Transcript of 503. The French Revolution: Bloodbath in Paris (Part 1)

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God of the people and of Kings, of cities, of the countryside, of Luther of Calvin, the children of Israel. Remember the times when the sinister tyrants crushed underfoot the rights of the French. The time, not so long ago, when wicked ministers deceived peoples and kings. Princes, nobles, bishops swam in opulence. The people shuddered under their wealth. Their palaces were cemented with the blood of the oppressed. The tears Eres of Misery. That was the song of the 14th of July, which was written by the director of the Paris Opera, François-Joseph Goseck. The words were by a poet called Marie-Joseph Chenier. It was written to celebrate the second Bastille Day. So that's the 14th of July, 1791. Dominic, I'm guessing that most of our listeners will have realized from this preamble that we're back with the French Revolution, our old friend, because we did our first series, didn't we? To coincide with the Paris Olympics, but they're long gone. But we're continuing the story because we want to do this in sufficient depth that we can give the subject the attention that it deserves. And which we didn't when we did our first treatment of it, and we dispatched it in a single episode in 50 minutes.

Yeah, not anymore, Tom. Those were very distant days. So hi, everybody. This is season 2, isn't it, Tom? Yeah. It's the second season of the French Revolution. And so we're kicking off at the Jean de Mars Mars, which is on the western side of Paris on the 14th of July, 1791. This was a huge public occasion, Bastille Day. And Jean de Mars had this earthen stadium with this great embankment with the grandstands. They had an altar of the Fatherland as they'd had a year before, and thousands of people turned up. But it was quite different this time, 1791. That hymns tells the story a bit. It's all about shuddering under the wealth of tyrants and blood and people being crushed underfoot and stuff. But a year before, in 1790, the same authors had just written a te Deum.

Yeah, so hymns and all very Catholic and stuff.

Yeah, that's one element of change. Then the other is in 1790, so a year after the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI had been there and he had sworn an oath to the Constitution, and he had really been the star of the show. In 1791, he's not there. There are no royal flags, there are no royal symbols. And on the altar itself, the word kua, king, has been literally scrubbed out. So there's that big inscription which says the nation, the law, and then it says the, and then there's a missing word because they've taken out the word king.

Just to say, one thing that immediately strikes me about those words, we still have this thing that it's wicked ministers deceiving the people and kings. So the king, he's not grouped in with that list of people who are swimming in opulence, the the nobles, and the bishops. So there is still a fantasmal sense of respect for the king.

Yeah, they're very fantasmal, I would say.

Very fantasmal, yeah.

So the reason we thought it would be interesting to kick off here, the Shon de Mars, is that just three days after this great celebration, there will be gunshots and screaming and bodies piling up on one of the bloodiest days of the revolution, a turning point in French history, the Massacre at the Jean de Mars. So that is to come in today's episode. But Tom Maybe before we get there, we should remind ourselves we should have a HBO-style recap.

What happened in season one?

In season one of the French Revolution. Listeners will remember that at the heart of the revolution, there were three things that collided. One was a financial and political crisis, France running out of money. Number two was a social crisis, people starving because of free weather events and so on. Number three, probably the element of this that interests you most, Tom, is the cultural moment.

Lots of abstract nouns.

Yeah, people We're being obsessed with virtue, with the Roman Republic, with the idea of purity.

And of course, Shom de Mars means it's the campus marshes. It's named after the place where the Roman people in the Republic would gather to celebrate their civic identity.

And as we will see running right through season 2 is the same obsession with Rome and the lessons of Roman history, so important for the French revolutionaries. Listeners will remember that to try and cope with all this, Louis XVI had very grudgingly recorded States General, this supposedly ancient assembly, the French People. That had declared itself the National Assembly while it was meeting. The disorder on the streets went out of control, culminating in the stormy of the Bastille. Then we had an episode that you did, Tom, about these market women marching on Versailles, effectively dragging the royal family back to Paris. Then you have this great fever of reform, of rebooting France, which included, most controversially, this attack on the independence and the privileges of the French clergy.

Yeah, people probably have been struck by the mention of Luther and Calvin in that passage that I read right at the start of the show. That's a reminder that I think that there are elements of the Reformation in what is happening in France, and that's what lots of devout Catholic think. There is an anxiety that the revolution is essentially a replay of what happened with Luther and Calvin. And it's still current two years on from the fall of the Bastille.

Absolutely, it is. And it's extremely controversial out in the countryside. To To move forward to the summer of 1791. By the summer of 1791, actually, very few of these things have really got better. So prices are very high, people are still hungry. A lot of the problems have not yet been fixed. But there has been a definite change in the cultural temperature. Paris has become drenched in politics. People are reading newspapers and cafés. People are wearing patriotic, tricular, cockades in their hats, all of that stuff. So that coincides with the tone of public life becoming much more fractious and polarized. And it's against On that background, as we ended the first, the climax of the first season, Louis and Marie-Antoinette deciding that they would make a break for it and escape Paris. They decided to flee to the Eastern border where they would collect troops and probably march on the capital. But they were intercepted at Varennes and brought back by this huge jeering crowd. Then they arrived in the city to a terrifying silence.

Nobody taking their hats off.

No gestures of respect at all. Then we ended with the gates of the Twilery Palace literally clanging shut behind them while the crowd lays into their bodyguards and tries to tear their bodyguards apart. That's the recap. Now, let's literally continue from where we left off.

Season 2, part 1.

Season 2. The gates have closed. As Louis looks out at the city, what he sees is a city that has completely turned against him since the news of his attempted escape. It's not just that he had tried to run away. It is that he had left a letter in which he said, I was lying all along. I hate you.

I hate the revolution. I wish you nothing but ill.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. While he's been gone, the press, which previously had been very much this stuff about the king has been misled by treacherous ministers. What do they call him?

Papa.le Bon Papa.Le.

Bon Papa, exactly. All of this stuff. That has vanished, and now they call him a traitor, a The Coward, Louis the Fulce. If you look at some of those papers, the Annal Politique, which was the most popular newspaper in these clubs that had sprung up around the provinces, allies to the Central Jacobin Club, a revolutionary club in Paris. He deserted the throne, the capital, the empire, and by this cowardly defection, intended to come back with foreign executioners to rule over 25 million corps. They're not wrong, really.

