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historium2020-05-08 08:52 pm
iberiandoctor) wrote in historium2020-05-08 08:52 pm
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Fandom Promo: 19th Century CE France RPF - Jacques-Antoine Manuel/Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Title: "All hail, the Republic!" They built it with their hands - Jacques-Antoine Manuel/Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Author:iberiandoctor (jehane)
Fandom: 19th Century CE France RPF - Jacques-Antoine Manuel/Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Historical Connection in Summary: Historical RPF: this is Restoration-era France in her turbulent Bourbon period between 1815 to 1827.
Content Warnings: N/A
With thanks to: My dearmiss_morland, for first luring me into this fandom and escorting me to Père Lachaise one perfect summer in 2018, and for betaing this manifesto, and to political aficionado kainosite, who is also responsible for many of the ideas and references here.
Canon recap: This fandom centres around two French political figures: Béranger, France’s unofficial poet laureate, and Manuel, the lawyer and orator and politician who loved him and lived with him until Manuel’s untimely death in 1827.
When Béranger died in 1857 he asked to be buried with Manuel, and their joint grave can be seen at Père Lachaise today, upon which medallions of the two men gaze into each other’s eyes for eternity:
Photo credit Pierre-Yves Beaudouin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Historical Connection:
Jacques-Antoine Manuel (10 December 1775 – 20 August 1827) was a Leftist Restoration-era liberal politician famous for his integrity, his eloquence, and his unwavering resistance to the absolutist Bourbon monarchy and ultraroyalist government of the day, which had been restored to power in the wake of the downfall of the First French Empire and the defeat of Napoleon after the Hundred Days War. A gifted orator, in May 1815, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from the Department of Basses-Alpes, which was then the lower house of the French Parliament.
After the Bourbons were returned to power, Manuel was re-elected in 1818 as the representative for the Department of Vendée, serving in the Centre-Leftist opposition government of Casimir Périer. Here is a link to his speeches in the Parliamentary debates of the time.
And this is a link to his dashing parliamentary engraving, and a glowing entry at pp 50-54 of La Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture, Vol 37, which waxes lyrically about him as follows (woeful trans. from French mine):
"...a tall man with an agreeable figure, and manners full of simplicity and at the same time of nobility, there we had Manuel, the sharpest, the most vehement, the most indomitable of the athletes which we have seen fighting under the flag of Liberalism in the parliamentary arena; his out of all the Deputies of the Left were the words most eloquent and bold, his was the infectious and irresistible logic that exerted the most influence on the resolutions of the Assembly."
(The aforesaid figure of Deputy Manuel in his parliamentary debut, indeed as tall and agreeable as advertised!)
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (19 August 1780 – 16 July 1857) was a popular songwriter who wrote political songs critical of the Bourbon regime and was imprisoned, twice, for his sedition. He played a key role in mobilizing the opposition that led, finally, to the regime’s downfall; his songs (such as Le Vieux Drapeau) helped to bring about the July Revolution of 1830.
Manuel and Béranger met in 1816 and swiftly became inseparable friends. Béranger writes of their meeting in his biography:
"He was reserved and difficult of access. I was still very unpolished; and yet on the occasion of our very first meeting, we felt we were made for that intimate friendship which was established between us in a few days, that death alone could dissolve."
In February 1823, Manuel was illegally expelled by a fearful ultraroyalist government from the Chamber of Deputies on a trumped-up pretext of advocating regicide. Although he ought to have been re-elected, his Leftist colleagues feared he was too controversial and would damage the electoral prospects of the whole Liberal slate. As such, they blocked his candidacy and ended his political career.
Shortly afterwards Béranger moved in to Manuel's residence at rue des Martyrs, 23 - see Manuel et son temps, 498 - living a simple life, ”in a building with a garden that offered them an agreeable retreat”, which truly looks like a lovely little nook ♥
They lived there together until Manuel's tragic death three years later, in Béranger’s arms, at their friend Laffitte’s house in the Yvelines.
(Béranger wanted nothing from Manuel's estate but his pocket watch and his mattress, which he slept on for the rest of his life. Neither of them ever married, and although Béranger had liaisons with women during his life, he didn't during the years when he and Manuel were together. The circumstantial evidence that they were in fact personal as well as political bedfellows is pretty compelling, and it’s discussed in academic works, Friendship And Politics In Post-Revolutionary France, Sarah Horowitz and Regicide and the Eloquence of Silence: The Expulsion of Manuel from the Assembly (1823) and Béranger’s Chansons nouvelles (1825), Robert O. Steele .)
