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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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You're retreating into mysticism now. But I'll humour you. It's military and political genius that makes Bonaparte a king. And his compatriots were certainly prepared to die for him and each other. As to gott mit uns, there are contradictory claims as to who the old man really supported in the various events under consideration.

I'm not retreating anywhere. I'm standing exactly where I have been this whole time.

Bonaparte's charisma and genius made people want to follow him, and the people following him made him an emperor. Simple as that.

The British Government can claim to rule North America, and the Aristocrats of Europe can whing about who's claim to what throne is strongest, but history is not obliged to listen to them.

I think I’ve made it clear I‘m not on the side of the aristocrats of europe. You’ve got strange views. Your god-fearing simple american persona manages to assimilate all europeans to aristocrats and also to utopist bloodthirsty revolutionaries. Where is the common frenchman, your brother? Should he have honored the ancestral pledge to leviathan you cast off so readily?

The common Frenchman, I Imagine, would "just want to grill" and that is a significant part of what I think sets the classes apart. You're starting from the assumption that there is an answer to be had, and I am starting from the assumption that there isn't.

The common Frenchman, I Imagine, would "just want to grill" and that is a significant part of what I think sets the classes apart.

What the common Frenchman really wanted at the time (I assume from context it is the time of Great French Unpleasantness).

We can actually tell rather well, not only from newspapers, pamphlets, letters and memoirs of the time, but also from this official "lists of complaints" composed by people of all three estates. These documents survived, were digitized and are accessible on https://gallica.bnf.fr

Cahiers de doléances

https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/301ModernEurope/Cahiers.html

The nobility were especially keen on personal liberties and on the authority of the upcoming Estates General: the common theme here is a concern with the arbitrary power of the king and his officials, who had been nibbling away at traditional, local privileges. We can interpret this concern with the "liberty" and power of Estates as a traditional, noble complaint, expressed in the language of Enlightenment.

Like the nobility, city-dwellers are concerned with the authority of the Estates General, but are more concerned with barriers to the market: concerns about customs duties and taxes on legal acts, for example, pertain to the free flow of trade. Their concern with Estates General, moreover, reflects and eagerness to diminish noble privilege: voting by head in the Estates General, for example, would throw more power to non-nobles.

And the overwhelming mass of people at the time, the peasants?

Unlike the nobility and the city-dwellers, rural people are overwhelmingly concerned with the burden of state taxation: after "taxation in general," which they share with the other two orders, all but two of the rural "top ten" concern taxation. By contrast, concern with the voting rules for the Estates General are almost entirely absent from the rural "top ten."

Yes, ordinary Frenchmen were just like ordinary Americans, they wanted to grill untaxed meat seasoned with untaxed salt and wash it down with untaxed booze.

Yes, ordinary Frenchmen were just like ordinary Americans, they wanted to grill untaxed meat seasoned with untaxed salt and wash it down with untaxed booze.

...and do you think that is that supposed to be a rebuttal?

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