Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen, 26 août 1789
Les représentants du peuple français, constitués en Assemblée nationale, considérant que l'ignorance, l'oubli ou le mépris des droits de l'homme sont les seules causes des malheurs publics et de la corruption des gouvernements, ont résolu d'exposer, dans une déclaration solennelle, les droits naturels, inaliénables et sacrés de l'homme, afin que cette déclaration, constamment présente à tous les membres du corps social, leur rappelle sans cesse leurs droits et leurs devoirs ; afin que les actes du pouvoir législatif et ceux du pouvoir exécutif, pouvant être à chaque instant comparés avec le but de toute institution politique, en soient plus respectés ; afin que les réclamations des citoyens, fondées désormais sur des principes simples et incontestables, tournent toujours au maintien de la Constitution et au bonheur de tous.
Article 1 - Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits. Les
distinctions sociales ne peuvent être fondées que sur l'utilité
commune.
Article 2 - Le but de toute association politique est la
conservation des droits naturels et imprescriptibles de l'homme. Ces
droits sont la liberté, la propriété, la sûreté et la résistance à
l'oppression.
Article 3 - Le principe de toute souveraineté réside
essentiellement dans la Nation. Nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer
d'autorité qui n'en émane expressément.
Article 4 - La liberté consiste à pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne
nuit pas à autrui : ainsi, l'exercice des droits naturels de chaque homme
n'a de bornes que celles qui assurent aux autres membres de la société
la jouissance de ces mêmes droits. Ces bornes ne peuvent être déterminées
que par la loi.
Article 5 - La loi n'a le droit de défendre que les actions
nuisibles à la société. Tout ce qui n'est pas défendu par la loi ne
peut être empêché, et nul ne peut être contraint à faire ce qu'elle
n'ordonne pas.
Article 6 - La loi est l'expression de la volonté générale. Tous
les citoyens ont droit de concourir personnellement ou par leurs représentants
à sa formation. Elle doit être la même pour tous, soit qu'elle protège,
soit qu'elle punisse. Tous les citoyens, étant égaux à ces yeux, sont
également admissibles à toutes dignités, places et emplois publics,
selon leur capacité et sans autre distinction que celle de leurs vertus
et de leurs talents.
Article 7 - Nul homme ne peut être accusé, arrêté ou détenu
que dans les cas déterminés par la loi et selon les formes qu'elle a
prescrites. Ceux qui sollicitent, expédient, exécutent ou font exécuter
des ordres arbitraires doivent être punis ; mais tout citoyen appelé ou
saisi en vertu de la loi doit obéir à l'instant ; il se rend coupable
par la résistance.
Article 8 - La loi ne doit établir que des peines strictement et
évidemment nécessaires, et nul ne peut être puni qu'en vertu d'une loi
établie et promulguée antérieurement au délit, et légalement
appliquée.
Article 9 - Tout homme étant présumé innocent jusqu'à ce qu'il
ait été déclaré coupable, s'il est jugé indispensable de l'arrêter,
toute rigueur qui ne serait pas nécessaire pour s'assurer de sa personne
doit être sévèrement réprimée par la loi.
Article 10 - Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, mêmes
religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l'ordre public
établi par la loi.
Article 11 - La libre communication des pensées et des opinions
est un des droits les plus précieux de l'homme ; tout citoyen peut donc
parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l'abus de cette
liberté dans les cas déterminés par la loi.
Article 12 - La garantie des droits de l'homme et du citoyen nécessite
une force publique ; cette force est donc instituée pour l'avantage de
tous, et non pour l'utilité particulière de ceux à qui elle est
confiée.
Article 13 - Pour l'entretien de la force publique, et pour les dépenses
d'administration, une contribution commune est indispensable ; elle doit
être également répartie entre les citoyens, en raison de leurs
facultés.
Article 14 - Les citoyens ont le droit de constater, par eux-mêmes
ou par leurs représentants, la nécessité de la contribution publique,
de la consentir librement, d'en suivre l'emploi, et d'en déterminer la
quotité, l'assiette, le recouvrement et la durée.
Article 15 - La société a le droit de demander compte à tout
agent public de son administration.
Article 16 - Toute société dans laquelle la garantie des droits
n'est pas assurée ni la séparation des pouvoirs déterminée, n'a point
de Constitution.
Article 17 - La propriété étant un droit inviolable et sacré,
nul ne peut en être privé, si ce n'est lorsque la nécessité publique,
légalement constatée, l'exige évidemment, et sous la condition d'une
juste et préalable indemnité.
