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Liberty Leading the People: How Revolutions Turn

2022-08-02 · explainer · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual

John reads Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, painted after the July Revolution of 1830 that ended nearly 50 years of French instability, as a painting about both the hope and the cost of revolution; its later history shows there was nothing inevitable about liberty and democracy's victory, and still isn't.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John, sick after the Louvre, introduces the painting and recounts French history from the 1789 Revolution through the Terror, Napoleon and the restored kings to the July Revolution of 1830

  • ★ John is sick, perhaps because he recently spent a lot of time with strangers at the Louvre looking at Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. (playful, hedged) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says Liberty Leading the People is first and foremost not about the French Revolution. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John recalls that the late-18th-century French Revolution removed King Louis XVI and his wife, who never actually said 'let them eat cake', from power. — 00:00:00 · Let them eat cake
  • ★★ John says that a couple of years later France entered the Reign of Terror, in which over 16,000 people were executed by the state. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John quotes Robespierre writing that the basis of popular government in a revolution is virtue and terror, adding that some would say he leaned more on the terror. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says Napoleon Bonaparte became France's de facto leader in 1799 and crowned himself emperor, and was succeeded by King Louis XVIII, the previous Louis's brother. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ John says that in about 20 years France went from a king named Louis to a democratic revolution to an emperor to another Louis: revolutions often go all the way around. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says Louis XVIII died of wet and dry gangrene in 1824, and his other brother Charles X became king and tried, badly, to rule with the Chamber of Deputies. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says that in 1830 Charles X tried to dissolve parliament and restore press bans, leading to the July Revolution, which removed him and brought the citizen king Louis-Philippe under a constitutional monarchy. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says the painting depicts the July Revolution, when France had been unstable for almost 50 years, veering between democracy, monarchy, populist tyranny and military dictatorship. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — What the painting says about the hope and cost of revolution, its unfinished background, its hidden later history, and the contingency of liberty

  • ★★★ John says the painting is about all of that: the hope of liberty leading the people, but also fear, as Liberty walks among corpses; the cost of revolution as well as its promise. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says Delacroix wrote of the painting that if he hadn't fought for his country, he would at least paint for her. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ To John it feels like a painting for the French people of that moment, celebrating the audacious hope of revolution while acknowledging the risk of its failure. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John loves the painting's unfinished-looking background, its distant people still unfixed, which reminds him we can't know what history means as we live through it; Delacroix couldn't know more revolutions would follow. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John says the French government bought the painting to hang near Louis-Philippe as a reminder, but his allies found it too radical, so it was hidden in an attic until shown again in 1848 amid a new revolution. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John says the painting entered the Louvre's collection only in 1874, just after the death of Napoleon III, France's last ever monarch. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ John says the painting now looks like a celebration of liberty and democracy's inevitable victory, but there was nothing inevitable about it then or for decades afterward, and there still isn't. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ John says the painting reminds him that revolutions are never easy or simple, even when liberty is leading the people. — 00:03:24

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says tomorrow is Esther Day and asks viewers to register for the Esther Day livestream (8 PM Eastern) featuring Sarah and John. — video description · Esther Day, Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ The description points viewers to a This Star Won't Go Out shirt at the DFTBA store. — video description
  • ★★ In a comment, John argues that if France needed three 'successful' revolutions in 60 years, none were that successful, and that revolutions so often fail to spread power more equitably. — creator comment
  • ★ In a comment, John recommends Sarah's Art Assignment discussion of the painting's symbolic imagery and the political courage required to paint it. — creator comment · The Art Assignment, Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ The description says Liberty Leading the People is one of John's favorite paintings. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: France · July Revolution · Liberty Leading the People · revolution

Also: People: Charles X · Louis Philippe I · Louis XVI · Louis XVIII · Marie Antoinette · Maximilien Robespierre · Napoleon · Napoleon III

Organizations: Louvre

Concepts: constitutional monarchy · democracy

Events: French Revolution · French Revolution of 1848 · Reign of Terror

Memes: Let them eat cake

Only in the description or credits: Esther Day · Eugène Delacroix · Sarah Urist Green · The Art Assignment · This Star Won't Go Out shirt

Also centred on France: God and Grain: The French Revolution, Part I · Headless Monarchy: The French Revolution, Part II · REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution, Part III

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