I’ll Bet You Didn’t Know..

…that Daphne du Maurier, she primarily of Rebecca fame, wrote a novel about the French Revolution.

I’ve read a lot about this topic, especially about Paris. But her novel The Glass Blowers is about the effects of the revolution in the countryside.

Again, I knew about the counter-Revolution in the Vendée, about the Chouans, about the terror in the provinces with the mass noyades (drownings).

But i don’t think I realized that this was a full-scale civil war. And it is..beyond amazing to realize that the French, impoverished and starved under Louis XVI, fought and subdued this war on the home front while all Europe was massed against them.

We hear a lotta talk these days about possible civil war in the US, about regionalization. This novel reminds me, as do novels I have read about the Irish Civil War, that there is nothing worse than “war” among neighbors. Private scores are settled under cover of the general mayhem. The violence isn’t blunt, random, but pinpointed at where the more fortunate live.

No, please, God of Our Fathers, spare my country this most horrible of all conflicts.

And if you wonder what I’m on about, read Du Maurier’s novel.