Oh What A Time... - #77 Citizens by Simon Schama (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

We’ve got a different episode format for you this week; a book review of the 1989 classic chronicle of the French Revolution: Citizens by Simon Schama. We’ll be focussing on; the storming of the Bastille, the flight to Varennes of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and the fearsome guillotine. Elsewhere this week we’re trying to figure out why piano teachers are, by and large, quite mean folk. If you’ve got something to contribute, why not ping us over an email to: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wandery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wandery Plus in the Wandery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide how on earth people learnt musical instruments in the pre-YouTube age. Obviously you had to have lessons with some oddball called, I don't know, Mrs. Simpkins. Mrs. Simpkins would have like busts of Beethoven and Mozart and Handel and Strauss on the piano and would wrap your knuckles with a wooden ruler so she didn't like the way your fingers were positioned as you played the keys. Every song you had to learn was Mrs. Simpkins' choice, so it was Michael Rotherboater Shaw,

then it was Michael Rotherboater Shaw but in a ragtime style. Then it was Michael Rotherboater Shaw but really, really quickly, then it was Michael rode the boat ashore, but in a ragtime style. Then it was Michael rode the boat ashore, but really, really quickly. Then Michael rode the boat ashore, but really, really slowly. Then it was Michael rode the boat ashore in a 1920s sort of like you do in the Charleston. This time Michael rode the boat ashore, but this time he's got a chicken, a fox, and some grain in there and he needs to work out how he can get to shore and not create a real issue on land. And then she doesn't like the way your fingers are positioned. Bam! Down comes the ruler. Again, your knuckles are bleeding. You're not enjoying it. But you remember saying I paid for a whole term of lessons. Am I wrong? Is this memory false? That every piano teacher in the 80s was a weird, but also a minimum

of 85 years old. So I had lots of piano teachers growing up and they were all, you know, their final days were invisible distance. Yeah. What a sad way to end your life as well, by being surrounded by people who can't play the instrument you love. It's sort of torture. I had a piano teacher growing up and she was exactly like, just a quite nasty old lady. And I thought her whole attitude was not conducive to learning piano. Absolutely. Incredible. People conducive to learning piano. Absolutely. Incredible. People who seem to hate music.

In what way was she nasty? Was it to do with the fact that you were hitting all the wrong keys? Or where was the nastiness stemming from? The constant feedback was that I hadn't been practising. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. And that feedback may have been coming my way because I wasn't practising. Yes, because you were scared of Mrs Simpkins and you weren't enjoying it. It did bother me, like learning the piano, that why can't I just learn some songs I know? They were finding these piano books full of songs I'd never heard before or since.

And the kids too, by the time we got to sort of 14 and 15, who might have been having lessons for eight or nine years, who were by that point able to play cool stuff. I remember thinking, wow, you pushed on through the Michael Rowe the Boater Show period. Will Barron Following a conversation we had, El, a few weeks ago, I went and watched several Chas and Dave documentaries. And Chas was talking about how he learned the piano because basically everyone in his family had an instrument. And it was just like Christmas's family occasions, there would be a big band and the expectation was what are you going to jump on and start playing? And it made me think that in the past, I reckon there were probably more musicians than now.

It felt like the way Chaz was talking about it, it was like everyone was playing the piano. And when you watch like old episodes of Only Fools and Horses, it's like there's always, there's a piano in every pub. Neil Milliken Pustamerefield. Yeah, Uncle Albert playing piano in the pub. Who was a self-taught musician, I think. Paul McCartney's dad was a jazz musician, but self-taught. Oh really?

And so showed Paul what he could play. And then, Sir Paul doesn't know any music. He can't read music, for instance. And yet he's gone on to write some of the- Carly! McCartney can't read music, no. And yet he's gone on to write- That blows my mind.

