From http://www.margepiercy.com/sampling/city.htm
CITY OF DARKNESS, CITY OF LIGHT
CITY OF DARKNESS, CITY OF LIGHT is my take on the French revolution. Why be interested?
First of all, modern politics began there, even the notions of "left" and "right."
Second, modern feminism began right there, and many of the demands those women fought for are not yet achieved - although some have been.
Third, late 18th century France was a society that had some of the same characteristics as ours - the top was becoming ever richer, the poor were getting poorer, and the middle class were being squeezed with taxes the rich did not have to pay.
Fourth, the people who made the revolution and those who fought against it were lively, colorful, intelligent, willful and sometime sexy individuals. It was an extremely dramatic time and you might enjoy visiting it.
--Marge Piercy
While reading Marge Piercy's "City of Light, City of Darkness" a couple of years ago, I took the following notes from Internet research so that I could follow along better with the book. (I tend to avoid Wikipedia and follow back cites to actual source if available, if that's any consolation.) So here are those notes plus a review of the book posted on Piercy's site.
I suppose this is a prelude to reading War and Peace this summer, assuming New York is not itself in the grip of revolution (or other visitations), and the review also makes me want to read Simon Schama.
Quickie on the French:
1774
Louis XV dies (king since 1715, following on 75 years for Louis XIV, both of whom engineered multiple European wars and wasted unbelievable resources). Succeeded by grandson, Louis XVI, who tries out the reformist P.M. Necker. This guy is dismissed following his attempt to tax clergy & nobles.
1788
28 million people in France and 98 percent are the “Third Estate” (everyone who is not clergy or nobility). 90 percent are peasants, the majority of the rest are sans-culottes (artisans, craftspeople, laborers) and the new bourgeoisie in the cities.
“First Estate,” the clergy, owns 10 percent of land and collects tithes, provides some social services.
Nobles, “Second Estate,” get all the top govt. jobs and need not pay taxes.
Peasants pay bulk of taxes dating back to Medieval times, on roads, soap, manor dues; they are forbidden from killing rabbits eating their own crops, nobles on the hunt can run over the crops at will.
At the top, the eternal Louises and now Marie-A., the “Austrian Bitch” take everything, burn it in lavish displays of vapid magnificence, not to mention all the past wars; the crown - the state! - is bankrupt and needs to raise taxes.
To deal with financial crisis, Louis naively convenes the Estates General for the first time in 175 years, in the expectation of rubber stamp for measures he desires. Each estate is to prepare notebooks (cahiers) of grievances and elect its representatives (only propertied men may vote for 3rd Estate: writers, officials, lawyers are the reps).
1789
WORST FAMINE IN MEMORY - PRICE OF BREAD MULTIPLIES.
April. Riots over bread and wages in Paris. Repressions by King’s Musketeers (rapid “reactionary” force). Executions.
June. Three Estates convene at Versailles. Estates 1+2 can always outvote 3. King disses 3.
3rd Estate finds the meeting hall is locked, convenes against King’s will at the Royal Tennis Court and declares itself the National Assembly. Joined by some clergy & nobility. (Some modern historians retell the locking of the meeting hall as unintentional, a groundskeeper’s oversight.)
King reaches to bring in Necker again for a few days, then dismisses him yet again.
Rumors the Swiss Guard will arrest the assembly.
July 14. Uprising in Paris. Bastille is stormed, hundreds shot, but then the guard surrenders. Crowd kills the hardline Swiss Guards.
Lafayette organizes National Guard militia in response to arrival of royal troops. They wear the tricolor.
Paris Commune is organized to replace royal govt. of Paris. Can mobilize the Parisians.
Free press, hundreds of newspapers. Countless political clubs organize and openly agitate.
Henceforth: Nobles and monarchists begin fleeing abroad, organizing reaction, trying to get Austria and Prussia to attack France and restore absolutism.
Aug. 4. All-night session of the Assembly officially abolishes feudal rights.
Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Oct. 5. Women march on Versailles, demand to see Louis, force him to come back to Paris and set up in the Tuileries. Louis is a prisoner of the Revolution.
1790
Civil Constitution of the Clergy abolishes clerical privilege, ends papal authority, nationalizes church; priests and bishops are elected and salaried, convents and monasteries dissolved (many are used as headquarters for political clubs). - This is one way to pay off debt, but split between city and peasantry (who are still faithful Catholic sheep) results!
