Suppemental 21: The French History Games
This is The Siècle, Supplemental 21: The French History Games.
Welcome back! I’ve got a special treat for you today. It’s early August 2024 as I record this, and the world’s eyes are on Paris for some intense competition. Well, if you’re a listener to this show, you know intense competition in Paris is kind of my thing. But I’m not the only one who spends too much time obsessing over 200-year-old French politicians. Today I’m joined by two fellow French history podcasters: longtime friend of the show Everett Rummage, of Age of Napoleon, and new friend of the show Will Clark, of Grey History: The French Revolution. We got together to compare notes on some of the more exceptional — or exceptionally stupid — people of the age, and award a few medals to some of the standouts. The whole conversation was a blast, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did recording.
I wanted to, as always, thank Evergreen Podcasts, the network The Siècle is a part of, and also all of my supporters on Patreon. You can join them for as little as $1 per month to support the show and receive an ad-free feed.
A full transcript of this episode is available online at thesiecle.com/supplemental21. There you’ll also find links to Grey History and Age of Napoleon, in case you’re not already subscribed.
Episode 42, meanwhile is almost done. It has involved research detours into military science, astronomy, and animal husbandry to fully flesh out the main narrative, but the result is looking really good and should be in your ears soon.
Finally, in the interests of not getting sued, I wanted to acknowledge that the word “Olympics” is a registered trademark in the United States of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Any mentions of USOPC trademarks in this unscripted episode are strictly noncommercial, for educational or parodic purposes, and are not associated with any athletic or theatrical competition. They do not imply any commercial relationship or any other affiliation between this podcast and the Olympic Games or the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. For more information, visit usopc.org.
Now, enjoy our discussion. Be sure to stay tuned at the end of the episode for information on how you can share your own take on who the real winners should be!
Will Clark: Hello everybody, and welcome to this special historical edition of the Paris Olympics. My name is Will Clark and I’m the host of Grey History: The French Revolution, a podcast exploring the ambiguities and contested historiography of the French Revolution. But, today, I’ll also be one of your commentators for these very exciting and unusual Olympic Games.
Joining me in the commentary box are two fantastic history podcasters with a passion for French history. Firstly, we have the amazing Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast which covers the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte. Everett, how are you going?
Everett Rummage: Doing well, thanks for having me.
Will: Absolute pleasure. And joining Everett and I is the exceptional David Montgomery, host of The Siècle podcast, which is covering French history after Napoleon, starting with the Bourbon Restoration. David, how are you going?
David Montgomery: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on.
Will: No, the pleasure’s all mine.
So, with the three of us running French Revolutionary, Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic podcasts respectively, we thought it would be great to come together and celebrate the 2024 Paris Olympics. As such, we are going to do an Olympics of our own, but it will have a series of very important twists. Critically, while history’s heroes and villains will be competing for gold medals, they will not be competing in traditional Olympic events. Nelson will not be winning gold in sailing, nor will the deputies of the National Assembly claim victory for their performance on a tennis court. Instead, we have come up with eight fictional events and will each be awarding a gold medal to an individual or a team from our respective eras. Those events, in no particular order, are Corruption, Disappointment, Misfortune, Competence, Incompetence, Eloquence, Idealism, and Stupidity.
So, as we go through each of these events, each of your commentators will award a gold medal to an individual from their respective eras of expertise. To be clear, that’s myself for the Revolutionary era, Everett for the Napoleonic era, and David for the post-Napoleonic era. Now, as we learned last week, everyone loves a quick and uncontroversial opening ceremony. Everett, David, does that pretty much cover it?
Everett: I think so. Let’s do it.
David: I think all of our podcasts have demonstrated that there are no short answers to anything, but we might as well pretend like there are for today.
Corruption
Will: So, the first event of our Olympic Games is Corruption, and Everett, I believe you have a solid gold medal winner in this event.
Everett: Yes, for Achievement in Corruption, I have chosen Paul Barras. Now, listeners of my show will be familiar with Paul Barras, intimately familiar with him. He played a big role in our early episodes. He was Napoleon’s political patron/friend/rival, probably most known to history as the man who dated Josephine before she married Napoleon.
Right: Paul Barras, by Pierre Alexandre Tardieu, 1799. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Barras was a Revolutionary politician and before the Revolution, he was a very obscure figure. Historians are not even actually totally sure what he was doing before the Revolution. The theory I’ve seen is that he was living off of his pension as a retired military officer.
Fast forward to the years of the Directory, and he’s one of the most powerful men in France, one of the Directors, and fantastically wealthy. So, a man who appears to have never had a job other than public servant, who all of a sudden is living high on the hog, throwing big parties, wearing fancy clothes.
As both of you know, this was a period of elitism and corruption and sort of insider politics and Barras was the ultimate insider in this world of corruption and insider politics. So for me, he is the gold winner for corruption.
Will: Yeah, it’s hard to argue with that. He’s certainly the kind of individual that even in early on in the revolutionary era, I’m thinking 1793 and his actions down in Toulon, for example, there’s already accusations and whispers of corruption, pretty early in his Revolutionary career before the Directory.
So I think, as you say, the ultimate insider and a clear gold medal winner.
Everett: Yeah, it’s funny, you know, a lot of these revolutionaries, you look at them and you see that you see them kind of lose their idealism over the, course of these, you know, these horrible years,
But Barras, you know, seems to have right out the gate been a complete cynic and completely self interested.
Will: Well, to be fair to him, he does survive and cynics seem to do a better job of that.
Everett: True.
David: What was the, the famous line that, Abbé Sièyes was asked about what he did during the Reign of Terror, and he said, “I survived.”
Will: Exactly. And I have a sneaky suspicion that Abbé Sièyes might feature as a gold medal contender later on in this Olympic Games. David, who is your gold medal winner and are they equally cynical and the ultimate insider?
David: I feel pretty strong about this category here. I’m going to start off with one of the figures who spans all three of our periods, Talleyrand — who would be, I think, a solid entry in the corruption category just on his own. But, specifically I want to nominate Talleyrand and his colleagues in the 1814 French Senate, which was the sort of Imperial senate that was in power during the transition into the Bourbon Restoration. And this senate, with Talleyrand as its dominant figure, wrote a constitution for France that they submitted to Louis XVIII to become a constitutional monarch. And this constitution was rejected by Louis XVIII for reasons like it was calling him to the throne on behalf of the French people rather than a defined right, and that’s what gets all the attention in the history books.
Right: Portrait of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, 1817. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
But the fun part, and one reason why this constitution was unpopular at the time, was much of the constitution was devoted solely to securing privileges and money for the members of the 1814 French Senate. These senators were declared — the current ones — were declared irremovable and hereditary, and they were given massive taxpayer pensions. Not to all members of the Senate, only to the ones who were in office in 1814 at the time. Any new members wouldn’t get these same pensions. It was such bald-faced corruption that Louis XVIII was able to use this to put in place a divine right based constitution, the Charter of 1814.
Everett: You almost have to admire how brazen that is.
David: It was pretty brazen even by early 19th Century standards when there are some pretty brazen attempts.
Will: It’s also interesting just how far the French Revolutionaries had come, including Talleyrand himself. He was a member of the National Constituent Assembly. That assembly famously, when it drafted France’s first constitution, introduced a self-denying ordinance that prevented those deputies from being in the subsequent legislative assembly. So you’ve gone from one end in 1791, where you can’t even be present in subsequent assemblies, all the way through to the other end where you’ve got every perk possible itemized and protected in constitutional law. It’s uh, quite the pendulum swing and yes, I agree, quite the corrupt act.
David: From self-denying to self-dealing.
Will, what do you have?
Will: So, I’ve awarded this gold medal to Mirabeau, and Mirabeau was a giant of the initial Revolutionary years, and he played critical parts in the creation of the National Assembly and the monumental reforms which followed. But this self-proclaimed champion of the people, this dog who would bite despotism to death was of course betraying the people. Secretly, he was employed by the court. He was advising the Royal Family to flee Paris, and he was actually essentially advocating for civil war. And in fact, that’s exactly what the royal family would attempt to do months after Mirabeau’s death, when they fled in mid-1791 in the so-called Flight to Varennes. So, in publicly championing the Revolution and in privately promoting counter-revolution, all while taking a healthy paycheck in the process, I’m awarding the gold medal to Mirabeau.
Right: Portrait of Honoré Mirabeau by Joseph Bozé, 1789. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Everett: I’ve always wondered, one of the presidents of the Republic of Texas was named Mirabeau Lamar, after Mirabeau. I’ve always wondered if, you know, he or his parents ever found out about that. That’s a little weird to be named after, you know, the guy who was, I mean, literally like one of the biggest traitors of the era.
