The revolution came with noisy, shirtless,
barefoot, emerging from the horrific century of torture and confusion
;
After victory She still bleeds;
With the people's torture tree, God
Forms the wooden boots of ninety-three years.
——Hugo's "Fifteen Hundred Years Weaved Night for Mankind"
Although there has long been a joke that "the petty bourgeoisie looks at France, the special bourgeoisie looks at Iran, and the peasant uncle Oscar" However, this 200-million-franc production of "Leptedesloups" (also translated as "Wolf Covenant") has received little praise after its release in China, and was even criticized as a "blind imitation of Hollywood" and "a blind imitation of Hollywood". It completely loses the essence of being French.” In fact, it’s not that the movie isn’t good to watch, it’s that they can’t understand it. How can we expect that many Chinese people who have been immersed in the historical education based on the theory of class struggle since childhood will have enough humanistic accumulation to see through the deep black historical reflection behind this dazzling French blockbuster?
"Wolf Monster" is based on real events, and its background is that France before the Revolution was very miserable. At the beginning of the 18th century, the failure of the War of Spanish Succession completely shattered the Sun King’s dream of shining on the European continent. Colbert’s huge wealth that he had worked hard to accumulate was wiped out. In 1707, an economist said about 1698 Shi said: "At that time, the country's situation was still very good, and it was not at the end of its rope. But now due to the lack of supplies, everything is over."
After the sun sets, France is in urgent need of lasting peace. To restore the economy, will the God of War - whose name is more accurate as "royal interests" than "national interests" - allow it? As a result, Louis XV was inevitably involved in the War of Polish Succession, the War of Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War... How gorgeous are dynastic wars! Feathers, lace, silk stockings, lily flags, Arabian horses draped in red carpets with gold tassels, gold-plated and silver-plated swords, violinists, drummers, choirs, poets, polite pre-battle speeches, and noble spectators surrounded by knights. The women and the lavish battlefield parties, hidden under such extremely entertaining and elegant clothes, are the bottomless pit under the national treasury and the absurd obligation that the entire nation must fight for one family!
The king needs war, the king needs pleasure, and the king needs rule. He can only ask for money from the privileged class. Louis XV suppressed the nobles and judges on one hand, and dissolved the arrogant Jesuits on the other. The frustrated nobles and churches desperately rebounded, and new rebellions quickly brewed. However, how could the nobles, who had long been intimidated by the Sun King, still have the strength to rebel against Louis XV, who had won the hearts of the people? So they unscrupulously spread rumors and slandered this "beloved king", plotting to carry out an "aristocratic revolution" to seize power, and the man-eating Revodang wolf demon was born! This is the film "The Wolf" and the historical background of the French Revolution.
How unfortunate Louis XVI was! His heinous sins were nothing more than inheriting the ominous legacy left by the previous kings and the monarchical autocratic education he had received since childhood. He did not have the prestige and power of Louis XIV and Louis XV, but the reason was that he was not as arrogant and extravagant as they were. He may be a talented locksmith, but he is politically indifferent. His weak personality makes him unable to refuse the endless demands of the rash queen, the arrogant royal family and the ambitious privileged class. Thus, all the evils of the court, all the evils of the nobility, all the evils of the privileged class, all the evils of fifteen hundred years of feudalism were imputed to this man who suffered from neurotic retardation. In his will, he wrote these words that will make future generations reflect and sigh: "Finally, before God, and prepare to stand before God, I do not consider myself responsible for any crime proposed."
If you still thought that France before the Revolution was a centralized autocratic regime with Louis XVI at its core, you are wrong. There are also privileged classes! Louis XVI once recorded in "Capriccio": "All power is the embodiment of the king's personal will, and no group or individual can be independent of his authority." For this reason, he tried to suppress the privileged class and establish a A new monarchy that is "minister autocratic" rather than aristocratic. If he has the courage of the Sun King to declare "I am the country", or maintains the popularity of "a beloved king", then he can successfully implement "absolute despotism" like Prussia, Austria and Russia. , thereby constructing an enlightened monarchy in which all people are equal under the king. Wasn't this the best way out for France and the French people at that time?
