Other Revolutionaries: BILLAUD-VARENNE

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Following the example of

estellacatwho made a birthday post for Prieur De La Marne, I have decided to open a serie of posts each one of them dedicated to discuss a revolutionary chosen among the less known (and loved) ones.

 

 I know many of you will be maybe disappointed with it, neverthless I want to begin this work with a post dedicated to Billaud-Varenne who remains, despite my strong passion for Saint-Just and sympathy for Robespierre, one of my most beloved revolutionaries (-> I know you may find it strange - but this is unrational, so just take it as it comes !).

I don't put here his biography since I believe most of you know it (and if not, you can just have a look anywhere on the web), but I'd like to underline some stereotypes about his figure which doesn't appear so simple and one-faced as many treat it.

He perhaps doesn't embody the type of a tragical hero such as Saint-Just and doesn't possesses that "poetic aura" which makes Robespierre so impressive, he also doesn't has the force of enflaming entire masses like a Marat, but if you consider his action during the whole revolution you can't avoid regarding him as a key-actor in it, despite his role as a last-minute-enemy in Thermidor. More, if you have a look at his entire life - I mean also after the revolution - you have to notice he is a fashinating character, much more complex and nuanced than the square "bloodythirsty traitor" which much of the XIXth historiographical tradition brought to us in opposition to the process of heroicization (or demonization yes, but always with that touch of grandeur) which surrounded Robespierre and Saint-Just as well.
He was among the greatest workers at the Committee, he was a remarkable orator, he was the one who mostly urged Robespierre for the arrestation of Hébert and then Danton, he was also, beyond Robespierre, the real architect of the Terror - that means he officially systemathized the executoning of the opposers as an instrument which had to grant the surviving of the young republic.
More, despite he is often considered close to the demagogy of the Hébertism, he really was one of the few who (in a different way as Saint-Just did with his Ventose Decrees) really took into account a real attack to private properties during the French revolution. Some marxist and more generally left-related historicians recall him as some kind of protoanarchist.
Despite Thermidor, he remained true to his principles for the rest of his life. He strongly refused the amnesty the Consul Bonaparte granted him because he didn't recognize the legality of Napoleon's coup d'état, and he then suffered of dreadful nightmares about Danton and Robespierre's executions for many years. Nobody will give Robespierre back to life again and let him do what he had planned - of course :)- but I think one shouldn't judge with superficiality this late regret of Thermidor.
Billaud died in the free Republic of Haiti whose government had asked for his cooperation (which he promptly accepted).

So I believe his memory should be rehabilitated. Or if not, I hope at least his figure will be discussed again with more objectivity.
Yes I like you, Nick !


Some curiosities about him:
- He appears as a minor character in the novel "Explosion in a Cathedral" published by the excellent Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier in 1962, dealing with the situation in many Latinoamerican countries after the French Revolution.
- He is also the main character of the drama "The Jacobins part II" put on the Italian stages in 2002 by the director Arnald Picchi. The drama is sort of a sequel of Federico Zardi's "The Jacobins" featured in Milan in 1957. In this new 2nd part Billaud is shown in 1816 during his sea-travel from French Guyana to New York at night facing his past represented by apparitions of Robespierre, Danton and the Girondins who torment him.

A quote (about the Terror):
"No, we will not step backward, our zeal will only be smothered in the tomb; either the Revolution will triumph or we will all die".

You can read his memories (with a long and detailed biographical note) here:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k73381s
 

Comments

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

(Mmm, I find him attractive - not ouvertly handsome and charismatic as Saint-Just was - I mean, but he was fashinating and quite masculine indeed... I have a crush on him *blush*)

Billaud was strongly anticlerical and declared himself as an atheist while Robespierre and Saint-Just, though not being exactly fond of the catholic Church, never denied the roussoian principles of the natural religion... Here their ideals were different and they had also quarrels about it (it's funny to know that during his first 2 years as a deported in Guyana Billaud had his awful tropical diseases cured by some kind nuns :D).
But yes, from an ideological point of view he wasn't so different than the other two. He was more concerned on a social-economic vision of politics while Robespierre and Saint-Just focused their attention more to strictly political-organizational questions, that is to say... and it's true he disliked strong excecutive powers. He also wrote a pamphlet, "Acephalocratie" (-> "government without head" from Greek) pointing out all the evil which strong executives could bring (leading to an effective dictatorship). Actually he was member of a strong executive power, or ? :)

We won't ever know why he really took part into Thermidor (otherwise we should evocate his spirit with a Voodoo rite - he himself should have a certain familiarity with such things XD)... I believe that angriness toward certain people who seemed wanting to advocate more power for themselves, jealousy toward the same people and maybe fear for his life aren't contradictory reasons. Perhaps all of them, mixed with the surrounding atmosphere of paranoia.

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I couldn't pass up a chance to comment on this since I listed him as one of my interests and stumbled across this discussion while browsing.

Some months ago I was lucky enough to find a copy of Arthur Conte's biography of Billaud-Varenne (_Billaud-Varenne, Geant de la Revolution_) and I was left with the impression of a man who had a very clear idea of where he wanted the Revolution to go and how to get it there (According to Conte BV was way ahead of the other major players in wanting to get rid of the monarchy, for example).

Up until the elimination of Danton it was a question of things not going far enough. But then with Hebert and then Robespierre it became a matter of things going too far off track...as much as it was also a matter of self-preservation. The problem was that even if, from BV's poing of view, the Robespierre faction had to be disposed of control could not be maintained without it...and so BV also ended up falling. But at least he kept his head in Haiti!

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding incredibly trivial (no! the revolutionary politics of hair are really important!) - any truth in the oft-quoted story that he wore a tiger-coloured wig? And, indeed, a puce coat? (SuperFly!)