The Dreyfus affair underlined both that there was an indigenous anti-Semitic tradition in France and that anti-Republican currents still existed. When Vichy embarked on an anti-Republican and anti-Semitic crusade the Dreyfus affair again emerged as a point of reference.
On the Dreyfus affair:
http://www.wfu.edu/~sinclair/dreyfus.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articles/03809.html
http://www.worldbook.com/fun/wbla/israel50/html/ziondrey.htm
In the Spring of 1941 Vichy created the post of Intendant de Police as the Prefect's delegate for policing. This official was the most senior police official at the regional level. The name Intendant was taken from the senior officials who served prior to the French Revolution. Sharon Kettering, Professor of History Emerita at Montgomery college in Maryland, describes the pre-Revolutionary Intendants in the following way:
'royal commissioners whose authority was based on a commission from the king. Intendants were sent on missions to act on the king's behalf. They were usually sent on investigative or administrative missions to the provinces, where they worked with the governors; to the royal armies; and to ports with royal fleets, where they worked with the army or navy officers in command. After 1634, Intendants were sent to all the généralités, or tax districts, in France where they assumed new, more extensive financial responsibilities. Provincial, army, navy and financial Intendants became important permanent members of the new royal bureaucracy'. (Sharon KETTERING, French society, 1589-1715, Longman, London, 2001, p 146)
Introduction
Drawn mainly from the nationalist right the Vichy regime celebrated Joan of Arc. Comparisons were made between Joan and Pétain. Joan was seen as a suitable symbol by Vichy because she was virtuous (notoriously a virgin), Catholic and anti-English.
But Vichy's use of Joan was contested by the Resistance. Lucie Aubrac recounts in her book 'Ils partiront dans l'ivresse' that when she was teaching history lessons in the Southern zone of France she would get the pupils to draw up lists comparing Joan and Pétain with the express intention of showing them how ridiculous the comparisons were (eg one was fighting the occupier, the otehr was collaborating with them, one was young, the other old, one was a man, the other a woman, etc). Indeed the Resistance often used the image of Joan themselves precisely because she had fought an occupier rather than passively accepting their presence.
Robert
Gildea on the cult of Joan of Arc during the Vichy Years
The cult of Joan of Arc, adopted by the regime, was not unproblematic.
After all, Joan had liberated French soil, while Vichy had entered upon a
strategy of collaboration with Germany. One solution was to present Joan
of Arc as the scourge of the English, not of foreigners in general.
Admiral Darlan, vice-president of the council and foreign minister,
meeting Hitler at Berchtesgaden on 11 May 1941 to further Franco-German
collaboration, announced hopefully, ‘Today is the festival of Joan of
Arc, who drove out the English’. Another solution was to draw a moral
rather than a military lesson from the story, to see Joan above all as a
model for moral rearmament and the enemy of the rottenness that had
brought France to its knees in 1940. This was the style of official
commemorations of Joan of Arc in unoccupied zone on 10 May 1942. The key
slogans imparted to 2000 young people drawn up on the Place Bellecour at
Lyon were ‘restoration’, ‘redemption’ and ‘resurrection’, in
the sense of moral purification, not a call to arms. Pétain’s message,
read at Limoges and Chambéry where new statues of Joan of Arc were
unveiled, betrayed his concern about internal discord rather than an
enthusiasm for Liberation. He urged that the people should ‘unite,
discipline themselves, stop questioning their leaders’ and ‘close
their ears to foreign propaganda’. (…)
The Vichy regime was
unable to establish a monopoly of the cult of Joan of Arc. Opponents of
the regime and of its policy of collaboration were not slow to see that
the myth could serve their purposes just as well, if not better. The
communists, seeking the widest possible national legitimation after June
1941, espoused the myth not only of the soldiers of the Year II but that
of Joan of Arc as well. (…)
At the Liberation,
Joan of Arc was firmly located in the camp of the communists and Charles
de Gaulle, who marched together in procession on her statue on 12 May
1945.
Robert Gildea, The Past in French History, New Haven, Yale UP, 1994, pp 163-164
Colin JONES writing on the history of Joan of Arc:
'The extraordinary career of Joan of Arc has made her one of the best known, but perhaps least understood, figures of French history. Canonized as recently as 1920, it was only in the 19th century that the 'Maid of Orléans' was adopted as a mascot of French right-wing nationalism. Earlier generations found her more difficult to fathom.
