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Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France
The wrongful conviction for treason of a Jewish army captain in France in the late 19th century exposed antisemitism and virulent nationalism – but also, as Mike Rapport reveals, sparked a flood of ‘fake news’ that presaged the worst of the modern media landscape
In the oppressive heat of his cell in the Mont-Valérien military prison west of Paris on 31 August 1898, Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry wrote a despairing letter to his wife, drank half a bottle of rum, and killed himself. This desperate act was a pivotal moment in one of the best-known causes celebres in modern history: the Dreyfus Affair. The story of Henry’s suicide, following his arrest for forging a document in the controversial case, was co-opted by the nationalist rightwing media as part of a tidal wave of coverage that threatened to destabilise French democracy and public trust in the Republic. The background is well known today. In September 1894, Henry, a counter-espionage officer, had uncovered evidence of a mole within French military intelligence. A cleaner working in the German embassy (and in Henry’s pay) had found a memorandum, since dubbed the ‘bordereau’, written by an officer in the French General Staff revealing military secrets. The handwriting was identified as that of Alfred Dreyfus, an army captain then working in the War Ministry, who was arrested, court-martialled, publicly degraded and hauled off to solitary confinement on the notoriously harsh penal colony of Devil’s Island, off French Guiana. But the army had the wrong man. Contradictions and irregularities in the case soon began to appear. In August 1896, the new head of military intelligence, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, was examining more papers stolen from the German embassy. The handwriting on one was identical to that in the bordereau used to convict Dreyfus – but the signature was that of Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a dissipated, debt-ridden, disreputable officer who had been selling secrets to the Germans for two years. Dreyfus, Picquart realised, was innocent. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/BAL1756949-CMYKWeb-Ready-2c9d689.jpg" width="3683" height="2456" alt="An engraving shows a man lying dead on the floor, while a police officer kneels over him. Another police officer stands by his head, and two more officers are entering the room in the background" title="An engraving depicts the discovery of the suicide of Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry following his arrest for forging a letter incriminating Dreyfus. Some thought his crime justifiable (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Ignoring the errors Even after this discovery, Dreyfus remained incarcerated for years longer because government officials, the army and large segments of public opinion refused to accept that a terrible error had been made. In part this was a result of the desire to maintain national security by authorities who were keen to avoid demoralising the army just as France secured a military alliance with the Russian empire, and amid heightened tensions with Germany following its annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine region from France in 1871. But it was also due to the fact that Dreyfus was from Alsace, and Jewish – at a time when a virulent strain of antisemitism based on ‘scientific’ racism had emerged, and as antisemites of different political persuasions associated Jews with either socialism or capitalism. Read more | Fake news and Nazis: Richard J Evans on the spectre of conspiracies These motives also played on a deeper division that had riven French society since 1789. There were those who, like Dreyfus himself, embraced the principles of the Revolution and its legacy as embodied in the Third Republic, founded in 1870. These included secularism, parliamentary democracy, civil equality and a world view exulting in science and human reason. Adherents of this strong current within French political culture generally became ‘Dreyfusards’ who supported the officer’s innocence. Their opponents saw 1789 as a fatal breach with France’s true historical destiny: Catholic, hierarchical and monarchical. More recently, this traditional conservatism had been joined by a new form of rightwing ideology promising social reform but which was also nationalist, authoritarian, antisemitic. Many of those with such views became ‘anti-Dreyfusard’, opposed to revisiting the case. These flames were stoked by a virulently partisan newspaper press that played a pivotal role in the battle for public opinion. Print media had experienced a boom stimulated by more rapid communications, the introduction of photographs into newspapers, an expansion in advertising, and new forms of printing technology that made periodicals quicker and cheaper to produce and more widely available. At that time, France had a particularly vibrant press. Free, compulsory and universal primary education for boys and girls from the early 1880s encouraged literacy, and a press law enacted in 1881 lifted almost all restrictions on what could be published, although this was rolled back in 1893 and 1894 after a spate of anarchist bombings. Journalists and publishers could be sued for slander, but cases were rarely successful. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the number of periodical titles mushroomed by 250 per cent. These publications included broadsheets and tabloid newspapers representing the whole range of political opinions from the radical left to the extreme right. Yet within this vibrant ecosystem of print lurked a danger that remains familiar in our age of social media, online news and artificial intelligence. It was all too easy to spread what we now call ‘fake news’ – misinformation (falsehoods spread unintentionally), disinformation (fabrications aimed at manipulating readers politically and socially) and malinformation (deception based on some truth, but twisted in such a way as to deceive). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1404448124cmykWeb-Ready-a0c4306.jpg" width="2374" height="1582" alt="A black and white photograph of a man wearing military uniform, including a hat with "74" written on the front. He has a large, heavy moustache" title="Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, the officer who really wrote the treasonous memorandum attributed to Dreyfus. He was acquitted by a tribunal in 1898 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Fake news During the Dreyfus Affair, the newspaper press was infused with ‘fake news’. Not for the last time, the episode exposed the friction between free speech on the one hand and, on the other hand, the challenges that arise when people of bad faith abuse that freedom, spreading falsehoods to manipulate public opinion, demonise certain groups of people, or undermine faith in the rule of law and democratic government. The Dreyfus case sparked a truly explosive public controversy after Walsin Esterhazy was finally tried – and acquitted with unseemly haste – by a military court in January 1898. On 13 January, novelist Émile Zola published J’Accuse…!, an open letter to the president of the Republic, in L’Aurore newspaper. He accused the government and army of committing a gross injustice and of conspiring to cover up the truth. He specifically highlighted and decried the antisemitism, militarism and authoritarianism behind the falsehoods: “It is a crime to lead public opinion astray,” Zola wrote, “to manipulate it for a death-dealing purpose and pervert it to the point of delirium. It is a crime to poison the minds of the humble, ordinary people, to whip reactionary and intolerant passions into a frenzy while sheltering behind the odious bastion of antisemitism… It is a crime to play on patriotism to further the aims of hatred.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-90758187cmykWeb-Ready-51ffbc8.jpg" width="2642" height="1761" alt="A yellow newspaper page with the headline "J'accuse!" written across the top" title="Émile Zola’s open letter to the president of the Republic, accusing the army and government of a cover-up in the Dreyfus Affair, exposed deep rifts in French society (Image by Getty Images)" /> Following Zola’s outburst, the Dreyfus Affair erupted into a full-scale public storm. Except on rare occasions, newspapers tended to reinforce the beliefs of their readership rather than challenge them with facts. Giving readers what they wanted to hear was partly driven by economics: the conservative Le Figaro, for example, had stopped publishing Zola’s articles towards the end of 1897 after he openly embraced the Dreyfusard cause, which hurt sales of the newspaper. Yet much of the fake news had an even more insidious purpose. Anti-Dreyfusard papers fuelled nationalist prejudices by targeting Jews; claimed to be defending the ‘honour’ of the army; and railed against the ‘unpatriotic’ manoeuvres of the Dreyfusards – all as a means of galvanising support for the assorted authoritarians, monarchists, nationalists and antisemites who loathed the Republic. It was not that the Dreyfusards were innocent of spreading fake news. Although much of what Zola wrote in J’Accuse…! turned out to be accurate, he did not get everything right, as he himself appeared to admit when he finished by saying that he would willingly submit to prosecution for defamation under the 1881 Press Law. Zola did, in fact, face prosecution in 1898, avoiding imprisonment only by slipping away in June to England and living there in exile for a year. Read more | “A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history Even some leftwing Dreyfusard newspapers tended to casually use the antisemitic trope of the Jew as capitalist to explain popular hostility against Jews. Anti-Dreyfusard publications saw Jews, socialists and leftwing republicans as a ‘Syndicate of Treason’ (as the vitriolic journalist Henri Rochefort put it). However, the Dreyfusard press was prone to sharing conspiracy theories of its own, seeing its opponents as part of an interwoven plot involving the Catholic church and the nationalists, aiming to destroy the Republic and the inheritance of 1789. Yet the anti-Dreyfusard press had most of the running: of the 55 dailies published at the time, only eight came out as Dreyfusard from February 1898, almost all of them with relatively low circulation numbers. The media was dominated by anti-Dreyfusard titles, which had an almost open field in which to bombard readers with a swirl of half-truths and outright lies, stoking prejudices and stirring up fears. Forgiveable forgery One of the most egregious moments came in the wake of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry’s death. After his colleague, Picquart, had exposed Esterhazy as the real traitor in 1896, Henry had tried to bolster the case against Dreyfus by forging a letter that ‘proved’ his guilt, introducing it into the dossier of evidence. The ruse was successful until, as the pressure mounted over the course of 1898, the government investigated and discovered that forgery, leading to Henry’s arrest and suicide. For anti-Dreyfusard journalists, Henry’s crime was forgiveable: it was ‘patriotic’ because it served a higher cause – the security of the nation. Dreyfus was guilty anyway, they claimed; and even if he were innocent, those who sought to clear his name were traitors working for Germany. The virulently nationalist La Patrie accused Zola of doing untold harm to the army: “And since that day, the damage has surged in like a torrent, roared like a tempest. Who has not recognised in this tactic the workings of Bismarckian [ie German] politics?” The idea that Henry was a martyr to the cause of patriotism gained traction when the explicitly and graphically antisemitic La Libre Parole opened a subscription for the Lieutenant-Colonel’s widow, Berthe, which received no fewer than 25,000 donations. The newspaper published the many antisemitic and anti-republican messages sent along with the money. La Libre Parole means ‘Free Speech’, making it a case study for how prejudice and anti-democratic forces cloak themselves in the very freedoms that they seek to destroy or to deny to others. The Dreyfus case was – rightly or wrongly – seen as connected with both national security and the country’s future, so both sides entrenched themselves deeply within their positions. The more that the problems with Dreyfus’s conviction trickled out, the more the anti-Dreyfusards reinvigorated strategies that rested less on facts than on what is today called ‘gaslighting’ and on deflection, both of which involved stoking prejudices and demeaning opponents. Gaslighting, by which the perpetrator seeks to cast doubt on the truth, was deployed by Édouard Drumont, editor of La Libre Parole, who in June 1898 assured his readers that Dreyfusards were merely “a clutch of cosmopolitans who always talk of pieces of paper and documents but never prove anything” – the term ‘cosmopolitan’ being a dog-whistle term denoting unpatriotic or Jewish people. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/RV185-14cmykWeb-Ready-bfe91fd.jpg" width="2464" height="1643" alt="The top image shows a man in a suit with a moustache sitting at a desk and looking to the right. The bottom image shows a bearded man wearing glasses attached to a string, looking directly into the camera" title="Nationalist writer Maurice Barrès (top) entreated readers to consider national security above the facts of the miscarriage of justice, in contrast with the moral arguments of Dreyfusard Émile Zola (Images by TopFoto and Getty Images)" /> Nationalist writer Maurice Barrès made a more sophisticated use of gaslighting. Nothing in the Dreyfus Affair was demonstrably true, he argued in Le Journal in February 1898, so “how do you intend… to undertake to solve the problem when you do not have all the data?” he demanded of the Dreyfusards. Barrès’ purpose was to cast doubt on the significance of the few facts that were, at that point, already public knowledge. He took this further by suggesting that there are some truths that are “foreign to individual reason”, and that national circumstances and interests were the true barometer of what was just and true. “It is necessary to judge things in the relative,” Barrès argued, opening the way for his readership to be secure in their prejudices – because for them the army’s honour and national security were more important than the facts of any miscarriage of justice. Anti-Dreyfusard newspapers tried in various ways to deflect their readers’ attention away from the question of the convicted man’s innocence and onto other targets. This was a strategy behind the argument that Henry’s forgery was ‘patriotic’: his crime was minor compared to the real danger, which would be the victory of the Dreyfusards, who were no better than traitors. La Patrie proclaimed in September 1898: “Let us leave those cosmopolitans from Frankfurt to howl with joy over the tomb of that modest child of French soil [Henry]… Let us turn away with disgust from the spectacle of the odious triumph of the worst enemies of the army and of the country.” In that one sentence, the newspaper connected the Dreyfusards with treason, with Germany and Jews (‘cosmopolitans’), and with the ignominy of defeat – ‘Frankfurt’ being a reference to the humiliating peace treaty with Germany at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Demeaning caricatures At the same time, the anti-Dreyfusard press demeaned their opponents, caricaturing them as effeminate wimps, sexually sterile and highly strung, and contrasted them with the muscular, virile masculinity of the army officers whom they were accused of attacking. Zola was frequently depicted with simian characteristics: hairy, fat, thick-lipped. Dreyfus and other Jewish figures were ascribed the whole range of antisemitic tropes. La Libre Parole compared the ‘French’ femininity of Henry’s widow, Berthe, with the Jewish Dreyfusard Joseph Reinach, who was “puffy, swarthy, sweaty, stomach bulging”. For some, it did not even matter that Dreyfus was innocent: he was Jewish, so for the nationalists the greater ‘truth’ was that he could never be French. The process of gaslighting and deflection combined to stoke prejudices and popular fears, fogging out the original question of Dreyfus’s innocence. Read more | How Napoleon (almost) destroyed the French Revolution Yet a denouement was eventually reached. In February 1899, President Félix Faure – who opposed reopening Dreyfus’s case – died of a brain haemorrhage. He was succeeded by a Dreyfusard, Émile Loubet, whose election by parliament prompted an unsuccessful coup attempt by the Ligue des Patriotes and the Ligue antisémitique, who provided the street muscle of the anti-Dreyfusard movement. In June, the appeals court quashed Dreyfus’s conviction and ordered a retrial, which took place in August and September 1899 in Rennes – Paris being deemed too dangerous. Shockingly, the military tribunal again found the captain guilty. President Loubet issued a formal pardon, but Dreyfus was not officially cleared until 1906. He returned to the army, serving with merit in the First World War. The Dreyfus Affair showed how, when the stakes were high and when divisions ran deep, a torrent of half-truths, lies, deflection, the stoking of fear and prejudices, and appeals to ‘patriotism’ made it difficult for citizens to make informed decisions. It also demonstrated that many citizens were content to have their prejudices reaffirmed rather than critically examined. This is why Barrès’ argument that the nation had needs that were above reason and truth was so corrosive to democratic politics. The principle that truth, justice and legality could be judged only according to national interests allowed readers to indulge in a kind of relativism that justified falsehoods and injustice in pursuit of a conception of France that excluded groups who were the bogeymen of the nationalist right: Jews, foreigners, Protestants, Freemasons, socialists and others. It also exposed the spiky question that every democracy faces when freedom of expression becomes a means of undermining confidence and trust in its institutions: how to defend itself without infringing the very liberties that are its essence. Ultimately, the lesson of the Dreyfus Affair is that, in an age of mass media, citizens not only need to be equipped to make the honest effort to assess critically their sources of information and to examine their positions with verifiable evidence: they have to be willing to do so. In December 1898, L’Aurore understood that this was essential to the survival of democracy: “It is for citizens to inform themselves, to think, to use their will; it is for them to reform their morals, to no longer let themselves be taken for fools or as things to be juggled with and to emancipate themselves, not by force, but by ideas.” We need, the newspaper concluded, to “enlighten [our] brains, not slice them open!” Mike Rapport is reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
Jane Austen’s lifetime coincided with near-constant conflict and bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic
The American Revolutionary War (1775–83) Born eight months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jane Austen entered a world on the brink of seismic change. Although the conflict that ended with the independence of 13 North American colonies from British rule did not affect her directly, its geopolitical legacy shaped the world in which she came of age. During the 1760s and 1770s, colonists in North America grew increasingly frustrated with taxation by Britain, and by its legislative supremacy over their lives. In 1773, the Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to America – and levied taxes on that tea, payable to the British Government. In response, colonists disguised as Mohawk Native Americans boarded British ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbour – a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. Westminster responded by passing the Intolerable Acts, ending local self- government and commerce in Boston. Tensions boiled over in April 1775, when British troops in Massachusetts attempted to confiscate weapons in Lexington and Concord. When they met resisting local militia, the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired – marking the start of the Revolutionary War. The following year, on 4 July 1776, delegates from 13 colonies assembled in Philadelphia declared their independence and established the United States of America. Over the next five years, on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, the colonists – led by figures including George Washington – fought for liberty and self-governance. And, with support from France and other European powers, the tide turned in their favour. Signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain formally recognised the US as an independent nation, ending the conflict. But the ideals championed in that war opened the era of the Atlantic Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) On 22 August 1791, the French colony of Saint- Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, was shaken by an uprising. Inspired by the French Revolution, more than 100,000 enslaved Africans overthrew the oppressive regime, leaving many of its 8,000 plantations in ruins and more than 1,000 Europeans dead. The colony was the most lucrative in the Caribbean, producing around half of the world’s coffee and sugar, so in 1792 Paris dispatched a 6,000-strong force to pacify it. Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, in 1793 British and Spanish troops arrived on the island, exacerbating the turmoil as these European powers recruited people to their war aims. Amid this chaos, Toussaint L’Ouverture – who had been born into slavery on Saint-Domingue – emerged as a figurehead. In 1796/97, he became deputy governor and then commander-in- chief of the French forces and, after expelling the British and Spanish, he established a new regime over much of Hispaniola, assuming dictatorial powers and launching efforts to revive its damaged economy. In 1802, another French expedition ousted L’Ouverture and whisked him to France, where he died in captivity a year later. When Napoleon restored slavery in Saint-Domingue, the revolution erupted afresh and, led by the formerly enslaved Jean-Jacques Dessalines, revolutionary forces decisively expelled the French. On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti – the first led by people of colour –was declared, galvanising the international anti-slavery movement. Just three years later, Britain’s Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was signed into law. Though Austen’s views on the Haitian Revolution aren’t known, many in her circle supported abolitionism. And both her brother Francis and the fictional Captain Wentworth in Persuasion were present at the Napoleonic battle of Santo Domingo (the Spanish colony on Hispaniola) in 1806, so Jane was clearly familiar with events on the island. The French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) Having provided support for the American independence cause, France's King Louis XVI grappled with a mounting economic crisis. In 1789, hunger and widespread discontent sparked revolution: on 14 July, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, reviled symbol of royal tyranny. But the movement's pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity - and the revolutionary government's aspiration to spread these principles beyond France's borders - spooked Europe's monarchies. Over time, factionalism and infighting split the revolutionaries. In an effort to rally national unity, the government targeted France's historic enemies, and in April 1792 declared war on Austria. Later, Louis and his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, were toppled and executed. A series of coalitions formed by European powers including Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia aimed to contain and reverse the revolutionary changes in France in wars spanning much of the next decade. These conflicts spread revolutionary and nationalist ideals, and pioneered strategies such as national conscription. But their most significant legacy would be the meteoric rise of a Corsican corporal, Napoleon Bonaparte. After a decade of turmoil, the 1802 Treaty of Amiens was signed by France and Britain, bringing to an end the Revolutionary Wars - though not auguring a lasting peace with France. The Austen family wasn't untouched by these events. Of Jane's brothers, Henry joined the Oxfordshire Militia, while Francis and Charles enlisted in the Royal Navy. Jane was horrified by a description by her cousin (and, later, sister-in-law) Eliza de Feuillide of her first husband's guillotining in 1794, during the bloody period of the French Revolution known as the Terror. Like her contemporaries, Jane eagerly followed events. She even sported an Egyptian-style 'Mamalouc' cap to a ball honouring Lord Nelson's victory over the French at the battle of the Nile. Did you know? Winston Churchill, musing on Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, once quipped: "What calm lives they had... No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic Wars" The Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) Jane Austen’s career as a writer reached its zenith during the series of wars involving Napoleonic France. Her most famous novels were penned as those conflicts raged and, though war itself is absent from her stories, the military characters she created, and the references to everyday hardship in her books, attest to her lived reality. Two of her brothers were fighting in the Royal Navy, and the threat of a French invasion of England remained credible until Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in October 1805. Napoleon Bonaparte was a skilled military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution. After seizing power in 1799, Napoleon – who later crowned himself Emperor of the French – aimed to establish an empire and exert his influence globally. Through military campaigns, he drove a rapid expansion of French territory, conquering numerous European nations and bringing them under his rule. His military victories – including in battles at Austerlitz in 1805 and Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 – demonstrated his tactical brilliance and reshaped the political landscape of the continent. Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria and other nations joined forces in coalitions pushing back against Napoleonic France. A series of battles and campaigns followed, notably the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, and the Russian campaign of 1812. Despite his military prowess, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia proved disastrous, and led to his first abdication in April 1814, followed by exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The following year, while European statesmen were gathered in Vienna to establish a new continental order, Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed in southern France. Arriving in Paris in March 1815, he resumed hostilities – culminating in French defeat at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815 by a combined British and Prussian force led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Napoleon was subsequently exiled once more, to the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, marking the end of the Napoleonic era and decades of warfare. The War of 1812 (1812–15) In a letter dated 2 September 1814, Jane Austen wrote: “I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.” Despite her reticence in discussing many of the global events that defined her era, the coincidence of this scathing verdict with a conflict then raging in North America is perhaps telling. So-called ‘War Hawks’ in Congress asserted that Britain’s presence in Canada posed a threat to the US, and called for military action. Tensions had arisen as a direct result of two decades of near-constant warfare between Britain and France. Factors that frustrated the US included impressment (forced recruitment) into the Royal Navy of American sailors believed to be deserters; competing Anglo-French trade restrictions imposed on neutral powers such as the US; and British support for Native American resistance to US expansion westwards across North America. So, on 18 June 1812, the US declared war on Britain, launching a conflict that would last nearly three years. Despite initial American naval victories, the British were able to maintain blockades of key US ports. On 24 August 1814, in retaliation for American attacks on York (modern-day Toronto), British soldiers burned public buildings in Washington DC – including the White House and the Capitol. War fatigue and economic stresses forced both sides to the negotiating table, and on 24 December 1814 the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Even so, the distances involved delayed ratification of the treaty by Congress until 16 February 1815 – after US victory at the battle of New Orleans on 8 January. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen – reading time 6 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
Beneath the genteel surface of decorous society, unrest simmered in the world – and works – of Jane Austen
