A Bastille Day quiz

1. Who said, “Revolutions have terrible arms and righteous fists; they choose their targets well and rarely miss”?
a. Maximilien Robespierre
b. Georges Jacques Danton
c. Olympe de Gouges
d. Victor Hugo

2. Which deputy at the Convention government spoke out against the vague definition of plotter (conspirateur) in the midst of the Terror, and pleaded for measures that would protect the innocent?
a. Robespierre
b. Bishop Talleyrand
c. Marat
d. Danton

3. What author was guillotined in November 1793 on the grounds that her writings aimed to re-establish a counter-revolutionary regime?
a. Charlotte Corday, assassin of Jean-Paul Marat
b. Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin, Countess de Genlis
c. La Princesse de Lamballe, former intimate of Marie-Antoinette
d. Olympe de Gouges, author of La Déclaration des droits de la femme

4. The official celebration of July 14 as the French national holiday dates from what era?
a. 1789
b. 1880
c. 1804
d. 1946

5. What author penned a 1791 document that explained the reasoning behind the actions of King Louis XVI on those days when military intervention could have reversed the course of events (such as July 14, 1789 or October 5-6, 1789), and stressed the king’s sacrifices towards the misguided people (la multitude égarée)?
a. Monsieur, Count de Provence (brother of King Louis XVI)
b. General Lafayette, leader of the National Guard
c. Jean Sylvain Bailly, mayor of Paris
d. King Louis XVI

6. Which public figure described himself as a martyr to the French people?
a. Robespierre
b. Marat
c. King Louis XVI
d. All of the above

7. Which revolutionary event is today considered the turning-point in the fate of the French monarchy?
a. July 14, 1789: the taking of the Bastille
b. October 5-6, 1789: the Women’s March on Versailles
c. January 21, 1793: the execution of Louis XVI
d. October 17, 1793: the execution of Marie-Antoinette

8. Which author penned these prescient words about the Revolution’s legacy: “Thus the truth of history, on this point as among others, will probably not lie in what happened, but only in what continues to be told”?
a. Robespierre
b. Hugo
c. Napoléon
d. Chateaubriand

9. What pop idol is currently the star of a music video that relays the history of the French revolution on YouTube ?
a. Lady Gaga
b. Madonna
c. Beyoncé
d. Taylor Swift

10. What is the most important legacy for France of the Revolution today?
a. The system of representative government
b. The commitment to universal rights
c. Free public education
d. All of the above

Answers
1. d. Victor Hugo, “Les révolutions ont le bras terrible et la main heureuse; elles frappent ferme et choisissent bien,” Les Misérables, ed. Rosa, 2 :1125.
2. a. “Il est important de bien définir ce que vous entendez par conspirateurs; autrement les meilleurs citoyens risqueroient d’être victimes d’un tribunal institué pour les protéger contre les entreprises des contre-révolutionnaires,” Maximilien Robespierre, speech at the Convention on March 11, 1793.
3. d. Olympe de Gouges, condemned and executed for being: “Femme de lettres, âgée de 38 ans, native de Montauban, convaincue d’être l’auteur d’écrits tendans à l’établissement d’un pouvoir attentatoire à la souveraineté du people” (Journal de Paris National, 3 novembre 1793).
4. b. 1880.
5. d. King Louis XVI, in Déclaration du Roi adressée à tous les Français à sa sortie de Paris, a 16-page manuscript left behind in the Tuileries castle on June 20, 1791, when the royal family tried to flee from France.
6. d. All of the above
7. b. The Women’s March (or October Days) is today considered the most important event for symbolic, material, and political reasons, as it revealed the people’s power over the monarch and re-placed the royal family in the capital city. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette never saw Versailles again.
8. c. Napoléon Bonaparte
9. a. Lady Gaga (aka “The History Teachers”)
10. d. Vive la démocratie!

Bastille in literature, from The Guardian

Today is Bastille Day, when France celebrates the storming of the notorious Parisian jail, which set its revolution in motion. To mark the occasion, see if you can overcome the fortifications of this quiz published in today’s Guardian.
Hint: Bone up on your English Lit. Perhaps someone else could make us an interactive quiz based on the French…

Blood in the margins – Freedom and The French Revolution, by Matt Stewart

One year ago today–Bastille Day–I released my debut novel The French Revolution on Twitter. It got some pretty good attention, and last fall I landed a traditional book deal with Soft Skull Press. Today, the novel launches as a hardcopy book.

It has been one hell of a year.

Everything about this experience has been larger than life. The novel is a San Francisco family saga, loosely structured on the radical events of the historical French Revolution. I strived to make my characters big and bodacious, colorful and creative, capturing the fiery personalities that make San Francisco such an entertaining place to live. I baked a plot that weaves classic San Francisco “industries” of gourmet food, anti-war politics, music, marketing, and–of course–drugs, lampooning extremes and puncturing caricatures. Zany events progress from a proverbial Bastille Day on down to Waterloo, and I did my best to pack in as many literary guillotines as possible.

There’s a theoretical underpinning to this madness–after all, the historical French Revolution is one of the greatest identity crises in history. Mirroring those bloody extremes, the family in my novel lurches from extreme (monarchy) to extreme (Reign of Terror) to extreme (Napoleon) before a definitive showdown (Waterloo) marks the family forever. It’s a classic self-discovery journey, packaged and punched through the Hegelian mill.

