History Mark Twain on the French Revolution

[Lord Sovereign]

"There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."

With this quote in mind, and as I understand it he is considered the father of American literature by some, is Mark Twain an idiot? Because, pardon me, but this is a child's understanding of history and the horrors of the French Revolution.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Twain's view seems to be motivated by the Enlightenment (and onward) misconception of the Middle Ages as this unspeakably, unceasingly horrible time period where absolutely nothing good happened between ~476 and ~1453: that 99% of society were oppressed peasants gnashing their teeth as their overlords whipped them with their own spines to motivate them only to then steal 105% of their produce at swordpoint, the kings & nobles were tyrannical parasitic despots rather than a social class composed of actual people with actual functions and actual (comprehensible) interests, and the Church did nothing but encourage holy wars in-between destroying knowledge and drinking their flocks' tears (the Peace of God, monastic preservation of otherwise-lost history and revolution of charity, what's all that?)

The French Revolutionary Wars and Terror are far better compared to the absolute worst of medieval conflicts than, say, the Hundred Years' War or the Guelph-Ghibelline conflicts, which were fought over a longer period of time but didn't kill nearly as many people (vastly more people died from the Black Death than actual fighting & raiding in the HYW, which also had several years-long breaks between the fighting). I'm talking something on the scale of the Mongol invasions in terms of sheer destructiveness and upheaval.

Twain's view is, in other words, the kind of Whig '''''history''''', written by dudes huffing their ideology's farts to the point that it impaired their judgment, which inspired and is perpetuated by works like ASOIAF. Sure it might make for an interesting story or pithy speech, but not anything that should be advertised as realistic - as GRRM continues to do for his unfinished book series despite the growing number of blogs & threads slamming his historical inaccuracies online, to the point where I've seen growth in the number of people who realize the truth that the much more conservative Tolkien handled his 'non-obviously-European bad guy' peoples vastly more respectfully and wrote a more realistic medieval society than the avowedly progressive Martin. And it's a damn good thing that our knowledge of the period has evolved so much from Twain's time that revisionist scholars are now credibly pushing back against the very usage of the term 'dark ages', since it originally didn't even mean that the Early Middle Ages were some pit of despotic horrors but merely that we didn't have enough sources to figure out what happened then.

 

[Bear Ribs]

That excerpt is from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Now that story has actually done a lot of damage to people's understanding of history, because way too many idiots through Twain's slapstick comedy was actually real and, f'rex, knights in full plate were so heavy they practically had to be lowered onto their horses by cranes, couldn't see more than a 2 degree cone in front of them, and could barely move their bodies so they were reliant on the other guy walking into their swords. During an early joust in the story nearly the entire time is taken up by the knights trying to actually figure out where the other is and get themselves aimed in that direction.

The story is pretty much built as the prototype of Isekai stories where the hero's cheat power is that he had vast modern (to Twain) engineering, social, and medical knowledge. Medieval people were also played up as staggeringly gullible and idiotic (Merlin was a complete charlatan who relied entirely on the fact that nobody questioned anything he said, so he could, f'rex, prophesy about things that nobody present could check and be believed, and when Merlin told a knight he'd made him invisible the knight absolutely believe it was true even through everybody could see him), and their society unspeakably wretched and stupid entirely so the Connecticut Yankee could fix everything and show how superior he was.

You should not take anything from that book as actually representative of Twain's beliefs on reality as it was pretty much written as burlesque satire.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Wasn't A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court intended as a response to works which romanticized the Middle Ages, ex. Walter Scott's writings? (these were in turn a backlash to the Enlightenment works which set up the narrative that the Middle Ages were an unrelentingly bad time) Twain himself was, AFAIK, a staunch progressive - huge supporter of labor unions, overtly sympathetic to revolutionary causes of all stripes, rather irreverent, etc.

