Something for the weekend. Ah, the things you can find on YouTube! An orchestral performance of the scene from Casablanca (1942) where a group of German officers are singing Die Wacht am Rhien, only to be ultimately drowned out by the French patrons in Rick’s Cafe singing La Marseillaise. Go here for an excellent examination of this moving scene. At the time the movie was made the Vichy regime had banned the song and it had become the anthem of de Gaulle’s Free French Movement. The movie was rushed into release shortly after Allied, mostly American, troops had landed in North Africa in Operation Torch. After some initial fighting, the French garrisons came over to the Allied side, so the film had a strong contemporary resonance for American audiences which was completely fortuitous.
The French song was written in the 1790s when the French feared a German invasion from the East, the German song in the 1840s when the Germans feared a French invasion from the West. Die Wacht am Rhein was (I believe) written by German university students, and the tune is still used for the Yale alma mater “Bright College Days”. Of course Columbia’s alma mater is set to the old “Kaiserlied” that we know as “Deutschland uber alles”. History is weird.
The more appealing French patriotism is here.
My Uncle John (RIP) landed with the First Infantry Division that day. He was still battling until the end of the war, about which he had very little to say. You knew. You could see he was a serious man that had seen and done serious things.
I normally go there to play bagpipe music. YouTube (with appropriate warnings) also has videos of a number of Wehrmacht marching songs; and a military funeral music/song: Ich Hatt’ Einen Kameraden.
“I once had a comrade.
You will not find a better one. […]
Universal.
Again, the standards of the more appealing French patriotism can be seen here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Oriflamme.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_France#/media/File:Pavillon_royal_de_la_France.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_France#/media/File:Royal_Standard_of_the_King_of_France.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_France#/media/File:Naval_Flag_of_the_Kingdom_of_France_(Civil_Ensign).svg
Don’t get overly romantic for the Old Regime Art. There were reasons why the French Revolution occurred, not least of them being that the last able Bourbon King of France died in 1715. As Napoleon said, he did not usurp the crown of France, he found it in the gutter and lifted it up with his sword.
Don’t get overly romantic for the Old Regime Art. There were reasons why the French Revolution occurred, not least of them being that the last able Bourbon King of France died in 1715. As Napoleon said, he did not usurp the crown of France, he found it in the gutter and lifted it up with his sword.
The salient defects in the political and economic order of France were not peculiar to France and were addressed with much less disruption in other European countries, Britain and the Hapsburg dominions to name two. Napoleon’s abiding achievements included the codification of the laws and improvements in the administrative architecture of the French government. That did require the dispossession of certain vested interests. It certainly did not require the Vendee or the Terror or the Civil Constitution of the Clergy or the other paraphenalia which emerged during the period running from 1790 to 1796. It also did not require conquering continental Europe.
The salient defects in the political and economic order of France were not peculiar to France and were addressed with much less disruption in other European countries, Britain and the Hapsburg dominions to name two.
Partially as a result of the French Revolution. Reforms were conceded because the ruling classes saw what could happen, from the example of the French Revolution, if they did not.
Napoleon’s abiding achievements included the codification of the laws and improvements in the administrative architecture of the French government.
Indeed, reforms that he was able to ram through as a reaction to the chaos of the Revolution.
It certainly did not require the Vendee or the Terror or the Civil Constitution of the Clergy or the other paraphenalia which emerged during the period running from 1790 to 1796
Indeed. Napoleon brought a peaceful settlement to the Vendee, and peace with the Vatican, although relations remained tense because Napoleon inherited the traditional Gallic resistance to the Pope.
It also did not require conquering continental Europe.
Napoleon and the Sun King were brothers under the skin! Napoleon had once opined that you could do much with bayonets but you could not sit on them. Napoleon’s Empire rested on force, and the crowned heads of Europe were unwilling to cede supremacy in Europe to him. Their generals learned, albeit slowly, Napoleon’s style of warfare, and after the roll of the iron dice of war in 1812 came out poorly for Napoleon, showed in 1813 in Germany just how much they had learned from the Master.
Napoleon had once opined that you could do much with bayonets but you could not sit on them.
I think that was Bismarck.
If I’m not mistaken, the Vendee was over ‘ere Napoleon seized the government.
Indeed, reforms that he was able to ram through as a reaction to the chaos of the Revolution.
Disagree there. The events in 1786-90 scrambled existing power relations and thus the capacity of this actor and that actor to frustrate a rationalization of the legal and administrative system. Note, for good or ill, the Estates-General re-drew the provincial boundaries of France. Note, France wasn’t the only place in the world which codified its laws. New York accomplished this with a state commission (which completed its work in 1909, IIRC).
The Hapsburg agrarian reform was carried out more than fifty years later, partially in response to domestic disturbances. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the extant agrarian system among the seigneurial classes, btw. British agrarian reforms antedated the French revolution (though were injurious to the interests of the peasantry).
I should note that the abolition of monarchy has commonly been a prelude to severe political dysfunction and / or a decline in the quality of political institutions in their formal operation and / or tyranny. Lots of examples of one or another, revolutionary France foremost among them. See the German states after WWi, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Brazil, the Latin American republics all through the 19th century, several post-war Arab states, Iran, &c. There have been exceptions, such as Italy after 1945, Greece after 1974, interwar Czechoslovakia, and the Indian princely states after 1947. Note, Italy and Greece are among the few where abolition of the monarchy was accomplished through a referendum.
I think that was Bismarck.
Actually it was Talleyrand, Napoleon’s Foreign Minister, to Napoleon, now that I bothered to look it up.
If I’m not mistaken, the Vendee was over ‘ere Napoleon seized the government.
Napoleon ended the guerilla war by exempting the area from conscription, reopening the churches through the Concordat, and using government funds to rebuild in the Vendee. A very wise policy, as the Vendee remained peaceful for him.
Disagree there
We will have to agree to disagree Art. Napoleon was, as a result of the Revolution, given a blank slate to create anew. The Sun King, with his experiences of the Fronde, would have envied him.
British agrarian reforms
The enclosure movement goes back to the Seventeenth Century. I wouldn’t call outright theft of the traditional Commons, a reform. The reforms of British politics in the Reform Act of 1832 and the subsequent Chartist Movement were inspired by the ideas popularized by the French Revolution. In Austria, that master statesman Metternich delayed the inevitable, but he noted that walls were useless in attempting to stop the spread of ideas.
I should note that the abolition of monarchy has commonly been a prelude to severe political dysfunction and / or a decline in the quality of political institutions in their formal operation and / or tyranny.
Except when it doesn’t as in the case of the American Revolution. In this area, the circumstances attending the ending of the monarchy are all important.