David: Well, Mirabeau had, uh, the very good fortune to die when he did.
Everett: Right.
Will: He had the exceptional fortune to die when he did. One of the very few prominent revolutionaries to die a natural death, really. In terms of whether I would name my own child Mirabeau, to be honest, there’s a long list of French revolutionaries that I would not consider, and Mirabeau is one of the top of those lists.
David: Far from the bottom of the list, though.
Everett: True, true.
Will: Also true. So, the next event is Disappointment, and David, who is your ultimate expectation mismanager?
Disappointment
David: Yeah, I’m gonna start with another big name that everyone will know, and I promise I’ll get into some deeper cuts a little bit later on. My gold medal winner for Disappointment is the Marquis de Lafayette, or General Lafayette, as he preferred to be known in this time, having renounced his noble titles. Lafayette had been sort of in prison for a lot of the period of the French Revolution, he was sort of in exile during a lot of the Napoleonic Era, but he came back to the forefront at the end of the Napoleonic period and throughout the Restoration. And he spent this entire time fruitlessly and almost entirely unsuccessfully fighting for reform/revolution.
Right: Portrait of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, by Ary Scheffer, 1832. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
There was a long period where he was just volunteering his name to any group of three revolutionaries who wanted him as a figurehead, whether or not he was involved. And almost every single one of these came to a disastrous and damp end. I’ll be talking more about one of these attempts a little bit later on. Even when he had some success, as he does a little to a certain degree in 1830 — some minor spoilers for listeners of my podcast, as I’m in the middle of this right now — even here when he does find success, Lafayette is ultimately going to end up feeling disappointed by what comes out. This is a man who, as they like to say, peaked in high school — but he kept going.
Everett: This is a great choice. He’s so frustrating to read about even today. You know, it’s like, when you’re watching a horror movie and you don’t want someone to open the door — Lafayette’s career is just full of those moments where you’re like, “What are you doing? Stop.”
David: It’s a lot really complex and you can admire the guy for keeping at it.
Will: Yeah, if nothing else, he might be a gold medal winner in Disappointment, but he would also be a gold medal winner in Perseverance, had we selected that event.
David: Sadly for Lafayette, that is not one of our categories, so he’ll have to limit himself to one.
So Will, do you have someone who endured more disappointment than Lafayette?
Will: I think I do, actually. I think my gold medal winner knocks Lafayette out of the park. And it’s the Messiah who wasn’t. For me, the gold medal winner for Disappointment in the revolutionary era has to go to none other than Swiss wonder boy and finance minister Jacques Necker. Now, Necker was considered a national hero in the early years of the Revolution. It was of course Necker’s dismissal which triggered the events which resulted in the Storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. But, for all the hope, for all the praise, for all the expectation, Necker just wasn’t up for the job. He was unable to sort the Estates General’s composition and structure before it sat and before it went rogue. He was unable to compile and dictate an agenda for that body. He was both so incredibly popular and also so ineffective in translating that popularity into real power and influence and tangible outcomes.
Above: Portrait of Jacques Necker, after Joseph-Siffred Duplessis, circa 1781. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Now, yes, to be fair to Necker, it’s not all his fault. King Louis XVI would not have been the easiest of employers, to say the least. But, Necker is literally described as a Messiah by some publications at the time, and for being so ineffectual in shaping the revolution’s progress, I think he’s a solid gold medal winner for Disappointment, even more so than Lafayette, in the subsequent years.
Everett: I will say this. There’s a postscript to his story, which is that his daughter, Madame de Staël, became one of Napoleon’s most hated critics. I mean, very few people got under his skin the way she did. So, you know, Necker, as you pointed out, obviously massive disappointment, but, his daughter kind of, uh, salvaged the family honor a little bit.
David: And then his granddaughter married the Duc de Broglie, who continued to be a major figure in French politics throughout the Restoration and beyond.
Will: Well, there you go. As, uh, I didn’t realize that last point.
Everett, who have you got for your gold medal winner in Disappointment?
Everett: Well, we’ve got another big name here for me, I picked Emmanuel Sieyès. This is a man — I believe we’ll be getting into more later in this episode — but, uh, a man with incredible talents as a writer. Some of the iconic publications from the period of the Revolution were written by Sieyès, a man who had really a first rate mind and a lot of interesting ideas about politics. A man who, when the Revolution was kind of, seemed to be at a dead end in 1798, 1799, decided to take it upon himself to overthrow the corrupt regime and return France to stability and good government. And it turns out that the type of mind that makes a great political thinker and writer is not necessarily the type of mind that makes a great political leader.
Right: Portrait of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, by Jacques-Louis David, 1817. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Before Sieyès’s coup, it was Sieyès’s coup. You know, he was the leader. He was the person who everyone involved in the plot kind of assumed would be taking the reins. And that coup, we know as the Coup of 18 Brumaire, we know it as Napoleon’s coup, because once the dust settled, it was Napoleon in charge, not Sieyès.
And, it is, frankly, a little bit frustrating and kind of depressing, actually, to read about just how easily Napoleon was able to shove Sieyès to the side. I found that a very interesting lesson in what power is and what kind of people are good at wielding power because Sieyès was a very intelligent man. But, his period ruling France never even got off the ground because he just was not suited to that.
Will: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It is fascinating how Sieyès is such a mover and shaker in the coup in 1799, and yet coming out the other side, he is completely emasculated from a political power point of view, and I thoroughly agree that he’s the gold medal for Disappointment. But I’m sure he would probably award it to himself in the wake of Napoleon’s victory
David: That said, I will say that, at least he has got a second act, which is more than a lot of people — I think a lot of people know Sieyès from his work in the early days of the Revolution, writing, “What is the Third Estate,” and such. And he came back a decade later, and still was — briefly, incompetently, but still — there, playing a key role at the pinnacle of French politics.
Everett: Yeah, it’s really a testament to what a great mind he had. It’s just — you know, I’ve always loved the anecdote: right before the coup, he started taking horseback lessons because he didn’t know how to ride a horse.And he thought, you know, “Well, I might have to be like a figurative man on horseback, and that might involve, literally riding on horseback. So I gotta, I gotta learn this real quick.” And to me, that’s just so illustrative of the situation he was in where he was, for all his talents, he was just not at all suited to be the type of guy who leads a coup.
Will: I think, even though we said that we wouldn’t kind of cross-compare individual winners, I do think that of the three that we’ve named for the category of Disappointment, I would award the bronze medal to Sieyès, because as you said, David, he does get a second act and he is still quite a considerable figure nonetheless.
David: We’re all trying to cooperate here, but I think some of this competition is going to rise to the forefront over the course of this French Historical Olympic Games.
Misfortune
Will: Perfect. Well, let’s continue the competition with our third category, which is Misfortune. And I might start this one off. And I found this a particularly tricky category. I mean, the French Revolution and misfortune go hand in hand. There’s no shortage of bad luck in the French revolution, but I’m going to go a little rogue and award it to the French Foreign Minister, De Lessart.
Right: Portrait of Claude de Lessart, unknown artist, circa 1790. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
De Lessart is not particularly well known, but the key thing to know about De Lessart is that he was the Foreign Minister in the lead up to the outbreak of war between France and Austria in 1792. The war that will eventually become the War of the First Coalition. Now, De Lessart was actually trying to keep the peace at a time when many Jacobins, in particular the Brissotins, later the Girondins, were incessantly calling for war. And to cut a long story short, the Brissotins were able to use De Lessart’s rather weak diplomacy to attack the foreign minister, to accuse him of not only incompetence, but in fact treason, and eventually they were able to indict him and haul him off to prison. Needless to say, he was perhaps a little out of his depth, but he certainly was not treasonous, and from the perspective of many constitutional monarchists, he was right in trying to keep the peace with Austria. After all, the war will go horribly wrong later in 1792, and the monarchy will be toppled just months after it commences.
Now, it’s because of the events in the aftermath of the overthrow of the monarchy that I think De Lessart is the gold medal winner for Misfortune. In the weeks that follow the Crown’s demise, we have the September Massacres, which saw the slaughter of thousands of prisoners, not only in Paris, but across the entire country. And it’s during these massacres that De Lessart is killed as he’s transported from one prison to another. So: innocent of treason, debatably correct in his foreign policy stance, and butchered on a road by his fellow citizens.
But, to add just one further insult to injury, and I suppose to add to his misfortune, it’s claimed by some contemporaries that Brissot knew that the minister he was denouncing was not a traitor, but that Brissot anticipated subsequent investigations would find De Lessart not guilty, and thus Brissot’s tactics to install pro-war ministers were justifiable. And it’s therefore perhaps a little ironic that Brissot would eventually be on the receiving end of his own tactics of denunciation without evidence, and he too would share the same fate of De Lessart just over a year later.