Seems quite likely to me that he was speaking from the heart in this excerpt, as I doubt he was aiming to bash his own views while leaving the (Whig history) version of medieval history he was lampooning throughout the rest of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court untouched in this instance. It'd certainly be consistent with his self-identification as a 'Sansculotte' (the radical urban mob of Paris, basically the French predecessor to the Maoist Red Guards) and a 'Marat' (an especially bloodthirsty radical leader who engineered the September Massacres) rather than a 'Girondin' (moderate) in his view of the French Revolution.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Wasn't A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court intended as a response to works which romanticized the Middle Ages, ex. Walter Scott's writings? (these were in turn a backlash to the Enlightenment works which set up the narrative that the Middle Ages were an unrelentingly bad time) Twain himself was, AFAIK, a staunch progressive - huge supporter of labor unions, overtly sympathetic to revolutionary causes of all stripes, rather irreverent, etc.

Seems quite likely to me that he was speaking from the heart in this excerpt, as I doubt he was aiming to bash his own views while leaving the (Whig history) version of medieval history he was lampooning throughout the rest of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court untouched in this instance. It'd certainly be consistent with his self-identification as a 'Sansculotte' (the radical urban mob of Paris, basically the French predecessor to the Maoist Red Guards) and a 'Marat' (an especially bloodthirsty radical leader who engineered the September Massacres) rather than a 'Girondin' (moderate) in his view of the French Revolution.

Okay, have you actually read the story? You do realize that by the end of Connecticut Yankee the character who makes that statement is proven wrong about everything, all their accomplishments are destroyed, and they and their whole family are killed?

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Okay, have you actually read the story? You do realize that by the end of Connecticut Yankee the character who makes that statement is proven wrong about everything, all their accomplishments are destroyed, and they and their whole family are killed?

Well, thanks for the context. It's weird how that quote gets trotted out to justify the horrors of the French Revolution.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Okay, have you actually read the story? You do realize that by the end of Connecticut Yankee the character who makes that statement is proven wrong about everything, all their accomplishments are destroyed, and they and their whole family are killed?

And? Hank Morgan remains the protagonist, indeed is clearly intended the hero, of Twain's work to the end. He fails in revolutionizing Britain, but Twain doesn't at all hide that we should be sympathizing with him as he machine-guns knights, tries to industrialize Britain and shows up the Church (depicted pretty consistently as an evil force of superstition and obscurantism even when they aren't openly sending thousands of knights Hank's way) throughout the book with his 19th-century knowledge. Let's not forget the context of the author himself, who makes it clear with statements like,

When I finished Carlyle’s French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently — being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment … and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat.

That maybe, his own thoughts and those of his character in this quoted passage might just be in alignment? That Hank fails in the end doesn't mean he's wrong or the bad guy (unless you're attempting a right-wing interpretation of Connecticut Yankee which, given that Twain was a staunch progressive & technophile in life who depicted medieval British society & the Catholic Church in a thoroughly unflattering light in this particular work, I very much doubt was something he intended). Wouldn't be the first 'tragic hero who's right but is screwed because he's out of his depth, not that that should take away from the righteousness of his points' in literary history.

Now maybe it's because English still isn't my first language after all my years living in a Western country (part of which did involve reading some of Twain's books in school, but that was an age ago), but I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to argue here - is it that Mark Twain was actually a conservative satirizing liberal attitudes in Connecticut Yankee, or that he can't try to slip actual points into his comedic works? Because respectively I think it's pretty clearly the other way around, and that it is a satire doesn't mean Twain never gets serious in it ever.

We may not be able to bring Twain himself back from the dead so we can ask him what he was really thinking when he wrote that passage, but given what else we can know about his political leanings and what the turn-of-the-century progressives thought about the medieval period, I'd think the odds of him saying something along the lines of 'of course I meant that' are rather higher than 'obviously I wasn't being serious, only an idiot would think the French Revolution was justified and an improvement over the Middle Ages'. Certainly the latter isn't the interpretation most of the people I've seen bring the passage up online (in fact all of them, I've only ever seen Internet leftists of various stripes bring this up when discussing 'red' vs. 'white' atrocities) took away from Twain.

