Clara Campoamor and Mercedes Formica: Two Exceptional Feminists, Victims of Political Correctness

The progressive doxa and ideology make the women’s rights movement in Spain, in the 20th century, a sort of preserve of radical and Marxist feminism. The leading figures, invariably cited by the mainstream media, are the socialists Victoria Kent, Margarita Nelken and Carmen de Burgos y Segui, the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinists Dolores Ibarruri and Matilde Landa, and, to a lesser extent, the anarchist Federica Montseny. Apart from these? Nothing or almost nothing. Even the famous and talented writer, Emilia Pardo Bazán, has been met with embarrassment or hostility on the grounds that she was an aristocrat with conservative or even traditionalist-Carlist convictions. Other examples? Feminists as important as María Espinosa de los Monteros or Consuelo Gómez Ramos, to name but a few, share a similar fate and are even ignored or blacklisted for having been supporters of a conservative Catholic feminism or for having held public office under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.

Another significant case is the Republican-Liberal Clara Campoamor. Honored and admired, often referred to as the most prestigious feminist of the 1930s, her biography is nonetheless watered down, if not glossed over, to avoid mentioning her harsh criticism of the Popular Front. But the archetypal example of ideological amnesia is without question that of the lawyer Mercedes Formica. A major architect of women’s emancipation under Franco’s regime, her Jose Antonian and Falangist convictions, affirmed throughout her life, led to her being placed squarely under the radar.

Clara Campoamor Rodriguez and Mercedes Formica-Corsi, are undoubtedly two almost perfect victims of the “historically correct.” One is instrumentalized and manipulated by the politico-cultural power, the other is caricatured, ignored or passed over in silence. They deserve to be rethought, reevaluated and revisited.

Clara Campoamor: A Scandalous Political and Cultural Recovery

Clara Campoamor was born in Madrid on February 12, 1888. While still a child, she lost her father and had to help her mother survive. She was successively a milliner, a commercial employee, a post office employee and a mechanics teacher. She then resumed her studies, entered the University, obtained a law degree and enrolled in the College of Lawyers in Madrid in 1925. A well-known lecturer, she helped found the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the Spanish Women’s League for Peace.

Clara Campoamor. Credit: Historia.

In 1930, at the age of forty-two, on the eve of the proclamation of the Second Republic, Clara Campoamor entered politics. She was a member of the national council of Manuel Azaña’s Acción Republicana, the embryo of the party that he would officially create in 1931. However, she soon left this party to join the Radical Party of Alejandro Lerroux, a centrist party that was then more to the right. On June 28 of the same year, in the general elections, she was elected deputy in a Madrid constituency. A month later, she was appointed by her party as a member of the Commission in charge of drafting the Constitution. She succeeded in having the draft of the fundamental law proclaim the full suffrage rights of women. During the debates in the Cortes, when she defended the wording of the law, she came up against another woman, the radical-socialist deputy Victoria Kent. Like many members of her party, Kent was against the right to vote for women and asked for its postponement, fearing that it would favor the right because of the Catholic convictions of too many Spanish women. A few days earlier, a famous PSOE politician, Margarita Nelken, later affiliated to the PCE, expressed the same opinion in the press. A surprising point of view, but in agreement with that of a good number of socialist-Marxist leaders who, through “elitism”, shared with the reactionary right the same distrust and contempt for the people, who were considered uneducated and had to accept, willingly or not, to be guided by the enlightened elite.

As a result of the successive speeches, including those of Kent and Campoamor, the Parliament was divided into two blocks. Socialist leader Prieto, who also opposed women’s suffrage, left the room before the vote. The final result was clear: 161 votes in favor, 121 against and 188 abstentions. Taking into account that the PSOE had 116 deputies and the Radical Socialist Republican Party had 61, out of a total of 177 socialist deputies, 83 voted in favor and 94 against. 40 percent of those elected to the chamber abstained or were absent.

It was therefore against the will of a majority of left-wing deputies—socialists and socialist radicals (the right-wing deputies were almost absent from this chamber)—that the principle of women’s right to vote was acquired. But, let us emphasize, it was in Spain before France, since French women had to wait for the provisional government of General de Gaulle, in 1944, to become finally electors and eligible as men.

On the occasion of this vote, Clara Campoamor’s intervention was decisive. She has the honor of having been the deputy who contributed most to obtaining the right to vote for women. But it is necessary to remember here an important point; she belonged to the radical party of Lerroux, a republican and liberal party, nourished by anti-Catholic Freemasons, of which she was deputy from 1931 to 1933. She was not a socialist militant or sympathizer, as many leaders and historians of the PSOE say or imply today, trying to appropriate her figure. She expressly rejected Marxist socialism and communism.

Clara Campoamor was also, under the same government, Director General of Beneficiencia y Asistencia Social and delegate to the SDN of the Spanish Republic. She was also one of the main drafters of the law establishing divorce in Spain. And her little known or misunderstood history does not end there. In the aftermath of the socialist uprising of October 1934, against the government of the radical Lerroux, Clara Campoamor, who, it seems, disagreed on the way to repress those responsible for the insurrection, decided to leave the Radical Party. She immediately tried to join the Izquierda Republicana (Manuel Azaña’s party), but was refused admission. The “cardinal sin” that she was accused of, she said, was the women’s vote, which would have led to a victory for the right in the general elections of November 1933. This is at least the interpretation of most of the left-wing leaders of the time, which today is not unanimously accepted by historians. The defeat of the leftists can be explained more by the disappointment of a part of the electorate and the wear and tear of power than by the importance of the female vote.

But the ordeal of Campoamor had only just begun. Too often, it is said and written in an imprecise way that she voluntarily went into exile to escape the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. The unvarnished truth is much less glowing for her opponents. In reality, in September 1936, fearing to be arrested and summarily executed in one or another of the Chekas of Madrid, she fled, with her family, the Popular Front zone, not wanting, as she would later write, “to be one of those details sacrificed unnecessarily.” Having managed to reach Switzerland, via Italy, she published less than a year later in Paris, La Revolución española vista por una republicana (Plon, 1937), an edifying work that curiously was not published in Spain until the early 2000s.

In this book, Clara Campoamor analyzed the origins of the Spanish Civil War and severely denounced the violations of Republican legality by the Popular Front government that emerged from the February 1936 elections. She explained how the situation deteriorated very quickly; how the government, indecisive and inactive, proved incapable of maintaining public order and preventing physical violence and assassinations. She emphasized the extent to which the left, the socialists and the communists, had prepared for war, carefully hiding substantial arsenals of arms and ammunition, and forming and organizing militarily trained militias. She told how from the first days of this fratricidal conflict, leftist terror spread to more and more victims; and how the political persecution spread throughout the Popular Front area.

Clara Campoamor summarized her testimony in “The Causes of the Government’s Weakness, as Seen by a Republican,” an instructive article published after her death in a special issue of the journal Histoire pour tous/History for All (La guerre d’Espagne/The Spanish Civil War, no. 16, February-March 1980, Paris). Here are some brief excerpts to enlighten the reader:

“From the first days of the struggle a bitter terror reigned in Madrid. Public opinion was tempted at first to blame the violence in the cities, and especially in Madrid, on the anarchists. History will one day tell whether they were justly blamed for these events. In any case, it is up to the governments, without distinction, to take responsibility for them.”

