#ultraroyalist

[secretmellowblog]

Les Mis French History Timeline: all the context you need to know to understand Les Mis

Here is a simple timeline of French history as it relates to events in Les Miserables, and to the context of Les Mis's publication! A post like this would’ve really helped me four years ago, when I knew very little about 1830s France or the goals of Les Amis, so I’m making it now that I have the information to share! ^_^

This post will be split into 4 sections: a quick overview of important terms, the history before the novel that’s important to the character's backstories, the history during the novel, and then the history relevant to the 1848-onward circumstances of Hugo’s life and the novel’s publication. 

Part 1: Overview 

The novel takes place in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, during a period called the Restoration. 

The ancient monarchy was overthrown during the French Revolution. After a series of political struggles the revolutionary government was eventually replaced by an empire under Napoleon. Then Napoleon was defeated and sent into exile— but then he briefly came back and seized power for one hundred days—! and then he was defeated yet again for good at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

After all that political turmoil, kings have been "restored" to the throne of France. The novel begins right as this Restoration begins.

The major political parties important to generally understanding Les Mis (Wildly Oversimplified) are Republicans, Liberals, Bonapartists, and Royalists. It’s worth noting that all these ‘party terms’ changed in meaning/goals over time depending on which type of government was in power. In general though, and just for the sake of reading Les Mis:

 Republicans want a Republic, where people have power rather than monarchs and (in this context) elect their leaders democratically— they’re the very left wing progressive ones, and are heavily outcast/censored/policed. Les Amis are Republicans.

Liberals: we don’t have time to go into it, but I don’t think there are any characters in Les Mis defined by their liberalism.

Bonapartists are followers of Napoleon Bonaparte I, who led the Empire. Many viewed the Emperor as more favorable or progressive to them than a king would be. Georges Pontmercy is a Bonapartist, as is Pere Fauchelevent. 

Royalists believe in the divine right of Kings; they’re conservative. Someone who is extremely royalist to the point of wanting basically no limits on the king’s power at all are called “Ultraroyalists” or “ultra.” Marius’s conservative grandfather Gillenromand is an ultra royalist.  Hugo is also very concerned with criticizing the "Great Man of History," the view that history is pushed forward by the actions of a handful of special great men like kings and emperors. Les Mis aims to focus on the common masses of people who push history forward instead.

Part 2: Timeline of History involved in characters’ Backstories

1789– the March on the bastille/ the beginning of the original French Revolution. A young Myriel, who is then a shallow married aristocrat, flees the country. His family is badly hurt by the Revolution. His wife dies in exile.

1793– Louis XVI is found guilty of committing treason and sentenced to death. The Conventionist G—, the old revolutionary who Myriel talks to, votes against the death of the king. 

1795:  the Directory rules France. Throughout much of the revolution, including this period, the country is undergoing “dechristianization” policies. Fantine is born at this time. Because the church is not in power as a result of dechristianization, Fantine is unbaptized and has no record of a legal given name, instead going by the nickname Fantine (“enfantine,” childlike.)

1795: The Revolutionary government becomes more conservative. Jean Valjean is arrested. 

1804: Napoleon officially crowns himself Emperor of France. the Revolution’s dream of a Republic is dead for a bit.  At this time, Myriel returns from his exile and settles down in the provinces of France to work as a humble priest. Then he visits Paris and makes a snarky comment to Napoleon, and Napoleon finds him so witty that he appoints him Bishop.

Part 3: the novel actually begins 

1815: Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by the allied nations of Britain and Prussia. Read Hugo’s take on that in the Waterloo Digression! He gets a lot of facts wrong, but that’s Hugo for you.

Marius’s father, Baron Pontmercy, nearly dies on the battlefield. Thenardier steals his belongings. 

After Napoleon is defeated, a king is restored to the throne— Louis XVIII, of the House of Bourbon, the ancient royal house that ruled France before the Revolution. In order to ensure that Louis XVIII stays on the throne, the nations of Britian, Prussia, and Russia, send soldiers occupy France. So France is, during the early events of the novel, being occupied by foreign soldiers. This is part of why there are so many references to soldiers on the streets and garrisons and barracks throughout the early portions of the novel. The occupation officially ended in 1818.

1815 (a few months after Waterloo): Jean Valjean is released from prison and walks down the road to Digne, the very same road Napoleon charged down during his last attempt to seize power. Many of the inns he passes by are run by people advertising their connections to Napoleon. Symbolically Valjean is the poor man returning from exile into France, just as Napoleon was the Great Man briefly returning from exile during the 100 days, or King Louis XVIII is the Great King returning from exile to a restored throne.