After the French Revolution brought down the July Monarchy in 1848 and restored France to a democracy for the first time in fifty years, Béranger’s first thought was of his beloved friend who did not live to see it, as set out in his Poem 199.— ODE ON THE REVOLUTION OF 1848, particularly these verses:
Beranger to Manuel:
O, Manuel, France has raised again her head;
Now has her freedom not a foe to dread:
Thus in our dreams France we were wont to trace;
For nought by halves can suit that giant race!
Since to the promised land God leads the way,
Why did He not with us permit thy stay?
What hadst thou done, like Moses, thus to die?
Ah, my poor friend, for thy embrace I sigh!
A victor thou — that strife heroic ended —
Soon would thy thoughts to my still nook have tended;
For most we need each other's cordial greeting,
When nobly high the fevered pulse is beating.
Embracing as of old, with voice long pent.
Till in a kiss our tears at last were blent,
"All hail, the Republic!" would have been our cry —
Ah, my poor friend, for thy embrace I sigh!
Characters: Apart from Manuel and Béranger, our Restoration-era milieu (which would be familiar to fans of Victor Hugo’s oeuvre in general and Les Miserables in particular) featured the Leader of the centre-left Opposition and later Prime Minister Casimir Perier (11 October 1777 – 16 May 1832), and his protégé, Henri Gisquet, who in 1831 became (the fictional) Inspector Javert’s Prefect of Police.
Immediately pre-Restoration, we have Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police and later President of the Executive Commission of the provisional government during the Hundred Days, before he died in exile in 1820. Fouché was young Manuel’s patron, and Ray Ellsworth Cubberly's The Role of Fouché during the Hundred Days, 1970 described the up-and-coming politician thus:
"… a promising young Provençal and later a great liberal leader, who was elected from the Basse-Alpes. He was to be Fouché’s voice in the Chamber during the trying days lying just ahead. A brilliant orator, skillful writer, quick and intelligent, he was the perfect complement to Fouché, himself a poor speaker and an uninspired writer…"
(Béranger hated Fouché, and trolls the man in his book. Someone else who was Fouché’s protégé? Honore de Balzac’s fictional spy, Corentin, from La Comedie Humaine!)
Manuel and Béranger had many Liberal-minded friends, including Jacques Laffitte and the Marquis de Lafayette (yes, the hero of the American Revolutionary War, recently portrayed in Hamilton (the Musical)). After Manuel’s death and the 1830 Revolution, many of these gentlemen played parts in the new Orleanist government under Louis-Philippe I, though Béranger never would.
They also had one protégé: Adolphe Thiers, (15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877), who set fire to everything that Manuel and Béranger worked for. Ambitious, brilliant Thiers, who became the President of France in 1871, came to Paris in 1821 as a 24-year-old with 100 francs in his pocket. Manuel took him under his wing, and he wrote political screeds for liberal newspapers and was instrumental in Manuel’s (relative) 1820s electoral successes. However, after Manuel’s death, Thiers took up political cudgels and a position in the post-July Revolution Orleanist government, and embarked upon a path that culminated in betraying his republican ideals and also incidentally killing half of Paris (although in one of his final acts as President Thiers did manage to block the efforts of royalists to return France to a constitutional monarchy).
A Manuel-related anecdote, as told in Henri Malo's 1932 biography of Thiers:
Béranger inherited the horsehair mattress on which Manuel had slept, and a carpet. One day while visiting the songwriter, Thiers said to him: "Why, this carpet belonged to Manuel!" "How did you recognize it?" Béranger asked. "I've looked down at it so many times when Manuel scolded me!” replied Thiers.
Other Sources:
* Link to Manuel’s page on a website of old historical coinage of Manuel’s home county, Alpes de Haute-Provence, which includes several historical pictures and medallions of our hero.
* Manuel’s biography in French.
* Béranger’s biography in English.
* Béranger’s poetry in English.
* Sarah Horowitz’s Friendship And Politics In Post-Revolutionary France.
* Robert O. Steele’s Regicide and the Eloquence of Silence: The Expulsion of Manuel from the Assembly (1823) and Béranger’s Chansons nouvelles (1825).