“As the exhortations of the government newspapers eloquently show, terror reigned in the rear from the beginning of the struggle. Patrols of militiamen began to make arrests in homes or in the street; wherever they thought they would find enemy elements. The militiamen, outside of all legality, set themselves up as popular judges and followed their arrests with shootings…. The guardians of the law were either indifferent or powerless before the number of executors who carried out this odious task.”

“At the beginning, they targeted the fascist elements. Then the distinction became blurred. People belonging to the right wing were arrested and shot; then their sympathizers; then members of the radical party of Mr. Lerroux, sometimes even—tragic mistake or class vengeance—members of the Republican Left party… When these mistakes were noticed, the murders were blamed on the fascists and continued… The government found every morning sixty, eighty or a hundred dead lying around the city.”

“And yet the government could have stopped the looting and the anarchy, because it had at its disposal the Civil Guard, which, being very numerous in Madrid, did not side with the insurgents. This force, by its numbers and training, would have been sufficient to maintain order in the capital if it had been wanted to be used… The government therefore did not want to use this force which, in order to re-establish order, would have had to repress the violent acts of the militiamen”.

“During the night, Madrid did not sleep, it trembled. Everyone listened attentively to the sounds of the street, strained one’s ears for footsteps on the stairs… always expecting a search by the militia…. Madrid had fallen to the lowest degree of disorganization and bad taste…. But only by hiding under ground could one escape the ferocity of the carnivores of the rear.”

“Of the thousands of prisoners in the central prison in Madrid, only two young men managed to escape. All the others were massacred. Among them were well-known personalities, such as Mr. Melquíades Alvarez, a member of Parliament, a former Republican and leader of the Liberal Democratic Republican Party, and Mr. Rico Avelló, former Minister of the Interior in the government presided over by Mr. Martinez Barrio in 1933, and High Commissioner to Morocco in February 1936. The shooting echoed all night long inside the prison, spreading terror in the neighboring houses.”

“These last facts finally convinced the government to take the leadership of the repression by forming a tribunal, composed of members of the magistracy and a popular jury recruited from all the parties registered in the Popular Front. This tribunal, given the publicity that its verdicts would receive, would be required to measure their scope and justify them. However, it was not afraid to pronounce sentences such as those of Salazar Alonso, Abad Conde and Rafael Guerra del Rio, former ministers of the Radical Party in the Lerroux cabinet, who were accused—without any proof—of having promoted the uprising. Their crime was quite different: it was to belong to the old radical party, under whose government they had been several times ministers.”

“It is all very well to say that in the exasperation provoked by a civil war all these excesses can be explained; but they remain unjustifiable. The peaceful citizens, the humble merchant, the civil servant, the petty bourgeois; in short all those who do not look at life on the historical level but as it is presented day by day, suddenly understood the danger this terror constituted for them, which was exercised by a resentful rabble and envenomed by a hateful class propaganda.”

“Yes, the pay of ten pesetas per day, paid to the militiamen and militia women, the parade in the city, and for some the looting and the revenge, were sufficient baits to attract in the militias many people who should have been in prison…. Debauchery reigned at the front. and many combatants had to be hospitalized.”

“The terrorists worked on behalf of the insurgents more successfully than their own supporters. These elements always forced the government to continue the struggle, and for good reason…. They had the perfect life: provided with money, looting, massacring and satisfying their thirst for revenge and their baser instincts.”

It is understandable that the admirers of the Popular Front boycotted or ignored the honest and severe testimony of this notorious anti-Francoist. Ignored or marginalized by both sides, Campoamor went into exile, first in Switzerland, then, from 1938, in Argentina, before returning to Lausanne in 1955. She lived on her writing and her profession as a lawyer, publishing articles and lecturing at conferences. Her three requests for permission to return permanently to Spain, which were made by visiting her country three times between 1948 and 1955, were all rejected. In 1964, the Tribunal for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism was abolished, but by that time she had long since given up her plan to return. She died of cancer in Lausanne on April 30, 1972. Her body was cremated and the ashes were deposited in the Polloe cemetery in San Sebastian, in accordance with her last wishes.

Mercedes Formica: An Admired Feminist Turned Pariah

The biography of the lawyer Mercedes Formica is much less known, but it is no less admirable. Mercedes Formica Corsi-Hezode was born on October 8, 1916, in Cadiz, into a relatively wealthy family. Her father, an engineer, was the director of the Gas and Electricity Company of Seville. She was the second daughter of six children who lived their early youth peacefully, without any major problems, between Seville, Cadiz and Cordoba. Her mother, Amalia Hezode, wanted Mercedes to be able to work one day, to be free, independent and to marry for love. She encouraged her daughter to pass the baccalaureate and to study. Mercedes was the only young woman in Seville to enroll in law school in 1932. Unfortunately, that year was a very dark one for her because the family home was destroyed. Her father decided to start a new life with a young German woman. The separation was all the more painful for her mother, who refused the amicable divorce and lost parental authority. Worse still, at the request of her husband and his lawyer, the courts ordered her to move to Madrid with her daughters, one of whom was barely three years old. Amalia would not see her only son again except on rare vacations, barely a few weeks, until her death. The extremely modest alimony she was granted condemned her to live with her daughters in complete destitution. Only scholarships allowed Mercedes to continue her university studies. Divorce law of that time (1932) was favorable to the man; it enshrined the triumph of the stronger, the only one really protected by the law. The marital home was conceived by it as the “husband’s house,” and it gave him the right, humiliating for the woman, to get rid of her by “depositing” her with her parents, in a monastery or in any other place he wished. Mercedes, still a teenager, would never forget the terrible injury and grief inflicted on her mother.

Doña Mercedes Formica de Llosent y Marañón, Madrid, 1954. Credit: SBMA.

Intelligent, hard-working, charismatic and extremely beautiful, Mercedes Formica became a lawyer, historian, novelist and feminist (although she never liked this last label). Her literary work includes the novels, Monte de Sancha (1950), La ciudad perdida (1951), El secreto (1953), A instancia de parte (1955), La hija de Don Juan de Austria (1972), María Mendoza (1979), La infancia (1987), Collar de ámbar (1989) and the trilogy of her memoirs: Visto y vivido (1982), Escucho el silencio (1984) and Espejo roto y espejuelos (1998). However, despite her undeniable literary talent, it was her political and social commitment that made her famous.

Married in 1937 to Eduardo Llosent Marañon, poet and man of letters, Mercedes Formica rubbed shoulders with all the intellectuals of post-Civil War Madrid. Her husband, Llosent, former director of the magazine Mediodia in Seville, was a friend of poets, such as García Lorca, Gerardo Diego, Rafael Alberti and Dámaso Alonso before the Civil War. He was also known for having contributed to the tribute book, Coronas de sonetos en honor a José Antonio, with the poem “Eternity of José Antonio.” Close to the philosopher Eugenio d’Ors, he was soon appointed director of the National Museum of Modern Art (now Museo Reina Sofia). But the couple’s marriage would only last for a while. After separating, Mercedes Formica obtained an annulment and in 1962 she married José María de Careaga y Urquijo, Mayor of Bilbao and Technical Secretary General of the Ministry of Industry.