  1817: The Year 1817, which Hugo has a whole chapter-digression about. Louis XVIII  of the House of Bourbon is on the throne. Fantine, “the nameless child of the Directory,”  is abandoned by Tholomyes. 

1821: Napoleon dies in exile. 

1825:  King Louis XVIII dies. Charles X takes the throne. While Louis XVIII was willing to compromise, Charles X is a far more conservative ultra-royalist. He attempts to bring back something like the Pre-Revolution style of monarchy. 

Underground resistance groups, including Republican groups like Les Amis, plot against him.  

1827-1828: Georges Pontmercy, bonapartist veteran of Waterloo, dies. Marius, who has been growing up with his abusive Ultra-royalist grandfather and mindlessly repeating his ultra-royalist politics, learns how much his father loved him. He becomes a democratic Bonapartist. 

Marius is a little bit late to everything though. He shouts “long live the Emperor!” Even though Napoleon died in 1821 and insults his grandfather by telling him “down with that hog Louis XVIII” even though Louis XVIII has been dead since 1825. He’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit. 

Marius leaves his grandfather to live on his own. 

1830: “The July Revolution,” also known as the “Three Glorious Days” or  “the Second French Revolution.” Rebels built barricades and successfully forced Charles X out of power.

Unfortunately, TL;DR moderate politicians prevented the creation of a Republic and instead installed another more politically progressive king — Louis-Philippe, of the house of Orleans. 

Louis-Philippe was a relative of the royal family, had lived  in poverty for a time, and described himself as “the citizen-king.” Hugo’s take on him is that he was a good man, but being a king is inherently evil; monarchy is a bad system even if a “good” dictator is on the throne.

The shadow of 1830 is important to Les Mis, and there’s even a whole digression about it in “A Few Pages of History,” a digression most people adapting the novel have clearly skipped. Les Amis would’ve probably been involved in it....though interestingly, only Gavroche and maybe Enjolras are explicitly confirmed to have been there, Gavroche telling Enjolras he participated “when we had that dispute with Charles X.”

Sadly we're following Marius (not Les Amis) in 1830. Hugo mentions that Marius is always too busy thinking to actually participate in political movements. He notes that Marius was pleased by 1830 because he thinks it is a sign of progress, but that he was too dreamy to be involved in it. 

1831: in “A Few Pages of History” Hugo describes the various ways Republican groups were plotting what what would later become the June Rebellion– the way resistance groups had underground meetings, spread propaganda with pamphlets, smuggled in gunpowder, etc. 

Spring of 1832: there is a massive pandemic of cholera in Paris that exacerbates existing tensions. Marius is described as too distracted by love to notice all the people dying of cholera. 

June 1st, 1832: General Lamarque, a member of parliament often critical of the monarchy, dies of cholera. 

June 5th and 6th, 1832: the June Rebellion of 1832:

Republicans, students, and workers attempt to overthrow the monarchy, and finally get a democratic Republic For Real This Time. The rebellion is violently crushed by the National Guard.

Enjolras was partially inspired by Charles Jeanne, who led the barricades at Saint-Merry. 

Part 4: the context of Les Mis’s publication 

February 1848: a successful revolution finally overthrows King Louis Philippe. A younger Victor Hugo, who was appointed a peer of France by Louis-Philippe, is then elected as a representative of Paris in the provisional revolutionary government.

June 1848: This is a lot, and it’s a thing even Hugo’s biographers often gloss over, because it’s a horrific moral failure/complexity of Hugo’s that is completely at odds with the sort of politics he later became known for. The short summary is that in June 1848 there was a working-class rebellion against new labor laws/forced conscription, and Victor Hugo was on the “wrong side of the barricades” working with the government to violently suppress the rebels. To quote from this source:

Much to the disappointment of his supporters, in [Victor Hugo’s] first speech in the national assembly he went after the ateliers or national workshops, which had been a major demand of the workers. Two days later the workshops were closed, workers under twenty-five were conscripted and the rest sent to the countryside. It was a “political purge” and a declaration of war on the Parisian working class that set into motion the June Days, or the second revolution of 1848—an uprising lauded by Marx as one of the first workers’ revolutions. As the barricades went up in Paris, Hugo was tragically on the wrong side. On June 24 the national assembly declared a state of siege with Hugo’s support. Hugo would then sink to a new political low. He was chosen as one of sixty representatives “to go and inform the insurgents that a state of siege existed and that Cavaignac [the officer who had led the suppression of the June revolt] was in control.” With an express mission “to stop the spilling of blood,” Hugo took up arms against the workers of Paris. Thus, Hugo, voice of the voiceless and hero of workers, helped to violently suppress a rebellion led by people whom he in many ways supported—and many of whom supported him. With twisted logic and an even more twisted conscience, Hugo fought and risked his life to crush the June insurrection.