* William Hone’s book on the politics and historical accounts of the 1830 July Revolution Full Annals of the Revolution in France, 1830
Meta:
Obviously, I ship it, so much. Manuel and Béranger were courageous, gifted patriots who were as devoted to each other as to France, and it’s tragic that their life together was cut short in the way it was. Living together, working together for a better France, and being buried together in the same tomb, all speak of their personal and political intimacy.
In a letter written during this period Manuel said they shared ”the same tastes, the same opinions, the same liaisons, and a tender friendship”, and in his Author’s Preface to the 1833 edition of BÉRANGER: Two Hundred of His Lyrical Poems (trans. William Young, 1850), Béranger writes that, if Manuel had lived to see the July Revolution:
“It is probable that Manuel would have been forced to bear a part in the affairs of the new Government. I would have followed him, with my eyes closed, through all the pathways which it might have been requisite for him to take, in order to reach again, and speedily, without doubt, the modest nook that we shared together… And as soon as he could be assured that France no longer needed him, I would hear him exclaim: “Come, let's away, and pass our time in the country!"
What would have happened to France if Manuel had in fact survived to see beyond the 1830 July Revolution, and the fruition of his and Béranger’s dreams in the 1848 Revolution? If he’d been at Béranger’s side, would they have managed to steer Thiers back to the path of the angels, or shared the tragedy of their protégé going over to the dark side? The sad AUs and potential fix-its abound, not to mention the action-adventuring of the Revolutionary period and the H/C of Manuel’s illness and demise!
But also, there is the grand romance and struggle of this particular setting: that is, France in her century of political upheaval, where her different factions and classes struggle with different styles of democracy, and what seem to be unbridgeable gulfs between competing ideologies. It took generations to understand that enfranchising the poor and giving the right to vote to the common man and having things burn down were necessary for a proper democracy, and for France to fully embrace at last the proud ideals of the Republic. Manuel and Béranger were Republicans and political figures first and foremost, and they truly personify the hope and heartbreak of this turbulent period in French history. They, and men like them committed to the Liberal cause like Lafayette and Laffitte, built the Republic with their hands. And then there are those others for whom the ends justified the means, like Fouché, like Perier, like Thiers, who were nevertheless of service to their nation.
Perhaps we, in our present era of almost cartoonish extremes of political partisanship, can draw some lessons, and some comfort, from their example.
Fandom Guide:
Well, it’s largely a fandom of three, and there are very few fics written for them. Here are the three Manuel/ Béranger ones:
The Canary bykainosite for Miss M (missm) (Teen)
When Béranger is brought up on charges of sedition, Manuel is determined to spare his friend from a long prison sentence by any means necessary. But the prosecutor Marchangy has plans of his own for the songwriter, and to stop them Manuel may have to find out just how far he's willing to go.
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn bykainosite for iberiandoctor (jehane) (Mature)
They say poets have prophetic dreams. But how to tell the true from the false?
L’homme qu’il n’aurait pas quitté byiberiandoctor for Kainosite (Mature)
The veteran soldier during the Three Glorious Days, and that which his devoted chansonnier— living in their quiet retreat — would have remarked upon at his side on the battlefield of power.
There are a couple of fics for Casimir Perier (admittedly, there are rather more for Henri Gisquet, but those impinge on the fictional Les Mis universe).
La Moitié de la Preuve byiberiandoctor for Kainosite (Mature)
What’s written in the newspapers is often only half the story.
Memory Exercises byfirestorm717 for Kainosite (Teen)
Gisquet strives to impress Casimir with his talented memory, among other skills he brings to Périer Bank.
There’s no fic for Thiers at all, alas. But I live in hope that this will change this year!
Thanks for your patience in getting to the end of this! If you've made it this far, please feel free to throw me any questions, or let me know what you think if you decide to read any of the source materials linked!
Author:
iberiandoctor (jehane)Fandom: 19th Century CE France RPF - Jacques-Antoine Manuel/Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Historical Connection in Summary: Historical RPF: this is Restoration-era France in her turbulent Bourbon period between 1815 to 1827.
Content Warnings: N/A
With thanks to: My dear
miss_morland, for first luring me into this fandom and escorting me to Père Lachaise one perfect summer in 2018, and for betaing this manifesto, and to political aficionado kainosite, who is also responsible for many of the ideas and references here. Canon recap: This fandom centres around two French political figures: Béranger, France’s unofficial poet laureate, and Manuel, the lawyer and orator and politician who loved him and lived with him until Manuel’s untimely death in 1827.
