Posted on 07/14/2015 12:46:03 PM PDT by markomalley
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Tuesday, July 14 probably passes without much fanfare in your home, but the date, Bastille Day, marks the beginning of the greatest organized persecution of Christians since the Emperor Diocletian. This day, the beginning of the French Revolution, also planted the seeds for the murderous ideologies of socialism and nationalism that would poison the next two centuries, murdering millions of believers and other innocent civilians. Between them, those two political movements racked up quite a body count: In Death By Government, scholar R. J. Rummel pointed out that
during the first 88 years of this century, almost 170,000,000 men, women and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens or foreigners.
But the first such modern genocide in the West took place in France, beginning in 1793. It was undertaken by modern, progressive apostles of Enlightenment and aimed at pious peasants in the Vendée region of France. By its end up to 300,000 civilians had been killed by the armies of the Republic.
This story is little discussed in France. Indeed, a devout historian who teaches at a French university once told me, “We are not to mention the Vendée. Anyone who brings up what was done there has no prospect of an academic career. So we keep silent.”
It is mostly in the Vendée itself that memories linger, which may explain why that part of France to this day remains more religious and more conservative than any other region. The local government opened a museum marking these atrocities on their 200th anniversary in 1993 — with a visit by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who noted during his eloquent address 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 Lenin himself pointed to the Vendée massacres as the right way to deal with Christian resistance.
It was ordinary farmers of the Vendée and Brittany regions who rose up in 1793 against the middle-class radicals in Paris who controlled the country. The ideologues of the Revolution had already
When the Parisians came to take away their sons for the army, the Vendeans finally fought back and launched a counter-revolution in the name of “God and King.” It quickly spread across the northwest of France, tying down the government’s professional armies — fighting untrained bands of devout guerillas, many of them armed only with muskets suited to hunting.
As Sophie Masson — herself a descendant of rebels who fought in the Vendée resistance — has written:
The atrocities multiplied, the exterminations systematic and initiated from the very top, and carried out with glee at the bottom. At least 300,000 people were massacred during that time, and those of the intruders who refused to do the job were either shot or discredited utterly. But still the people resisted. Still there were those who hid in the forests and ambushed, who fought as bravely as lions but were butchered like pigs when they were caught. No quarter was given; all the leaders were shot, beheaded or hanged. Many were not even allowed to rest in peace; the body of the last leader was cut up and distributed to scientists; his head was pickled in a jar, the brain examined to see where the seed of rebellion lay in the mind of a savage.…
“Not one is to be left alive.” “Women are reproductive furrows who must be ploughed under.” “Only wolves must be left to roam that land.” “Fire, blood, death are needed to preserve liberty.” “Their instruments of fanaticism and superstition must be smashed.” These were some of the words the Convention used in speaking of the Vendée. Their tame scientists dreamed up all kinds of new ideas – the poisoning of flour and alcohol and water supplies, the setting up of a tannery in Angers which would specialise in the treatment of human skins; the investigation of methods of burning large numbers of people in large ovens so their fat could be rendered down efficiently. One of the Republican generals, Carrier, was scornful of such research: these “modern” methods would take too long. Better to use more time-honoured methods of massacre: the mass drownings of naked men, women and children, often tied together in what he called “republican marriages,” off specially constructed boats towed out to the middle of the Loire and then sunk; the mass bayoneting of men, women and children; the smashing of babies’ heads against walls; the slaughter of prisoners using cannons; the most grisly and disgusting tortures; the burning and pillaging of villages, towns and churches.
The persecution only really ended when Napoleon came to power in 1799 — and needed peace at home so that he could launch his wars of conquest. He patched together a modus vivendi with the pope, and the Vendée quieted down.
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. King Louis XVI was a kindly if not terribly competent king. He had lifted the lingering, disgraceful legal penalties against Protestants and Jews imposed by his ancestors during a more intolerant age. He bankrupted his kingdom bankrolling the American Revolution. (In gratitude, the U.S. Congress hung a portrait of the monarch in the Capitol, and named a southern county “Bourbon.” That’s where the whiskey was invented.) The French legislators who met in 1789 for the first time in over a century intended at first to reform their government, not replace it.
And some reforms were certainly needed: As Tocqueville would observe, 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.
Unlike its sister kingdom across the channel, France had no sitting parliament, no common law protecting its subjects from arbitrary arrest, and an economy largely driven not by free citizens but the state. The French church, while still in communion with Rome, was largely controlled by the kings – who appointed its bishops and set its policies. Indeed, the kings of France, Portugal and Spain had arranged in 1767 for the suppression of the Jesuits — whose loyalty to Rome and rejection of the Divine Right of Kings made them suspect, and whose defense of the rights of Indians got in the way of “progress.”
The educational vacuum created by the destruction of this order was quickly (and ironically) filled by Enlightenment philosophes. The first generation to rise without the Jesuits would come of age in 1789. 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.” Since the Jews are indeed a priestly people, it is not surprising that such satanic parallels exist. Just as fascists excused their atrocities by pointing to Jewish prominence in the financial sphere and the press, leftists still defend the persecution of the Church by pointing to her political influence. We shouldn’t let them get away with it. I wait in vain for the historian who will write a comprehensive comparison of anti-Semitism and anti-clericalism.
In 1989, I helped organize a funeral Mass for all the Revolution’s victims. We invited the French consul-general, but he pleaded a prior engagement. In the Vendée itself, a French friend told me, some people still wear black armbands on their country’s national holiday, and regard the Revolution’s tricolor as black Americans do the Confederate battle flag. As we tremble for the future of religious liberty in America, let’s remember those who died defending freedom and faith before us. God forbid that we’ll have to follow in their footsteps.