Mercedes Formica’s social-political commitment went back to the very beginning of her life as a student. In her memoirs, she recounts that on a visit to a friend’s house one Sunday in October 1933, when she entered the living room, she heard a man’s voice on the radio saying: “We are not a party of the left, which in order to destroy everything, destroys even what is good, nor of the right, which in order to preserve everything, preserves even what is unjust.” This chance “radio” encounter with José Antonio Primo de Rivera, during the broadcast of the founding speech of the Falange, would condition her entire life. Years later, she wrote in Visto y vivido (1982), this “young, intelligent, courageous man was feared, rejected and ridiculed by his own social class, which never forgave him for his constant references to injustice, illiteracy, lack of culture, miserable housing, endemic hunger in rural areas, with no other resources than temporary work, the urgent need for land reform. To confuse José Antonio’s thought with the interests of the extreme right is something that ends up rotting the blood. It was the extreme right that condemned him to civil death, waiting for the physical death that they thought he deserved.”

In Mercedes Formica’s life, the meeting with José Antonio marks a before and after. She would be faithful to his memory and his ideas until her last breath. From 1934, she was resolutely involved in the life of the phalangist movement, not hesitating to put her life in danger. Affiliated with the SEU (Sindicato Español Universitario), she was the only female Phalangist in the Faculty of Law in Madrid. The sympathizers preferred not to join so as not to risk paying with their lives.

That same year, Mercedes Formica was appointed by José Antonio as the female delegate of the SEU in Madrid. When the first SEU National Council met on April 11, 1935, she gave a report in which she insisted on the urgency of creating a Book and Textbook Exchange and on the need to increase the number of scholarships, grants, restaurants and student residences. At the suggestion of Carmen Primo de Rivera, one of José Antonio’s sisters, she agreed to contribute to the activities of the Women’s Section. In February 1936, she became the national delegate of the SEU, and as such a member of the National Committee of the Falange.

After the execution of José Antonio on November 20, 1936, and even more so after the adoption by Franco of the decree-law of April 19, 1937, which imposed the fusion of all movements—Carlists, Phalangists, monarchists and other affiliations—fighting in the national camp, Mercedes Formica felt cheated and disappointed. She was reluctant to remain involved with the new political structure created by Franco, the Traditionalist Falange of the JONS. In 1997, she confided to Rosario Ruiz “Franco was not a Phalangist, and I understood then that all this was going to be a kind of gigantic mess, in which there were many converts who, in order to save themselves, had very cruel ‘merits.’ Before the conflict, José Antonio’s followers were very few, perhaps two thousand in all of Spain, and perhaps even less; and in the Franco zone, only a minority remained, perhaps one hundred or two hundred. Those who were in Madrid and Barcelona were shot.”

She did not hesitate to ridicule last-minute converts, and mockingly asked the question: “But where did so many blue shirts come from?” She reproached the newcomers for having set themselves up “as representatives of something they did not believe in; intolerance being their distinctive sign.”

At the beginning of 1944, the National Delegate of the Women’s Section, Pilar Primo de Rivera, offered her the editorship of the weekly Medina. She also worked for the Institute of Political Studies. In August 1944, she accompanied her husband on a diplomatic and cultural tour of Argentina and met Juan Domingo and Evita Perón. Mercedes Formica lost many years of study due to the Civil War and her involvement in the social activities of the Women’s Section, especially in favor of the children of the defeated. But she finally obtained her terminal degree in 1948. Her first wish was to join the Diplomatic Corps; however, she had to give it up so as not to have to live far from her husband. At the same time, the only woman diplomat in Spain was Margarita Salaverria, who was the first to pass the entrance exam during the Republic, in 1933. Faithful to the national camp, she continued her career under Franco. In the 1970s, her husband was appointed Spanish ambassador to the United States and she lived with her family in Washington.

At the end of the 1940s, Mercedes Formica decided to apply for the public prosecutor’s and notary’s examinations, but again she had to give up quickly because one of the requirements was to be a man. For lack of anything better to do, she joined the Madrid Bar Association. But it was extremely difficult for a woman to join a well-known law firm. Therefore, she opened her own law firm, and also became a journalist, novelist and essayist. In 1951, Pilar Primo de Rivera asked her to participate in the Hispanic-American-Philippine Congress. She was given full freedom to write a report proposing reforms on the status of women. But her paper on the situation of university-educated women in the workplace was eventually deemed too committed and buried. A year later, however, the First National Congress of Justice and Law of the FET de las JONS joined her voice to those of the Phalangists of the Women’s Section who demanded more rights for women.

In 1953, Mercedes Formica was alerted to a news item in the press. It was about the assault of a woman by her husband, who stabbed her several times. When the journalist asked the distressing victim why she had accepted her husband’s abuse for so long, she gave a chilling answer: “I tried to separate from him, but a lawyer I consulted told me that I would lose everything, children, house and my few possessions.” Outraged, Mercedes Formica decided to publicly denounce the absurd law that left separated women without any protection.

On November 7, 1953, she published a famous article in ABC, a liberal-conservative monarchist newspaper, entitled “The Marital Home.” The repercussion was enormous; it was taken up, commented upon, or quoted not only in the national press, but also abroad. In the United States, the New York Times, Time Magazine and Holiday magazine echoed it. The same was true of the European press in Great Britain (The Daily Telegraph and the Morning Herald), Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and of course in the Iberian-American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Cuba). In Spain, this article was praised in the anarchist weekly CNT by the communist activist of the PSUC, Lidia Falcón, future founder of the Feminist Party in 1979 (This famous figure of Spanish radical feminism, would be accused of transphobia and incitement to hatred in 2020 and excluded from the communist party Izquierda Unida (IU), allied to Podemos).

In Madrid, on November 18, 1953, the director of ABC, decided to publish a new article. Its title was unambiguous: “The marital home is not the husband’s house.” At the end of November and the beginning of December, the Madrid daily launched a wide-ranging survey to which the most important Spanish jurists and lawyers were invited. At the 1954 National Congress of Lawyers, lawyer-priests were among those who spoke out in favor of the reform. Some of them did not hesitate to point out that in his 1931 book, La familia según el Derecho natural y cristiano (The Family According to Natural and Christian Law), Cardinal Isidro Goma, the strongest supporter of the “Crusade” in 1936, wrote: “It is time to underline the offensive inequality to which the civil code has relegated the Spanish woman and mother.”

For her part, Mercedes Formica did not stop there. On March 3, 1954, she published an interview in the magazine Teresa, in the Women’s Section, in which she summarized her point of view. Again, on July 10, 1954, she gave a lecture on “The legal situation of Spanish women” at the Medina Circle of the Women’s Section. She did not fight, as one might think, against the retrograde laws of Francoism, but against legal principles dating back to the nineteenth century. The Constitution of the Republic of 1931 stated the general principle that “all Spaniards are equal before the law,” a principle that was taken up by the Fuero de los Espanoles of Franco’s Spain in 1945; but in both cases there were no concrete laws or regulations to implement it. The Civil Code of 1889 had remained unchanged under the Republic, despite the law on marriage and divorce, and then, just as unalterable under Franco’s regime, which had deviated from the law on divorce and introduced penalties and sanctions against abortion, infanticide, adultery and child abandonment. Women needed their husband’s permission for any act with legal consequences. Spain was not an exceptional case; in France, for example, it was only with the law of July 13, 1965 that married women were allowed to work without their husband’s prior authorization and to open a bank account in their own name. On both sides of the Pyrenees, the same prejudice existed in the middle classes—the work of married women was perceived as proof of the man’s inability to provide for his family.

