Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794)

Robespierre was a French lawyer and politician who became one of the most influential figures of the French Revolution.

Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre was born in Arras on 6 May 1758, the son of a lawyer. He was educated in Paris and entered the same profession as his father. He was elected a deputy of the estates-general (a form of parliament, but without real power) that met in May 1789, and subsequently served in the National Constituent Assembly.

Robespierre became increasingly popular for his attacks on the monarchy and his advocacy of democratic reforms. In April 1790, was elected president of the powerful Jacobin political club. After the downfall of the monarchy in August 1792, Robespierre was elected first deputy for Paris to the National Convention. The convention abolished the monarchy, declared France a republic and put the king on trial for treason, all measures strongly supported by Robespierre. The king was executed in January 1793.

In the period after the king's execution, tensions in the convention resulted in a power struggle between the Jacobins and the more moderate Girondins. The Jacobins used the power of the mob to take control and the Girondin leaders were arrested. Control of the country passed to the Committee of Public Safety, of which Robespierre was a member. He rapidly became the dominant force on the committee.

Against a backdrop of the threat of foreign invasion and increasing disorder in the country, the committee began the 'Reign of Terror', ruthlessly eliminating all those considered enemies of the revolution. These included leading revolutionary figures such as Georges Danton.

In May 1794, Robespierre insisted that the National Convention proclaim a new official religion for France - the cult of the Supreme Being. This was based on the thinking of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau of whom Robespierre was a passionate advocate.

The intensification of the 'Reign of Terror' and Robespierre's autocracy made him increasingly unpopular. French military successes served to undermine the justification for such ruthlessness and a conspiracy was formed to overthrow Robespierre. On 27 July 1794, he was arrested after a struggle. The following day Robespierre, wounded from a bullet to the jaw, and 21 of his closest supporters were executed at the guillotine.

NAPOLEON, DIVORCE AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS

HTTP://ARTLARK.ORG/2014/01/10/NAPOLEON-DIVORCE-AND-WOMENS-rights/

POSTED BY ART LARK ON JANUARY 10, 2014 IN HISTORY | 4 COMMENTS

On the 10^th of January 1810, the divorce ceremony of Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Joséphine was performed as a grand social gathering, with each of the parties reading out a statement of devotion to the each other. A year prior to that, after a tense dinner together, Napoleon had announced to Joséphine that he had his mind set on separation. The emperor had long desired a son who would succeed him and continue the Bonaparte dynasty, but Joséphine, a widow six years his senior and already mother-of-two had been unable to provide him with a heir in their fifteen years together. Although their relationship was an unusual power-struggle with mutual distrust and infidelities, it seemed to have run deep and their separation had a heavy impact on both of them.

Allegedly, upon learning of Napoleon’s decision to divorce, the empress suffered a nervous fit and fainted, and had to be carried back to her chambers by her husband and his aide. The day after the divorce, as she wept at Malmaison, Napoleon went to console her and the couple walked hand-in-hand in the rain. Bonaparte’s  name was on Joséphine’s lips when she died in 1814, aged 51 of pneumonia (but her maid said that she died of grief), and her name was uttered by Napoleon on his deathbed in exile on St Helena seven years later. While in exile on Elba, he read about her death in a journal and is said to have locked himself in his bedroom for two days, refusing to see anyone. He claimed to a friend that “I truly loved my Joséphine, but I did not respect her.”( Felix Markham,  Napoleon, 1992).

Whilst for most of us love equals respect, just as the rights of men equal those of women, Napoleon had a different view. If these were indeed his words, they were rather telling of his generalised view of women. Proof of which were the laws of his Napoleonic Code, or The French Civil Code 1800-1820, which caused quite a setback to aspirations of female equality. In “The Wife is Obliged”, Napoleon reaffirmed the legal right of men to control women. For instance, a woman could demand divorce only in case the husband moved his concubine into their common residence, but she could not remarry until after 10 months from the dissolution of their marriage! The Code dictated that married women in particular owed their husband obedience in all life matters, and were forbidden from selling, giving, mortgaging or buying property. Napoleon allegedly proclaimed: “Women ought to obey us. Nature has made women our slaves!” This backlash to women’s rights had consequences throughout Europe. In military campaigns, Napoleon carried the Code throughout Europe, where it served as a model to legislators in countries from Italy to Poland. Within France itself, the Code survived basically unaltered for more than 150 years. Only in 1965 did French wives get the right to work without their husband’s permission. Only in 1970 did husbands forfeit the rights that came with their status as head of the family. In many ways, the Code was the most enduring legacy of the French Revolution.

