Plans for My First Book

After a lengthy period of contemplation, I have settled upon the basis for my first book. To hear about it, simply click on the following link: Plans for My First Book

A Defense of Radicalism

A Defense of Radicalism

My response to a comment made on this blog.

To play the audio, click on the orange letters above.

Cameron & Nicholas

Cameron & NIcholas

Originally uploaded by cameronreilly

On 13 July 2008, I met with Cameron Reilly and J. David Markham in Paris, and we spent the next day on the town. Here is a photo of Cameron and me at the Louvre at one of the outdoor second-story cafes.

Legal Justification of the Enghien Affair

The duc d’Enghien was sentenced to death after a military trial found him guilty of treason. To this day it is not definitively known whether he was actually the “young prince” revealed by the British-paid terrorist Georges Cadoudal to be involved in what is dubbed the Cadoudal Plot, although all available information and my own intuition point towards his innocence in that matter; however, the fact remains that he was a traitor. He had made a public oath to overthrow the Republic, had taken up arms against France and personally fought against the Republic’s armies, and was in the midst of working on what appears to be another plot when he was arrested, the suggestive evidence being that he and his companions were in the process of burning several sets of papers when the soldiers came for him and the remaining papers detailed secret meetings in Paris, which not only would be illegal for the duc as he was exiled but also had the implication that he could have been in contact with Cadoudal. It is now supposed that he was in fact traveling to Paris to meet with his fiancée, but he made no declaration of this during his trial, nor would it be of much importance. The fact remains that the merciful pardon of émigrés excluded those who had, as it explicitly described, “not taken up against the Republic,” and so his return for any reason was warrant enough for death. Whether or not he was part of the Cadoudal Plot in particular, he was still a traitor, and the price for such treason was death. The argument presented is not on whether or not the proscribed penalty of death for treason is just, but rather that the sentence given him was in fact legal, despite the claims of a sect of naysayers.

 

By the end of the trial, the duc d’Enghien refused to offer a defense, contenting himself instead with writing to Napoleon for pardon as was permitted by the law, and accepted the final judgment of guilty of the charges:

1 – of having borne arms against the French Republic .2 – of having offered his services to the British Government, the enemy of France.

3 – of having received and harboured in his household agents of the British government, of having provided them with the means to carry out espionage in France and of having conspired with them against the internal and external security of the State.

4 – of placing himself at the head of a group of émigrés and others, funded by England, on the frontiers of France, in the states of Fribourg and Baden.

5 – of having carried out espionage in Strasbourg, of a kind liable to encourage unrest in the neighbouring departments, in order to create a diversion favourable to England.

6 – of being one of the supporters and accomplices of the conspiracy devised by the English against the life of the First Consul which, in the event of its success, would have led to the invasion of France

 

 

 

Of those charges, the only one which he could possibly have been innocent of would have been the 6th, which would have left more than enough warrant for his arrest and execution. As for the issue of his residence in Ettenheim, that must be put into context. At the time, the issue of “national borders” was not as it is today, and there would have been very little problem with officials seizing criminals from the fringes of their territory, as the duc was only on the very edge of France and Ettenheim [which was an independent state, noting that the unified political body of Germany would not exist until 1871 and it was neither part of Prussia nor Austria]. In addition, the duc had violated the terms of his stay in Ettenheim, which was on the conditions that he “did not conspire against the French government, its friends and allies ” and maintained “peaceful and discreet conduct.” Conspiring to reinstate the Bourbon monarchy and plotting with England violate the first condition, and publically swearing to overthrow the Republic and taking up arms against it both violate the second condition.

 

Ultimately, it was a conspiracy two of Napoleon’s ministers, Savery and Talleyrand, that sealed the duc’s fate. Savery was responsible for, of his own initiative, hassling the trial into moving quicker and of brutally executing the duc in despicable conditions, shooting him in the back of the head in front of a pre-dug grave in the middle of a rainy night, without even pretending to wait for Napoleon’s reply to the request for pardon, and Talleyrand withheld the request from Napoleon until he knew it would be too late. Whether or not he would have been pardoned is a subject for debate, but had it not been for those two self-absorbed and malicious ministers the duc would have met a dignified death at the guillotine during the day and in a better environment. The manner of the duc’s death was disgraceful, but his arrest and sentence were both entirely right and justifiable.

Speech by Napoleon III on France’s Foreign Policy

Although I am hardly a fan of Emperor Napoleon III, this is nevertheless an interesting historical account, given by the US’s Confederate newspaper Harper’s Weekly on 2 March  1861:

FRANCE.
THE EMPEROR’S SPEECH.

