by Tom Anderson
The Utilitarian style which Lisieux favoured was influenced by Thouret’s ideas but mostly enacted by architects such as Deneuve and Queneau. As the name implied, the idea behind it was that buildings should have no extraneous decoration, no features that were not strictly necessary, no waste. Lisieux disapproved of imagination in anyone other than himself; it made it harder to adjust reality to the way it should be. Utilitarian architecture mostly used brickwork. Utilitarian buildings were often deliberately designed to be easy to demolish, the intention being that central city planning committees would plan out the entire lifespan of a building over, say, 50 years, and not waste any resources making it last beyond that. There was an emphasis on squares and rectangles and sharp edges.[199] Utilitarian buildings were almost invariably ugly, although occasional examples of more inspired uses of the style existed, most notably L’Aiguille in Paris and many of the old Chappe Optel towers whose network it serviced. Most Utilitarian buildings were either demolished by counter-revolutionaries after the Restoration or decayed out of their own planned obsolescence. Paris, though, which Lisieux had had his hands on for the longest and had always been at the core of his schemes, sustained a lasting mark from the style.
Royal France, cut off from all this, favoured nostalgic Versaillaise combined with strong Orientalist influence as trade funds from the Carnatic kept the statelet afloat, and it was this style which would define the Restoration period…
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From: “From Rembrandt to Reiss: Painting Since the Seventeenth Century” by Dr. A.J. Anderson, (1949)—
…not an exaggeration to say that the two decades of the Watchful Peace are more cherished to the true patron than the five that preceded them… it is here that the sense of loss, of senselessness, of weariness evoked by the bloody conflict of an entire generation lost in sound and fury comes to life upon the canvas.
The period is dominated by the German Explosion, as regions formerly not at the forefront of the art were catapulted into the eye of the connoisseur. A two-part effect is necessary to explain this: firstly and most obviously, the Germanies took the brunt of the ruin and horror of the wars and thus the grief and anger of their people found its expression through art; secondly, the upheavals of the conflict caused many German artists to flee elsewhere. Many southern Germans of the craft came to Hanover or Saxony or Denmark, where they found employment initially doing work as mean as engravings for the ubiquitous propaganda leaflets. As the years passed and the war gave way to the Watchful Peace, however, many such men found themselves able to finally express the passions that the devastation had brought upon them.
Gerhardt Stauch first became a household name thanks to his The Tenth Circle (an allusion to Dante’s nine circles of Hell) in which he portrays via allegory and artistic licence the entirety of the German conflicts, from the Second War of the Polish Succession to the Great Baltic War to the French invasion, the rapacious reign of Lascelles and the Cougnonistes, Ney in Swabia, the formation of the Mittelbund, Boulanger’s attack on Flanders – all of it, all in one enormous oversized painting, exploding with violent colours. Appearing like chaos from a distance, a closer look reveals that each tiny figure is rendered in perfect detail, from Emperor Ferdinand stamping on his crown as his son Francis clutches at his own bare head in disbelief, to John George of Saxony and Frederick William III of Brandenburg strangling each other over an empty treasure chest labelled ‘Poland’ while a group of bloody-coated Frenchmen massacre their own people in the background, to Michael Hiedler shown as a wild barbarian stripped to the waist, bearing a great scimitar and surrounded by the butchered bodies of countless Frenchmen. The enormous painting initially provoked shock and controversy by the way it presented each and every person depicted as a demonic figure with distorted eyes, but this only served to increase its renown. After suffering numerous death threats Stauch eventually fled to the UPSA where he continued his work, though he never matched The Tenth Circle’s height of genius. Nonetheless he became fondly remembered by the Meridians chiefly for his portrait of President-General Mateovarón.
