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

[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.