1791
Constitution of 1791: limited monarchy.
Election of Legislative Assembly by all taxpaying male citizens, but only 50,000 men may qualify to actually stand for election.
Provinces are abolished in favor of roughly equal departements. (Extreme centralization of administrative power in Paris.)
June. Louis and Marie take off by night and are caught before reaching border. Dumb fucks.
August. Prussia & Austria issue Declaration of Pilnitz: We may intervene to restore king!
Oct. Legislative Assembly convenes: Mix from right to left of
a) a few secret royalists disguised as b;
b) constitutional monarchists a la Lafayette, who wants an end to reforms now, or the Duc d’Orleans (who wants to be the new progressive king);
c) Girondins (rationalist liberals, bourgeoisie, mostly prepared to accept a republic: Brissot, Roland, Condorcet);
d) centrist Republicans around Danton, pragmatists;
e) Jacobins (Robespierre, though he’s not in the Assembly);
f) even more radical to the left of that (like Marat) calling for blood, blood!
This, largely, how Piercy depicts.
1792
April. Girondins-Constitutional Monarchists in government, declaration of war on Austria, Prussia, Britain et al.
Many losses follow. Perception Louis is betraying French forces to Austrians (which he is!).
French invaders of Belgium surprised they are not welcomed as liberators.
Aug 10. Parisians storm Tuileries, massacre of crowd is followed by massacre of Swiss Guards, Louis deposed, monarchy ends: REPUBLIC.
Constitution of 1792.
Statement of Duke of Brunswick: I will level Paris for what you have done to the King!
Sep. Prisons are attacked by the people, many prisoners (esp. clerics and nobility) massacred on summary judgement.
National Convention convenes after new election. Robespierre back in it, also Marat, Saint-Juste, also Girondins & Dantonists. Much more powerful.
The “iron safe” is found full of evidence that Louis helping Austria all along. This brings down the constitutional monarchists (including Lafayette), as many are found to have collaborated and the people bay for the blood of the rest.
Louis is tried, convicted by margin of single vote, condemned to death.
1793
Jan. Louis meets guillotine.
War going badly with Britain, Netherlands, Spain and Prussia; effective peasant revolt against Republic in the Vendee region led by priests. British scrap French fleet at Toulon, which they occupy.
June. Marat killed by Charlotte Corday, who gets the guillotine.
May. Uprising in Paris called by Jacobins overthrows Girondin government (Danton joins Jacobins in this just in time to save himself.)
June. Girondins are arrested.
July. Committee of Public Safety convenes (12 who rule). Robespierre’s first office of the Republic.
Committee declares levee en masse (all citizens must contribute: draft! homefront! gather scraps, take ration cards, buy war bonds etc.).
Declares the TERROR.
New calendar is declared.
New religion of the Supreme Being.
La Marseillaise (marching song of revolutionary loyalist militia from Marseilles).
Oct. Marie gets the guillotine. Now we’re moving! Guillotine work around clock. Thousands of monarchists, Lafayette, Lavoisier get guillotine.
Nov. Girondins get the guillotine (Mme. Roland!). Terror turning on thousands of revolutionaries; anyone out of line with regime is viewed as an objective threat due to the war and siege.
War turns around. Vendee revolt is put down.
Officer Napoleon directs artillery barrage that captures Toulon back from British.
Committee tells women to stop being revolutionary and get back in the kitchen.
Women’s clubs are banned!
1794
March. Hyper-terror faction to the left of Robespierre (Hebertists) get the guillotine.
April. Dantonists (and Danton) get the guillotine.
July. Set up of even faster procedure for trials; Robespierre looking for an end game, but gets outmaneuvered by Convention and the other Committee.
July 27 comes the “Thermidorean Reaction” (named after month of Thermidor): Jacobins (including Robespierre) get the guillotine.
Napoleon leads crushing of anti-Convention rebels.
Constitution of 1795: Sets up 5-man directory as executive, 2-house legislature (suffrage only for propertied men).
Peace with Prussia and Spain, war continues with Austria and Britain.
More rising bread prices; riots; return of many emigres.
Napoleon - total quickie:
1796-97: Napoleon in Italy, beats Austrians.
