Revolts and Revolutions #

Revolts against opression have been a regular occurrence since time immemorial. “When any group feels they’re disenfranchised or have lost something they really wanted, they tend to rebel. If we recognize the grievances that cause the revolution, maybe we can find the solutions.” Ruddy Roye, supported by Eyebeam’s Center for the Future of Journalism.

“In revolutions everything is forgotten … The side once changed, gratitude, friendship, parentage, every tie vanishes, and all sought for is self-interest.” — Napoleon, 1816

“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst,” David Hume.

Slave revolts throughout history are reactions against the incapable. They recur to seek liberty.

What the slave morality defines as good, the master morality will define as evil – ex: Marxism has been demonised. Equality has been discredited. People can be persuaded to act against their own interests. Nietzsche

Greek Helots #

Wikepaedia claims:

The helots were a subjugated population that constituted a majority of the population of Laconia and Messenia – the territories ruled by Sparta. Most worked in agriculture. The number of helots in relation to Spartan citizens varied throughout the history of the Spartan state; according to Herodotus, there were seven helots for each of the 5000 Spartan soldiers at the time of the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Thus the need to keep the helot population in check and prevent rebellion was one of the main concerns of the Spartans. Helots were ritually mistreated and humiliated. Every autumn the Spartan polis declared war on the helots, allowing them to be killed and abused by members of the Crypteia without fear of religious repercussion. Uprisings and attempts to improve the lot of the helots did occur, such as the Conspiracy of Cinadon.

The number of Spartans was very small in comparison to that of the helots. In a celebrated passage, Thucydides stresses that:

“most Spartan institutions have always been designed with a view to security against the Helots”.

Aristotle compares them to “an enemy constantly sitting in wait of the disaster of the Spartans”. Consequently, fear seems to be an important factor governing relations between Spartans and Helots. According to tradition, the Spartiates always carried their spears, undid the straps of their bucklers only when at home lest the Helots seize them, and locked themselves in their homes. They also took active measures, subjecting them to what Theopompus describes as “an altogether cruel and bitter condition”.

According to Myron of Priene, an anti-Spartan historian of the middle 3rd century BC:

They assign to the Helots every shameful task leading to disgrace. For they ordained that each one of them must wear a dogskin cap and wrap himself in skins and receive a stipulated number of beatings every year regardless of any wrongdoing, so that they would never forget they were slaves. Moreover, if any exceeded the vigour proper to a slave’s condition, they made death the penalty; and they allotted a punishment to those controlling them if they failed.

The first helot attempt at revolt which is historically reported is that provoked by general Pausanias in the 5th century BC. Thucydides reports:

Besides, they were informed that he was even intriguing with the helots; and such indeed was the fact, for he promised them freedom and citizenship if they would join him in insurrection, and would help him to carry out his plans to the end.

According to Thucydides, the helots and perioeci of Thouria and Aithaia took advantage of the earthquake to revolt and establish a position on Mt. Ithome. He adds that most of the rebels were of Messenian ancestry—confirming the appeal of Ithome as a historical place of Messenian resistance.

There is evidence that Athens encourages and rewarded Helots with outpost cities, Helots who rebelled against Sparta.

Roman Republic #

Year Event 494 BC First secessio plebis: the plebs abandoned Rome for the nearby Monte Sacro.
471 BC The Plebeian Council was reorganized by tribes.
459 BC Under popular pressure, the Senate increased the tribunes of the plebs from two to ten.
449 BC Resolutions of the Plebeian Council were given the full force of law subject to Senate veto.
449 BC Specially-elected ten man commissions, issued the last of the Twelve Tables, the fundamental laws of the Republic.
447 BC The Tribal Assembly was established, and granted the right to elect quaestors.
445 BC Lex Canuleia: Marriage between patricians and plebeians was legalized.
443 BC The offices of the Tribuni militum consulari potestate were established. A collegium of three patrician or plebeian tribunes, one each from specific Roman tribes (the Titienses, the Ramnenses, and the Luceres), would hold the power of the consuls from year to year, subject to the Senate.

