French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, catalyzed violent periods of political turmoil, culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon who brought many of its principles to areas he conquered in Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history; the causes of the French Revolution are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, the French government was in debt, it attempted to restore its financial status through unpopular taxation schemes, which were regressive.
Leading up to the Revolution, years of bad harvests worsened by deregulation of the grain industry and environmental problems inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy and the Catholic clergy of the established church. Some historians hold something similar to what Thomas Jefferson proclaimed: that France had "been awakened by our Revolution." Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789. During the first year of the Revolution, members of the Third Estate took control, the Bastille was attacked in July, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was passed in August, the Women's March on Versailles forced the royal court back to Paris in October. A central event of the first stage, in August 1789, was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules and privileges left over from the Ancien Régime; the next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms.
The Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 after the French victory at Valmy. In a momentous event that led to international condemnation, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. External threats shaped the course of the Revolution; the Revolutionary Wars beginning in 1792 featured French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine – achievements that had eluded previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins; the dictatorship imposed by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, from 1793 until 1794, established price controls on food and other items, abolished slavery in French colonies abroad, de-established the Catholic church and created a secular Republican calendar, religious leaders were expelled, the borders of the new republic were secured from its enemies. After the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795.
They suspended elections, repudiated debts, persecuted the Catholic clergy, made significant military conquests abroad. Dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. Napoleon, who became the hero of the Revolution through his popular military campaigns, established the Consulate and the First Empire, setting the stage for a wider array of global conflicts in the Napoleonic Wars; the modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. All future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor, its central phrases and cultural symbols, such as La Marseillaise and Liberté, fraternité, égalité, ou la mort, became the clarion call for other major upheavals in modern history, including the Russian Revolution over a century later. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day; the Revolution resulted in the suppression of the feudal system, emancipation of the individual, a greater division of landed property, abolition of the privileges of noble birth, nominal establishment of equality among men.
The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not only national, for it intended to benefit all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of democracies, it became the focal point for the development of most modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism and secularism, among many others. The Revolution witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France and the lives of its citizens towards the objective of military conquest; some of its central documents, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, continued to inspire movements for abolitionism and universal suffrage in the next century. Historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Rising social and economic inequality, new political ideas emerging from the Enlightenment, economic mismanagement, environmental factors leading to agricultural failure, unmanageable national debt, political mismanagement on the part of King Louis XVI have all been cited as laying the groundwork for the Revolution.
Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the "public sphere" in France and elsewhere
Agrippa d'Aubigné
Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné was a French poet, soldier and chronicler. His epic poem Les Tragiques is regarded as his masterpiece. Born at the Aubigné Château of Saint-Maury near Pons in the present day Charente-Maritime, the son of Jean d'Aubigné, implicated in the Huguenot Amboise conspiracy to kidnap the King. According to his own account he knew Latin and Hebrew at six years of age, he had translated the Crito of Plato before he was eleven, his father strengthened his Protestant sympathies by showing him, while they were passing through that town on their way to Paris, the heads of the conspirators exposed upon the scaffold, instructing him not to spare his own head in order to avenge their death. After a brief residence he was obliged to flee from Paris to avoid persecution, but was captured and threatened with death. Escaping through the intervention of a friend, he went to Montargis. In his fourteenth year he was present at the siege of Orléans. In 1567 he made his escape from tutelage, attached himself to the Huguenot army under the prince of Condé.
Aubigné studied in Paris, Orléans and Lyon before joining the Huguenot cause of Henry of Navarre as both soldier and counsellor. After a furious battle at Casteljaloux, suffering from fever from his wounds, he wrote his Tragiques in 1571, he was in the battle of Coutras, at the siege of Paris. His career at camp and court, was a somewhat chequered one, owing to the roughness of his manner and the keenness of his criticisms, which made him many enemies and tried the king's patience. In his tragédie-ballet Circe he did not hesitate to indulge in the most outspoken sarcasm against the king and other members of the royal family. Henry's accession to the throne of France entailed an, at least nominal, conversion to the Roman Catholic Church and Aubigné left his service to tend to his own Poitou estates though his Huguenot confederates welcomed Henry's religious tolerance; however he never lost the favour of Henry, who made him governor of Maillezais. D'Aubigné remained true to the Huguenot cause, a fearless advocate of the Huguenot interests.
The first two volumes of the work by which he is best known, his Histoire universelle depuis 1550 jusqu'à l'an 1601, appeared in 1616 and 1618 respectively. The third volume was published in 1619, being still more free and personal in its satire than those which had preceded it, it was ordered to be burned by the common hangman; when Marie de' Medici became regent following Henry's assassination in 1610, she embraced the Counter-Reformation and Aubigné's isolation made him an easy target. He was proscribed in 1620 and fled to Geneva where he lived for the rest of his life, though the hatred of the French court showed itself in procuring a sentence of death to be recorded against him more than once, he devoted the period of his exile to study, supervising the fortifications of Bern and Basel which were designed as a material defence of the cause of Protestantism. His daughter Louise Arthemise d'Aubigné, Madame de Villette, was born in 1584 at Mursay to Suzanne de Lusignan de Lezay, his son, Constant d'Aubigné, led a scandalous life of adventure.
Between his two sons, later his three grandsons, the family sailed to England in the late 1680s, or America, avoiding the Huguenot persecution in Europe. In 1715 or thereabouts, most if not all of the main family had sailed to the new world and settled on the east coast near the North River around Falls Church and changed their name to Dabney, his great grand daughter Françoise Charlotte d'Aubigné married into the House of Noailles. Histoire universelle Les Tragiques Avantures du Baron de Faeneste Confession catholique du sieur de Sancy Sa vie à ses enfants Written over some three decades, the alexandrine verse of this epic poem relies on multiple genres as well as stylistic familiarity with the work of the opposing, Catholic poets of the Pléïade, headed by Pierre de Ronsard. Divided into seven books, a number symbolic of the author's ultimate, apocalyptic intent, the Tragiques incorporates literary influence from classical sources, such as tragedy and satire, palpable in the first three books, before resorting to influence from genres like ecclesiastical history and apocalypse in the creation of the remaining books.
In the first of two liminal paratexts, the introduction "Aux Lecteurs," Aubigné endorses the account, that the inception of the Tragiques came to him as an ecstatic vision during a near-death experience. In the second, "L'Auteur À Son Livre," Aubigné adopts the metaphor of father as author to name the text that follows as a more pious son than the less religious works of his youth; the intent of the epic is subsequently spelled out as an attack against the falsely beautiful, verisimilar works written by the Catholic poets of the Pléïade for their patrons in the midst of the religious wars. Linden, Paul and Witnessing in Agrippa d'Aubigné's Les Tragiques. Dissertation, Emory University, 2003. Fragonard, Marie-Madeleine, La pensée religieuse d’Agrippa d’Aubigné et son expression. Bibliothèque littéraire de la Renaissance 53. Junod, Agrippa d'Aubigné ou les misères du prophète, 2008. Works by
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s. Clouzot directed documentary films, including The Mystery of Picasso, declared a national treasure by the government of France. Clouzot was an early fan of the cinema and, moved to Paris, he was hired by producer Adolphe Osso to work in Berlin, writing French-language versions of German films. After being fired from German studios due to his friendship with Jewish producers, Clouzot returned to France, where he spent years bedridden after contracting tuberculosis. Upon recovering, Clouzot found work in Nazi occupied France as a screenwriter for the German-owned company Continental Films. At Continental, Clouzot wrote and directed films that were popular in France, his second film Le Corbeau drew controversy over its harsh look at provincial France and Clouzot was fired from Continental before its release.
As a result of his association with Continental, Clouzot was barred by the French government from filmmaking until 1947. After the ban was lifted, Clouzot reestablished his reputation and popularity in France during the late 1940s with successful films including Quai des Orfèvres. After the release of his comedy film Miquette et sa mère, Clouzot married Véra Gibson-Amado, who would star in his next three feature films. In the early and mid-1950s, Clouzot drew acclaim from international critics and audiences for The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques. Both films would serve as source material for remakes decades later. After the release of La Vérité, Clouzot's wife Véra died of a heart attack and Clouzot's career suffered due to depression and new critical views of films from the French New Wave. Clouzot's career became less active in years, limited to a few television documentaries and two feature films in the 1960s. Clouzot wrote several unused scripts in the 1970s and died in Paris in 1977. Henri-Georges Clouzot was born in Niort, France, to mother Suzanne Clouzot and father Georges Clouzout, a book store owner.
He was the first of three children in a middle-class family. Clouzot showed talent by playing piano recitals. In 1922, Clouzot's father's bookstore went bankrupt and his family moved to Brest, where his father became an auctioneer. In Brest, Henri-Georges Clouzot went to Naval School, but was unable to become a Naval Cadet due to his myopia. At the age of 18, Clouzot left for Paris to study political science. While living in Paris, he became friends with several magazine editors, his writing talents led him to theater and cinema as a playwright and adaptor-screenwriter. The quality of his work led producer Adolphe Osso to hire him and send him to Germany to work in Studio Babelsberg in Berlin, translating scripts for foreign language films shot there. Throughout the 1930s, Clouzot worked by writing and translating scripts and lyrics for over twenty films. While living in Germany, Clouzot saw the films of F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang and was influenced by their expressionist style. In 1931, he made his first short film, La Terreur des Batignolles, from a script by Jacques de Baroncelli.
