Controversies and Viewpoints

by Alain de Benoist

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  Grandeur et misère de l’individualisme français à travers l’histoire,468 an essay by the Duke of Lévis-Mirepoix. Librairie académique Perrin, 658 pages.

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  In Le mal français469 (Plon, 1976), Mr Alain Peyrefitte,470 a former minister, also denounces the French ‘verbal engine’ (‘We admire words and despise facts’), our perpetual tendency towards civil war, as well as the manner in which French individualism finds its ‘natural’ compensation in bureaucracy, with the two feeding upon one another. Nevertheless, he does not restrict himself to describing the symptoms, striving, on the contrary, to identify the underlying and profound causes: beyond the ‘statal ailment’, what he detects is a ‘societal affliction’.

  For three centuries now, France has been an ‘administrative society’. And throughout this time, the position occupied by France in the hierarchy of powers has never ceased to decline. ‘Jacobinism’ was born under the monarchy, somewhere between Richelieu and Colbert. The ‘Great century’ was actually the ‘dazzling onset of decline’. While Northern European countries proceeded to endow themselves with a supple form of organisation allowing the instinct of transcendence present in a minority of men (‘history’s greatest force’) to flourish to everyone’s benefit, the administrative omnipotence pervading Latin countries, and especially France, only served to exacerbate ‘convulsionary immobilism’.

  The French have become both fractious and passive towards the state. On the one hand, they leave any and all initiative in the hands of the institutions, of which they expect nothing but services and gratifications, while, on the other, manifesting an incessantly bad temper towards these very same institutions, ever unable to perceive that they themselves are the source of the situation that they denounce. They thus oscillate continuously between submission and insubordination and are ‘dissenting conservatives’. Behind these two seemingly contradictory attitudes, one encounters a common denominator: the rejection of difference. Frenchmen are ‘uniformisers and egalitarians, thus driving the state to embrace its negative penchants’. The reign of impersonal power leads to a society of ‘limitless irresponsibility’.

  ‘The history of civilisations teaches us that their progress relies on difference. Monotony is synonymous with death itself’, Mr Peyrefitte writes.

  He then specifies that ‘unitarian obsession results in egalitarian obsession, both of which are equally sterilising. And yet one cannot progress if one does not seek to transcend or, if one wishes, to equalise: although equality is an objective, it does imply the presence of inequality. For some inequalities are of a creative nature’.

  ‘The day may come, as it did in England, when the quest for equality ends up exhausting the sources of a prosperity that would allow us to advance towards further equality. In France, the passions of inhibiting equality do not yet threaten our economy, but the ravages of envious egalitarianism are ever a menace to our society’, he goes on to add.

  Mr Peyrefitte also says that to understand the past is to understand oneself; but what is it that the past reveals to us? The disastrous influence of our Roman Catholic heritage. During the sixteenth century, all the necessary conditions were met for all of Europe to invent a genuine civilisation of development. In that same period, however, the Counter-Reformation triggered, in response to the Protestant rupture, an accentuation of the centralised system, which inhibits individual initiative.

  This reaction was simultaneously religious and profane: the tendency to reinforce central power went hand in hand with the necessities of the struggle against ‘heresy’. ‘In all domains, the Counter-Reformation applied the brakes. It proceeded to create or protect hierarchies everywhere, discouraging novelties and establishing a society of distrust’. Still today, ‘one encounters’, through the bureaucratic reflexes of the state, ‘the reflexes of dogmatism and Catholic clericature’. In Protestant countries, by contrast, individual religious commitment (where ‘everyone acts as their own priest’) has led to the principle of ‘responsible autonomy’. The ‘dynamic of polycentrism’ was inscribed into both Luther’s and Calvin’s defiance.

  Mr Peyrefitte states that ‘a civilisation is fertile as long as it accepts, within itself, exchanges between differences. Protestant countries have implemented Erasmus’471 lesson, evolving towards tolerance and polycentrism. In their unitarian obsession, Catholic lands have, on their part, hounded pluralism and constructed monocentrism’. Nordic societies are, nowadays, open societies, societies of mutual trust that bestow ‘a clear conscience upon Prometheus’. On the other hand, Latin societies are closed ones, characterised by reciprocal defiance. So as to reduce this opposition and become (once again) a society of trust, what is necessary is a ‘mental revolution’. Mr Peyrefitte does not deem the latter to be impossible and outlines the means that could enable us to achieve it.