While the novels of Jane Austen might suggest an endless schedule of middle- and upper-class gaiety, disgruntlement was rumbling beneath the surface across the country – and, during this tail end of the Georgian era, it often erupted in violent, sometimes lethal protest. Not that Austen herself completely ignored what was happening in the country beyond Barton Cottage and Netherfield Park. For instance, her fifth novel, Northanger Abbey, refers to the unrest erupting in England’s larger cities. Although she writes about a riot as imagined by one of the characters, the rather visceral description depicts: “a mob of three thousand men assembling in St George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood”. Whether real or imagined, Austen’s inspiration for this tableau does seem to have come from real-life events. The episode appears to be a conflation of at least two separate disturbances that occurred prior to Northanger Abbey’s publication. In 1808, perhaps 6,000 weavers from the local – and rapidly growing – textile industry in Manchester gathered in St George’s Fields to protest about the lack of a minimum wage in their trade. Eight years later, not long before Austen’s novel was published, another riot broke out in London at the end of a hitherto peaceful protest. During the violence, the rioters even planned to attack the Tower of London – so it was surely not mere coincidence that Austen’s imagined account of the unrest included the Tower being “threatened”. Fighting for fair pay The weavers’ protest in Manchester may have been violent but it did achieve a modicum of success. Though dragoons were called in to restore peace (and one protester died during this response), the rioting was replicated in surrounding towns in Lancashire, and the weavers won a small concession in the form of a modest rise in their wages. Some scholars of Jane Austen believe that the Gordon Riots of 1780 also contributed to her description in Northanger Abbey, though those events took place when the author was only four years old. In particular, these scholars cite her reference to a deadly disturbance during which “the streets of London [were] flowing with blood”, as well as an attack on the Bank of England. The Gordon Riots were certainly bloody, a violent response to the Papists Act 1778, which aimed to reduce discrimination faced by Catholics. Anti-Catholic protests, led by the head of the Protestant Association, Lord George Gordon, exploded into chaos, with a week of rioting, burning and looting following in the capital, resulting in several hundred deaths. Religion was also the cause of the 1791 Priestley Riots in Birmingham, in which non-Anglicans who supported the French Revolution were attacked and their property damaged or destroyed. Local taxation was the reason for the Bristol Bridge Riot two years later; the militia were called to quell this disturbance, and 11 people died. Headstrong heroines As well as including occasional references to events playing out across the country, Austen didn’t confine her social commentary to the romantic politics of the gentry. Although by no means a polemical feminist, she put the disparity between men and women in the late Georgian period at the heart of her novels. They focus heavily on marriage, the ways women are defined by their husband, and what society’s expectations of women. Women seldom owned property; they couldn’t vote; they were barred from higher education; and they were rarely able to access prestigious professions. Certainly, a middle-class woman who had to work was looked down upon. Despite the absence of women’s rights, Austen’s headstrong heroines are by no means shrinking violets in their marriages or in their pursuit of suitable husbands. Although she can’t give her female characters the rights that society has denied them, Austen does empower them with purpose and intent. Women lower down the social strata simply had to work if their husband’s income wasn’t sufficient – those who were married, that is. Women were also required to maintain a functioning household, even when conditions beyond their control intervened. Such conditions arose in 1795, when a savagely cold winter brought the average temperature in the English Midlands down below –3°C. When the rivers thawed, great floods raged, so that crops didn’t grow, and animals couldn’t graze. Angry women tackled the resulting food scarcity head-on in what was later dubbed the ‘Revolt of the Housewives’ or the ‘Food Riots’. Unscrupulous merchants took full advantage of the fact that demand far outstripped supply, pushing up the prices of items such as flour and meat – but the rioters weren’t having high prices dictated to them. They seized merchants’ goods and sold them at what they believed were true market prices, giving the proceeds to the merchants. Such direct action was one way that women, with no electoral power, could effect change. But other people were also denied the vote in Austen’s time. Indeed, only 200,000 individuals – all of them property-owning men – had the vote. So a wave of vociferous reformers fiercely pushed for a large-scale extension of electoral suffrage – in the face of equally implacable opposition. Did you know? Initial goverment responses to the Gordon Riots were weak and badly planned. But when the army was called out to protect the Bank of England on 7 June 1780, the result was mass bloodshed – around 285 protesters were shot dead. Boasting nearly 30 MPs among its ranks, the Society of the Friends of the People filed a petition in the House of Commons in 1793, demanding electoral reform. This was heavily quashed in a parliamentary vote by MPs concerned about the redistribution of power to the masses after the French Revolution four years earlier. And while that Society was trying to put the subject of reform on the political agenda, organisations such as the Hampden Clubs and the London Corresponding Society, whose more radical proposals included extending the vote to all adults, met with even greater opposition. It wasn’t until the Reform Act of 1832 that the growing metropolis of Manchester gained any representation in the Commons. Unsurprisingly, then, the protection of entrenched interests in Parliament, and the means by which this was legitimised by a very limited notion of democracy, poured extra fuel on the bonfire of disquiet that flared among large swathes of the population. Problems at the pinnacle While the fabric of wider society was being unpicked, unease also proliferated right at the pinnacle of the British elite. While George III bounced between bouts of madness and lucidity, the threat of a constitutional crisis always hung heavy in the air. In 1788, a bill was passed in the Commons that would see the king’s eldest son, another George, become regent. The king emerged intact from that episode of mental ill health, and the bill was withdrawn before it had progressed through the House of Lords. By 1811, though, his insanity had become permanent, and another regency bill successfully negotiated its way through Parliament. With the Care of King During His Illness etc Act 1811, George III was replaced as head of state by his son, who eventually became King George IV on his father’s death in 1820. By then, Jane Austen had also died, passing away three years earlier, in 1817, at the age of just 41. Her great success and renown arrived only posthumously. Yet her legacy proved to be not only her artfully plotted novels, populated by enduring characters, but also her ability to depict – albeit subtly – the late Georgian period as it approached the crossroads of change. The industrial age cometh Austen’s writing did little to reflect the vast changes taking place in Britain’s cities Jane Austen’s novels might be set on rolling country estates and in well-heeled towns and cities, but the Industrial Revolution was well underway during her lifetime. Although more commonly associated with the early Victorian age, industrial development was progressing at lightning speed during Austen’s lifetime, and the largely rural economy that had dominated the countryside was being undermined. Towns and cities grew rapidly, their skylines soaring and their populations booming. The nature and pace of everyday life was irrevocably changed within a generation, and the world became driven by steam, not horse. Who knows what themes Austen’s novels might have touched on had she been born 50 years later, or if she’d grown up in the dirty heart of a city dominated by factories and chimneys. As it is, her works remain lasting memorials to a fading, possibly more innocent era. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins Regency Britain: An age of war and revolution – reading time 6 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
Robert Darnton guides us through the streets of Paris in the decades leading up to the French Revolution
The French Revolution of 1789 is one of the defining events of world history – but the decades preceding the revolution were also seismic, being marked by war, royal scandal, financial crisis and scientific wonder. In conversation with Rob Attar, Robert Darnton takes us on a journey through the streets of Paris in the 40 years that preceded the storming of the Bastille. Robert Darnton is the author of The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 (Penguin, 2023) View Green Video on the source website
The French Revolution of 1789 is one of the defining events of world history – but the decades preceding the revolution were also seismic, being marked by war, royal scandal, financial crisis and scientific wonder. In conversation with Rob Attar, Robert Darnton takes us on a journey through the streets of Paris in the 40 years that preceded the storming of the Bastille. Watch a video version of The dangerous road to the Bastille Robert Darnton is the author of The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 (Penguin, 2023) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
As a major new film explores the life of the French emperor, Matt Elton asks historians Laura O’Brien and David Andress how we can make sense of the diverse and contradictory aspects of Napoleon’s character and career
Matt Elton: Before we start thinking about Napoleon’s legacy, we should explore a key aspect of his story: just how great a military commander was he, and what were his greatest successes? David Andress: He’s one of the greatest military commanders of all time. He was also a highly charismatic individual and, every time you talk about Napoleon, you have to bear that in mind alongside the fact that he was a terrible person, politically speaking. He was staggeringly successful at doing things with military force – the problem was, that wasn’t always a good idea. The story of Napoleon’s life from the mid-1790s onwards is essentially one of balancing his personal charisma, drive, ambition and outstanding leadership qualities with what he actually did in the political sphere, the systems he set up, and what they said about what he thought about everyone else who wasn’t him. Laura O’Brien: I completely agree. One of the reasons he continues to excite such interest is the tendency to view him through a binary prism: he is either the worst person who ever lived, or a perfect genius who was really hard done by. This is the classic historian’s answer, but we need to think about his reputation in a more complicated, nuanced way. We have to recognise what Napoleon achieved – which was exceptional – and the way he was able to capture the imagination to such an extent that he still informs how we understand leadership. How did Napoleon’s early life shape his worldview and how he saw himself? LOB: Probably the most important early formative event was being sent to a military academy in 1779, when he was nine. He spent the next five years in that very austere environment, and noted later how it taught him to survive in hard situations. He was likely very badly bullied: people joked about his accent, and the fact he didn’t speak French very clearly. He became interested in the idea of Corsican independence in this period, and in the fact that he was Corsican above all. Although he did have a difficult time, and wasn’t an academic superstar by any means, he did get on quite well. He probably wasn’t the lone genius – the isolated child ploughing a lonely furrow towards a future destiny – that he and some of his future biographers wanted him to be viewed as. DA: Thinking of yourself as a lonely genius was the thing of the moment in the 1770s and 1780s. It was an era in which the late Enlight- enment began shading towards Romanti- cism, and for the young people of that generation who were going to become the Romantics, one of the key ideas was that you had to be distinctive and have a personality. That included the idea that, if your circum- stances were making you miserable, you had to surmount them and move forward. In a sense, the French Revolution fell into the lap of this generation as an opportunity to show off their greatness in all kinds of ways. LOB: It’s vital to think not just about the boots-on-the-ground aspect of his military successes but also how those victories were relayed back to France and around the world. Napoleon was aware of having an audience at all times, and of existing for that audience. That projection of an image of himself – his military success and his political leadership – explicitly intended for wider consumption was very modern. He essentially created a form of modern leadership, and you can see that from early on in his career. Le Courrier de l’Armée d’Italie, for instance, which was the newspaper of the Army of Italy, was essentially a write-up of how well Napoleon had been doing and how great all his military successes had been. It was notionally for the soldiers but, really, it was for the people at home in France, who were starting to put pictures of Napoleon up on their walls and buy prints of him in battle. Was this image management central to how he was seen? DA: You always have to see that aspect of it. He didn’t even bother posing for the famous image of him crossing the Alps sitting on a horse as it rears up, for instance. He just said: “Knock me up a picture in which I look great.” That was an act of propaganda in itself, part of a movement to set himself up as a hero to people desperate for such a figure after a decade of chaos – and to then take power on the assumption that they need it rather than having to actually ask them if they want it. During the coup of 1799, Napoleon wanted to ratify the fact that he’d taken power (albeit having seized it brutally), so decided to have a popular plebiscite, or referendum – and then faked the results. In order to vote in that referendum, you had to sign a book in your local administrative office: if you wanted to vote against Napole- on, you had to literally sign your name in front of the officials. Approximately 1,500 brave people did so, but more than a million people voted for him – and then that number was just doubled randomly, because it sounded better. That’s another pattern we can follow through Napoleon’s story: paying lip service to democracy, but in reality just using power to do anything he