One of the five children, Joan (Jeanne or Jehanne in French) was born about 1412 to a moderately wealthy farmer in Domrémy in Lorraine. She was 13 when she started hearing the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret, instructing her what to do. Her reputation preceded her in Chinon, in February 1429, where Charles VII was ruing the possible loss of his kingdom to the English. Joan identified Charles from a group of courtiers and convinced him of her divine mission to drive the English out of France. She persuaded him to give her command of an army to lift the English siege of Orléans, which she accomplished. The English were driven north of the Loire and their aura of invincibility was severely damaged. Joan was instrumental in bringing Charles to Reims. His coronation in this traditional place made him king 'by the grace of God' and fortified his prestige.
However, Joan's role at court became increasingly uncertain as those who urged negotiations with the English came to prevail over the pro-war group with which she was identified. Taken prisoner, she was handed over to the English by the Burgundians, who were still allies of the English. The English tried her as a witch in Rouen. Despite a heroic defence, she was sentenced at first to life imprisonment, then to be burned at the stake. The sentence was carried out in 1431, after Charles VII had failed to ransom her.
Joan's habit of dressing in men's clothing, plus her claims to divine guidance, helped to condemn her as a heretic and sorcerer- charges that were supported by false evidence. Her death exemplified a growing intolerance within late-medieval Europe toward unconventional behaviour and religious views' (John ARDAGH & Colin JONES, Cultural Atlas of France, Facts on File, New York/Oxford, 1991, p 46)
Some Joan of Arc sites:
http://members.aol.com/hywwebsite/private/joanofarc.html
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.htm
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/musee.jeannedarc/indexanglais.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/3062/jeannedarc.htm
Marianne
http://www.franceway.com/w3/Facts&Figures/politics/republiquesymbols.html
http://www.elysee.fr/ang/instit/symb6.htm
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/02/19/mkarianne/
http://www.surfandbook.com/article.asp?ArticleID=277&ViewStyle=explorer
The government is best remembered for its introduction of ambitious social legislation designed to reduce inequality, to improve working conditions and to open up greater leisure to the working class. In particular the government increased working class wages and reduced the working week. If these elements are what the Popular Front is best remembered for they were in fact secondary in its political mission. The raîson d'être of the Popular Front was the defence of democracy against the encroaching fascist threat. The advent of fascism in Italy and Germany had demonstrated the need for left parties to join forces to overpower this menace. Contemporary observers felt that the riots of 6 February 1934 demonstrated just how real the fascist threat in France was (even if many historians have since played this down). To combat fascism the government outlawed 'fascist' leagues and movements and was successful in dismantling the anti-Republican Cagoule organisation. At the same time this government invested hugely in a massive re-armament program designed to bring French defence up to the level of the Germans. The Popular Front was initially a great source of hope to left wing militants, although many became disillusioned once the government began to slow down its social reforms.
On the right, however, there was great hostility. For Vichy the Popular Front was a bête noire. There were many reasons they disliked it. The government of Léon Blum had been the first socialist government in French history. Since Blum was Jewish his presence at its head was a source of irritation to anti-Semites. The Popular Front's campaign against extreme-right anti-Republican groups targeted some of those who would support Vichy. This explains why the former Popular Front Interior Minister Marx Dormoy was assassinated: it was he who had ordered the arrest of members of the Cagoule. Under Vichy the Popular Front would be held partly responsible for the 1940 defeat- it was claimed that this government had insufficiently prepared France for the battle and that it had encouraged a climate where French people would be unwilling to sacrifice themselves and insisted too much upon their rights and not enough on their duties. Vichy decided to bring some of the Popular Front leaders (Blum, Daladier, etc) to trial. The trial was held in the town of Riom, near Vichy, between February and April 1942 but it was a complete farce. Not only were the defendants not allowed a lawyer but Pétain had publicly declared their guilt before the trial began. Nevertheless, the defendants successfully turned the tables on their accusers with Blum in particular demonstrating the role played by the military high command in the inter-war period (ie Pétain and Weygand) and thereby underlined its responsibility in the defeat.
The French Popular Front
http://worldatwar.net/biography/b/blum/
http://www.black-schaffer.com/info/classes/hist53/paxton_chapter_12.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FRpopular.htm
http://members.aol.com/RevolutionTruth/popfront.htm
http://www.stabi.hs-bremerhaven.de/gbs2/whkmla/region/france/france192939.html
Des sites en langue française au sujet du Front Populaire
http://www.culture.fr/culture/actualites/celebrations2000/lblum.htm
http://perso.club-internet.fr/erra/montignon/france.htm
http://www.multimania.com/noritakazbrevet/histoire/front_populaire.htm
http://www.maitron.org/actu/Expo/expo4.htm
http://www.sinistra.net/lib/mat/bilan/fohe/fohehjebef.html
http://www.mairie-athis-mons.fr/histoire/front.htm
http://fr.encyclopedia.yahoo.com/articles/ni/ni_166_p0.html
http://www.hystoriae.com/france1939.html
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/Gavroche/PopFront.html
http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/fre320/front.htm
http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/hist-geo/lp/pratique/weingaertner/demofr/chronofp.htm
The Schlieffen plan was the tactic employed by the Germans in the Western campaign in 1914. Part of the Schlieffen plan involved attacking France by passing through neutral Belgium.
