Luc Mary is a writer and Historian by training. He has notably published
These unsung heroes of history
(Larousse Publishing, 2018) and
Angry France
(Bruchet Chastel Publishing, 2021).
FIGAROVOX.-You address in your book many revolts that have marked French history.
Why is France so confronted with this phenomenon?
Luc MARY.-
If France is not the only country to have been shaken by large-scale revolts, as evidenced by the Bolshevik coup d'état in Russia in 1917 or the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, it can be boast of being the scene of the greatest number of riots or insurgencies.
No less than 10,000 revolts have been recorded since the reign of Henry II.
We can talk about the consistency of our history.
The republics have not been spared any more than the monarchies.
In the space of five centuries, not a single decade of civil peace has passed.
Between 1789 and 1848, France even had the luxury of being the initiator of three historic revolutions.
Three kings paid the price, as expressed by the beheading of Louis XVI or the double exile of Charles X and Louis Philippe.
Insurrections with universal reach.
The revolution of 1789 even became the symbol of the French spirit, inseparable from the spirit of rebellion.
It would be embedded in our DNA.
The social history of our country is indeed a hymn to rebellion and to the Revolution.
A shame for a nation which sets itself up as a leader of democracy.
In fact, democracy and insurgency are not really mutually exclusive.
They are even intrinsically linked like two sides of the same currency.
It is only in the most implacable dictatorships that the people do not move.
Better still, the number of revolts recorded in our country would only be the expression of an incomplete democracy, a manifestation of the spirit of freedom when the state fails in its duties.
"
The right to insurrection
" is even considered as a fundamental value of human rights by the Jacobins of 1793. Faced with the inaction of power and the injustice of society, "
the insurrection is the most sacred of duties
”proclaimed La Fayette in February 1790 to the National Assembly.
I make a fundamental difference between the peasant revolts of the Old Regime and the workers' riots of the modern period.
What are the main causes of these uprisings?
In a way, misery is the mother of all revolts.
"
Angry France
" invites us to a major autopsy of poverty in our country through its most violent upheavals.
From the peasants overwhelmed with taxes under the Renaissance to the workers overwhelmed with work during the Industrial Revolution, their successive uprisings constitute as many great turns in history where the armed people claim their identity, their right to live and sometimes their fierce will to fight. 'do battle with the authorities and transform society.
Anyway, I make a fundamental difference between the peasant revolts of the Old Regime and the workers' riots of the modern period.
Where the Pitauds, the Croquants or the Bonnets Rouges rose up to keep their tax privileges, the Canuts de Lyon, the minors of 1948 or the Renault employees in 1968 demand better living conditions when they do not intend to overthrow the social order and slay capitalism.
In the second part of the 19th century, the cities indeed became the epicenter of revolts;
the industrial revolution thus drained millions of peasants towards the urban centers, who gathered in squalid and damp slums.
From the repression of June 1848, the Republic cut itself off definitively from its popular base, namely the proletariat.
All the riots that follow this period reflect the failure of the Democratic and Social Republic.
Under the influence of Marxist ideas and after the triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, the revolutionary movements in France became radicalized and politicized.
Without a doubt, poverty is the ferment of popular anger here.
Where the peasants of Louis XIV were only rebels still worshiping the person of the king, the workers of our modern world are true revolutionaries.
They loathe the bourgeoisie and the elites and intend to fundamentally change society.
What is more, because of the triumph of communism in Russia, the revolt in France from 1945 is part of a movement that is as ideological as it is global.
The violence generated by the revolts that you describe, is it the only way for the people to show their desire for changes in society?
"
The French love the Revolution but hate change
".
This sentence from the former Figaro chronicler André Froissard illustrates very well the conservative character of the peasant revolts of the Ancien Régime alone.
From 1548 to 1715, the Croquants and other Bonnets Rouges and Lustucrus rose up to retain their privileges and not to contest the merits of the Monarchy.
Better still, they revolt in the name of their "
good king
", unworthily served by tax clerks as greedy as they are immoral and corrupt.
Far from standing up against the king, these armed peasants above all intend to rise up against his disciples whom they deem unworthy of royalty ...
The revolt is by definition violent.
Violence is even inseparable from its development.
Its tragic dimension is what makes it a capital and significant event for the collective memory.
Violence, because it arises when the actors of this tragedy do not find other means of expression.
Violence is the paroxysmic manifestation of unparalleled despair.
In addition, the perpetrators of massacres most often intend to impress the adversary in order to better show their determination.
Thus perish lynched by the crowd the gabeleurs of the monarchy.
Read also:
"When they are afraid, the French are willing to give up some of their freedoms"
The revolt in its most violent dimension appears to its protagonists as the only language that “
France from above
” can understand.
Paradoxically, the revolutionary gesture of the Pitauds, the Canuts or the Communards is both the expression of their deepest dismay and the ultimate message of hope for an improvement in their living conditions.
"
Work or death!"
"Proclaimed the Canuts in the streets of Lyon in November 1831."
We prefer to perish from a bullet than from hunger
".
You mention May 68. How do you consider this event to be important in the history of France?
The movement of May 1968 seems to me unique and unprecedented in the social history of France.
More than a diet crisis, this is a real questioning of our civilization, that of consumption and profit.
Unlike previous revolutionary episodes, it is characterized by an absence of deaths.