When Béranger died in 1857 he asked to be buried with Manuel, and their joint grave can be seen at Père Lachaise today, upon which medallions of the two men gaze into each other’s eyes for eternity:
Photo credit Pierre-Yves Beaudouin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Historical Connection:
Jacques-Antoine Manuel (10 December 1775 – 20 August 1827) was a Leftist Restoration-era liberal politician famous for his integrity, his eloquence, and his unwavering resistance to the absolutist Bourbon monarchy and ultraroyalist government of the day, which had been restored to power in the wake of the downfall of the First French Empire and the defeat of Napoleon after the Hundred Days War. A gifted orator, in May 1815, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from the Department of Basses-Alpes, which was then the lower house of the French Parliament.
After the Bourbons were returned to power, Manuel was re-elected in 1818 as the representative for the Department of Vendée, serving in the Centre-Leftist opposition government of Casimir Périer. Here is a link to his speeches in the Parliamentary debates of the time.
And this is a link to his dashing parliamentary engraving, and a glowing entry at pp 50-54 of La Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture, Vol 37, which waxes lyrically about him as follows (woeful trans. from French mine):
"...a tall man with an agreeable figure, and manners full of simplicity and at the same time of nobility, there we had Manuel, the sharpest, the most vehement, the most indomitable of the athletes which we have seen fighting under the flag of Liberalism in the parliamentary arena; his out of all the Deputies of the Left were the words most eloquent and bold, his was the infectious and irresistible logic that exerted the most influence on the resolutions of the Assembly."
(The aforesaid figure of Deputy Manuel in his parliamentary debut, indeed as tall and agreeable as advertised!)
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (19 August 1780 – 16 July 1857) was a popular songwriter who wrote political songs critical of the Bourbon regime and was imprisoned, twice, for his sedition. He played a key role in mobilizing the opposition that led, finally, to the regime’s downfall; his songs (such as Le Vieux Drapeau) helped to bring about the July Revolution of 1830.
Manuel and Béranger met in 1816 and swiftly became inseparable friends. Béranger writes of their meeting in his biography:
"He was reserved and difficult of access. I was still very unpolished; and yet on the occasion of our very first meeting, we felt we were made for that intimate friendship which was established between us in a few days, that death alone could dissolve."
In February 1823, Manuel was illegally expelled by a fearful ultraroyalist government from the Chamber of Deputies on a trumped-up pretext of advocating regicide. Although he ought to have been re-elected, his Leftist colleagues feared he was too controversial and would damage the electoral prospects of the whole Liberal slate. As such, they blocked his candidacy and ended his political career.
Shortly afterwards Béranger moved in to Manuel's residence at rue des Martyrs, 23 - see Manuel et son temps, 498 - living a simple life, ”in a building with a garden that offered them an agreeable retreat”, which truly looks like a lovely little nook ♥
They lived there together until Manuel's tragic death three years later, in Béranger’s arms, at their friend Laffitte’s house in the Yvelines.
(Béranger wanted nothing from Manuel's estate but his pocket watch and his mattress, which he slept on for the rest of his life. Neither of them ever married, and although Béranger had liaisons with women during his life, he didn't during the years when he and Manuel were together. The circumstantial evidence that they were in fact personal as well as political bedfellows is pretty compelling, and it’s discussed in academic works, Friendship And Politics In Post-Revolutionary France, Sarah Horowitz and Regicide and the Eloquence of Silence: The Expulsion of Manuel from the Assembly (1823) and Béranger’s Chansons nouvelles (1825), Robert O. Steele .)
After the French Revolution brought down the July Monarchy in 1848 and restored France to a democracy for the first time in fifty years, Béranger’s first thought was of his beloved friend who did not live to see it, as set out in his Poem 199.— ODE ON THE REVOLUTION OF 1848, particularly these verses:
Beranger to Manuel:
O, Manuel, France has raised again her head;
Now has her freedom not a foe to dread:
Thus in our dreams France we were wont to trace;
For nought by halves can suit that giant race!
Since to the promised land God leads the way,
Why did He not with us permit thy stay?
What hadst thou done, like Moses, thus to die?
Ah, my poor friend, for thy embrace I sigh!