David: Appreciate you going with the deep cut. We’ve had a couple big names so far, and it’s time to get into some of the juicier second-tier figures.
Will: Every time I kind of come across his story — and he pops up now and then — I just, I feel sorry for the guy. Like, I think he was probably on the money in terms of policy. He was clearly innocent of treason and, you know, he is literally hacked to death. There’s no shortage of, I think, misfortunate individuals in the French Revolution, but his name does come to mind.
Everett: And boy, those early months of the war are just painful to read about. That to me is one of the hardest to understand, uh, revolutionary policies from that period, because the country was just so clearly not ready for war — as was borne out immediately after the opening of the war. And that’s always been something that’s — you know, of all the things from that period that are hard to wrap your head around, of which there are many, that is one of the hardest.
Will: Are you trying to tell me, Everett, that liberating your fellow neighbors by marching into them under arms is a difficult task that might go wrong.
Everett: I’m trying to tell you exactly that.
Will: Okay. Good to know. I’ll make a note of that. Speaking of misfortune, who have you got from the Napoleonic Era that you think is a gold medal winner for the category?
Everett: Well, I’ve picked someone, who in many ways actually was very fortunate. He was a person of great privilege, a person with many natural gifts: Józef Poniatowski, who was a Polish prince who became the only foreigner to become a Marshal of France under the First Empire. And he was, as I said, a man blessed with many, many talents: great intelligence, great political insight, highly respected in Poland — even to this day, there’s statues of him all over the country.
Left: Portrait of Józef Poniatowski, by Josef Grassi, circa 1810-13. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
You know, a person — you know, it’s funny you read about the great privileges of these aristocrats and you understand why it made the Revolutionaries’ blood boil because so many of these people just so clearly did not deserve it. But Poniatowski is one of those rare people who did seem to sort of — you know, obviously it wasn’t fair that he was born into this position, but he seemed to make the most of it and seemed to try to use it for the common good. And he was quite beloved in Poland.
But I picked him for this category because of how he died. You know, a person of this stature, you know, like a legend in his own time, absolutely worshiped by his soldiers. And at the Battle of Leipzig, one of the great battles of the Napoleonic Wars, Poniatowski is leading the rear guard. And as is his nature, he’s one of the last people in the rear guard. You know, he’s leading from the front, trying to cover the retreat. And in the process of doing this, he is riding back towards the rest of the retreating army, [and] is mistaken for an advancing enemy soldier. His own side starts shooting at him. He gets hit, but he keeps riding. He ends up trying to ford a river on horseback. And at some point in the middle of the river his injuries, the size of the river, got the better of him. And he comes off the horse, drowns in the river.
And to me, that’s always, you know, this is a guy whose life almost seems like fiction. You know, really just one of these — you know, the Napoleonic Era produced these just absolutely larger than life figures, people who seem like they’re something out of a fairy tale. And then this guy — to have one of these people who seems, you know, a living legend. And he dies in this just very — it’s a comedy of errors, practically. And it just seems so wrong that that’s how his story ended.
Had the Napoleonic wars worked out differently, he really could have been one of the great men of the 19th Century. And instead he drowned in a river the kind of death you would expect from like, you know, some worthless drunk or something. Really just a sad and not-fitting end to a guy who had an incredible story.
Will: Yeah, I’m, I don’t know even how to follow that up. I have no idea where to go. David, help me out.
David: I’ll just make the joke that he’s only the only foreign Marshal if you don’t count Karl Johan of Sweden.
Everett: That’s true. That’s true. Also, Marshal Ney, in theory, you know, that was how his lawyers tried to defend him after the Restoration, claiming that he was actually technically not a French subject. But Marshal Ney refused to use that defense and wound up getting executed, which is probably how he would have preferred it.
David: To, uh, explain the joke for anyone who’s not as immersed in this period as we are, Marshal Bernadotte was unexpectedly offered the crown of Sweden and ended up taking it up, and his descendants are still the monarchs of Sweden today.
Everett: Spoiler alert for listeners of my show.
Will: David, your gold medal winner for the event of Misfortune?
David: Well, I suspect mine might end up with silver or bronze after hearing that, but, my medal winner for the Misfortune for the Bourbon Restoration is Jean Baptiste de Martignac, who is a French politician, a lot of times, sort of a backbencher technocrat associated with the royalists. And like, I think, all of our nominees, he ended up rising to some fairly high positions, which is not necessarily a sign of misfortune. But when Martignac became the de facto prime minister of France in 1828, he found himself caught to a rock and a hard place. He was at the peak of French politics, but he was trapped between a Chamber of Deputies that was demanding reforms and a king who saw reforms as a slippery slope to revolution. And he did his best to try to navigate this dilemma and held on for a while, but ultimately found himself plucked from relative obscurity, only to discover that the chalice of victory was poisoned and there was nothing really he could do. Ultimately he was squeezed out and relegated back to the sidelines as he watched his successor as prime minister earn his spot in one of the later categories we’re going to cover.
Above: Jean-Baptiste de Martignac by Sophie Feytaud, 1824. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Everett: He is, you know, sometimes these — you look at people’s political careers and it almost seems like that they’ve been elevated purely just to take it on the chin again and again and again, until they finally leave the stage. And he is certainly one of those people.
David: Yeah, the thing about Martignac is, like, literally no one wanted him. He emerged sort of by default because none of the ministers in Charles’s government in 1828 had the confidence of the king, but Martignac was the only one who was good at giving speeches. And so by default, sort of, he became the spokesperson for the ministry and its leading figure. And, despite that, he never actually got appointed as the president of the Council of Ministers, the official formal title of prime minister. He was just sort of the de facto prime minister because everyone else around him was bad at talking.
Competence
Will: Well, I do wonder if giving speeches might be a common trait amongst the winners of our next category, because our next event is competence. And Everett, I associate a lot of names with competence during the Napoleonic Era, so I’m eager to meet your gold medal winner.
Who is standing at the top of the podium?
Everett: Yeah, you know, as you point out, Napoleon was obsessed with this idea. I actually thought of going with Napoleon himself in this category, but that’s, that’s a bit boring, isn’t it? I mean, Napoleon’s right there in the name of my podcast. So instead, I went with Napoleon’s right hand man in matters of politics and administration, Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès.
Right: Portrait of Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, by François-Séraphin Delpech after Nicolas Eustache Maurin, 19th Century. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
And this is a person who is not super well known to the general public. He’s really not part of the sort of pantheon of heroes of Napoleonic France that people know from this era. But he was incredibly important. He was, like I said, probably, the second-most important person in the Napoleonic government after Bonaparte. He was a lawyer by training and was a first rate legal mind by all accounts. He had been highly sought after as what we would today probably call a corporate lawyer before the Revolution. And then he served in every subsequent Revolutionary government and, finally became, Second Consul to Napoleon, after the Coup of Brumaire, and then Archchancellor of the Empire, a very grand sounding title, which Napoleon was very fond of.
And he was just a workhorse, very organized, very logical mind, and someone who was adept at getting things done in a system that was somewhat unwieldy with — you know, Napoleonic France was sort of a, just a straight pyramid style of organization with, you know, the emperor at the top and the local governments at the bottom.
Cambacérès was, you know, he’s the type of person today you would want, running a ministry in a government. He was just a very competent person all around. And, one thing I love about him is he was well known for his love of parties and food. And, you know, sort of living large, he had a very careful — he was very, very good with money and very careful with his spending.
And so he had this lavish lifestyle, but everything was accounted for perfectly and he never spent beyond his means, never went into debt his entire life, despite spending money on booze, and food, and men — because he was also pretty well known as a homosexual. But his hard partying ways never got in the way of business. He was to his core, a competent professional.
Will: Every government needs a high-functioning hedonist, particularly the French government, so I think it’s a well deserved gold medal winner. David, your winner for the category of competence. Do you have someone that can compare?
David: Well, the Bourbon Restoration is not normally seen as a high watermark of, uh, efficient government in France, but part of that’s just the bad press this period generally gets. I want to highlight a man named Joseph de Villèle, who was Prime Minister of France for a big chunk of the 1820s, officially or unofficially, depending on the period. And he was sort of the high-water mark of the Bourbon Restoration, if one sees the Bourbon Restoration as an attempt to bring back not just the Bourbon family, but also some of the spirit of the ancien régime. Which of course was controversial even within royalists at the time.
