Tag Archive: louis xvi
By Patricia Elliott
My novel, The Pale Assassin
, is set during the French Revolution. As a writer, what fascinated me during my research was the discovery of how many contradictions this extraordinarily dramatic period contained.
The complex character of the king, Louis XVI: compassionate, but blind to the suffering of his people. His queen, Marie-Antoinette: vain and extravagant, yet one who endured her imprisonment with great fortitude. Then the aristocrats, privileged and wealthy, yes, but many of whom actively supported the introduction of a constitution that would bring equality and the end of the corrupt ancien regime.
Foremost among them was the Marquis de Condorcet, who drafted the first constitution, basing it on the Declaration of Independence – it is said with the help of George Washington. And Robespierre, the most powerful man in the new Republic, who lived a life of moral purity, yet was the cold-blooded architect of the Terror, when thousands were guillotined in order to preserve a “republic of virtue.” The Terror itself was sanctioned by a government paranoid about the enemy within, for, as Jefferson is believed to have said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” But the majority of the Terror’s victims were not the hated aristocracy but the ordinary, innocent people of France.
Lastly, the most tragic and ironic paradox of all was that in order to uphold the ideals of “liberty, equality and fraternity,” the revolutionaries resorted to a ruthless denial of human rights that was to have its echo down the ages.
Patricia Elliott’s novels for young adults have received critical acclaim. Her newest novel is The Pale Assassin.
Visit her website at patriciaelliott.co.uk.
By Dan Edelstein
The Capetian dynasty, which had ruled France since 987, was overthrown on the night of 9-10 August, 1792. The deposed king, Louis XVI, had escaped with his family to safety; with the monarchy gone, the French still had a monarch on their hands. There was little question that he should be tried for treason. The question was how. Under the 1791 Constitution, the king had been granted inviolability. How do you try a chief executive when that executive, by definition, cannot be tried?
The answer, it turned out, was straightforward. There was a higher law, respected by all peoples at all times, that allowed the Convention to prosecute the king: this was the law of nature. The “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” had served earlier revolutionaries well. But there was more to natural right (as this body of law was known) than political freedom. Indeed, it also provided the definition of an exceptional criminal—the enemy of the human race, or hostis humani generis—who, having violated the laws of nature, must be destroyed. The French deputies jumped through this loophole to try, and ultimately convict, the king.
At the time, the most radical deputies in the Convention (the “Montagnards”) were in favor of abolishing the death penalty. The execution of the king was a “cruel exception” to this rule, Robespierre opined. In a matter of months, however, these same deputies extended this exception to any counter-revolutionary, invoking the same arguments as they had against the king. This book shows how natural right provided the legal and moral authorization for the Terror, but also points to the strange republican ideal cherished by the Montagnard leaders: the dream of founding a state based entirely on nature.
Dan Edelstein, author of The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution
, is an assistant professor of French at Stanford University. He was raised in Geneva, Switzerland, where he attended university before returning to the United States for graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He works primarily on eighteenth-century French literature, politics, and philosophy, and more generally on questions of political mythology. His book on the genealogy of the Enlightenment will be published by the University of Chicago Press in fall 2010.
IMAGE: Depiction of the storming of the Tuileries Palace on August, 10, 1792, Jean Duplessis-Bertaux, c 1793
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