Spartacus #

The first major slave revolt was Spartacus in 73 BCE. At his high point he commanded 40,000 troops, fellow slaves and disaffected workers, controlling most of southern Italy. He won many battles against poorly organised Roman battalions, but was finally crushed by the might of an army led by Crassus in the spring of 71 BCE. He was killed in battle and his body never identified.

French revolts #

Following the first wave of the Black Death, the shortage of labour gave a glimmer of hope to the working class resulting in uprisings in many countries.

The French have always been revolting. Peasant’s Revolts have been a regular occurrence since time immemorial. Here are some salient ones:

Jacquerie revolts – France 14th Century #

Peasant revolting against poor living conditions occurred frequently throughout the Middle ages. The French were generally at the van guard. In 1358, the peasants killed a knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die by a miserable death.

“There was little organisation, however, and the revolts were soon brought to an end when the leader, Guillaume Cale (? - 1358), was captured and decapitated.

“In spite of the failure and loss of life in the Jacquerie revolts, similar expressions of public disgust occurred in other places. Rebellious peasants rose up in the cities of Béziers, Rouen and Montpellier and, between 1381 and 1384, the group known as the Tuchins, armed gangs of peasants and craftsmen, revolted against tax levies and the presence of mercenaries who robbed and killed at will without any interference from those in charge. In Florence, workers seized the government of the city; in Flanders there were uprisings; Catalonia experienced a revolt against the nobility; and in England, in 1381, Wat Tyler (1341-81) famously led a march by discontented peasants on London which ended in his death and the deaths of his associates. A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Lisbon Gordon Kerr, Publisher: Oldcastle Books

Peasant revolting against poor living conditions occurred frequently throughout the Middle ages. The French were generally at the van guard. In 1358, the peasants killed their knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die a miserable death.

“There was little organisation, however, and the revolts were soon brought to an end when the leader, Guillaume Cale (? - 1358), was captured and decapitated.

“In spite of the failure and loss of life in the Jacquerie revolts, similar expressions of public disgust occurred in other places. Rebellious peasants rose up in the cities of Béziers, Rouen and Montpellier and, between 1381 and 1384, the group known as the Tuchins, armed gangs of peasants and craftsmen, revolted against tax levies and the presence of mercenaries who robbed and killed at will without any interference from those in charge.

In Florence, workers seized the government of the city; in Flanders there were uprisings; Catalonia experienced a revolt against the nobility; and in England, in 1381, Wat Tyler (1341-81) famously led a march by discontented peasants on London which ended in his death and the deaths of his associates.

By the late 18th cenury, the growing disparity of the rich and poor spilled over into one of the most disruptive and bloody revolutions of all times when the peasants attacked the Palace of Versailles and stormed the Bastille in Paris.

Perhaps the most Western democracy owes much to the ideas of the Englishman, John Locke, who formulated the basic ideas of modern democracy almost entirely in humanistic terms. Humans established political society to protect all citizens equally. He influenced proclamations such as the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Bill of Rights in 1791, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789.

These texts articulate that humans elect an assembly of men to represent them and its laws are the will of the people. God exists, but government makes and enforces laws entirely for the public good without interest in religion. The insightful minds of the 17th and 18th centuries articulated principles that help hold a political community or nation together. Public officials from head of state to minor clerks undertook to uphold the political community’s basic principles and the will of its people as expressed in law. These texts contain magnificent words written to describe what it means to be human.

Of the three catch phrases, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, how many are actually still practised?

The revolutionary process in the summer of 1789 — including the storming of the Bastille on July 14, toppled the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI, divested the nobility of their hereditary power, and completely undermined the political influence of the Catholic Church.

This dramatic revision in French society unleashed a chaotic process of revolutionary advance and reactionary blowback. The forces of property were unwilling to stand idly by as their enormous privileges were threatened; they attempted to undo all the radical changes brought on by the revolution and restore the old social hierarchies even as the revolutionaries worked to cohere an entirely different kind of society based on more egalitarian ideals.