It's like when they took away the pass back role in football and Peter Shulton couldn't kick it. and yet he's gone on to rights. Mason thing you've described there Chris with cousin Dave. They all play instruments. He's got an organ in his front room, or at least he used to with stops in it. His sons play saxophone, guitar, drums, all this sort of stuff. So at Christmas they will jam together and play Christmas carols and all this sort of stuff. It's awesome. It'd be amazing to have that as a family. It's a really cool thing. Will Barron Do you know what it is? Yet again, Chris Skull, our resident cockney, banging the drum for Cockney culture, making it sound fantastic. And you know, I'm fascinated by cockney culture. I'm often very jealous of cockney culture, having not grown up in the East End of London unlike Chris. Our cats bring in mice and they occasionally bring in rats, but because they're cockney rats, the rats fight back and it really is a really horrible thing

to watch in your kitchen. Cockney rats. When the rats break free, they jump on the old Joanna, they're knocking up knees at Mother Brown. Sorry, are you watching your cat fight the rat? Like you're in Thailand placing bets. What's going on? I've seen my cats bringing a rat and for the rat to square up to it. It's a tough Cockney street rat and go, come on then, if you're going to eat me, I'm not going to go down without a fight.

A rat square up? It's awful. Another rat going, leave it, leave it Glenn, it's not worth it. Cockney rats. Yeah. So, welcome to Owater Time. As you may have seen on our social media, we're now on the Wondery network, which means nothing really changes. It's going to be the same show.

And if you were a full-timer on Apple and Spotify, your subscription will be shortly cancelled and you'll be able to access the show via Wondery Plus or via another slice. For more information, just have a look at the description. But although it is the same show, we're trying out a different format this week. It feels like the bravest of all the weeks to have tried a new format, but we are trying it nonetheless. This is our first ever book review episode. Yeah, it's a cup final and we've decided to play an unknown quantity, 17-year-old Striker. Brand new formation. We're reviewing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for an hour and a half. Do you know what?

You laugh, my daughter and all of her friends are so obsessed with Harry Potter, there would be a market for that. Absolutely. My son loves it so much. Why are we not getting involved in the Potter scene? Potter pod. It just occurred to me, Potter pod. There must be thousands of Potter pods.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to do a Potter pod because I've got so many questions. It was the first COVID Christmas, me and my wife sat down and watched every Potter film back to back over, what was it, seven days or however many films there are. Did you? We watched them all every day. Yeah. And I was like, I just didn't understand what was going on. God, Cockney cultures change so much, isn't it? You popped me in front of Chas and Dave's Christmas special on YouTube. I can tell you exactly what was going on. God, Cockney cultures change so much, doesn't it?

You popped me in front of Chas and Dave's Christmas special on YouTube. I can tell you exactly what's going on. You get it. Harry Potter film, no idea. Sorry, you didn't understand what was going on? Well, the rules of the universe. The example is, there's some people who are dead and they're dead and they never come back.

There's some people who are dead who are ghosts, who can come back and are basically the same as people who are alive. There doesn't seem to be that much discernible difference. But that's just a ghost, isn't it? A ghost is just someone who floats around and slightly more translucent. That's what it is. They're just like normal people at Hogwarts. I'd love for someone to explain this to me. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I've got a million questions like that, but I'll save it for Potterpot. I'm not wasting it here. I would be amazed if Tom Craner hadn't seen a ghost. I did walk past something which had a sort of shimmering human form when I was in the second

year of university going up some stairs in my house, but I was also, it's worth saying, smoking a lot of weed in that house at that time. And I don't think those two points of information are entirely separate. But I genuinely did think I walked past a ghost and it was in normal form. Yeah. But what was weird thing, the ghost was up there sitting with, this is such a weird fact, I've never thought about the ghost was holding the handrail, which is a weird thing for a ghost to do is just going downstairs. A ghost can't fall, can it? I'll tell you what, hold that thought. I think we should do for a subscriber special this month, ghost stories, a ghost story.

Great. We'll all tell our best ghost stories. Great idea. Yeah. There you go. Another great idea in the bag. Right. Today's episode, shall we say what it is before we get into a little bit of correspondence?

