Shakespeare Causes a Riot!

In February 1934 the government of Eduard Daladier, reacting to an anti-parliamentary interpretation that had been placed on a new production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus by the right-wing pressure group, Action Française, banned further performances of the play. In the growing heat engendered by the Stavisky Affair, a scandal that exposed extensive political and financial corruption, members of the group appeared in the theatre in force, cheering on the play's denunciations of political leaders.

In Action Française, the movement's newspaper, praise of Coriolanus was used as an excuse to attack French democracy; to hurl accusations of corruption and villainy against the republic and its institutions in the light of every fresh revelation about Alexandre Stavisky, a Jewish financier and embezzler. Circulation shot up as Action Française urged people to come and protest in large numbers at the Chamber of Deputies, the first time in history, so far as I am aware, that Shakespeare contributed towards a major political riot-and a French one at that!

I am the State

There were two things crucial in the formation of Louis as a king: his early experience of the disorders induced by the Fronde and the education in statecraft he received form his observations of Cardinal Mazarin, himself a pupil and protégée of Cardinal Richelieu. From the Fronde he took the lesson that it was necessary to limit- and severely limit-the power and independence of the French nobility; following the example set by the Cardinals, he further refined and magnified the agencies of the state. The two things, it might be said, came together in his person and his court. At Versailles he created a great political theatre, a universe, with himself, in the role of Apollo, the Sun God, at the very centre. The nobility was tied to, and often ruined by, attendance of the king; the bureaucracy, the standing army and the treasury radiated from his person. L'Etat c'est a moi-I am the state. It really does not matter if he ever used those words; they express an essential-and fatal-truth

The Myth of the Marshall

In retrospect this may be difficult to believe, but for most French people Philippe Petain came as a national saviour in 1940, much as he had at the Verdun in 1916. After the resignation of Paul Reynaud, Petain's appointment as Prime Minister was confirmed by a massive majority of 468 to 80 in the National Assembly, which also voted him autocratic powers, effectively bringing the seventy-year-old Third Republic to an end.

Support, moreover, came from all shades of French opinion; from the Socialists, on the left, to Action Francaise, on the right. For some time the exact political complexion of the new regime was in a state of flux; so Petain stood all the higher as the one constant, a representative of 'nation' rather than 'party.' The enemies of the new realities were to call supporters of Petain 'collaborators', 'fascists' and 'reactionaries'. Collectively, however, the only title they adopted themselves was 'Petainists' or 'Marechalistes.'

Petain attracted the kind of mass reverence formally accorded to kings. Busts and portraits of him replaced Marianne, the symbol of Revolution and Republic, across France. The crucial point here is that in the crisis of 1940 Petain was all things to all people; he was an image, it might be said, without substance. His national halo could only remain as long as he remained inactive, and for as long as he remained in silence.

Bit by bit the saintly image of the national saviour began to tarnish and decay, as the nature of the Vichy state became more apparent. It was not a regime of all France, but a regime of the right, confirmed when the leading representatives of the pre-war Popular Front government were put on trial in 1941. Furthermore, pro-German statements issued from Vichy also lost the government support, as did the forced deportations of French workers across the Rhine.

To some degree the burden of unpopularity was carried by Pierre Laval, Petain's Prime Minister, but the Marshal could not escape culpability altogether. The very best that could now be said of him was that he himself was a 'passive' victim. Jean Paillard, one of his most loyal supporters, wrote that after 1943 the Marshal was "a man of eight-five, almost alone and surrounded by young wolves with sharp teeth." In the end, a symbol first of resistance and then of salvation became little more than an embarrassing residue of an uncomfortable past. Even after his death he had supporters; but France had grown beyond the myth of the Marshall.

The Red Eminence

There are people like Armand Jean du Plessis Richelieu, Cardinal Duc du Richelieu-Cardinal Wolsey in England is another such-who were born to be politicians rather than churchmen; men, in other words, who are in the church through circumstances, rather than design.

Richelieu stands astride his age like a giant, a man who put the interests of the state before that of his class, and the interests of his nation before that of his church. He was not the model of Machiavelli's The Prince; he was the Prince. Inevitably such men make enemies rather more than they make friends, and even Louis XIII, who was so dependent on his great minister, is said to have expressed some relief when he died in December 1642.

It was not just the king who was pleased by his departure. According to Father Griffet, writing in 1768, the Cardinal "...was disliked by the people and I have known old men who could still remember the bonfires that were lit in the provinces when the news of his death was received." Cardinal de Retz claimed that Richelieu had created "within the most lawful of monarchies the most scandalous and most dangerous tyranny which may ever have enslaved the state." In his 1712 history on the reign of Louis XIII Michael Le Vasor wrote "I can look only with horror on a prelate who sacrifices the liberty of his fatherland and the peace of Europe to his ambition." This charge against the Cardinal-warmonger was later to make an appearance in Voltaire's Le Siècle de Louis XIV, where he says "...there was fighting since 1635 because Cardinal Richelieu wanted it in order to make himself necessary." For Montesquieu Cardinal Richelieu was, quite simply, a 'wicked citizen.'

