Well, the 4th of July is upon us like the black smoke of ten thousand revolutionary war muskets and ringing ears. The barbecues are polished, ready to ignite and grill enough meat to crush a car; main street is lined with the stars and stripes. The sound of a beer can opening resounds across the country as families everywhere get ready kick back, duke it out, or whatever else folks do to celebrate Independence day. What does it all mean? It means that Bastille Day is around the corner…
Bastille day or Fête Nationale, as it’s called in France, celebrates the overthrow of the monarchy; on July 14th, 1789, the people of Paris storm 232 Rue Saint-Antoine, the Bastille Saint-Antoine, a very old castle, built in the late 14th century. For 100 years it has been used to imprison political, religious, and intellectual prisoners; but when it is stormed by the people of Paris at 1:30 p.m. on that summer afternoon, there are only seven prisoners there and the angry mob isn’t so interested in them. The objective of storming the Bastille is, essentially, to get at the stores of ammunition and gun powder. The Bastille falls by 5:30 that evening. Close to one hundred dead; only one of whom is a defender of the Bastille, it’s governor, Bernard-René de Launay, who’d actually been born inside the castle years before; after he surrenders the Bastille, he is torn to pieces outside the Hotel de Ville and his head is sawn off and put on a pike. “Assez! Laissez-moi mourir!” he says before his execution by the mob.
Lettres de Cachet: these were letters signed by the king and one of his ministers and sealed with the royal seal (cachet). There was no trial– if one of these letters decreed it, you could be flushed down a toilet in the Bastille without further argument. The neo-conservatives would like to ressurect this method of judgement and have, at times, been successful.
To believe the inhabitants of the earth no longer need violence and war in their power plays. Governments and revolutionaries both have exhibited the ability to forward their causes non-violently for millennia– “DIOCLETIAN, 37th after Augustus, thought: more if we/ tax ‘em/ and don’t annihilate.” (Ezra Pound, Canto 96); from the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not resist an evildoer. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left.…Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.…You shall be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” There are those of you who will, without even trying, be quick to point out the long history of violence committed in the name of Christ, yet we know there is a schism between the founder and the followers. For the last 2000 years, at least, the concept of non-violence has existed on both sides of the eternal struggle between those with and those without. The United States has long known how to fatten its citizenry and let them be the dictators of themselves; and those of us who are not satisfied with this state of affairs know there are better ways to go about freeing ourselves and our brothers and sisters from tyranny, without ripping the legs off of Donald Rumsfield or the vice president and parading them through the streets. What both poles suffer from is historical momentum, a kind of spiritual inertia, that afflicts the collective human spirit: we are used to doing it this way, why change?
In this light, I take the call to arms in La Marseillaise as a call to arm ourselves with the strength it takes to overthrow that which we are dissatisfied, if that is our want or need, non-violently. Perhaps, it is the collective abandonment of the war impulse that will restore and unify the powers of body, mind, and spirit that are our birth right, but that all the blood in world will only stain.
La Marseillaise by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts
To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows
What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!
What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny
Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé*
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers’ wombs
We too shall enlist
When our elders’ time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them
Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!
*Bouillé is the last name of a brutal French general
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