What are we talking about today, Chris? So today I have read the classic. I'd never heard of this book, but it's amazing. And our historian, Daryl, has read it. Ellis, I think you've read it, haven't you? No, I've read a book that discusses it, so I've not read it. That's very meta. It is very meta. But it's been on my list. I've read, we can tell the listeners what it is, we're reading, Chris has read Citizens by Simon Sharma. I've read quite a lot of Simon Sharma and I've never got round to this.

I've heard of Simon Sharma, I've never read it yet. This is the first Simon Sharma book I've read, a chronicle of the French Revolution. Our friend Mark Steele, the comedian, is obsessed with the French Revolution and he wrote a really brilliant kind of beginner's guide to the French Revolution years ago, which I loved. And this was one of the sort of texts he mentioned a lot because he's read them all. So this is, this really has been quite high on my list. So I'm looking forward to getting lots of spoilers because fun fact, I don't care about spoilers. I knew nothing of the French Revolution before I read this, but like I knew very little.

And this book to me was like a thriller. Oh wow. What I tried to do is condense everything I learned and found particularly astonishing down into the script for a 1 hour 15 podcast. I like the idea, relative, you not wanting any spoilers for the French Revolution. Something that happened so long ago. Well, as Chairman Mao was saying, you know, too early to tell the implications of the French Revolution.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, in the grand scheme of history, it's a blink of an eye ago, Tom. Yeah, that is literally the first line of the book. The Chinese Premier, Zhu Enlai, was asked what was the significance of the French Revolution. He said, it's too soon to tell. Too soon to tell? Oh, sorry, I've got my Chinese leaders wrong. Jason Vale It is close enough. Will Barron But before we get to that,

shall we have a little bit of correspondence from one of our lovely, lovely listeners? Should we do that? And then we'll get into some French Revolution fun. This email is from someone called Kim Connor. Thank you so much for getting in contact with the show, Kim. This refers, I think we should give the context, it's about Christmas and the fact that you, Ellis, have your Christmas tree. It's not directly about your Christmas tree, but just briefly to any new Wondery listeners, just explain what this is and why we get lots of emails about your Christmas tree. I like to save time and I like to be efficient. Listeners to any podcast I've ever done will know that that's actually not true. I am, however, quite lazy.

I brought our Christmas tree up into the attic where I occasionally record podcasts on, I don't know when it would have been, January the 6th last year or this year. And I just left it there. Fully out in the open. It's out in the open. It's not covered anything.

It's decorated as it was when we put it up in December 2023. I haven't touched it. The only thing is the top has come off it as a fake tree obviously, so it's left at the top. Weeks away from it coming back down. Weeks away from it coming back down. I'm gonna say it, it is pretty uninspiring as fake Christmas trees go. But we've been recording this podcast every week, all year, throughout all of the seasons. Winter, spring, summer and autumn. We're now coming into winter again. I've stared at it every day. I do feel a little bit more Christmassy when it's… Downstairs.

In the living room. And there's presents underneath it to give it some kind of context. But at the moment I just feel nothing. So that's Ellis's tree, which he looks at constantly every time we record an episode. You can know that he's staring at a Christmas tree. Even if you're listening to this. Heat wave, rain, sleet, snow, it doesn't matter. It's a January record, a February record, midsummer, he's looking at that Christmas

tree. But this email from Kim Connor is titled, Julymas. Hi guys. Back in 2020, when we couldn't get together for Christmas, our family decided that we would postpone until such a time as was allowed. Now, I don't know if you remember guys, but there was a pandemic. You remember that? It was on the news. It was quite a big thing. Our family decided that we would postpone until such a time as was allowed. And so in July 2021, Julymus was born. On the first weekend of the school summer holidays, we put on Christmas music, put up a tree and have a secret Santa whilst enjoying a traditional

Christmas dinner, all whilst sweating like troopers on our Christmas jumpers. We've decided to keep this tradition, I really like this bit, because we enjoy the amusement of our children having to explain to their school friends why they already have plans that weekend in July. Keep up the good work, Kim. So every July, this family celebrate Christmas, full Christmas dinner in their Christmas jumpers, Christmas tree in the corner, presents, the whole shebang. So thank you very much, Kim Connor. I back that. I think that's quite sweet. I don't mind that at all. I think that's cool. Thank you for that email, Kim. That's fantastic. If anyone else has anything they want to send to

us, any fantastic historical facts you have, any weird family habits like Kim, maybe you do. We have a thing called the one-day time machine. New listeners may not know about this, where you leap in a time machine, it takes you back to any day in history, you get 24 hours there, what you're doing with it. So do get in contact for whatever reason you so choose, and here's how you do that. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwhattatime. com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod now clear off.

Okay so it's a different format welcome this is the book review of Simon Sharma Citizens now I'll be telling the story of the French Revolution and what I've read in this magnificent book. I thought I'd do this in three parts. So you've got the storming of the Bastille and then we'll talk about the flight to Varan of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. And then lastly, going to get into the whole guillotine stuff. The big finale.

Great. It's kind of a big finale of the French Revolution. It'll be the big finale of this episode. I think it's worth saying when you say book review, you're not going to be giving it sort of four out of five at the end or whatever. It's not that sort of review. We're not becoming a podcast where we review other historians' work in that sense. I think you should do it like the newsroom press pack used to do it when we were kids. How did they do it?

I didn't like the plot. I didn't think the acting was good, but I thought the special effects were excellent, so I give this film 11 out of 10. I didn't think the acting was good, but I thought the special effects were excellent, so I give this film 11 out of 10. I'm going to pull out the things I found most interesting and try and tell the story up to that point and then just read you bits that I was like, wow, and just try and pose you questions, try to get a sense of what you make of the French Revolution when I tell you this stuff. So firstly, I knew nothing about the French Revolution.

They never taught me any of this in school. I spent a lot of time learning about the Tudors, the Stuarts. I was like, this is way more interesting. And also, France is so geographically close to the UK, it's really relatable steps as well, because lots of kids in school have been to France or might be going to France, and also it's modern history or modern-ish, and you know, compared to a lot of the stuff you study at schools. So I think it's a great topic. It's closer to us in time, the French Revolution, than Henry VIII was to the French Revolution. That's a weird thing to wrap your head around.

Also, not knowing a lot about the French Revolution, I really got the sense that it was a roaring success and the French were really proud of it. And it's just not a controversial subject. Like it's seen as a good thing, the establishment of kind of equality and democracy and all that. But then you read this and you're just like, what? This is insane.

The amount of things that happened that I'm gonna talk you through now. Okay, so here's the first slide. So there's so much violence. I had no idea. This is the first quote I'll read you and this is actually, I would say, probably the most famous quote from Simon Sharma. He said, talking about the French Revolution, from 1789, perhaps even before that, it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that had given them the power to challenge constituted authority. Bloodshed was not the unfortunate byproduct of revolution.

It was the source of energy." One thing Simon Chalmers does is he tells you what he's thinking. Generally, like some historians, they just give you fact after fact. He's giving you his opinion the whole time and he does it in such a convincing way that I just believe it. Everything he's saying, I'm just buying into. There is so much violence and violence is the whole thing going through the French Revolution. So are you saying that he's saying there was just a complete acceptance of blood violence

throughout the whole period? I would describe the French Revolution, and Simon Schama kind of says this, as it's the battle for who can use violence to assert their will. And initially it's the monarch, because the monarch is in control of the violence, but then the mob takes over and then the kind of the monarch, he can't use violence against the mob because the mob is going to use violence. But the whole thing is just violence. So it's like secondary school basically.

And it's all about- It's my memories of what school was like. It's like who can monopolise violence to the extent that they're in power. Okay, got you. It's astonishing. But I want to take you right back now. I thought I'd give a little bit of a kind of a whistle stop tour of what the French Revolution is. So I'll start by talking about the storming of the Bastille.

But to get there, it's late 18th century, France are absolutely skinned. They've helped fund the American Revolution. The monarchy is expensive, but you have inequalities when it comes to taxation. So there's no money. But what blew my mind is like a lot of the nobility and the clergy don't pay tax. It's the peasantry and the urban poor who have to. And it's the fact that the peasants, when everyone's skin have to pick up the bill, that is an enormous source of tension right at the very start.

