Davies For Altar and Throne

The Rising in the Vendee
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4835-9465-1
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Many know very little about the Catholic uprising in the Vendee - the most important opposition to the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror. In this book, Michael Davies provides the whole truth of the history of the Revolution of 1789, in France.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davies, Michael

Leseproben

It was the worst of times… The Estates General Versailles, 4th May 1789. As the doors of [the Church of] Notre Dame swing open the voice of an organ reaches the expectant crowds. Led by a cross-bearer the procession comes into view. First to appear are hundreds of men dressed in sober black and small tricorn hats. Next, far more elegant, members of the nobility in black and white satin embroidered with gold, their plumed headgear stirring in the breeze. Behind them walk a small group of bishops and cardinals resplendent in violet and purple, followed by two long files of cassocked priests. Each carries a candle in his right hand. Then, beneath a cloth-of-gold canopy, the Archbishop of Paris bears the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance flashing like the sun. Immediately after him steps the king, wearing his great coronation mantle of blue adorned with golden fleurs-de-lys; he is attended by the queen, the princes and princesses of the blood and senior officers of the orders of chivalry. That slow cortège takes more than an hour to reach its destination, the church of Saint-Louis. Every building along the route has hung out some piece of gorgeous tapestry, and the pavements are crowded with a throng of people held back by an unbroken line of troops. The three Estates of the Most Christian realm are on the way to attend a Mass of the Holy Ghost, begging God to enlighten the deliberations of the States-General which are to open on the following day.1 Thus with the full splendour of the Catholic liturgy was initiated a train of events which for a time would appear to have obliterated Catholicism from the most Christian realm of France. The starting point of the French Revolution was the convocation of the Estates (States) General by King Louis XVI. His reason for doing so was that his treasury had become bankrupt on 16 August 1788, as a result of a financial crisis triggered by France’s costly participation in the American Revolution.2 Jacques Necker, Director of the Treasury (1777-81), had warned that this intervention would bankrupt the country, but his advice went unheeded. Necker, a Swiss-born Protestant financier, was highly competent, incorruptible, and totally loyal to the King. On the far from impartial advice of his Philosophe-inspired ministers, Louis sent material and financial aid, amounting to $240,000,000, to help the American colonies in their struggle for independence. It was the French fleet and the battalions of Lafayette and Rochambeau (both prominent members of various Masonic Lodges) that helped Washington to bottle up Cornwallis in Yorktown, compelling him to surrender and to bring the war to a close. After the defeat of Cornwallis, those French, American and British officers who were members of Masonic Lodges all dined together, despite their having served on opposing sides. Revolutionary ideas, already well established in France among the beau monde, swept across the Atlantic into France brought by the returning French officers like Lafayette and re-enforcing the strong hold which such ideas already had on the ruling elites in the Kingdom. Meanwhile the treasury was crippled by its new, wholly unnecessary, war debts, Necker was dismissed (1781), and the bourgeois bondholders, who stood to gain most from revolution in France, clamoured for financial control of the government.3 The king’s treasury was in debt to the moneylenders, a situation which certain Philosophe-inspired ministers had done their best to foster and encourage for their own ends. The only solution seemed to be the calling of the Estates General. The King hoped that the Estates would come to the aid of his bankrupt exchequer by raising new taxes, but the circumstances under which they were to meet could hardly have been less propitious: The year 1788 was marked by merciless “acts of God.” A severe drought stunted crops; a hailstorm raging from Normandy to Champagne, devastated 180 miles of usually fertile terrain; the winter (1788-89) was the severest in eighty years; fruit trees perished by the thousands. The spring of 1789 loosed disastrous floods; the summer brought famine to almost every province. State, Church, and private charity strove to get food to the starving; only a few individuals died of hunger, but millions came close to the end of their resources. Caen, Rouen, Orléans, Nancy, Lyons, saw rival groups fighting like animals for corn; Marseilles saw 8,000 famished people at its gates threatening to invade and pillage the city; in Paris the working-class district of St.