The French Emperor opened the Chambers on 4th with a speech, in which he said :

“I have endeavored to prove, in my relations with foreign Powers, that France sincerely desires peace, and that, without renouncing a legitimate influence, she does not pretend to interfere in any place where her interests are not concerned; and, finally, that, if she sympathizes with all that is great and noble, she does not hesitate to condemn every thing which violates international right and justice. It is sufficient for the greatness of the country that its rights be maintained in the quarters in which they are incontestible, to defend its honor wherever it may be attacked, and to afford her support where it is supplicated by a just cause. It is thus that we have maintained our rights in causing the recognition of the cession of Savoy and Nice. These provinces are now irrevocably united to France. It is thus that, to avenge our honor in the extreme East, our flag, united with that of Great Britain, floats victoriously over the walls of Pekin, and that the Cross, emblem of Christian civilization, again surmounts in the capital of China the temples of our religion which have been closed for more than a century. It is thus that, in the name of humanity, our troops have gone to Syria, in virtue of a European convention, in order to protect the Christian against a blind fanaticism. At Rome I have considered it necessary to increase the garrison when the security of the Holy Father appeared to be threatened. I have sent my fleet to Gaeta at the moment when it seemed that it must be the last refuge of the Ring of Naples. After having allowed it to remain there four months, I withdrew it. However worthy of sympathy might be a royal misfortune is nobly defended, the presence of our war vessels obliged us to depart every day from the system of neutrality which I had proclaimed, and gave rise to erroneous interpretations; but you know that in policy one hardly believes in the possibility of a pure, disinterested step. Such is a rapid exposition of the general situation. Let any apprehension, therefore, be dissipated, and let confidence be reestablished. Why should not commercial and industrial affairs assume a new development? My firm resolution is not to enter into any conflict in which the cause of France should not be based on right and justice. What, then, have we to fear ? Can a united and compact nation, numbering forty millions of souls, fear to be drawn into struggles the aim of which she could not approve, or be provoked by any menace whatever? The first virtue of a people is to have confidence in itself, and not allow itself to be disturbed by imaginary alarms. Let us, then, calmly regard the future in the full consciousness of our strength as well as in our honorable intentions. Let us engage, without exaggerated preoccupations, in the development of the germs of the prosperity that Providence places in our hands.”

 

 

Reasoning behind the War of the First Coalition

 

“Their said majesties the emperor [of the Holy Roman Empire] and the king of Prussia are resolved to act promptly and in common accord with the forces necessary to obtain the desired common end [the reestablishment of Louis XVI’s absolute monarchy],” declared Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire and King Frederick William of Prussia in their Treaty of Pillnitz, continuing to promise to “give such orders to their troops as are necessary in order that they may be ready to be called into active service.”  Although they later deny it, this treaty was virtually a declaration of war on the French Republic; it clearly revealed the fact that Austria and Prussia were prepared to employ military force against the free French nation that had taken its fate into its own hands.  Reasonably enough, the despots of Europe, drunk with blood and pride, feared for their thrones in light of the liberal and egalitarian ideals flowing from France; however, rather than accepting their existence and instituting new reforms and freedoms as the Assembly in France was, the despots chose instead to attempt to extinguish the light of liberty and crush the Republic underfoot.  They stated that they were ready to use force, and all that remained was a trigger to “justify” a war.

 

            Rather than play the victim, France, recognizing war to be inevitable, chose to take the reigns and declare war for themselves, which they did on 20 April 1792.   There were, in fact, further reasons for declaring war than just subduing the despots of Europe.  Jacques Pierre Brissot, the Legislative Assembly’s greatest proponent of war, argued that war would spread the Revolutionary ideals to neighboring countries as the armies of the Republic ventured out on their campaigns, and that the war would serve as a goal that the whole country could rally behind, consolidating the Revolution.

 

            Peace was not a possibility; the absolutism of the despots would not allow it.  The Republic must, as Joseph Chénier wrote in his masterpiece song Chant du Départ, “prevail or perish,” for the enemies of France would never yield otherwise.   The tyrants thirsted for French blood, but it would be their own “impure blood” that would “water the furrows of France,” as  Claude-Joseph Rouget so brilliantly wrote in his song La Marseillaise.  Searching for evidence of the cruel and barbarous absolutism of the despots, especially of Austria and Prussia, one needs look no further than the Brunswick Manifesto, issued by the Duke of Brunswick, commander of Prussian and Austrian invasion forces, on 25 July 1792 as he neared Paris.  He warns that “any towns and villages who may dare to defend themselves” shall be “punished immediately according to the most stringent laws of war, and their houses shall be burned or destroyed.”  Furthermore, in his insane blood frenzy, he admonished the French populous, “if the least violence be offered to their Majesties the king, queen, and royal family, and if their safety and their liberty be not immediately assured, they [Prussia and Austria] will inflict an ever memorable vengeance by delivering over the city of Paris to military execution and complete destruction.”  In other words, should the Parisians offer any defense at all, they’ll all be slaughtered mercilessly and the city leveled to the ground.  No one other than the most tyrannical despot would make such an offer.