And then you've also got the American Revolution, which France helped fund. And that's partly why they're skin, as I mentioned. That's a massive inspiration for the French. And you've got some of the characters from the American Revolution, which France helped fund, and that's partly why they're skin as I mentioned. That's a massive inspiration for the French. And you've got some of the characters from the American Revolution that are actually in France, like the Marquis de Lafayette, who fought with George Washington in the American Revolution. He becomes a huge figure in the French Revolution. And what's weird in this story is that I kind of think of like 1789, like you forget that

there's international travel, like they're backwards and forwards to America. It's recent. It's recent. You're like, Oh yeah, in my head. I don't know. I find it difficult to wrap my head around, but I don't imagine transatlantic travel happening as often as that. And you get people popping backwards and forwards.

It's kind of mind blowing. The other thing is the weather is not great in the late 1780s. So when you've got skin, a really restless population and because the weather is bad, the harvest is poor. So you've got no money and now people are starving. You throw that into the mix. Will Barron So they're hangry because we all know what that's like.

Jason Vale I've been trying to analyse my own feelings like I've missed lunch by like an hour. I can feel that anger. Will Barron Absolutely. Jason Vale And then on top of everything else, it helps me understand the French Revolution. I studied history at university. So we studied historiography, the study of history, and different interpretations and

how they change based on the experiences of historians. So you had feminist history, you had oral history, Marxist history. We've never had hunger history. I don't think anyone has ever adequately introduced that into their work as historians. And I mean, I get terrible, terrible hunger. It's very much a part of the human experience, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, big time.

Yeah, totally. It's the pre-protein bar age. If there was bread everywhere, I just don't think the French Revolution happens. If there's like an infinite supply of food… If only they'd had a bread! I am at my worst as a parent when I haven't eaten. That is one of my least patients. Yeah, of course!

Oh, your kids! Your kids on a car journey! If they haven't eaten, they're kicking off. Do you ever have that thing where you realise you haven't eaten? You're like really grumpy, you're being irritable and you go, oh wait a second, I've missed every meal today or whatever. That'll be why. I'm starving myself to death inadvertently. My body's eating itself.

Yeah. Anger, it's a big thing. I'd be fascinated to know which sort of seismic historical events have been affected by anger. What are the big ones? It's a great observation because it does come back again and again. The other thing that's happening before the French Revolution is like, it's the age of enlightenment. So, famously, you've got great thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau who say stuff like, we don't need an absolute monarchy.

Like, it's almost like an awakening of intelligence and they're like, hang on, why are things like this? What we all need is a prep. We've invented the word. So basically everyone's pissed off. There's a real sense that things need to change. So in 1789, King Louis XVI calls the Estates General, which is like an advisory body, kind of like they're trying to pull together a bit of a parliament, but it's made up of three

estates. You've got the clergy, which makes up a third, the nobility, another third, and then the commoners, the kind of the house of commons element. And they're tasked with addressing the financial crisis. This third estate representing the commoners look around and say, well, we're kind of outnumbered by the clergy and the nobility, which are the wealthiest, but they take up like, they're only got 2% of the population. So they break away from the clergy, the nobility, the commoners, and they create the National Assembly. They draft a constitution and basically they start saying, we're going to take power, we're going to figure this out. And then you

have the King Louis the 16th. He doesn't want that to happen. He knows it means that I'm effectively giving away my power. What kind of King would want that? It's interesting because I think when we talk about later what King Louis XVI does, he probably could have saved his skin at multiple points. Oh really? Yeah, when the National Assembly and the commoners say, well, hang on, we want to kind of dictate the laws for the people, we want some sort of equality. He's pushing against that, but multiple opportunities, much like Charles I, he could have saved himself

at loads of opportunities, but it gets worse and worse and worse as we'll see. So in what way could he have saved himself? He could have given it gets worse and worse and worse as we'll see. So in what way could he have saved himself? He could have given up more of his power earlier on. He could have found a way to appease them. And those small compromises, because of the way the political winds are blowing, if you acknowledge them early enough, you can cut off an awful lot of trouble at the pass. It's all about feeling seen, isn't it, Ernest?

