Ouch.

Has anyone seen the bookmark they made for Sergio Luzzatto's biography of Augustin Robespierre? This is the quote they chose for it:

"Au cours de l'année qui, pour les frères Robespierre, devait être la dernière de leur vie, Augustin, bien plus que Maximilien, osa regarder en face la République jacobine et reconnaître ce qu'elle comportait d'ambiguïté, de fausseté, voire de laideur."

("In the course of the year which, for the Robespierre brothers, was to be the last of their life, Augustin, much more than Robespierre, dared to look at the Jacobin Republic straight on and recognize what it contained of ambiguity, falseness, even ugliness.")

Is it just me, or does this seem unreasonably vitriolic? I hope it doesn't set the tone for the book. I've never read anything by Luzzatto, but from what maelicia has quoted of him, he never seemed to me like someone who thought the Republic of the Year II needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

It's not even that I think that assessment is entirely false; there were undoubtedly ambiguities and ugliness in what was going on in the Year II. But it seems to me that the implication of the quote is that Maxime was blind to this and that since he manifestly wasn't blind to what the future Thermidorians were doing, the only reading I can really take away from this is that what was wrong with the "République jacobine" was ideological and that Maxime was therefore blind to its faults for ideological reasons, which is absolutely ridiculous. To the extent that there were problems with the Republic in the Year II, they existed where it failed to live up to the ideals on which it was based, not because those ideals were inherently flawed. Maybe I'm misreading it, but that's what it seems to imply to me.

Moreover, this is not a case of debunking some sort of golden legend. It is not generally accepted among historians and certainly not among the general public, that the "République jacobine" = utopia. So no, you're not being original when you rather gratuitously point out that this was not so. That goes without saying. However, there are plenty of people under the false impression that it was a pure dystopia. Pointing out that those people are wrong would serve the truth better than knocking down straw-arguments.

(On the other hand, although I seriously doubt it, it's possible that Luzzatto really does portray the Republic in the Year II as some kind of paradise and this quote is there for nuance. But that wouldn't be very professional either.)

In any case, I'm sure it's not Luzzatto himself who chose that quote for the bookmark, but it's clearly something he wrote. Which invites the question: Seriously, people, is the only way we can make Augustin likeable to make Maxime blind and the Republic ugly? I thought we were over that. Apparently not.

More on Luzzatto's biography of Augustin

I know I'm overly sensitive to these issues, so I'm going to lay it out for those of you who might judge with a cooler head than mine, but it seems to me that, like with the quote on the bookmark, this little half-paragraph that I just found in that same biography of Augustin by Luzzatto, while not false - it leaves out certain accounts that I think tend to tip the balance away from his conclusions, but of course this is a question that's extremely peripheral to the topic of the book and Luzzatto is hardly obliged to agree with my interpretations - is at least unnecessarily nasty in tone:

"Ils côtoyaient là le demi-monde [seriously?] de la maison Duplay, fourmillant de silhouettes féminines : la maîtresse de maison, Françoise, en conflit avec sa locataire Charlotte dès les premiers jours, ainsi que les quatre filles, toutes à marier [this is, in fact, not the case, since Sophie was already married and no longer present]. La plus jeune, Élisabeth, n'allait pas tarder à épouser le député montagnard Lebas ; quant à l'aînée, les parents Duplay la considéraient comme fiancée à Maximilien, lequel, pour sa part, ne semblait pas impatient d'obtenir ses faveurs [!]. Un témoignage tardif et perfide de Charlotte (dans un livre de souvenirs publié à titre posthume en 1835, Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères) assure que Maximilien efforça même de se décharger d'Éléonore sur Augustin : "Tu devrais épouser Éléonore. - Ma foi, non, répondit mon jeune frère."

"There they mixed with the demi-monde [seriously?] of the Duplay house, swarming with feminine silhouettes: the mistress of the house, Françoise, in conflict with her lodger Charlotte from the beginning, as well as the four daughters, all unmarried [this is, in fact, not the case, since Sophie was already married and no longer present]. The youngest, Élisabeth, would soon marry the montagnard deputy Lebas; as for the eldest, the Duplay parents considered her betrothed to Maximilien, who, for his part, didn't seem impatient to obtain her favors [!]. A late and treacherous account by Charlotte (in a book of memoirs published posthumously in 1835, Charlotte Robespierre's Memoirs on Her Two Brothers) assures that Maximilien even tried to off-load Éléonore onto Augustin: "You should marry Éléonore. - Faith, no, replied by younger brother."

So yes, he calls it "perfidious" testimony, but on the other hand, Charlotte is the only one allowed to speak. With no counter-argument from other sources, this leaves us to infer that even if Charlotte was being malicious, she was probably more or less right. Luzzatto, of course, has every right to this interpretation, but he seems almost as maliciously pleased by it as Charlotte himself... at least to me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it just seems so unnecessary.

What the fuck is the world coming to?

I just saw the phrase "règne de Robespierre" used in all seriousness in a serious work of history published this year, 2010.* The author wasn't even paraphrasing a primary source - let alone quoting one directly. No, she just apparently thinks this is the most appropriate term for the Republic, pre-Thermidor. And I was complaining about Luzzatto!

*Verjus, Anne, Le bon mari : Une histoire politique des hommes et des femmes à l'époque révolutionnaire, (Paris: Fayard, 2010), p. 35.