For almost five years, the debates and polemics, initiated by Mercedes Formica, followed one another at a good pace. The lawyer and journalist did not give up. She visited the president of the Supreme Court, José Castán Tobeñas, and obtained his support; she convinced parliamentarians of the Cortes; finally, she had a meeting with the head of state. In order to obtain this meeting, on March 10, 1954, the mediation of Pilar Primo de Rivera was essential. When before the “Generalissimo,” Mercedes Formica mentioned the need for the wife’s consent to dispose of her property during the separation, he corrected her: “No. Consent must be required at all times, with or without separation.” Franco knew from experience the difficulties of children of separated or divorced parents. He remembered that when he was an army cadet and his mother’s alimony payments were late in coming, he was forced to ask for credit at grocery stores. At the end of the hearing, the Caudillo invited Mercedes Formica to go and speak on his behalf to the Minister of Justice, the traditionalist Antonio Iturmendi.

Her efforts were successful, but only four years later. The law of April 24, 1958, would modify sixty-six articles of the Civil Code. The concept of “husband’s house” was replaced by that of “marital home;” the discriminatory concept of “wife’s deposit” was abolished; the man’s absolute power over household goods disappeared; and widowed or remarried women no longer lost parental authority over their children. Mercedes Formica was undoubtedly responsible for this reform of the Civil Code; but it was not until 1978 that the Penal Code was reformed and the discriminatory treatment of women in matters of adultery was repealed. Other legislative reforms aimed at establishing equality between women and men were initiated by Mercedes Formica and her friends in the Women’s Section, such as Monica Plaza and Asunción Olivé. These included the Law of July 22, 1961, on women’s professional and labor rights, and the Law of July 4, 1970, on the consent of mothers for adoption.

In 1970, Mercedes Formica’s signature was among those of 300 writers, some of whom had been volunteers in the Blue Division, artists and intellectuals who protested against clerical censorship to the Minister of Information Manuel Fraga Iribarne. Mercedes Formica intervened again to demand an improvement in the situation of destitute pensioners (1966), to demand an increase in the number of childcare centers (1967), to defend the law decriminalizing adultery (1977), and to denounce the non-application of sentences against rapists (1998). From the 1970s onwards, her work was taken up and extended by the lawyer María Telo (who had a letter-writing relationship with Clara Campoamor) and by Concepción Sierra Ordoñez. Both of them were founders of the Spanish Association of Women Jurists (1971), an association in which the Phalangists of the Women’s Section Belén Landáburu and Carmen Salinas Alonso were also active. These four women were behind the 1975 law on the legal situation of married women and the rights and duties of spouses.

Mercedes Formica’s fight was not only in favor of women, but was part of a larger struggle against injustice and in defense of the weak. It was not, she said in the twilight of her life, an extravagant or senseless struggle, as the opposition (Immobilists) maintained for a while; nor was it a paradoxical, contradictory or even superficial struggle to change nothing in depth, as the extreme feminists claimed. Mercedes Formica wanted to be consistent, in accordance with her youthful convictions, which were against the stereotypical image of the submissive woman, of the angelic housewife, confined to the private space to take care of her husband. She was aware of the reproaches made to the founder of the Phalange for having made comments about women that were described as ambiguous and stereotypical by his opponents. Hadn’t José Antonio said that the Phalange was feminine because it had to have two major virtues, self-abnegation and a sense of sacrifice, which are much more common in women than in men? Didn’t he keep saying that he wanted “a joyful Spain in short skirts?” Didn’t he refuse to plead divorce cases during his life as a lawyer, judging them to be a source of suffering for the children? But to the inevitable scorners and critics, Mercedes Formica answered stoically, as in her Memoirs: “On the anti-feminism of José Antonio and the thesis so widespread, according to which he wanted a woman at home, with almost a broken leg, I must say that it is false. It is part of the process of interpretation to which his thought was subjected. As a good Spaniard he did not like the pedantic, aggressive, extravagant woman, full of hatred for the man. From the beginning he could count on women academics, and he gave them responsibilities. In my particular case, he didn’t see in me the angry suffragette, but the young woman concerned about Spain’s problems, who loved her culture and was trying to make her way in the world of work.”

Mercedes Formica continued her activism into old age. She wrote her last article in 1998, before the first serious symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease affected her. She died in Malaga on April 22, 2002, victim of a heart attack. Very few people attended her funeral and few media reported on her death, even though she was undoubtedly one of the most important women of 20th century Spain. Recognition is not a virtue of the vulgar, it is the prerogative of great hearts, they say. These were not legion at the time of her death. In 2015, at the instigation of the Marxist and far-left party Podemos, the municipality of Cadiz removed the bust of Mercedes Formica that had been installed in the center of the city, in the Plaza del Palillero. But two street names perpetuate her memory to this day, in Malaga and Madrid.

Arnaud Imatz, a Basque-French political scientist and historian, holds a State Doctorate (DrE) in political science and is a correspondent-member of the Royal Academy of History (Spain), and a former international civil servant at OECD. He is a specialist in the Spanish Civil War, European populism, and the political struggles of the Right and the Left – all subjects on which he has written several books. He has also published numerous articles on the political thought of the founder and theoretician of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, as well as the Liberal philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, and the Catholic traditionalist, Juan Donoso Cortés.

The Indictment of the Good Guys of the West

Part 1: The Leadership of the Good Guys in the West. Three Decades of Achievement. The Law of the Strongest

In all the conflicts that have shaken history, there have always been the good guys against absolute evil. At least, this is what emerges from the great political declarations and from the media, with its therapy via sledgehammer, when it comes to the two opposing camps. At the end of a conflict, history is written by the winner. The victor often brings his opponents before a court to condemn and execute the leaders of the losing side. Good and evil are then perfectly identified in the eyes of history.

The war in Ukraine is no exception to this universal rule. If one believes the Western politicians and media, expressing themselves in perfect connivance, the good guys are on our side, that is, USA-EU-NATO-G7, while the bad guys are those opposing us, whoever they might be.

As far as I am concerned, the political and media diet of dubious narratives is far from sufficient for me to form an opinion as to which is the good side. I prefer to refer to the achievements of the good side over a few decades and to verify that this side is, in fact, led by commendable people, before giving my opinion.

It is this analysis, carried out since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that I propose to share with you, below.

The alleged good guys are today led by an elite with political and moral practices that are questionable, to say the least.

None of my readers will dispute that the so-called “good guys” are today led by the United States of America. The governance of the “good guys” is thus ensured today by a small American elite, which it is up to us to evaluate.

In three very short videos, let’s get to know some very characteristic specimens of the leadership of these “good guys” of ours.

1. During a conference in San Francisco in 2007, well before Maïdan and the crisis that followed, the US General Wesley Clark, former commander-in-chief of NATO, introduces us, in five minutes, to the “nice neoconservatives” of the United States and their “Project for a New Century of American Hegemony.” This project is a very aggressive one which promises regime changes, wars, chaos in several countries, in order to place these countries in the US orbit. The Russophobic side of the project does not easily escape a listener of good faith, even though Russia was not in a position to pose any problem at the time:

Is this the leadership of the good guys?