To quote a rather current phrase. Yeah. The problem he has, I would say, is that he's one of the first kings to really go through this process of giving up these feudal powers. I know we had a bit of it in England, but he sees it like this is the land of his fathers. He is one king in a long line going back 1400 years he doesn't want to be the one to have to get up I would say I think if he really was a kind of absolute is monarch who didn't really care he would have used violence to put down the kind of the rising population against him but he doesn't because he's like I understand you I hear your concerns so he he acknowledges something needs to be done and he doesn't really want to use the violence that will be later be used against him, but he doesn't because he's like, I understand you. I hear your concerns. So he acknowledges something needs to be done and he doesn't really want to use the violence that will later be used against him. And so, as we'll see, his options become narrower and narrower as the story continues.

Will Barron It also, it must be very difficult to feel threatened when you live in a big castle. Mason O'Brien Characters surrounded by soldiers as well. Will Barron It must insulate you a little bit, mustn't it? The accommodation he's in changes at various points, and not for the better. Just a spoiler alert. Plenty of spoiler alerts here about the French Revolution. You've got the National Assembly now. They're taking over power. They're trying to overrule the nobility and the clergy. They're trying to represent the people. A lot of this is happening in Paris and the population of Paris are restless and they

worry that the National Assembly are about to be overthrown. There's one thing that keeps happening in the French Revolution which is that conspiracies keep building and the population get more and more worried. There's a fear that the clergy, the nobility, the monarchy, maybe a foreign army is about to come in and shut down all the progress they're making. And so early on in the French Revolution, it's the population of Paris who see it as their responsibility to make sure the National Assembly are protected.

And now, of course, you've got the army, you've got the French army, who are responsible for kind of maintaining order in some respect. And so you've got people demanding the National Assembly stay in power and the French guards who are trying to keep order and the two of them are kind of locking horns. You've got mobs of Parisians going around, there's conspiracy, the nobility, like these foreign armies are going to take over. So what these mobs of Parisians start doing is they start going around and basically start collecting arms.

Okay. So we're in like the middle of 1789. They start going around getting gunpowder because they're scared about a foreign army or maybe even the French army turning against them and stopping the progress that's being made. So these conspiracies are building in Paris. People start running around collecting up guns. And so by July 1789, the rumors now are really ripe.

Paris is just, people are losing their heads that foreign, the royal troops are going to sweep into Paris. They're going to put an end to the uprising and put an end to the kind of National Assembly. Will Barron When Claire and I went on our honeymoon to Paris, by the way, about two years ago, that was when Paris was rioting. Remember that? They were burning stuff on the street. Obviously, there's a culture of protest, that's the right way of putting it. We got locked into a restaurant, people were burning things outside. We got a free tiramisu, which was quite good. Which if anything's going to happen during a riot, being handed a free tiramisu, it does sort of help to… That kind of implies the French learned the

lessons of the revolution. And that's one way to calm the population. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But there were pyres outside and they really, yeah, none of us are allowed to leave. Let them eat tiramisu. But not too much because they won't get to sleep. They'll keep them up all night. That's the last thing we need. Really wired rioters full of caffeine. So the mobs are arming themselves and now the authorities don't do anything. Okay. This is really interesting. So the French guards who were meant to be loyal to the monarchy and the nobility Like everyone's still trying to play nice at this point

but the french guards don't want to stop these rioters going out and grabbing guns because A they think it might make things a lot worse if they start trying to put down this unrest because it's already that's a tinderbox but secondly also The french guards themselves like the, also, the French guards themselves, like the senior officers of the French guards, are starting to think that the French guards themselves won't follow their orders. It's becoming clear that the army is on the side of the mob. Right? This is where we get to the Bastille. I knew the Bastille and the storming the Bastille and Bastille day. I kind of thought that's where the king lived maybe. But it's actually like an old medieval fortress, right? It was an armory

and it was also used by the time we get to 1789, it's a jail. But really the people saw it as, and the reason I would say Bastille Day is celebrated is a symbol of the French monarchy and maybe royal authority, but also kind of royal tyranny. Yes. It's a symbol of all that. And so the rumors start spreading that there is guns and gunpowder hidden in the armory, but also in 1789 it's being used as a prison. And one thing about the French Revolution is throughout the story, interesting characters start popping up.