Of course, none of this is fair or objective, and most of his later critics underestimate the extent to which Habsburg power, concentrated in Spain and the Empire, was a considerable danger to the security of France, especially after the onset of the Thirty Years War, which the Cardinal viewed in political rather than religious terms. But the image of the malevolent and scheming churchman made its way down the ages, emerging in the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century, in which the Cardinal is relentlessly vilified by poets and dramatists of all sorts.

In a sense he became, in post-Revolutionary France, the archetype of all that was wrong with the ancien regime. In Cinq-Mars, Alfred de Vigny's novel of 1826, Richelieu's attack on the nobility is blamed for all of France's subsequent ills. It was in this form that the Cardinal-mad, bad and dangerous to know-made his way across the English Channel, where Vigny's novel inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton to write a play, called Richelieu or the Conspiracy.

Thus it was that the Cardinal, both sinister and witty, made his way on to the English theatre, one of the great stage villains of the age, depicted by Henry Irving, among others. Though barely aware of his existence before, English people discovered in the Red Eminence qualities that made him 'the man you love to hate.' And so it went on, back to France and The Three Musketeers, and back again to England in Stanley Weyman's popular novel of 1896, Under the Red Robe. From movie, to comedy, and even in children's cartoons, Richelieu lives. Better, I suppose, to be misunderstood and parodied than forgotten. :-)

The Pompadour Effect

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, better known simply as Madame de Pompadour, was inn many ways she was a quite extraordinary woman, a commoner and a member of the Third Estate, who grew to be one of the most powerful political figures in eighteenth century France.

She established her position by beauty; and when beauty started to go, she maintained it by intelligence. She gave an added brilliance to the court of Louis XV that might otherwise have sunk under the diffident character of that unimaginative and melancholy man.

Yet, in the long-term, the 'Pompadour effect' was damaging for both the monarchy and for France. After the War of the Austrian Succession, when economy was the thing the French state needed most, she drew more and more resources into the lavish court. Her influence over Louis increased markedly through the 1750s, to the point where he allowed her considerable leeway in the determination of policy over a whole range of issues, from military matters to foreign affairs. Her importance was such that she was even approached in 1755 by Wenzel Anton Graf Kaunitz, a prominent Austrian diplomat, asking her to intervene in the negotiations which led to the 1756 Treaty of Versailles.

This was the beginning of the so-called Diplomatic Revolution, which ended long antagonism between France and Austria. It also led to France's disastrous involvement in the Seven Years War against England and Prussia. After the defeat of France at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757, she is alleged to have remarked après nous, le déluge. France emerged from the war diminished and virtually bankrupt. By the time of Pompadour's death in 1764 the waters were already pushing hard against the walls of the dam

Defending Pierre Laval

In thinking about any particular figure, any person of prominence, either living or dead, I try to imagine what kind of defence could be mounted at the bar of history before which they stand on arraignment. I suppose I think of myself as barrister, preparing cases for the defence, perhaps even trying to defend the indefensible.

There are some cases, I confess, where I would simply refuse the brief. I despise Tony Blair, Fidel Castro and Lenin too much ever to offer a defence, even under compulsion. There are also some beyond all defence s far as I am concerned. Here Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler come to mind. But I might, without too much compulsion, offer an effective argument in favour of Mussolini, Franco and Philippe Petain. I would certainly use all the power I could muster to have Juan Peron and Engelbert Dollfuss acquitted. But let me offer a more tricky case, one I discussed with a group of French friends-that of Pierre Laval, twice prime minister of the Vichy administration, and a man much loathed in his native land. So, here is my argument, part defence and part plea in mitigation.

Poor Pierre Laval, most definitely the 'man you love to hate.' Even Marshall Petain, head of the Vichy state, said of him Ce Laval-quel fumier! (What horse shit) In a poll carried out Novelle Litterairies in 1980 on the fairness of his post-war trial, only 2% of the respondents said that he should have been acquitted. Indeed, Laval has become the ultimate scapegoat, the French Judas. There are still those who would excuse Petain, believing he acted for noble if misguided motives. Nobody defends or excuses Laval, who is held to represent the 'unacceptable face' of Vichy. Even his appearance was against him; he seems the very quintessence of the shifty and disreputable politician. He was the ultimate wheeler-dealer, reflected even in his nickname, the 'horse trader.'

