Image Credit: Exécution de Marie Antoinette le 16 octobre 1793
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“You won’t believe how unpleasant he is to be with.” Andrew unloads.
“He thinks that he is the only one working, the only one competent.”
“Maybe he is a hard worker.” I absently reply, poking at the remains of what was a rack of lamb.
“But that is just it. He doesn’t work. He spends all his time arguing with clients, as to why their request is stupid; then he yells at the secretary for daring to assign him work.” Andrew is clearly confounded.
“Just the other day, he gave a mock Nazi salute to his project manager for some perceived slight.”
“Well, it is surely in jest . . .”
“No, you don’t understand. The project manager happens to be German, He almost was fired for his stupid stunt.” Andrew is exasperated.
“Wow. He must have nine lives like a cat.”
“Or something. He is alway quoting Jefferson or Franklin about tree of liberty and blood of tyrants.” Andrew flings a piece of tomato in my direction in his animated gesture.
“Oh. He is a reformer . . . “
Musings of Lazare Carnot, 1796
Gazing upon the Seine from his sumptuous apartment in Palais Bourbon, Carnot breathed the contented sign of a man who has not only survived the lethal upheavals of the Revolution (was there any other?) but ascended to the highest position of power within the Eternal Republic of the French People. And why shouldn’t he occupy this once royal summer palace of the dethroned (and decapitated) Bourbon monarchy as his primary office and residence? It was his decisive vote that offed the mediocre blacksmith’s head, birthing the glorious era of the true Enlightenment, freeing mankind from the tyranny of superstition, ignorance, and absolutism. It was he, Lazare Carnot, who saved the Republic from her intractable enemies, those anachronisms of the Dark Ages, with perspicacity, resolve, and organization. It was Lazare Carnot’s intuition and ingenuity in all things military that led the armée révolutionnaire française to repeated victory across Europe. He was the people’s beloved Organizer of Victory; if he were any lesser man, he would have seized absolute power for himself and his progeny.
Lazare Carnot, however, was not some petty thug drunk on too much power like Georges Jacques Danton, or some political prostitute in the vein of Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (the so-called Anacreon Of The Guillotine), or that self-absorbed clodhopper Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore de Robespierre. Carnot was ever the servant of the people, the stoic philosopher Republican along the line of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Marcus Portius Cato, the exceptional executor of the people’s will widely praised for his humbility. No, he was not like the parvenue peasants grasping at that which was beyond their reach, nor was he like the odious demagogues clawing for public acclaim and obsequious adulation. He was a high-born noble, who renounced his luxurious comforts and guaranteed security, in the service of a higher calling: liberté, égalité, fraternité. Did not the wise Rabbi of Nazareth advise men to humble themselves, rather than bicker over positions and prestige?
Despite his rationalism, his childhood instructions in superstition still crept into his thoughts at times. Carnot wistfully reminisced his teenage years at Compagnie des Prêtres de Saint-Sulpice, where his nascent talent for philosophy was nurtured to full bloom by the superstitious monks. It was there that he met the Marquis de Nolay, who sponsored his entrance and rise in the military profession. Carnot was a professional, not some washed-out, in-bred, disappointment looking for a sinecure to impress the whores at court; his commission was based on ability, diligence, experience, merit. His purpose was not to impress pampered Jezebels, but to defend France from the ghouls of anachronism that threatened to drag his beloved France back into the era of superstition, ignorance, and fantasy. He was a man of the Enlightenment who relied on logic and observation, not some ignorant boor mired in mysticism and prophesy. He, Lazare Carnot, will cure France of this plague of Christian shibboleth with universal, compulsory education. He shall be the Light of the World. Those whom he will lead, drag if he must, shall have the light of life. For he so loved the world, that he, Carnot, gave his one and only life, in her service.
Not all agreed with history, of course. The deluded fools of the so-called triumvirate glossed over his accomplishments, as if the fools thought that they inherited this perfect Republic from God! It was Lazare Carnot’s indefatigable industry and unparalleled vision that procured for the Directoire this stable, perfect government “of the people, for the people,” as his old friend Ben would oft quip during his time at Mézières School of Engineering. He smiled a wry smile at the recollection of Ben Franklin; old Ben himself did fairly well for his country.
Carnot was still in charge of the military, with which he shall lead his government and his people into the new age, the triumvirs be damned! It was nearly time for his scheduled meeting with his young protege. He was a remarkable young man, with some gift for organization and tactical intuition. With his mentorship, he shall lead armée révolutionnaire française to victory in Italy. The taint of his rumored association with the unfortunate Robespierre gave the Directoire the leverage it needed to curb the ambition of this upstart general. Carnot’s patronage will guarantee his safety and ensure his loyalty to his patron. Should he fail in Italy, well . . . with your shield or on it, as the Greeks say. It is somewhat poetic that one Napoleon Bonaparte, of a minor Corsican nobility, will lead the French army in Italy. The Genoese will venerate the day they sold Corsica to King Louis XV; the glorious Revolution will drag their petty merchant “republic” into the 18th century, under the benevolent patronage of the Directoire.