You're like, oh my God, this guy's here. I've heard of that guy. And one guy who's been holed up in the Bastille is the Marquis de Sade. This is a bit from Simon Sharma on the Marquis de Sade. He's holed up in the Bastille and Paris is rising. This is what the Marquis de Sade does, right? He can see an opportunity to basically maybe get himself free. So basically what the Marquis de Sade does is he starts shouting out the windows to passersby from the Bastille saying they're starting to kill the prisoners and hoping that the mob will kind of release him. But interestingly, the way he does

that is he's got a megaphone, but it's actually the tool he's meant to use to like get his wee and his poos out of his cell into the moat outside the Bastille. Right, okay. It's like a big funnel that you're meant to wee and poo into that gets the poo out of the building. And he's used it as a megaphone. He's flipped it into a megaphone and shouting into the street. Clever, to be fair.

Marquis de Sade is saying that the governor, Bernard-René Jourdan de Lornais, is the governor of the Bastille and that he's going to murder all the prisoners and massacre them all and that the crowd should set them free and get the gunpowder while they still can. So the locals turn up and they want the arms, they want the gunpowder, they seem to be hidden inside. They also want the prisoners released. So that the mob and the governor start having negotiations about what's going on in the prison and can they release them, and there's a crowd gathering outside the Bastille. Shouts of give us the Bastille were heard and the 900 had pressed into the undefended outer courtyard becoming angrier by the minute. That's the mob.

A group including an ex-soldier, now carriage maker, had climbed onto the roof of a perfume shop abutting the gate to the inner courtyard and failing to find the keys to the courtyard had cut out the drawbridge chains. They had crashed down without warning, killing one of the crowd who stood beneath and over the bridge and his body poured hundreds of the besiegers. At this point, the defending soldiers shouted to the people to withdraw or else they would fire, and this too was misinterpreted as encouragement to come further." Isn't that astonishing? They shout out, don't come any further! And the crowd going, it just said come further. Quick! Like, it's such a comedic.

I also, talking about comedic, the idea of getting flattened by a falling drawbridge is one of the worst deaths I've ever heard. And I'm also thinking about the moment the next day when they winch the drawbridge up again and there's a really flat guy stuck to the front of it. Oh my god. That's horrendous. The soldiers say don't come forward, the people think they heard come forward, and then the first shots are fired and subsequently each side would claim the other side fired first,

but since no one among the melee knew that their own people had cut the drawbridge, it was assumed that they had been let into the inner courtyard in order to be mowed down in confined space by the cannon. It was of a piece with all the other assumptions of treachery and conspiracy of the cordial greeting behind which was the plan of death and destruction." That's amazing, isn't it? So they thought, they're trapping us in it, it's all a plan. They're getting us in there just so they can massacre us all here. In a city that obviously is rife with conspiracy theories.

Yeah. So they're like... It's astonishing. Okay. Yep. I get this. This all adds up. So when they're in there, are they getting shot and kind of, are they getting hit with cannon fire when they're in there? What's happening? Okay. So a battle basically ensues. Okay. Remember our man Delaunay. Here's what happens to him. The battle itself had taken the lives of 83 of the citizens army. Another 15 were to die from wounds. Only one of the invalid's who had died in the fighting, one of the soldiers

kind of defending and three had been wounded. The imbalance was enough for the crowd to demand some sort of punitive sacrifice and Delornay duly provided it. All of the hatred which to a large degree had been spared the garrison was concentrated on him. His attributes of command, a sword and a baton, were wrenched away from him and he was marched towards the Hotel de Ville through enormous crowds, all of whom were convinced he had been foiled in a diabolical plot to massacre the people. Houllant and Elie managed to prevent the crowd from killing him on the street, though more than once he was knocked down and badly beaten. Throughout the walk he was covered in abuse and spittle.