From this unstable crucible ultimately emerged Napoleon, who would construct the Bonapartist state through war and empire, ultimately leading to France’s renewed subjugation by the old powers of Europe and the restoration of the monarchy.

Napoleon had already reached a concordat with the Church to re-establish it to keep the laity under control, yet considered himself the supreme head of state.

The Congress of Vienna, assembly in 1814–15 that reorganized Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, was the most-comprehensive treaty that Europe had ever seen. it was customary for historians to condemn the statesmen of Vienna. It was later realized how difficult their task was, as was the fact that they secured for Europe a period of peace of 100 years, which was its cardinal need.

Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain, the four powers that were chiefly instrumental in the overthrow of Napoleon, decided there were better ways to resolve disputes than killing each other.

The secondary objective was to “turn back the clock”. Napoleon had “liberated” the areas he conquered by abloshing mondarchies. The Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, Priussia and France wanted to re-instate heriditary rule by Monarchs by eliminating popular rule. Article six explicitly stated that popular governments were to be destroyed and royal monarchies reestablished. Britain abstained.

Prince Metternich is considered the main architect of the Treaty. He decried the waste of young lives for no real gain and was determined it should never happen again. Often characterised as a conservative, he was actually visionary and established a peace that lasted 99 years by attempting to maintain a balance of power between the five great nations.

Metternich’s great fear was a fear of revolutionaries demanding universal suffrage, posing a threat to “legitimate” aristocratic and regal power.

One hundred years later, the Belle Epoch demonstrated that like Talleyrand’s aphorism of the Bourbons, the aristocrats “have forgotten nothing, and have learned nothing.”

British revolts #

England experienced a number of insurrections throughout its history - Wat Tyler’s revolt, 1380, Peterloo - 1819, The Opium Wars, 1840 - 60, Boxer Rebellion; the Chinese see as part of 100 years of humiliation, India, Amritsar, Punjab, Louis Riel in Canada, Ned Kelly, Australia, The Boer War….. None of these can be considered proud times for the British Empire clinging tenaciously to the conviction that:

“whoever rules the waves, can waive the rules.”

Wat Tyler #

Some 35 years after the Black Death had swept through Europe decimating over one third of the population, there was a shortage of people left to work the land. Recognising the power of ‘supply and demand’, the remaining peasants began to re-evaluate their worth and subsequently demanded higher wages and better working conditions.

In 1381, Wat Tyler (1341-81) led a march by discontented peasants on London. The whole administration sought refuge in the Tower, but it was stormed and several officials were executed. Richard, at 16, rode out in all his kingly regalia and negotiated with the rebels. Surprisingly, they submitted to his stature, knelt to his authority and with promises to review their causes, agreed to disband to return in a week.

Richard regrouped his military and at their next meeting, arrested 100 of their leaders, which ended in Wat Tyler’s death and the deaths of his associates. Peasants were forced to accept the previous oppressed conditions.

Richard now fully convinced of his invulnerability, asserted the divine right of Kings and assumed absolute power.

Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 #

Maimoonah Yaasmeen writes:

Jack Cade was the leader of a popular uprising against the government of Henry VI. Cade’s rebellion of 1450 was a protest brought about by corruption, high taxes and discontent at the recent loss of Normandy by aggrieved returning soldiers. The uprising was centred largely in the South East of England with people from Kent rising and marching on London. Cade led the rebels from Sevenoaks through Kent, arriving on 30th June 1450. It ended with the death of Cade on 12th July 1450.

Kent had suffered greatly as a result of the wars with France. Taxation was high, many lives had been lost. The lack of success and continued demands for more men and financing caused resentment. This was increased as many people viewed the Kings closest advisors as being incompetent or corrupt. Arguments in court had led to divisions over policies on France and taxation and created a powder keg of ill-feeling against the Kings council and dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the king himself.