Stauch was only one among many Germans to depict the narrative of the war, but more artists focused on specific incidents. The Death of Cavaignac is a graphic depiction of the end of Fabien Lascelles’ chief bully-boy by Bavarian artist Georg Kruger, which remains famous even among the historically ignorant for the titular figure’s wide, staring eyes filled with horrified realisation as the girl he seeks to rape slashes him with her poisoned needle, his recoil presented as the supine movement of a coward, his fellow rapists mere blurs and shadows around him symbolising the darkness of the Lascelles regime. A line popularised by critic Alan Carmain sums up the impact of the painting on public culture – “those eyes follow you into your nightmares”.
Italian and Spanish artists also depicted the devastations of their countries, but were more restrained by state control. For example, while Miguel Fidalgo is well known for The Cradle Robber, a piece showing the French General Drouet holding a pistol to the head of Philip VII to symbolise his absolute control over Spain (and perhaps to imply his suspected role in the king’s eventual death), it is less well known that originally in the background was a subtle hint to Fidalgo’s opinion of the Portuguese who now exercised equal influence over his country. Where today there is a blank wall in the painting, originally there was the infant who would become Alfonso XII holding a toy to his head as though copying the gun on his father’s. The implication of course was that Peter IV of Portugal was no better than Drouet. The Portuguese authorities caught this and forced Fidalgo to repaint the picture, then kept him under house arrest for a decade afterwards.
Britain also produced many painters who depicted the French invasion of their country, but probably the best-known are by an artist who had already been active many years before, James Constable. His work Thermopylae, showing the suicidal actions of the 52nd West Kent upon the Downs, is thought to be the first to compare the sacrifice of those three hundred to the Spartan battle. Younger artists tended to be subject to more state censorship and produced less memorable work, including many rather vulgarly gory depictions that were used to illustrate many London memorials – the implication obviously being to remind the British people of what they had suffered, what Churchill had saved them from, and what they might suffer again if they thought to question his rule…
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From: “Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century” by Ann Woodward (1980)—
…undoubtedly the best expression of the Watchful Peace period’s attempt to place the incidents of the last two decades into context was Global Revolution, the masterpiece of Anthony Beaumarchaise. Beaumarchaise had lived through the entirety of the Revolutionary regimes in Paris, observing much of Lisieux’s schemes along the way. The title is a pun, as the work depicts both the world physically revolving and also the revolution Lisieux sought to bring to it. Rather than going with the Neoclassicist simplicity of much of his contemporaries, Beaumarchaise used intricate design and colour to get across his ideas. The globe of the world, five feet across, is half shown in the typically complex and decorative style of eighteenth-century maps, while the other half consists of a simple gridwork of black and white squares, filled in to vaguely suggest a squosaiced[200] version of the map of the world – a clear reference to Thouret’s perfectly square départments and the folk belief that Lisieux planned to physically change the world to be so neatly arranged.
Impressive as the globe is, it is but the pedestal for the statue of Lisieux himself. L’Administrateur is presented as human rather than demonic, yet his eyes are fixed with inhuman intent upon the pile of papers worked beautifully in marble that sits before him, ignoring the world he is changing, refusing to set eyes upon it until it has completely changed to the stark, hard-edged, black and white version he seeks to make. One hand goes to his side to clutch tightly at the belt of his breeches – which is often interpreted as an uncharacteristically vulgar attack suggesting Lisieux is breaking wind upon the
world, but a more likely interpretation is that it represents Lisieux’s rejection and betrayal of the Sans-Culottes by showing him firmly holding on to his own trousers.
The work is impressive from the front, but one only realises its true meaning from the back, where Lisieux’s head and back end in an abrupt flat plane rather than competing themselves. Originally the sculpture was painted by Beaumarchaise’s friend Pierre Gaudin to resemble the opposing wall of the Nouvelle Salon,[201] meaning that if it was carefully aligned, Lisieux would seem to become invisible, obviously evoking his own mysterious disappearance. However since the sculpture was damaged in the bombing of 1962 this was lost and instead we are now presented by the blank marble itself. In a way this is even more thought-provoking, as one is challenged by that blankness to try and explain just what went on in the head of L’Inhumaine…
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From: “Music in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” by Paul van der Groot (1978, English translation 1981)—
Under Lisieux the Revolutionary French cared little for music, with the rousing songs of the early Republic suppressed as supposedly being triggers for emotional excess. While they were maintained by Hoche’s Italy and to a lesser extent Ney’s Swabia and Lascelles’ Bavaria, the Jacobins left little direct musical legacy. However, the conflicts they unleashed inspired much indirectly. Friedrich Wilhelm Bach, Michel Auteil, Girolamo Maffei, Andrew Philips, many composers that remain household names drew their inspiration from the blood and fire and the clash of ideas that dominated Europe in this time.