Outside the Hotel de Ville, competing suggestions were offered as to how he should meet his end, including a proposal to tie him to a horse's tail and drag him over the cobbles. A pastry cook named Deneau said it would be better to take him into the Hotel de Ville, but at that point, Delornay, who had had enough of the ordeal, shouted, let me die, and lashed out with his boots,

landing a direct hit on Deneau's groin. He was instantly covered with darting knives, swords and bayonets, rolled to the gutter and finished off with a barrage of pistol shots. He kicked him in the bollocks. That's the final thing he did as well. He kicked someone in the balls. He kicked him in the bollocks. Talk about death or glory. Wow.

Better to die than to live on your knees. Yeah. Wow. Imagine that as a to live on your knees. Yeah. Wow. Imagine that as a final act. A final act. I think that gets overlooked. A final act of kicking a pastry chef in the bollocks.

That's absolutely sensational. They're all threatening him. Just let me die. You've never seen that in a Bond film, do you? That's astonishing. I mean, it's pretty gruesome. Obviously he dies to Lorne. And then so what they do is, and this happens again and again in the French Revolution,

so much it's like, it's astonishing. They cut off his head with a pocket knife. They pop his head on a pike and they parade it through the streets and Parisians are reportedly like cheering and laughing while they do this. There is so much stuff on pikes in the French Revolution. Anyone who knows about this will back me up. At one point there's like someone puts a cow's heart on a pike and like wags it at the king and another part later on they'll cut off the head of one of Marie Antoinette's great

friends and like knock on her window and try and show her the head. Everything ends up on pikes. It's astonishing. Yeah, but I suppose it's kind of a display of victory, isn't it really? And also absolute hatred for the other side. There's nothing more inhuman and so is an absolute lack of care for that person and if you're removing their head and you know, it's humiliation. That's what it is, isn't it?

Going to put it out there, I wouldn't thrive in this atmosphere. Outside the baths deal. Yeah, this feels, sounds quite heavy, doesn't it? Yeah. But you know, like, I mean, it's pretty gruesome what happens at the Bastille, but they don't find much by way of guns and gunpowder, but they released the prisoners. There were seven prisoners, okay? You would imagine these prisoners would be like really high worth prisoner individuals. It's not. So there's seven people in the prison. Four of them are forgers, just common criminals detained for forging documents.

There was two mentally ill men in there. One was an individual called Auguste Claude Tavernier, who was described as a deranged aristocrat who was being confined at the request of his own family. And then also there was another aristocrat who was imprisoned by immorality, again at his own family's insistence. So it wasn't like they were a bunch of great prisoners to be released. They're not letting out a lot of freedom fighters. No, not at all.

There's also, it's not a sustainable prison if you only got seven people in there. That needs to be merged into another prison, doesn't it? Surely. That's not a business. Seven prisoners. Mason- It implies that your community is very law-abiding. Al- Yeah, it does, yeah. Mason- Yeah, here they are. The only seven we can find. They've got plenty of room in

there and it is a good opportunity for rehabilitation actually. Al- That's a B&B. That's not a prison. You can't have seven people in there. Not good enough. In central Paris. That's what it is. It's a boutique hotel in central Paris. That's not a prison, you can't have seven people in there. Not good enough. In central Paris. That's what it is. It's a boutique hotel in central Paris. That's basically what it is, isn't it? Remarkable. Close that down, stick him in a bigger jail. There, yep, you heard it here first. So that's the end of part one. While we're storming the Bastille. Join us for part two when we will be talking about the flight to Varan and the guillotine in general, which is very exciting. Got all that to look forward to. Fascinating. So we'll see you very soon

for part two. Don't forget if you want to get part two right now, you can do that via Wondery Plus or via another slice. But otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Goodbye. tomorrow bye goodbye So Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.