Bastille Day

It is that time of the year again. The time when French republicans celebrate their bloody revolution that brought down the Kingdom of France and which saw the invasion and occupation of the Principality of Monaco. Having nothing new to say on this sad subject, I will merely point readers to some past posts on...

The Facts About Bastille Day

Bastille Day

HSH Prince Honore III

Princess Francoise-Therese

HSH Prince Honore IV

Prince Joseph of Monaco

Posts on the French Revolution

The Facts About Bastille Day

Another year, another Bastille Day in the (fifth) French Republic. I hope no one gets the wrong impression from my somber attitude on 14 July. The Principality of Monaco and the French Republic are good friends these days, everyone gets along and no one wants any unpleasantness. Many people also have the attitude that there’s no such thing as a bad time to have a party. However, I cannot condone such festivities on a day like this. Aside from all the horror the Revolution visited on France itself, the chain of events that started with the storming of the Bastille did no good for anyone in Monaco either, least of all the House of Grimaldi. There is no need to go into all of that in detail, we have covered it all before; the Grimaldis being stripped of their French titles, Prince Honore III being deposed, Monaco annexed to France, many going to prison (even the little future Sovereign Prince Florestan) and most horribly the wife of Prince Joseph of Monaco being among the last to be sent to the guillotine. But, in France itself, it is worth remembering on a day like today just how little most people know about the actual facts surrounding the storming of the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution.

The Kingdom of France was, undoubtedly, at a low point at the time. The economy was in shambles, hunger and poverty were widespread, too many in the aristocracy were living lives of indulgence far away from the people they should have been looking after and many in the clergy were more concerned with their own comfort than with administering the sacraments and teaching their people. However, the two young people at the pinnacle of power in France, His Most Christian Majesty King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, were not blind or uncaring to these problems. Both had each been working in their own way to solve the immense problems they had so recently inherited. King Louis XVI enacted many common sense policies to alleviate the suffering of his people. He cut expenses at Versailles, cut government expenditures overall, refused to go deeper into debt and refused to raise taxes. He ended the government monopoly on grain which allowed for lower prices that more people could afford. He taxed wealthy landowners for the first time and, though he was not required to, paid his own share as any other landowner would. Likewise, Queen Marie Antoinette helped to educate poor children, had her own kitchen opened to the poor, cut down on lavish parties (yes, despite all you’ve probably heard) and simplified her own wardrobe in an effort to make frugality chic.

Unfortunately, the accumulated problems of decades could not be overcome quickly and the radical firebrands were doing everything possible to mislead, misinform and radicalize the public while spreading the most vicious lies they could think up about their King and Queen. For example, partly in an effort to pay for the war against Great Britain on behalf of the United States, King Louis XVI enacted a tax reform which raised revenues but lowered taxes for the poor. Revolutionary propagandists played their game of misinformation, only telling people that the King would be collecting more money (not less from the poor) and implying or stating outright that this was all for his own enrichment rather than paying for the needs of the country. King Louis had done everything in his power to be reasonable and accommodating. Early in his reign he had encouraged local parliaments and he recalled the Estates-General. However, the firebrands only increased their agitation, whipping the mob into a frenzy and blaming the King for ills he had absolutely no control over. Finally, someone pointed to the prison-fortress of the Bastille as the imposing symbol of absolute royal power that had to be wiped out.

On July 14, 1789 a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille, which was actually nothing like what they had been told or what most people today think it was. Naturally, it looked very harsh and foreboding from the outside, but inside the prison conditions were not terrible, certainly no worse than any other prison of the time and probably better than most. The fact was that there was practically no one in the Bastille. The popular portrayal would have one believe that the Bastille was crowded with the poor, tortured victims of an autocratic monarch. In fact, it was almost empty of prisoners. The only people present to be liberated were four forgers, two lunatics and a pervert who had been locked up at the request of his own family. The real victims were the unfortunate men who just happened to be doing their job guarding the prison. All 120 soldiers were brutally massacred by the hatchet-wielding mob and the governor had his head cut off and stuck on a pike. This was the bloody and inglorious start of the horrific bloodbath known as the French Revolution.