No, they're not wrong. That was his plan, effectively.

This is the thing. We'll be talking a lot about conspiracy theories in the next couple of episodes about conspiracy theories and paranoid suspicions. And yet the truth is they're right.

I mean, there literally was a conspiracy. Exactly.

And that's so important in everything that follows, explains the climate of fear, of suspicion, and the belief that basically, if you're living in a world where people are conspiring, you'd be better off killing your enemies before they kill you. That's the dynamic at the absolute center of what will follow. And the aggression, the sheer aggression, which, of course, draws on what you talked about at the very beginning of the first season, the torrent of Invective against Louis and particularly Marie-Antoinette. This is now turbo-charged by the flight to Varennes. There's a radical paper called Pierre Duchesne, which was edited by this incredibly aggressive journalist called Hébert. Some people may be familiar with a faction called the Hébertistes, who are going to run into trouble later on. He wrote, You are no longer my king. You're no longer my king. You're nothing but a cowardly deserter. We will stuff you into Charenton Prison.

But also a lunatic asylum.

A lunatic asylum, yeah, exactly. We will stuff you into Charenton and your whore into the hore, and your whore is Marie-Antoinette, the Queen.

And the hore is where prostitutes are sent.

Yeah, exactly. During all this time, there's also been a sense in which the common people have been emboldened as never before. We will hear a lot in the next few episodes about a group of people called the Sansculottes, working class people who don't wear breaches and stockings but wear trousers. And we have had, in the last few days, there's been so much panic about the flights of Iran. There have been groups of them, impromptu militias, armed often with pikes or with makeshift weapons taken to the streets. They had, while Louis had been gone, besieged the National Assembly, not aggressively, but because they wanted to be let inside to swear oaths to pledge their loyalty to the revolution. So on the one hand, they've done that, and on the other hand, they've been rampaging through the streets, smashing images of the king, his statues, his busts, ripping down pub signs, ripping down street signs, anything that has the taint of monarchy.

So virtuous and principled, but simultaneously quite fun.

Well, simultaneously quite fun, but also potentially very frightening. If you're a lawyer by... If you're somebody who prizes authority, stability, and all those kinds of things.

But I think if you've been raised in the shadow of the authority of the Crown, to be intimidated by it, and then you have a license by the behavior of the king, but also the sense that you are part of a large number of people who feel this. There must be a giddy sense of excitement.

I think there is.

The thrill of almost blasphemy in toppling these statues.

I think we talked in the first French Revolution series about how if you miss the fact that for lots of people, this is quite good fun, all of these marches on Versailles, these great public spectacles. A lot of people, as we will see, treat these political moments as a carnival. You can throw off the shackles of everyday convention, and you can go around smashing stuff up and having a fine old time. A lot of people, particularly young men, I think find that very invigorating. They always do in history, but the French Revolution is a really good example of that.

Well, high-minded vandalism. Yes. I mean, you get the best of both worlds, don't you?

Yeah, you do indeed. The question now is what will happen to the King? France has never been a very Republican country. There has been Republicans, but they have been a tiny, tiny minority. And Republicanism, even in 1789, 1790, has never been more than a real minority sport. But now, in the last few days since Louis' flight to Varennes. More and more people have been saying, maybe the whole institution, it's not just Louis that's the problem, it's the institution that's the problem. The club that has been instrumental in this is a club called the Caudillier Club. That met on the left bank in the heart of the publishing district and the theater district. It had a very radical populist tone. Its's most famous members were people who we've talked about before or will be featuring very heavily. So a guy called Camille Desmoulins, radical journalist.

Who we featured in the previous series.

Exactly. Who's the hero of Hilly Ramantell's novel, The Place of Greater Safety. A chap called Jean-Paul Marat, formerly of New Castle.Skin.

Problem.skin.

Problem. Another skin complaint person, Georges Danton, who we haven't really talked about before, who's this great, titanic, earthy, brilliant speaker and organizer who will play a very big part in the river. He's basically Gérard Depaugea, isn't he?

Well, he's also, to a degree, he's you, Dominic.

Tom, so kind. I've got a lovely skin, though. That's the difference.

Well, it's not on every I mean, but a man of great principle and appetite.

D'ancian was married to a 12-year-old or something when he was executed. So let's not go there. Right. So the Cordelier Club, within hours of the King's flight, has been arguing, Okay, enough now. The National Assembly should pull the plug, and let's declare France a Republic. And in the next few weeks, the Cordeliers Club and other radical clubs bombard the National Assembly with petitions saying, You've got to scrap the monarchy now. Louis has shown he can't be trusted. So the decision lies with the National Assembly, and we should perhaps recap a bit to remember what that was. Remember that Louis had called the Estates General, and that had met in 1789. They had declared themselves a National Assembly, dissolving the boundaries between the three estates.

The priests, the nobles, and the common people.

Exactly. But what's actually now happened is the nobles and the priests have all gone home. They're guttered about what's happening, by and large. And not only they gone home, most of the commons have gone home. Because they didn't expect that they would be there for two years. Most of them are massively overworked, stressed, deluged with correspondence and petitions from their constituents, and they've basically just given up. So there's only the 400 hard core deputies left. And they are trying to completely reboot France to rewrite the government structures, the tax code, the law codes, and to write a new constitution. And they are absolutely worn out. In fact, from this point onwards, in this whole story running to when we finish French Revolution, who knows when that will be, 2029, everybody is just constantly tired and half drunk. They're just absolutely exhausted.

And also, I mean, quite young as well. So it's increasingly becoming a young man's game.

It is exactly.

It's young, drunk, inexperienced men.

