BASTILLE DAY.

YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR REVOLUTION....

       Storming the Bastille, July 14, 1789.

    Today, 14th July, is France's national day.  Dignitaries will shortly fill the bleachers that line the Champs-Elysées and Place de la Concorde. Contingents from the armed services will pass before them, while aircraft roar overhead. Tonight, the sky will fill with fireworks - all state-provided, the government having, in the light of recent unrest, banned the private sale of Roman candles and cherry bombs.

           It's unlikely that anyone fidgeting on those uncomfortable seats will recall that it was beneath their feet that Louis XVI,  most of the royal family and its court,  were guillotined. Blood soaking into the stones of what was then called Place de la Revolution created such a stench that for years even dogs wouldn't approach.

           It's not that aspect of the revolution that is celebrated, but rather the day in 1789 when the Paris mob, having failed to draw the attention of Louis XVI to a national shortage of grain, among other deficiencies of his reign, turned on the most convenient symbol of his power, the prison known as the Bastille, and broke down its doors. (In fact, they hoped to find gunpowder and weapons inside. When they didn't, the mob beheaded the prison governor and most of his staff.)

           As much as one might wish to imagine hundreds of grateful political prisoners stumbling into the sunshine and the arms of waiting friends, the Bastille held only four occupants, none with much in the way of a political pedigree.  Among them was  Donatien, Marquis de Sade, locked up because his family begged the king to get him off the streets and stop embarrassing them with his outrageous fantasies. The Marquis hadn't wasted his time inside, and carried under his arm a fat roll of paper, stitched together from sheets provided for sanitary purposes, which comprised his master work, The 120 Days of Sodom.

           Political progress which, in most countries, occurs in an orderly manner -  debate, followed by elections, with the occasional ripple of a scandal - takes place in France in fits and starts, with periods of grumbling tranquility interrupted by outbreaks of violence and disorder. After 1789, there was the coup d'etat of 1801 that put Napoleon I on the throne, his forced abdication in 1814, the July Uprising of 1830 (that's the one in Les Miserables), the Napoleonic restoration of 1848,  the anarchist Commune of 1871, les evenements of 1968... If the present stand-off between liberal centrists, represented by President Macron, and the right wing gathered around Marine LePen led to civil war, nobody would be surprised. We’re just about due.

           Not that the population in general hope for a revolution. If and when it comes, only a handful will actively participate. But the rest won't interfere. Pressed for an opinion, they'll decline to comment - except, perhaps, to say, defensively, "Well, that's how we do things in France." And they'll shrug.

           Why this system in France and not in nearby Spain, Germany or Great Britain? Could it be that France, a rural country - the same population as Britain but five times the land area - is ruled by the seasonality that dominates life on the land? A time for sowing, for harvesting - and for violence?  Significantly, the revolution of 1789 tried to rename the months in line with a year ruled by the seasons. Fructidor was the month of fruit, Messidor the month of the harvest, Floreal the month of flowers. Just now, we're in Thermidor, the month of heat. Ominous, one might think, with the long and dangerous summer to come.