Monaco was, of course, much more fortunate than France. Most of the family survived, Monaco was ultimately given back her independence and the Sovereign Prince was restored to his rightful throne. The French monarchy was restored as well but, sadly, the Revolution had done too much damage in France. The mentality of the country had changed and the moral core of the country would never be quite the same again. The traditional monarchy would fall, replaced by another Kingdom of France that tried to reach an accomodation with the revolutionary mindset only to be undone in 1848 and all of this in between the two efforts at empire led by the famous Napoleon and his later nephew. It says something profound that, despite some minor problems, the Principality of Monaco in all that time has continued on in peace and ever-increasing prosperity, secure in the traditions of a centuries old monarchy led by a family everyone knows and loves while France had more revolutions, the Paris Commune and is currently on their fifth effort at a republic. Monaco has long depended on the protection of France but these facts, perhaps, suggest that France might benefit from taking a lesson from the little principality on her southern coast.

Vive le Roi!

Bastille Day

Today the republicans of France celebrate the storming of the Bastille, usually used as a way to mark the start of the French Revolution. The "accepted" viewpoint is that the Bastille represented tyranny and oppression and the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent revolt was a glorious uprising of the people for 'liberty, equality and brotherhood'. However, facts can often get in the way of a good, rabble rousing story. The fact is that the Bastille was ugly and imposing but was not a terrible prison. At the time of the storming it held only a few petty criminals and lunatics. Moreoever, the Revolution that followed did not deliver freedom and liberty but a horrific bloodbath, known even at the time as the "Reign of Terror" which was not finally ended until the imposition of the authoritarian regime of Napoleon. It was not a battle between suffering masses and a cruel elite, in fact it was the poor common people who suffered the most and far more of them were murdered than were aristocrats. It was a terrible turn of events that brought greater suffering than anyone in Europe at that time had ever seen.

The storming of the Bastille also set events into motion that led to misery and suffering for France's neighbor Monaco. Shortly after the Bastille fell the revolutionary instigators infiltrated the lands of the Prince of Monaco and encouraged uprisings and demands for government power in Monaco, Menton and Roquebrune. HSH Prince Honore III was caught in a desperate situation. He allowed the formation of independently elected councils in the towns of his domain to appease his subjects and then rushed to Paris to try to save his considerable estates as a member of the French nobility. On August 4, 1789 he lost everything with the adoption of the abolition of all feudal rights and privileges in France. Promises were made to compensate him as he was a foreign prince and the Grimaldis had been given their French titles as payment for services to France but nothing ever came from it. The Grimaldis and Monaco were pulled down into the abyss that was the French Revolution.

The Prince de Conde (whose paramour was Honore III's ex-wife) gathered the royalist emigres to fight for the Kingdom of France and Prince Joseph of Monaco (a veteran of the Lorraine Dragoons and the Royal-Cravate) joined them. On October 22, 1792 French revolutionary forces occupied Monaco which Honore III protested but could not stop and his petitions were ignored. A Monegasque branch of the Jacobin Club, a radical bloodthirsty society led by the notorious executioner Robespierre, was set up in Monaco and the palace was ransacked by a revolutionary mob. In January of the next year they finally got around to arranging a "vote" to depose Honore III and allow Monaco to be annexed to France. Relegated to a mere cantonal seat in the Alpes-Maritimes department the "People's Council" voted to change the name of Monaco to Fort d'Hercule.

These were the darkest days for the House of Grimaldi. Prince Honore III, old and soon to die, tried to get back simply his own personal property but even this was denied him. Prince Joseph went into exile and Honore III and his son Honore IV were thrown in prison by the revolutionary regime. Honore IV's ex-wife Louise-Felicite and their son Prince Florestan were also put in prison. All of the property of the Grimaldi and Mazarin families were confiscated and Princess Francoise-Therese, the beloved wife of Prince Joseph, went to the guillotine as the last victim of the Reign of Terror. Ironically it was on that very day, 9 Thermidor on the revolutionary calendar, that Robespierre himself, the instigator of the nightmarish bloodlust, was arrested by his own revolutionary cohorts. That would not be the end of the ordeal and anyone observing the situation could have understood the Grimaldis and the people of Monaco giving up. Thankfully, they did not and their fortunes were ultimately restored but the spiral downward, toward revolution, occupation, terror and death all started today, July 14, in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille.