Talk:Le souper de Beaucaire

Some quick questions.

Thank you for this fascinating article. Some quick questions. What did it say ? Do we have a translation or a summary of its contents ? How long was it ? Do copies of it still exist ? Was it his first public document ? 203.206.60.233 (talk) 11:15, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's a French to English Google Translation of its contents. Not very long, 10 pages in a book, a 10 minute read at most - it reads like a conversational script. It can be found (better translated) in Somerset de Chair's "Napoleon on Napoleon", chapter 2, pp. 59–70 - see References section or article for full details. The author offers no details as to the documents background, he simply translated Napoleon's words with a few dry historical footnotes to support the content. Don't know if copies still exist, presumably at least one survived the Revolution to allow for modern publication, but where they are now I don't know - I assume French Archives have one, some place, or a museum in Paris might. Yes, it was his first public document, as far as I know, although he had written things in the past, he never completed or published them. Ma®©usBritish ^{[Chat • RFF]} 11:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. This this request may prove difficult, be that as it may it is made. Given (?) this is Napoleons first public document, at age 24, it is quite important. The article omits one important item; that is a very short synopsis of the pamphlet in English. This is a difficult request: to summarise from French of 12 pages of 40 lines (480 lines in total) into English of 12 paragraphs of 2 lines (24 lines in total) in a large task. This request is also based that one must know for certain that it is both; Napoleon's first public work; Napoleon's own work and is not a post event fiction. One would consider this of premier importance; to have an English language summary of an important French language document. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.60.233 (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

There's no doubt it was a soul effort, and that he wrote it without aid. No historian or biographer, to my knowledge, has ever questioned the validity of the document, and I have read several - I have just added a Memoirs of... paragraph which details his authoring of the work, although the biographer is not wholly-reliable he cannot be easily discounted as a first-hand witness. Whether he manufactured the entire conversation, or if a genuine conversation actually took place which inspired him to write it is uncertain, although Napoleon's autobiography seems to imply that it did occur. Which leaves his biographers to choose between political genius or simple inspiration when writing about it. Though no one makes that big a fuss over the event, and few biographers expend more than a page on the matter, mainly to explain how it promoted his career, rather than how it failed to impress the rebels as a propaganda effort. As for a synopsis, it really only sums up as "Napoleon meets four merchants in a tavern and they discuss the outlook of the civil war". There's little more can be said than that as far as things go, it's not really an involved document to summarise further, and synopsis' are meant to be a "brief summary of the major points of a written work", which I've done in the lead section. It's not even one of his best works given his later achievements, perhaps that's why it is not given a lot of attention. Whether it is an under-rated piece of work, remains to be seen.. given that they republished it in 1821 after his death, perhaps they recognised it, even then, as his epoch into becoming the greatest leader in French history? Ma®©usBritish ^{[Chat • RFF]} 14:52, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

May be worth noting that the French wiki has a brief article on a Sabin Tournal, (Google translation) who may have been the editor and/or publisher of the original 1793 pamphlet. Napoleon would certainly have needed an editor, given that French was not his first language and he sometimes mixed French with Italian spelling, all his life, so I'm not going to suggest that Tournal was a co-author, though I suspect, given his background as a political newspaper editor, that he may have had a hand in the tone of the final print from Napoleon's draft – none of which can be supported, but is certainly not impossible to believe. Apparently it was Tournal's version reprinted in 1798, although he died in 1795. I'm not including this fellow in the article, at present, as the French page has no in-line citations against the points relevant here, and the sources ref'd are French anyway so I cannot check them myself. Incidentally, I cannot find any info regarding Frédéric Royou, who wrote the introduction to the 1821 2nd edition. Ma®©usBritish ^{[Chat • RFF]} 05:48, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

"...civil war had spread across France, in response to the government's decrees and radical oppression of counter-revolutionaries..."

“Pro-republic censoring”, seriously ?

Honestly, if you can't assume a peaceful discussion on the matter, then you need to consider finding another area to edit in…

It’s not about being anti- or pro-republic, it’s about being factually right. Your sentence oversimplifies the issues of the civil war occurring in France (its causes are much more complex than your laconic argument), it reverses the cause and the consequence of the repression (Federalists insurrections are one of the reasons of the governement's repression, not the other way around) and it is written in a controversial style ("radical oppression")...

And above all, it doesn’t belong to this article (the Souper de Beaucaire) to analyze the causes and reasons of the French counterrevolution, especially with a single, short and provocative sentence. So basically your sentence is useless in this article.

By the way, as "oppressed counterrevolutionaries", you gave the example of Federalists, proving you don't know much on this subject... You would probably be interrested to know that Federalists were not counterrevolutionaries, but a revolutionnary faction (Girondins), struggling with another revolutionary faction (Montagnards)... DITWIN GRIM (talk) 10:37, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Your argument carries a very polemic tone, which reads "I know better than you, so my beliefs are superior to yours". Doesn't even warrant a discussion with that so-called "peaceful" approach. And "radical oppression" is hardly a controversial style.. since when is lopping people's heads off by the 1000s "controversial", given that no one denies it happened? Controversy refers to disputed events, which is not the case here. If you feel the content is incorrect the onus or WP:BURDEN is on you to provide fresh supported material, not to go dropping content from articles willy-nilly because you question them. That is not a collaborative process, and generally appears disruptive as it leaves articles looking like Swiss cheese because editors foolishly remove content they disapprove of without making any effort to replace that content with fresh material to fill in the gaps they're leaving. It results in paragraphs containing disjointed sentences. So, whilst I don't intent to discuss your unsupported opinions, at this stage, I suggest you consider providing a suitable alternative. This article is a GA, if you notice, I intend it to stay that way. Ma®©usBritish^[chat] 14:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not about a knowledge better than the other,it's about true and untrue. You're twisting the facts, that is what is controversial : The way you present things is that the Federalists were forced to revolt in response to an indiscriminate oppression. Well, it's the other way around, the Reign of Terror aimed to quell the civil war started by Federalists and Royalists (in order to win the International war that France was simultaneously facing), not to start one. The Reign of Terror was sufficiently violent like that, no need to feed the "black legend" of the French revolution...

Removing the erroneous sentence doesn't leave the article "like a Swiss cheese", as it is really unnecessary. It does not belong to this article to explain the causes of the civil war, so I propose to leave it to the Reign of Terror's article and to keep this alternative sentence : "With the French Revolution into its fourth year, civil war had spread across France between various factions.. Napoleon was involved in military action, on the government's side, against some rebellious cities of southern France." DITWIN GRIM (talk) 17:14, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

References