2. In 22 seconds, Madeleine Albright, a kindly neo-conservative US Secretary of State at the time, assumed the death of 500,000 Iraqi children on American television, saying: “It was a difficult choice but it was worth it.” Realizing with hindsight that she had just said an enormous thing, she apologized a few hours later, but her true nature had been expressed without shame and without compunction in front of the camera:

It is necessary to remind the uninitiated that during the First Gulf War in 1991, a war conducted with the approval of the UN, but in fact under a false pretext, proven today, (the affair of the incubators in Kuwait), the American-British forces dropped depleted uranium on Iraq, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Iraqis subjected to the embargo on medicines:

Is this the leadership of the good guys?

Sure, Madeleine Albright has gone to join her master Lucifer in hell and is therefore no longer in a position to harm humanity, but her spiritual daughter, the gentle neoconservative Victoria Nuland, made famous by her heartfelt cry of “F*** the EU,” and by her magnificent 2014 Maidan Coup in Ukraine, for a mere $5 billion, has risen to replace her at US Foreign Affairs:

Is this the leadership of the good guys?

3. On April 15, 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a startling statement to students at Texas A&M University. “I was director of the CIA and we lied, cheated, stole. It was like we had entire training courses to learn how to do it. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment”:

Is this the leadership of the good guys? Very free and easy, in any case.

The political and moral perversity of the small neo-conservative elite in the United States, which holds the real power in the USA and therefore leads the “US-EU-NATO-G7” good guys, has no limits.

But let’s now take a quick look at the main achievements of these “good guys” over the last three decades.

Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the main achievements of the so-called “Good Guys” have been calamitous and bloody for the planet.

We will limit ourselves to five episodes that the reader should remember.

I. The Fake Graves in Timisoara

In April 1989, the fake mass grave in Timisoara served as a catalyst for the Romanian revolution. A false narrative, repeated for six weeks by the Western media dog-pack, succeeded in bringing down the last communist regime in Eastern Europe. The media then apologized for “their mistake,” but the coup was a winner. This type of deceptive narrative, aimed at winning the decision, soon became the rule in the Western media landscape.

The concerted and “dog-pack” action of the mainstream media was thereafter facilitated by an ever-increasing concentration of said media in the hands of a few billionaires of neo-conservative and globalist persuasion. Those who control opinion through manipulation and emotion will end up controlling the world:

Of course, this revolution in Romania was not terrible in terms of loss of life (1,100 dead and 3,300 wounded), but what was calamitous was this evolution of the Western media landscape towards more and more lies, manipulations, and its concentration in the hands of a few, with the aim of taking and keeping control of the populations by making them swallow anything.

It is a sad evolution which has more than ever put wind in the sails of the good guys, to the great satisfaction of the politicians in power.

II. The First Iraq War of 1990-1991

This was begun under the false pretext of the “Kuwait incubators,” conceived and implemented by the CIA, and under the real pretext of the invasion of Kuwait

On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein met with the American ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie. Duplicity or not, she was well aware of what was being prepared (“we see that you have amassed a large number of troops on the border”) and suggested that the United States would not intervene in a conflict between two Arab countries. Saddam Hussein interpreted the US ambassador’s words as a green light. Had he been taken in by his American ally who used him to wage war against Iran from 1980 to 1988? In any case, it was the CIA that concocted the false pretext of the incubators.

As in the case of Timisoara, the Western media repeated the false pretext and lied wholesale to get the war launched.

The truth finally came out, once these lies had achieved their goals, namely, the vote of a resolution at the UN and the entry into war of the “good guys” who had deceived popular opinion.

If we add the deaths that occurred during military operations, a little more than 100,000, and the indirect deaths, linked to the aftermath of the war and the consequences of the use of depleted uranium and the embargoes on medicines, the death toll oscillates between 500,000 and 1 million, depending on the source.

This depleted uranium, a “dirty” weapon used without moderation and without real necessity by the Anglo-Saxons on the Iraqi population, has had long-term consequences on these populations, but also a boomerang effect on the unwary soldiers of the coalition of the good guys.

In addition to depleted uranium, economic sanctions and embargoes, including on medicines, have become the preferred weapons of war of the good guys, because they kill far more than any bombing, and discreetly, because the losses are spread out over time, well after the military operations.

Another great achievement of the good guys, based on duplicity and lies.

III. The Dismemberment of the Former Yugoslavia

The ins and outs of this conflict, which lasted 9 years, are not well known by those who claim to be experts on the subject and who rewrite history to the glory of the “good guys.”

On November 5, 1990, when the countries of Eastern Europe were in a state of near-bankruptcy, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513, deciding that all financial support to Yugoslavia would be suspended within six months, with no possibility of borrowing or credit.

This deliberate procedure was obviously so dangerous that, as early as November 27, 1990, the New York Times quoted a CIA report that accurately predicted that a bloody civil war would break out in Yugoslavia.

It was this law and the economic and financial pressure of the United States that were the source of the division in ex-Yugoslavia, and the civil war and the dismemberment of the country that followed and which ended with the bombing of Belgrade by NATO, without UN approval, in the spring of 1999.

The real human toll of this dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, masterfully planned and carried out by the U.S. leader of the “good guys,” varies, depending on the sources and what is counted. It is between 200,000 and 250,000 dead.

Before 1990, a non-aligned federal republic After 1999, a mosaic of small states of 23.5 million inhabitants, under the control of the “good guys.”

After 250,000 to 1 million dead, the break-up of Yugoslavia. Source: Vivid Maps.

Lessons to be learned from this magnificent case study:

The Economic and Financial Weapon was the first to be used in 1990 and proved to be decisive in the execution of the dismemberment plan. “We caused the collapse of the Yugoslav economy.”

The plan could only be completed by getting recalcitrant Serbia to submit via 78 days of bombing, in the spring of 1999, according to the Five Rings strategy, with emphasis on civilian infrastructure. These bombings were justified by a false pretext: the fake Račak massacre. They did not have the approval of the UN, but NATO was already trying to substitute itself for the UN by acting as the sheriff of the planet. NATO’s overwhelming air superiority and its fear of engaging in ground combat in the Kosovar theater must be noted in this case.

The right moment for the good guys to carry out this plan of dismemberment of Yugoslavia came in the 1990-1999, that is to say when both Russia and China were weak and could not react.

This dismemberment operation brought an awareness by Russia and China, humiliated by the bombing of Belgrade, of what could happen to them one day. They therefore created alliances, SCO (2001) and BRICS (2006), which are very effective today in supporting Russia.

Moreover, Putin, who has followed these events at the highest level since 1999, quickly understood that what had happened to the former Yugoslavia would one day be applied to Russia. For more than twenty years, he prepared his country for a confrontation that he knew was inevitable, while the self-proclaimed “good guys,” arrogant, dominating and overconfident, were disarming at every turn and their US pack leader was extending his control eastwards, advancing his rockets and military bases towards the Russian borders.

Plan for the Dismemberment of Russia by the “Good Guys”

Before dismemberment: a Federation rich in resources of all kinds but difficult to control by the “good guys,” and especially standing in the way of world domination.

And just a few hundred thousand or millions of deaths later (on both sides):

After dismemberment, a new projected configuration of Russian territories: a mosaic of smaller, less populated states and easier to control, exploit and dominate by the good guys.