In their preparations for the Second World War the French high command were convinced that the Germans would again attack through Belgium. In this they were right except what they had not understood was that in 1940 the attack through Belgium would be merely a diversion with the main thrust of the German attack coming further south through the Ardennes forest. This miscalculation proved fatal. As the Germans attacked Belgium, the Allies poured their very best troops into Belgium. These soldiers were cut off in the North and had to be evacuated from Dunkirk (27 May- 4 June, 1940).
The Schlieffen plan
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWschlieffenP.htm
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk1/kriegsverlauf/schlieff/
http://www.worldwar1.com/tlwplans.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/revision/history/1890_1920/schlieffen_plan_belguim_rev.shtml?survey
http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/great_war/keating.htm
http://www.spwgame.com/tspoverview.htm
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/schli/schlieff.htm
http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/gcselinks/wars/firstwwlinks/schlieffen_summary.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWschlieffen.htm
Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War:
http://www.weisbord.org/Spain.htm
http://www.chisholm-poster.com/chisholm/sCivil/
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude07.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9820/
http://burn.ucsd.edu/scwtable.htm
http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/spciv.html
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/spancivwar/Spanishcivilwar.html
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spaindx.html
http://www.sispain.org/english/history/civil.html
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/abe-brigade.html
http://www.skalman.nu/spanish/
http://www.weisbord.org/Spain.htm
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/spain-images.html
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/collects/southw.html
Des sites en langue française au sujet de la guerre civile espagnole
http://www.sispain.org/french/history/civil.html
http://www.patrimoine-photo.org/dhtml-fr/actu/expositions/espagne/
http://www.fluctuat.net/expos/chroniques/espagne.htm
http://www.photo-infos.com/actualite/guercivesp.htm
http://www.ihtp-cnrs.ens-cachan.fr/publications/cahier31/tonte_esp_ripa_31.html
http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/spcivf.html
http://www2.ac-lyon.fr/etab/lycees/lyc-42/jmonnet/francais/guerresp.html
The first was the First battle of the Marne (September 1914) which pushed back the German advance on Paris. The participation of the civilian population was celebrated through the image of the taxis which rushed troops to the front.
The second was the battle of Verdun (February 1916-December 1916). This battle was significant on many levels. It was one of the fiercest, bloodiest and longest running battles in history. Huge losses were inflicted with 143,000 Germans and 163, 000 Frenchmen dying. For the French it became particularly symbolic. On the Allied side there were only French troops present at Verdun. The system of rotating troops at the front meant that most French troops served at least some time at Verdun.
During the Vichy period Verdun became a particularly important image. It was at this battle that Pétain established his name. It was in great part due to his role as the victorious French general at this battle that he was promoted to Marshal in 1918 and celebrated to such an extent in the inter-war period. The expression 'vainqueur de Verdun' was frequently used to describe Pétain in the inter-war period and during the second world war.
Battle of the Marne:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWmarne.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2354/marne.html
http://british-forces.com/world_war1/Campaigns/marne1914.html
http://www.1914-1918.net/bat3.htm
http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/charles1.htm
http://info.ox.ac.uk/departments/humanities/rose/battle.html
http://212.67.202.71/~johnwhal/timeline/1marne.htm
http://www.granada-learning.com/yitm/ww1/study_notes/over_by_christmas.html
http://rapidttp.com/milhist/1/d01julne.html
Battle of Verdun:
http://war1418.com/battleverdun/
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/World/Verdun.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWverdun.htm
http://www.ifrance.com/letunnel/verdun-e.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/newsid_203000/203224.stm
http://home.wanadoo.nl/battleofverdun/
http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/interviews/audoin3.html
http://www.geocities.com/sander84/thebattle.html
http://www.multied.com/ww1/verdun.html
http://home.wanadoo.nl/~r.cossee/ (site in Dutch and English)
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0850683.html
Des sites en langue française au sujet de Verdun:
http://www.ifrance.com/letunnel/verdun.html
http://fissiaux-adrien.nexen.net/jm/verdun/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2328/ba-fr.html
http://myweb.worldnet.net/~larane/histoire02210.htm
http://manu14-18.ifrance.com/manu14-18/LIENS/LA_BATVERDUN.HTM