The film is a 15-minute comedy with three actors. Film historian and critic Claude Beylie reported this short was "surprisingly well made with expressive use of shadows and lighting contrasts that Clouzot would exploit on the full-length features he would make years later". Clouzot's wife, Inès de Gonzalez, said in 2004 that La Terreur des Batignolles added nothing to Clouzot's reputation. In Berlin, Clouzot saw several parades for Adolf Hitler and was shocked at how oblivious he felt France was to what was happening in Germany. In 1934, Clouzot was fired from UFA Studios for his friendship with Jewish film producers such as Adolphe Osso and Pierre Lazareff. In 1935, Clouzot was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent first to Haute-Savoie and to Switzerland, where he was bedridden for nearly five years in all. Clouzot's time in the sanatorium would be influential on his career. While bedridden, Clouzot read and learned the mechanics of storytelling to help improve his scripts. Clouzot studied the fragile nature of the other people in the sanatorium.
Clouzot had little money during this period, was provided with financial and moral support by his family and friends. By the time Clouzot left the sanatorium and returned to Paris, World War II had broken out. French cinema had changed because many of the producers he had known had fled France to escape Nazism. Clouzot's health problems kept him from military service. In 1939, he met actor Pierre Fresnay, an established film star in France. Clouzot wrote the script for Fresnay's only directorial feature Le Duel, as well as two plays for him: On prend les mêmes, performed in December 1940, Comédie en trois actes, performed in 1942. Despite writing scripts for films and plays, Clouzot was so poor that he resorted to trying to sell lyrics to French singer Édith Piaf, who declined to purchase them. After France was invaded by Germany and subsequently during the German occupation of France during World War II, the German-operated film production company Continental Films was established in France in October 1940.
Alfred Grevin, the director of Continental, knew Clouzot from Berlin and offered him work to adapt stories of writer Stanislas-André Steeman. Clouzot felt uncomfortable working for the Germans, but was in desperate need of money and could not refuse Grevin's offer. Clouzot's first fi
Communes of France
The commune is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, Gemeinden in Germany, comuni in Italy or ayuntamiento in Spain; the United Kingdom has no exact equivalent, as communes resemble districts in urban areas, but are closer to parishes in rural areas where districts are much larger. Communes are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered; the communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. Communes vary in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris, to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. Communes are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes, the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers.
Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the communes are the lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials with extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy. A commune is city, or other municipality. "Commune" in English has a historical bias, implies an association with socialist political movements or philosophies, collectivist lifestyles, or particular history. There is nothing intrinsically different between commune in French; the French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia, for a large gathering of people sharing a common life. As of January 2015, there were 36,681 communes in France, 36,552 of them in metropolitan France and 129 of them overseas; this is a higher total than that of any other European country, because French communes still reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution. The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes.
This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions: COM of Saint-Martin, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe région. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Martin became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. COM of Wallis and Futuna, which still is divided according to the three traditional chiefdoms. COM of Saint Barthélemy, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe region. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Barthélemy became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. Furthermore, two regions without permanent habitation have no communes: TOM of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands Clipperton Island in the Pacific Ocean In metropolitan France, the average area of a commune in 2004 was 14.88 square kilometres. The median area of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was smaller, at 10.73 square kilometres. The median area is a better measure of the area of a typical French commune.
This median area is smaller than that of most European countries. In Italy, the median area of communes is 22 km2. Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France; the communes of France's overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They group into the same commune several villages or towns with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in the administrative splitting of some communes; the median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a small number, here France stands apart in Europe, with the lowest communes' median population of all the European countries; this small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where the median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium, or Spain.
The median population given here should not hide the fact that there are pronounced differences in size between French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What the median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants. In metropolitan France just over 50 percent of the 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants a
Pope John XXII
Pope John XXII, born Jacques Duèze, was Pope from 7 August 1316 to his death in 1334. He was the second and longest-reigning Avignon Pope, elected by the Conclave of Cardinals, assembled in Lyon through the work of King Louis X's brother Philip, the Count of Poitiers King Philip V of France. Like his predecessor, Clement V, Pope John centralized power and income in the Papacy and lived a princely life in Avignon, he opposed the political policies of Louis IV of Bavaria as Holy Roman Emperor, which prompted Louis to invade Italy and set up an antipope, Nicholas V. Pope John XXII faced controversy in theology involving his views on the Beatific Vision, he opposed the Franciscan understanding of the poverty of Christ and his apostles, famously leading William of Ockham to write against unlimited papal power, he canonized St. Thomas Aquinas; the son of a shoemaker in Cahors, Jacques Duèze studied medicine in Montpellier and law in Paris, yet could not read a regal letter written to him in French.