William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk

In May 1450 those divisions at court led to King Henry VI having little choice but to banish William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. The Duke was associated with the failings of policies in France and many considered him to be one of the corrupt councillors. However, the Duke of Suffolk never reached Europe. His body was found washed up on the shoreline of Kent. As a favourite of the King, the murdered Duke would surely be avenged. With no obvious murderer, many of the people of Kent believed that they would be made to suffer.

The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent

As the political situation nationally continued to be quite fractured, the local situation for those in Kent was also getting worse. It prompted Jack Cade, also known as John Mortimer, to write The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent. This manifesto, produced at the foot of the page in untranslated format, outlined the complaints that the rebels had against the crown. Cade’s complaint, in brief, states:

Loyalty to the King

That certain advisors “dayly enforme hym that good is evyll and evyll is good” That these corrupt advisors are causing fractures to the court. It specifically states that there is an attempt to corruptly discredit Richard, Duke of York whilst promoting traitors: “so that by ther fals menys and lyes they make hym to hate and to distroy his frendys, and cherysythe his fals traytors” States that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, met his end at the hand of the false traitor Willliam de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk.

Raises the issue of the system of justice breaking down:

“the law servyth of nowght ellys in thes days but for to do wrong, for nothyng is sped almost but false maters by coulour of the law for mede, drede, and favor, and so no remedy is had in ye cowrt of conscience in any wyse”

Informs the King that poor advise led to the countries financial problems, widespread debt and the loss of France:

“we sey owr sovereyn lord may understond that hi”s fals cowncell hath lost his law, his marchandyse is lost, his comon people is dystroyed, the see is lost, Fraunce is lost, the kynge hym selffe is so set that he may not pay for his mete nor drynke, and he owythe more then evar eny Kynge of Yngland owght, for dayly his traytours abowt hym wher eny thyng shuld come to hym by his lawes,. anon they aske it from hym.

Makes it clear that the demand is just, fair and effective governance.

Derides the Duke of Suffolk and implores the King to listen to sound guidance of the unjustly banished Richard, Duke of York (to Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant).

“avoyd from hym all the fals progeny and affynyte of the Dewke of Suffolke, the which ben openly knowne, and that they be p[u]nyshyd afftar law of lond, and to take about his noble person his trew blode of his ryall realme, that is to say, the hyghe and myghty prynce the Duke of Yorke, exilyd from owre sovereyne lords person by the noysyng of the fals traytore the Duke of Suffolke and his affinite

Blames the loss of Normandy on traitors,

” allso the realme of Fraunce lost, the duchy of Normandy, Gascon, and Gyan, and Anjoy demayn lost by the same traytours.” It also lists the ‘true’ knights and nobles who were excluded from a role on the continent who could have done a better job: the Dukes of Norfolk and Exeter and the 16th Earl of Warwick.

Calls for justice to be done to prevent extortion in Kent and states that the rebels will support all just means.

The language used in Cade’s demands is reminiscent of those made during the Peasants Revolt. It also led some to believe that the true power behind the rebellion was not Cade but Richard, Duke of York, as many of the complaints bear similarities to those made by himself about the faction led by Suffolk. This has led to some observers linking Cade’s Rebellion to the origins of the Wars of the Roses.

By Maimoonah Yaasmeen

Peterloo Massacres #

Excerpted from Ellen Castelow

While the British abstained from the Holy Alliance, they too feared popular government pushed by The American Revolution 1789, and resisted universal franchise as long as possible.

In March 1817, six hundred workers set off from the northern city of Manchester to march to London. Known the ‘Blanketeers’ because each carried a blanket for warmth during the long nights on the road. The leaders were imprisoned and the ‘rank and file’ quickly dispersed.

In May 1819, a more serious, but peaceful demonstration, took place in Manchester at St. Peter’s Fields with a large body of people carrying banners bearing slogans against the Corn Laws and in favour of universal suffrage.