But here does not reside the singular character of this revolutionary outbreak, which is as brief as it is unprecedented.
At the height of the movement, there were 10 million strikers.
Unheard of in France, even in November 1947 at the time of the insurrectional strikes, in particular in the mining basins.
Calling for a fairer society and a more direct and more social democracy, the contemporaries of Louise Michel have nothing to envy the comrades of Eric Drouet.
If the government succeeded "
miraculously
" in thwarting the revolutionary process, it was not able to stop the cultural upheaval initiated by this movement.
The spirit of May 68 survived the barricades.
The debates of the Odeon thus resonated in our ears for a long time.
As historian Gérard Courtois underlines, leftists “
irrigated all the currents that sprouted in the following decade, from the new University of Vincennes to the Larzac plateau, from the cause of women and homosexuals, from the self-management aspiration to the first ecological mobilizations
”.
May 68 also played a powerful role in accelerating reforms, especially in schools and universities.
The time has come for decentralization, the end of the school hierarchy and the end of elitism.
Professors are no longer a separate and inaccessible body.
Delegates chosen from among the students now participate in class councils.
In October 1968, the Faure law thus ratified the representation of students and the various teaching bodies on university councils.
Not to mention the liberalization of morals in schools as evidenced by the extension of co-education and the possibility for girls to wear pants or put on make-up.
Also the movement of May 68 it left a lasting mark on the spirits, more than any other revolt in France during this long XXth century.
A proven political failure, since the popular revolution did not take place, it nonetheless represents a long-term cultural success.
If the students lost the battle of the streets, they won the battle of ideas ...
The yellow vests movement emerged about two years ago.
Can we see similarities between this movement and the revolution of 1789 or the revolt of the municipality in 1871?
In no way, the movement of yellow vests has no comparison with all the previous insurrections, even less with the bourgeois revolution of 1789, or even the proletarian revolt of 1871, which took place in a context of war against Prussia and after the terrible ordeal. from the siege of Paris where people, starved to death, devoured dogs and stalked rats.
An exclusively Parisian revolutionary movement, as evidenced by its name passed down to posterity: the Paris Commune Moreover, this tragic episode, lasted 72 days, is fleeting and particularly deadly.
For the insurgents alone, more than 15,000 dead are counted.
Unlike the yellow vests, the Communards died for their ideas on the barricades.
A priori, the Communards appear as yellow vests before the letter.
Calling for a fairer and more egalitarian society and a more direct and more social democracy, the contemporaries of Louise Michel have nothing to envy the comrades of Eric Drouet.
To read also:
"Is the movement of '' yellow vests '' over?"
But there the comparison ends, the historical context and the means of communication are radically different.
The Communards have also never expressed anti-elitist ideas.
Their main battle horses are anti-militarism, anti-monarchism and anti-clericalism.
We take as proof the assassination of the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Darboy, and the return to the republican calendar of 1793. Not at all anti-elitist ideas.
Despite the manifest influence of the Blanquists, they are not even imbued with anti-capitalism, as the full functioning of the Banque de France testifies.
Finally, I would say that every great revolt in France is unique.
To the surprise of the right-thinking, the spirit of revolt did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
According to you, does this yellow vests revolt represent the return of the class struggle across the people / elites divide?
In a way.
As recently as December 1, 2018, hundreds of demonstrators walk up Avenue Foch to cries of "
Death to the rich
".
If Soviet communism is dead, the ideas that made communism successful are still relevant today.
As part of the yellow vests movement, we are witnessing a renaissance of the French people;
to the surprise of the right-thinking, the spirit of revolt did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The yellow vests movement is the first popular revolt in France in the post-Soviet world.
It is the return of the weight of taxation and of the principle of the class struggle.
In the space of a few months, a polymorphic, decentralized and unstructured movement with purely fiscal demands is transformed into a radical political and social movement.
For the first time since May 1968, riots broke out in the streets of Paris but also in several towns in the provinces.
But unlike May 1968, the movement is more provincial than Parisian, more proletarian than bourgeois and more rural than urban.
It does not affect academia either.
It is really a revolt of those forgotten by globalization, of those who cannot make ends meet.
The yellow vests have no leader, no political structure and are not affiliated with any union.
What matters to them is less the end of the World prophesied by environmentalists than their end of the month that they are unable to complete.
With the health and probably social and economic crisis then, can France again be faced with a historic revolt of great magnitude?
Churchill said: "
Those who forget history will be led to relive it
".
All the revolts that have punctuated our history insist on this point: not to forget the suffering of the people.
Today, the French people are facing a major ordeal: the Covid health crisis.
Individual freedoms are violated and the civilization of pleasure is sacrificed on the altar of collective interest.
However, the French are not moving.
No doubt the health crisis is paralyzing them.
We can also advance other arguments.
Starting with the global nature of the epidemic.
It is the planet and not our only France which fights against this virus still unknown two years ago.
What is more, the pandemic independently affects all social strata.
The feeling of inequality, the catalyst for many revolts in the past, does not exist in the context of the health crisis.
However, we can never predict the future.
History is not an exact science and the same causes never give rise to the same effects.
Faced with the unforeseen, I express only one certainty: other revolts will agitate our country, but we do not know the nature or the date.
Angry France, Luc Mary, Buchet Chastel, 23.90 euros, 352 pages.
Editions Buchet Chastel
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