A victor thou — that strife heroic ended —
Soon would thy thoughts to my still nook have tended;
For most we need each other's cordial greeting,
When nobly high the fevered pulse is beating.
Embracing as of old, with voice long pent.
Till in a kiss our tears at last were blent,
"All hail, the Republic!" would have been our cry —
Ah, my poor friend, for thy embrace I sigh!
Characters: Apart from Manuel and Béranger, our Restoration-era milieu (which would be familiar to fans of Victor Hugo’s oeuvre in general and Les Miserables in particular) featured the Leader of the centre-left Opposition and later Prime Minister Casimir Perier (11 October 1777 – 16 May 1832), and his protégé, Henri Gisquet, who in 1831 became (the fictional) Inspector Javert’s Prefect of Police.
Immediately pre-Restoration, we have Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police and later President of the Executive Commission of the provisional government during the Hundred Days, before he died in exile in 1820. Fouché was young Manuel’s patron, and Ray Ellsworth Cubberly's The Role of Fouché during the Hundred Days, 1970 described the up-and-coming politician thus:
"… a promising young Provençal and later a great liberal leader, who was elected from the Basse-Alpes. He was to be Fouché’s voice in the Chamber during the trying days lying just ahead. A brilliant orator, skillful writer, quick and intelligent, he was the perfect complement to Fouché, himself a poor speaker and an uninspired writer…"
(Béranger hated Fouché, and trolls the man in his book. Someone else who was Fouché’s protégé? Honore de Balzac’s fictional spy, Corentin, from La Comedie Humaine!)
Manuel and Béranger had many Liberal-minded friends, including Jacques Laffitte and the Marquis de Lafayette (yes, the hero of the American Revolutionary War, recently portrayed in Hamilton (the Musical)). After Manuel’s death and the 1830 Revolution, many of these gentlemen played parts in the new Orleanist government under Louis-Philippe I, though Béranger never would.
They also had one protégé: Adolphe Thiers, (15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877), who set fire to everything that Manuel and Béranger worked for. Ambitious, brilliant Thiers, who became the President of France in 1871, came to Paris in 1821 as a 24-year-old with 100 francs in his pocket. Manuel took him under his wing, and he wrote political screeds for liberal newspapers and was instrumental in Manuel’s (relative) 1820s electoral successes. However, after Manuel’s death, Thiers took up political cudgels and a position in the post-July Revolution Orleanist government, and embarked upon a path that culminated in betraying his republican ideals and also incidentally killing half of Paris (although in one of his final acts as President Thiers did manage to block the efforts of royalists to return France to a constitutional monarchy).
A Manuel-related anecdote, as told in Henri Malo's 1932 biography of Thiers:
Béranger inherited the horsehair mattress on which Manuel had slept, and a carpet. One day while visiting the songwriter, Thiers said to him: "Why, this carpet belonged to Manuel!" "How did you recognize it?" Béranger asked. "I've looked down at it so many times when Manuel scolded me!” replied Thiers.
Other Sources:
* Link to Manuel’s page on a website of old historical coinage of Manuel’s home county, Alpes de Haute-Provence, which includes several historical pictures and medallions of our hero.
* Manuel’s biography in French.
* Béranger’s biography in English.
* Béranger’s poetry in English.
* Sarah Horowitz’s Friendship And Politics In Post-Revolutionary France.
* Robert O. Steele’s Regicide and the Eloquence of Silence: The Expulsion of Manuel from the Assembly (1823) and Béranger’s Chansons nouvelles (1825).
* William Hone’s book on the politics and historical accounts of the 1830 July Revolution Full Annals of the Revolution in France, 1830
Meta:
Obviously, I ship it, so much. Manuel and Béranger were courageous, gifted patriots who were as devoted to each other as to France, and it’s tragic that their life together was cut short in the way it was. Living together, working together for a better France, and being buried together in the same tomb, all speak of their personal and political intimacy.
In a letter written during this period Manuel said they shared ”the same tastes, the same opinions, the same liaisons, and a tender friendship”, and in his Author’s Preface to the 1833 edition of BÉRANGER: Two Hundred of His Lyrical Poems (trans. William Young, 1850), Béranger writes that, if Manuel had lived to see the July Revolution:
“It is probable that Manuel would have been forced to bear a part in the affairs of the new Government. I would have followed him, with my eyes closed, through all the pathways which it might have been requisite for him to take, in order to reach again, and speedily, without doubt, the modest nook that we shared together… And as soon as he could be assured that France no longer needed him, I would hear him exclaim: “Come, let's away, and pass our time in the country!"