Nonetheless, in hindsight among these composers one man stood out, one man whose remembrance of the Jacobin Wars traced a thread to the start of the next round of conflict, highlighting how the Popular Wars were sparked by disillusionment over how the Jacobin Wars had ended. That man was, of course, Wenzel Druschetzky, whose great symphonies celebrated the Bohemian resistance to the Cougnonistes and the betrayal of the Hapsburg-executed Graf Radetzky von Radetz. He also wrote operas reviving both Czech and Silesian German ancestral traditions and legends to generate more of a common Bohemian identity, standing apart from the Austrians. Druschetzky was subject to persecution by the Hapsburg authorities and eventually had to flee into Saxony, where his music would help inspire part of the cause of the next round of European warfare…
Chapter #94: In America
“Do we truly look to the mother country out of old loyalties, out of Christian compassion for the difficulties she faces – or do we look simply to avoid having to look at ourselves and our own problems?”
- The Rt. Hon. Matthew Quincy MCP IPC, 1814 speech
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From: “A Socio-Political History of North America” by Professor Andrew Faulkener (Yale University Press, 1977)—
After Lord Hamilton’s victory in the election of 1805, the Empire was ruled by the Patriots for nine years. Hamilton won a victory with an increased majority in 1809[202] – unsurprising due to the war fervour and public outrage over both the Cherry Massacre and the French invasion of Britain. After the end of the war, however, questions arose as to whether the Patriots would be so successful in the next election. Hamilton was still thought of a war leader and there was speculation about whether he would be suited to the peace. The opposition Constitutionalists were not in a good position to challenge, however; after James Monroe stood down as leader in 1807, the leadership was eventually taken by default by Wade Hampton. Hampton was a prominent Carolinian politician who had been a minor war hero in the Second Platinean War, but what superficially looked like a positive in fact seriously undermined the party. Hampton still had strong sympathies with the Meridian people thanks to his experiences fighting by their side during the war, and his elder statesman status (by American standards then – he was 55 when he became leader) meant he tended to turn a curmudgeonly deaf ear to those who warned that voicing such sentiments in public would not be a good idea. The American people still held a grudge over the Cherry Massacre and the ensuing Third Platinean War, and while Hampton’s party still enjoyed considerable popularity the man himself did not. Nonetheless, no other Constitutionalist leaders dared unseat him; within the party society, he had strong backing from other Carolinian planters as well as those from Virginia. Hampton was the poster boy for the southern aristocracy, as well as those taking the pro- side in what was becoming the elephant in the room of American politics: slavery. Hampton owned over a thousand slaves on various plantations, having expanded his family’s existing fortunes through several astute land purchases.
Lord Hamilton suffered a minor heart attack in September 1811; ironically the news reached Africa mere days after his son Philip had set off in search of the legendary city of Timbuctoo. Although the Lord President made a full recovery, he decided to retire from frontline politics in view of the fact that his doctors advice regarding the strain his work might have put on his heart. The Patriots chose their Minister for Domestic Regiments,[203] Augustus Seymour of New York, to be his replacement. The Lord Deputy, the Earl of Exmouth, approved him with Crown authority, but Seymour then promptly asked Exmouth to dissolve Parliament and call an early election. He wanted to ensure he was governing on his own mandate rather than that inherited from Hamilton, and also saw an opportunity to strike while the Constitutionalists were having problems with Wade Hampton’s Meridianophile beliefs.