felt like. LOB: It is about manipulating the idea of democracy, but also the idea that Napoleon can connect with people to such an extent that they almost don’t need the thing in the middle. Napoleon’s idea was that he could connect to the public because he knew what they wanted – and what they wanted was him, because he was such a legend. Returning to that painting of him crossing the Great St Bernard Pass, Napoleon knew his history – being a child of the classics- focused system of the Enlightenment – and there are plenty of references to leaders of the past in that image. For instance, the rocks in the foreground are inscribed with the names of Hannibal and Charlemagne. So Napoleon was very explicitly inserting himself into this continuum, this legacy of leadership that unified the military and the political. Did this self-mythologisation obscure darker, more complex aspects of this story – of the Napoleonic Wars, for instance? DA: The crowned heads of Europe fought each other a lot. But they also understood at some level that this was a system in which wars had limits, and that the objective of every war was some kind of just diplomatic settlement. That was an idea that had gone back hundreds of years. What Napoleon did, notoriously, was to break that system: partly through his use of magnificent, glorious force, but partly by being a shameless oath-breaker. He thought that treaties were things you used to make other people do things – and, if you didn’t like the outcome, you’d just declare war on them again. He did this for reasons his propagandists outlined at length and in detail but, in the end, he did them because he could. When you look at the relationship between war and politics through the decade after Napoleon’s coronation in 1804, it’s clear he never accepted that anyone else could limit what he wanted to do. That was the real dark side, internationally speaking. Of course, within the French empire there was also authoritarianism at a civil level: censorship, no free elections, and no meaningful concept of democracy in action. France was a police state, and it’s only in light of the worse examples from the 20th century that you might be tempted to downplay that authoritarianism. LOB: It’s important not to see this era as being a sort of 20th-century totalitarian police state, but there was an authoritarian element. And there was also, of course, the decision to send the French army back into the Caribbean and to reimpose slavery on some French colonies – although Napoleon did later say that he shouldn’t have done it, if only because he would then have been able to use military and political force to play off against Britain and Spain in their imperial possessions. While people have long been aware of this aspect of the story, the 2021 bicentennial of his death acknowledged it very explicitly, and it’s now something I think you can’t avoid talking about. It seems to me there’s increasing scope for understanding Napoleon in a way that is not just about explicit, blanket denunciation or heroisation but instead about looking at him and his legacy in a more holistic way that goes beyond the good or bad binaries of the past. We should talk about the Napoleonic Code. What was it, and why is it important in understanding this wider story? DA: Since early in the French revolutionary process, France’s finest legal minds had been trying to solve the problem that, even after revolution, people would still say you couldn’t change the law because it was so grounded in history it was as if it just existed. They spent more than a decade working on new systems of law, and what eventually became the Napoleonic Code was drawn from that work. The extent to which you think Napoleon was personally responsible for shaping it depends on how much of the propaganda you want to believe. It was discussed in front of him, and there was lots of talk about what he wanted it to include. But we can see one of the good aspects of monarchy in Napoleon’s ability as a single figurehead, a single authori- tative will, to push forward the work of a state political class. He got things done, including producing these law codes at the same time as pacifying the nation, which had seen a real breakdown of law and order in the late 1790s. It was just one of the ways in which Napoleon was the physical manifestation of what the revolution had been trying to do for a decade. LOB: [Historian] Geoffrey Ellis wrote that, although we tend to see Napoleon as either Caesar or Charlemagne, he was more compa- rable to [Eastern Roman emperor] Justinian in that his big legacy was civil reorganisation and the implementation of a new revolution- ary structure. Many of its elements still hold sway in some form in the legal systems of France and other European nations. Modern French history is in many ways a story of centralisation and decentralisation, of people handing off power and taking it back to themselves, culminating in the system we have now, which is much central- ised in that power is concentrated much more in the figure of the president than had been the case beforehand. That in many ways is a product of the story that began in the process of setting up these different codes. So I think one of Napoleon’s biggest legacies is bureaucratic structures and systems, certainly in terms of the aspect that people in France and other European nations live with on a daily basis. I’m not sure that’s necessarily the legacy he would have wanted to leave, but it probably is his biggest ongoing impact. When was Napoleon’s reputation at its highest, and why? LOB: In terms of his military success, I think the emergence of the Grande Armée [Napole- on’s main fighting force], victory at Austerlitz and the events of 1804 and 1806 represent a period in which he was very dynamic, rising to power, and pushing things forward. There were mini downfalls within that period – but then there were minor downfalls all the way through Napoleon’s career. This wasn’t a life or a reign that was straight up or straight down. People also pick and choose the version of Napoleon they want to celebrate, and the version they maybe don’t want to think about too much. That isn’t a very direct answer, but it does, I think, reflect the complexity of his story. DA: You could also take a different view – as some of his critics on the political left have – that the era of ‘peak Napoleon’ was around 1810 and 1811, when he clearly saw himself as master of Europe. He had monarchs coming to pay court to him, and he was rude and dismissive to all of them. He was in the process of trying to bully Russia into more strongly resisting Britain, and had no diffi- culty imagining defeating Russia militarily – or, indeed, finally smashing any of his enemies that he’d always wanted to get his hands on. There is ample evidence of the massive scope of his vision of himself, and his capability of dragging along his whole extended family as junior monarchs. Another peak was in 1813, when he used a truce with Austria to build up his military forces – because, when the peace settlement was over, he was just going to start fighting again, and nobody could stop him. He had an unshakeable belief that he could defeat his enemies and impose his will on them. Yet another peak came just months later, during those terrible winter battles of early 1814. With only small numbers of troops at his disposal, Napoleon was shuttling back- wards and forwards around the frontiers of France, repeatedly punching Allied armies in the face and making it very difficult for them to advance on Paris. Eventually, of course, they simply mobilised overwhelming num- bers and couldn’t be stopped. Yet there was a lightning flash there of the Napoleon of 20 years earlier – proof that he could still act like his younger self on the battlefield. David, you caused something of a stir this summer when you wrote on Twitter that “Napoleon used the entire resources of state and empire to make himself look cool to future generations”. Do you think people still see Napoleon as being cool? DA: Absolutely, yes – and the response to making simple, factual statements on the internet demonstrates that quite clearly. You can really annoy a lot of people by suggest- ing that Napoleon is not a stainless hero, or is an anti-democrat or, in the end, a tyrant in the sense in which tyranny had been under- stood since ancient times. He was unaccount- able: he broke things, he broke systems, he broke people. My old mentor, the historian Norman Hampson, used to say that the reason he couldn’t stand him was because Napoleon said: “My income is 100,000 men a year.” That’s 100,000 deaths on the battlefield, from diseases in the camp, from horrible, festering wounds, and from all the other things that the pursuit of power via warfare inevitably led to – and from all the moments when Napoleon didn’t have to start another fight but did so anyway. We need to come to terms with the fact that, in civil life and in politics, he just wasn’t interested in what anyone else thought, and was never going to cede power even when he paid lip service to doing so. LOB: Napoleon wasn’t the only person who tried to harness the entire resources of the state to make himself look good. He was doing what people had done in political and monarchical leadership for centuries, and what politicians still try to project today. In his [2020] book Men on Horseback, historian David Bell is eloquent on the link between image and charisma, and the importance of the global age of revolutions in forging the image of leadership we have today, which is fundamentally a legacy of Napoleon’s era. David, you noted that you can annoy a lot of people by suggesting that Napoleon isn’t a stainless hero, but I think you can also annoy an awful lot of people just by mentioning his name. The implication sometimes seems to be that you can’t engage with Napoleon’s legacy because he was simply a very bad man. He was, but that’s why he’s so annoyingly interesting: because he was simultaneously terrible and fascinating, and was able to use his charisma all through his life. He wasn’t as short as British propaganda would have you believe, but he was very slight, and certainly quite unimpressive as a young man. Yet the fact he was still able to persuade people to such an extent says something about the level of charisma we’re dealing with here. We’re talking ahead of the release of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. Does the fact that a film of this scale and budget is being released now, in 2023, surprise you? LOB: I’m fascinated by the fact it looks like a very traditional Napoleon film, in the sense that it is a straight biopic. It was originally pitched as being just about his rise to power, which seemed like a more sensible approach, but it now looks as if it’s going to be a start- to-finish retelling. That’s interesting, because films made about Napoleon across the past 20 or 30 years have tended to move away from battlefield dramas to focus much more on the man on a human scale. I’d want to ask Scott about the decision he’s seemingly made to explore the story beyond Napoleon’s rise to power. Could he not resist the lure of big battle sequences? The initial reaction to the trailer in some parts of social media was, shall we say, people rubbing their hands with glee at those sequences, whereas I’m more interested in thinking about how Napoleon is going to appear as played by Joaquin Phoenix. DA: The casting is very strange: Phoenix is almost 50, so a generation older than Napole- on was in the 1790s – almost the age he was when he died, in fact. If they’d done the whole thing as Napoleon sitting on St Helena reminiscing, that would have made sense, but from what we’ve seen there’s no evidence of that. As a historian, thinking about Napoleon and his charisma, I don’t understand that decision, especially when they have cast a very young actor [Vanessa Kirby] as Joséphine. LOB: And, of course, a key aspect of the real Joséphine was that she was older than Napoleon. There was a dynamic of survival and power, and of people using each other as well as having a romantic connection. Given all this complexity, how might people see Napoleon in 50 years’ time? DA: In the 1940s, the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl wrote Napoleon: For and Against, which summarised more than a century of furious argument – and admitted that there was no resolution. And here we are, 80 years on, still capable of getting riled up by the discussion. That’s partly because we’re still in a kind of modernity shaped by the Napoleonic legacy – by its legal codes, but also by a charismatic, demagogic leadership that came into exist- ence in the age of Napoleon and which was fundamentally different from the traditional leadership of the old European monarchies. The ability of leaders to persuade people that they’re going to take them somewhere better sits in permanent contradiction with the idea we have experienced a democratic age. One of the ironies of democracy is that people still very often vote to be ruled rather than to rule themselves. I suspect that, as long as those tensions exist in our culture, people will still go back to Napoleon to look for examples of how to behave – and how not to behave. LOB: I agree. I think historians will probably still be having this conversation in 50 years. My only caveat is that I hope some of the shifts we’re already starting to see, away from the old-school for-and-against approach, continue into the future. The ways of think- ing about his legacy through such prisms as gender, culture and imperialism help shift it away from Napoleon in isolation and towards a more complex, nuanced discussion. One final thought. While I was in Paris over the summer, out of curiosity I went to Les Invalides, where Napoleon is buried, on 15 August – his birthday. It was rammed. I’d have liked to ask people why they were there, and what relationship they had with him. That this figure still manages to pull people into his orbit to such an extent that they crowd to see this huge sarcophagus and horrible statue is fascinating. I don’t think even historians are able to fully explain it. David Bell, who we mentioned earlier, wrote that Napoleon gives us a sense of human possibility for good and bad. The idea that you can make your own destiny is something that Napoleon was obsessed with. I think that continues, and that it probably explains a lot about why he continues to exert such fascination – and why we’ll doubtlessly still be talking about him in 50 years. Laura O’Brien is associate professor at Northumbria University. Her current research examines representations of Napoleon in popular culture David Andress is professor of modern history at the University of Portsmouth. His books include The French Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2019)
What should we make of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon?
