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Être suprême, I don't know anymore...
Tuesday, 30 December 2008 16:58Margerit's series on the Revolution gets so much right, especially through the trial and execution of the Dantonistes - and even after that, in places. So the portrayal of pretty much everything involving Robespierre from that point on is extremely disappointing, to say the least. I finally finished the third book, which is the last one that takes place during the Revolution proper. I had thought, several chapters back, that as Margerit had done elsewhere, he was simply going to have his protagonist be mistaken on Robespierre's account. But apparently not.
And thus the last phrase this protagonist - Claude Mounier-Dupré - pronounces on his subject, is one of the most unfair and unjustified opinions I've heard on the subject (even the Thermidorians didn't actually believe this kind of thing, you'll notice):
"Vois-tu, dit-il, c'est son esprit obstinément et despotiquement religieux, c'est son caractère de prêtre manqué qui ont tué Maximilien. C'est ce caractère qui lui a fait détester des hommes comme Tallien, Barras, Fouché, Fréron, Collot, Billaud et leurs pareils. C'est son intolérance de prêtre sûr de son Dieu, c'est son acharnement de Grand Inquisiteur à remplacer les bûchers par la guillotine qui l'ont fait haïr et nous ont contraints à l'abattre. Il est mort parce que tout en désirant, comme certains entre nous, rénover la condition des hommes, établir l'égalité, la fraternité, la justice, il n'avait aucun sentiment de la liberté, il a voulu perpétuer l'antique esclavage des âmes. La Révolution ne pouvait s'achever avec lui. Mais, hélas, je crains qu'elle ne s'achève pas sans lui."
In translation: "You see," he said, "it's his obstinately and despotically religious spirit [or mind], it's his character of a priest manqué that killed Maximilien. It is this character that made men like Tallien, Barras, Fouché, Fréron, Collot, Billaud, and those like them, detest him. It's his priest-sure-of-his-God's intolerance, his Grand Inquisitor's determination to replace the stake by the guillotine that made him hated and forced us to bring him down. He died because, while he desired, like some of us, the renewal of the condition of men, the establishment of equality, fraternity, justice, he had no sentiment of liberty; he wanted to perpetuate the old enslavement of souls. The Revolution could not be completed with him. But, alas, I fear that it will not be completed without him."
The only full sentence that's accurate in all of that is the last one.
But I just don't know what to think; for the vast majority of the series Margerit seemed so reasonable where Robespierre was concerned - as he did in his diary from when he was writing the books, which I read in his entirety - and yet, in the last third of the third book, he has all his sympathetic characters express such sentiments as I quote above. I just don't understand... It's true he was incredibily rushed to finish this book and was researching as he went along (at a rather manic pace, to get the book done in time); he also confessed to trusting memoirists much more than historians, which accounts for many of the odd accounts throughout the books... Could it be he simply placed too much trust in Thermidorian accounts?
*sighs*
I have a headache.
