Fatal Friendship: The politics of Jacobin friendship

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

http://fhs.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/31/1/51.pdf

A download-able article by Marisa Linton, one of the historians who participated as talking heads in THAT BBC docudrama, on the importance of networks of friendship in revolutionary politics.

1) Do you think filling public posts with friends and countrymen can be qualified as nepotism or it would be an unhistorical interpretation disregarding the context of those times?
 

2) What was the role of friendship in your opinion?

3) Were Desmoulins and Robespierre really such close friends? And Robespierre and St.Just? Wasn't Robespierre closer to Couthon? What are the historical proofs of the friendship ties between the revolutionaries?

4) Why do British historians of French revolution seem so obsessed with "fatality"? :D 

 

Comments

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the pdf file yet, though I was wondering, in relation to regional dialects etc., whether Robespierre and Desmoulins would have had a similar dialect/regional accent. When you are away from home (at school, university, in a strange city), that's something that can bring people together. Just a thought, anyway.
On the fatality point - the British pro-revolution MP Fox commented at the time that his rival, Pitt, and his party would never tolerate the example of a successful republic flourishing in Europe. I think the 'fatal' narrative - revolutions are doomed to fail, they're doomed to end in bloodshed, begins with Burke - who, having made his predictions, joined Pitt in making policies to ensure that his 'predictions' came true - and has been injected into every portrayal ever since. It's to stop the British having another revolution. "it'll only end in tears".

Btw, have you ever seen the Halas and Batchelor animated film version of 'Animal Farm'? Orwell's revolutions-are-doomed-to-fail narrative is now a fixed classic on the school curriculum.I know - because I have to help with neighbours' kids' homework - that kids who have never even heard of the Russian or French revolutions are being taught this parable at school - so when they come across the historical version, they'll say - oh yeah, I know - revolutions, those are those things that are always doomed to fail, like in the book where the nice horse gets killed...HOWEVER what's weird about the Halas and Batchelor version is that it was made at the height of the Cold War and CIA funded, but at the end of the film the animals stage a SECOND revolution (not, as some have said, a counter-revolution). Thus, Orwell's negativity is negated! I wonder if the CIA were happy?

In the recent USA remake, the tacked-on 'happy ending' is that the farm animals get a NEW human master!!!!! The American Republic's version is telling viewers that what you need is a King. WTF, as they say.

All I have to say is...

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

In which Marvin the Paranoid Android has never been more apt.




...couldn't resist.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Great post, you have made me think A LOT!
Poor Orwell, had he known...After all, he also wrote Homage to Catalonia. It is true, Animal Farm has turned to a tool of propaganda, when i was a teenager, our US teachers of English ALWAYS made us read that. The end of the new remake is INCREDIBLY telling, as for the real faith in democracy...I wonder what they are preparing us for :D

By the way, I have been educated in the conviction that the French Revolution was actually A HUGE SUCCESS. You know, a bourgeois revolution, a no-way-back, final break with the Ancien Regime, the dividing line between Early Modern and Modern History textbooks and all that. This view of it as a failure is rather new to me and it is so related to (some) British and (some) US historiography and popular culture. I am shocked how the enormous impact of the FR can be erased from historiography and the so-called memory: the great transformative impact FR had in German lands, Italy, Spain, Latin America, Poland, Balkan peoples, etc. C'mon, even the West Point is modeled on a French revolutionary institution...In the 20th century people in different parts of the world, from Russia to Arab lands or African countries, still searched for inspiration in the FR in their emancipatory movements. Is this a fatal failure? I think it's more like a nationalist envy speaking, combined with a strong message of political quietism ;-) OK, I admit that the second is probably more important than the first xD It seems they try really hard, as I have read somewhere here that in the UK some people had to write an essay in the high school on the "reasons of the failure of the FR".
As for the geographic proximity: who were actually connected by contacts between families were Desmoulins and Saint-Just. The latter wrote in a letter to the former that he'd be visiting some kin of Camille who lived in the Aisne.

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I had to read _Animal Farm_ in school too. As I recall it was presented to us (as Americans) as being a criticism about revolutions in other countries...such as Russia.

It wasn't meant to apply to the American Revolution, because (of course) ours turned out so perfectly ;)

[missweirdness.livejournal.com]

I did too, and we had to research about the Russian revolution also. I did a excellent paper on Trotsky (who i thought had the best hair ever xD)and i even started liking other revolutions..and other revolutionaries..like Mao xD

supposedly Camille and Maxime were that close..but who knows?

and i liked Animal Farm. It was one of my favorite books in high school. =)

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly, as far as I know the testimonies of a close friendship between Robespierre and Desmoulins are rather limited: the fact that the former was the best man of the latter and the godfather of his child remain the strongest proofs. Then there's the letter written by Lucile to Robespierre after Desmoulins is jailed. But not much more, actually. Especially there's no proof they maintained contact in the period after the Louis-le-Grand and the beginning of the Revolution.
As for the friendship between Robespierre and Saint-Just, there are hardly any written proofs of it. It is actually quite difficult to prove that it went beyond 1) St.Just's admiration of Robespierre (proven well enough by the famous letter and by later testimonies of St.Just's friends) 2) close political alliance (those frequent visits of St.Just in Robespierre's appartment). I do believe this friendship existed and was strong and important, but I don't know whether there are many proofs of it. Actually, Lucile's letter can be considered one of these rare proofs, as she mentions this "new" friendship there.
Well, and then there are Charlotte's memories, of course, in which she says that her brother had friendship for both of them, though a bit more for Saint-Just than for Camille ;-)

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

As far as Robespierre and Desmoulins' relationship goes, the first known letter from the former to the latter from 1789 is incredibly formal. It would seem to suggest that they hadn't kept in touch, if they were ever particularly close, which doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion either. But who knows, really?