 

[Bear Ribs]

And? Hank Morgan remains the protagonist, indeed is clearly intended the hero, of Twain's work to the end. He fails in revolutionizing Britain, but Twain doesn't at all hide that we should be sympathizing with him as he machine-guns knights, tries to industrialize Britain and shows up the Church (depicted pretty consistently as an evil force of superstition and obscurantism even when they aren't openly sending thousands of knights Hank's way) throughout the book with his 19th-century knowledge. Let's not forget the context of the author himself, who makes it clear with statements like,

That maybe, his own thoughts and those of his character in this quoted passage might just be in alignment? That Hank fails in the end doesn't mean he's wrong or the bad guy (unless you're attempting a right-wing interpretation of Connecticut Yankee which, given that Twain was a staunch progressive & technophile in life who depicted medieval British society & the Catholic Church in a thoroughly unflattering light in this particular work, I very much doubt was something he intended). Wouldn't be the first 'tragic hero who's right but is screwed because he's out of his depth, not that that should take away from the righteousness of his points' in literary history.

Now maybe it's because English still isn't my first language after all my years living in a Western country (part of which did involve reading some of Twain's books in school, but that was an age ago), but I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to argue here - is it that Mark Twain was actually a conservative satirizing liberal attitudes in Connecticut Yankee, or that he can't try to slip actual points into his comedic works? Because respectively I think it's pretty clearly the other way around, and that it is a satire doesn't mean Twain never gets serious in it ever.

We may not be able to bring Twain himself back from the dead so we can ask him what he was really thinking when he wrote that passage, but given what else we can know about his political leanings and what the turn-of-the-century progressives thought about the medieval period, I'd think the odds of him saying something along the lines of 'of course I meant that' are rather higher than 'obviously I wasn't being serious, only an idiot would think the French Revolution was justified and an improvement over the Middle Ages'. Certainly the latter isn't the interpretation most of the people I've seen bring the passage up online (in fact all of them, I've only ever seen Internet leftists of various stripes bring this up when discussing 'red' vs. 'white' atrocities) took away from Twain.

Author avatar/political mouthpieces don't crash and burn the way Hank does. The problem with your position is that we need to presume that this passage was clearly serious and intended when the entire rest of the book is various stripes of slapstick comedy and satire. Twain lampooned everything.

If you want to pull out other things he's written you need to look at more than just this one passage and see some of his other quotes and writings.

Was Twain overly fond of the modern French? His thoroughly spoofing them via comedy and satire in The Recent Grand French Duel suggests not. When it was convenient for a laugh he was just as prone to sporking the post-revolution French society. Also it's a hilarious story and worth a read.

Twain in general despised politics but lets look at a few quotes where he touched on them:

To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything a congressman can.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

Twain wasn't especially fond of the French Revolution, his politics were more of an anarchist bent and he hated The Man most of all. He approved of the French Revolution because it tore down The Man and approved of most other revolutions for the same reason. Twain believed that power corrupted and thus leaders needed to be regularly removed and political parties rotated so that the relatively less corrupted could have a turn.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Author avatar/political mouthpieces don't crash and burn the way Hank does. The problem with your position is that we need to presume that this passage was clearly serious and intended when the entire rest of the book is various stripes of slapstick comedy and satire. Twain lampooned everything.

If you want to pull out other things he's written you need to look at more than just this one passage and see some of his other quotes and writings.

Was Twain overly fond of the modern French? His thoroughly spoofing them via comedy and satire in The Recent Grand French Duel suggests not. When it was convenient for a laugh he was just as prone to sporking the post-revolution French society. Also it's a hilarious story and worth a read.

Twain in general despised politics but lets look at a few quotes where he touched on them:

To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything a congressman can.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

Twain wasn't especially fond of the French Revolution, his politics were more of an anarchist bent and he hated The Man most of all. He approved of the French Revolution because it tore down The Man and approved of most other revolutions for the same reason. Twain believed that power corrupted and thus leaders needed to be regularly removed and political parties rotated so that the relatively less corrupted could have a turn.

You know what, you've made good points and I'll concede the argument. (Not being sarcastic, that's why I gave you a Like just now) As I said in my last post my initial position was colored by all the other times I've seen the original 'Two Revolutions' excerpt online, exclusively coming from the keyboards of leftists (universally of an anarchist or tankie stripe) justifying the atrocities of 'their guys', of whom the ever-execrable Ta-Nehisi Coates was the highest-profile, and in light of what you've said I suppose it was a much darker coloring than Twain fairly deserves.