Napoleon’s divorce from Joséphine was in reality a double annulment and the climax of more than two years of speculation, gossip and negotiation which kept leading European courts and governments concerned with France’s innermost troubles. Napoleon and Joséphine both came under intense pressure to ensure the succession of the Bonaparte dynasty; therefore their union was first dissolved in the Senate and finally annulled by the Diocesan and Metropolitan tribunals. “The events during this period not only cover some of the major preoccupations of Napoleon and the French state – dynasty durability and stability, France’s relationships, both with the major political powers on the continent and with the Catholic Church – but also touch on more social issues – the legal basis of marriage in the 19th century – and some of the more complicated aspects of Canon Law.” (Fondation Napoléon 2008)

Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon To Be Adapted By Steven Spielberg

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mark-hodge/stanley-kubricks-napoleon_b_2807030.html

The news that Steven Spielberg is to produce Stanley Kubrick's infamous unrealised Napoleon film, has been met with trepidation.

Of course, the last time Spielberg attempted such a project, the result was the much maligned A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

But, the Jaws director is looking to side-step such criticisms, and obvious comparisons with his former friend, by adapting the subject matter for television.

Film aficionados will view the finished product with great interest, as the original Kubrick project has built up a mythology all of its own. In fact, the story behind it illustrates the frustration that surrounded the latter half of Kubrick's career and proves once again that even the greatest filmmakers are not immune to market pressures.

Kubrick had started work on the Napoleon film soon after 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). And, when faced with studio resistance the director famously wrote that it would be "the best movie ever made".

Whether this claim was simply bluster, made in retaliation to studio impotence, will of course never be known. While Kubrick obsessively researched the project, a rival Napoleon film, Waterloo, starring Roy Stieger, bombed at the box-office. Waterloo's failure, costing a sizeable $25million in 1970, meant that Kubrick had his budget slashed to around $4million, shelving the film indefinitely.

Kubrick's work was as sporadic as it was brilliant. Indeed, the reason he only made 8-films in the last 40-years of his life was because of his obsessive approach to filmmaking. And, even though his meticulousness meant that his films were often groundbreaking, it ultimately hindered him in the fast moving world of Hollywood.

In 1980, after the critical success of Francis Ford Coppola's subversive Apocalypse Now, Kubrick started preproduction on his own Vietnam film. But, after seven years of painstaking research, he was usurped by a raft of politically charged Vietnam epics, most notably Oliver Stone's semi-autobiographical Platoon which won four Academy Awards.

When Full Metal Jacket was released in 1987, it seemed Kubrick had come too late to the party. But, while the film was commercially underwhelming, it still contained all the technical brilliance that critics had come to expect from one of cinema's great masters.

Throughout the 1980s, Kubrick had developed the idea of a real life Pinocchio film, based on Brian Aldiss's short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. This of course was posthumously adapted by Steven Spielberg, resulting in the terribly uneven A.I.

Any chance of a Napoleon reprisal was put to rest after the box-office disasters of two Christopher Columbus films in 1992. Kubrick then turned his attention to a Holocaust film he had been developing since the 1970s, titled The Aryan Papers, however that to was scrapped after Spielberg disclosed his plans for Schindler's List.

Kubrick ended his career with the misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, dying suddenly that year at the age of 70.

As for Spielberg's intentions to once again adapt a lost Kubrick masterpiece, the uninitiated may smirk, but there is still no questioning his skill as a director. In fact, while Spielberg could have benefited from his colleague's artistic prudence, his powers as a producer and his ability to get projects made are second to none.

Whatever the outcome, fans will always wonder if Kubrick would have made good on his assertion that his historical epic would be the best film ever made. Although, only a director of his lofty standing could get away with such a remark. There has never been another filmmaker, before or since, with the ability to adapt populist genre material so brilliantly to the screen.

"If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed." Stanley Kubrick