IV. The Second Iraq War (March 2003—December 2011)

We will not dwell on the Second Iraq War, which was also based on a false pretext: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, that did not exist.

Everyone remembers the comedy played by Colin Powell in front of the UN Security Council, shamelessly lying to the whole world with his magic powder.

From 2003 to 2011, anywhere from 150,000 to 1 million direct or indirect victims of this Second Iraq War have been counted, depending on the source, of which 75% to 80% were civilians.

The US leader of the good guys implemented new, more discreet methods to kill, indirectly of course, the civilian population of the opponent, in order to force the leader of the opposite camp to submit.

Examples? Bombings according to the Five Rings theory which target, among other things, the infrastructures necessary for the survival of the population. This is a theory invented in the USA, morally questionable, and which the Americans find difficult to accept that it can be applied by anyone other than themselves in theaters of conflict. This strategy was already used in the bombings against Serbia.

Economic sanctions and embargoes, including on medicines, which become weapons of war because they kill much more than any bombing, and discreetly, since the losses are spread out over time, well after the military operations.

This was yet another achievement of the “the good guys,” without UN endorsement, on the basis of a lie, to which for once France, Germany and Canada refused to associate themselves, which was to their credit. At that time, some NATO countries still had some honor and sovereignty.

V. The Syrian War (2011-2023)

Launched in March 2011, according to now proven techniques, this umpteenth colored revolution, also concocted by US neoconservatives, according to the words of the former NATO commander-in-chief, US General Westley Clark (see video above), was conducted, like the two Iraq wars, for the benefit of Israel, whose very influential supporters direct US and European foreign policies.

Provisional death toll: 500,000 to date.

We could add to the above examples Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, all sovereign states attacked by the good guys and/or their allies, on the sole pretext that their leaders and their policies did not serve the interests of the good guys.

Further, over the last three decades, there are the countless US interferences in the internal affairs of dozens of countries, all attempts at colored revolutions, electoral interferences, economic pressures, with the aim of forcing this or that country to submit to the will of a nation that has gone rogue, because it is directed by a mafia-like deep state that calls the shots in US and European elections.

Beyond these various and often bloody achievements of the good guys, it is necessary to look at the methods used by these good guys, US-NATO-EU-G7, and the means at their disposal.

For the good guys, the end justifies the means. International legality does not matter. It is the law of the strongest and “the rules” that the strongest unilaterally sets that must be applied.

To impose its “rules” on the whole world, the United States, leader of the “good guys,” uses two formidable weapons: the dollar and the self-proclaimed extraterritoriality of its laws. They do not hesitate to punish their adversaries and also their allies who do not strictly apply the “rules” that only the US can set. Some French banks, for example, have had to pay fines of several billion dollars to the US Treasury for daring to circumvent US economic sanctions against Iran and several other embargoed countries.

The USA and its good-guy allies do not hesitate to steal the assets of their adversaries when these (Iran, Afghanistan, Russia) got the unfortunate idea of depositing them in US banks, or in those of NATO member states. “We lied, we cheated, we stole…”

The US does not hesitate to seize the industrial flagships of its most servile allies, going so far as to throw into high-security prisons, under false pretense, the executives of companies, in order to blackmail the management (Alstom affair, Frederic Pierucci). They go so far as to corrupt politicians and company directors (MaKron) to achieve their ends.

They even go so far as to torpedo the international commercial contracts of their most loyal allies in order to take them over and award them to their companies. ($35 billion contract for US Air Force tankers, won by Airbus in 2008 and reallocated to Boeing; $56 billion contract for Australian submarines cancelled in September 2021 to be reallocated to US companies).

They maintain a system of telephone tapping by the NSA, revealed by Snowden, to spy on the leaders of the major allied countries, to discover their weaknesses, even their misconducts, to establish files on them and to blackmail them as much as necessary, in order to better subjugate them; and this, without the interested parties even being offended by it. In fact, the opposite is true. The more the leaders of the EU are deceived, cuckolded and sodomized by those of the USA, the more they seem to be satisfied with the situation.

This is what makes the partnership and cohesion among the “good guys” so excellent.

As a hyper-power confined in its egocentrism, the United States, leader of the dog-pack of good guys, uses and abuses its strength and its monopolies. In French, we call this “abus de position dominante” (“abuse of a dominant position”). For the average American, unaccustomed to even the simplest legal terms, this translates into: “Why bother?”

This is how they remain one of the few countries in the world not to have signed and especially ratified the 1997 Ottawa Convention on the prohibition of antipersonnel mines.

They are still violating the 1992 Geneva Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, which they signed and ratified in 1997, by allowing the Ukrainian ally, a signatory of the convention, to use this type of weapon on the Donbass front.

They are violating the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons, which they signed in 1975. And, to do it more discreetly, they relocate their laboratories in allied countries with little regard for the situation (Ukraine), while keeping some ultra-secret research laboratories on their territory (Fort Detrick).

To top it all off, the USA, the undisputed leader of the good guys, is the only country in the world that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Such is undoubtedly the beauty and the greatness of the neo-conservative and globalist model, to which the EU governance now adheres without reserve, even with enthusiasm.

Such is the leadership of the U.S. dog-pack to which our leaders have freely (?) chosen to rally and which we are supposed to follow in its Russophobic crusade in Ukraine, to hang on to world hegemony for the good guys.

But we are still far from the end of the analysis of the good guys who know how much further to go in horror, while giving lessons on morality and good governance to the rest of the planet.

There are of course the unacceptable acts of torture, murder and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners of war incarcerated in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, all perpetrated by nice American GIs who, without shame and without compunction, posted the images of their crimes on Facebook and on the Internet for the whole world to view. But the Internet has now been “cleaned” of most of the most sordid videos that might harm the honor of the “good guys,” and only a few, less horrible ones remain.

One could have imagined that these were just blunders that would be severely sanctioned by the Good Guys. Actually, no. One of the main US torturers, Lynndie England, an evocative and proudly worn name, was sentenced to 3 years in prison, but only served one. However, she executed some prisoners herself and was photographed in front of the corpses. It is true that in the article published in The New Yorker, the US investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winner, revealed the existence of “Copper Green,” a torture program used in Afghanistan, then in Iraq and approved by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself (a nice neo-conservative globalist, quoted by General Clark in the first video).

Are these the good guys who give lessons in morality and governance to the whole world and who often scream “war crime,” in more and more delirious accusatory inversions?

Twisted enough to institutionalize torture, stupid enough to brag on the Internet and get caught with their fingers in the jam. These are the good guys.

It is true that until recently, the US military authorities were rather discreet in relocating torture (like their biological laboratories) to countries with little regard for the environment, including NATO countries (Poland, Romania, Lithuania) and sending their torturers to “operate” on site.

We have already mentioned economic sanctions and embargoes which, in the long term, can be much more deadly than bombing for the most fragile civilian populations, particularly children and the elderly. This is the case of the US embargo on medicines still in force for Syria, even though this civilian population has just experienced an earthquake which caused significant losses and many injuries. Everyone can see in these rabid, stupid and counter-productive “good guys” the level of its human and moral qualities, and understand why these good guys arouss disgust, rejection and hatred in most of the planet.

Since 1990, the call by the US, leader of the good guys, for Private Military Companies (PMCs) has exploded in all theaters of operation. This system has nothing to do with mercenarism, in which individuals are recruited directly by states. In PMCs, they sign contracts with companies that have a legal status and these companies deal with the states.