As Machiavelli said: "When the people are sincerely convinced by the king from the bottom of their hearts, the king need not worry about those who have conspiracy intentions. But if the people also have hostility and resentment towards the king, the king will It is not surprising that they are so worried when doing anything. "Unfortunately, whenever the enlightened ministers have just taken a big step in reform, they will encounter natural and man-made disasters, leading to repeated failures. The boiling public dissatisfaction turned public opinion against the reformists, and the king, whose prestige was lost, had to bow to the privileged class. On February 6, 1778, France and the United States formally signed a treaty of alliance to fight against the British (Lafayette had led the volunteers to fight alongside Washington as early as 1777). France shouldered another 2 billion liens for the independence of the United States. huge debt.
The bankrupt palace was determined to reform the tax system and require fair taxation by nobles and commoners. The deeply damaged privileged dignitaries fiercely resisted. On May 3, 1788, the Paris High Court issued the "Fundamental Law of National Rights and Monarchy", claiming that citizens should pass regular meetings. The Estates-General were free to pay taxes to the king and sought to limit royal power by requiring that no one be arrested without a formal trial. The "Aristocratic Revolution" spread rapidly across the country. Nobles, judges (their nicknames were "robed nobles"), clergy and people who originally disliked princes and ministers rebelled against the royal power. Louis XVI was forced to agree to convene the Estates-General. . In this way, under many accidental coincidences such as national famine, government bankruptcy, royal reform, and noble resistance, the third-estate propagandists finally saw the opportunity to fight for power, and the Great Revolution began.
No one can deny the genesis-like significance of the French Revolution, but there are few conscientious historians who can downplay the heinous crimes of the revolution like Chinese history textbooks. In the early days, the heroic Lafayette and the people's Mirabeau worked together to restrain the revolution and prevent it from deviating from the right path; but when Mirabeau died of illness, Lafayette, who was unable to support himself, was quickly removed from the throne. . Under the instigation of Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, the revolution slid sideways into the bottomless abyss, and the wolf monster they encouraged opened its bloody mouth and wanted to eat people again!
It can be said that August 10, 1792 was the watershed of the Great Revolution. The revolution before August 10th was radiant, and the warden of the Bastille, De. The blood of Lonet and the 32 old and weak soldiers did not dim it in the slightest; the Revolution after August 10 shed a river of blood under Guillotanna's skirt. Madame Roland summed it up best: "Freedom, how many crimes." I will do it in your name!”
What is glory that never fades? You must know that the glory of the United Kingdom does not lie in the "Broken Parliament" and the "Act to Deal with Ireland", but in the bloodless "Bill of Rights"; the glory of the United States does not lie in the "Declaration of Independence" - the various crimes it accuses the British King of Uncle Sam He will do this to his slave countries in the future - and the "Monroe Declaration", and in the inviolable "Bill of Rights" (i.e., the 10 Constitutional Amendments); the glory of the universal church does not lie in the Crusades, Inquisition and "Encyclical Shepherd", the "Second Vatican Council" that rectified the mistakes of the past, and the glorious "Declaration towards a Global Ethic"! Revolutionary France once had a Bible that was more dazzling than these most dazzling treasures in human history. This was what the great Lafayette kept for ten years and finally read out at the Constitutional Convention on July 11, 1789. The Declaration of Human Rights, however, has been drowned time and again by the blood of August 10, September 2, 1993 and 1994.
On August 10, 1792, representatives of the 28 districts of Paris established the Paris Commune. The Commune immediately directed armed people to bloodbath the Tuileries Palace and forced the Legislative Assembly to depose Louis X who had fled for refuge. six. Although the complete overthrow of the monarchy is not a crime in itself, it can even be regarded as a great achievement. However, the "uprising" on August 10th caused the Paris Commune controlled by the Montagnards to overrun the parliament, and the country fell into a state of collapse. The next day, he was under the clutches of Marat, who shamelessly seized power as a victor.
The exorcist angel who sat high on the altar screamed for massacre without restraint. He began to ask for 50,000 heads, and then increased the number to 100,000, then to 200,000, and soon he opened 27 heads. Thirty thousand heads is such a weird number with a fraction! How noble and unquestionable his reason is - to save the country and ensure the happiness of the people!