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  North and South

  During the wedding of Constance of Arles and Robert the Pious (996–1031), chronicler Raoul Glaber tells us, ‘France found itself inundated by a certain kind of people, the vainest and shallowest among all men. They were all genuine histrions whose ridiculous shaved chins, breeches, ankle boots and entire ill-composed exterior heralded the disorder of their very soul’. These ‘histrions’ actually have a name: Meridionals.

  Books, records, and newspapers: for a few years now, we have been witnessing the awakening of militant ‘Occitanism’. The ‘Oc’ abbreviation flourishes almost everywhere these days; the red flag bearing the yellow cross clechée relates to all wine-growing manifestations. In Paris, the ultra-Left is discovering a new sort of exoticism and gleefully chanting slogans in a language that it does not understand: Volem viure al païs! Gardarem lo Larzac!472 It seems that in May 1968, we were all German Jews. And lo and behold, we have now become Occitan shepherds.

  In 1964, 165 baccalaureate candidates took the optional Occitan language exam. In 1973, the number was already close to 7,000 and today, it has risen to over 10,000.

  The Marquis appeared. Julien hastened to inform him of his departure. “Where to?”, asked Mr de la Môle. “To the Languedoc”, came the reply. “Do not do so, I beg of you. You are destined for higher accomplishments. If you must leave, it shall be northwards!”

  When quoting this excerpt from Stendhal’s473 The Red and the Black, the Occitans claim that nothing has yet changed. A student who has obtained his diploma from the University of Toulouse or Montpellier is still compelled to travel to Paris for his ‘consecration’, a fact which Mr Jean Larzac of the Institute of Occitan Studies expresses through a specific formula: ‘To have luggage is to have to pack one’s trunk!’

  The Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse

  The ‘Occitan difference’ is by no means a myth. Mr Jacques Vedel, a professor at Toulouse, writes the following:

  No matter how far back we go, France’s historical substratum reveals a clear dualism.

  The ‘demarcation line’ lies approximately across the Loire: the ancient border of the two Gallic dioceses, the lands of written law (urban consulates and public notaries) and customary law, of the langue d’oc and the langue d’oïl, of the ancient seneschalsies and the bailiwicks of the North.

  The word ‘Occitania’ derives from the Latin word Aquitania. It designates all the ancient lands of the langue d’oc, thus thirty-five contemporary French departments belonging to ancient provinces: Poitou, Limousin, Manche, Dauphiné, Provence, Auvergne, Aquitaine, Gascogne, and Languedoc (the ancient Septimania), to which the Catalan domain is added. Their possible capital city? Toulouse.

  Although the Occitan language belongs to the Romance family of languages, it has never been unified. It is subdivided into four dialects: Central Occitan, North Occitan, Catalan and Gascon.

  According to Henri Espieux,474 the Occitan man is comprised of ‘two sub-races of the White race — the Alpine race and the Mediterranean one’.

  As early as in the year 1000 BC, the Celts, who made great use of iron, stood up again
st the Iberians and the Ligurians. Mr Jean Larzac writes:

  From the intermixing of the Ligurians, the Iberians, the Greeks, the Celts, the Romans and the Visigoths was born a type of man that bore no resemblance to the Gauls (who were blue-eyed and blond-haired) and whose physiological constants were defined on various levels, including, for example, that of blood groups: whereas the Frankian type is based on the balance between the A and O group, the Occitan type is marked by the predominance of the O group in the West and the A group in the East, with this diversity compensated for by a more pronounced proportion of the B aspect in the East compared to the West. (Le petit livre de l’Occitanie475 )

  Francia (The Land of the Franks) was originally a region that stretched from the Elba to the North Sea and la Manche and whose boundaries were, in the sixth century, delimited by both the Visigoth state that had established itself south of the Loire and the Breton surge. It is this very kingdom which, by means of various treaties and conquests, gradually extended its domain until it became the France of today.