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly that's what I was referring to. I saw the letter and it was a way more formal than the letters St.Just wrote to Desmoulins.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Quite true. I also think people make much more of the fact that they went to school together than in warranted just because they would later share political beliefs for a time. I'm sure they both also went to school with many people who did not grow up to be particularly noteworthy and I know they went to school with a few who grew up to rabidly royalist. Who's to say that at the time either of them mightn't have been closer to one of them? There's about as much real evidence, since neither seems to have really kept continuously in touch with anyone from Louis-le-Grand, as far as I know.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

And after all, there is no need to support the argument of friendship with an invented (or not proven) childhood friendship. I can imagine that in those exciting times strong emotions flourished very fast, fueled by ideological affinities. For example Couthon and Robespierre became close friends very fast, as did Robespierre and St.Just. So I suppose that Desmoulins and Robespierre could become close enough since 1789, so Robespierre was asked to be his bestman and a godfather of Horace. It's just too vivid imagination of today's psychoanalyzing novelists that need to underline Robespierre's "treason" of Desmoulins by inventing sentimental childhood stories. The problems arises when the novelists use their novels as primary sources, as you once stated.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

No doubt they were friends for a time. How close and during exactly what period would be harder to say for sure. Certainly, they were more than just political allies (it's quite possible, as the example of Robespierre's relationship with Marat shows, to be in agreement with someone you feel personal antipathy for, but that's clearly not the case here). On the other hand, as far as we know he never wrote him the kind of heartfelt letter he wrote to Danton when the latter's first wife died and many people consider Robespierre and Danton to have been allies more than friends. (All the same, who knows what he might have done if Lucile had died giving birth to Horace?)
Unfortunately, this is really all speculation. Which makes great material for any number of novels. I just really wish novelists would stop taking their works for some divine revelation of the Truth and accept the limits of their craft. Historians should really do likewise, for that matter.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Then there is also the question of interpreting the peculiarities of the 18th century French style (all this: I love you, Hug/Kiss him for me, our heads will kiss in the basket and all that stuff). It is interesting to see how the historians and novelists sometimes really invent incredible stories from a very small (and totally innocent) remark, while they willfully ignore a much more "ardent" a manifestation (completely innocent, too, indeed) if it is not convenient to their interests.
I am thinking of this crazy French who psychoanalyzes Robespierre saying something like: "When St.Just was on the missions, Robespierre felt like an abandoned mistress", basing himself on a COLLECTIVE letter signed by several members of CPS calling St.Just back to Paris :-O
On the other hand, nobody invents homoerotic stories basing himself/herself on a much more expressive letter Couthon wrote to St.Just when he was in Lyon. 'Cause it just does not suit the purpose ;-)

[lucilla-1789.livejournal.com]

T thought that the "failure" meant that French Revolution couldn't establish stable and lasting way of governing France. Some countries have moved from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and democracy without much bloodshed and the whole 19th Century period was politically strange in France (I'm not expert of this period, but seems like they had multiple revolutions, two emperors, at least one king and then republic again)

But I wouldn't emphasize the revolution on itself as something that is bound to cause chaos. Revolution is just one of the many things that cause a sort of power vacuum, others being invasion, independence, death of a tyrant and so on. Usually these all are followed by civil war.

On a lighter note. British Revolution and republic - now, there was a great success!

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

But which important countries did it BEFORE the FR cleaned the way for it? Before it symbolically/physically killed the ruler by divine right and formulated the universal rights of men?
(Small remote islands like Iceland don't count :-)

[lucilla-1789.livejournal.com]

Great Britain!
No, just kidding, that had nothing to do with universal rights, but I think that the fact that British Revolution had happened, made it somewhat easier to give the monarch death penalty.

The real success of French Revolution was of course it's long term affects. Napoleon, strangely enough, is part of this good legacy. Napoleonic wars certainly helped my country (Finland) towards autonomy and independence.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and the Glorious revolution also doesn't fulfill one of the definitions you put out: "transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy and democracy without much bloodshed."
True about Napoleon, though hard to admit :-)

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

England is Protestant, though, so the situation regarding 'Divine Right' was different (not in Charles 1's mind - he was a full-on believer, of course, but in the minds of many of the people) - Charles I was making war on 'his' people and flirting with Catholicism - ie, he fitted the bill to be Antichrist of the Latter Days, in the Millenarian Protestant belief common at the time, whilst a Providence doctrine would mean the New Model Army were right, because God had given them victory. I think that's why you don't get a Vendée in Protestant England - you get it in Ireland instead.

There was a movement that you could describe in terms of 'universal rights' during the English Revolution of the mid-17thc, in the Levellers, Ranters, Diggers and so forth: Norman Cohn's 'The Pursuit of the Millennium' gives a good account of the ancestry of their doctrines in Medieval and pre-medieval Europe, Christopher Hill excellent on the period itself. The Agreements of the People and the Putney Debates are probably the best known documents of the movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_of_the_People

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Very good point (and very interesting info on the Levellers, Diggers, etc.- I wonder how many of them were more or less forced to emigration?).

I don't see anything reasonable in Schama's bashing French revolution through idealizing the US one. I very much prefer Palmer's idea of sister revolutions, not a competition of nationalist myths. And of course, the Glorious revolution contributed a lot to the birth of the modern World, too.

What I meant before was to point out to the enormous impact of the FR on the history and social thought of 19th-century Europe. An impact, which is now being minimized by the notion of failure.