What would have happened to France if Manuel had in fact survived to see beyond the 1830 July Revolution, and the fruition of his and Béranger’s dreams in the 1848 Revolution? If he’d been at Béranger’s side, would they have managed to steer Thiers back to the path of the angels, or shared the tragedy of their protégé going over to the dark side? The sad AUs and potential fix-its abound, not to mention the action-adventuring of the Revolutionary period and the H/C of Manuel’s illness and demise!
But also, there is the grand romance and struggle of this particular setting: that is, France in her century of political upheaval, where her different factions and classes struggle with different styles of democracy, and what seem to be unbridgeable gulfs between competing ideologies. It took generations to understand that enfranchising the poor and giving the right to vote to the common man and having things burn down were necessary for a proper democracy, and for France to fully embrace at last the proud ideals of the Republic. Manuel and Béranger were Republicans and political figures first and foremost, and they truly personify the hope and heartbreak of this turbulent period in French history. They, and men like them committed to the Liberal cause like Lafayette and Laffitte, built the Republic with their hands. And then there are those others for whom the ends justified the means, like Fouché, like Perier, like Thiers, who were nevertheless of service to their nation.
Perhaps we, in our present era of almost cartoonish extremes of political partisanship, can draw some lessons, and some comfort, from their example.
Fandom Guide:
Well, it’s largely a fandom of three, and there are very few fics written for them. Here are the three Manuel/ Béranger ones:
The Canary by
kainosite for Miss M (missm) (Teen)When Béranger is brought up on charges of sedition, Manuel is determined to spare his friend from a long prison sentence by any means necessary. But the prosecutor Marchangy has plans of his own for the songwriter, and to stop them Manuel may have to find out just how far he's willing to go.
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn by
kainosite for iberiandoctor (jehane) (Mature)They say poets have prophetic dreams. But how to tell the true from the false?
L’homme qu’il n’aurait pas quitté by
iberiandoctor for Kainosite (Mature)The veteran soldier during the Three Glorious Days, and that which his devoted chansonnier— living in their quiet retreat — would have remarked upon at his side on the battlefield of power.
There are a couple of fics for Casimir Perier (admittedly, there are rather more for Henri Gisquet, but those impinge on the fictional Les Mis universe).
La Moitié de la Preuve by
iberiandoctor for Kainosite (Mature)What’s written in the newspapers is often only half the story.
Memory Exercises by
firestorm717 for Kainosite (Teen)Gisquet strives to impress Casimir with his talented memory, among other skills he brings to Périer Bank.
There’s no fic for Thiers at all, alas. But I live in hope that this will change this year!
Thanks for your patience in getting to the end of this! If you've made it this far, please feel free to throw me any questions, or let me know what you think if you decide to read any of the source materials linked!
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And I'm fascinated about Thiers. What a complicated legacy to leave.
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Thiers is fascinating! But then, I have a huge thing for proteges who are lured to the dark side and make complicated moral choices and who redeem themselves in the end (as he hopefully did as well, by stopping the last royalist push in order to ensure France stayed a republic).
Thanks for reading ♥
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I am a bit envious that your historical fandom has politics that feel relevant to (I assume) your own. In mine, the two main characters are on opposing sides, but both of them are actually royalists, at least in the sense that the side for which they fought had a king. There doesn't seem to have been much of a leftist movement at the time (mid-18th century Britain). Of course when you dig into it, which I have definitely done, there's still all sorts of interesting stuff going on, which I guess is always the case in history! And the character on the winning side does very much react against the harsh repression going on after the war.
Perhaps strangely, I have never read Les Mis, although I've read books on the Paris Commune (though that was later, I know).
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I am a bit envious that your historical fandom has politics that feel relevant to (I assume) your own Yeah, I mean, France got rid of her kings spectacularly in 1789, and made it stick despite the bumps in the road of the Restoration and the July Monarchy, so the French definitely have a long and celebrated history of republicanism and revolution. Whereas England/the United Kingdom ... you know, still has her monarchy today :)
I will say that in the context of historical novels, I do appreciate the appealing trope where the protagonists are royalists deeply loyal to their (opposing) kings -- also, I think that in that context most such romantic historical protags tend to be royalists out of a love of a well-meaning sovereign and a loyalty to their country, not because they'd support divine right of kings and indentured servitude and widespread oppression and injustice towards their subjects?