Right: Joseph de Villèle, by Jean-Sébastien Rouillard, circa 1820s. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Joseph de Villèle was an ultraroyalist, the sort of the far right of French politics at the time. And this was not a super popular position in France. It had the support of the king, especially Charles X after he became king in 1824. But Villèle succeeded because while his politics were very far right, he was an incrementalist, who was not prone to going for sweeping reactionary change all at once. He was prepared to win one victory at a time, which attracted lots of attack from other ultraroyalists who thought he was squishy and insufficiently bold. But year after year, Villèle just marked up success and stability for the Bourbon Restoration, first as finance minister and then as the prime minister, in foreign affairs. With the aid of a little bit of old fashioned vote rigging, he won a sweeping majority for the ultra royalists in the Chamber of Deputies. And in general passed a bunch of big wins for the ultraroyalist point of view — which, you know, a lot of people today aren’t fans of the ultraroyalist point of view, so may not like that Villèle was so effective.
I think the purest tribute to Villèle is even after his fall from grace, which was partly his fault, his enemies, who hated him and disagreed with all his positions, tried to bring him back as prime minister because he was seen as a stable hand who could manage the crisis France was in in 1830, even though they disagreed with him, which is quite the tribute when even your enemies think that you’d do a pretty good job right now.
Everett: It’s funny. He really bucks the stereotype of the royalist politicians of this era. You know, you really think of like, you know, just kind of intransigence and being out of touch and sort of not being very good at the workings of government. And, he really bucks the trend.
David: It doesn’t get a lot of attention because I think a lot of the focus is on sort of the royal part of ultraroyalism, there was a very vigorous and talented sort of parliamentary wing of ultraroyalism during the Bourbon Restoration. People who sort of came to power in 1815, these, in the chambre introuvable, the right-wing dominated Chamber of Deputies, and sort of took in parliamentarism as a sort of an ideal and working through matters in a parliamentary fashion. Some of these people even had the idea to outflank their enemy by supporting a massive lowering of the voting franchise to let even poor people vote, as a way to outflank the liberals who were seen as being strongest with the bourgeoisie.
Villèle flirted with this at times, although never had the courage to, to follow through with it. But, you know, the ultra royalists are associated with the elite, but there are some surprising minds in this camp, and Villèle is the foremost among them. Except possibly one of the other figures who I’m going to mention in a future event.
Will, what do you have for your medal in Competence?
Will: So gonna lie, this category kind of stumped me a little bit because it is so easy in the French Revolution to talk to and to point at incompetence. If you think about 1789 or 1792, whether you’re talking about an ultraroyalist, a moderate republican, a constitutional monarchist, a radical republican, no one wants to see the Napoleonic Era that follows the French Revolution. And so, as a result of that, I think you kind of inevitably get to a real clear winner for competence and at the risk of Everett calling my answer boring, I’m going to say that the gold medal winner is Napoleon Bonaparte. No other individual was able to climb so high, so effectively, and then stay at the top. Most of the leading revolutionaries end up dead. Those that don’t die generally end up making a hash of things. You do have some very competent administrators and individuals in the Committee of Public Safety, that’s for sure, but compared to Napoleon, I mean, I just don’t think anyone else comes close.
Above: Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole, by Antoine-Jean Gros, 1796. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
His performance at Toulon, his suppression in 1795 of a royalist uprising, his victories in Italy, finally his coup in 1799 and his outmaneuvering of Sieyès, which we talked on earlier. He is above all else competent. Now, that’s not to say he doesn’t make the occasional mistake — I mean, Egypt, I think, was a disaster, but he’s still able to spin that into a PR victory, somehow. So for me the gold medal for the Revolutionary Era for competence — or perhaps the golden crown — in this case has to go to Napoleon.
Everett: Hey, we made it, we made it over 40 minutes without giving a medal to Napoleon. That’s pretty impressive, I think. Because you could almost give all of these to Napoleon for various points in his career.
David: All I’ll say is Lazare Carnot was robbed.
Will: Hold on, now to be fair to Carnot, he was actually — and you might be saying this because you saw my notes beforehand. Carnot was my first answer and then I just kind of sat on it a little bit more and I was like, no, actually I do think I want to give this to Napoleon.
Incompetence
Will: Now given the fate of various revolutionary and reactionary actors post 1814, I imagine David, that you have no shortage of contestants who could claim the gold medal in our next event. for the rather inglorious event of incompetence, who’s taking home the gold?
David: My nominee for the Restoration period, the gold medal in Incompetence, to one of those revolutionary movements you mentioned, the French Carbonari or Charbonnerie who were a revolutionary movement or secret society that formed 1821 to 1822. They were a liberal/imperial/generally anti-royalist opposition movement, who saw the successes of various coups and uprisings in southern Europe in after 1820 and Spain and Italy and thought, we should do that in France. In their defense a crackdown in the French government had sort of limited the opportunities for constitutional opposition to the Bourbon Restoration. So it can be defended, the idea of turning to a coup or revolution as a solution to the difficulty they found themselves in.
But the way they went about it does not speak highly of the organizers. They recruited members into their secret society all around France, prioritizing rapid recruitment over operational security. Shockingly, when the time came for these revolutions to launch and try to overthrow the Bourbon Restoration, almost all of them were leaked to authorities before they began some well in advance, others just hours before they were about to pop off. Some of these revolutions were rescheduled at the last minute, throwing off all the complicated moving parts that were all supposed to go off at once. And ultimately, not only did they fail and get many of their leading figures either exiled or executed, but these revolutions embarrassed the image of the sort of constitutional opposition party in France for basically the next six or seven years. It took more than half a decade for any sort of opposition force in France to be able to win over the admittedly elite, limited electorate, and make a case to France that change was possible without being associated with revolution. And a lot of that has to do with just the very slapdash and over idealistic organizing strategy of the French Carbonari.
Everett: Boy, a little lazy, isn’t it, to just steal the name of the Italian Carbonari?
David: There was a lot more international exchange going on at the time. You know, they called themselves the Charbonnerie — Carbonari is a little bit better branding, so I use that in my episode a lot of the time. But, the big difference between the Italian Carbonari and the Spanish Liberals of 1820, and French Charbonnerie, is the Bourbon Restoration actually had a decent foundation as a government in France, unlike some of the rickety regimes of Southern Europe. One of the surviving Carbonarists later lamented that they had the mad belief that students and second lieutenants could overthrow a massive regime.1 It seemed a bit daft in hindsight and that’s because it mostly was.
But I think there is also no shortage of incompetent revolutionaries several decades earlier. Will, do you have a winner in this event?
Will: I mean, the problem here is like, who do I pick? Like, it’s a photo finish. I have a smorgasbord of choice for potential incompetence. And as Everett, as you alluded to earlier, I was very tempted actually to award this to the Girondins regarding their agitation for war in 1792, but they’re going to place in the silver for the Revolutionary Era because I’ve decided to go earlier than that and award it to the personification of ministerial despotism, the Archbishop Brienne.
Right: Portrait of Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, after Jean-Baptiste Despax, circa 1770-1794. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Now, for those of you that don’t know Brienne, he’s essentially a finance minister in the pre-Revolutionary years, and he rose to prominence in early 1787 at the First Assembly of Notables. And that assembly had essentially been called to pass a series of reforms to help France avoid bankruptcy. Calonne, who was the then-finance minister, had no shortage of problems as he tried to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. And one of the issues that he kept facing was that no one really believed him when he said that the nation was broke. And rather accurately, Calonne warned that to delay reforms was to endanger the safety of the state. But Brienne, then a leading member of the Assembly, declared boldly that the danger was not so great. Turns out, Brienne was wrong, and the danger was great, but due to his defiant stance Brienne essentially became the leader of the opposition in the Assembly of Notables, and thus when Calonne loses his job. Brienne actually replaces him, and it’s here, despite claiming that the danger to the state was not so great, that Brienne manages to do a perfect job at proving why his predecessor was correct.
Ultimately, he’s unable to compromise with the Notables, and subsequently he picks a huge fight with the judiciary. His tactics help to awaken the Third Estate politically, they help to transform an aristocratic revolt into a general one, and simultaneously, he’s doing a tremendous job at discrediting the monarchy. Although, you know, credit does need to be given to Louis XVI for falling asleep at inappropriate times.
So, it’s a disastrous year, there is much pain, zero gain, the entire country is a mess once he leaves office, and thus we have in Brienne a minister who corrupts pretty much everything he touches, and a minister who does a lot to put in motion the events which triggered the Revolution in 1789. I said, this is a tight race for the gold medal, there’s some great competitors in this event, but had Brienne done a better job, perhaps 1789 looks incredibly different, and that completely changes the events that come later.
Everett: Yeah, that’s an excellent pick. This guy was an absolute caricature. I mean, people could probably almost guess what he was like just from the reaction to his administration. He did everything wrong.
Will: I think you need to acknowledge that you’re not winning the battle if part of your solution is closing the chess clubs. Like at that point in time, that’s where you should take a look in the mirror and go, “Am I on a winning strategy here?” But, uh, Everett, I’m keen to hear who is your winner for Incompetence in the Napoleonic Era.