A priest named Grégoire summed up the evils of the monarchy for 1,500 years: "The king is the physical embodiment of the devil's thoughts. The palace is the manufacturing place of all evils. The history of the king It is the history of national suffering!" However, when looking at the revolutionary history of Britain, France, Russia and other countries on the issue of how to liquidate the crimes of the dynasty, we will find a pattern written in blood - the butcher knife of regicide will soon fall on the people. on the head of an entire nation, when it would be far better to expel him, banish him, and imprison him for life. This is not that the kings really have any guardian angels who will avenge them, but that regicide extremely stimulates the evil and bloodthirsty demon species in the people's nature, causing it to expand rapidly, thereby dominating and destroying everything. It cannot be brought down without a large amount of bloodletting. They regained their composure. In front of the guillotine, Louis XVI shouted: "I die innocent of all the crimes against which I have been accused, I forgive those who caused my death, and I pray to God that the bloodshed you are about to cause may never fall on France! ... …” The people silenced his words with noise and drums, and Louis XVI’s prayers were unfortunately in vain.
Liberty, equality and fraternity, the most lovely words of this trinity are inseparable. Once divorced from fraternity, freedom and equality transform into tyranny and terror. The "people's will" has been whitewashed as a synonym for unquestionable justice, but in fact, in many cases, especially under the catalysis of the "square effect", it often mutates into cries of terror and massacre. A warrior who truly benefits the people must not feed his head to flatter the people, but should alert them and guide them to learn forgiveness and tolerance. The people's representatives of the Montagnards, the Paris Commune and the Palais des Bishops, however, were driven by the will of the people to indiscriminately terrorize and reject benevolent government on the sacred pretext that "legislators have no right to be lenient." The result was the most brutal and evil deprivation of everyone. of happiness and peace.
In "A Tale of Two Cities", Dickens described an unforgettable scene for us as if we were on the scene - the women sitting in front of the guillotine were knitting and counting the fallen heads: "Twenty Two, twenty-three..." When the speed of the guillotine could not keep up with "the needs of the development of the times," they resumed hangings. When it was not enough to fill the wolf monster's bloody mouth, they shot with volleys of guns and bombarded with cannons. They even invented a boat with a movable bottom to drown the "criminals" en masse! Don’t think that these heads all belong to the nobility. According to statistics, among the deceased who have been identified, only 8.5% are nobility, only 6.5% are priests, and 85% belong to the original third estate. This is a battle. Faced with an outright massacre of the entire population! Don't think that these heads all belong to "counterrevolutionaries". Among their names are Bayi, Verio, Pétion, Barbaru, Madame Roland...the most upright and loyal revolutionaries. The former Jacobin congressman deeply reflected: "During the Great Revolution, how many people tried their best to conceal their true feelings in order to protect themselves, and how many people were sent to the guillotine because of their magnanimity!" Don't even think that Hébert and Danton [7 ], Robespierre and Saint-Just were eventually sent to the guillotine, which was the failure of the revolution. After Thermidor, they got rid of Robespierre's orgy in Paris, and the revolutionary chariot finally stopped sliding!
It is undeniable that Robespierre was incorruptible, Saint-Just was indomitable, Marat was steadfast, and these wolf-driving angels of terror selflessly devoted themselves to A great revolutionary cause, fearlessly fighting for the happiness of mankind. However, their virtues, their beliefs, and their fanaticism make them ignore every specific person, and their bloodshot eyes cannot see the inviolable and sacred rights of each living person! At the World Youth Day held in Toronto last month, 82-year-old Pope John Paul II passionately called out to young people from all over the world: “Even if I don’t know each of you, I always include you in my prayers. Introduce you one by one to the Lord, who has always known you and loved you one by one! "There is an essential difference between saints and angels - saints bring the true gospel to everyone, that is, to all people; and gods and angels They will destroy the world with floods and burn down cities with thunderstorms. They will not hesitate to destroy mankind in order to save mankind!
Two hundred years later, on July 14, under the Eiffel Tower, a voice full of pity, mourning and regret wailed: "Ah, King, our poor King!" This is The voice of history.
For two hundred years, every moment, and forever, a heart-stirring voice echoed: "On top of the absolutely correct revolution, there is also an absolutely correct humanitarianism!" This is A voice from heaven.
Never forget the horror of the Great Revolution, and never depend on those "fearless fighters" who are intolerant of the well-being of the country and its people. Please see clearly the pair of bloodthirsty fangs hidden under their cross-browed faces, and please see clearly the iron hearts wrapped in their coat of virtue. The heaven on earth they want to build is our hell.