A simple observation of the facts shows, for example, that the USA signed some 3000 contracts with PMCs between 1994 and 2004. The most infamous of these numerous Private Military Companies operating for the good guys is the US Blackwater Company, founded in 1997 [now Xe, trans.], and known for its countless exactions and massacres committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. But of course, the impunity is total, as it is for the military of the “good guys.”

This PMC system is particularly effective and limits the political risks of the state that uses it. Of course, the good guys would like to keep the exclusivity and tend to consider as “terrorist organization” any PMC that would compete with those of the good guys.

It is interesting to note that the Wagner Group, the first Russian PMC, was only founded on May 1, 2014, perhaps as a reaction to the Maidan coup d’état, led by the “good guys,” in which some US PMCs had played, in the shadows, the leading roles. Founded 17 years after Blackwater, Wagner is therefore 17 years behind Blackwater in what could be described as exactions, by the always presumed “honest” narratives of the media of the good guys, alas too often caught with their fingers in the cookie-jar of lies.

What everyone should understand is that the USA and its allies (the good guys) cannot stand the fact that Wagner, a young Russian private military company, less than nine years old, can distinguish itself by a military efficiency and ethics far superior to any PMC of the good guys, including Blackwater, 17 years older. This is why they denounce this competition [Wagner] as unfair.

It is therefore hilarious to see the USA classify Wagner as a terrorist organization, while the US PMC Blackwater has really been a terrorist organization for 26 years, while benefiting from the immunity linked to its work for the good guys. This is the traditional double standard. Nothing surprising from the good guys.

The first part of this “apology” of the good guys, which some will not hesitate to call an indictment, being already heavy to bear and very long, it is good to end it with the interesting question of extrajudicial executions.

In 2014, shortly after the Maidan coup and the subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia, an adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of the Interior (Anton Guerachenko) under the influence of the major intelligence services of the good guys (CIA, Mossad, MI6) created an online collaborative platform to establish the list of people to be physically eliminated because they oppose the interests of Ukraine, but especially the neoconservative and globalist project that proceeds via the dismemberment of Russia.

In fact this project is 100% American and lists some 289 000 people worldwide. This is what emerges from the well-documented article by Bellincioni Berti.

The originality of this project of a terrorist nature, since its purpose is to spread terror among all those who would oppose the narratives of the good guys on Ukraine, is that it is openly supported by the USA, but also by a silence, obviously complicit, of the current leaders of the EU who let it happen. Thus, academics, journalists, former military or diplomats, elected officials, are threatened with death because they openly refuse to submit to the diktats of the globalist neocons. It does not matter if they are themselves belong to “the good guys.”

Some executions have already been carried out as an example, including that of Daria Dugin, assassinated on August 20, 2022 in Russia.

This shows, if it were still necessary, the true nature of the member countries of the good guys, whose political discourse is no longer in line with their actions since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the emergence, in the upper echelons of American power, of a neo-conservative and globalist spawn that has largely swarmed the governments of the major European countries.

There is no need to mention, in order to add to the balance sheet, the instrumentalization of Daesh and Al Qaida terrorism by the good guys, with the sole aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad, a secular head of state recognized by the United Nations whose only defect is that he displeases Israel, one of the influential champions of the good guys.

There is no need to mention the illegal and provocative execution of Iranian General Soleimani by the United States, which will stop at nothing to sow chaos and death on the planet.

What cries of orphans would we not have heard in the media of the “good guys,” if one of our generals had been executed in this way by an Iranian drone?

And, yes, these are the good guys.

At this stage of the analysis, it is good to take a break to digest this first avalanche of information and undeniable facts which will be followed by a 2nd wave, then by the analysis of the “evil camp”: the one which opposes ours.

As a provisional conclusion, I can only say that I cannot belong to such good guys, as they appear up to now. I do not understand by what ethical, moral and intellectual perversion some of my brothers-in-arms have been able to offer their unconditional allegiance to good guys whose leaders have lied, cheated, stolen, killed, tortured, violated international laws, harmed the interests of our country, for the sole interests of their leader (the US), a leader who has no use for international legality and for whom the rules he himself has set must be imposed on all.

I will be told that our leaders were elected (even if they were badly elected) and that the military is subordinate to politics. But it is because of this type of thoughtless discipline that Hitler, better elected at the time than our leaders today, was followed to the end of his murderous madness by his army and by his people. Hitler’s “good, brave and disciplined” generals were justly punished at Nuremberg after the war. They should have looked at their conscience earlier and not obeyed stupidly.

There are moments in history when French soldiers have had to choose sides. General de Gaulle did so without hesitation in 1940 and I doubt that, from where he stood, he would approve of France’s slavish allegiance to what has become, over time, the empire of duplicity and lies.

I also doubt that François Mitterand, from where he is, would approve our unfortunate, slavish allegiance after having declared:

“France does not know it, but we are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, an economic war, a war without death, apparently. Yes, the Americans are very tough; they are voracious; they want undivided power over the world. It is an unknown war and yet a war to the death.”

It’s all there. Everyone will have to choose sides in this war to the death at one time or another. This side will not necessarily be the side that badly elected rulers, supported by the media, have chosen for us. (to be continued).

Dominic Delawarde is a General (retired) of the French army. He was educated at Prytanée militaire de La Flèche, Saint Cyr, and Ecole Supérieure de Guerre.

Featured: The Torment of Saint Anthony, by Michelangelo; painted ca. 1487-1488.

New Documents: Maese Nicolás is Based on a Barber Cervantes Knew

“Oh, sweet Spain, beloved homeland.” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

The distinguished historian, Don Sabino de Diego Romero, President of the Cervantes Society of Esquivias, former mayor of Esquivias, and author of excellent books and articles, including Genealogía de Fray Francisco Ximénez de Santa Catalina, fraile de la Santísima Trinidad de Calzados, natural del Lugar de Esquivias, que fundó un hospital en Túnez (Genealogy of Fray Francisco Ximénez de Santa Catalina, friar of the Holy Trinity of Calzados, native of the Place of Esquivias, who founded a hospital in Tunis), Cervantes y Esquivias, lo que todos debemos saber (Cervantes and Esquivias. What We All Should Know), and Catalina. Fuente de inspiración de Cervantes (Catalina. Cervantes’ Source of Inspiration), discovered a new document about a real person in Don Quixote.

In 2015, Diego Romero published Análisis biográfico sobre Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (Biographical analysis on Catalina de Salazar y Palacios), which provided new, unpublished documents on the barber Mease Nicolás, a character in Don Quixote, that most outstanding work of universal literature by the “king of Spanish literature.”

According to the excellent documentary work of Diego Romero, from the of the time of the publication of Don Quixote, in 1605, Cervantine researchers have been making all kinds of speculations about whom Cervantes took as literary models, starting with Don Quixote himself and continuing with characters, such as Sancho Panza, the priest Pero Perez, as well as a character whom Cervantes gave the responsibility of bringing Quixote’s “madness” to a happy ending, namely, the barber Maese Nicolás.

In this sense, it should not be forgotten that Maese Nicolás is introduced by Cervantes, for the first time, in Chapter V of the Part One of Don Quixote, together with the priest Pero Pérez, both residents of Esquivias, who eagerly conspire to bring Don Quixote back to his senses and are found in Quixote’s library, burning the pernicious books that altered his mind, in the opinion of both characters, found in Quixote’s library.