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

*ROTFL*

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

That's unusual? No wonder my co-workers stare at me when I wear that outfit to my job!

I don't remember any detail like that...but it has been going on a year since I read the book.

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I was wondering a year or so ago about the popularity of tiger imagery in the 1790's - Blake's 'Tyger' and "tygers of wrath", comparisons of Robespierre and Marat to tigers, tiger imagery in revolutionary speeches: I wondered if it had anything to do with the death-by-tiger of the son of the head of the British East India company, an event celebrated in 'Tippoo's Tiger', the amazing automaton made for Tipu Sultan, now in the V &A - but that was in 1792, and tiger imagery was already popular by then - in the end I think it's just that they're big and savage and don't have the royal connotations of 'lion'...but in the course of looking I came across the line that Billaud was nicknamed Le Tigre because of his two-tone hair (I found it on google, so it may well be a mistake - he doesn't even appear to be wearing a wig in most portraits, unless it's a 'natural' unpowdered one). I can't remember where I came across the puce coat - but I have a puce suede 70's coat with big buttons and huge lapels so it stuck in my head!

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I did find your "Le Tigre" reference on a French version of Wikipedia, but it didn't cite a specific source for that information. So I don't know if it came from Conte's book or not.

I did, however, find a site with Billaud-Varenne's horoscope!

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I found it too !
But unfortunately the hour of his birth is unknown so the horoscope is uncomplete XD XD

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

True...we can't know the Ascendent. But it's still fun to know what the moon and planetary signs are.

I sometimes dabble in that sort of thing.

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

The Ascendent and the other Houses are unknown, unfortunately ! But I've noticed his Moon in Aquarius, Mars in Aries, Jupiter in Leo and many other interesting things XD

I can read horoscopes very well :D

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Mmm, interesting discussion. "Tiger" is a strong archetype, usually related to a kind of subversive power exactly at the opposite as suggested by the royal patriarchal connotation of "lion"... If "lion" archetype recalls order, blood aristocracy and hierarchies, "tiger" one recalls the matrifocal earthly powers of wilderness and chaos from which construction and distruction do come out. And equality too, because tigers are much more individualist than lions and don't live in groups.
I have read about Billaud's "tiger" wig, but I don't remember exactly where. On the biographical note I linked to this page I read he had black hair (as we can see in most of his portraits) but he also used to wear a red wig (made with natural hair and unpowdered, I suppose...). I had the impression it was considered very typical of him and quite kitsch from his contemporaries ! :D
I also read about his "puce coat" on some account related to the massacres of September - if my memory doesn't fail (the weather is so hot and so wet that all my intellectual skills and not are k.o. !). Could it be in some work of an English historician like Macaulay or Carlyle ?

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

If he wore a red wig over his black hair - with his black hair showing underneath, in the tail or whatever - that could be the 'tiger' combination! My young cousin had 'Emo' hair like that last year!

I found this clip of 'Tippoo's Tiger' on youtube, with a very posh woman playing a tune on it! Tipu Sultan became a Jacobin supporter, and the man being eaten by the tiger may be meant to be the son of the head of the British East India company, killed by a tiger in 1792 - there are better pictures of the mechanical tiger on the Victoria and Albert Museum website, but their webite is offline today for some reason. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mrO5a5k1z0

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

The tip from Fatimahcrossin about the September Massacres did allow me to pinpoint something in the Conte book describing BV's presence at those events:

"La silhouette droit dans son severe habit puce, coiffe de sa celebre perruque fauve...."

But Conte doesn't list a source either...so I don't know if that's much help!

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Oh oh, this is the same quote I read in English, but I still can't remember where...

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Well, at least it suggests there was, at some point in his career, a punk wig!

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

I have just found on the web an article featuring many references on Billaud's scary wig and other information. If you are interested in, check it here: http://www.andreversailleediteur.com/?bibv=109. Of the same author (Lenotre) there you'll find different rev-related articles too, such as "Saint-Just en Blérancourt", "Mademoiselle Robespierre" and many other else !

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I've got a book by Lenotre but I haven't been through it yet (I'm a slow reader in French! And a friend pointed out that I now know the 18thc words for things, but not the modern ones...)

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

You' re welcome !

(as for me, I can read French rather easily because it's close enough to Italian, but unfortunately I am accostumed only to XVIII's century lexicon... like you XD)

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Pretty good intuition ! It must have been something like that !
Mmm, a young Emo version of Billaud ?? OMG !!

The automaton is amazing (and the music fits to it well !)... Like all automatons it has something perturbating - that's fashinating indeed.

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

I believe this is a rather good interpretation... but a question: how did you get the book ? I have looked for it on the Internet but it is out of print since years - I have to read it absolutely !

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I actually stumbled across it in a used bookstore in San Francisco. I remember browsing the titles in the French section and not really believing what I was seeing. It took a second to register in my brain. I knew the book existed, but I never expected to just come across a copy like that.

As far as I know it's the only book out there about him.

Re: Billaud-Varenne

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is the only relatively recent book about him... you had luck !

You might be lucky too!

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I couldn't resist ordering a couple of things from amazon.fr and I noticed that they claim to be able to get the Billaud-Varenne book for you.

Despite the brutal monetary exchange rate (since I have the fortune/misfortune of living in the USA) I decided to pick up biographies of Collot d'Herbois and Saint Just since my nomadic interests seem to have wandered back to the Revolution.

Re: You might be lucky too!

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Thank you veryvery much!! :D I have checked the site and found it ;)

Collot's biography too ? It sounds interesting - you could post something about it here when you finish to read it !

Re: You might be lucky too!

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't have any problems. I also tried to order a book about Claire LaCombe, but they refused to get it for me!

But I am looking forward to the Collot book...he's another one that doesn't often get a good look...even though he was in the center of the storm as well.