The Bloodbath that Was the French Revolution

Nearly three decades have passed since Mademoiselle B.P. and I were a couple. This woman, a bit older than me, grew up in a small village in France and had a most beguiling accent. I regret not having asked her about the French Revolution (1789–1799), although my impression is that contemporary Gallic people regard it with some pride—liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that. There is no doubt that France in the late 18th century was in dire need of reform; the royals, the hereditary elites and the Catholic church had a stranglehold on economic and social power, and most of the people were fed up.

My main complaint about the French Revolution—and I wonder whether Mlle. B.P. would have agreed—is the frenzied killing that just went on and on. Called the Reign of Terror, it saw more than 40,000 people put to death. That includes, of course, King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Georges-Jacques Danton and Maximillien Robespierre. The latter two were among the most vociferous in sending opponents, or anybody considered ideologically impure, to the guillotine. As for the former two, I will just say that regicide is very serious business. The English did it to King Charles I in 1649, something that is much regretted even today. Dethroning and/or sending a king or queen into exile would seem to be adequate chastisement, regardless of how bad or incompetent his or her reign was. (Tsar Nicholas II would also suffer death at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1918.)

A commoner myself, I have little sympathy for any nation’s royalty. And in the matter of the French Revolution, the Girondin, Jacobin and Montagnard parties are one and the same to me. I do, however, feel for the average Frenchmen and -women who for no good reason were accused, given a perfunctory trial or no trial at all and then killed. Many lost their heads when the blade fell in the Place de la Révolution. Most of all, I grieve for those priests, nuns and lay Christians who died because of the extreme anti-clerical sentiment of the day.

Victor Hugo, the great 19th century French writer, exaggerated just slightly when saying that the revolution “threw open the monasteries, snatched away the veils, aired out the sacristies and slew the Holy Office.” A series of policies undertaken during those chaotic 10 years sought to do no less than de-Christianize France. Regarding the faith once planted so deeply in French soil and which inspired people to erect some of the most splendid cathedrals in all of Europe as nothing but superstition and mythology, the Dantons and Robespierres instituted short-lived absurdities like the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and the atheistic Cult of Reason. It is said that more French people were reading Voltaire than the Bible even before the revolution commenced, but this just accelerated the process.

The murderous rage directed toward Christians is what I find most stunning. It was more than the guillotine. Many believers were deported, imprisoned, shot and suffered mob violence. These were not just fat and corrupt bishops, but God-loving priests, monks and nuns, not to mention rank-and-file church members—people who certainly did not deserve an early and violent death.

I draw your attention to the drownings at Nantes. Rural western France was Catholic and conservative, and so abolition of the monarchy and subjugation of the clergy were resisted. The people in Nantes paid a heavy price for that stance in late 1793 and early 1794. Anyone suspected of not fully supporting the revolution was dubbed a royalist and subject to stern punishment. Priests, nuns, peasants, women and children had good reason to fear. A monster named Jean-Baptiste Carrier had been sent from Paris to enforce the new laws, and he did so with utmost vigor. Regarding Nantes as a hotbed of counter-revolutionary activity, he ordered the execution of at least 4,000 civilians. Most were drowned in the Loire River, which he insouciantly called “the national bathtub.” Carrier was hailed in the capitol, but political winds shifted and he was denounced, arrested, tried and finally decapitated on December 16, 1794.

On a smaller scale but no less awful was what happened around the same time in Compiègne, in the northern part of the country. A convent of Carmelite nuns founded there in 1641 and supported by the French court was noted for religious fervor and fidelity. The women were told to choose between the revolutionary government—such as it was—and breaking their vows of obedience, chastity and poverty. All of them refused to cooperate. They were taken to Paris and given a trial. Lacking legal counsel, their verdict was a foregone conclusion. On the night of July 17, 1794, sixteen sisters ranging in age from 29 to 78 were transported through the streets in an open cart. They sang hymns of praise and supplication (the Miserere, the Salve Regina, the Evening Vespers, the Compline and the Laudate Dominum from Psalm 116) as onlookers berated them and threw refuse; some, let it be noted, had pity and offered comfort. Nearing the scaffold, they kissed a statue of the Virgin Mary, forgave their captors and submitted to the guillotine. Their heads and bodies were buried in a mass grave at nearby Picpus Cemetery. The martyrs of Compiègne may have helped bring about an end to the Reign of Terror, as Robespierre was administered the old chop-chop 10 days later. Danton had already gotten his, on April 5.

Devastating though these events were to Christianity in France, it survived. French priests continued to minister to their own flocks, and some went to distant Korea in the mid-19th century, preached the Gospel and suffered martyrdom as well. Their numbers include Laurent-Joseph-Marius Imbert, Siméon-François Berneux, Pierre Maubant, Jacques Chastan, Just-de-Bretenières, Louis Beaulieu, Pierre-Henri Dorie, Antoine Daveluy, Pierre Aumaître and Martin-Luc Huin. Post-modern French intellectuals, far too smart to believe in God, may consider them fools who died needlessly. I view them as strong men, men of faith and worthy of deep respect.

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