The sudden return of winter weather kept audience numbers down, but the presentation on the causes and effect of the French Revolution by SCSU graduate student Renae Elert was an impressive addition to the Winter Lecture Series at the Sherburne History Center Tuesday afternoon.

 

Elert recently received her MA degree in history from SCSU, and is currently a history teacher at Hill-Murray High School in the Twin Cities.  A fluent French speaker who has visited France many times, Elert was able to provide a number of person insights into the locations depicted in Paris and the palace at Versailles.  The palace, 11 miles from central Paris, was to play a key role in the disassociation of the French nobility from the concerns of the people who supported them.

 

There were three distinct populations in France at the time, Elert said, the First Estate being the Clergy, the Second Estate the nobility and the Third Estate comprised the workers and peasants, who did the labor and paid the taxes that supported the other two.  When King Louis IV decreed that all of the nobles should live at Versailles, where he could keep an eye on them, it helped to create a “fantasy world” for the upper classes that removed them from the problems and suffering of the workers, Elert said.

 

By the late 1700’s, when King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette (nicknamed “Madame Deficit” for her spending habits) were on the throne, the population was suffering under a heavy load of debt, much of which was incurred in aiding the American Revolution.  (Elert also described the lifestyle of American envoy Benjamin Franklin, who delighted in wearing a fur hat and playing the backwoods rustic for the French nobility, who were also fascinated by his habit of working at his desk in his Versailles apartment in the nude, Elert said.)  Marie Antoinette also never said “Let Them Eat Cake” when told of the suffering of the French people due to a lack of bread, Elert said, but the people believed she had, due to anti-royalist propaganda.

 

A series of unfortunate events propelled the French Revolution to the bloody demise of the royal family, Elert said, including the “Great panic” of 1789, when King Louis summoned his Swiss guards to Versailles, and the people responded by storming the Bastille prison which set the chaos in motion. When King Louis refused to accept the plans of the Estates General for a form of constitutional monarchy, and was captured in an attempt to escape to Belgium while the Austrian army was attacking France in an attempt to restore the monarchy, the radicals took over, Elert said.

 

That was the time of “The Terror,” orchestrated by Robespierre, Danton and Marat, known as the “Jacobins” (“Jackals” in English), who demanded the extermination of the royal family.  Ironically, Elert said, Robespierre and Danton met their fate on the same guillotine that claimed Louis and Marie-Antoinette as cooler heads prevailed among the revolutionary leaders. (Marat was famously assassinated in his bathtub.)

 

The final phase of the revolution was known as the “Directoire Period,” Elert said, which saw the rise of the young artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte, who “made his bones” by telling a crowd of rioters in Paris that he would fire his cannons if they did not disperse.  They didn’t, and he did.

 

The next Winter Lecture Series event will be Tue., Feb. 17 at 2 p.m., where SCSU graduate student Doug Breese will give a presentation on the sinking of the White Star liner RMS Titanic.