Paddy Watts
The French Revolution
In the United Kingdom, the events surrounding the French Revolution polarised the opinions of politicians and political thinkers. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a Whig M.P. was vociferously against the Revolution. In 1790 he wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies Relative to that Event.[1] It was written as a condemnation of the revolution and what he viewed as the breakdown of society, the destruction of societal and state institutions, and the unchecked rise of mob rule.
[The revolutionaries] act like the comedians of a fair before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them; and sometimes mix, and take their seats amongst them; domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud presumptuous authority.[2]
Burke’s antipathy towards the French Revolution deepened in 1793 when the Jacobin faction gained control of the National Assembly and they proposed the eradication of Christianity, and the confiscation of church land to pay off the National Debt, something he vehemently opposed as a devout Catholic.[3] Also in 1793, the Reign of Terror began, culminating in the deaths of thousands of ‘enemies’ of the Revolution. On the other end of the commentary spectrum was Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the Anglo-American political thinker and foundingfather. He wrote in 1791, The Rights of Man, which is a validation of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789, which, in turn, was inspired by the American Revolution. Although he was a revolutionary, as a Quaker, Paine was staunch in his opposition to capital punishment, so he argued for the life of Louis XVI in the National Assembly in January 1793. The argument was unsuccessful, and the King was found guilty of high treason and executed.
The French Revolution was of particular interest to Austria. The Holy Roman Emperor and Habsburg Monarch of Austria, Josef II had a need, in the middle of the eighteenth century, to strengthen the monarchy, which had largely succeeded by the 1780s. this came at the expense of peace in much of Europe.[4]
The Austrians and the French had formed an alliance in 1756, but relations between the two had become so strained that the alliance was virtually defunct.[5] In an effort to improve relations, he negotiated the marriage of his sister Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette) to the heir to the French throne (the Dauphin) Louis, later to become Louis XVI. This Marriage, and with it hopes of strengthening links between the two countries was less than successful, Marie Antoinette was extravagant, and quickly became unpopular in France, leading to rumours of infidelity, having illegitimate children, and having anti-French sympathies, claims not unheard of against a queen consort. She became known as l’Autrichienne (the Austrian woman) and typified the decadence and corruption of the French court.[6]
The initial Austrian interpretation of the French Revolution as being good for Europe quickly changed, especially over the treatment of the Austrian Marie Antoinette. This culminated in the declaration of war on Austria by France in 1792.[7] This outbreak of hostilities possibly helped seal the fate of the queen, who was executed in 1793.
The French Revolution was also interpreted in art and literature Jacques Louis David’s The Death of Marat, 1793, is an iconic work of art depicting a pivotal moment in the Revolution.
Figure 6. Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793. Oil on canvas. Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
Literature is represented in the form of drama, although little is known of contemporary dramas about the murder of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday. Because of censorship in London, they were performed either away from London or in unlicenced playhouses.[8] Edmund Eyre (1767-1816) wrote The Maid of Normandy, or the Death of the Queen of France (1794). It was first performed in Dublin in 1974. The reason it made its debut there is because the censor in England refused to give it a licence because of the play’s references to God and events in France. The censor lifted his ban, and the play was staged in Bridgenorth in 1796.The play was written with a certain amount of dramatic licence by introducing a lover, Alberto/Theodore, for Charlotte Corday. Eyre explains this in the preface to the play by saying, ‘I chose rather to interweave the imaginary character of Theodore, than tire the auditor by dwelling on the whole circle of historical events’.[9] The Maid of Normandy; or the Death of the Queen of France was written as a docudrama, chronicling two aspects of the French Revolution. In four acts, it describes the murder of Marat, and the ensuing trial and execution of Charlotte Corday. The play draws parallels between the story of Corday and the story of the trial and execution of Queen Marie Antoinette.[10]
Figure 1. James Northcote (1746-1831) after Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Portrait of Edmund Burke (1728-1797), c.1770-1780 after a painting of 1774, oil on canvas, 76.3 x 63.8cm, Royal Albert Museum & Art Gallery.
Figure 2. Lauret Dabos (1761-1835) Thomas Paine (1737-1809) 1792, oil on canvas, 34 x 26cm, National Portrait Gallery.
Figure 3. Anonymous, Circle of Joseph Hickel (1736-1807) Joseph II of Austria (1741-1790) in a dark Just-au-corps, oil on canvas, 97 x 71cm, Unidentified location.
Figure 4. Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842), Marie Antoinette with a rose 1783, oil on canvas, 130 x 87cm.
Figure 5. Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802), Portrait of Louis XVI of France between 1787 and 1797, pencil and chalk on paper, 49.5 x 30cm.
Figure 7. Playbill, Edmund John Eyre, The Maid of Normandy: or, the Death of the Queen of France 1794, Performance at the Bridgenorth Theatre eighth January 1796.
The Spanish Civil War
By contrast, the reporting and interpretation of the Spanish Civil War had much more immediate and far-reaching effects. In the intervening century and a half, technology, especially information technology, had boomed. With the development of electricity came inventions such as telegraphy, telephony, wireless, cinema, and a nascent television. The press had also become popular, bringing news and opinion to an increasingly socially and politically aware general public. Newspapers such as The Guardian, The Daily Herald and The Daily Mirror were published and gave different interpretations of current affairs, including the Spanish Civil War, to established newspapers such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail.