There is an otherwise baffling chapter in Les Mis titled "The Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Scylla of the Fauborg Du Temple," where Hugo goes on a digression about June of 1848. Hugo contrasts June of 1848 with other rebellions, and insists that the June 1848 Rebellion was Wrong and Different. It is a strangely anti-rebellion classist chapter that feels discordant with the rest of the book. This is because it is Hugo's effort to (indirectly) address criticisms people had of his own involvement in June 1848, and to justify why he believed crushing that rebellion with so much force was necessary. The chapter is often misused to say that Hugo was "anti-violent-rebellion all the time" (which he wasn't) or that "rebellion is bad” is the message of Les Mis (which it isn't) ........but in reality the chapter is about Hugo attempting to justify his own past actions to the reader and to himself, actions which many people on his side of the political spectrum considered a betrayal. He couldn't really have written a novel about the politics of barricades without addressing his actions in June 1848, and he addressed them by attempting to justify them, and he attempted to justify them with a lot of deeply questionable rhetoric. 1848 is a lot, and I don't fully understand all the context yet-- but that general context is necessary to understand why the chapter is even in the novel. Late 1848/1849: Quoting from the earlier source again:

In the wake of the revolution, Hugo tried to make sense of the events of 1848. He tried to straddle the growing polarization between, on the one hand, “the party of order,” which coalesced around Napoleon’s nephew Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who in December 1848 had been elected France’s president under a new constitution, and the “party of movement” (or radical Left) that, in the aftermath of 1848, had made considerable advances. In this climate, as Hugo increasingly spoke out, and faced opposition and repression himself, he was radicalized and turned to the Left for support against the tyranny and “barbarism” he saw in the government of Louis Napoleon. The “point of no return” came in 1849. Hugo became one of the loudest and most prominent voices of opposition to Louis Napoleon. In his final and most famous insult to Napoleon, he asked: “Just because we had Napoleon le Grand [Napoleon the Great], do we have to have Napoleon le petit [Napoleon the small]?” Immune from punishment because of his role in the government, Bonaparte retaliated by shutting down Hugo’s newspaper and arresting both his sons.

Thenardier is possibly meant to be Hugo’s caricature of Louis-Napoleon/Napoleon III. He is “Napoleon the small,” an opportunistic scumbag leeching off the legacy of Waterloo and Napoleon to give himself some respectability. He is a metaphorical ‘graverobber of Waterloo’ who has all of Napoleon’s dictatorial pettiness without any of his redeeming qualities.

It’s also worth noting that Marius is Victor “Marie” Hugo’s self-insert. Hugo’s politics changed wildly over time. Like Marius he was a royalist when was young. And like Marius, he looked up to Napoleon and to Napoleon III, before his views of them were shattered. This is reflected in the way Marius has complicated feelings of loyalty to his father (who’s very connected to the original Napoleon I) and to Thenardier (who’s arguably an analogue for Napoleon IiI.)

1851: 

On December 2, 1851, Louis Napoleon launched his coup, suspending the republic’s constitution he had sworn to uphold. The National Assembly was occupied by troops. Hugo responded by trying to rally people to the barricades to defend Paris against Napoleon’s seizure of power. Protesters were met with brutal repression.  Under increasing threat to his own life, with both of his sons in jail and his death falsely announced, Hugo finally left Paris.  He ultimately ended up on the island of Guernsey where he spent much of the next eighteen years and where he would write the bulk of Les Misérables. It was from here that his most radical and political work was smuggled into France.

Hugo arguably did some of his most important political work after being exiled. In Guernsey, he aided with resistance against the regime of Napoleon III. Hugo’s popularity with the masses also meant that his exile was massive news, and a thing all readers of Les Miserables would’ve been deeply familiar with.

This is why there are so many bits of Les Mis where the narrator nostalgically reflects on how much they wish they were in Paris again —these parts are very political; readers would’ve picked up that this was Victor Hugo reflecting on he cruelty of his own exile.  

