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shuuuuuuuuuuuh · 6 months

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Saint-Just in "La Comtesse de Charny" (1989). _______________________________________

ᥫ᭡˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚

#☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.#saint-just #the angel of death #french revolution #love #makeup #reign of terror #ᝰ.ᐟ｡ ₊°༺♡༻°₊ ｡#um...I like history and stuff

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jimkinnz · 3 months

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homunculus facts¡

homunculi recovered from the late jurassic period in germany seem to have been pickled in deep brine pools in the area• paleoalchemists surmise that they may have mistaken them for the potion•

alchemists in the deep south during prohibition were known for using a moonlight potion' this is the origin of the term „moonshiners•„

i once took apart warren,s computer and incorporated some of its parts into one of my arms• it tickles when i lay on that side•

i ate a cork yesterday• this morning i pooped out an egg• probably unrelated•

happy anniversary of the death of louis xvi•

#homunculus #homunculus facts #wizardposting #unreality #paleoalchemy #solnhofen #prohibition #moonshiners #diy #homunculus biology #french revolution #reign of terror

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ladylucck · 6 months

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thoughts on the ending of killers of the flower moon are that after all of that, it's about how it's remembered. for white americans, the events become entertainment. but for the osage, the reign of terror is a grief and loss that they refuse to forget. scorsese is simply just fantastic at what he does. 5 stars from me for a great film with a perfect ending.

#killers of the flower moon #martin scorsese #lily gladstone #leonardo dicaprio #robert de niro #osage #the reign of terror #reign of terror #directors #films #spoiler warning

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lanterne · 2 years

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So um... themidorian propaganda 🤡

it must be very odd to run into people on tumblr defending Robespierre saying that calling him a mass murderer is "thermidorian propaganda". So let's unpack that.

Thermidorian propaganda is, long story short, a series of made up or distorted facts about the politics of year II (1793/94, like, the terror) and specially about Robespierre. We all know propaganda is supposed to push an agenda, it's usually financed by an entity. With thermidorian propaganda is hard to tell because the people who had anything to gain from painting Robespierre as a monster are long dead, but somehow it still gets parroted to this day by non-specialists and reproduced in fiction and pop culture.

In this post I'm going to focus on the original thermidorian propaganda that came out immediately after Robespierre’s death. I hope, if real life allows me, this to be the first post of a series. I must clarify I’m not a historian so there will be inacuracies, this is just a casual, funny and quick intro to the subject, so if I succeed in picking your interest, I strongly encourage you to do your own research with real academic sources and draw your own conclusions. Also I’d like to thank @frevandrest and @tierseta for their corrections and suggestions! Also I relied a lot on @rbzpr, specially this post that compiles a lot of primary sources about the propaganda.

Year II (1793-1794) speedrun

Robespierre's real role during the terror

To understand what even was the terror about, you need to know that there was an external war against all the monarchies of Europe and simultaneously, an internal war against counterrevolutionary forces like vendean revels and federalists. To even have a chance for the republic to survive, the national convention declared that the government would be “revolutionary until peace” which means that there would be a state of emergency, which suspended certain freedoms until peacetime. Some of the emergency measures were the suspension of the constitution of 1793, the infamous law of suspects and general maximum, the limitation of freedom of press and the institution of representatives on mission, deputies of the convention that were sent to the provinces to watch over military operations and had the authority to do whatever they wanted.

Robespierre in 1793 was elected to the Committee of Public Safety. The CPS was the convention’s executive branch and pretty much a war cabinet with dictatorial powers (in theory, but in practice everything they did had to be approved by the convention). Its purpose was to take measures to win the war against all of Europe, keep everyone fed and crush counterrevolution. They didn’t have a “director” or anything like that, the twelve had equal authority. Besides, the CPS was full of deeply confrontational, clashing personalities that weren’t exactly fond of Robespierre, so it’s not like he could dominate over them. (Twelve who Ruled by R.R. Palmer gives you a good idea of their dynamic and boy did they hate each other)

Despite this, Robespierre was the most famous member; so he became the de facto face of the CPS and it was assumed outside of France that he had control over the republic, which was portrayed by the monarchies as a barbaric mess, and that impression lives on.