-Antoine had 30,000 paupers to be cared for.4 “Properly speaking, then, the crisis of 1789 began in 1788, and the symptoms of agrarian distress endured until the early months of 1790, and later still in the South West, where the barely adequate harvest of 1789 succeeded in containing the situation, but little more.”5 The Revolution had its origin in the Deist, Masonic conspiracies of the Encyclopaedists and the Philosophes. They gained control of every major Catholic European power through their respective governments. By the beginning decades of the 18th Century, all the main powers had Masonic first Ministers: Pombal (Portugal), Aranda (Spain), Choiseul (France), Kaunitz (the Empire). This was demonstrated by their success in suppressing the Jesuit Order in each respective country, starting with Portugal, and eventually in persuading even the Pope–the weak Clement XIV–to suppress the Order. The Order was to remain suppressed for over 50 years until after the fall of Bonaparte. It must be clear that the suppression of the Order was symptomatic of the control the Masons and Philosophes had over the governments of Europe, not least those which were Catholic. That control gave them every opportunity to promote the principles which ultimately triumphed at the Revolution in France. There was thus hardship, unrest, and anxiety in urban and rural France when the Estates assembled at Versailles on 5 May 1789. The First and Second Estates represented the clergy and nobility. The Third Estate, of whom two-thirds had a legal qualification, represented the rest of French society, but was restricted to a very small propertied Bourgeois minority, which embodied everything represented in all the key areas of French business and professional activity. F.V. Grunfeld writes: The French Revolution, therefore, was essentially the chaotic and often violent process by which political power passed into the hands of those who already possessed economic power. In the words of one modern economic historian, it “made the bourgeoisie the masters of the world.”6 On 27 December 1788, the Third Estate had been permitted as many members as the other two Estates combined. When the Estates assembled, not one of them appeared to have the least thought of establishing a republic. The Third Estate advocated the continuance of a constitutional monarchy, as did a majority of the parish clergy; this would mean the periodical convocation of the Estates General, their supremacy in financial matters, the responsibility of ministers, and the regular guarantee of individual liberty. Many of the principal complaints concerning the old regime had been rectified during the reign of Louis XVI, a considerate King, whose first concern was for the welfare of his people, but who could be weak and vacillating when faced with a crisis. The King had abolished the unpopular corvée (compulsory labour for peasants, who were obliged to build roads as a condition for occupying land belonging to their feudal lord), serfs had been liberated, torture to obtain confessions was prohibited, the medieval guild system had been abolished, Jews were freed of discriminatory taxes, and more foundling homes and schools for blind and deaf-mute children were established. Protestants were emancipated from all discriminatory laws in 1787, to the outrage of the faithful in the more Catholic districts of France. Louis also realized the pressing need for tax reform in the interest of his poorest subjects. “The taxes of the poorest part of our subjects have increased, in proportion much more than all the rest.” He expressed the hope that “rich people will not think themselves wronged when they will have to meet the charges which long since they should have shared with others.”7 He established pawnshops to lend money to the poor at three per cent. He also proposed to abolish the dungeons at Vincennes and to raze the Bastille to the ground as part of a program of prison reform.8 In 1789, France was the most populous and prosperous nation in Europe, and Paris was its largest city, with a population of 650,000, the best-educated and most excitable in Europe. Rioting was an established Parisian tradition. French peasants were better off than any of their counterparts in continental Europe, except, perhaps, those of northern Italy. Despite the bankruptcy caused by the American war, industry and trade were flourishing as never before, and the Revolution was to prove a setback in this field. In 1815, France’s foreign trade was only 60% of what it had been in 1789.9 “The ‘old regime,’ then, was not a society doddering on its way to the grave. Far from appearing moribund, signs of dynamism and energy may be found wherever the historian looks.”10 A. Forrest writes: The dominant figures of the Third Estate during the summer months of 1789 were almost all committed monarchists,...