1862-1863: Les Mis is published. It is a barely-veiled call to action against the government of Napoleon III, written about the June Rebellion instead of the current regime partially in order to dodge the censorship laws at the time.

Conservatives despise the book and call it the death of civilization and a dangerous rebellious evil godless text that encourages them to feel bad for the stupid evil criminal rebel poors and etc etc etc– (see @psalm22-6 ‘s excellent translations of the ancient conservative reviews)-- but the novel sells very well. Expressing  approval or disapproval of the book is considered inherently political, but fortunately it remains unbanned. 

…And that’s it! An ocean of basic historical context about Les Mis!

If anyone has any corrections  or additions they would like to make, feel free to add them! I have researched to the best of my ability, but I don’t pretend to be perfect. I also recommend listening to the Siecle podcast, which covers the events of the Bourbon Restoration starting at the Battle of Waterloo, if you're interested in learning more about the period!

[0lemat]

look gotta be honest here: a DNI for ultraroyalists has always been and will always be good policy

twitter teen from 1818 making a post like "unfollow me if you like irredeemable media like m*ry sh*lley's fr*nkenstein"

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 3.2.3 ‘Luc-Esprit’

Gillenormand’s name is the chapter title, so it’s probably significant. It means, at a basic level, “light” and “spirit,” and there’s kind of an implication at the end of the chapter that his godfather may have been a little optimistic in picking it.

It feels mostly relevant by its sheer irony.

(Rose’s notes point out that esprit also means “wit” in an 18th century sense, which is maybe closer to a trait Gillenormand actually has. Luke is the writer of one of the gospels, but I don’t know enough about the bible to say anything beyond that.)

It’s a short chapter, and I don’t have much to say. I really appreciate the portrait of the eighteenth century we get.

There are ways in which I see in Gillenormand when he’s very young some of the fleeting charm of youth that will later be attributed to Courfeyrac: he’s spirited and in love and getting enmeshed in awkward social situations with famous women. I don’t have any particular fondness for him, but if all I knew of him was who he was at sixteen, I wouldn’t hate him. And I wouldn’t assume he was incapable of growth.

But we find out immediately how his story turns out. He’s going to harden into an ultraroyalist misogynist who’s a dick to anyone he has power over, and he thinks that anyone who gains power they weren’t born to is a laughingstock. Everyone has his place in the ancien régime, and it would be ridiculous to try to alter that.

Unlike Myriel--who’s the same age in a way that makes me think Gillenormand is designed to be his foil--Gillenormand reacts to the revolution by digging in his heels and rejecting all change. Unlike some of the more dynamic characters, the initial description we get of him will never stop being accurate because he never transcends it.

For many of the rest of the cast, proximity to death confers upon them light and spirit and a kind of transcendent power. Gillenormand’s almost preternaturally prolonged life--by the standards of this book, anyway--seems to exist at the expense of the kind of dynamism and change and soul that other characters are capable of.

I want to say that the other characters gave up their lives, or at least their attachment to the outcomes of their lives, in order to change themselves and the world. Gillenormand seems to have given up the opposite. He renounced both death and change some time in the 1790s--as evidenced by the last time he changed his outfit.

Being superficially happy forever seems to have conferred something like immortality on him--but at what cost?

And I think the answer is: none that he’s capable of noticing.

[fremedon]

Brickclub I.5.7, “Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris”

This chapter wraps up the rest of the background and moves us back into straight chronology for a while. It really is striking just how little of the book is presented as a chronological narrative, and how spare and fast-moving those sections are. Fantine enters the narrative at the end of this chapter. The next three will take her from her arrival in M-s-m, through her firing, her selling her hair and teeth, and her entering the sex trade. That’s just nine pages in Donougher or FMA.

(And looking ahead to next week...yeah, I’m thinking I might want to read ahead a bit. We’re about to get a run of five of the longest and most eventful chapters in this book: 1.5.12, “The Idleness of M. Bamatabois”; 1.5.13, “Solution of Some Questions of the Municipal Police”; 1.6.1, “Now, Rest”; 1.6.2, “How Jean Can Become Champ,” 1.7.1, “Sister Simplice”--27 pages, compared to this week’s 12.)