I hope to make this very clear: Robespierre wasn’t as powerful and didn’t have as much control of the situation as bad school texts will make us believe. Nobody did, the situation during the terror really was that chaotic. By the summer of 1794, known today as the Great Terror, Robespierre’s popularity and influence on the goverment was weakened compared to that it was before (I’ll elaborate why soon).

The excesses of year II and who made them

The deputies that became the future thermidorians, for the most part, were ultra radicals from the mountain (the far left party that was most influential in the convention and Robespierre himself was a part of) who had been sent to the provinces as representatives in mission to crush counterrevolution or supervise the army. Some of them committed some atrocious war crimes, brutally executing thousands of people. Robespierre was appalled, had them recalled and spent the rest of his life antagonizing them because he didn’t have the authority to bring them to justice.

For example, Collot d’Herbois, fellow CPS member, who shot people with cannons full of shrapnel as a representative on mission in Lyons alongside Joseph Fouché, used his authority to counteract Robespierre’s attempts to hold him or the other representatives on mission accountable. Still Robespierre had them on his radar to punish them as soon as he had the opportunity and they had him on their radar fearing that he would use his popularity against them at any moment. Some of them tried to bootlick him and get on his good side, but their actions were so repulsive to him he refused any kind of compromise.

Other important details

The idea that Robespierre was aspiring for a dictatorship comes from way earlier. In November 1792, a girodin named Louvet accused him of such and wanting to form a triumvirate with Danton and Marat. Robespierre defended himself well and the idea was discredited, only to be recycled during thermidor when the surviving girondins came back to the convention (the girondins another long story lmao)

The idea that Robespierre was some kind of blood drinking monster also started even before the man even did anything wrong. His radical ideals about giving voting rights to minorities like jews and protestants, to men that didn't own property, to free black people, him speaking out against slavery, against the inviolability of the king, the royal veto, etc… it genuinely pissed off a lot of people

This is a huge tangent but it’s relevant because it’s the origin of Robespierre’s supposed God-complex. So, if you have heard about the decristianization hysteria that was going on during the terror, Robespierre was hostile to it actually, and thought the state needed some kind of religion to hold it together, which is funny since a lot of people nowadays believe he was an atheist. To put a stop to it and reinforce the freedom of cults, he proposed that the French Republic must recognize the cult of “Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul” as a compromise between religion and secular patriotic worship. To clarify, this isn’t some religion Robespierre made up out of nowhere, it was influenced by Rousseau’s deist ideas and civic festivals (More on that in Mathiez essay about The Supreme Being in The Fall of Robespierre). The project was a success at the time, but his militant atheist coworkers couldn't forgive him for it and went out of their way to use it against him later. Thus the Committee of General Security put together a report (with fabricated evidence and all!) in which they tried to link him to a wacky but harmless and obscure cult that prophesied the coming of a messiah, implying that it was Robespierre, with the purpose to ridicule him.

The infamous Prairial law (here's a post explaining it better than I ever could). This law, which streamlined processes and executions and centralized them in Paris, removed the deputies immunity which would enable Robespierre to go after the aforementioned war criminals' heads. However, Robespierre cut ties with the CPS after a fight with the other members and disappeared from the government, leaving the law in the hands of people who abused it, like the Committee of General Security and public prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville (who also had beef with Robespierre). In fact you don't see many arrests signed by Robespierre during this time, that later became considered to be the Great Terror, while his coworkers, like Carnot or Barère, were very trigger happy using this law to say the least.

Robespierre's fall

So, Robespierre goes rogue against the CPS and disappears from the government for more than a month. There was an attempt at reconciliation that Robespierre completely rejected when the 8th thermidor he returns and causes a commotion with an emotional and disjointed speech in which he expresses his despair about the gory state of the revolution and vagues the violent deputies, but refuses to give their names. The speech is definitely not his best and you can tell he’s not ok, but it has some raw, revealing lines like:

“Anyway, voilà within less than six weeks that my dictatorship is expired, and that I didn’t have any kind of influence on the government. Has patriotism been more protected? the factions more timid, the patrie happier? I would wish so”

Or my personal favorite:

"They call me tyrant… If I would be one, they would crawl at my feet, I would stuff them with gold, I would ensure them the right to commit all the crimes, and they would be grateful.”

Fouché and others took advantage of his vagueness to convince half of the convention that he was targeting them and aspiring for a power grab.

Jean Lambert Tallien, a young deputy who had participated in bloody repressions in Bordeaux, conspired with his then girlfriend Thérese Cabarrus who was in prison, starts the reaction the next day by interrupting SJ's speech trying to mitigate the mess Robespierre caused the previous day. Later Tallien becomes instrumental in building the narrative to justify Robespierre’s murder and create the concept of the Reign of Terror.

The first batch of Thermidorian propaganda

The accusations against Robespierre were vague and contradictory… and calling them accusations is kind of generous because they were mostly people yelling vague grievances against him, nothing official or legal. The ultra radicals accused Robespierre of not being enough of a terrorist. The moderates of being too much of a terrorist. The funniest example of this dichotomy was when Billaud-Varenne (CPS member) accused him of, I shit you not, protesting against arresting Danton and another guy shouting "the blood of Danton chokes you" during the session. Anyway, Robespierre was declared an outlaw and executed with no trial and at least a hundred of his followers were dragged with him to the scaffold. Ironically, the day after Robespierre’s death saw the highest number of people guillotined in a single day in all of the terror. I need to empathize that he was guillotined without a trial, because while the revolutionary tribunal could be a kangaroo court sometimes, at least they kept registries of what someone was being accused of, Robespierre didn’t even go through it so his imputed crimes remained very vague and open to add shit later. So the next day Barére showed up with a report and fabricated evidence about how Robespierre was conspiring with his close supporters to crown himself king.

Some time later Tallien came up to the convention with a speech about how what had happened the past year had been a Reign Of Terror, that Robespierre bullied a congress of 700 something men into doing whatever he wanted, that every single bad thing that happened, all the unnecessary bloodshed was exclusively Robespierre’s fault. Boohoo, Robespierre poisoned our water supply, burned our crops and delivered a plague upon the republic and he did all himself.

The thermidorian convention, with the press of the time, made sure to run the robespierrists' names through the mud and scapegoat them of their own excesses. A massive amount of libelous pamphlets against Robespierre were circulating circa 1795-1799, portraying him as some kind of gangster-sultan-pimp tyrant monster with a secret castle and lots of money and chicks, which is hilarious in hindsight since all his stuff sold for like… 300 francs, but at the time people ate it up.

Here's some of my personal favorites because original thermidorian propaganda was seriously wacky (and let’s make it fun by rating it)

✨highlights✨

Apparently, Robespierre wished to marry Louis' eldest child to crown himself king. I’d rate it higher for the creativity but she was a literal teenager ewww. 3/10

Courtois report: Courtois was in charge of going through the robespierrists papers and of course he suppressed and twisted a lot of evidence. He collected his "findings" in a report for the convention. Thanks to this guy most of Robespierre’s correspondence is lost. 🤡 -4563456435/10

La vie de Robespierre: I haven’t read this one so what I know comes from secondary sources, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s one of the first biographies of Robespierre ever written, by his own school teacher, the abbot Proyart, who became a royalist émigré during the revolution. It’s such a mess, he makes normal things children do sound malignant when little Maximilien did them. He’s also the source of the legend that Robespierre read a poem for Louis XVI as a kid, which Hervé Leuwers debunked in his Robespierre bio. 5/10 because apparently his beef with Robespierre (besides the whole revolution thing) was that he wouldn't say hi to him during vacations. Petty as hell.

Le chat-tigre: the description that Robespierre resembled a cat comes from a pamphlet published by Merlin de Thionville. This one is key because it deviates from the common view of the time of Robespierre as a morally corrupt orgy-frequenter, and portrays him as a dull, emotionless incel, which is closer to the way thermidorian propaganda reads like today. It also has this hysterical line: “History will say little about this monster”. Anyway Merlin called Robespierre a catboy unironically so I rate it meow/10

La queue de Robespierre (Robespierre's tail). This pamphlet by Méhée de la Touché is interesting because it goes after certain thermidorians like Barère, Collot and Billaud, foreshadowing how the whole thing would soon backfire on them. Also the title is a dick joke, so, 10/10.

These two engravings. 760936/10

This whole-ass painting of Robespierre straight up ruling over hell

My absolute favorite: this one is from later when the whole mountain was purged from the convention (so there's lots of thermidorians here too). There’s so much happening here. The snakes, the bats, the be gay do crimes skeletons, and the whole gang is there, looking like smurfs. It’s beautiful. 1793/10

But why spread so many lies about a dead man? They had to do it, you see, they had to gaslight the entire nation as much as possible, the ultras to avoid accountability and the moderates to discredit the democratic ideals that he represented so they could pass shit like the constitution of year III. This has effects on historiography to this day (but let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Thermidor backfires

With some exceptions, who ended up becoming Napoleon’s ministers, they did not avoid accountability...

Some of the original thermidorians were radicals who believed in the jacobin ideals of year II and just thought, sincerely or not, that Robespierre was aspiring for dictatorship, and the ones who had done war crimes as representatives on mission seemed to genuinely believe they were justified to do so and had to defend themselves when they were used against them.

Some of them weren’t expecting that after purging and persecuting Robespierre’s supporters, the mountain would be weakened and that the national convention would take a turn to the right when they brought back a bunch of girondins. What was left of the mountain wanted to keep the progress towards a more egalitarian society made in year II. Some of the right wingers like Boissy d’Anglas took credit for Robespierre’s fall and influenced the convention to become more reactionary. Some of the montagnards got guillotined for their crimes against humanity, like Carrier (the infamous dude who drowned thousands of people in the Loire - also a massive thermidorian, because of course he was), while most were exiled to Guyana.

Decades later during the Bourbon restoration, former Montagnards and members of the CPS like Billaud and Barère, came to regret bitterly what they did to Robespierre, his memory and the Republic, and admitted to having lied about him.

Conclusion

It’s not a secret to anyone that the French Revolution was extremely brutal and nobody is denying it (and that’s without counting what happened after Robespierre’s death). Donald Greer in The incidence of the terror during the french revolution estimates a death toll of 35.000-40.000, which includes not just people sentenced to death (which he estimates between 16.000-17.000), but people massacred without a trial by these representatives on mission I spoke about, people who died of disease in prisons, etc.

The executions by guillotine, that Robespierre came to represent, were just one aspect of it, an aspect that has become iconic in pop culture and exaggerated to death. The Jacobins weren’t executing people just for being nobles, in fact, there were some former nobles in the government and more commoners were executed than nobles. All those 17k death sentences weren’t signed or approved by Robespierre personally, and while Robespierre was powerful in theory as a member of the committee of public safety, he had very little control of the situation. And it's not like he was an innocent little angel, he had blood on his hands but so did everyone back then, and his reputation is very disproportionate to what he actually did.

And yet, we’re taught in schools and in media that he was single-handely the supreme authority who did whatever he wanted and we never hear about the people that got him killed, what they were up to during the terror and how they straight up scapegoated this man to escape accountability for their crimes against humanity. But why though? Shouldn’t that be common knowledge by now, more than two centuries later?

Next part, if I can do it, I hope I can cover how thermidorian propaganda evolved to what it is today. Still this is a subject I only have general notions about and haven’t read about extensively so I’ll take a while to write the post, but it should be fun to research as it was fun (and infuriating) to research this.

Salut & fraternité and... happy birthday Robespierre!!! :-) My present is posting about how you got murdered and slandered I guess lmao.

#frev #Robespierre #Gore imagery #Tw violence #Reign of terror

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muhammadgiovanni · 5 months

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Wah-kon-tah-he-um-pah “Mollie Kyle Burkhart” (right) and her sisters Wah-hrah-lum-pah “Anna Kyle Brown” (center) and Me-se-moie “Minnie Kyle Smith” (left).