Despite the divided Constitutionalists, the Patriots had been long enough in power that their majority was reduced to the smallest possible, just one MCP. However this was more secure than it may at first seem, as there were also seven members of the American Radical Party in Parliament who would more often vote with the Patriots than against them, and were strongly antagonised by the way that the planter aristocracy was taking over the Constitutionalist Party. Three of the Radical MCPs were former Constitutionalists themselves, dating from the time when the party was seen primarily as a vehicle for those supporting greater independence from Britain. They were angered by the way that, given how party interests were falling, it now seemed impossible for a man to both oppose slavery and yet be in favour of such a greater devolution of power. This was particularly crucial given the new Marleburgensian regime in Britain and the rumours that Churchill endorsed the use of (white) prisoner slave labour and had recalled Britain’s anti-slave trade patrols. It is debatable in fact whether this truly meant Churchill was in favour of slavery as an institution – his writings suggest he simply had no opinion on the subject, and the recall of the patrols is more likely to be a simple cost-cutting measure and a reflection on the idea that Britain had no money or men to spare for such high-minded moral crusades when her own people were starving. Nonetheless, the perception presented in ARP election propaganda was that ‘you can either stick with aristocratic and pro-slavery Churchill with the Patriots, or turn to our own aristocratic slave-holders with the Constitutionalists’. It is small wonder that 1811 was the Radicals’ best election result of the period.
To their credit, the Constitutionalist leadership did recognise the causes of their loss, and at this point the planters could be overcome long enough to unseat Wade Hampton. The Carolinian resigned as an MCP and, after toying with the idea of reinventing himself in Carolinian confederal-level politics, instead returned to his plantations and speculations, dying in 1832 as the richest man in the Empire.[204] Ironically, in the mid to late 1810s his foreign policy views suddenly became fashionable again, as Meridian Ambassador Roberto Mateovarón helped repair relations between the opposite ends of the Novamund. The retired Hampton would often invite Mateovarón to his mansion, Santee House in Charleston. Mateovarón had a profound effect on Hampton and, although the anti-slavery Meridian never convinced Hampton to change his views on the subject, he did introduce him to high culture; in his later years Hampton became a patron of the arts, paying for the construction of the Hampton Opera House in Charleston and the Grand Theatre in Raleigh. He also freed about one-fifth of his slaves upon his death, mostly his house-servants; many of these were promptly re-emp
loyed as freedmen by his heir, Wade Jr. It was a moment of hope for abolitionists which would be cruelly dashed later.
To return to the Constitutionalist Party, the senior party members realised that nominating southern planters was not gaining them great appeal elsewhere. Several strategies over the next few years would be attempted to address this. For the present, it was decided that slaveholders would vote Constitutionalist even if the party appointed Jean de Lisieux to be their leader, and therefore they could afford to be adventurous in order to gain appeal elsewhere. To that end, the party appointed Matthew Quincy, a New Englander from Massachusetts, as their leader. Quincy was from a legal background and had strong beliefs in the rights of the individual citizen; while he himself did not personally support slavery, he believed that the onus of whether it was morally repugnant or not should fall on each slaveholder (slaves themselves, of course, were not citizens). Quincy was strongly Anti-Papist due to the fact that his father had been killed by Canajun Catholic rebels during the Third Platinean War while he had been serving in the New England militia in Canada. This prejudice ran well in both his native New England and in the southern Confederations, particularly Carolina (ironically, given later events), which had its own problems with Catholics in the Floridas, Cuba and Hispaniola. Quincy famously dismissed the American Radical Party as “a popish plot to destroy our government and leave us open to attack by hostile powers”, by which he clearly meant the Empire of New Spain and the French in Louisiana (promoted to a Grand Duchy in 1815, q.v.). His views on the UPSA were more noncommittal, thanks to a combination of Mateovarón’s efforts and the country’s loud Jansenism.