The new Mayor Bailly orated about the law. Lafayette, summoned to the scene, argued that if Foullon was taken in safety to prison instead of being summarily lynched, he could be brought to disclose his ‘confederates’. After several hours of this the fiery crowd seemed placated. But when the old man — he was seventy-four — and his guard emerged from City Hall, a man suddenly jumped forward, caught Foullon by the neck, and threw him into the crowd. A cluster closed around [him] immediately. Beating him energetically … [dragged him] across the Place de Greve to the lamp iron at the corner of the rue de la Vannerie. A noose was thrown over him; one man hoisted him up while others pulled on the lower end of the rope. After he was strangled to death his cadaver was lowered, his head cut off and stuck onto a pitchfork. The rest of the body was stripped, mutilated, and carved into pieces. A horrid parade through the streets started.”
A side note, Alexander Hamilton had expressed concerns about the nature of the French Revolution to his friend Lafayette, who paid no heed as he hastened back to France. Hamilton’s warning likely rang in his ears a few short years later, when he escaped just ahead of the mob.
Many men and women, including the king and queen, were executed after days, months, and years of imprecations and insults hurled at them, culminating with the same accusations painted on placards and posters as people trudged behind them, shortly before their lynchings.
Words are powerful. And effective. All revolutionaries understand that.
Clarence B. Carson wrote, “What particularly intrigued revolutionary socialists, Karl Marx among them, about the French Revolution was the drastic changes it made in the lives and ways of a people. It demonstrated, at least for them, in embryo form, the potentialities for changing man and men in society by revolution. The relentless thrust to equality especially caught the attention of socialists….
“In sum, society would be completely reconstructed.”
The French Revolution expressed those ideas loudly and made attempts at such. It moved to change the calendar with Year 1 being the first year after the Convention of 1792. But the most virulent attacks were on the church and its priests, nuns, adherents, and property. In Nantes the guillotine could not kill priests quickly enough so the representative-on-mission there, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, conjured up an even more effective way to rid the revolution of clergy, and entire families of men, women, and, children too. “Wolflings grow to be wolves,” he explained.
Boatloads of people were towed to the middle of the Loire and scuttled. Other boatloads were merely emptied into the river and, should any unfortunate attempt to grasp the side of the boat, his or her fingers or hands were slashed or cut off, ensuring drowning. Reports survive of many cases where Carrier ordered men and women stripped, tied together, and thrown into the river. “Republican Marriages” he called them. Modern historians tend to discount this, although they cannot deny the fact of thousands of cruel, inhumane deaths.
Carrier later became yet another fulfillment of Jacques Danton’s exclamation at his execution, “The Revolution, like Saturn, devours her own children!”
But the main objective must be kept in sight at all times: the de-Christianization of France. In this hatred of Christianity, revolutionaries have been consistent throughout the centuries. And this hatred is very knowledgeable, it not only attacks the church and churches, it attacks the home. One of the first acts of Revolutionary France was to make it much easier to dissolve the marriage bonds. It also decriminalized abortion. This was re-criminalized in 1810 with the Napoleonic Code.
As noted before, all this was studied with great interest by Karl Marx. As for Vladimir Lenin, an absolutely pitiless man, he said that he had learned much from the French Revolution, but that the revolutionaries had made one major mistake which he would not make: they had ended the Terror. This he was determined to not do.
The king and the queen were executed by guillotine. Their young son, born in 1785, died in prison ten years later, in 1795, days before physicians were called to perform an autopsy which revealed countless scars reflecting indescribable torture. The people whom the king loved and trusted had repaid him with their own currency.
It pains me to say, yet again, that Venezuela, the land of my birth, had its own birthing pangs in the philosophies and anti-clerical fervors of the French Revolution, however much lip service her revolutionaries paid to the American Declaration of Independence.
Simón Bolivar said, “We need equality to recast, so to speak, into a single whole, the classes of men, political opinions, and public custom,” thereby neatly encapsulating The One while ignoring The Many. His executions of defenseless prisoners of war, his pitiless emptying of Caracas, and his Declaration of War to the Death follow logically from such sentiments.
May Venezuela see better days soon. Meanwhile, may those of us in the USA, learn to push back and not acquiesce so easily as did Louis XVI.
Whenever you hear lofty sounding words and ideals, be sure to check the fruit. That’s always a dead giveaway.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité, sounds marvelous. But the fruit is seen in the original’s last three words: ou la mort.
Joseph-Foullon shortly before strangling and beheading.
Depiction of executions by drownings in Nantes. Jean-Baptiste Carrier is in the center. King Louis XVII, the dauphin in captivity. He died at 10, likely of torture, certainly of neglect. Some believe he was poisoned. Simón Bolivar. His political philosophies were steeped in Rousseau and other French thinkers. Maximillian Robespierre. An absolutely ruthless politician utterly convinced of his own virtue and superiority to other men while proclaiming equality for all. His political thinking was steeped in Rousseau. He too fulfilled Jacques Danton’s cry, “The Revolution, like Saturn, devours her own children!”