Yes, exactly. And also, frightened men. So these deputies who had been elected in 1789, they didn't think they'd be there two years later. I mean, they thought they were going to Versailles, of course, not Paris. So they're in the center of Paris now, and they are surrounded by people with trousers on and pikes who are smashing up street signs and things. There are constant bred riots and brawels in the markets and all of this. Actually, the deputies We can tell from their correspondence, when they write home, they say, I actually don't feel safe anymore. I'm genuinely concerned about my personal safety. And to add to that, at the back of their minds from this point onwards, summer of 1791, there is a lesson in what can happen when order falls apart completely. France has one really important and lucrative colony, which we haven't talked about at all yet, which is what is now Haiti or Haiti, which is a place that was then called Saint Domingue. And in August 1790, there had been the first signs of a slave uprising on Saint Domingue, people burning sugarcane fields and so on, breaking the machines. Then at the end of 1790, the Black Freedmen on had launched an uprising.

At the end of August 1791, there will be a mass slave rebellion, overnight rebellion that will plunge the entire colony into civil war. An extraordinary, extraordinary story.

Dominic, you said most of the deputies in Paris is about order falling apart, but not for all of them.

No, abolitionists.

There are people who are very enthusiastic about this because one person's order falling apart is obviously another person's Declaration of Liberty and Freedom. Yeah, exactly. That's certainly how the slaves feel about it, obviously. But there are people in Paris who feel this is perfectly in tune with the revolution. The revolution has claimed liberty as one of its three founding ideals.

There are indeed, yeah.

Even this is furiously contested.

It is exactly. You can feel conflicted about it, just some deputies clearly do. Some deputies think, Well, I believe in the rights of man. Actually, my sympathies probably do lie with the slaves on Saint Domingo. But at the same time, they're getting letters from merchants on the Western Atlantic Sea border, France, saying, Our town's entire economy depends upon this. You've got to intervene militarily immediately.

Also, we said that one of the principles upheld in the Declaration of Rights of Man is the right of property. If a slave is at property, then that's in conflict with the upholding the ideal of liberty. There's much to be resolved.

There were all these tensions. Even before the flight to Varennes, there had been some people who had looked at all this and said, Okay, this has now gone too far. The revolution must now be brought to a swift conclusion and order and normality restored to France. Their champion, and a person who's probably a bit forgotten now in accounts of the revolution because he's not quite as colorful and charismatic as some of the other characters, but the man who's really the Revolution's big star in the summer of 1791 is a very young man called Antoine Barnave. Barnave came from Grenoble. People who listened to the first season will remember that the French Revolution began in Grenoble.

He's a Protestant, isn't he, as well?

He's a Protestant, yeah. The protestants do, as the Luther and Calvin reference at the beginning, they do play a oversize part in the imagination of the revolution. He's a classic revolutionary. He's a lawyer's son, he's a lawyer himself. He's very young. He's only 27 when the Bastille falls. He had become one of the great stars of the National Assembly. He was a founder member of the Jacquemin Club. He drew up its first rulebook. And he has a little faction ally to him. People who, I suppose you might call for want to a better word, liberals. So there's a couple of noblemen called Lamef. There is a magistrate in Paris called Dupont. And they think, by the summer of 1791, they think, a lot of people think, these are the people, this is the faction that are going to run the Revolution. Their attitude is this. They say, look, the disorder has gone way out of control. We need to end all this. We need to end all the chaos, the polemics from the clubs and from the radical press. We need to restore order in the army. The way we can fix the economy Economy is by further liberalization.

We need to scrap all the antiquated regulations and things. We need to have a proper laissez-faire economy. So scrap price controls, have a free market. Let the free market work its magic. They reminded me when I was reading about this of the people who were around Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Well, that worked out well, didn't it?

In Russia, yeah, it worked out equally well. So they're liberal reformers, think tank people who basically have figured how they think they'll fix France. It'll be short term pain, but in the long run, they think it will all pay off.

But also, Dominic, I'm guessing further example, which I know the revolution is themselves aware of, is England after the Civil War. And that sense also then of radical thoughts, opinions, incredible liberty of expression, and the sense that there does need to be control at the center, and there needs to be, if not a monarch, then a monarchical figure. But I'm guessing But Benar, well, I know, Benarv is thinking, We already have a king, so let's try and work with him. Or more specifically, let's try and work with the queen.

Yeah. You could see them as wigs, actually, in some ways, Tom. You could see them as a little bit wiggish. They're all about free trade. They're all about a liberal oligarchy, sensible people.

With a neutered monarchy.

Yes, exactly. They've already, by the way, passed a law called the Le Shapelier law to clamp down on strikes and workers. That has made them quite unpopular on the streets. But as you rightly say, they think they can use Louis and Marie-Antoinette. Now, Bonnave had been one of the three deputies who had gone to get them back from Varennes, and he had sat. People will remember who listened to the final episode of the last series. He had been there sitting in the coach with Marie-Antoinette on the way back. He had thought to himself, Oh, this is brilliant. With the Queen, she's very charming. I think we can do business together.

This is so crucial about how both Bonnave and indeed Marie-Antoinette come to be seen. Because the idea of Marie-Antoinette as a manipulative whore who only has to meet a man to work her wiles on him and seduce him and corrupt him. It's like Cleopatra with Anthony.

It totally is.

From this point on, the moment Benarve is back, even while he seems the cock of the roost, the pornographers, the satarists are getting to work and are portraying him as a a dupe of the Queen, like Louis, that he is the victim of this vampireess.

But you know what, Tom? As with what we're saying about the paranoia and the conspiracies, they're not entirely wrong.

No, they're not. But it's not a sexual seduction, is it? No, it's not. It's a political seduction.

It's a political seduction. He got back and he thought, I can do business with the Queen. We understand each other. I understand now where she's coming from, her anxiety for her family. She understands that I'm the man. She respects me. And they start exchanging coded letters. And basically, Barnav says, Let's do a deal. I will make sure the National Assembly go easy on you. You must give up all thoughts of escape. You must commit yourselves to making the new Constitution work. Now, in return, I will make sure that the new Constitution has a really good, solid role for the monarchy, that you'll still have powers, you'll still have your self-respect on all of that thing. Actually, to begin with, he's pretty much as good as his word. When they wake up the morning after those gates have klang shut at the Tuileries Palace, they might be expecting they'll face a show trial, they'll face really aggressive interrogation. There's none of that. Now, they are under house arrest. They can't go out of the Tuileries. They can't even close the door of their rooms. They're constantly supervised, understandably, because they'll try to run away again. But thanks to Barnav and his pals, the National Assembly treat them with great tolerance.

They send a committee to interview them, but they give them 24 hours to get their story straight. When Marion, Swinette, and Louis say, Well, listen, we were just frightened. We were running away to where we thought we'd be safe, but we absolutely would never have raised an army to march on Paris. The very idea of it. The idea that we would be in touch with foreign powers, never. I mean, those are outright brazen lies. We were possibly quite sympathetic to Louis-Amède Surnet in our previous episode, but they are lying about this. They were talking to the Austrians, and they were thinking about marching on Paris.

There are a lot of lies that the King is telling. I mean, he clearly feels that he's obedient to a higher calling.

Yeah, he does. That would be his justification, wouldn't it?

But he's still... I mean, he's an absolute fibber.

He is a fibber. So thanks to Barnab, the National Assembly decides that they will reinstate Louis as long as he promises to obey the Constitution. And when a few people in the assembly say, I don't know about this, he has behaved very badly. Barnab gives a brilliant speech, and he says, The next step that the revolution takes would be a very dangerous one. It would undoubtedly be an attack on your, our property. It is time to conclude the revolution. It needs to stop. The nation is free and all the French are equals. So let's, no more.

Except they're not, are they?

No, of course not.

Because they still have a monarchy. I mean, that's the whole point.

But from their point of view, their property owners, remember a lot of these doypities, they're like, You know what? He's probably right. Because I actually have always been a monarchy. I do have a fair bit of property. I have my country house. I have If my parents have a whatever, whatever. Yeah, it is right. Let's calm things down. So the National Assembly decides on the 15th of July, so the day after the thing that you began with, Tom, the Bastille Day, the day after that, the assembly votes Fine. Louis, swear an oath. When we finish the Constitution, we swear an oath, and then he's back. And of course, all the radicals, so the Cordulier Club, this club on the left bank full of artists and working class radicals, and Desmoulins, Marat, and Danton, they go ballistic. On the evening when they hear about this, there are people in there saying, Listen, the deputies have been bought and paid for by the courts. Barnabes and all these people are in bed with Marie-Antoinette. This is unbelievable. The king ran away to the frontier to try to get a foreign army to attack us, and they're just going to let him off when barely even a slap on the wrist.

Dominic, when you look at the pamphlets that are produced in this period, the emphasis on Marie-Antoinette as the agent of this is stupifying. She's like the center of a world pool of blood, sucking everyone down.

And it'll actually get worse. I mean, in the next episode, it will get even worse. When the news that the assembly has made this decision hits the street, so this is on the afternoon, the evening of the 15th of July, people go absolutely ballistic. There are people shouting in the cafés, there are brawels. There's a huge protest outside the National Assembly with people chanting. They invade the theaters and they say the performances should be closed, shut down, because we should be in mourning for the death of liberty. Now, ominously, this is what they had done in 1789, just before the fall of the Bastille. So people have a real sense. Something is building, something is coming. Then on the next day, the 16th, is a day of extraordinary drama. First of all, at the main club that all the revolutionists belong to, the Jacobin Club, There is this incredibly bitter session in which a lot of club members are accusing the deputies of treason and of selling out to the monarchy. And Barnav and his friends, the Lamef brothers and this guy, Adrien Dupont, they say, Okay, enough. I'm not standing for this anymore. This club has served its purpose.

It's time for us to go. And Barnav and co say to all the other deputies, We're out of here. We're not going to stay and be insulted like this. And they all storm out of the jacobin. Literally, they go across the street to another abandoned monarchy.

I love the fact that all of these factions are named after monestries.

So this was a cistercian group called the Foyon. Of course it was. And they set up a new club called the Society of the Friends of the Constitution. And they're called, obviously, the Foyon Club after these monks. And only six deputies stay behind at the Jacobin Club.

Is there a particularly prominent member of these six deputies?

There is a man who is going to become more and more prominent as the story goes on, and his name is Maximilien Robespierre. There. So he stays behind at the Jacquesaban where all the others have gone. Meanwhile, at the club on the left bank, the Cordillier Club, the people there say, Right, big rally. Let's take this to the streets. Tomorrow is a Sunday. Perfect. People are at work. We'll get everybody to gather. They'll gather at the ruins of the Bastille, and then we'll have a huge march across town, and we'll go to the stadium, to the Jean de Mars Stadium, where the altar to the fatherland is, when there's a lot of stuff still hanging around from Bastille day. And there we will sign this huge petition. It'll be the biggest such thing in history. The petition says, Louis abdicated when he ran off to Varennes, France must be a Republic. This will be the turning point. Actually, the one person who says, Hold on, is Robespierre. Robespierre says, I'm not sure about this. A big rally and all that thing, that will give the feuillon a pretext for a crackdown. We don't really want that.

We don't want to give them any semblance of an excuse.

I I think he comes across from all of these narratives, today's episode, the next episode we're going to do, and so on. He's a very, very shrewd and impressive political operator.

The thing is, he is quite smart, isn't he? He really is. He's tactically cunning, Robespierre. He can see what's coming. But of course, people don't recognize that at the time. They say, No, no, no, no, no, it'll be brilliant. We'll have this huge march. We'll have a great rally, all of that thing. What could go wrong? Yeah, what can go wrong? They break up that evening, the 16th. They say, There will be so many of us, the deputies will have to give in. Louis will fall, and France can walk into the new dawn of a Republican tomorrow. But Tom, it will not work out like that.

Well, we will find out how it does work in the second half. So please join us then. Hello. Welcome back to the Rest is History. And for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you'll be delighted to see that I took the opportunity of the break to put a blanket up to stop the sun, blinding my eyes and turning me very pale. Dominic, high drama in Paris. It's the morning of Sunday, the 17th of July. Weather is clear. It's going to be hot. It's going to be sunny. What happens?