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Everett: Well, this is someone much like Napoleon, you could almost pick for any of the negative categories. Manuel Godoy, who was the de facto prime minister of Spain, in the period just before the French invasion of Spain, he was the leading figure in Spain other than the king. He was a royal favorite, very much a throwback to that sort of early modern period, uh, where you have royal favorites who are major figures in the government. He was the lover of the queen, which the king seems to have been aware of and not particularly concerned by. And basically, he was sort of a nobody from the provinces who wormed his way into the royal couple’s lives. And, once his patron Charles became king, he immediately began grabbing more power for himself.
Right: Portrait of Manuel Godoy, by Francisco Goya, 1801. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
He particularly was fond of noble titles. And so he gave himself quite literally dozens of noble titles. I read during my episode introducing him, I read from a treaty where you need, like, just reading all his titles out took me about five minutes. I mean, it’s really remarkable how greedy he was for these noble titles. He also took a lot of money, also was extremely fond of extorting sexual favors from people — very creepy character. And, to top off all this personal corruption, he was just a disaster at running the government, which was a particular problem because he took over every aspect of the government.
Had someone been deliberately trying to destroy Spain, I’m not sure they would have done anything differently. He really was just on every level an odious person, an incompetent person, a one-man wrecking crew, who helped destroy the Spanish state. It’s really hard to overestimate how much of the trouble Spain went through in the 19th century you can trace back to this guy, basically just — before Godoy, there was this sort of, extremely moderate, tepid, centralizing, reforming, liberal absolutist system that was, very slowly, trying to bring Spain, up to par with the other great powers. And then you get Godoy coming in, and he’s only interested in himself, and he just dynamites everything — really putting the whole country on a different trajectory. I would even say, you can look at the Spanish Civil War in the 30s and blame some of that on Godoy. He really was a pivotal historical figure in Spanish history in all the wrong ways.
David: In Godoy’s defense, he was very good at what he considered the only important part of his job, which was maintaining the favor of the king.
Everett: Yes. Which is interesting, in a way he sort of had a talent which was realizing that he held this trump card and that he could use it to do whatever he wanted.
Will: I think it’s fair to say that you not only have a gold medal winner there, but perhaps a Spanish record holder as well, given the multi-century impact of his legacy.
Eloquence
Will: So, our next category is eloquence, which we’ve opened up to be a relatively wider category for both speaking and writing.
I might go first with a very quick winner, which Everett has alluded to already. And in fact, in many ways, you’ve kind of sold the positive story. But before I reveal who it is, I’ll start with a question: What is a gold medal? Everything. Just like the Third Estate. As such, I’m awarding the gold medal in eloquence for the Revolutionary Era to none other than Abbe Sieyès, author of the most famous political pamphlet of the entire revolution, “What is the Third Estate?” I think if you’re going to award it to a writer rather than a speaker, Sieyès is as good a winner as any.
Right: Portrait of Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, by Wilbrode-Magloire-Nicolas Courbe, circa 1789-91. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
I mean, it’s clear that his work shaped so much of the rhetoric of the broader Revolution, of revolutions to come in some ways. And it’s not without good reason that literally every single student of the French Revolution will study his work. Now, I will admit that had I chosen to give this medal in eloquence to a speaker, Sieyès would not have been in contention. He’s not really famous for his speeches, so I acknowledge that that probably would have been a photo finish or a tight contest between the likes of Robespierre, Danton, potentially Vergniaud as well representing the Girondins. But for writing at least, I think it’s impossible to look past the considerable impact that was generated by the very simple question: What is the Third Estate?
Everett: Yeah, well said. You know, it’s — I almost felt bad picking Sieyès for a negative category because, you know, as you point out, I mean, he’s an absolutely iconic figure for his writing. And that’s part of the reason I found him so fascinating talking about him on my show, is that there’s this dichotomy, with a guy who is an absolutely brilliant writer and thinker, who just has these glaring, towering weaknesses as a politician.
Will: I think that’s part of what makes all of our respective areas. So fascinating though, is that you see these individuals. have in some ways such talent, such skill, such potential — and yet you also see just the most crippling of flaws as well and that’s what I think particularly this part of late 18th Century, early 19th Century French history, I think it’s part of the reason why you get these amazing narratives in addition to what are very consequential events is the fact that people like Sieyès are major players.
Everett: Yeah, well said.
Will: So, speaking of something that was perhaps well said, Everett, who have you got as your gold medal winner for Eloquence?
Everett: Brilliant segue there. I picked a guy who is, the opposite of Sieyès: a brilliant politician, very well-known for his eloquent, very long and wordy speeches, but not so much well-known for his writing. I chose William Pitt, former Prime Minister of Britain, and really one of the towering figures of this era. I would say a person who was held in very high esteem, even by his enemies.
Right: Portrait of William Pitt the Younger, by John Hoppner, after 1806. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
I did an episode a few years ago talking about his death. And, one of the things I found so interesting was that, you know, British politics from this era are really cutthroat. I mean, they were horrible to each other. People on the other side of the partisan divide. But then after Pitt’s death, you read all these people who were in rival factions eulogizing him like this giant. And it was really fascinating that they were able to put that aside. Because this man was so admired, and his speeches are, they are dense, they are very hard to read.
It is sort of the polar opposite of how politicians talk today. You know, today politicians are obsessed with seeming kind of folksy and approachable. Nothing approachable about Pitt. He is a very erudite speaker who uses all kinds of references, extended metaphors. But his speeches are — I mean, they are really tours de force. I mean, he was a person who could, you know, almost in spite of yourself, sometimes you find yourself agreeing with him just because of the force of his rhetoric. And I find it very interesting that collections of his speeches were extremely widespread in 19th century Britain. [A] huge proportion of educated British people who did not live during his lifetime read his speeches as part of their education or just, you know, for pleasure.
So he sort of was the template for those stereotypically verbose 19th Century politicians. A lot of them were harkening back to Pitt. Not so effectively in some cases, but really, you know, a guy — it’s easy to caricature him as kind of a blustere,, but go read one of these speeches and, and tell me that he wasn’t brilliant. He knew what he was doing.
David: To make a counter argument: Pitt wasn’t even the most eloquent person in his own family.
Everett: That’s actually a fair point.
David: Sorry, I’m a bit of a partisan for Pitt the Elder.
Will: David, would you like to make a counter argument for the Restoration Era more broadly,
David: Yeah, I actually feel pretty good about, the Restoration’s medal winner in this event. I think the gold medal for Eloquence goes to Francois-René de Chateaubriand, who has the starting point of being the leading light of French letters for a generation or two in France. [A] phenomenally successful author of both fiction and nonfiction, who then went on in the Bourbon Restoration to become a politician and a statesman. He was a man whose talents were almost as immense as his own self-regard. [He] can’t have been the easiest man to get along with, but, uh, as Joseph de Villèlle once said about Chateaubriand, you can’t form a government with him, but you can’t form a government without him either. Because, Chateaubriand, through the power of his pen, he was the leading light of one of the major French newspapers. And [he] took that newspaper either into a pro-government or anti-government direction, depending on whether he himself was in the ministry or given a position or a title or something like that. And as he went, so did French politics.
Above: François-René de Chateaubriand, by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, after 1808. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
He was famously fired as France’s, foreign minister in 1824, and took it as a personal slight and, uh, went into opposition and, took his whole center-right faction with him, and did not rest for years until he brought down Villèle, the man who had arranged for him to be fired. Then he was brought back into the government, and the government stood, as he was with the Martignac government. And then after Martignac fell, he went back into opposition, and, contributed to the downfall of the next government after him — which was someone I will talk about in my very final category here. But, he was a statesman, he gave speeches on the floor of the Chamber of Peers — which, admittedly, in Restoration France, the Chamber of Peers was not necessarily known for its great floor speeches. But Chateaubriand was unquestionably a man of letters, and I think his work both in politics and literature holds up to any comparison.
Everett: It’s a bit funny to me because he was such a titan in so many ways. But to me in my show, I mostly know him as the guy who switched from opposition to Napoleon to support for Napoleon, and then back to opposition I think quicker than anyone i’ve covered on the show.
And so to me that always seemed a little comical to me and it’s it’s just obviously one little hiccup in a massive career , but that’s always funny to me because you know, my listeners know him as this kind of fair-weather fan of the Bonaparte regime.
David: I would not give him a gold medal for consistency, necessarily, but, he was definitely a very prickly personality, and, when slighted, took those slights seriously.
Will: It doesn’t sound like you would award him a gold medal for our next category either, which is Idealism.