But, yes, it is very easy to love and admire these French brave republicans who were committed to liberty and the empowerment of the people and stayed true to their ideals (when everyone around them were compromising theirs), as well as true to each other ♥
I've read books on the Paris Commune, Hey, this was during the era of Adolphe Thiers -- who came to Paris as a penniless 21 year old, and started off his career as Manuel's protege! So, this is not that much later, and it's definitely intimately connected to this time period and these guys!
Les Mis is public domain, and is available in English here on Project Gutenberg. I might get dinged for heresy as a Bad Les Mis Fan, but you can absolutely skip the chapters about the Parisian sewer system (though as a history buff you might enjoy the chapters about Waterloo!).
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But, yes, it is very easy to love and admire these French brave republicans who were committed to liberty and the empowerment of the people and stayed true to their ideals (when everyone around them were compromising theirs), as well as true to each other ♥
Oh, definitely!
I will say that in the context of historical novels, I do appreciate the appealing trope where the protagonists are royalists deeply loyal to their (opposing) kings
You are going to enjoy Flight of the Heron in that case. : ) Though I will say that the book also does show the flaws of both causes, which is nice!
also, I think that in that context most such romantic historical protags tend to be royalists out of a love of a well-meaning sovereign and a loyalty to their country, not because they'd support divine right of kings and indentured servitude and widespread oppression and injustice towards their subjects?
Well, yes, of course they are not for oppression and injustice. : ) But they might in fact be for the divine and hereditary right of kings. From what I've read, I think a common argument for the landed gentry and nobility went like this: that it's very important to them to pass on their estates to their sons, that in fact to them, the family going on could be more important than individual members of the family. And the hereditary succession of the kings is this same thing writ large, and if you can just switch out the king, what's to stop the same thing happening to their families? (Of course I personally am not sympathetic to this argument, because such a society obviously had huge inequalities of resources and power.)
But I find it interesting that a cause like that (wanting the "rightful king" back on the throne) also attracted all kinds of other people, for other reasons. Like, the large numbers of smugglers in Kent and Sussex were Jacobites, and I doubt they cared about the "rightful king". They wanted to avoid import taxes and avoid English protectionism in trading, and avoid the power of the state, and I guess because they traded with France, and the Stuarts were in France, they became Jacobites? But I wonder how much sense that actually makes, because it's not like the Stuarts, when they were actually on the throne, did not want to strengthen the power of the state and make people pay taxes. Maybe it's just too hard to imagine another social system, so by default it becomes, "I guess the other king is better"?
Re: Les Mis, I am probably too deeply immersed in my current fandom to tackle it right now. But if/when I do, I actually think sewer systems sound interesting. : )
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Ah, yes, you do. That said, yours seems reasonably benign and non-interfering with the democratic process, at least from the outside? It must very different from within, though!
But they might in fact be for the divine and hereditary right of kings. From what I've read, I think a common argument for the landed gentry and nobility went like this: that it's very important to them to pass on their estates to their sons, that in fact to them, the family going on could be more important than individual members of the family. And the hereditary succession of the kings is this same thing writ large.
Yeah, I agree a lot of the popular thinking would be tied up in land ownership and hereditary succession, and being able to own property and pass it to your heirs is an important (and, IMO, mostly positive -- my subject is law, so I'm predisposed to think this!) feature of civilisation as a whole. But the right to govern* isn't the same as the right to own land (I mean, people aren't chattel, and have rights themselves!), and you'd imagine sensible, compassionate protagonists like your Flight of the Heron OTP would appreciate this ;)
* I appreciate that the argument regarding the divine right of kings is more complicated than this, but I've always thought it boiled down to: royalty is predisposed by God (or hereditary genetics) to be just better at governing than the common man, and therefore they're the best person for the job. Albeit, as you say, folks like smugglers or rival countries would likely indeed support one king or other, not out of purist reasons, but out of convenience and politics!
Re: Les Mis, I am probably too deeply immersed in my current fandom to tackle it right now. But if/when I do, I actually think sewer systems sound interesting.
Haha, you will definitely fit right into the fandom! +rolls out welcome mat