The Napoleon of Ridley Scott’s epic biopic appears to be a man of emotion and vision, but does that match up to what really know of the Corsican general? Dr Zack White considers how Napoleon’s film portrayals tally with real history
Ridley Scott's new trailer for his epic biopic of Napoleon's life has caused a lot of excitement and a lot of consternation online and in the social media forums. I t seems that we're getting quite a different portrayal of Napoleon to some of the representations we've seen in previous films. This is an intense Napoleon, with a very hefty dose of narcissism thrown in the mix and in a lot of respects, that’s highly accurate. There has been a lot of pushback about the way in which Joaquin Phoenix is portraying a much less openly emotional Napoleon. But Napoleon was noted as being oddly intense in the early stages of his life. It's one of the things that's picked up from his time at military Academy, and it's part of the reason he was quite unpopular. We also get this strong sense that Napoleon has a destiny that he believes he has been born to fulfil and that's, that's again, actually quite accurate. From an early point in his life, Napoleon was reading about Julius Caesar particularly, and trying to channel his own efforts in life to become a new Caesar. There was a lot of internal frustration for him when he wasn't getting the postings that he wanted, and this is part of the reason that he's actually in Paris during the Vendémiaire uprising, which leads to the famous ‘whiff of grape shot’ moment depicted in the trailer. The reason he's there is he's turned down a posting in the Vendée because he believes it is beneath him. So you have this intense guy, somewhat self-absorbed, very impressed with himself, and that’s actually quite accurate at this point in Napoleon's life. Napoleon and Josephine One of the things that's really exciting about what's come through in this trailer is the huge significance of Josephine de Beauhernais. Again, this is really reflective of reality. Josephine was Napoleon's emotional rock, just as Napoleon needed Marshall Berthier to be able to translate his military vision into reality, so Josephine was the one who – in the words of historian and commentator Rachel Stark – made Napoleon palatable for French society. She took Napoleon's kind of reserve and his insular tendencies and made him much better able to engage in a way that enabled him to more effectively charm his contemporaries. Napoleon in Sergei Bondarchuk’s Waterloo The lack of emotion of Phoenix’s Napoleon has been contrasted with Rod Steiger's portrayal of Napoleon in 1970’s Waterloo by Sergei Bondarchuk. There we have a much more emotional Napoleon, and that is again reflective of where Napoleon was at that point in his life. The historian Clare Siviter has made the point that if you take any two years of Napoleon's life, he's different in terms of his emotions and his psychology. In Waterloo, Napoleon is depicted as reflective and depressed Napoleon, which is, accurate to a point – though perhaps that's slightly truer of Napoleon during his exile on St Helena. In Waterloo, there's also very much that sense that Napoleon is barely in control, which is in stark contrast to what we're seeing in the Ridley Scott trailer. In Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, we have a guy with a vision who's just frustrated about being held back. When it comes to Waterloo, we've got this sort of almost Trumpian twisting of reality, which is reflective of Napoleon's exceptional use of propaganda. Napoleon in Abel Gance’s 1927 silent movie The other great depiction that we can contrast this with is, of course, Abel Gance’s 1927 silent movie Napoleon. The challenge we have here is this is a different medium and it belongs to a different time. We're talking a hundred years ago, not only in terms of film production, but also in terms of historical research, and there have been massive shifts in both. Gance was a visionary without question. He had a genius that showed the potential of the moving medium that in some respects has never been realised to this day. His film was meant to have been the first of five installments on Napoleon's life. And it is five and a half hours long. In this respect, some people just were quite pleased that he didn't go and produce the entire thing, because it would've taken the rest of his life. But what’s interesting is that he's using different techniques to try and show what goes on in Napoleon's mind. He layers multiple shots simultaneously over a single scene kind of showing Napoleon as this visionary genius. You have a sort of a flashing of the eyes, algebra sort of flickers across the screen, and underneath that is laid out a map. And then you've got troop movements and arrows sort of going in different directions. It's trying to show Napoleon as the person who can just almost click his fingers and see everything, have everything played out in his mind, and that is very much a ‘great man of history’ way of looking at the guy, which is reflective of the time. In the 1920s, we were still in that age of grand narratives of history, focusing on the ‘big men’ who made big decisions and historical interpretation has moved on. Napoleon – the visionary and the genius – is not what we're getting through Ridley Scott. What we're getting in his film a much more human Napoleon, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a much more exciting depiction because of that. Dr Zack White is a military historian and author specialising in the British Army in the early 19th century
How Napoleon (almost) destroyed the French Revolution
When the Corsican general seized power in a coup in 1799, he proclaimed himself a defender of the republican ideals that had come from the revolution. But, as Marisa Linton explains, the would-be emperor did all he could to dismantle them
On 10 November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte stormed into the chambers at the Château de Saint-Cloud in the suburbs of Paris and set in train a military coup. “The republic no longer has a government,” he declared to the assembled members of one of France’s two ruling councils. “Together let us save the cause of liberty and equality.” The coup represented an enormous gamble for Bonaparte but it paid off spectacularly: within a matter of days, he had been declared First Consul of his nation. He was now the most powerful figure in France – and hardly anybody had seen it coming. But one man had, and his name was Maximilien Robespierre. When revolutionary France had embarked on a war with its royalist neighbours in April 1792, Robespierre warned of the dangers that would follow. A military leader could, the leading Jacobin revolutionary counselled, take the opportunity to seize political power in Paris, becoming another Julius Caesar, another Oliver Cromwell. Robespierre’s warnings were disregarded, but they proved prescient. The ensuing war would last a generation. It brought to prominence several talented young generals with the potential to become a second Caesar. In the end the man who came out ahead was the young Corsican general who burst into the Château de Saint Cloud in November 1799: Bonaparte. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know For many historians, the coup of 1799 signalled the end of one of the great step-changes in European history: the French Revolution. Erupting in 1789, the revolution had shaken the old order based on the authority of king, nobles and clergy to its core. It also brought into being a raft of new political ideals, such as individual liberty, equality before the law, freedom of speech and religious toleration. The revolution was the first of its kind anywhere in the world, and would have an unfathomable impact on modern history. But what would be the fate of these revolutionary ideals under the Napoleonic regime that took shape after his rise to power? Would the man himself go on to champion them or dismantle them? Was he their greatest ally, or an implacable foe? If Bonaparte himself is to believed, the answer is clear: the revolution was safe in his hands. “The French Revolution need fear nothing,” he declared, “since the throne of the Bourbons is occupied by a soldier!” Bonaparte later presented himself as having been the mediator between the old world of the kings and the new world of the revolution: “The [great battle] of the century had been won,” he intoned, “and the revolution accomplished.” However, a close examination of what Bonaparte did, as opposed to what he said, during his extraordinary time in power tells an entirely different story. A man of “transcendental merit” As a young man, Bonaparte’s revolutionary credentials were impressive. Robespierre’s younger brother, Augustin, had encountered Bonaparte, then a young artillery officer, at the siege to retake Toulon from the British in 1793. Augustin was impressed by his expertise and his radicalism – laid out in Bonaparte’s pamphlet, Le Souper de Beaucaire, written in support of the Jacobins, among revolutionary France’s most powerful political forces. The Corsican was, Augustin confided to Maximilien, a man of “transcendental merit”. Neither brother would live to see that potential realised. On 28 July 1794, both lost their lives to the guillotine, the latest victims of waves of revolutionary bloodletting that we now know as the Terror. Many more Jacobin sympathisers would be executed, and more still arrested. Among the latter was Bonaparte himself, who spent a short time imprisoned at the fort of Antibes in France’s south-eastern corner. He was in prison for less than two weeks, and was released after writing a statement that emphasised his republican allegiances, while distancing himself from the Robespierre brothers and Jacobinism. Such radical politics could no longer serve Bonaparte’s ambition: ever the pragmatist, he promptly ditched them. As Maximilien Robespierre had predicted, the revolution offered young soldiers of talent the opportunity to rise through the ranks. Some of these men had the potential to make the transition to the political sphere had they so wished. They included Lazare Hoche, whose father had been a servant tending the king’s horses in the stables of Versailles. Yet Hoche, seen by many as a more talented man, died young of consumption in 1797. Another rising star was Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of an enslaved black woman and a French nobleman, her legal owner. More than 6ft, strikingly handsome, a staunch Republican (and father of the author of The Three Musketeers), Dumas cut a much more impressive figure than the diminutive Bonaparte. During the French invasion of Egypt (1798–1801), locals who saw Dumas on horseback “all believed that he was the leader of the expedition” rather than Bonaparte. When he heard that Dumas had conferred with other generals about his ineptitude in Egypt, Bonaparte threatened to shoot him. En route back to France, Dumas was captured by royalist forces in the Kingdom of Naples, imprisoned in grim conditions, and left to languish by Bonaparte, who refused to intervene. Though Dumas was eventually released, his health was irretrievably damaged. The fates of both Hoche and Dumas prove that, while Bonaparte was one of the most able of the new generals, he was also lucky that his main rivals had been eliminated. Bonaparte was the leading proponent of the French invasion of Egypt, so when the campaign descended into a bloody debacle, it was he who had most to lose. Yet he showed exceptional skill in presenting it as a success, and himself as a hero. He left his soldiers bogged down in the desert sands and returned before news of the extent of the disaster had reached France. In doing so, he was able to turn a potentially career-ending fiasco into a bid for power After arranging for the despatch of looted treasures from Egypt’s ancient past, which would eventually find their way into the Louvre, Bonaparte cut a deal with the leading political theorist of the revolution, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès. Lured by the prospect of a regime based on militarism – and the big money to be made from lucrative contracts to supply the armies – Bonaparte and Sieyès conspired to overthrow the republic that they claimed to cherish. The result was the coup of November 1799. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/GettyImages-520717823sml-4af44bc.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Napoleon Bonaparte leads a military coup in November 1799, claiming he acted in the interests of the revolution (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Napoleon Bonaparte leads a military coup in November 1799, claiming he acted in the interests of the revolution (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> The Coup of 18 Brumaire Though this revolt – widely known as the Coup of 18 Brumaire, the name of its date in the short-lived French revolutionary calendar – ultimately catapulted Bonaparte into power, it very nearly went wrong. In short, Bonaparte met with more opposition than he had expected. “What about the constitution?” declared a defiant deputy in response to the Corsican’s dramatic entrance to the Château de Saint-Cloud. According to the political commentator Madame de Staël, conciliatory and judicious speech did not come naturally to Bonaparte. He was “eloquent only in abuse” and what he really wanted to say, she speculated, was: “You are a miserable bunch and I will have you shot if you do not do as I say.” Bonaparte also met with fury and cries of “Down with the dictator!” Half-fainting, he was rescued by two grenadiers. His position was saved by his younger brother, Lucien, who put on a theatrical display for the grenadiers waiting outside the palace, swearing to stab his brother if he proved a traitor to the republic. The soldiers marched into the council’s assembly hall and with fixed bayonets drove out the unarmed deputies. Within hours, Bonaparte issued a proclamation presenting himself as having acted as “a citizen devoted to the Republic”, motivated by his sense of public duty to take office. “I believed it my duty to my fellow citizens, to the soldiers perishing in our armies, to the national glory bought with their blood to accept the command,” he later declared. Read more | Napoleon: the rise and fall of a dictator A few days later, a new constitution was devised, inaugurating a regime that, for all Bonaparte’s words, was only nominally republican. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the statement of the founding principles of the revolution, which had served as the preface to the three previous constitutions, was omitted. Sieyès had envisioned buying off Bonaparte by making him “Great Elector”, a title full of pomp, but with little power. Bonaparte would have none of it, enquiring if Sieyès imagined a man such as himself “would consent to be no more than a pig manured with millions, luxuriating in the royal palace at Versailles”. Bonaparte had out-manoeuvred the man who had installed him and planned to control him. He would serve as First Consul, on a salary of 500,000 francs a year (Robespierre had lived on the equivalent of 6,570). There were two additional consuls, and the appearance of consultation, with three legislative bodies and a series of referendums, but the legislatures were talking shops, referendum results falsified. Clamp down on press “free reign” One of the first casualties of Bonaparte’s rise to power was freedom of the press. In 1789 the revolutionaries had legalised freedom of speech, stating that “the free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man”. While this principle came under considerable stress after the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, Bonaparte’s regime was far more systematic in destroying press freedom. “If I give it free reign,” he said, “I shall not remain in power for three months.” In 1800 a decree suppressed 60 of the 73 newspapers in Paris. In 1811 the number of permitted newspapers was reduced to four. The theatres of Paris had long been a place where opposition to the government was voiced: in 1807, 25 theatres were ordered to be closed, leaving just eight open. A secret police enforced censorship and arrested vocal opponents. It operated under the sinister Joseph Fouché, another Jacobin who had long since renounced his radical beliefs. For his services he was awarded the title of Duke of Otranto. Much of the population, exhausted by years of revolution and instability, was prepared to accept Bonaparte. His principal opponents were people with strong political convictions: Jacobins and others who retained their republican beliefs; and royalists, who wanted a return to the old regime. Bonaparte was ruthless in exterminating opposition. When, in 1804, royalists launched the Cadou dal Plot, an attempt to assassinate Bonaparte and restore the Bourbon monarchy, Napoleon used it as an opportunity to decimate Jacobins who had no involvement, along with the actual conspirators. What many ordinary people did want was a reconciliation with the Catholic church, which throughout the revolutionary years had been divided from France. In a tactical manoeuvre, Bonaparte obliged. On Easter Sunday 1802, a Concordat signed the previous year in Rome was published. It recognised that Catholicism, if not the state church of France, at least was “the religion of the great majority of Frenchmen”. Bonaparte himself gave little sign of caring about religious belief. He was quick, however, to acknowledge its utility in reinforcing his position. In 1806, a new Catholic catechism was devised, article 7 of which involved pledging to, “Napoleon I, our emperor, love, respect, obedience, loyalty, military service… because God… whether for peace or for war, has made him the minister of His power and His image upon Earth.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/AKG167122smlwebready-957790f.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Napoleon commissioned the artist Anne-Louis Girodet to paint this glorification of those who had died fighting for republican liberty (Photo by akg-images / Erich Lessing)" title="Napoleon commissioned the artist Anne-Louis Girodet to paint this glorification of those who had died fighting for republican liberty (Photo by akg-images / Erich Lessing)" /> Napoleon as emperor of France Two years earlier, in 1804, Bonaparte had crowned him self Emperor Napoleon. From that moment the republic had not even a notional existence. “The government of the republic is confided to an emperor,” he said, but the words were hollow. When Beethoven heard that Bonaparte had betrayed the ideals of the revolution by making himself emperor, he slashed out the dedication to the French leader on the title page of his Third Symphony, the Eroica. Bonaparte was not an absolute dictator, in that he gave people things they wanted: stability, after years of uncertainty; reconciliation with the Catholic church; and military successes for France. His popular support depended on victories on the battlefield, and an economic system that fed France with tributes and recruits. Yet Bonaparte’s military successes came at a cost – above all, in human lives. Around 50,000 people lost their lives in the Terror, 2,639 of whom were guillotined in Paris. Many thousands more died both in a civil war that erupted across the Vendée, and the revolutionary wars. These figures are dwarfed by the number of casualties – French and non-French, soldiers and civilians – in the so-called Napoleonic Wars. No one has ever clearly established the death toll, especially for civilians, but it numbers several million. In 1790, the revolutionaries had abolished nobility, along with all privileges founded on heredity. Bonaparte made it clear that he did not care about a person’s political past – Jacobin, royalist, moderate – provided that they were now loyal to him and were prepared to drop their principles in his service. To encourage obedience, he awarded those who served him well with honours and titles; he encouraged emigrés to return to France, provided they would give him their allegiance; and in 1808 he set up a new imperial nobility. It was honorific, without the fiscal and legal privileges that had made the old regime nobles such a powerful force. With the new nobility, the emphasis lay more explicitly on the creation of wealth. And like many rich and powerful men, Bonaparte used his status to cultivate a well-deserved reputation as a womaniser. But the truth was that he feared the kind of women he could not control – strong, intelligent women, such as Madame de Staël. The novelist and liberal theorist was no Jacobin, yet her intellectual salon and political criticisms infuriated him, and he reacted by banishing her from Paris, and banning her writings. His mother, who had singlehandedly brought up eight children, remained for Napoleon the ideal of womanhood. “In France,” he said, “women are considered too highly. They should not be regarded as on equality with men… they are nothing more than machines for producing children.” Established in 1804, the Napoleonic Code built on the legal achievements of the revolutionaries in some ways, while undermining them in others. Legal and civil rights for women, including equality of children’s inheritance rights regardless of gender, were partially or entirely rescinded. The revolutionary right to divorce, to which men and women had equal access on grounds of incompatibility, was limited under Napoleon’s code. While “the husband may demand divorce on cause of adultery on the part of his wife”, a woman could only obtain a divorce if, in addition to adultery, her husband “shall have kept his concubine in their common house”. “War of extermination” In February 1794, the revolutionaries had decreed an end to all slavery in France’s territories. The decree aligned with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, though the revolutionaries’ immediate reasons were rather more pragmatic, and were passed in the wake of Toussaint Louverture’s successful slave revolt in Saint-Domingue. Bonaparte changed course completely, setting out to reimpose slavery throughout France’s colonies, forcing formerly enslaved people back onto the plantations, and restoring the slave trade. He sent 20,000 soldiers to the Caribbean under the command of his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc to wage what Leclerc called a “war of extermination”. Despite fierce resistance, slavery was reinstalled in Guadeloupe. Saint-Domingue was another matter. Napoleon’s forces failed to retake the colony from the formerly enslaved who fought ferociously for their freedom. “Damn sugar, damn coffee, damn colonies!” was Bonaparte’s response. Saint-Domingue declared itself the Republic of Haiti. But Louverture was captured and imprisoned in a fortress in the Jura mountains. Within a year he was dead, seen by many as a martyr for the cause of black liberty. Foreign territories that came under Bonaparte’s rule saw some of the benefits of the revolution – among them equality before the law and the abolition of feudal practices. But other peoples saw the imposition of French nationalism as a foreign invasion. In Spain, French soldiers met with fierce resistance, fanned by Bonaparte’s decision to install his brother Joseph as Spanish king. As emperor, he placed relatives on thrones across Europe, and married the Hapsburg archduchess Marie-Louise. Their son was made King of Rome. When Bonaparte was forced to abdicate in 1814 he attempted to make his son his successor. For many commentators, Bonaparte remains the heir of the revolution. Yet his determination to secure a family dynasty was just one example of the myriad ways in which he left the political radicalism of the 1780s and 90s far behind. He was a populist and militarist dictator, who used the revolution to climb to the pinnacle of power. When the coalition forces defeated him for the second time, at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, they put a Bourbon monarch, Louis XVIII, on the throne, a man who acted as though the revolution had never taken place. For a while, the ideals of the French Revolution appeared to be all but extinguished. But it would fight back through the long and tumultuous 19th century. In fact, such was the strength of its resurgence that today its principles are seen as a foundation of modern democracy. For more than a decade, Napoleon Bonaparte had, it seems, strained every sinew to consign the revolution to the dustbin of history. He almost succeeded, but not quite. This article was first published in the April 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
How Marie Antoinette waged a battle for survival
Marie Antoinette spent much of her reign engaged in a battle: first to cement her position as queen of France, and then to avoid the guillotine. Catriona Seth uses the queen’s letters to trace her desperate bid for survival
Make a callous remark betraying your indifference to other people’s suffering, and you might be accused of having a “Marie Antoinette moment”. We’ve all heard of Marie Antoinette. She is the French queen who displayed her disdain for the plight of her hungry subjects by exclaiming the immortal phrase: “Let them eat cake!” She’s also the French queen who – as every history lover knows – got her comeuppance by being sent to the guillotine. And yet there’s a problem with this portrayal: Marie Antoinette never invited the French people to eat cake. Anti-monarchists propagated the falsehood using an anecdote that had circulated long before her birth. Anyone who wants to discover the queen behind the myth might instead consider the following: “Our situation is awful. When I am really sad, I take my little boy in my arms, I hug him with all my heart, and that consoles me.” Marie Antoinette wrote scores of letters during her lifetime, many of which have been preserved. And, as the words above suggest, these letters tell a tragic story. They paint a picture of a woman engaged in a desperate battle for survival as her world fell apart. They help us locate the real Marie Antoinette. Scurrilous rumours Maria Antonia, as she was christened, began life not in France, but in Vienna. She was born on 2 November 1755, the 15th of 16 children of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. Her mother, the queen of Hungary and Bohemia in her own right, used her offspring as pawns: their marriages consolidated her network. After lengthy diplomatic negotiations, Maria Antonia was sent to Versailles to wed the dauphin – the heir to the king of France – though they had never met. Preceded by a portrait destined to show her at her most beautiful, the 14-year-old left Vienna never to return. She was, as Maria Theresa wrote to her on 3 May 1770, “where Providence meant for [her] to live”. Less than five years later, she would be queen of France. Marie Antoinette, as she became known after her marriage, would be adored and reviled by public opinion: considered beautiful and kind by some, but accused of meddling in politics and favouring Austrian causes by others. She was deprived of official power, but armed with agency of her own through her cultivation of a striking image of queenship. She was a fashion icon whose likeness circulated through paintings and prints. Affection, rather than social hierarchy, dictated her choice of friends. However, the queen became the object of much scurrilous gossip. She was accused of a string of imaginary affairs (with men, women and even animals) in an attempt to besmirch her reputation and, indirectly, to criticise the king’s weakness. Unlike his predecessors, Louis XVI did not have an official mistress (think of Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry in Louis XV’s case), and so Marie Antoinette became the object of criticisms traditionally reserved for the king’s favourites. Royal dressing down Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette’s mother, was a formidable woman, who sat at the apex of a vast letter-writing network. She received direct communications from her family but also reports from diplomats and civil servants. She was never above reprimanding adult sons and daughters for undignified comportment. Even being the wife of a head of state offered no protection against her wrath if you acted against imperial interests. The dowager empress demanded regular news. The young Marie Antoinette (whose handwriting was awful, as her mother pointed out) was a reluctant correspondent, even when dealing with family members. She sometimes tried to duck out of the obligation by getting someone to write on her behalf, simply adding a signature at the end. Marie Antoinette wasn’t the most natural of letter writers: she failed to make mundane occupations interesting, and, for the most part, restricted herself to talking about who she had seen, what events had been organised and, occasionally, what she was reading. She did, however, confide to her mother that she found some court activities perplexing. Much of her life had to be lived in the public eye, like the daily ritual of her dressing ceremony. Etiquette at Versailles was more formal than in Austria – and women wore rouge on their cheeks, which she thought indecent. This was a very unequal correspondence. Respect and affection characterise Marie Antoinette’s letters. On 17 May 1773, she wrote: “You are in Schönbrunn, my dear mama. Would that I could transport myself there! I would follow in your footsteps during your evening walks; I would be better placed to profit from your good advice and to show how my soul is full of respect and tenderness for the best of mothers.” Until her death in 1780, Maria Theresa used the exchange to attempt to control her daughter’s behaviour, upbraiding her for buying extravagant jewellery, wearing feathers in her hair, riding or spending time at balls. She sent conflicting messages. Instructed to follow French customs but never to forget her “German” birth, Marie Antoinette is forever bending over backwards to support her compatriots, the “Allemands”. For instance, in 1782, the queen wrote a short note to the Austrian ambassador, Count Mercy-Argenteau, the Holy Roman Empire’s mouthpiece and the man she turned to in loco parentis when she needed advice. Marie Antoinette told him of the death of a French ambassador which had yet to be announced. A replacement