Idealism
Will: Everett, I associate the Napoleonic Era and many of the leading individuals within it as pragmatic, as perhaps embracers of realpolitik. I’m curious, therefore, who you ended up giving the gold medal to for Idealism.
Everett: Yeah, this is, uh, this was a tough one for me, to be honest, this is, you know, this is like, one of those Middle Eastern countries in the Winter Olympics where it’s, it’s tough because they don’t have snow.
Will: Hey, hey, as, an Australian, you know, that can be a real issue, okay? It’s not — don’t joke about the Winter Olympics, some of us are really sore about that.
Everett: Uh, I wound up cheating a little bit, and I picked someone from the Revolutionary Era. Someone who I don’t think is terribly well known today, but someone who I got very interested in during my research: a French general named Lazare Hoche.
Left: Portrait of Lazare Hoche, by Jean-Louis Laneuville, circa 1801. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Hoche has the distinction of being the youngest army commander of the era. He was appointed to command an army at age 24. Which, I don’t know about you guys, but when I think back to what I was doing at age 24 is pretty crazy.
Will: I turn 30 in a couple weeks, and I’m not sure what I’m doing, so 24 is doing fantastic.
David: Hoche did not start a single podcast. I think you really have to hold that against him.
Everett: That’s true. He also had tuberculosis, though. That would, that would be an uphill climb for a podcaster.
But the reason I picked Hoche: he has a very interesting career. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t heard of him to go Google him. But the aspect that I chose to focus on was his conduct during the Coup of 18 Fructidor. Which was, you know, we’re in this period of the Revolution where things are getting more cynical, the use of force is becoming more naked, things are going off the rails. And Hoche is called in to help launch a coup. Basically, he was well known as a left-winger by the standards of the French political spectrum of the time, well known as a republican. The coup was to be against the Right, and so they figured, “Hey, we’ve got this popular, competent left wing general, he’s our man to launch the coup.”
So they order him to bring some of his troops near Paris, summon him to meet with the members of the government who were plotting the coup. And, basically, Hoche, you know, they fed him a line, an excuse as to why the coup should be launched. And basically, despite being in this very cynical era, where the different political factions fought tooth and nail, trying to lock each other up and execute each other, Hoche didn’t buy this line and decided he didn’t want to be part of any coup. And so he just left Paris. He didn’t tell them “no,” he just didn’t want to participate. And so he left. And I’ve always thought that that was very interesting because this is a period where, you know, the idealism is pretty much out of the Revolution at this point. People are making decisions based on, you know, what’s best for them.
And he seems to have been still clinging to some of his convictions. And he was a believer in democracy, such as it was at that time. And he was a believer in the rule of law. And he didn’t think it was right to, overthrow the government with force, even though the people he would have been overthrowing were his political enemies. And I’ve always thought that spoke very well of him, and he’s not a very well known figure, so, I thought it would —you know, he deserves a medal, so let’s give it to him.
Will: I think that’s a fantastic choice. David, for idealism, do you have anyone dabbling in coups in 19th Century French politics?
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David: My nominee here is going to be controversial, I think, because this is a man who was devoted to ideals. But they’re not the kind of ideals that most people today might associate themselves with. I had to think about this for a long time, but when I thought of it, the answer seemed obvious to me. The man whose devotion to his ideals most shaped Bourbon Restoration France was King Charles X, also known as the Comte d’Artois before he ascended to the throne.
Left: King Charles X of France in coronation robes, by François Gérard, 1825. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Charles was more or less an unreconstructed devotee of the ancien régime France. He’s not a caricature; he had acquiesced in some ways to some of the changes the [Revolution] made, but he spent the entire reign of his brother, Louis XVIII, leading the right wing ultraroyalist opposition. He ascended the throne and, promptly set about trying to push through a host of new policies, on both matters of religion and executive authority. You know, his brother, Louis XVIII, probably gets an unfair rap from history. He managed to eventually after, on a second try, do a decent job of being King and staying in power, dying in bed as a king, which is pretty good for French monarchs of this period. But Charles X was devoted to his beliefs about the role of the monarchy in France, and continued to be devoted to those beliefs to the very end, even after his own devotion to those monarchies led him to, yes, launch a coup, from the top as king with the Four Ordinances of 1830, which, didn’t go over well.
But this was a man who did not compromise, did not temporize, did not put off what he wanted to any longer than he had to, chafed at the idea of being forced to do any of that, and ultimately when he got his way, he picked a government that would back him up in this in this belief, in these ideals.
Everett: I think this is a great pick, actually. And you’re right, that it is, you know, not what people think of when they think of an idealist. But, you know, I think it’s interesting that Charles X was an icon for the French far right for decades and decades after this. And there’s a reason for that.
David: Someone just dropped a thumbs-down emoji in the chat.
Will: I suspect it was the ghost of the winner that I’m about to propose.
David: Let us have it, Will.
Will: So for me for idealism there is only one gold medal winner here — and indeed this will also be a controversial pick — but I think this has to go to Robespierre. For his admirers. Robespierre’s idealism is perhaps his most defining feature. It’s his idealism that makes him “the incorruptible.” It’s his idealism that makes him a true champion of the people. It’s his idealism that allowed Robespierre to take some very unpopular positions during the Revolutionary Era, both against conservatives as well as more radical factions. Some historians even see Robespierre as the embodiment of the Revolution’s ideals, and I think that just underscores the point of why he should win the medal.
Right: Portrait of Maximilien Robespierre, artist unknown, circa 1790. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
But, Robespierre is of course incredibly controversial, yet even many of his detractors — and he has a lot of detractors — would acknowledge his idealism. Some would say that it’s in fact a weakness: that his idealism prevents him from governing more effectively, that it fuels a sort of fatal purity and a moral inflexibility which ultimately results in the Jacobin Civil Wars, and sees not only Robespierre, but so many leading Jacobins killed. Regardless of whether or not you see Robespierre’s ideals as a good thing or ultimately harmful to the revolutionary project, the very fact that so many of his detractors are willing to predicate their case on the importance of Robespierre’s idealism, I think, is significant. Add on to that his influential roles in the revised Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the Constitution of 1793, the “Justification of the Terror,” the pursuit of virtue, and so on — the treatment of the enemies of the revolution. I mean, there’s just so many ways that this individual is so impactful.
So I think that the gold medal for Idealism, whether you agree with his ideals or not, has to go to Robespierre.
David: All I can say is I want a live camera shot of the podium at this Olympics. As our two nominees stand up next to each other.
Everett: Yeah, I gotta say, Robespierre — if there ever in history was someone who was motivated primarily by the thoughts he had in his mind rather than the things he observed in the world and sort of his self interest and things like that, it was certainly Robespierre. I mean, that’s what makes him so fascinating.
Will: Yeah, whatever the opposite of like realpolitik, that should, you know, there called Robespierrepolitik or something and that should be part of our modern political lingo.
Stupidity
Will: Now, our final event, Stupidity. I’m sure we all have our moments while we’re researching our episodes and we’re rolling our eyes at the actions of individuals.
David, who is your gold medal winner for stupidity in Restoration France?
David: I don’t think this will be a big surprise to anyone who knows anything about the period — and if you know anything about the period, you should check out my show, an excellent way to remedy that — but I think a very strong medal contender here, for Stupidity is Jules de Polignac, the prime minister under Charles X. The one he put in place after Martignac, when Charles finally got his way, no more compromises [and] brought in his best bud from all the way back before the Revolution.
Right: Jules de Polignac, artist unknown. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Polignac was not a man without talents: he distinguished himself a little bit in the diplomacy leading up to the French invasion of Algiers in 1830; he was by all accounts, a moderately effective ambassador to Great Britain. [But] Polignac’s actions after he became prime minister, August 1829, all the way through the Four Ordinances in July 1830, are just a series of blunders, no matter how you look at it. From a of someone who doesn’t like the ultraroyalists, he provoked a popular uprising by launching a coup d’etat attempt over what are ultimately fairly small beans with an opposition that didn’t want to overthrow the monarchy, they just wanted some mild reforms, to limit the government.
But he also failed to prepare for this attempt, for any sort of backlash — took almost no precautions. He dissolved parliament to call new elections and then, botched the managing of those elections and came back even worse. He launched a war to try to win popular support and messed up the timing of that war, so that the news came back too late to make a difference. He waited too long. A lot of people sort of expected him to come into office and take vigorous action to reassert royal authority, and instead he dithered away for months and months and months as opposition grew and rallied against him. Under basically any front, Polignac was just a series of mistake after mistake, that ultimately culminated in a mass popular uprising in July 1830, which I’m still exploring, at this exact very moment in The Siecle.
Everett: This is a guy — I was looking forward to this. When I when I started listening to your show, I was like, “I can’t wait for him to get to this guy,” because he’s just such a one of those perfectly hateable characters.