  In 451, the king of Toulouse, Theodoric I, dies while fighting against Attila’s army in the ‘Battle of Catalaunian Plains’. Finding itself in need of the Western Goths, Rome proceeds to support them.

  Saint Sidonius Apollinaris476 describes this Visigothic Toulouse that visitors from all over the world swarmed to admire:

  In Toulouse, one witnessed the thronging of the blue-eyed Saxons accustomed to overcoming the ocean waves; the old Sicambri whose hair, cropped after their defeat, slowly rose upon their heads to cover their skulls now that peace had restored their freedom; the Heruli with their cheeks tattooed in blue and a complexion akin to sea water; the seven-foot Burgundians; the Ostrogoths, so proud of the support of the king of Toulouse, Euric, against the Huns; and even the envoys of the Persian king. Rome itself implored Toulouse to grant it its assistance against the men of the North that attacked it from all sides. The Garonne river thus protected the Tiber.

  When entering into function, kings swear an oath of fidelity to the traditions and customs of the peoples that they govern. Such is the origin of local liberties: the ‘fors’ to the north of the Pyrenees; the Spanish fueros.

  In 507, Clovis (Chlodowig) defeats the Visigoths at Vouillé and takes control of the Gallia Romana. The Church, which had already brought about the collapse of the Ostrogoth kingdom of Italy, triumphs. Against the Goths, Christianised a century earlier but ideologically uncertain, it had chosen to support the Franks, who had, until recently, espoused pagandom. Salic Law proclaims: ‘Praised be the Lord, who loves the Franks!’ (Next, the Church directed its vindictiveness against the Visigoths of Spain, whose leader, Roderic, would meet his fate on 26th July, 711, in Jerez, on the banks of the Guadalete).

  In 732, Charles ‘the Hammer’ Martel faces the Arabs between Tours and Poitiers. Among his adversaries’ ranks, one finds a rather large number of superficially Islamised Visigoths. ‘Occitan militias’, some would go on to say.

  The Land of the Cathars

  During the 12th century the literary movement of the troubadours surfaces. It proposes a novel genre: the Chanson. Having initially emerged in Limousin with the Ebles de Ventadour school, it soon triumphs at the court of Poitiers. Despite having perhaps originated from the Andalusian civilisation, one also detects Celtic and Germanic influences in it.

  Mr Robert Lafont477 writes:

  Whether in Occitania, the South of Spain or the Orient, sung poetry constitutes the common form of complimentary celebration.

  ‘The troubadours’ Occitan’ quickly conquered the entire meridional region. One even witnessed the development of a ‘troubadour civilisation’ around Toulouse. In their books, Mr Pierre Bec478 (Nouvelle anthologie de la lyrique occitane du Moyen ge.479 Aubanel, 1970) and Charles Camproux of the University of Montpellier (Histoire de la littérature occitane.480 Payot, 1953) have demonstrated its literary wealth. Its tolerance, its ‘liberalism’ and the important position it bestows upon feminine values have all been praised as well. Unlike the barons of the North, who were rather supportive of ‘male power’, the troubadours proclaimed the futility of social principles in relation to amorous feelings. In contrast to chivalric love, Mr Jeffrey B. Russel481 writes, ‘courtly love is an adulterous love, meaning a heretical one’ (Courtly Love as Religious Dissent, The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 51, No. 1, 1965).

  ‘The man proceeds to beg the woman, instead of imposing his desires upon her’, Mr Larzac proudly specifies.

  This civilisation developed on the fringes of the Church, which was a source of irritation for the latter, especially when considering the fact that, sheltered by the mountains anthe precipitous terrain of the South of France, heresies never ceased to flourish.

  First came the Muslims and the Arians, then the Albigensians and the Cathars, and, at a later point, the Waldensians of the Alps and the Protestants of the Cévennes.

  The ‘land of the Cathars’ is located between Albi, Toulouse, Foix and Carcassonne. The claim that the South of France was uniformly Cathar is therefore very far from being truthful. Hence these words by Mr Lafont:

  By welcoming Catharism, what Occitania acknowledged was much more the right to heresy than heresy itself.