—Raymond Red Corn collection, Osage Nation Museum.

#Osage Nation #Osage Nation Museum #Mollie Burkhart #Anna Brown #Minnie Smith #Raymond Red Corn #Photography #Historical Photography #Native American Heritage Month #Native American History #History #American History #Reign of Terror #Killers of the Flower Moon

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nesiacha · 2 months

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I never understood the term "reign" of terror . I mean Louis XVI reigned as king, Napoleon reigned as emperor (I would rather think of a term which is closer to military dictatorship, I also contest the term which qualified Napoleon as a "despot enlightened" but that's another story…), Louis XVIII, Charles X reigned as kings. In the case of the French revolutionaries in this period mentioned, these deputies are people elected by universal suffrage and there is no absolute power. In fact there is not a single deputy who could have absolute power. For example the Committee of Public Safety is subject to the Convention which decides by a majority vote whether it can be renewed or not.Laws must be passed by a majority of the Convention, etc... So there is not a reign of deputies. Even the historian Patrice Gueniffey, who is clearly not a supporter of revolutionaries from the Mountain, contests this story of absolute power.

I will one day do a more detailed post on this period on what I think of it...

#french revolution #Louis XVI #Louis XVIII #Charles X #Historian #history #Napoleon #reign of terror #Terror

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autumndasher · 9 months

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This is a real, unedited, animation that an actual studio made and was released officially

#what is happening #what is this #animation #doctor who #reign of terror #classic doctor who

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shuuuuuuuuuuuh · 2 months

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💀💀💀💀

zesty….

#french revolution #reign of terror #1700 #18th century #robespierre #saint-just #marat #danton

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th3-0bjectivist · 16 days

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Dear listener, if you offer me ordinary pop music, I will reflexively kick you in the gonads and book it in the opposite direction. However, if you offer me pop music interlaced with elements of metal, punk, and hip-hop… I’m going to do a double take, carefully examine the melodious product in question, and reassess my conclusions on what the tentative limits are in modern music. As long as you don’t have any issues with strobe lights, smash play on the above track, Demons from the 2012 album Reign of Terror. The featured band this week is Sleigh Bells, who, for over a decade-and-a-half have practiced an overdriven, experimental version of pop which regularly incorporates the fundamentals of digital hardcore, industrial rock, and electro.

After years of personal listenership, I am confident that SB can give you everything you want, and more, from modern pop music. Like most pop tunes, the sound is structured around hooks (the peak-altitude of a song, whether it be the melody, the lyrics, or the repetitive composition of instrumentals) crafted to a sharp, absolute, and prominent apex. I LOVE exploring the catalogs of experimental bands… particularly when you catch me by surprise and show me a pop music product that I can actually immerse myself in. Over the last decade or so, Sleigh Bells has provided me with utter bliss, utter joy, utter pain, and a rough ride filled with ups-and-downs, but most importantly… an overall experience that I want to be a part of! It’s pop music that has the capacity to appeal to everyone, not just teenage girls, because the music manages to have a semblance of * universal meaning*. Their tunes are the very definition of sweet-and-sour chicken, only delivered entirely in an audio format, and dammit all, it tastes mostly sweet! A noise pop duo, based out of Brooklyn, NY, has managed to accomplish within a decade and a half what the rest of you limp-dicked, corporately funded pop music jabronis can’t seem to do; immerse the listener in pop music that *actually innovates* for a change. All over their discography, you can find personally resonant tunes that manage to successfully communicate complex ideas and emotions. If you want pop music with an unapologetic nonconformist twist, immerse yourself in something that sounds different for a change. If you like what you heard above, click below for some work by SB that is laced with slightly more traditional pop elements, Rosary from their 2021 album Texis.