David: I will say: in Polignac’s defense, there is a widely reported story that he acted the way he did because he was getting visions from the Virgin Mary that were telling him what to do. And as near as I can tell, and the historians I read can tell, those are not true. There’s no basis for it in any of the accounts of people who are closest to him at the time. And some of these people had plenty of bad things to say about Polignac in their memoirs. So that bit at least does not appear to be true, but there’s plenty of evidence for his blundering outside of that.
But Everett, the Napoleonic period had its fair share of idiots as well. Who do you have in mind for the medal?
Everett: Yeah. So I felt like, over the course of his career, there were many generals who Napoleon humiliated. And so I figured I should pick one of them. And of all of those Old Regime generals who were humiliated by Bonaparte, my personal pick would be General Karl Mack von Lieberich.
Left: Portrait of Karl Mack von Leiberich, artist unknown, 1873. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
And, listeners of my show will remember him as the man who was defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Ulm — although calling it the Battle of Ulm is kind of a misnomer because the sort of headline about Mack is that Napoleon basically outmaneuvered him and he was forced to surrender without fighting a major battle.
So effectively he just kind of lost his army, by misplacing it. And he’s a guy who — you know, normally when you look at a battle, you can at least see what the defeated general was trying to do. You know, you say, “Oh, he was trying to, you know, envelop the enemy, but the enemy was able to, you know, isolate his two spearheads before they could unite,” or whatever the case may be. But with Mack, there’s actually a lot of debate because his decisions were so bad, it’s hard to understand what he was trying to do. He seems like someone who was just sort of flailing around.
He was able to convince the Austrian emperor to give him command of this army, because he claimed he had a special understanding of the French mindset, that he gained from being captured by the French and being their prisoner. Which I’m not quite sure how that’s supposed to work. It’s a very dubious assertion. I’m not quite sure. He must’ve been charismatic because the Austrian emperor fell for it. And basically his plan was to sort of rush his army at the French as fast as possible, and then just sort of sit there waiting for them to respond. And by the time his army got where they were going, Napoleon was already working around his flanks, to surround him.
And, it’s pretty much — it’s like starting a boxing match with a big giant haymaker where you wind up and get your chin way out there. Just a bizarre man who was — actually, he performed so badly, they put him in prison. And you really have to screw up to just, you know, in the course of normal military operations, be so bad that it’s considered a criminal act.
Will: Unless you happen to be a revolutionary general, in which case you don’t need to screw up to find your head removed from your shoulders. That would be the one asterisk I’d put to that comment.
Everett: Right, right. Or even be eaten by your own troops, like happened to General Dillon. But Mack is a really, a fascinating figure. It’s almost like a hypothetical: what would happen if just kind of a random con man was put in command of one of these armies? And it turns out, result’s not good.
Will: I think, an absolute solid contender for the, gold medal of Stupidity there.
Well, for my winners for the event of Stupidity, there is also plenty of evidence, and in fact too much evidence, and that’s part of what gets them in trouble. So for this event, I’ve chosen to focus on a particular series of stupid blunders, and I’m actually going to award the gold medal to a doubles team: the royal couple, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Specifically, I’m going to award it for a few of their incredibly poor decisions during the Flight to Varennes in mid-1791, when the royal family fled Paris and almost escaped the French Revolution.
Now, to be clear, I’m not saying the escape itself was stupid. I actually think it was perfectly reasonable that the de facto prisoners tried to escape the capital. But. There were three key actions which I think were truly daft.
Firstly, you have King Louis XVI’s decision to leave behind a written document in which he outlined all his objections to the Revolution and pretty much repudiated every aspect of it. This was entirely unnecessary, and it meant that there was no way to spin his escape as a “king napping,” as the National Assembly would later try to do. If he wanted to make his opinions clear, he should have issued this document after the escape was successful. Publicizing his thoughts first was just ludicrous.
Secondly, the royal family should have traveled separately. I mean, this is probably the biggest one of the three. Both royals own responsibility for this action, and essentially, during their escape, they refused to take separate carriages and separate routes. By all piling into one carriage, their pace of travel slowed dramatically, they became a much more obvious target, and the King and his heir would either both succeed or both fail. They would have been infinitely better off traveling separately, in faster, more inconspicuous carriages, more discreet carriages. But instead, they traveled in an over the top, pimped out, humongous, yellow and black, 18th Century limousine equivalent that screamed “look at me.” It was the height of foolishness.
Lastly, after the royals got out of Paris, the king in particular let his guard down. They started traveling with the blinds down, their hats off. Louis started to make small talk with the people along the journey, and unsurprisingly, he is recognised multiple times along the way. When you’re traveling incognito, when you’re making the great escape of the century, you keep your disguise until you are 100 percent safe. It’s just mind blowing. And so, whether it’s stupidity, or naivety, or a combination of both, it’s ridiculous. And ultimately, these mistakes, these unforced errors, cost the royals their lives. And to make matters worse, it’s otherwise a very well-executed escape attempt that almost succeeds.
So, winners of this gold medal for stupidity and the overall losers of the Revolution are the monarchs themselves, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.
The arrest of Louis XVI and his family at the house of the registrar of passports, at Varennes in June, 1791, by Thomas Falcon Marshall, 1854. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Everett: Yeah, it’s an excellent pick. I mean, it’s one of those really pivotal moments in history. I mean, a lot of things could have been different if even one member of the royal family had escaped and they just, you know — it’s a story you see again and again during the Revolution where things could have been different, but the royal family just could not rise to the occasion.
David: I will point out that one member of the royal family did escape with the Flight to Varennes: the middle brother, the future Louis XVIII, left that same night, made it out of France and kept the royal standard burning through the dark days of the Revolution and Empire to follow.
I can’t think of any more fitting winner for this event, and way to end the Olympic Games that we’ve been having today.
Picking a host
Will: Well, that is the end of our scheduled events, but we do have one last surprise up our sleeves. As we were crafting this episode, we got talking about which year we would like to see Paris hosting the Olympics. That is to say, if the Olympics existed in the late 18th Century or early 19th Century, when would we like to see Paris host the Games? Perhaps in 1789, as the revolution kicked off, or 1810, to celebrate Napoleon’s new marriage and the Austrian alliance. There’s a lot to choose from over these several decades, so Everett, if we start with the Napoleonic Era, when would you like to see Paris host the games?
Everett: Well during the course of my research, there was a period in Paris that really captured my imagination — that I sort of wasn’t expecting to cover on the show, but I wound up devoting a large part of an episode to. And that’s the period, immediately after the Treaty of Amiens, which was the brief period of peace between Britain and France during the Napoleonic Era. So this would have been, late spring and summer of 1802. And, this was the most hopeful period of Napoleon’s rule over France. You know, he’d only been in power at this point a little over two years. So there’s still kind of a honeymoon period. He’d come to power promising peace and he had just delivered it.
Right: “The first Kiss this Ten Years! —or—the meeting of Britannia & Citizen François,” by James Gillray, Jan. 1, 1803. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
And there was an idea that now the war with Britain was over, there would be prosperity, there would be development, the Revolution could finally, you know, kind of the positive aspects of the Revolution would finally be able to be felt. And of course, any time a big war ends, there’s jubilation among the people: no more casualties, no more high taxes, no more blockade, which is a very important aspect of this in France.
And after the treaty, you know, Paris sort of is able to return to being the cultural capital of Europe. There’s all these British visitors show up because they haven’t been able to visit Paris for quite a long period of time at this point. And the French are actually very eager to welcome the British because, you know, they feel like they’re entering a new era of peace and brotherhood. There’s all these theatrical performances. There’s a story of Lord Cornwallis, who had negotiated the treaty for Britain, showing up at a Paris theater, to attend one of these performances of sort of variety show in celebration of the peace.
And the actors tell the people who had negotiated the treaty to stand up and there’s this huge, you know, burst of acclaim from the crowd, cheering for Lord Cornwallis, this British aristocrat andgeneral. And apparently Cornwallis was moved to tears because, getting this reception from the people of Paris was so moving to him. And so it’s this period, you know, there’s, there’s big parties and festivals with fireworks and it’s a really hopeful time, and a time where people are feeling the brotherhood of all mankind and all those good things that the Olympics are supposed to be about. It almost seems like the Olympics would have fit right into that milieu.
Will: Yeah, I think that would be an absolute, quite a joyful and kind of jovial time to celebrate an Olympic Games in Paris. And as you say, Paris kind of reclaiming its spot as the cultural capital on the continent. I can absolutely see it work. Where do I buy my tickets?