What is to be said in his favour? Very little, I suppose, but I will try my best.
First and foremost, he set out to preserve his country, not to betray it. He was never in that sense a Quisling, and senior French fascists were kept out of the Vichy administration. His task, as he saw it, was to continue the work of Aristide Briand in ending the enmity between France and Germany. But whereas Briand had Gustav Stresemann, Laval had Hitler. He was also mindful of the fate of Poland under the Nazis, and saw active collaboration as a way of preventing a similar fate befalling France, thus ensuring that the country would have a role to play in the post-war settlement.

He did not 'believe' in a German victory; but he did expect it. His chief aim was to conclude a treaty that would end the occupation, bring French prisoners of war home, and secure France's overseas empire. His chief failure was that he never really understood that the Germans were not at all interested in maintaining a 'reasonable relationship', only in securing French support in advancing their war aims. Even his scheme to bring the prisoners of war home in return for sending French workers to Germany produced little in the way of practical returns, France giving far more than it received. He did his best to save the French Jews from deportation, but only at the sacrifice of those not of French nationality, which had the effect of turning his horse-trading into the grossest forms of moral turpitude.

He may indeed have been right, that things would have been worse without him, a defence that he made at his 'trial' in 1945. To the very end he preserved the semblance of an independent French state, and kept his long-standing promise that he would never consent to a declaration of war. The problem was that he simply lost all sight of the big picture, and that the collaboration which he believed would save France forced him into ever decreasing circle of compromise and betrayal. A more prudent politician would have said much and given little. Laval said much and gave even more. He remains a victim, to the end, of his own misconceptions; not a bad man, just a misguided one.

Servant of the State; Servant of France; Servant of God

I've always found Cardinal Mazarin and intriguing and complex figure in much the same fashion as England's Cardinal Wolsey, servants of the state first and of God second.

Was Mazarin a disciple of Machiavelli? He certainly gives all of the outward signs of being so, an exponent of the arts of political realism, not over-troubled, perhaps, by more general ethical considerations. I'm not sure, though, what the alternative would have been to a policy that ensured the integrity of the French state at a point where it was threatened with political fragmentation. He was, moreover, one of the best statesmen and diplomats France ever had, guiding the country through some difficult times.

As far as religion is concerned, well, Mazarin was always more secular than spiritual, a Cardinal who never became a priest. He was no purist and no crusader, and was even prepared to do business with such noted anti-Catholics as Oliver Cromwell. It was all part of his pragmatic character, in which doctrine, and the imperatives of orthodoxy, played very little part.

Yet on his death he left 600,000 livres to help finance a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. Was this an act of a bad conscience? Perhaps; we will never know for certain. What we do know is that he was revered by Louis XIV and died a well-respected figure, unlike his unfortunate English counterpart. Of Mazarin it was said in 1661 "No one left his presence without being persuaded of his reasoning and struck by his graciousness. His intentions were good; he could never say evil of anyone...and was unable to hate even his own enemies." Not a bad epitaph.

Being and Nothingness as Political Commentry

Envisage, if you can, Paris in 1943: a bleak place, one where the arena of personal freedom was growing more circumscribed by the day. In the streets, alongside the German occupiers, there were French Fascist auxiliaries of one kind or another, with links to Marcel Déat and others among the so-called Paris Collaborators. The previous year all French Jews had been required to wear the yellow star, not by order of the Germans, but on the initiative of Darquier de Pellepoix, Vichy's Commissioner for Jewish Affairs. Round-ups and deportations were now a regular occurrence. Through the city German propaganda, evoking final victory, was an ever-present feature of life in public places. Denunciations, anonymous letters and police raids wee a constant threat. France has been seized by a Judeo-Bolshevik phobia. The atmosphere is stifling.

So, for Sartre, and every other Frenchman, objective freedom has all but gone. It is against this background that Being and Nothingness, was published, a profoundly Cartesian work, one where subjective forms of freedom find their greatest defence.

There, in subjective consciousness, lies the origin of one's absolute freedom, one that is shaped in a state of permanent criticism. All labels are rejected-"How them shall I experience the objective limits of my being: Jew, Aryan, ugly, handsome, kind, a civil servant, untouchable, etc.-when will speech have informed me as to which of these are my limits?" It is from these labels that alienation and inauthenticity are created: "Here I am-Jew or Aryan, handsome or ugly, one armed etc. All this for the Other with no hope of apprehending this meaning which I have outside and still, more important, with no hope of changing it...in a more general way the encounter with a prohibition in my path ('No Jews allowed here')...can only have meaning only on and through the foundations of my free choice. In fact according to the free possibilities which I choose, I can disobey the prohibition, pay no attention to it, or, on the contrary, confer upon it a coercive value which it can hold only because of the weight I attach to it."