The Spanish Civil War began when Spanish workers organisations and socialists attempted a Coup D’etat by overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic and seizing power at local levels and reorganising the economy. The organisers also armed the worker movements and formed militias to fight the Nationalists, led, amongst others by General Francisco Franco (1892-1975). Franco, and other military officers formed a junta with the aim of taking control of the country by force, initiating the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Europe in the 1930’s was in a state of flux, Germany and Italy were governed respectively by the Nazi Party and the National Fascist Party, both sympathetic towards Franco in Spain, with both countries sending troops to Spain to fight for the Nationalists.
The cinema industry grew from the beginning of the twentieth century, and from 1911 cinemas began incorporating newsreels in their shows.[11] With the advent of talking pictures in 1927, newsreels became entertainment in their own right and in 1937 a cinema opened in Grand Central Station in New York showing only newsreel films. The reason that they became so popular in the United States is that the public could access news from Europe soon after the event, which for many European immigrants was a way of keeping in touch with events back home. In Comparison, news of the French Revolution in 1789 would have taken weeks to reach the United States, and even longer to reach inland communities. Besides purely reporting on events in Spain, newsreels gave the general public the opportunities to interpret what was happening and react to it.[12] There was newsreel footage in 1937 of Franco marching on Bilbao, while some viewers interpreted it simply as reporting an event, others would have reacted differently. In Germany and Italy where there was state control of the news, this footage would have been used as propaganda to promote a Nationalist and Fascist ideology and defend the use of troops to fight for Franco’s junta. Other viewers would have seen the footage and have been inspired to join the International Brigade and fight, in Spain for the Republicans against the Nationalists. Besides newsreels, wireless communications were improving so that still photographs could be transmitted and published quickly in daily newspapers. This in conjunction with telegraphy meant that news from the front line could be in a newspaper office in London in a matter of hours, allowing the public and commentators to interpret the events almost immediately.
For Adolf Hitler, the Spanish Civil War provided an opportunity to provide armed forces to fight on behalf of Franco’s Nationalists. German troops were fighting in Spain from 1936 to the end of hostilities in 1939.[13] This gave his army valuable operational experience before Germany’s invasion of Poland and the declaration of war by the United Kingdom on Germany on third of September 1939. As well as providing troops on the ground, Hitler also provided his air force (Luftwaffe). On twenty-sixth April 1937, the Luftwaffe, with the help of aeroplanes from the Italian Air Force bombed the Basque town of Guernica.[14] This event compelled Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) to paint Guernica (1937), a condemnation of bringing war to non-combatants.
Figure 9. Unknown, George Orwell (1903-1950), Photograph c. 1940.
Figure 10. Lloyd Arnold, Hemingway posing for a dust jacket photo for the first edition of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, photograph 1939.
Figure 8. Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Oil on Canvas, 349.3 X 776.6 cm, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Reina Sofia, Madrid.
Alternatively, the ranks of the Republicans were swelled by large numbers of volunteers from all over the world, including up to 2800 volunteers from German.[15] Because the Republicans were fighting a right-wing alliance, the volunteers were predominantly socialists or communists and coming from all walks of life. Many were working class, by the same token academics and writers also volunteered for the International Brigades, most notably the authors George Orwell (1903-1950) from England and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) from the United States. Orwell, although a socialist, was anti-communist and saw the danger of Spain ceding independence to Germany or the Soviet Union.[16] He was shot in the throat in 1937 and almost died. He was repatriated to England to recover and write a memoir of his time in Spain, Homage to Catalonia 1938.
Ernest Hemingway went to Spain early in 1937 as a war correspondent. He gravitated to the Republicans, writing reports that were favourable to them. He wrote, in 1940, For whom the Bell tolls, a novel based on his experiences in the Civil War.
Figure 11. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, (Secker and Warburg London, 1938).
Figure 12. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York
[1] Willam Richey, ‘The French Revolution: Blake’s epic Dialogue with Edmund Burke’, English Literary History, 59.4 (1992), 817-837 (p.817).
[2] Richey, ‘The French Revolution’, p.819.
[3] William Selinger, ’Patronage and Revolution: Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France” and His Theory of Legislative Corruption’, The Review of Politics, 76.2 (2014),43-67 (p.58).
[4] Michael Hochedlinger, ‘Who’s afraid of the French Revolution? Austrian Foreign Policy and the European Crisis 1787-1797’, German History, 21.3 (2003), 293-318 (p.295).
[5] Hochedlinger, ‘Who’s afraid of the French Revolution?’, p. 296.
[6] Hochedlinger, ‘Who’s afraid of the French Revolution?’, p. 296.
[7] Hochedlinger, ‘Who’s afraid of the French Revolution?’, p.307
[8] Wendy C. Nielsen, ‘Edmund Eyre’s The Maid of Normandy; or, Charlotte Corday in Anglo-Irish Docudrama’, Comparative Drama,40.2 (2006) 169-190 (p. 169).
[9] Nielsen, ‘The Maid of Normandy’, p.172.
[10] Nielsen, ‘The Maid of Normandy’, p.169.
[11] Michael Stamm, ‘Watching News in Public: The Rituals and Responses of Newsreel Theatre Audiences’, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 63.2 (2024)96-118 (p. 100).
[12] Stamm, ‘Watching News in Public’, p. 100.
[13] Peter Monteath, ‘Hitler and the Spanish Civil War. A Case Study of Nazi Foreign Policy’, Australian Journal of Politics and History. 54.3 (2008) 428-442 (p, 428).
[14] Monteath, ‘Hitler and the Spanish Civil War’, p.429.
[15] Josie McLellan, ‘I Wanted to be a Little Lenin: Ideology and the German International Brigade Volunteers, Journal of Contemporary history, (2006) 287-304 (p, 287).
[16] John Rossi, ‘ Orwell on Fascism’, Modern Age 54.1 (2012) 207-211 (p. 207).