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Ten years ago, I thought I liked one song by SB. A year later, I liked two songs by them. The next year, I liked four. The next year, eight. You starting to see a pattern? A decade on, I am flabbergasted at their sniper-rifle range in musical versatility and commitment to providing their audience with an endearing and truly meaningful experience that I would recommend to anyone looking for a potent alternative to mainstream pop. Image source: https://www.gq.com/story/sleigh-bells-derek-e-miller-alexis-krauss-interview-reign-of-terror-treats

#sleigh bells #demons #reign of terror #rosary #texis #pop #noise pop #music #music on tumblr #music video #audio video #audio on tumblr #duo #musical duo #experimental music #experimental pop #indie electronic

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davros42 · 5 months

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Rewatching Classic Doctor Who, some episodes I haven't seen in years, some of the animated reconstructions I haven't seen at all.

The Reign of Terror AKA Serial H

The last serial of Series 1, closing it out with another historical.

Director Henric Hirsch gives it all a fine style, even if it did drive him to a breakdown that led him to miss episode 3. There's a LOT of dialogue in this one and relatively little action after the first episode. Ian cons the Doctor into going out for a drink to celebrate returning to Earth and hijinks ensue. The Doctor did get them back to Earth but... it's the French Revolution. They crew breaks into a farmhouse to find out it's a safehouse for royalists, they get caught and arrested, the royalists get shot and the Doctor gets left in a burning building, roll credits over the rising flames.

Sadly, the serial doesn't get any better than that. Despite Barbara going full Shawshank Redemption to try and break out of the Concergerie, The Doctor tricking a simple minded road crew boss and then masquerading as a revolutionary official, and special guest appearances from Robespierre and Napoleon.. Not a lot happens. The direction is solid, the writing is fine, we get the first use of location shooting (and it's not even a quarry!) as well as some good uses of illustrations, maps, and even stock footage to spice up the studio shot footage. The problem is there's no real antagonist (Robespierre, nominally, is the 'main bad guy' I guess) and even if there was, the show's then-current internal logic dictates that history cannot be changed (in historical themed shows only!) which leaves the crew as witnesses to history. They get in scrapes and escape over and over but nothing really comes of it. The actual plot is lifeless and lacking much in actual stakes. Much like the resolution to Marco Polo, Robespierre gets overthrown without much input or assistance from the TARDIS crew. Who then leave disappointed they couldn't have gotten a pre-emptive shot in at Napoleon. The final shot of William Hartnell narrating over a starfield and then the credits rolling is rather lovely way to close out series 1 though. "Our destiny is in the stars... let's go and search for it..."

The history's not great either and the show is decidedly sympathetic to the royalists, taking some slight inspiration from The Scarlet Pimpernel with the subplot of English undercover spies working against Robespierre. There were many, many issues with the revolutionaries but, good grief, under no circumstances do you have to hand it to divine monarchy.

Oh, and not a critique of the original story but the animated reconstructions are quite bad. The 3D CG is cheap, almost every shot is a close up of a face running a basic loop of motion. There are some wider shots which are mostly rotoscoped from existing footage. But for all the pains the existing episodes take to use positioning, editing, and body language to spice up long stretches of dialogue.. all of that it lost in the reconstructions. I would have much rather had the Sealab 2021/Frisky Dingo/Archer style animation of other reconstructions or even a photo reconstruction. The audio doesn't seem to have been mixed/balanced to match the existing episodes either. Too bad the Turks blew up the only known surviving copies of those episodes.

Next time, another odd entry for early Doctor Who... Planet of Giants.

#doctor who #classic doctor who #first doctor #ian chesterton #barbara wright #william hartnell #carole ann ford #jacqueline hill #susan foreman #william russell #doctor who rewatch #reign of terror

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k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9 · 3 months

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𝔚𝔦𝔩𝔡 𝔇𝔬𝔤𝔰 - 𝔓𝔰𝔶𝔠𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔬

#Wild Dogs #Reign Of Terror #Psychoradio #Release date:#1987 #Full-length #Genre:#Heavy Metal #Themes:#World domination #USA

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krinsbez · 7 months

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Help Me Pick My Next RPG Thing, Part 2!

Well, the most votes went to "More Pulp Cthulhu or related" so...