As the dawn breaks everywhere across Paris, there are the members of these radical groups called the fraternal societies and clubs and so on, streaming to the agreed meeting point, which is the Place de la Bastille. But when When they get there, they find that the entrances to the square are blocked by guards, by members of the National Guard. What's going on? What is going on is the city authorities have been busy overnight. Now, the city authorities, the two people who run Paris, they're both men of 17 1989. So they're what you would call liberal reformers. One of them is the mayor, who is a guy called Jean-Sylvain Bayy. He's an astronomer, isn't he? He loves staring at the sky, and he's a fan of the tax evader, Benjamin Franklin. So he's a great pal of the Americans. And the other fellow was also tainted by his association with North America, and that's the Marquis de Lafayette, the guy who runs the National Guard. The man described by the official Dictionary of the French Revolution as an empty-headed political dwarf. He's back on the scene.

Well, all dominant. You could say, you say he's tainted by his association with America, you could say burnished by his glorious feats in defense of liberty. And he's actually, I think, played a very, very difficult hand pretty well. And is a rather admirable figure.

Well, people who were persuaded by your defense of Lafayette in season one will be disappointed to hear that in season two of the French Revolution.

I know. Things don't go well for him.

Lafayette's career collapses in absolute shame and ignominy.

Yeah, But he's not alone, is he? He's running up a down escalator, and he does survive. He will live to see another revolution. All of these guys we're talking about, they're all going to end up dead.

They are. I mean, this is the extraordinary thing. Whenever I do these episodes, I always think, let's look at the names at the end, and I look through the names like, Yeah, he was dead six months later. He's guillotined, whatever. Lafayette has been moving rightwards all this time.

Or you could say everyone else has been moving leftwards. I suppose you could.

Yes, you could, of course. You could say that. Because he has been using the National Guard to implement the attempt to clamp down on strikes and work at unrest. So he's actually gone from being the darling of the streets to being drawn further and further into conflict with the streets.

Well, it's his job to keep order in Paris.

Tom, you are so team Lafayette. What have they got on you, the Lafayette family?

I'm just trying to see the world through his eyes and having some sympathy.

I'm not criticizing him, but of all the people that you know, I'm not talking about Justin's podcast, but life, generally. Can you think of anybody who's generally more in favor of using troops to break up street disorder. I'm usually all over that.

Churchill.

Yeah, but you don't know Churchill. I mean, you know him.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, right.

Okay. Yeah, but the reason you despise Lafayette is he's not very good at it.

Yes, exactly. I like competence. I like competence.

But he's torn between his conscience and his duty.

I like competence and the regular payment of taxes. That's what I believe in. Right. So the demonstrators have been blocked off by Lafayette's troops. So they say, Well, we're not going to do the big rally. We'll just get by sideways to the Shanda Mas, which actually they do. When they see the National Guard there, some of them say, Okay, we're in for trouble. They have like, rocks in their pockets. Some of them even, I think, have pistols. They know that there is danger today in this Sunday. So a midday, the stadium is starting to fill up. As it's filling up, people notice this shuffling and moving going on under the platform where the altar is. And they go to investigate.

Two very improbable figures. Yeah.

So they find that hiding under the platform beneath the altar are a young man who makes wigs and an older man who has a wooden leg. With them, they have a picnic camper with a lunch, a nice spread. They have a load of carpenter tools. What historians think is that these two men hiding under the platform, had a plan to use the tools to drill holes in the platform so they could, as women were crossing the platform to sign the petition, they would look up their skirts. Upskirting. Upskirting. The skirters, exactly. But the rumor goes around that they had a bomb, that they're terrorists, that they're royalists terrorists or something. And they are dragged away by a group of laundry men who literally, they string them up on a lampe post, they hang them from a lamppost. And then, Tom, they cut their heads off. I mean, that escalated very quickly.

I mean, it's a good way to celebrate Bastille Day, isn't it? To string someone up and then chop their heads off and parade the head on a spike.

It's true to the spirit of Bastille Day, I suppose you could say, but it's quite... I don't approve of the wig maker and the wooden legman's behavior, but it's a tough penalty, I think. Anyway, news of this travels across Paris. There's been terrorists or something or upskirtters lurking around at the stadium, and they've had their heads cut off. It reaches City Hall, the Hôtel de ville. And by e, the astronomer says, Oh, my God, this shows that this is totally out of control. He says, And this is a sign of the rhetoric that's going to be used throughout the revolution. He says to the city council, This whole rally is a foreign plot, a conspiracy against the Constitution and the nation financed by foreigners who are attempting to divide us. He flies the red flag, which is the flag of martial law. He declares martial law, and he sets off with a small group of troops towards the Champ de Mars. When he gets to the stadium, the Marquis de Lafayette is there with hundreds of National Guardsmen, and they're like, Right, let's go and break this thing up. Now, inside the stadium, there are perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 people.

A lot of those are radical supporters, but of course, a lot of those are just people. It's a Sunday. It's a very nice day.

It's fun. It's a fun thing to do. Go out with your family, have a stroll, see what's going on.

It's a day out. Lots of people would have gone to the Champ de Mars anyway on a warm summer Sunday. So there are tens of thousands of people there, and of them, perhaps 6,000 have already started to sign the petitions. Lafayette starts to march his men in through the Southern embankment of the stadium, and people start booing, and some of those people start to throw stones at the National Guard. And then, we don't know when, we don't know how exactly, a single shot rings out. And it's the classic way that these things start. No one knows who's fired it, but the guardsmen immediately assume they're being fired upon by the crowd. They drop to their knees and start shooting. And suddenly, it's all total chaos, and there are more and more shots.

There's no one among the National Guards who worry about this, because that was an issue when the National Guard go to Versailles to bring the King, Queen back a year or so earlier, is that Lafayette can't be certain that his men will follow him. No, he can't. On this occasion, they do.

They do. And maybe because they are being stoned by the crowd, out, I guess. And there's a sense of camaraderie. You're absolutely right. It's remarkable in some ways that the National Guard do stay loyal to Lafayette, given, as we'll see in the next few episodes, their loyalty cannot be dependent upon. But at this point, yes. Then there is total chaos. There are thousands of people screaming and running everywhere. Another detachment of guardsmen on horseback charges into the stadium, starts trampling people, running them down. Troopers are hacking at people with their sabers.

Very Peter Lou Massaker.