would need to be appointed and so the queen asked Mercy-Argenteau if he might put forward a pro-Austrian suggestion that she could present to her husband as her own: “Let me know, please, what your ideas are regarding the Berlin position. It could be important for the emperor.” This short missive – the equivalent of a text message nowadays – would have been hand-delivered discreetly by a trusted intermediary. The queen was circulating confidential information but she did so secure in the belief that this served the interests both of her birthland and of France. When writing to her mother, Marie Antoinette’s letters dwell on any hint of illness. Health is central in many 18th-century correspondences. All too often, if you lived far from your loved ones, news that they were unwell would only arrive after their death. It was therefore important to offer reassurance at all times. Maria Theresa also monitored any hint of pregnancy. She knew the French crown wanted an heir, and until Marie Antoinette had provided one she could be repudiated. The letters in which the young princess replied to what feels like maternal bullying make painful reading. On 13 October 1771 she wrote poignantly: “You will surely know, dearest mama, of the misfortune of Madame la Duchesse de Chartres, who has just given birth to a stillborn baby. While that is terrible, I would like to be at that point, but there is no appearance of this yet.” The queen’s husband spent little time with her: she partied into the night while he left early to go hunting. They slept in separate rooms and appeared incapable of getting on with starting a family. Marie Antoinette’s brother, Joseph, travelled to Versailles to collect information and give the couple instructions which involved going into minute anatomical detail. On 30 August 1777, after more than seven years, the young queen could triumphantly announce that she was “in the most essential happiness” as her marriage had finally been consummated. Sixteen months later, she gave birth to her first child, surrounded by court officials. Her body was a matter of state, not just of private life. She would find motherhood fulfilling. Marie Antoinette was deeply moved by the premature deaths of two of her children. The youngest, Sophie, her “dear little angel”, died of unknown causes in 1787 at 11 months. In June 1789, the royal couple’s elder son, the dauphin, fell victim to skeletal tuberculosis. The queen really came into her own as a letter-writer during the French Revolution, an event that would turn her life upside down. In October 1789, less than 15 years after Louis XVI inherited the throne, the royal family was exiled from Versailles to Paris, where they lived under surveillance in the Tuileries palace. Their freedoms were now drastically curtailed. Soon after arriving in the Tuileries, Marie Antoinette set about attempting to reverse the course of the revolution, and to avert what she feared would be a grisly fate for her and her family. Her weapon of choice was her pen. She used her correspondence to activate a political network, attempting to encourage foreign powers to intervene in favour of the French monarchy. But the simple act of sending and receiving letters was fraught with danger. As she was watched closely, the queen went to great lengths to ensure her words were kept safe from prying eyes. In normal times, wax seals with a coat of arms made it impossible (in theory) for envelopes to be opened without the tampering being obvious. When she was corresponding with émigrés and representatives of foreign powers – which was banned during the revolution – Marie Antoinette made use of tricks reminiscent of spy novels. She hid letters in the lining of boxes or composed them in code. One type of cryptography she practised was what the French call encre sympathique or “sympathetic ink”: you write in lemon juice, and the page looks blank until it is held to a source of heat. The queen also formulated polyalphabetic codes with certain contacts. A new cipher, based on a specific keyword, was created for every letter. Sender and addressee both owned copies of the same book. The first word of a page whose number figured at the top of the sheet would yield the key for decrypting the letter. Armies on the march During these tumultuous times, Marie Antoinette’s main correspondents were men: it was they, after all, who had the power to command armies, raise loans and negotiate treaties. Although she had not had a political education or been briefed to reign, the queen displayed considerable acumen. For instance, she wrote to ambassador Mercy-Argenteau requesting that Austrian troops be sent to Luxembourg, in the summer of 1791, to create a cordon along the frontier: “This movement will give [fiercely royalist French military leader] Monsieur de Bouillé a pretext to get his troops marching and assembled, and to be able to leave Metz with the Swiss and Germans who are there.” She also set out the need for an international congress and envisaged ways of leveraging funds and making a show of military might. All to no avail. Throughout the revolution the outcast queen expended great energy engaging with people whom she believed might help her cause. These included the French statesman Breteuil and Count Mercy-Argenteau, who both had the ear of foreign monarchs. She also won over the politician Antoine Barnave, who was sent to escort the royal family back to Paris after they were intercepted while attempting to flee the capital in June 1791. The escape attempt took place at night, with the royal family disguising themselves as members of the entourage of “Baroness Korff” (a role played by the children’s governess, Mme de Tourzel). The king was to be Monsieur Durand, the baroness’s steward; Marie Antoinette was to be the governess; and the little dauphin was disguised as a girl. They were heading for a royalist stronghold called Montmédy on the eastern border of France. They were intercepted at Varennes-en-Argonne and escorted back to the Tuileries by armed guards. The failed plot to leave Paris had been partly masterminded by the Swedish count Axel von Fersen. He was extremely supportive of the royal family and dearly loved by the queen – some people believe they had a full-blown affair. While the degree of scrutiny to which Marie Antoinette was subjected, and the high moral standards she set herself, make this impossible to confirm, she clearly had strong feelings for Fersen (see opposite page). Redacted passages in their correspondence, thought to have been blacked out by a prudish 19th-century descendant of the Fersens, led to speculation that they might contain evidence that the relationship was not platonic. Modern scientific techniques indicate that Fersen himself suppressed parts of the letters which included information about state secrets or terms of endearment. The Varennes episode exacerbated the distrust between the monarchy and reformers. The prospect of dialogue now appeared increasingly distant. Marie Antoinette's parting words As the royal family’s situation deteriorated during their confinement, Marie Antoinette reflected on the precarious position in her letters. That summer, keenly aware that her life was at risk, she wrote to Count Mercy-Argenteau: “It is in unhappy times that one feels more greatly what one is. My blood runs in my son’s veins and I hope one day he will show himself the worthy grandson of Maria Theresa.” Her last letter to the diplomat, on 4 July 1792, reminds him of his attachment to her mother, the late empress, and asks him to intervene to save her and her family. Things came to a head on 10 August 1792 when the Tuileries palace was stormed and the royal family forced to take refuge in the National Assembly. They were now jailed in the Temple (a medieval fortress converted into a prison), from where Louis XVI was taken to be tried and executed in January 1793. In August 1793 Marie Antoinette was removed from the Temple, where she had languished in captivity alongside her sister-in-law and daughter, and placed in solitary confinement, mostly without access to pen and paper, in the Conciergerie prison. Her fate now seemed all but inevitable. Then, while the queen was in the Conciergerie, a royalist sympathiser, the Chevalier de Rougeville, deliberately dropped a carnation in her cell. At its heart there was apparently a rolled-up piece of paper containing a message which the queen destroyed before attempting to answer it by pricking out a line saying she was under surveillance. We don’t know what the note said but a later transcription, whose accuracy cannot be guaranteed, suggests it read something like: “I am under surveillance. I talk to nobody. I trust you. I will come.” The message was discovered, and in the autumn of 1793 Marie Antoinette was forced to endure a summary trial on (partly) trumped-up charges. On 16 October, she was put to death. Read more about the final days of Marie Antoinette A long testamentary piece, written in the wake of her condemnation, was published a few years after Marie Antoinette’s execution. Addressed to her sister-in-law, it seeks forgiveness from anyone she might have offended and asks her family to be kind and thoughtful, rather than to seek revenge. The queen’s last note, scrawled in a prayer book on the morning of the day she was executed, simply reads: “My Lord, have pity on me! My eyes have no more tears to cry for you my poor children; farewell, farewell!” Given that it’s more than 200 years since Marie Antoinette wrote these words, we’re incredibly lucky that so many of her original letters survives. These missives give us a clearer view of a remarkable woman. And they allow us to trace that woman’s development: from the teenager who lived in fear of her mother’s rebuffs to the strategist whose suggestions went unheeded by those who might have intervened to avert her fate. Catriona Seth is Marshal Foch professor of French literature at the University of Oxford. A new drama on Marie Antoinette will arrive on BBC Two on Thursday 29 December 2022 at 9pm, with all episodes available on BBC iPlayer from that date This article was first published in the December 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
The life and death of Marie Antoinette: everything you need to know about the last queen of France
Queen of France before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette (1755–93) is famous for being overthrown by revolutionaries and being publicly guillotined following the abolition of the monarchy in France. But how much do you know about her life? And did she really say "Let them eat cake"?
From nation’s sweetheart to public enemy, what led Marie Antoinette to the guillotine? We bring you the facts about her life and death… Marie Antoinette: in profile Born: 2 November 1755, Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria Died: 16 October 1793, Place de la Concorde (previously known as Place de la Revolution), Paris, France | Read more about Marie Antoinette's final days Known for: Being overthrown by French revolutionaries and being publicly guillotined after the abolition of the monarchy. Family: Marie was the 15th child of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Empress Maria Theresa. Together the couple had 16 children, 10 of whom lived into adulthood. At the age of 14, Marie married the heir to the French throne, Louis-Auguste, Duke of Berry and Dauphin of France, by proxy (a wedding that takes place without the presence of at least one of the two individuals) on 19 April 1770. Together they had four children: Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Louis Joseph, Louis Charles, and Sophie Hélène Béatrice. Timeline: Marie Antoinette’s tragic life 2 November 1755 Archduchess Maria Antonia (the future Marie Antoinette) is born in Vienna, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and of Empress Maria Theresa. 21 April 1770 Marie Antoinette leaves Vienna for Versailles and married life with the heir to the French throne whom she has never met. 10 May 1774 The death of Louis XV from smallpox means that Marie Antoinette’s husband, the dauphin, becomes Louis XVI, king of France. 19 December 1778 Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s first child, a daughter, is born in Versailles. Marie Thérèse Charlotte survives the revolution and lives until 1851. 22 October 1781 Marie Antoinette gives birth to a son, Louis Xavier, the dauphin (heir to the throne). A sickly child, he will die in 1789. The queen’s second son, Louis Joseph, dies in the Temple prison in 1795, possibly of tuberculosis. 1785 Marie Antoinette’s reputation is sullied by the “Diamond necklace affair”. This saw her falsely accused of acquiring an expensive diamond necklace that she then refused to pay for. 6 October 1789 Following the outbreak of the French Revolution in the spring of 1789, the royal family is forcibly removed to Paris. They live in the Tuileries Palace. 20–21 June 1791 The flight to Varennes. The royal family attempt to flee the capital but are intercepted at the town of Varennes-en-Argonne and returned to Paris. The following year the monarchy is abolished. 