Prince Charles-Emanuel de Bourbon-Parma was unsuccessful in attempting to halt an exhibit at Versailles by an American "pop artist" which he felt was disrespectful to his royal ancestors. Note the claim by the republican in charge of Versailles that a victory for the prince would have been "tantamount to proclaiming that the Revolution didn't take place." Really? (If only it hadn't!) It is interesting that even after 138 years of having their way, French republicans are so defensive that they can see a single legal dispute like this as a threat.
In a related story, Frenchmen of the heroic Vendée, stronghold of Catholic and royalist resistance to the Revolution, demand that the First Republic's horrifying massacres of men, women, and children there in 1794 be recognized as a "genocide." It's unfortunate, though, that the Vendean historian quoted can only go so far as to claim that the Vendée atrocities constituted "faithlessness of the Revolution to its own principles," when in fact it was the French Revolution's evil principles themselves that were the problem, and led naturally and logically to the extermination of those who did not wish to live under the revolutionaries' new order.
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2 comments:
Greetings, and Happy New Year, from an admirer of your blog.
I'm glad you ( and other bloggers ) are giving attention to these heroes of the Vendée.
By the way, have you read the work of Aurel Kolnai? He was an Austro-Hungarian political philosopher, born in 1900, who opposed Nazism and Communism and developed a political philosophy defending institutions such as hereditary monarchy, aristocracy, etc. as safeguards of liberty against totalitarianism. He wrote on topics such as "Privilege and Liberty", "The Utopian Mind," and others.
Just thought you might be interested, if you haven't already heard of him.
No, I had not not heard of Kolnai. Thanks, and I'm glad you enjoy the blog.
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