Yeah, but Peter Lou Massaker with with knobs on. Because when the firing finally dies down, it's a few minutes only, but when the firing dies down, there are dozens of bodies everywhere. If you look at estimates, they differ wildly. At the bottom end, it's perhaps 50 people dead and hundreds injured. The radicals themselves had the hundreds of people had been killed and thousands injured. I mean, we can't possibly know. But it is a very, very bloody afternoon and a terrible shock to the body politic of Paris.

Because this is theIt's the first outbreak of mass violence in Paris since the Bastille, right?

It is exactly. It's the first outbreak of violence where the violence has been perpetrated by the forces of order against a defenseless crowd. I think that's what people find so shocking.

But it's also the first example of revolutionaries on revolutionaries. Exactly.

Yeah, it is. The different groups of revolutionaries interpret it very differently. For Barnav, and the Foyon and Lafayette, and Bayou the mayor, this is a sign of the danger of disorder. An overdue warning that it is time to put all this to an end and crack down because this is going to become the norm if you don't stop it. For the radicals, it's a sign that Bayes and Lafayette have joined the corrupt conspiracy being run by Marie-Antoinette, and they hate the people. Actually, big spoiler alert, Bayi is going to end up dead. He's going to end up being sentenced to death. As a special treat for him, they move the guillotine to the Champ de Mars so that he can be executed on the very spot where he's accused of carrying out this massacre. So that's a sign of how bad things are going to get. But actually, in the short term, the Champ de Mars does seem to be a victory for the moderates because the assembly immediately passes a very strict anti-riot decree and makes it retroactive. So they can punish offenses carried out before the rally on the Champ de Mars. Within days, more than 200 people have been imprisoned, some of them just for throwing stones or even shouting slogans.

There are dozens of people who are held for weeks in solitary confinement without trial, without even being told the charges against them. It is part of a much more general crackdown in the summer of 1791.

But it still strikes me as strange that the general mood of opposition to the monarchy that seems to be manifesting itself and the fact that the victims of this massacre are being widely mourned, that the final should have had the tools for oppression at their hand, that the Lafayette's men should have followed him. I mean, I never made that point, but it does seem quite I suppose it suggests that we perhaps shouldn't assume that the the onward sweep of the revolution is as inevitable as it seems, do you think?

I think part of it is that, Tom, you're approaching this knowing what we know, which is we know the revolution is going to continue and it's going to get worse and it's going to become more polarized, more radical, or better, if you like that thing. They don't know that. And so there are a lot of people who think, oh, wow, this has now definitely gone much too far. There are a lot of people who do crave stability, and they want the return of order. You made the comparison with the English Revolution of the 1640s, 1650s, as then there are a lot of people who are anxious about chaos and anarchy.

But Lafayette famously didn't become Cromwell.

Well, so there is a definite sense in 1791, in the summer of 1791, actually, that France could be moving towards a more authoritarian regime. So for the first time now, the police are shutting down publishing houses and clubs. I mean, you talk about, could he have become a Cromwell? Lafayette census men across the city, they seize copies of radical newspapers like Marat's newspapers, and they destroy them. They even start to reactivate the old Royal Secret Police, and They have people literally spying on conversations in taverns, writing reports, what people are thinking on the streets.

The radicals are doing this as well, though, aren't they? They're also saying that it's the duty of a patriot. Yes. If he or she suspects a traitor in their midst to denounce that person.

Let's get into that now, actually, because that's such an interesting thing. There's a brilliant historian called Timothy Taket. I know you've been reading his stuff as well. His book's on this period, so his book on the flights of Iran and his book on the Coming of the Terror. They are brilliant on this It was 1791, 1792. He says in that, What happens now is that a paranoid style of politics becomes completely normalized and institutionalized on every side of the political spectrum. Understandably, because Varennes showed that you're right to think there's a conspiracy. There absolutely was a conspiracy.

And that people might be telling lies.

Yes, you can't trust anybody.

If the king could tell a lie, then who can you trust?

Yeah. Taket has this lovely section on a particular trope, a device, which is the idea of the traitor who wears the mask of patriotism. And this was a phrase that had been coined by the radical journalist, Maira, the mask of patriotism. It's so toxic, that's an idea, because the idea is the more patriotic you appear to be, the more keen on the revolution you are, the more likely it is that you're actually a traitor who's conspiring against the revolution. You can see why they have this idea. A, because there have been conspiracies, but B, because their sense of history, I mean, you would know this better than anyone, Tom, their sense of history, which is rooted in the Roman Republic, the unveiling of plots and conspiracies, the Cataline Conspiracy by Cicero. They've all studied it at school, and it's so central to how they view the world. That Republican virtue is constantly in danger of being undermined by sinister Machiavelian, by liars, like the king, or like the Foyon, or like Mirabeu before him, or like Lafayette, and all of this stuff. And that the more loudly somebody proclaims his patriotism, the more likely he is to be a traitor, and there is no greater service than to expose him, to denounce him.

In Hilary Mantell's novel, A Place of Greater Safety, the Hero is this guy, Camus de Mulat. But he already written. He'd published a Declaration of the Rights of the Accuser. He had said, To be a good citizen is to accuse and denounce your neighbors. It's incumbent upon you. The Jacquemin Club, actually, from this point onwards, has a rule. All its members must swear an oath to denounce all traitors of the fatherland, even at the risk of our lives and our fortunes. It's very social media, circa 2020, 2021.

It's a feature The culture of left wing politics from this point on, right? That on the radical end of the left, there's always been a tendency to denounce.

Yeah, to call people out.

To say they're traitors or they're lackies of capitalism or whatever. Even before the left has really come to power in the revolution, they're already at it.

Oh, completely they are. Absolutely they are. The Jacqueminot actually sent a message to all their nationwide sister clubs, and they said, We would like you, each club to send in regular reports on its village or town or area. At the beginning of the meetings in Paris, the secretary will read out the reports and he'll say, Well, here's a report from Brittany. The people there say, The such and such guy, and this butcher, and this whoever, and that this town is full of counter revolutionaries. This constant now institutionalized search for the enemy within. This is obviously going to be very bad news for all the revolutionists because they will all end up being consumed by it.