  Ever since the first centuries of our era, Mr Michel Roquebert482 remarks, Manichaean dualism ‘had never, in fact, ceased to seethe in the bosom of the Orient’s religious communities’. Around the year 1000 of our era, it spilled out into the West, passing through Northern Italy and the Balkans. All around the West, it gave birth to sects that declared themselves against the established Church: the Paulicians of Armenia, the Bogomils of the Balkans, and the Albigensians.

  In Occitania, Catharism was the religion of the land-owning aristocracy, ever in league with the people against Roman guardianship.

  Destroying Heresy

  In May 1243, on the road to Montferrier, a flicker allows one to surmise the presence of a compact mass of arms-bearing men. The night draws to its end and, in the still fresh dawn of this spring morning, the watchmen suddenly shake each other out of slumber. The sergeant-at-arms sounds the alarm. 500 Cathars, some simple believers and others ‘Perfects’ (i.e. members of the Cathar clergy), have fallen back into the citadel of Montségur. Facing them are 10,000 men that have come from the North.

  The ‘Franks’ set up camp. The banner of the Archbishop of Narbonne, Pierre Amiel, flutters alongside that of Carcassonne Seneschal Hughes des Arcis. The siege of Montségur commences.

  The conflict had already lasted for more than half a century, and it was Pope Innocent III, the count of Segni, that had initially triggered it.

  Having ascended to the pontifical throne in 1198, Innocent III would, three years later, decree the ‘domestic crusade’. Because of his predications, Arnaud Amaury, the Abbé of Citeaux, would mobilise the barons of the North. Mr Robert Lafont remarks:

  The critical fact is that the Church proceeded to modify the notion of crusade, no longer implementing it on infidels but, for the very first time, on heretics instead.

  The purpose of the entire undertaking was to destroy the Cathar heresy by replacing the Occitan feudal rulers protecting it with lords devoted to Rome’s cause.

  From the Pope’s perspective, however, the crusade also represented an opportunity to intervene in ‘Frankish’ matters. Mr Michel Roquebert writes:

  One must not forget that Philippe-Auguste483 had deliberately delayed the crusade for about ten years. […] At the very time when he begged Philippe-Auguste to lead the crusade himself, the Pope actually sought to use the king. Paradoxically perhaps, the latter did not actually reciprocate the intention.

  In 1209, an army of crusaders had already invaded the lands of Toulouse. Its leader, Simon de Montfort, originally from Montfort-l’Amaury, was an ambitious and determined man driven by a cold sort of energy. A remarkable man, he would be killed during the siege of Toulouse, in 1218. The crusaders themselves originated from all northern regions. In contemporary texts, the ‘Fre
nch’ are mentioned along with the Bretons, the Flemish, the Normans, the Burgundians, the (Swabian and Lorrain) Germans, the Picard people, the Champenois,484 and the ‘Tiois’ (meaning northern Germans or ‘theodisca’485 ). The Viscount of Béziers-Carcassonne was the first to oppose them. His troops were immediately crushed.

  In November 1212, Simon de Montfort organises a sort of large parliament in Pamiers, whose members he instructs to ‘wipe out the heretical filth’ and ‘ensure that common decency reigns over a land that has been claimed by the Holy Roman Church and has submitted to the latter’. Some ‘statutes’ restoring the Church’s privileges and instituting the repression of the Cathars and the Jews are then put in written form.

  The crusade would successively face the counts of Toulouse, Foix and Comminges, the Viscount of Béarn, and even the king of Aragon.

  It is initially successful: during the battle of Muret, on 12th September, 1213, Peter II of Aragon is killed and the Occitan armies defeated. Soon enough, however, it is forced to retreat.

  In 1224, the aggressors are compelled to leave the region and, once again, Catharism comes out into the open.

  Two years later, a second crusade is led by the king of France, Louis VIII, the son of Philippe-Auguste.

  This time around, Occitania falls. The treaty of Meaux, signed in 1229, consecrates its defeat. Its signatory, Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, commits himself to purging his land of heresy, dismantling his city’s fortifications, paying the Church an indemnification of 10,000 silver marks, and, last but not least, offering his daughter’s hand in marriage to one of Saint Louis’ brothers, Alphonse de Poitiers (Saint Louis486 had, in the meantime, ascended to the throne), in exchange for which he would receive formal absolution on the main square of Notre-Dame, in Paris.