French Revolution Game

[racaille.livejournal.com]

What? "Le bleu vous va si bien" (Blue suits you so well) a live-action roleplaying (LARP) game set in 1793 Brittany. This celtic region on the west coast of France was famous for its anti-revolutionary activity, so players could play either side (historically, "blues" were the revolutionaries, "whites" the royalists).

When? A few weeks ago, near perfect timing for Bastille Day :)

Where? near Quimper, Finistère, Brittany

Who? In Nomine Ludis, a Breton LARP group



And they had a cannon!




A traditional Breton outfit. I just love the pants.











Even more pics over there



For more pictures of LARPs, checkout the larpix community

Comments

[kurotoshi.livejournal.com]

*blinks* Holy crap!

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Wow. Now that looks so very great. Beautiful costumes too. *drools*

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

As awesome as that looks, one has to wonder about the people who want to play the whites... :/

[pedrolino.livejournal.com]

Well, you've got people who want to play both sides in Civil War reenactments and such, too. Maybe they've got ancestors who they're modeling their role on?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I suppose... But many people still take those distinctions seriously, so that's why I would possibly suspect those who want to play the whites of really agreeing with their politics.

[tearosefury.livejournal.com]

Oh common', don't you have at least a little pity for some good old fashioned royalists? They had cause enough in their own minds for their opinions.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

In their own minds... being either brainwashed, selfish and self-interested, or deranged. No, I don't pity them--especially since, whatever they profess, it's well documented that they were just as ruthless and brutal to the "blues" as the blues were to them.

[racaille.livejournal.com]

This can be actually be found in historical reenactment troupes: "whites" reenactors are often royalists IRL and "blues" reenactors are well... a bit more normal ;). But this is not historical reenactment: in LARPs people play usually fictional characters with specific goals, there's a secret plot that may have nothing to do with history, and most of the action is improvised. The setting is historical but the same people may very well play in a Starship Troopers LARP or a Lord of the Rings LARP next month.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

As I said, that does change the situation quite a bit. I won't deny that modern-day royalists are a bit frightening, and also a bit pathetic, especially since they can hardly plead ignorance or that the republic has harmed them in any way, like their forebears.

[racaille.livejournal.com]

Well, this being a game with pre-generated characters, not all the players may have gotten the side they wanted. Furthermore, I know many people enjoy playing "bad guys" or "historical losers" in LARPs. I know a guy who's played a Nazi in a WWII LARP, an Imperial in a Star Wars LARP and he's a really nice, liberal-minded guy IRL. Also being "hunted" keeps you busy in such a game.

As to the historical aspect, the most important reason many Bretons were royalists was that:
- they did not want to be drafted in the republican army to fight on the eastern front. They wanted to stay in their village and be farmers
- they wanted to practice catholicism the way they had for centuries, and not switch to weird supreme being worship

The whole "democracy vs feudalism" issue only came third, IMO.

And overall, Bretons are supposed to be very stubborn, so any big change will piss them off, especially if it comes from Paris. This state of mind could be seen in many other parts of France.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Well, if that's the case, it's another story.

As for the first of the "historical aspects": that's no excuse to foment a bloody civil war, and certainly no excuse for their descendants to call that civil war a "genocide."

For the second: "supreme being worship," as you call it, is no more "weird" than Catholicism. Not to mention the fact that "Religion of the Supreme Being vs. Catholicism" is a false dichotomy, since proponents of the former were also proponents of freedom of religious conscience--Robespierre for one said that those who wanted to stop the mass from being said were worse fanatics than the priests--and it was the dyed-in-the-wool atheists who thought it was a crime to be Catholic. However, it is true that the priests of the regions in civil war such as Bretagne but also, of course, the Vendée, were brainwashing ignorant peasants into giving their lives for a cause that didn't benefit them at all.

Obviously, the average Breton foot-soldier wasn't aware that he was fighting for feudalism against democracy, but you can bet the authority figures he was listening to did.

Not to mention the fact that the religious issue was not the only one at stake. There's some pretty good evidence that economic factors also played a large part. There were other parts of France, for example, where the vast majority of the priests were non-juring. So why did civil war break out only in western France, and only in some parts at that? Many of the areas where the peasants were able to buy most of the national lands were republican, while those where the bourgeoisie claimed the vast majority of these lands and peasants felt for this reason that the revolution did not benefit them, were much more likely to take up arms against the revolution.

And I wouldn't assume that all changes came from Paris--the Midi in particular was known for being even more avant garde than Paris on many issues in the Revolution, in particular in calling for a republic in the immediate aftermath of the flight to Varennes, before and independently from the Cordeliers and their allies in Paris. Most departments, in fact, did not become counterrevolutionary until informed of the "betrayal" of Paris by the fleeing Girondin leaders. In other words, the Revolution was far from a Parisian phenomenon, as many revolutionary leaders in Paris learned--in some cases to their surprise--with the arrival of the fédérés in the days before 10 August.

[racaille.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of what you said :)

The first historical point I made was indeed economical: nobody likes to see able-bodied men go and get shot hundreds of kilometers away when they could be plowing the fields. It's a huge economic loss for families, villages, a whole region.

I agree with you view on priests: with some exceptions (theology of liberation in South America etc) the role of priests around the world is to have poor people not bitch too much about the current state of affairs and follow their current leaders. I personally don't make a difference between supreme being, catholicism etc, but the religions question has been very salient in Bretagne for centuries. It is now a very christian region compared to the rest of France, but christianity had a tough times getting implanted over there, as locals had very strong pagan beliefs. When the church saw that people just weren't buying that whole monotheism thing, that had a very extensive strategy of converting celtic gods into saints and bishops, carving crosses in standing stones etc. Old women in today's Bretagne still have a very pagan way of worshiping, praying to Saint X for back aches, Saint Y for rain, Saint Z for warts etc. Conversely, catholic monuments often feature pagan symbols like l'Ankou, the Breton figure of death.

And I'm not saying all changes came from Paris (our anthem is called La Marseillaise, not La Parisienne ;), but that is was perceived as such by Bretons. I don't think they were very aware of/gave a rat's ass about what was happening in the Midi.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Obviously, the draft constitutes an economic loss, but is there any evidence that Bretagne and the other areas of royalist uprising were less able than others to bear this loss? It seems to me that there must be another explanation, but stubbornness in way of religion might not necessarily account for it all--the statistics I mentioned about the high incidence of non-juring priests in other regions, for example.

And even assuming that religion did account for most of their reasons for fighting, I suppose my main point is, an ignorant 18th century peasant, who, believing himself to be fighting for what is right-- according to his indoctrination since earliest childhood--, but really fighting against his own best interests by taking the side of the authority figures who continue to pull the wool over his eyes, so to speak, for their own ends, is to be pitied. However, the two groups of people I can't have any pity for are a) the priests and lords who knew that the real fight was not about religion, but about "democracy vs. feudalism," but, also knowing that the peasants would be unwilling to fight for their cause thus articulated, framed it to the peasants as a religious war; and b) people living today who support the "whites," though, with historical perspective, they really ought to know better. I mostly just find the latter pathetic though.

And the goings-on in the Midi were just an example; I by no means meant to imply that the Bretons had any knowledge or appreciation of events there.

[tearosefury.livejournal.com]

That is just all sorts of fun and awesome.

[kkrum.livejournal.com]

agreeeeeddd!!