Sartre's theory of freedom is expressed, for the most part, in highly abstract terms, but it still has to be read against a specific historical background. The call for freedom, and the parallel denunciation of all forms of bad-faith, was never more meaningful in Nazi France.

Why did the Germans allow this? Well, because they operated in some areas a fairly relaxed censorship policy, especially over such abstract works as Being and Nothingness. It also helped if the author expressed an anti-German message which the Germans themselves could not understand, as Sartre did in his play, No Exit, which concludes with his most famous quote "Hell is other People", or l'enfer, c'est les autres in French. By this time the French ad long ceased to refer to the occupiers as Boches-they were, quite simply, Les autres

The Resistance, Alibi of a Nation

A second bite at French history, war-time history, in one session: there is simply no stopping me!

Anyway, I’ve been skimming through Matthew Cobb’s recently published The Resistance: the French Fight Against the Nazis. Interestingly enough, considering the importance of this topic, considering how much it has entered the popular imagination through visual media, there is very little published material in the English language.

I commend this book; commend it, for blowing away some cherished myths: that the Resistance made an important contribution to the Allied victory-it did not; that most French people were in favour of its actions-they were not. The Resisters, like the arch collaborators, were in a tiny minority. Most people simply wanted to be left alone, to get on with life; most people identified with Petain and Vichy until there was no more point in identifying with either. As Arthur Koestler put it as long ago as 1942;

When the scales of success turn in favour of England, the barricades will emerge from the pavements of the towns of France, the snipers will appear behind the attic windows and the people will fight in the old days. Not before.

Many of those in the Resistance were Communists, traitors before June 1941, and ‘patriots’ after. The fighting, such as they did, was often more against each other, in murderous fratricidal disputes, rather than against the Germans. Only Jean Moulin, a true patriot, gave the overall movement a degree of coherence, and then only temporarily. If there had to be resistance then the Germans could have wished for no better enemy. Right up to the Liberation the Gestapo had no difficulties in recruiting French spies to penetrate the various groups.

It’s often said that reprisals, the kind of savage reprisals the Nazis specialised in, had an effect contrary to that intended, drawing in ever greater degrees of opposition. Well, in the case of France, they did not: the harsher the reprisals, the more people began to hate and resent the resisters who had occasioned them. When Jacques Bingen, a French SOE agent, escaped from the Gestapo in Clermont-Ferrand, a woman stopped a passing German lorry and pointed out where he was in hiding. And this was in May 1944, while the nation was on the frontier of liberation.

Cobb writes well. More important, he writes with authority and objectivity. One cannot but admire the courage of a few selfless people, tremendous courage in the face of the most ruthless enemy. But, in the end, the Resistance did not raise France from the ashes. That honour belongs to Charles de Gaulle, the greatest patriot of all.

Days of Glory, no, Indigènes!

Days of Glory is a French-language film directed by Rachid Bouchareb. Released in 2006, it won the best actor award that year at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film, but lost out on the day to The Lives of Others, a worthy opponent. It was broadcast on BBC 4 a few days ago, when I saw it for the first time.

The focus is on four men in particular: Said, Yassir, Messaoud and Abdelkader. They fight through campaigns in Italy, southern France and on to Alsace. They fight with courage and bravery but they are treated shabbily; they are discriminated against by the nation and the army they serve, forms of discrimination both petty and grand, from denying them tomatoes to refusing leave and promotion. It upset me. I can imagine how those men must have felt, risking their lives when their lives had such little apparent value.

The first thing I have to say is that the English title in retrospect made me angry, a vacuous cliché so lacking in imagination, one that says little or nothing about the movie itself, about what the director was trying to say. Who decides these things, I wonder? Do the film makers themselves have any input? I saw the movie advertised when it first came out but decided not to go because I thought it was just another ‘war movie’, another Saving Private Ryan, and I’m not all that keen on war movies as such. It’s not; oh no, it is not. The original French title is Indigènes, meaning Natives, more appropriate in every sense, as I will explain below.

Indigènes tells the story of the men of North Africa, the ‘natives’, who were recruited in the Second World War by the Free French to fight against the Germans in Europe. They volunteer for all sorts of reasons; because they believe in the cause, because they want to escape poverty, because the want to come to a ‘homeland’ they have never seen, because they are looking for a better life; all sorts of reasons.


The discrimination did not end when the war ended. When the nations of North Africa and the other French colonial territories became independent the French government discontinued payment of war pensions. A long legal battle ensued but it was only after the release of Indigènes that this was reversed and veterans paid what they were due. What a powerful medium for justice cinema continues to be, when it chooses to be.