 

            After the War of the First Coalition, which Spain and Britain would later join as allies of Austria, the French Republic stood victoriously above the rest, shining as a beacon of hope to the world.  With General Bonaparte’s victories in Italy he was able to seal peace with the fair and benevolent Treaty of Campo Formio.  In effect, France had begun liberating Western Europe.  Italy, which was splintered and dominated by an oppressive Austria, had been reorganized by Gen. Bonaparte into a set of republics, most notably the Ligurian and Cisalpine Republics.  In accordance with the ideal of equality, Gen. Bonaparte went so far as to liberate Italian Jews from the ghettoes they had been subjected to, even demolishing the walls of the infamous Roman ghettoes, after which the manacles of the Star of David on their clothing were removed as they were finally allowed to join society as free men, equal in rights.  There were initially problems with fighting a war while the state was still embroiled in revolution, especially with internal enemies such as the Royal Family, who gave away troop movements to the enemy and begged for them to continue the war with France, and traitorous members of the Assembly such as Mirabeau, who earlier had conspired with the Royal Family, but thanks to Robespierre’s insistence, a Revolutionary Tribunal was established, followed by the Committee of Public Safety, which weeded out many traitors, which in turn inspired the soldiers on campaign.

 

In light of all of this, there can be no doubt that the war was a good decision, not only because France won the war, but because of what would ultimately result from the war.  War consolidated the people, and in that state the government was able to all but annihilate the internal enemies of France.  Outside of France, people were shown a new style of life, namely one where they could be free to live life as they wished.  They saw first-hand the benefits of choice of profession, of freedom of religion, of freedom of speech and of the press, and many more that they could hardly dream of.  After the War of the First Coalition, England would bribe the tyrants of Europe into forming coalition after coalition, creating a state of perpetual warfare on the continent which, while defending la patrie, Napoleon Bonaparte could further expand the glorious ideals of the revolution to not only his own country but also to all of Europe and the United States of America through his Code Civil, otherwise known as the Code Napoleon, which would eventually influence countries worldwide.  Although France would in the long-run lose the Wars of the Coalitions, it sacrificed itself for the modernization and liberation of Europe and the whole world.  Without the war, all of that would most likely not have happened, or at least not at the expedient rate at which it had.

Modern Presence of Napoleon

Within France traces of Emperor Napoleon I are ever eminent, evident to people of virtually every walk of life.  The law system of France is still the Napoleonic Code of the First French Empire, although modifications have been made to it with the shifting times.  Paris’ paved roads, even-odd numbering system for houses, and fire brigades are all testament to his reign, as are the trees along main roads, originally planted to provide shade for travelers. 

            Thanks to Napoleon, France has one of the world’s best water-bound transportation and trading lines in the world.  The préfecture system was initiated under Napoleon, creating a highly efficient and centralized police administration, in addition to La Sûreté Nationale, now the French National Police, which inspired the creation of organizations such as Scotland Yard and the F.B.I.  In terms of finances, taxes are still being collected by professional tax collectors, a change Napoleon made from using part-time people who were paid a percentage of what they collected, and France still maintains its central National Bank.  The fact that France is financially stable, considering the horrible deprivation and poverty under many years of the despotic ancien régime and even the French Revolutionary governments, is directly due to Napoleon

            Religion-wise, France still is religiously tolerant as Napoleon had decreed, accepting not on the Catholicism of the large percentage of the population, but Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, and others.  For landmarks, he built the Colonne Vendôme and initiated construction of the Arc de Triomphe, one of the most famous monuments in the world.  For French students, there is a centralized curriculum and higher education available, especially with Napoleon’s lycées; in addition, to ensure that effective teachers were heading the schools, he instated the École Normale Supérieure for the express purpose of training teachers.

 

            If Napoleon had never existed, France would probably be much worse off.  Without his leadership, the country would have been completely decimated by starvation, poverty, and crime.  Without his military guidance, the despots of Europe would have defeated the French Revolutionary armies in the War of the Third coalition, the punitive measures taken on France would have been even more devastating then they were with the nefarious Congress of Vienna, and a more lasting monarchy would have been imposed.  Revolutionary fervor in la patrie would have been all but extinguished, the feudal laws of the Bourbons would have continued to oppress the people, and the county might well have wound up at war with Jeffersonian United States of America over the lower ports of New Orleans.  Therefore, in light of the miraculous reforms he brought to France and the abhorred plight he ended, Napoleon Bonaparte I would be rated as the foremost European military leader and statesmen in history, setting the scene for the modernization of France, Europe and the world.