THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 15, 18 July 1939, Page 4

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —The excellent article in Thursday's "Post" on the above subject must hava interested many readers, especially those who have made a particular study of. that world-shaking historical event. Your able contributor has, however, fallen into the customary errors in assigning the causes of the French Revolution. This is immediately apparent in the fact that he cites Carlyle as an authority. Lord Cromer once remarked that "no such thing exists in the English language as a true and reliable history of the French Revolution, for Carlyle produced merely a philosophical rhapsody which is throughout prejudiced and very often inaccurate—well worth reading, but certainly not history." | British ideas about the Revolution are largely founded on the conceptions of Carlyle and Dickens. The latter's "Tale of Two Cities," magnificent as romance, embodies the same fallacious theories regarding the origin of the Revolution. Modern research has brought to light much information. An intensive examination of all the available data gives us a totally different impression from that supplied by the average history book. Anyone who cares to study authoritative bibliography of the subject,, including such writers as Flammermont, Arthur Young, Hua, Montjoie, Frudhomme, de Tilly, Dard, Garat, Blanc, Robison, Lavallee, Beaulieu, Ferrieres, etc., cannot fail to emerge from their perusal with all his pre-conceived notions completely shattered. The facts adduced by those authors show us indisputably that the French Revolution was a gigantic conspiracy engineered by some of the most dastardly megalomaniacs and carried out by bands of the blood-thirstiest scoundrels that the world has ever seen. The widely-held belief that the people of France were oppressed to the point of starvation and madness, and that they rose en masse, in 1789, against their oppressors is entirely wrong. It would take far too much of your valuable space, Sir, to go fully into the whole story, but, with your permission, the chief causes of the Revolution may be summarised as follows: — 1. The intrigue of the Orleanist party to change the dynasty of France. Louis Philippe, fifth Duke of Orleans, a distant relative of Louis XVI, may be regarded as the prime instigator of the earliest disturbances in 1789. His adherents, headed by a villain named de Laclos, conspired to place him on the French throne. Apart from this .ambition, the Duke had private grudges against the reigning monarch and the Queen. A man of vile moral character, he hated Marie Antoinette [ because she had spurned his infamous advances. Nothing can be clearer than that the Queen's unassailable virtue made many enemies towards the Royal couple, and that the Duke of Orleans was the bitterest and most vindictive. He hated the King also because Louis XVI had refused to make him grand admiral of the French fleet, and for other reasons too numerous to detail here. Directed by Laclos and financed by the Duke of Orleans, the vast intrigue known as the Orleanist conspiracy was completed in the spring of 1789. Ruffians of the lowest type were brought to Paris from all over France and even further afield. Money was poured out like water in the effort to subvert public opinion and to inflame the people against the King and Queen. A false famine was threatened through the action of the Orleanist agents in buying up large -tocks of grain and thereby cornering the food supplies. That there Was no actual starvation prior to the outbreak of the revolt is indicated by the seizure and destruction of grain at the hands of an enraged populace. Starving people do not wantonly destroy food. 2. The intrigues of the subversive party, with the objective of annihilating all government, religion, and authority. These men included Desmoulins, Barrere, Rabaud, Marat, Danton. Robespierre, etc., whose aims were in the main essentially destructive, and culminated in the Reign of Terror, the purpose of which—incredible though it may seem—was nothing less than the wholesale depopulation of France. The prime mover in this frightful conspiracy was Robespierre, who calculated that as the French people numbered far too many for the resources of tlie soil and for the requirements of industry, they must be killed off and diminished until a comfortable balance was reached. In other words, the new Republic was to be a Socialist State in which absolute equality and contentment should prevail by the simple expedient of exterminating threefourths of the population and sharing all resources among the remainder. The people themselves had no hand in this gigantic crime. They were the victims, not the aggressors. Fortunately for them the Terror ended in the real conspirators quarrelling and killing each other, and then Napoleon appeared on the scene and cleaned up tho whole mess—temporarily, at all events. I

There were other intrigues also that had considerable influence —such as I that of Prussia, to break the FrancoI Austrian alliance, and the conspiracy of revolutionaries in England—primed with Orleanist gold—to overthrow the monarchist system everywhere. Besides these organised intrigues there is evidence that all through the Revolution many miscellaneous rebels mingled with the other disturbers, actuated by a variety of motives, which resulted in a confused and turbulent movement, formed of such conflicting units, running concurrently with a more or less vague but genuine desire for social reform, that it is no wonder contemporary observers were puzzled, or that ( posterity has been largely deceived. j Regarded as a whole, the French Revolution is seen to have been an attempt to establish Socialism by means of force, the forerunner of what has since happened in Russia. —I am, etc.,

LEWIS DALY.

[The contributor was unaware of any attempt on his part to assign a cause or causes to the French Revolution, but admits quoting the French historian Mignet as describing France at the time to be in "an utter confusion of arbitrary administration, of class legislation, and special privileges to special bodies. For these abuses the revolution substituted a system more conformable with justice and better; suited to our times"; and the source of this quotation was duly acknow-: ledged by the writer.] ' • -