For now, though, we’re finishing dressing the stage for the burst of action that’s about to start. Fauchelevent leaves the story for a while. Madeleine becomes mayor. Under his administration, the cost of tax collection drops seventy-five percent in M-s-m, and the ultraroyalist finance minister approves--though, as @everyonewasabird points out, the mere fact of Villèle’s approval casts some doubt on how much we’re meant to take the town’s seeming economic prosperity at face value. And in the context of this anecdote, Fantine arrives and finds work; her wages are low, but enough to support her--for now.

Other observations:

--We learn here of the existence of the infirmary and the two Sisters of Charity who run it, though we won’t meet them for a few chapters. We also learn that Madeleine relies on their recommendation to find Fauchelevent his position in Paris, setting up Sister Simplice as someone whose opinion carries weight.

--When he first comes to town, Javert is described as watching Madeleine compulsively, but this stops when Madeleine becomes mayor: Javert is so uncomfortable seeing him in his mayor’s sash that he avoids him as much as he can.

It’s sure...something...that at the apex of Javert’s integrity, before he has hounded an innocent to death, before he has learned to turn a blind eye to his superiors’ corruption, his best response to cognitive dissonance is to physically remove himself from situations that cause it.

[natalieironside]

Well, you see, back in the 1790s all the dogs in Paris had already fled to the expat enclaves in Austria (Parisian dogs specifically are ultraroyalists, as you know) and that really threw a spanner in the works vis a vis the Committee of Public Safety's plans to revolutionize the professional dog show circuit, which was a la mode with most Enlightment intellectuals in those days. Well, one day Babeuf was out distributing pamphlets and he saw a dog, and this was the first dog anyone in Paris had seen in nigh on seven years, and it certainly was a very shaggy dog. So Babeuf decided this would be his ace in the hole if the Directory ever tried to crack down on him: In such turbulent times, they surely wouldn't behead a man in possession of such an exemplary canid.

Anyways, to make a long story short, 1796 rolled around and the Coup of 22 Florèal never happened and Napoleon got involved and the dog shows of France stayed closed for the umpteenth year in a row (which Napoleon was not happy about) and the 7th day of the good ol month of Prairial, Babeuf had an appointment with Madame Guillotine and suffered an unfortunately close shave. So it goes.

But the most important thing is, the most important thing is, that everyone agreed it certainly was a very shaggy dog.

I walked through the city and saw everyone--men, women, normal people, and children--all hard at work laying bricks. They were working furiously mixing clay, firing bricks, mixing mortar, laying bricks and building....something. I couldn't see what it was from the street because it was so massive as to obscure itself, towering over all of us like the carcass of some dead god. I saw workers mixing mortar run out of water and solemnly draw lots to see who would have their throat slit to finish the mix with their blood.

"Hey, buddy," I said to a worker passing by, "what are y'all workin on here?"

"Dunno," he said with a shrug.

"Why work so hard, then?"

He shrugged again before returning to the endless, backbreaking work.

Everybody I spoke to who claimed to know what the monolith was or why they were building it said something different. Most people had no idea, knew they had no idea, and didn't particularly care. Everyone agreed that it was necessary, that the terrible sacrifice couldn't possibly be avoided, and it would all be worth it in the end.

I had to know, so I left the city and climbed to the top of the mountain for a better view. And I saw it. Towering over the city two miles high was a brick red cock and balls shooting a stream of brick red cum into the heavens, surrounded by letters a quarter mile high that said "ME WGEN....TFW WHEN.....ME WHEGN UR MOM"

[lizardrosen]

1/20/19 BrickClub 3.3.3 Requiescant

The child, who was nothing but joy and light on entering this strange world, quickly became sad there and, more unusual at his age, grave.

Oh no, this is not a good environment for a child. Gillenormand is really raising him to only look at the eighteenth century and fear the nineteenth, isn’t he? It’s interesting that Marius doesn’t really think these women are real, and makes them mythic in his mind. “These antique faces and biblical names mingled in the child’s mind with his Old Testament, which he was learning by heart.” This is a continued theme in his life, completely idolizing his father and Napoleon once he learns about them, and completely switching gears when he first falls in with the Amis, and I knew that the rigid ideology he was raised with contributed to this tendency, but reading it now is the first time I noticed he did it with people too!

Hugo goes on for two and a half pages about some of the notable priests and gentlemen who attended the salon, and I think the idea here is that they "added gravity to Madame de T.’s salon” but Hugo thinks they are not worthy of admiration for one reason or another.

They use a lot of language that would have "seemed grotesque” at the time, but used to be the norm, and they refuse to update their views.