The magistrates ordered the arrest of the principal speakers.

As the Yeomanry attempted to obey the order, they were surrounded by the horde of people and the Hussars were sent in to help them. Fifteen people were killed and about five hundred injured.

This became known as the ‘Peterloo Massacre’

The ‘massacre’ aroused great public indignation, but the government of the day stood by the magistrates and in 1819 passed a new law, called the Six Acts, to control future agitation, however, they consolidated the laws against further disturbances, which the magistrates at the time considered presaged revolution!

The people viewed these Six Acts with alarm as they allowed that any house could be searched, without a warrant, on suspicion of containing firearms and public meetings were virtually forbidden. Periodicals were taxed so severely that they were priced beyond the reach of the poorer classes and the magistrates were given the power to seize any literature that was deemed seditious or blasphemous and any meeting in a parish that contained more than fifty people was deemed illegal.

The Six Acts gave rise to a desperate response and a man called Arthur Thistlewood planned what was to become known as the Cato Street conspiracy….the murder of several cabinet ministers at dinner. The conspiracy failed as one of the conspirators was a spy and informed his masters, the ministers, of the plot.

Thislewood was caught, found guilty of high treason and hanged in 1820.

The trial and execution of Thistlewood constituted the final act of a long succession of confrontation between government and desperate protestors, but the general opinion was that the government had gone too far in applauding ‘Peterloo’ and passing the Six Acts.

Eventually a more sober mood descended on the country and the revolutionary fever finally died out.

So while the Battle of Waterloo is remembered as a turning point in British history, ‘Peterloo’ is also remembered as a sign that the people of England have the ability to right ‘wrongs’ should the occasion warrant it!

1848 #

The historian G.M. Trevelyan said that the democratic revolutions of 1848, all of which were quickly crushed, represented “a turning point at which modern history failed to turn.” The widespread nature of the revolts did usher in the era of “isms”, which further fractured societies.

January 6th, 2021 #

Antonia Hitchens, Contributing writer New Yorker

Late last week, August, 2024, David Dempsey, whom prosecutors described as “political violence personified,” was sentenced to twenty years for his intense assaults on officers at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. “Life has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows,” he told the judge during his sentencing hearing, at the federal courthouse in D.C., while his family sat listening. Dempsey is just one of more than fourteen hundred people who’ve been charged in connection with violence on January 6th; cases play out almost every day in Washington, and Americans are still being summoned back to the nation’s capital for their participation in the riot.

Over the course of writing about the aftermath of January 6th, I would hear rioters described as insurrectionists or as patriots, depending entirely on who was talking. Sitting in court with defendants’ family members, during the past few months, I saw how unresolved the narrative of that day remains—at the courthouse, a judge would say that a defendant had tried to “stop democracy in its tracks”; later on, at a vigil held for J6ers, as they are called, I would hear that the same person had been there to save democracy. (More than half of self-described conservatives now say that January 6th was an act of “legitimate political discourse.”) The courthouse where the trials are taking place is just blocks from the Capitol, and the accused sit before a jury of D.C. residents—on one afternoon, the pool for jury selection included an F.B.I. forensic toxicologist who had tested the blood of one of the Capitol rioters for illegal substances and a former federal police officer who worked at the Pentagon.

Donald Trump has specifically committed to pardoning just one of the Capitol rioters, but he has said on the campaign trail that he would be open to pardoning many more, even if they had assaulted officers. Among the defendants I spoke with, there is a sense of living in the bardo and waiting to find out which version of reality will win out, depending on who is elected President. Meanwhile, some family members have soured on Trump and resent the outsized role he plays in their lives.

The former President has never been held accountable for the riot. As Stephanie McCurry, a professor at Columbia specializing in the Reconstruction era told me,

“The criminal prosecutions are of foot soldiers, and so it’s a very unfinished, cracked process, because their leader is unrepentant. It keeps it alive and it should have been over. We’ve criminally pursued the masses, but then the person who called them remains out of reach.”