Election of 1797: Supporters of constitutional monarchy win majority.
1798 Napoleon in Egypt.
1799 Napoleon dissolves Directory, declares himself First Consul. Confirmed in plebiscite.
Emigres may return if they swear an oath of loyalty. Meritocracy. Economic reforms & rationalization. Recognition of all land reform in revolution wins over peasants. Napoleonic Code (restores order, disenfranches women).
Concordat of 1801: Napoleon makes peace with Church.
1802 Napoleon names himself Consul for Life. Confirmed in plebiscite.
1804 Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of France. Confirmed in plebiscite.
All by plebiscite. What do we conclude?
Give the people what they want!
1804-1814: CONQUEST! CONQUEST!
1805: Trafalgar; British blockade of Continent. Napoleon responds with Continental System (boycott).
Spain, 3 Italian states, Westphalia turned into protectorates (soon under Napoleon’s family).
Prussia falls 1806, as does Austria, Poland; turned into sattelite states.
1808: End of Spanish monarchy - will set off Latin American independence.
1812: What the hell are you thinking, invading Russia?
1813: The decisive “Battle of Nations” near Leipzig.
1814: Napoleon abdicates, goes to Elba.
1815: March - He’s back!
June 18, 1815: Waterloo. Napoleon to St. Helena.
Nov. 1814-June 1815: CONGRESS OF VIENNA. Attempted nervous restoration of old European order under monarchs, with more gestures to accommodate demands of the people, congeals until 1848.
Review of CITY OF DARKNESS, CITY OF LIGHT from THE LONDON TIMES, May 17-May 23, 1997
REVOLUTION HEROINES By Lisa Jardine
In Simon Schama’s massive historical chronicle of the French Revolution, CITIZENS, the chocolate maker’s daughter Pauline Leon and the burlesque actress Claire Lacombe make brief appearances. But in Marge Piercy’s meticulously researched and gripping tale of this turbulent period in French history, real-life women like these are made its central figures: unsung heroines from among the working people of Paris struggling to change the world.
In Piercy’s story, the lives of women surviving alone provide a poignant counterpoint to the power struggles and political intrigues of the political factions, Royalists and Cordeliers, Girondins and Jacobins. From the day she runs away from home at 15, Claire Lacombe is forced to battle a hostile world. Her life as a traveling player is one of abject poverty, but at least she does not have to put up with the kind of casual violence and subjugation experienced by her married friends.
Leon, left to run the chocolate shop alone through a series of awful accidents of the kind which regularly befall the unprotected, becomes the leader of the women who spark off the bread riots, and eventually joins those who invade Louis XVI’s palace to confront the king. It is the combination of deprivation and independence of spirit which bonds the two women when they meet. Their subsequent exploits as militant activists stem from a passionate shared sense of injustice and a determination simply to survive.
Piercy weaves these tales together with those of more familiar figures: Marat and Danton, Robespierre and Condorcet. Her revolutionary heroes are men with feelings and private lives, men who can acknowledge their own weaknesses and uncertainties at least in private. We find ourselves drawn into their intimate lives, sharing their desires and accidental choices, along with their processes of decision-making.
We slide with them from reasonable resistance to oppression into blind unreasonableness of the Terror. And, inevitably, the individuals with whom we have shared hopes and fears, whom we have seen triumph briefly over their local adversities become in their turn the victims of show trials and guillotine.
The world that Piercy conjures up is utterly believable, right down to the all-pervading, nauseatingly foul smells of the city, the appalling squalor of urban poverty, the casual violence and unreflecting cruelty towards the underclass.
So convincing is her fiction that I find it hard not to believe that this is truly how it was, particularly as regards the crucial part played by the women. Surely it was these bands of heroic women who precipitated and sustained the French Revolution? Surely Claire Lacombe, the actress, really is the figure of Liberty shown bare-breasted leading the people in the Delacroix painting reproduced on Piercy’s cover - the figure that Piercy has her play in the revolutionary tableau in the cathedral of Notre Dame? Did Pauline Leon survive her days of glory organising the women of her quarter into the Revolutionary Republican Women, to marry a soldier and retire to the country?
It is a tribute to Marge Piercy’s wonderful novel that these are questions to which I feel I badly need to know the answers.
.