Of course, the Revolutionary zeal must be tempered with rational realism. The fools of the “triumvirate” would have us engage on a million fronts without a single ounce, no milliliter, of strategic consideration. They fail to understand that peace, as well as war, can be a tool of the Revolution. If the fools had the faith the size of a mustard seed, in the inevitability of the Revolution, they would move mountains! Europe will be ours eventually, for the wheel of the Revolution will crush all obstacles, until all the world enters the Golden Age.
“Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers,” so declared Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, likely after the British victory in the siege of Bastia. An ironic statement, considering the Revolutionaries of France would be more in character with the devious merchants who peddle their bill of goods. In the annals of history, the French Revolution stands as the monumental scam perpetrated upon the entirety of humanity. Whereas the regimes prior to the Revolution were proscribed by their adherence to elaborate rituals, traditions, and religious sentiment reaching back to the dawn of humanity for legitimacy, the Revolutionary France declared her legitimacy with simple enumeration of arbitrary entitlements: the déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen.
The Papacy in the 16th century had to construct and establish rigorous theological and philosophical edifice, upon which to peddle her Indulgences. The Revolution merely voted a wish list into existence and liquidated any who dared question its fundamental principles. In return for these worthless pamphlets, the French peasantry was gifted with the privilege of being exploited, raped, and executed. Carnot’s levée en masse further granted the French the ineffable honor of perishing in the foreign swamps, for the glorious ambition of a few literate men, over arbitrary lines on a map. Even at the height of the mad King Louis XIV, didn't the French die in such numbers in mud-soaked trenches, as they did during the glorious Revolutionary, and later Napoleonic, Wars.
What of the liberty of the mind and speech as enumerated in Article 10 and 11 of the incredible declaration of rights of man? Counter-revolutionary thought crimes of the Republic, ensured that these articles remain as worthless as the paper, upon which they were printed. If a man or a woman can be executed for too fervent of a cheer, too dispassionate in demeanor, too frequent in public gathering, too isolated in public discourse, etc. then what opinion or thought would any Frenchmen dare express regarding the demigods of the Revolution? Even at the height of the Inquisition during the Huguenot persecution, were the French so neutered as in the mind-frozen hell of the Reign of Terror, when within a span of a single year, over 16,000 gained liberty from life at the alter of la Bécane.
The enlightened Directoire, who so benevolently governed France for four miserable years, is considered by some historians as unparalleled in its corruption, lawlessness, and social anarchy. Even the worst excesses of Robert Mugabe’s misgoverned Zimbabwe would seem as a model of efficiency and organization compared with the incompetence of the Directoire. When the system imploded, France was under the governance at the whim of a single man, Napoleon Bonaparte, who crowned himself “emperor” and ruled with obtuse egotism that rivaled that of another absolutist madman, the Sun King himself. After ten years mired in an orgy of blood, the French were back exactly where they began in their hapless journey into political and social reform.
There is a story, older than the written word, about a fox, a badger, and a group of mosquitoes. A badger encounters a fox, covered in mosquitoes, and generously offers to chase away the parasites. The fox politely declines the badgers magnanimous gesture, enlightening him that the current group of mosquitoes are fat and content with his blood. Should he chase away the current complacent group, a starved group of mosquitoes will eventually surround him and suck him dry. So it is with every “reformer” throughout man’s misbegotten history, creating worse problems and situations for humanity with their inept blunders.
It is a peculiar individual who diagnoses himself a “reformer.” What singular egotism, ignorance, and arrogance to declare that he, and he alone, has the wisdom to surpass the collective sum of humanity’s experience and understanding! Such delusion of grandeur to envision himself towering above even the Creator to declare “novel” solutions to man’s intractable plights and questions! Nihil novo sub sole. Usually, like the esteemed Carnot, reformers are experts; that is, they possess immeasurable amount of information about a very infinitesimal area in the common sum of human knowledge. Having mastered their infinitesimal subject matter, they imagine themselves possessing wisdom, wreaking havoc across space and time of human existence.
It is eminently preferable to live on one’s knees, then to die. To borrow and adapt from Marcus Tullius Cicero, one man’s greed for wealth and security, the public can amply satisfy, but the cost of reform is too much to bear, even with all the wealth in the world.