After the Napoleonic Wars, Louis XVIII was put on the throne and only proved they got it right about the Bourbons the 1st time.
Posted on 07/13/2018 9:33:01 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Bastille Day marks the beginning of the greatest organized persecution of the Church since the Emperor Diocletian, and the explosion onto the world of ideologies that would poison the next two centuries: socialism and radical nationalism. Between them, those two political movements racked up quite a body count.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who pointed out that the mass murders of Christians in Russia were directly inspired by those in the Vendée. The Bolsheviks, he said, modeled themselves on the French revolutionaries, and pointed to the Vendée massacres as the right way to deal with Christian resistance.
Of course, it wasn’t supposed to work out this way. The Revolution had begun with a financial crisis, and promised to pare back an absolutist monarchy, perhaps along British lines.
And some reforms were certainly needed: the ruthless centralization imposed by Louis XIV and XV had hollowed out French political life and concentrated power over the lives of citizens almost entirely in Paris, in the hands of technocrats. Predictably, they’d made a mess of things.
The abuses that would mark the Revolution — including mass executions of priests and nuns — were endorsed by intellectuals schooled on the slanderous pamphlets of Diderot, full of pornographic falsehoods about the “secret lives” of monks and nuns.
Indeed, there’s a chilling similarity between the anti-clerical literature that prepared the public for the looting of monasteries and the anti-Semitic canards that were spread by the Nazis. The euphemism that was used to describe stealing monastic property for the state — “secularization” — found its echo in the 1930s in the term the German government employed for robbing the Jews: “aryanization.”
(Excerpt) Read more at crisismagazine.com ...
True, very true.
A very informative article.
Unfortunately it may remind today’s progressives of their roots and rekindle thoughts of reviving their past ideas of “Reform”.
Has to be done in the right way. Our Revolution was remarkable in it’s civility for the most part and resulted in the best country known to man. The French literally had washer-women ripping soldiers limb from limb and a government even more tyrannical than the king they overthrew. Even the “good guys” fighting against the new government in the Vendee were known to slaughter prisoners on occasion.
What is the right way? Both sides in the Vendee were utterly murderous. One royalist, one republican.
By the way, BEFORE the revolution, what would happen to someone who openly defied the King and called for his removal? You would be auto-dead.
I guess it’s rough to get back the same medicine you give out.
Thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW72Gmqjse4
No good live versions out there - but the above has some historical images.
“Lemony Cake!”
"Happy November Revolution, Товарищ!!! The same can be said of the Russian Revolution. We Bolsheviks are ardent supporters of Bastille Day and always will be. Omelets and eggs, comrade."
I don't think you want to go there.
The right way is to not install an even more murderous government than the one being overthrown.
I don’t agree on that. What is the alternative, beg the despot (temporal monarch) to end his depredations?
History has shown that the only way to remove a monarch is by force, or by negotiations under a very strong threat of force.
If some mere mortal claims God has placed him to rule over me, I have a right to reject that. This will involve force unless he goes away. After all, show me a true absolute monarch that did not use force when “subjects” rejected his claim to rule.
You have to kill the monarchy and the “nobles” and structures that support it. It’s like a cancer.
The French revolution probably couldn’t have happened any other way. It could have been avoided if the King and his followers accepted that it was over and did not try to hold on and reestablish power.
That's what you're saying. No matter what kind of governing entity, each in their special way are potentially your cancer. No need to single out monarchs, nobles, or God, for that matter.
After the Napoleonic Wars, Louis XVIII was put on the throne and only proved they got it right about the Bourbons the 1st time.
That smacks of Lenin and Pol Pot, like modern lefties saying we need to purge “the rich.” Granted the idea of hereditary social privilege via being “noble” is absurd, there were nobles of mant degrees and thousands of them were willing to accept reform. Many such as Lafayette supported the revolution before it spiralled into irredeemable madness. To predicate reform upon the blanket slaughter of people for their status by birth is equally absurd as letting them rule because of that same status.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
JFK
In France you couldn’t vote out the King. That leaves begging and shooting as the alternatives.
“there were nobles of mant degrees and thousands of them were willing to accept reform. “
Baloney. They would accept “reform” as long only as it left them in the driver’s seat.
” the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”
Thomas Jefferson
Storm the Bastille I say!!!! Every King/Queen/Nobility type out there would make castanets out of your testicles if you openly opposed them. If you behave and accept your fate to be lorded over, you may be allowed a little food between serving in their wars. But lord how they scream about “civility” when overthrown at bayonet point.
Storm the Bastille!!! (For Lily)
The only “Bourbon” I will hold in high esteem is Wild Turkey 101.
Note Romans 13, too, where Paul is requiring obedience to kings:
"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.
For there is no authority except from God,
and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Therefore whoever resists the authority
resists the ordinance of God,
and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. ... For he is God’s minister to you for good
[and] he does not bear the sword in vain."
Paul here is speaking of "authorities" -- Roman governors and Roman emperors--- who were not anointed by the Prophets of Israel, but quite the contrary, saw their authority as established by pagan gods, and who were at that very hour oppressing the Church.
I don't think this functions as an absolute principle of "divine right of kings," but it does establish a strong prior presumption against rebellion, modified only by extreme circumstances, e.g. as a last resort because of the duty to protect yourself and your neighbors from massacre.
Even if that situation obtains, a war that has a just cause (jus ad bellum) has to be carried out in a just manner (jus in bello) --- not, for instance by carrying our massacres in return.
The American War of Independence is a fairly good example of a revolution carried out without indiscriminate killing. After the Revolution ended in 1783, those who had been loyal to the British Crown were not rounded up and fined, deprived of their property, imprisoned or executed.
For that reason, the American War for Independence was very unlike the French Revolution. The latter was far more similar to the 20th century Communist revolutions.
” that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.””
Thomas Jefferson.
I stand with him. Paul was wrong. He wasn’t infallible. That wasn’t the word of Jesus. If a man stands in front of you and says he lords over you, that is prima fascia cause to demand he stand down from that, or face war.
Following that Paul quote would mean nobody should assassinate Hitler or Stalin. After all;
“and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Therefore whoever resists the authority
resists the ordinance of God, “
I suspect you would say that Hitler was a usurper and not existing under the appointment of God. And that killing him and every nazi you can find is fine. I simply argue the same about monarchs. They are usurpers. And we need to face it, Paul was speaking in his own time and place. He was a Roman citizen, and wanted to make sure he was not accused of sedition. Probably as simple as that.
Maker’s Mark!!
Attitudes probably varied among the numerous flavors the new nobility and the nobless oblige and the nobility of the robe and member of the anciente regime, but many were onboard.
I don't see how the exclusion of Paul but the inclusion of the Gospels could be a coherent point of view. We don't have any guarantee that ANY of the Books of the Bible are Holy Scriptures, except that the Church, acting under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has told us so.
That is, the same Church that had the authority to canonize the four Gospels, had exactly the same authority to canonize the other 23 books of the NT as well.
How is it you accept the Gospels, but not the others?
Besides, Paul was personally instructed by Jesus Christ after His resurrection.
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