This is a brassy book, a balls-out book, a book that tickles and bites and occasionally spanks for no good reason. It was tremendous fun to write–and I hope it’s just as fun to read.

While writing a book structured on revolution, it was hard to resist the urge to flip over a few metaphorical cop cars along the way. Last year, I was tired of waiting for publishers to figure out if they wanted to take my book, so I seized control of my own publishing destiny with the Twitter experiment. This year, I’m launching a free iPhone app with Ricoh Innovations that helps the book function as “clickable paper”–you can zap any page in the book with your iPhone camera and launch relevant videos, recipes, articles, or even bonus chapters to get more involved in the story. Think of it as DVD bonus content available via old-fashioned, readily available books, and the world’s leading mobile device. (Please try it out and let me know what you think.)

I’m not out to revolutionize publishing. But it’s been liberating to work within the structure of the French Revolution, where disruption can be regenerative, where extremes are OK, where I kind of get a free pass to break a few rules.

Vive la révolution!

–Matt Stewart

Thoughts on the eve of Bastille Day: On violence, insurrection, and the people’s rights

On this eve of Bastille Day 2009, I am torn. I want to believe in the possibility of a democracy based on Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité. As daughter of a three-term legislator in the state of Washington, I saw first-hand growing up the power of effecting political change at the local level, and I’m proud of the gains made by people like my parents who gave so much to the Civil Rights movements, in particular. And yet I wonder if we have done all that we should and could. Obviously not, given the violent and polarized state of our world….

Attitudes toward violence and insurrection form a telling cultural difference between France and the United States. On the one hand, French friends hesitate to send their kids to spend holidays with us, wondering: “Is it safe there?” They are terrified by the news of gun violence, which in their eyes seems to be prevalent, unpredictable, and encroaching ever closer to people’s homes through the recent shootings in shopping malls, high schools, and even churches and day care centers. On the other hand, my extended American family sometimes fears for my safety on trips to France, asking: “Is it safe there?” They are amazed by imagery of angry crowds thronging through urban centers, rock-throwing youths, cars in flames, violent-looking banners demanding change, even revolution. (Steve Greenhouse presented a wry comparison of our two countries’ attitudes towards workers’ rights in “In America, Labor Has an Unusually Long Fuse,” The New York Times, April 5, 2009, from which I’ve drawn the two photos above.)

My first impulse is to ask, “Is anywhere safe?” Recent travels have taken me to Cairo, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Beijing: all cities where safety was a real concern. The risks of getting hit by a car in Cairo and Beijing are startling, but the risk of incurring an injury by a stray rock or bullet in Jerusalem or the West Bank is rather impressive too. No place is inherently safe. Avoiding violence is a question of cultural knowledge, and luck. All of us try to avoid those parts of our cities where violence is most prone to break out, or we keep a low profile if we happen to live there, and we steer clear of demonstrations or groups that turn violent. But no place should be considered inherently unsafe either. I do not think our present strategies are the best we can do.

On this eve of Bastille Day, I would like to ask two questions to help find a way out.
1. To the French: how can the spirit of insurrection realize useful change for all parts of the population? According to Claude Fouquet (former Ambassador and Fulbright scholar at the University of Chicago), the violence and bloodshed of July 1789 emerged out of the traditional parliaments and their refusal to reform, and the powerful political parties and unions in France continue the same resistance to change today. The people are their pawns, suffering the violence, unemployment, and frustration that result from the polarization. This opposition at all cost is profoundly counterproductive, argues Fouquet. “ Il faut réformer pour sauver les retraites et redresser l’Education nationale, en décentralisant et en introduisant la concurrence» (Fouquet, Histoire critique de la modernité [Paris : L’Harmattan, 2007], 141.)
2. To the Americans: how to curb the gun violence in our streets? According to a New York Times editorial, “Price of Lax Gun Laws” (12/23/08), there exists “a strong correlation between weak state gun laws and higher rates of in-state murders, police slayings, and sales of guns used in other crimes.” Here too it is the people who end up being pawns to powerful gun lobbies who sow a politics of fear that works against our well-being. As the article pointed out, “Weak gun laws put a state’s own citizens at risk. There were nearly 60% more gun murders in the 10 states where exports were highest” (including Georgia, Florida, Texas, Virginia).
What can be done? In France, as in the USA, we the people need to use our constitutional rights to communicate to elected leaders—through letters, the free press and media, in peaceful demonstrations, and targeted strike actions–the message that the current state of affairs is unacceptable. Whether it is a question of gun laws, retirement savings, access to employment, or educational reform, we have safe and effective ways to make change now and we need to use them. Think of all the blood shed in 1789-99, 1776, and all the other revolutionary moments which brought us our freedoms. We owe our forefathers and foremothers an educated and active citizenry.

The new media are helping galvanize populations in the Middle East and China, giving a voice where none was possible before. We should do our part as well, and speak up, demand the changes that we need in our own countries. The pen, the voice, and the presence of informed citizens asking peacefully for change, can and must be heard. Marchons, citoyens.