Hugo explains ultraroyalists and doctrinaries, and how "that world no longer exists.” Someone pointed out that his nearly indulgent closing statement on the subculture here, is similar to how he talked about the convents. “Besides, we have to say, that same little world has its own greatness. We may smile at it, but we can neither despise nor hate it. It was the France of former times.”

And Marius grows up, but it feels like the result is still incomplete because his education has been so selective that he’s not really well-rounded yet. Plus he “had little love for his grandfather, whose gaiety and cynicism wounded him, and the place of his father was a dark void.” So the love and affection he should have experienced just weren’t there. :(

[jill-knits]

A French statesman (Prime Minister to Charles X) with ultraroyalist leanings whose policies provoked the 1830 revolution. A new one to me as a color! #coloroftheday #colorstrology #knitweardesigner #art #artinspiration #stilllifepainting #colorinspiration #history https://www.instagram.com/p/CZQlYdKLeCr/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nesiacha]

Honestly, he's the kind of character that doesn't interest me much (sorry for all the Mirabeau fans who probably have good reasons to love him). I recognize him for good deeds like when he participated in the founding of the Society of Black Friends and perhaps denounced absolutism. But he is one of those people who receives as much money as possible to slow down the revolution while failing to impose his views on the royal family that he nevertheless hopes to see reign despite the duplicity he has seen. (but he also shows greater duplicity). In my eyes if his goal had triumphed, namely that the revolution stopped, there would have been at best an English monarchy with very little representation of the people (and therefore very little change necessary for the people and certainly no idea for get out of the crisis (the revolution of the rich that Marat denounced). In the worst case he would have protected the royal family who would have propagated the counter-revolution in a much more violent way. And for me Mirabeau is worse because he disguised himself as a revolutionary. he had ideals to betray unlike the ultraroyalists who clearly displayed their ideals. It seems that he being a stentor is clearly not everything, he lack some intelligence and revolutionnary like Marat , Robespierre clearly read on him before there were suspicions on him ( and it would be very quick as he make proposiiton of unpopular measures). Like I said before it seems for me he made a lot of bad moves without think of consequences for people( not suprise) but for him too ( I think that if he survived to his illness , he would run away like Talleyrand after the captures of the Tuileries Palace).

Danton at least if he received money never changed his ideals (in fact he took the bribes without fulfilling the part of the bargain from the people who gave him money) that can be very dangerous because if we wanted to sing it with the right evidence it would have been possible but he lasted much longer (kept the revolution going (to a certain point), was smarter in my eyes than a Mirabeau, more effective for the revolution and the country and less sneaky( but stil Danton is sneaky but not the same type than Mirabeau). Do not take this fact as if I appreciate Danton, I do not like him at all and is too glorified in my eyes he is very criticizable and benefits from a free pass in my eyes. too general meaning on films, Youtube (but less on Tumblr). But it has much more merit than Mirabeau, and is in every way more interesting. That's why I talk about it more than Mirabeau. don't know about others here on Tumblr but that's my reason.

I find it strange that there is so little discussion of Mirabeau on frevblr. (but not just him, and figures active in the early years of the Revolution in general). Unlike Danton, who is always put down here, he doesn't get much criticism. But that's not because he's highly regarded, but because he's not given much attention, and at best is treated as Camille's sugar daddy. This is in contrast to the many references to him in history books and literature about Frev.

[secretmellowblog]

For @lesmisletters readers not aware: the thing Hugo’s talking about in the “Few Pages of History” section is the Revolution of 1830, a revolution that happened two years before the June Rebellion of 1832 (the one that’s the focus of Les Mis.)

Basically what happened in 1830 was this:

— Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo in 1815 and kings were restored to the throne: the ancient pre revolution monarchy, the house of the Bourbons.

The first restored king was Louis XVIII, who was ultimately more willing to make concessions to the gains of the revolution: he wasn’t trying to bring back the “pre revolution” monarchy, he was willing to accept the monarchy had to make compromises to survive.

Then Louis XVIII died, and Charles X took the throne.

Charles X was a lot more Ultraroyalist, a lot less willing to compromise. He took a lot of measures to try to claw back the “concessions” the monarchy had been forced to grant to the French Revolution. It was like he was trying to bring back pre-revolution absolute monarchy.

This is what Hugo is talking about here, when he’s talking about why the Bourbons got kicked off the throne:

One morning [the monarchy] drew itself up before the face of France, and, elevating its voice, it contested the collective title and the individual right of the nation to sovereignty, of the citizen to liberty. In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which made him a citizen.

This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July.

The people of France were not happy about this. Following the monarchy’s nonsense, the Revolution of July happened, and basically the House of Bourbon got kicked out of power.

But instead of being replaced with a Democratic republic…. a series of Political Shenanigans happened and they instead got replaced by another king, Louis Philippe d’Orleans.

Louis Philippe was less conservative and more progressive, far more willing to compromise with leftists. but only like, by the standards of kings. There’s only so far you can go while still being a Monarch XD.

Anyway, this is the political context that Les Amis exist in— trying to boot Louis Philippe and get a democratic republic For Real This Time!

And this section is about Hugo explaining his own thoughts on these revolutions and on the failures of constitutional monarchies.

[fremedon]

I so badly want an adaptation that actually gets at the whiplash of the multiple violent changes of not only regime but governmental system which even the younger characters would have experienced.

To take one not-actually-random example: Grantaire, 29 at his death, would have lived through

the end of the Consulate (though he wouldn’t remember it)

the entirety of the Empire

the Allied invasion and military defeat of France and Napoleon’s first abdication in 1814 (he would have been 11)

the First Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII

The Hundred Days, in which Napoleon returns from exile and the Bourbons flee the country

Waterloo and Napoleon’s second abdication

the Second Bourbon Restoration, comprising also

the occupation of France by foreign troops, 1815-1818

the White Terror, a wave of lynchings and other reactionary violence set off and legitimized by Louis XVIII’s legal purge of Bonapartist functionaries

the assassination of the Duc de Berry, a nearly-successful attempt to extirpate the Bourbon line and set off a succession crisis, averted only because the widowed duchess turned out to be pregnant

numerous waves of destabilizing political unrest, including protests in Paris that brought over 100K people out in protest of laws giving a double vote to the richest quarter of the 1% (these are the protests in which Nicholas Lallemand is killed)

French troops being sent to restore the Bourbons in Spain after popular republican uprisings there

ONE! peaceful transfer of power within a regime, when Louis XVIII dies and is succeeded by his brother Charles X!

French warships being sent to Haiti to demand crippling compensation payments

more political unrest, including barricades at the election riots of 1827

massive and deeply unpopular wealth transfer compensating former emigres--aristocrats and royalists who fled during the revolution--for confiscation of their land

French troops being sent to Algeria on a punitive expedition to prop up Charles X’s regime, ending in the country’s conquest

naked election meddling by the Bourbon regime, with Charles dismissing the Chamber of Deputies--already elected by one percent of the male population, with 20% of the chamber elected by the richest quarter of that--twice in 1830

the July Ordinances: Charles’s second dismissal of the deputies, call for new elections under new rules, and draconian crackdown on the already heavily censored press

the July Revolution: three days of street fighting which leave Charles deposed and republican forces in control of Paris and a provisional government; and three+ days of backroom negotiations in which the liberal opposition, including Lafayette, sell them the fuck out and hand the throne to the king’s cousin Louis Philippe d’Orleans

continued republican protest and unrest for the whole two years from then until June 1832

and he JUST MISSED the SECOND armed uprising against Louis-Philippe in June 1832, this one from the right, from the Duchess de Berry, who landed in April in the royalist stronghold of the Vendee to drum up support for ousting Louis-Philippe in favor of her twelve-year-old son, Charles’s grandson.

That’s in LESS THAN THIRTY YEARS! Jean Valjean or Javert would remember all of that, plus Napoleon’s coup of 18 Brumaire, the Directory, the Thermidorean Convention, the Thermidorean Reaction, the Terror, the Convention, the execution of Louis XVI, the National Assembly, and all the rest of the OG FRev.

The accession of Charles X--a reactionary Ultraroyalist deeply unpopular with anyone outside his party, whose ascent to the throne inspired dread even in his brother--was the ONE peaceful, lawful transfer of power ANY PERSON IN THIS BOOK would have experienced, with the exceptions of Gillenormand and the bishop who would have been alive for Louis XVI’s accession in 1754.

And it would be the ONLY transfer of power not accompanied by a change to the form of government until the Third Republic--so, 1873 or 1876, depending on whether you’re counting elections before the finalization of the new constitution as being within the same system of government. (And it was 1879 before the government of the third republic stopped actively trying to replace itself with a monarchy.)

Which is to say that Marius, born during the Empire, and Cosette, conceived around Waterloo, can expect to live to see the fall of the July Monarchy in February Days of 1848; the Second Republic; the June Days of 1848; the coup of Louis Napoleon in 1851; the Second Empire; the Franco-Prussian War, including the months-long Siege of Paris; and the Paris Commune and its bloody suppression.

When the Commune is put down, Cosette will not even be 60 years old.

I just made the mistake of checking the notes on the Twitter mourning message post and it's just full of comments about how Les Mis is about the French Revolution on one hand and then ones about how it's NOT about the French Revolution so therefore definitely not anti-monarchy on the other.

Hate it when people just won't stop being Wrong On The Internet.

Can we come up with a meme about the Bourbon Restoration for educational purposes

(yes I know it's not the Bourbon Restoration in Les Mis either but you gotta start somewhere)

[rotteprinsen]

where did you get the jacket for your Enjolras cosplay? i'm looking to buy one, but everything is so expensive

Ahh actually I bought a red suit jacket on eBay and I sewed it into a waistcoat and replaced some buttons!!

[lizardrosen]

8/28/18 BrickClub 1.3.1 The Year 1817

This chapter always reminds me of the opening to A Tale of Two Cities, in that it’s a bit of a laundry list of tidbits that gets across the feeling of a time half a century before the book in question was published. For me reading in 2018, it’s a little hard to distinguish, because 1862 and 1817 are both fairly far in the past, but for someone reading when the book first came out it would probably feel distant and perhaps a little old-fashioned.

I’ve tried to look up all the little references before, but that’s not really the point. The point is that you have all these little moments and fashions and conversations, and those are what make history. Or: “Nonetheless, these details, which are incorrectly termed little -- there being neither little facts in humanity nor little leaves in vegetation -- are useful. It is the features of the years that makes up the face of the century.”

I will point out a few details that sort of jumped out to me:

“All the hairdressers’ shops, hoping for the return of powder and birds of paradise, were bedecked with azure and fleurs-de-lis” I just love how Extra hairstyles were around this time!

“At the Ministry of the Navy an investigation was opened concerning that ill-fated frigate The Medusa, which would cover Chaumareix with shame and Géricault with glory” I recognize that super-super-super Romantic painting!

“To say ‘regicides’ instead of ‘voters,’ ‘enemies’ instead of ‘allies,’ ‘Napoleon’ instead of ‘Bonaparte,’ separated two men by more than an abyss.” This idea that word choice indicates a person’s political inclination is obviously very important through the rest of the novel, especially when we get to Marius and his Ultraroyalist grandfather.

“...it was a machine of little value, a kind of toy, the daydream of a visionary, a utopia -- a steamboat. The Parisians regarded the useless thing with indifference.” The steamboat becomes important waaaay later on when Enjolras makes his What Horizons speech and talks about taming “the hydra, which blew on the waters, the dragon, which vomited fire, the griffin, monster of the air... fearful animals that were above man.”

Until finally: “In this year, 1817, four young Parisians had a good laugh on four others.” (Tholomyes can go choke)

[jill-knits]

A French statesman (Prime Minister to Charles X) with ultraroyalist leanings whose policies provoked the 1830 revolution. A new one to me as a color! #colorinspiration #coloroftheday #contemporaryart https://www.instagram.com/p/BtJdxKiFQsJ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mwh95xvkfk6l

[enjolradical]

penultimatemarch said: i’m gonna be mimicking you all day omw “cyuupon” also grocery cart is not a thing here it’s a shopping trolley!! you have such a great reading voice as well ahhhh “horr’d” YOU DOOOO THOUGH SUCH AN ACCENT that was great xDDD

"horr'd"??

you know what bri im glad you're amused ultraroyalist said: in england we call it a “trolley” not a “grocery cart” (◡‿◡✿)

ah thank you in england and nz it's a trolley. but does anyone say anything besides "remote" for the thing that changes the channels, that's the other question

[tresjoly]

so R is running late to a meeting and when he eventually shows up, he's really confused as no one is making impassioned speeches, or organising rallies. instead they're all just sat around, aimlessly chatting. it's not until R asks combeferre what's going on and he tells him that "Enjolras wanted to wait for you" that R realises "wow, okay, maybe he does care" BUT it's when he looks up and sees Enjolras smiling at him from across the room, that he realises maybe, in fact, it's love (◡‿◡✿)

enjolras isn't mad at him for being late he's worried because he is late ohhhhh my heart