Again, I mean, they're not wrong. There are enemies within. There are still nobles present in their château across France. Of course, there are all these priests who have refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the revolution, who are seen as being in league with the Pope, and because of the Pope, with the Catholic authoritarian powers, so- You're dead right. I mean, they're not wrong about worrying about this.

There's a group of people we haven't mentioned very much today, the emigreys, the exiles. There are 10,000 of them, and they are literally just across the border in the Rye land, and they are conspiring against the revolution.

And these are the people the King and Queen were going off to hang out with.

They were indeed. So there are local authorities across France who are now saying, Okay, the revolution is in danger. France is going to be invaded. We need to read people's post. We need to go and search the country houses. We need to detain all strangers, travelers, and so on and so forth. And in his book on Viren, The Flight to Viren, Taket has a section about Brittany. And he says, Brittany is a perfect example of where where this is heading. The local authorities there say absolutely clearly, There must be no limit to the measures against the enemy's hatred and fanaticism. He gives the example of a district called L'Ouindanou. In L'Oùindanou, they organized mass arrests of all nobles and priests who hadn't sworn the oath to the Constitution because they said, These guys can't be trusted. They're a fifth column. When the people of L'Oùindanou were challenged about this, Isn't this a bit extreme? They said, and I quote, it's worth reading because I think it so anticipates what's to follow. We had only one choice to seize our enemies before they commit crime and murder. We have served both humanity and the Constitution in separating out those who would cause trouble and disorder.

We will not cease pursuing them until the sacred fire which we hold on our breast has purified every corner of the French nation. I mean, that is pretty... You can understand why they're saying it, but at the same time, it's pretty ominous reading, given what we know about what will follow. But of course, nobody knows in 1791 what will follow. In fact, Vahnav thinks, the momentum is still with me. He thinks like Robespierre, the radicals overplayed their hand at the Jean de Maas, and now I have the political space to launch the crackdown I always wanted and to get through the slightly more conservative version of the Constitution that I wanted. And so as a result of his deal with Marie-Antoinette, they come up with a constitutional plan, which is when we have elections, there will be strict tax and property thresholds for voting and for holding seats. The King will still have a fair bit of power. He'll have the right to veto, really important. He can veto things he doesn't like. He can choose his own ministers, ambassadors. And Bonhoff says to Marie-Antoinette, What more does it take to be king? We're going to give him everything he wants.

It'll be fine. Now, he's starting to get now a lot of criticism from the Jacqueminte Club because people are like, he's giving away a lot, and he's clearly very close to the court. There's this sense that he's actually overreaching a bit.

Well, he is becoming the corrupt minister of the king who is always the object of hatred, as mentioned in that song that we quoted at the start of the program.

And as you say corrupt. On the one hand, you have this young man, lawyer, very fluent, very articulate, clearly very ambitious, who is Marianne Twinet's cat's poor. And on the other hand, you have a man who is who's actually now being called the Incorruptible, and that's Rob Speer. And this really is Rob Speer's moment, when his star has been growing, but this is the moment when he comes out as the champion of the radical cause. It's worth stopping for a minute and talk about Robespierre, because Robespierre, in many ways, he's the anti-Bernab. He's not interested in the trappings of power. He's not overtly ambitious for office. He seems to care only about the common people and the public good. Robespierre is from a place called Arras in northeast France. He's the son of a lawyer. Like you, Tom, he's a very earnest, very intense scholarship boy. He's obsessed with the Roman Republic like you. Like you, he's obsessed with Ruso.

Yeah, he's pale, thin.

Bony, tall.

Vicky sinister.

He's always perfectly turned out like you. His hair, his white wig, always powdered.

I think if I wore a wig, mine would be perfectly powdered.

And he has these little glasses, steel-rimmed glasses. Some people said Robespierre was brilliant. There's a guy called René Levasseur, who sat with him when they were in the national convention. And many years later, he said of Robespierre. He was sober, he was chaste, he had few personal needs or ambitions, he had no desire for economic gain. His only ambition was to acquire a reputation as the best and most honest citizen, which I know is what your cricket teammates say about you. But other people who worked with him closely, Tom told a different story.

Did they, Dominic? What did they say?

Proud, prickly, priggish.

Honestly. Cold. My sympathies are all with Robespierre.

The thing is, both these things are almost certainly true.

I don't think so, Dominic.

He is honest and sober and earnest and all of this. But at the same time, clearly, Robespierre is a very cold fish. I mean, he has no private life at all, as far as we tell. He's totally obsessed with and devoted to politics.

Because he's wedded to the good of the people.

In a way, no one has a higher appreciation of his own probity and virtue than he does. He's obsessed with his own virtue. He's one of those political monomaniacs. We're very familiar with them, that this radical politics often throws up somebody who's overpowering moral earnestness actually makes them a very chilly companion. But he gives these speeches that at first deputies laugh at. They're very long, they're very earnest, intense, full of references to the Romans.

Nothing wrong with that, Dominic.

Incredibly emotional, though. So his emotionalism, people always talk about Robespierre as chilly, and he's chilly in his personal relations. But his oratory is not chilly at all. He will be talking about himself as a martyr. He'll be talking about giving his life and shedding tears for the people. He has these long, tortured pauses in his speeches. And all through his letters, his speeches, they're shot through. He's a total conspiracy theorist. So even before the revolution, it's an interesting thing. Historians have looked at the letters of leading revolutionists and they said, the funny thing about it is that before 1789, most of them weren't paranoid. They'd sometimes talked about conspirations and stuff because that was part of the political imagination of the day, but they weren't obsessive about it. Robespierre was always obsessive about it. He was somebody who had been on Reddit or something and spent all his time arguing with people on social media and all that. That would have been his personality.

Because I think that he has a Manechean sense of the world, doesn't he? That there is, in political terms, good and evil, and he's on the side of good. The fact that good is being foiled can only be explained by the workings of evil. The fact that there might be economic problems or accidents or incompetence or whatever doesn't quite fit into that. It doesn't quite give it the edge in the drama that clearly, Rose Pierre thrills to.