Duèze taught civil law at Toulouse and Cahors. On the recommendation of Charles II of Naples he was made Bishop of Fréjus in 1300. In 1309 he was appointed chancellor of Charles II, in 1310 he was transferred to Avignon, he delivered legal opinions favorable to the suppression of the Templars, but he defended Boniface VIII and the Bull Unam Sanctam. On 23 December 1312, Clement V made him Cardinal-Bishop of Porto-Santa Rufina; the death of Pope Clement V in 1314 was followed by an interregnum of two years due to disagreements between the cardinals, who were split into two factions. After two years, Philip, in 1316 managed to arrange a papal conclave of twenty-three cardinals in Lyon; this conclave elected Duèze, crowned in Lyon. He set up his residence in Avignon rather than Rome, continuing the Avignon Papacy of his predecessor. John XXII involved himself in the politics and religious movements of many European countries in order to advance the interests of the Church, his close links with the French crown created widespread distrust of the papacy.
Pope John XXII was an excellent administrator and efficient at reorganizing the Church. He had sent a letter of thanks to the Muslim ruler Uzbeg Khan, tolerant of Christians and treated Christians kindly. John XXII has traditionally been credited with having composed the prayer "Anima Christi", which has become the English "Soul of Christ, sanctify me..." and the basis for the hymn Soul of Christ, Sanctify My Breast". On 27 March 1329, John XXII condemned many writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical in his papal bull In Agro Dominico. Prior to John XXII's election, a contest had begun for the Holy Roman Empire's crown between Louis IV of Bavaria and Frederick I of Austria. John XXII was neutral at first, but in 1323, when Louis IV became Holy Roman Emperor, the Guelph party and the Ghibelline party quarreled, provoked by John XXII's extreme claims of authority over the empire and by Louis IV's support of the spiritual Franciscans, whom John XXII condemned in the Papal bull Quorumdam exigit.
Louis IV was assisted in his doctrinal dispute with the papacy by Marsilius of Padua and by the English Franciscan friar and scholar William of Ockham. Louis IV invaded Italy, entered Rome and set up Pietro Rainalducci as Antipope Nicholas V in 1328; the project was a fiasco. Guelphic predominance at Rome was restored, Pope John excommunicated William of Ockham. However, Louis IV had silenced the papal claims and John XXII stayed the rest of his life in Avignon. Pope John XXII was determined to suppress what he considered to be the excesses of the Spirituals, who contended eagerly for the view that Christ and his apostles had possessed nothing, citing Exiit qui seminat in support of their view. In 1317, John XXII formally condemned the group of them known as the Fraticelli. On 26 March 1322, with Quia nonnunquam, he removed the ban on discussion of Pope Nicholas III's bull and commissioned experts to examine the idea of poverty based on belief that Christ and the apostles owned nothing; the experts disagreed among themselves, but the majority condemned the idea on the grounds that it would condemn the Church's right to have possessions.
The Franciscan chapter held in Perugia in May 1322 declared on the contrary: "To say or assert that Christ, in showing the way of perfection, the Apostles, in following that way and setting an example to others who wished to lead the perfect life, possessed nothing either severally or in common, either by right of ownership and dominium or by personal right, we corporately and unanimously declare to be not heretical, but true and catholic." By the bull Ad conditorem canonum of 8 December 1322, John XXII declared it ridiculous to pretend that every scrap of food given to the friars and eaten by them belonged to the pope, refused to accept ownership over the goods of the Franciscans in future and granted them exemption from the rule that forbade ownership of anything in common, thus forcing them to accept ownership. On 12 November 1323, he issued the bull Quum inter nonnullos, which declared "erroneous and heretical" the doctrine that Christ and his apostles had no possessions whatever. Influential members of the order protested, such as the minister general Michael of Cesena, the English provincial William of Ockham, Bonagratia of Bergamo.
In 1324, Louis the Bavarian accused the Pope of heresy. In reply to the argument of his opponents that Nicholas III's bull Exiit qui seminat was fixed and irrevocable, John XXII issued the bull Quia quorundam on 10 November 1324, in which he declared that it cannot be inferred from the words of the 1279 bull that Christ a
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Schorndorf, Germany
Errenteria, Spain
Bury, England, United Kingdom
Lousada, Portugal
Smolensk, Russia
Dueville, Italy
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