“But Soltzenitzen was right about the French Revolution!”
yes, he was.
Nationalism is a murderous ideology, on a par with socialism?
Does not compute.
I just completed approx 10 hours of reading spurred by this post: Vendee, dechristianization of France, mass executions including women and babies, General Carrier, Robespierre, etc.
Thanks Mark!
Communism is absolutely a descendant of the French Revolution.
Marx used it, partially, as a template.
Thanks, m. Good post.
w, as we were discussing....
“Nope, communism isn’t the child of the French revolution.”
Yes, actually, communism IS the child of the French Revolution. Even Karl Marx specifically credited the French Revolution for brainstorming Communism. I believe his exact words on the subject were “Once we are at the helm, we shall be obliged to reenact the year 1793. We’ll be viewed as monsters, but we could care less” and “The vengeance of the people will break forth with such ferocity that not even the year 1793 enables us to envisage it.” And if that’s not enough, he credited Gracchus as being the first Communist, and Lenin upon winning his revolution commissioned Monumental Propaganda, a statue line depicting figures from, you guessed it, the French Revolution. Heck, before Internationale became the anthem for Communism, La Marsellaise acted as its anthem. So yes, it’s very clear that the French Revolution inspired Communism in more ways than one.
“And you forgot another country that got rid of a Monarch by using force. We did. And it was a violent and deadly war that destroyed lives. And we had to fight it again in 1812 when the Monarchy came roaring back.”
We didn’t murder King George III, however, whether via a kangaroo court or even just blowing his brains out. That’s one other major difference between us and the French/Russians. And make no mistake, we could have just as easily gotten our independence by just sending a sniper to London and shooting King George III when he makes a speech in front of everyone if we so desired. If any instance was best comparable, try the Glorious Revolution, since that actually DID result in King Charles being murdered like King Louis XVI later on (and not because he was harming people, but simply for the “crime” of being Catholic).
“And you must have a wonderful sense of humor if you think the Germans and Austrians lost their monarchy peacefully. But in the end, all monarchs bear the responsibility for the cost of their removal. Whether it is some Aztec king, a French Catholic king, or some fat farting potentate somewhere else,,,, if they simply relinquished all claims to rule over others, there would not be violence.”
Oh really? Last I checked, King Louis XVI didn’t use violence against his people. He was arguably the best ruler they ever had. Him and Marie Antoinette. He certainly didn’t use raw power.
“They ruled by violence. None were from God, and all gained their positions through the exercise of raw power. But oh how they squeal when someone dare use muscle against them.”
Well, gee, I guess King David of the Bible was not of God, then, or King Solomon, since no kings are from God (oh, and BTW, that’s supposed to be sarcasm). And I guess God murdered his own son Jesus just because he can’t stomach the thought of his son being king (again, sarcasm).
“....If any instance was best comparable, try the Glorious Revolution, since that actually DID result in King Charles being murdered like King Louis XVI later on (and not because he was harming people, but simply for the “crime” of being Catholic). ...”
You’ve conflated the results of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution.
The death of King Charles after the end of the English Civil War resulted in the Commonwealth Republic of the Great Britain etc. it was feeble and ended up with Cromwell as dictator. By the time Cromwell died everyone had had enough and Charles II was invited back in - The Restoration.
He reigned but was adroit enough to keep the Parliamentary-Republican-Protestant impulses in check. His brother then assumed the throne - James II. He was an ass, Catholic and completely out of step with his Protestant subjects. He got booted out almost bloodlessly when it looked like there might be a Catholic heir. That’s was the Glorious Revolution of 1688! The Protestant Parliamentary faction invited William of Orange (Dutch Statholder) to come in and be king. William was married to James II daughter - Mary. Think William & Mary College in Virginia, it was founded during their reign. Their fleet came with a “Protestant Wind” that got them to merry ole England quickly! James II fled, thus ended the Stuarts in England & Scotland.
Okay, I stand corrected there (also heard that John Locke played a role in that uprising as well). Still, the American War for Independence is still not comparable to the French Revolution despite what DesertRhino, or rather, DesertRINO claims. One very big fundamental difference is that the Founding Fathers had enough respect for the King of England to not depose him via murder, state-sanctioned or otherwise, only separated from England without even trying to inflict any harm on him, while the French Revolutionaries and Russian Revolutionaries actually DID do exactly that to their respective kings.
Geez, if he’s so in love with the Jacobin buthcers, he might as well just adopt a Che Guevara T-shirt and the hammer and sickle, while he’s at it.
Basically agree with you!
Our FF viewed their revolution as a restoration of their rights as Englishmen, then later it morphed it their rights as Americans. It became “We’re fighting basically to make you leave us alone!”.
Even if they wanted to kill King George it wouldn’t have been very practical given there was this thing called the Atlantic separating them.
There are a lot of Robespierre wannabes on this site!
Lenin in his writings identified with Robespierre. Identified the brutality of the French Revolution with his.
Lafayette tried to keep the French Revolution within the confines of decency using us as a model but he failed!
Great post.
“And I know that prior to the Revolution, the Catholic church in France had a right to 10% of every farmers crop,,, period.”
And after it the State had a right to 100% of it. Here in the US the Government has a “right” to damned near 50%. I’d be thrilled if some entity only demanded 10% and no more.
L
You got that right. No matter what horrors the monarchy might have had under their belt, it was literally nothing compared to what the French Revolutionaries as well as the Communists unleashed.
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