David: I have a different proposal here, which has the slight [dis]advantage of a fair amount of it having not actually taken place in Paris. If at any moment sort of symbolizes the Bourbon Restoration, it would be the 1825 coronation of Charles X, which, infamously took place not in Paris as Napoleon’s coronation had, but in Reims, the cathedral city that was the traditional coronation site of French kings. This was during the prime ministership of Villèle, which I noted was sort of the high watermark of the Bourbon Restoration. There were huge ultraroyalist majorities. The country was fairly prosperous. Charles had become king under sort of a glow of popularity, a honeymoon phase. And the French government went all out, spared no expense at the ceremony and the pomp and circumstance. The Cathedral of Reims was completely decked out. There were parades, there were commissioned operas and plays, including, Il Viaggio a Reims, which is just absolute banger, underrated banger of an opera from Rossini. And if there’s any point in the Bourbon Restoration when a big ceremonial event was going to take place, it probably would have been May 1825, during the coronation ceremonies of Charles X. And I have to say the competition in Touching for Scrofula would have been absolute must-see TV.
Everett: That would be a very interesting aspect, to see kind of the Olympics we’re all familiar with. Because that coronation ceremony was very much a throwback to the Old Regime. And it would be interesting to see, like, a feudal Olympics would be very interesting.
David: Not quite as much of a throwback as it has gone down in history as being. There was a fair amount of fusion with the modern there. There were Napoleonic marshals in the ceremony, as well as old line aristocrats, and the coronation oath was modified and updated a little bit. But you know, compared to what the alternative was, it was definitely a throwback. I think Victor Hugo had a great line where he said he was grateful that the ceremony had happened in 1825 because six months earlier, they would have decked out the cathedral to look like a Roman temple.2 And he was glad, glad as a symbol of the changing times, that they were able to go with the faux medieval, sort of gothic, Romantic image instead of the neoclassical era that was on its way out.
Will: So, for an Olympics in the Revolutionary Era, I’m going to take a slightly different angle. I think now is a perfect time of year, the end of July, the start of August. It’s a great time to hold the Summer Olympics. So, the question becomes what year? Well, 1789 is too chaotic. You got the Great Fear, high bread prices, the Municipal Revolution, it’s just not going to work. And from 1792 onwards, you have the War of the First Coalition, so that’s also not going to work. Which leaves 1790 and 1791.
Now, in 1790, you have the all-important infrastructure, because of the Fête de la Fédération, and the humongous celebrations for the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. But, that would be a little boring, and you know, you don’t want to hold two major events back-to-back. So, I’m landing on the last week of July in 1791.
Now, for context, that would be a month after the failed Flight to Varenne when the royal family tried to escape the revolution. Furthermore, it would be weeks after the Champ de Mars Massacre, which no doubt would also be used as a venue for the games. So these major and rather bleak events would spoil the jovial tone of a traditional Olympics. But that wouldn’t stop the games from actually going ahead. So as far as I’m concerned, the resulting games would be hilarious. Louis the XVI would have to smile and wave as he participated in the opening ceremony. The French government would have to play one big happy family while the Tricolor Terror is literally imprisoning and shooting people for calling for dethronement, in an atmosphere defined by fear and conspiracy.
You can imagine the sort of welcome that foreign athletes would receive. I mean, can you imagine, for example, the Austrian and Prussian archery teams trying to convince officials that in fact they are not smuggling arms for the counter-revolution?
Furthermore, you know, what about the political and social statements that would occur? What about if a sans-culotte defeated a foreign aristocrat in a noble sport like fencing? And lastly, you also have a great opportunity amongst the chaos, amongst so many people, for another escape attempt. Does Louis XVI try to make a run for it? I mean, obviously not literally, he’s too fat to pass as an athlete. But maybe he could try his luck at being a coach, or an umpire, or an official, or something.
So, jokes aside, I think that in this grim atmosphere after the Flight to Varennes, after the Champ de Mars Massacre, hosting the Olympics would be a surreal experience, and for that I think 1791 would be the perfect year for the Games, as an audience member at least, I think it would be thoroughly entertaining.
David: I don’t know about that, Will. This idea of a Parisian Olympics during a time of great uncertainty about who will govern France seems a little far-fetched.
Everett: I will say this, you made the comments about, you know, a sans-culottes winning gold at fencing. And that is very much — I say this, I used to be a fencer. The Soviet Union put a lot of resources into their fencing program for exactly this reason. The idea that the New Soviet Man could best the capitalist powers at this aristocratic sport was very appealing to the Soviets and they spent a lot of resources on their fencing program for exactly that political reason.
Will: All I’m hearing, Everett, is that you’re on board for the 1791 Summer Paris Olympics. Perfect. We’ll see you there in the fencing arena.
Everett: I’ll be there. Absolutely
Will: Well that brings an end to our scheduled programming for these Olympic Games. I hope you’ve all enjoyed your visit to Paris during the Olympics. Before we wrap up, Everett, do you want to give a quick plug for what you’re doing at the Age of Napoleon podcast?
Everett: Yeah, so new episodes at the end of every month. They’re about an hour a piece.
I’m covering right now Napoleon’s second invasion of Spain, 1808. You know, starting all the way back. I’ve been doing this for years now. So if you want to start at the beginning you can go all the way back to Napoleon’s birth.
And yeah, I hope you guys will come along and join me. If you enjoyed what I had to say here on this program, I’m sure you would enjoy the regular episodes. So just go look up the Age of Napoleon podcast, wherever you found this.
Will: I’m an Age of Napoleon listener myself, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the mess that is the Spanish campaign. And it’s definitely worth an exploration. Can’t recommend it enough.
David, do you want to give a quick recap of what you are up to over at The Siècle.
David: Yeah, thanks, Will. The Siècle is a podcast that is covering France’s overlooked century, after Napoleon and before World War I, 1814 to 1914. At least in theory! I’m going in order and it’s taking a long time. But I think a fair number of people know the exciting events that you guys have covered: the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. What came after is less well known, and that’s what I’m hoping to rectify. I’m going through more-or-less in order through the Bourbon Restoration and regimes to follow, looking at the politics and the economics and the social functions of post-Napoleonic France. I recommend you start at the beginning. And you can find out more at thesiecle.com, which is T H E S I E C L E dot com, as well as hopefully a link in the show notes.
And, Will — thanks for organizing this. Can you tell the listeners a little about your own show?
Will: Sure! So I’m the host of Grey History: The French Revolution, grey [spelled] G R E Y. And the premise of the show is that history isn’t black and white. Realistically, that means that it’s a show that is slowly unpacking the French Revolution with a real emphasis on historiography. So, the conflicting conclusions of various historians and the different experiences of contemporaries as well.
Recently we just did an 11-episode deep dive into the Federalist Revolts, including five episodes on the Siege of Toulon. That sounds like a lot, and yes, to be frank, it is. But in my defense, we were also using it as an opportunity to explore the wider War of the First Coalition and the geopolitical relations of Europe at the time. So, the impacts of the Second Polish Partition and, say, British foreign policy in the Caribbean and these impacts on the siege at Toulon.
Going forward for the rest of the year, we’ve got coming up the death of Murat and the trial of Marie Antoinette and the Girondins. So, if you’re looking for a binge-worthy show that gets deep into the detail of the Revolutionary Era, check out Grey History.
And with that, Everett, David, thank you so much for your time. I have had an absolute blast and I think, I don’t know how we are going to connect all our shows to Los Angeles in 2028, but you know, we’re going to have to find a way.
Everett: Well, thanks for having us. That was a lot of fun. Thank you for organizing things, Will. David, nice to see you as always. This was a blast.
David: Same to both of you. I’m looking forward to whatever new events get added to the French History Olympics in four years when we have it again.
Thank you all for listening to this jumbo-sized French history nerd-out! If you have thoughts about figures who we unfairly snubbed, we want to hear from you! In the show notes, and in the transcript at thesiecle.com/supplemental21, you can find a link to a website where you can submit your own comments that Will, Everett and I will sift through for a possible follow-up episode.
You should also follow @ageofnapoleon on Twitter, because over the week following release Everett — who has the biggest follower count of the three of us — will be running polls asking you to choose the best winner for each of our events. Head on over there and do what Villèle would do: stuff the ballots for the Restoration politicians.
In the meantime, I’m headed back to research barricades, bonds of friendship, and… sheep? Stay tuned for Episode 42: Marmont.
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The precise quote, from Armand Carrel, is: “Why did we have the mad idea that a government supported by laws and by the weight of inertia of 30 million men could be overturned by the plots of law students and second lieutenants?” Sylvia Neely, Lafayette and the Liberal Ideal, 1814-1824: Politics and Conspiracy in an Age of Reaction (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 222. ↩
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The precise quote: “Six months ago,” Hugo told his wife, “they would have turned the old Frankish church into a Greek temple.” Graham Robb, Victor Hugo: A Biography (New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 119. ↩