16 October 1793 Marie Antoinette, the deposed queen, is executed on the Place de la Concorde in Paris after a shambolic summary trial. Marie Antoinette's early life Born an archduchess of Austria in 1755, Marie Antoinette spent her childhood in Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace and Hofburg Palace. The 15th child of Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, she was christened ‘Maria Antonia’ and known to the family as 'Antoine'. She and her siblings spent their childhood in the colourful court of Vienna while their mother charted out their futures, determined to use her large brood to national advantage. Marie's education was typical of that given to a royal woman of the time, and she learned how to sing, dance and play music. She shared a governess with her elder sister, Maria Carolina, and the sisters remained close for the rest of Marie’s life. The marriage of Marie Antoinette to the future King Louis XVI In 1756, France and Austria signed the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty promised that both countries would support one another after the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War (1754–63) – a series of battles fought between the strongest powers of Europe over British and French colonies in the US. King Louis XV of France and Marie’s mother eventually decided that a marriage alliance would secure this treaty between the French and Austrians. As a result, the 14-year-old Marie was married to Louis XV’s heir, his eldest grandson Louis-Auguste, by proxy on 19 April 1770. After meeting her husband for the first time on 14 May 1770, an official wedding ceremony took place at the Palace of Versailles on 16 May 1770. Great reputations Member exclusive | In our podcast series, expert historians discuss the contested reputations of key historical figures, charting the lives and afterlives of Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmeline Pankhurst and more… Listen to all episodes now In June 1770, some 50,000 people eagerly gathered along the streets of Paris to catch a glimpse of Marie during her first public appearance as a member of the French royal family. Members of the crowd were so keen to see the teenager that at least 30 people were crushed to death during the frantic rush. Many contemporaries were charmed by Marie during this public occasion, and praised her beauty. "While there were some mutterings about her Austrian heritage, her future seemed optimistic," explains historian Emily Brand. "A whirl of festivities at Versailles set the tone for the court she would cultivate over the next 20 years." Marie soon became involved in the extravagance of French court life, attending lavish balls and gambling. Her husband, however, shied away from public affairs. The couple would not consummate their marriage until seven years later – this became a popular matter of discussion and ridicule both at court and among the public. King Louis XV died on 10 May 1774 after contracting smallpox. Marie, who was not yet 19 years old, became queen of France when her husband inherited the throne as King Louis XVI. Although Marie's future seemed secure at this point, in reality the nation was squirming with unrest. "Just weeks after her husband’s coronation in June 1775, parts of the country flared up into riots about the cost of bread," Emily Brand explains. "Years of heavy taxation and failed fiscal policies were leaving the people hungry." Did Marie Antoinette have an affair? Answered by Emily Brand A highly social creature, the queen developed open and long-lasting attachments to female favourites at court. Perhaps the most significant were two of her ladies-in-waiting – the Princesse de Lamballe, and the Duchesse de Polignac. These friendships were later tarnished by accusations of sexual depravity, but more convincing are the rumours about her relationship with a handsome Swedish count, Axel von Fersen, who was admitted into her close circle during the summer of her first pregnancy and left the country in a cloud of gossip in 1780. Marie Antoinette's children The first three years of Marie's life as queen were childless. Conscious of her daughter’s delicate position, Maria Theresa bombarded her with advice about influencing people, and even sought secret updates about her behaviour from the ambassador in Paris. By 1777, Marie's brother Joseph – then Holy Roman Emperor – travelled to Versailles to identify why the couple were not fulfilling their duty of starting a family. "His conclusion was simple – lack of experience, and an apparent mutual disinterest," explains Brand. "Nonetheless, his stern words clearly had an effect, and the queen fell pregnant shortly after his visit." In December 1778, Marie gave birth to her first child, Marie Thérèse Charlotte. A son, Louis-Joseph, followed in October 1781, with two more children in 1785 (Louis Charles) and 1786 (Sophie Hélène Béatrice). "It was a relief to all parties when the queen gave birth to her first son, Louis-Joseph – although unfortunately, her mother had not lived to see it," comments Emily Brand. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2015/09/GettyImages-587492288-2b27d97.jpg" width="3571" height="5079" alt="A portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette of France and two of her children walking in the park at Trianon Palace, 1785. Painting by Adolf Ulrich Wertmuller. National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette of France and two of her children walking in the park at Trianon Palace, 1785. Painting by Adolf Ulrich Wertmuller. National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> Why did the French dislike Marie Antoinette? France experienced poor harvests during the 1780s, which consequently increased the price of grain. The government, too, faced mounting financial difficulties – and Marie’s lavish lifestyle at court soon came under attack. Numerous pamphlets and satires were distributed across the country demonstrating peoples’ disgust towards the queen’s extravagant spending. Meanwhile, dangerous rumours circulated that Marie was having an affair with her close companion Hans Axel von Fersen, a Swedish count. Questions arose regarding the paternity of Marie’s children. In 1783, Marie’s extravagance reached new levels when she began building a secluded farming village on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. Fitted with a farmhouse, cottages, a mill and farm animals, Le Hameau de la Reine (or 'The Queen’s Hamlet') was created to allow the queen and her closest companions to escape the busy court in Versailles. Marie and her ladies-in-waiting would dress up as shepherdesses and pretend to be peasants, walking around the farm and milking the cows and sheep. Marie even employed servants to uphold the village and care for the animals. Despite the idyllic nature of this retreat, members of the court and the public believed that Marie was mocking French peasants by dressing up as shepherdesses and acting as if she was impoverished. What was the Affair of the Diamond Necklace? Answered by Emily Brand Marie Antoinette had long provoked gossip, but in a world of blossoming print culture, her supposed misdemeanours became inescapably public – disastrously so in 1785. In what became known as the 'Affair of the Diamond Necklace', the queen was held responsible for a jewellery heist that was in fact the scheme of the impoverished noblewoman Jeanne de la Motte. In a ruse to obtain a necklace worth 1.6 million livres, La Motte persuaded an out-of-favour cardinal to procure it and arrange payment on behalf of ‘the Queen’, with her as go-between. By the time the fraud was exposed, it had been broken up and sold. The trial declared La Motte guilty, casting doubt on the Queen and cementing her reputation as deceitful and extravagant. In the years that followed, France occupied itself with the question of how to recover from its political and economic stagnation. For Marie Antoinette, the national emergency gathering momentum around her was clouded by personal tragedy. The death of their youngest daughter in 1787 was followed by that of their son and heir in June 1789. Meanwhile, the nobility – including the king’s brother, the Count of Provence, and his cousin, the Count of Orleans – became disgruntled with Louis XVI’s attitude towards pressing governmental matters: Louis was indecisive about how to rectify the growing government debt, and was hesitant in resolving the issues surrounding the poor harvests. Facing mounting pressure from his nobles, on 8 May 1788 Louis XVI ordered the first meeting in 175 years of the Estates General – the general assembly of the representatives of the clergy (first estate); the nobility (second estate), and the common people (third estate). Louis hoped that this would allow the representatives of France the opportunity to discuss ways to overcome the increasing state debt. However, after reaching an impasse over France’s financial situation, the third estate broke away from the Estates General and expressed plans to govern without the authority of the king. They were soon joined by representatives from the first and second estates, who were increasingly frustrated by the king’s hesitancy over the rising prices of foodstuff and the queen’s excessive lifestyle. Losing their heads: the road to revolution Written by Emily Brand When Marie Antoinette arrived in France, the road ahead did not point irrevocably to revolution, but bad political choices, unfortunate climate conditions and ideological shifts at all levels of society conspired to ultimately undermine the monarchy. From the mid-1700s, an economy wracked by wartime taxations and bad harvests was further weakened by the failure of attempts at fiscal reform. The effects of mounting debts and disasters were felt in rocketing food prices and growing poverty, and inspired no confidence in those in power - the royal tendency for flagrant extravagance did not help. The inevitable unrest that stirred among the lower classes was preyed upon by those who opposed the government's policies and saw an opportunity to gain power for themselves. Their efforts were legitimised by radical 'enlightened' theories about liberty, education and human nature that were sweeping across Europe, but perhaps had their beating heart in France. The existing feudal hierarchy was increasingly questioned, and the vacillating and unsure stance taken by the King did nothing to restore faith. As mistrust of elites and outsiders mounted, the wave of popular feeling increased. The growing print culture - political tracts, bawdy ballads, popular prints - ensured that the message was heard far and wide, and was a key uniting factor for the revolutionary cause. It was here that the queen was transformed into a "monster in everything", a symbol of the hated old system, and a crucial scapegoat for all the ills of the nation. The increasingly personal attacks on the royals, particularly Marie Antoinette, chipped away at the national consciousness, and in demystifying the monarchy, also facilitated its downfall. On 14 July 1789, this climaxed with the Storming of the Bastille, a symbol of despotic rule, and triggered the spread of revolutionary action across France. Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution On 14 July 1789, public opposition to the royal family reached its height, and the Bastille – a state prison in Paris – was stormed by an angry, armed mob. The Bastille was seen to represent the monarchy’s absolute authority, and the storming of its walls instigated the French Revolution and the beginning of the fall of the French monarchy. Several weeks later, thousands of people surrounded the Palace of Versailles, demanding political reforms and changes to the way in which the monarchy governed. The royal family was then imprisoned within the walls of Tuileries Palace in Paris by the revolutionary forces that opposed the monarchy. As more people joined the revolutionary cause in Paris, and public opinion of the monarchy deteriorated further, in 1791 Marie planned to flee France with her family and find sanctuary in Austria. However, the family was captured while attempting to escape and was taken back to Paris. They faced hostile crowds of people in the streets upon their return. Amid mounting pressure from his political opponents, in September 1791 Louis XVI agreed to instigate a constitutional monarchy, and promised to share his political power with the French Assembly. This failed to quell the rebellion, however: less than a year later, on 10 August 1792, a gang of revolutionaries broke into Tuileries Palace, where the royal family was being kept under surveillance, and took Louis XVI and Marie prisoner. Did Marie Antoinette really say "let them eat cake"? Answered by Emily Brand The quote famously attributed to Marie Antoinette, “If the people have no bread, then let them eat cake”, was in fact already a familiar attack on privilege by the time of the revolution. It was levelled against Louis XIV’s first queen in the 1600s, and the philosopher Rousseau wrote an almost identical anecdote about a “great princess” years before Marie Antoinette entered France. There is no evidence that the revolutionaries bothered to trot out this well-worn accusation, although it was reported that one heartless politician faced with the starving poor had snarled “let them eat hay”. Its exact origins are unclear, but the story existed long before Marie Antoinette became queen and was first attached to her 50 years after her death. The Republican government was determined to eradicate anyone who opposed the French Revolution. As a result, thousands of royalists, nobles and people affiliated with the royal family across the country were guillotined and brutally massacred, including the Princesse de Lamballe, one of Marie’s closest companions. With the king and queen now under arrest, the National Convention ordered that the monarchy should be abolished – and France was officially declared a republic. On 21 September 1792, the Legislative Assembly in France voted for the monarchy to be abolished. Just four months later, after being put on trial by members of the new republican regime, Louis XVI was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. He was executed by guillotine at the Place de la Concorde in Paris on 21 January 1793. What was Marie Antoinette accused of? On 14 October 1793, after months of imprisonment, Marie was put on trial and found guilty of treason. But what exactly was she accused of? As historian Emily Brand explains, the case built against Marie Antoinette pulled no punches: "She was held responsible for the deaths of 'thousands of French-men', accused of manipulating her husband, and incest with her son. She met their claims calmly, but there was little hope for a reprieve." Marie Antoinette's legacy Written by Emily Brand From the moment she stepped from her gilded carriage at Compiègne in 1770 until her rough and undignified cart-journey to the scaffold, Marie-Antoinette was destined to be a focus of popular attention. A child of the Viennese court and a leader of fashion at the height of French power, her 20-year reign saw such economic, social and political change that she was recast from “adored by all Frenchmen” to “avowed enemy of the French Nation”. A flawed and feared woman who became a symbol of all that was hated by the revolutionaries, her steady but spectacular fall from grace is perhaps unmatched in its drama and its violence. How did Marie Antoinette die and how old was she? Two days later after she was put on trial, at the age of 37, Marie Antoinette suffered the same fate as her husband: execution by guillotine. In her final letter, to her sister-in-law, she displayed both the calm dignity and the motherly love for which she was to be revered in the 19th century: “I am calm, as one is when one’s conscience reproaches one with nothing… I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor dear children. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell!” The final days of Marie Antoinette In the final moments before her death, Marie begged the executioner for his pardon – to no avail. The blade of the guillotine fell; the crowd cheered, and some at the front rushed to mop up her blood with their handkerchiefs. Later that day, a revolutionary newspaper declared, “the globe is purified!” "Her execution was hailed as the triumph of liberty over oppression," says Brand. What happened to Marie Antoinette's head? After the queen’s head fell, it was immediately shown to the crowd, who responded by crying: "Vive la République!" Shortly after her death, Marie's body was hurled into an unmarked grave in the cemetery of L'église de la Madeleine in Paris. The bodies of Louis XVI and Marie were discovered during the restoration of the monarchy in France in the early 19th century. Their remains were properly reburied at the Basilica of St Denis on 21 January 1815. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore this topic further with exclusive content from our archives Tudor royal women with Tracy Borman Marie Antoinette in her own words Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2015, and has since been updated to include content from BBC History Revealed written by historian Emily Brand