I totally agree, Tom. A lot of people, I think at the beginning, they listen to him and they laugh and they say, It's all very simplistic with him. There's always an easy answer. It's populism in a way. It's a moralistic populism that a lot of more worldly people, your Mirabos or whatever. Or Balal. Yeah, they think it's a bit déclassé and a bit down market. But as you rightly say, the moralism, the manichaeanism, for some people, is intoxicating. As early as 1789, he got a a letter from a young man called Antoine de Saint-Just. Saint-just said to him in this letter, I don't know you, but you are a great man. You're the representative of humanity in the Republic.

You'd love to get a letter like that, wouldn't you?

I get them from Restes History listeners all the time. Rob Sphere has a towering ego, I think, and a sense of self.

But a towering charisma, too.

I guess if you like that thing.

Well, Saint-Just does. Saint-just is, as we will see, he's a very impressive young man, if slightly frightening. Exactly.

For Robespierre, actually, the current political climate is a gift because every day in the autumn of 1791, he's getting up at the Jacquemin club. Barnav and co have walked out of that club, and he gets up and he says, What a load of sellouts they are. Why are people still hungry? Why is the King still hanging around? Why is this Constitution much weaker than we thought? Well, we all know why. It's because they're part of the conspiracy. It's because they've sold out to the Austrian Queen and to the forces of international tyranny.

Which, to a degree, Benarv has done. I mean, there's enough truth in that accusation that you can work with it.

Absolutely. So the third of September, the Constitution is finally finished, and there's a big procession, torch-lipped procession to the Twilery Palace to deliver it to the King. Louis says, Fine, thank you very much. I'll have a look at it. What they've given him is he will be head of the executive. There'll be a single chamber assembly. Louis can choose his ministers, Louis is head of the army, Louis has a right of veto. Property owners, tax players can vote, but the very poor can't vote, women can't vote, and slaves can't vote.

And so presumably, slaves remain property.

Slaves remain property, exactly. We will get on to in future episodes, some of the people left out of this story, for example, women. But the big question is, it's a compromise. So is it going to be the compromise that basically doesn't really please anybody, but pleases enough people to get through? Or is it the compromise that falls between every conceivable stool and pleases nobody at all? And will Louis accept it? The days go by. If Louis doesn't accept that Constitution, he is out as king. That is the deal. And his six-year-old son would become king under a regency. So on the 13th of December, he announces his decision. He will accept it. And the next day, he goes and swears an oath to maintain it and defend it. And there are great parades and fireworks and bonfires of celebration. There's a huge balloon, patriotic ribbons that flies over the-Like the Olympics. Yeah, like the Olympics. A scientist is in this balloon. He's throwing out copies of the Constitution across villages. It's a village all across the Île-de-France. For the first time, Louis and Mariano Tuinette are allowed out of the palace. They can go to the opera, they can go around the city and whatnot.

The deputies are like, It's over. It's done. They meet for the last time on the 30th of September. The new legislative assembly that will succeed them under the new constitution has already been elected. They've agreed that none of them will sit in it, a self-denying audience. So one of their successes comes along and he gives a speech and he says, You have done the most amazing thing. And anyone who wants to succeed you, it will be what Alexander the Great said of Philip the second of Massodon. You've left us nothing to conquer because of your amazing achievements. A lot of them are saying they declare the revolution is finished. Brilliant. It's all done, dusted. One of them, a Protestant pastor called Saint Etienne, he actually has already started writing a semi-official history of the revolution. Brilliant. Yeah, it's finished. But the thing is, it clearly hasn't finished. There are two shadows, Tom, of what is coming. The first thing is that the last full day of the Assembly's existence, the day before they broke up, one of Bonnard's allies, this guy, Le Shapelier, had tried to push through a law. He'd said, We don't need all the clubs anymore because it's done.

The revolution is over. Now that the revolution is over and the Constitution has been We decided order and public peace should prevail. We don't need this ranting and raving in the clubs. At that, one of these other deputies gets up to interrupt him, and it's Robespierre. Robespierre says, and I quote, For my part, I can see that the new constitution still has enemies within and without. I can see conspiracy and treachery sounding the alarm as they sow unrest and discord, and the leaders of opposing factions, fighting less for the cause of the revolution than for the power to rule in the monarch's name. When I see these things, I don't believe the revolution is over.

Once again, he is speaking truth to power.

That's it. When he finishes, when he goes out, there are loads of crowds waiting for him, and they carry him through the streets. Hurrah for Robespierre. He's speaking for the people once again. That's one shadow. The other shadow is in the Twilery Palace because-Fibbers, fibbers, fibbers, fibbers. Barnav has been completely double-crossed. Louis and Marie-Antoinette have Absolutely no intention of working with this new constitution all the time. Marie-antoinette has been sending secret messages to Vienna, and she has been saying to her Austrian family, These people are brutes. They are mad men. She writes to her brother, and she says explicitly, We are going along with Bonhoeven Co, The better to double cross them later. Louis writes to the Austrian Emperor, Leopold II, I am a prisoner. I am under duress, I beg you to come to the aid of the King and the Kingdom of France. Given that he is the center of this new Constitution.

He's the King of the French now, isn't he? Not the King of France. Yeah. He's asking a foreign king to attack his own people.

Now, Tom, there's one thing we've had missing from this episode that listeners to season one will have undoubtedly noticed. There's been no Simon Sharma. We should end with a little It because it wouldn't be a rest of his history of French Revolution episode without Simon Sharma. Simon Sharma writes at the end of his chapter on this. Poets of romantic weather forecasting, like William Wordsworth, continued to describe the revolution as a very cyclonic disturbance. But increasingly, it was no longer the storm that invigorates and cleanses, rather a dark and potent elemental rage moving forward in indiscriminate destruction. Its breath was no longer sweet but foul. It was the wind of war.

If the wind of war comes, can the storm clouds of war be far behind? Dominic, brilliant stuff. What a cliffhanger. In our next episode, France will indeed be going to war. If you can't wait for that, then you can hear the episode right away by joining the Rest is History Club at therestishistory. Com. Thanks, Dominic. Thank you all for listening. Bye-bye.

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