Therefore, in this context, I would like to emphasize that according to Don Sabino de Diego Romero, the barber’s shop, together with the tavern, were the ideal places for conversation among neighbors, and playing the guitar, and being also the centers of attention and influence. The barber, tonsor (of medieval origin), in addition to shaving beards, exercised the function of tooth-puller, performed bloodletting, healed wounds, bruises and broken bones well into the nineteenth century, when doctors became an independent guild and looked after the ailments once taken care of by the barbers. The barber of Esquivias was the one who took care of the tonsure—popularly known as coronilla (“crown”)—of Father Pero Pérez, priest of Esquivias, who exercised his pastoral work in the hermitage of San Bartolomé, in the outskirts of the town. The number of services rendered by the barber meant that:

“The influx of people to the barber’s shop was such that this place was the most frequented for social interaction and public discourse, where public forums were formed, for open debates with the participation of the locals on current issues.
“In small towns, in the absence of a regular doctor, it was the barber-surgeons who looked after medical needs, and accompanied the physician in his sporadic visits to the sick of the place.
“This meant that the affluence to the barbershop was massive and the barber needed the assistance of a good number of people, women in this case, who helped, cleaned, and produced soaps for personal use that were sold in the establishment, among other things.
“Likewise, as the shaving process was slow, given the deficient tools used, this meant an inevitable delay, resulting in the crowding of people in the barbershops being greater than in the taverns.”

Without a hint of doubt, Don Sabino de Diego Romero has found in Esquivias the barber-surgeon of the last third of the 16th century, whose name was Nicolás de Olmedo, a person of primordial influence among the commoners of the town. His opinion was respected by all, even by the noblemen of the town, who were also his clients, since the Master Barber, Nicolás de Olmedo, exercised a decisive influence between the two cultural strata of the town of Esquivias, noblemen and commoners, both for being the center of attention in his barbershop, as well as the natural gratitude of the families of Esquivias, for hiring a good number of young girls for the many services at his shop.

At this point, I must state that Diego Romero has found precise documentation that, between 1577 and 1589, Nicolás de Olmedo hired 20 young girls, all of whom were eleven years old. According to the new document of January 5, 1592, found by Diego Romero, we know that the Council of Esquivias agreed to appoint a new barber officer in this way:

“For being Able and sufficient and having a Letter of Review for such barber by Cristobal Ximenez… And that he be obliged to have knowledge of the Sick that are found in the said place and to walk with the doctor to visit them… that he cannot leave the said place without the License of Justice. That he may not play ball or throw or work with an axe or adze or anything else. And if he should be ill, that he be obliged to have another barber in the place at his own expense, and if he does not do so, that the Council bring another barber at his own expense.” (And it is signed by Nicolás de Olmedo, as a member of the Council).

Thus, from the beginning of January of 1592, the Master Barber, Nicolás de Olmedo, stopped holding the office of the barber’s shop in Esquivias, which then reverted back to Cristóbal Ximénez.

Further, it is worth mentioning that thanks to these new documents, found by Diego Romero in the archives of Esquivias, other native characters have become known, and there is now evidence that some of these were relatives of María de Uxena (Quixote, “Galatea,” 288º, 19), the girl whom Catalina de Salazar y Palacios named as heir. One of the most representative of these characters is the Master Barber, Nicolás de Olmedo.

In addition to this, the investigations carried out by Diego Romero document that Nicolás de Olmedo was married to Magdalena Rodríguez, sister of Catalina Alonso, mother of Ana Rodríguez—who married Juan de Uxena, who were parents of María de Uxena (Diego Romero, Catalina, p. 280), and in turn, Nicolás del Olmedo was the brother of Lucía Romana, who married Martín Alonso, parents of Pedro Alonso (Quixote-V-I; “Galatea,” 290º, 18-19).

In this respect, it is indispensable to emphasize that Nicolás de Olmedo and Magdalena Rodríguez were grandparents of the child Juan, whose baptism, Miguel de Cervantes and his wife Catalina de Salazar y Palacios, on the basis of the good friendship between both families, sponsored, on October 25, 1586.

Add to this that on April 9, 1588, Catalina, together with her cousin, Diego García de Salazar, acted as godparents at the baptism of Susana, the granddaughter of the Master Barber, Nicolás de Olmedo, where, on that occasion, Catalina was identified, in the baptismal certificate, as “muger de Miguel de Cervantes” (wife of Miguel de Cervantes).

Adding to the extensive list of inhabitants of Esquivias, and those related to the Master Barber, Nicolás de Olmedo, Diego Romero has discovered that Magdalena Rodríguez, Olmedo ‘s wife, was the aunt of Juana Gutiérrez (obit October 25, 1604) who was the wife of the Sacristan Mayor, Francisco Marcos, who in turn appeared as witness in the marriage of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra with Catalina de Salazar y Palacios.

It should also be said that Catalina Alonso, the maternal grandmother of María de Uxena, was the sister-in-law of Nicolás de Olmedo, and who, at the time of her death (Documents, 10-IX-1590), named Don Juan de Palacios y Salazar, Catalina’s maternal uncle, as her executor.

Baptismal certificate of Diego, son of Nicolás de Olmedo and Magdalena Rodríguez. February 8, 1573 (B1059v2ª. Unpublished).

In view of this, through the documents revealed, linked to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, husband of Catalina de Salazar y Palacios, and the evident relationship that existed between Cervantes and Nicolás de Olmedo, for being contemporaries; in fact, according to Diego Romero, it is crystal clear, based on the legitimate documentation, that for the character of Maese Nicolás, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra took the person of the Master Barber of Esquivias, Nicolás de Olmedo.

In short, I congratulate the Esquivian historian Don Sabino de Diego Romero for the magnificent discovery of new documents of capital importance about the authentic characters presented in The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha for the documented biography of Catalina, the glorious Man of La Mancha, the history of Spain and of Esquivias.

As well, I must emphasize that Diego Romero has discovered the twelfth real character of Don Quixote, after Quijano or Quijada y Quesada, sometimes called Alonso Quijano, protagonist of Don Quixote; the priest Pero Perez; Teresa Panza, wife of Sancho Panza, whom Cervantes calls Juana Gutierrez, Mari Gutierrez or Teresa Cascajo; Sancho Panza; the squire Vizcaíno; Pedro Alonso, also called Pedro Alonso de Salazar; Aldonza Lorenzo; Ricote, the Morisco; Pedro Martínez, Tenorio Hernández, and Juan Palomeque, named in Chapters XVII and XVIII of the first part of Don Quixote.

Without a shadow of a doubt, I thank Don Sabino de Diego Romero for his exemplary and excellent work; and with all certainty these documentary gems will form part of the new book, Documentos de Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (Documents of Catalina de Salazar y Palacios), which currently includes 1700 legal documents, 1350 of which were discovered by our extraordinary and indefatigable author Don Sabino de Diego Romero, President of the Cervantine Society of Esquivias. Congratulations.

Laus in excelsis Deo.

Krzysztof Sliwa is a professor, writer for Galatea, a journal of the Sociedad Cervantina de Esquivias, Spain, and a specialist in the life and works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and the Spanish Golden Age Literature, all subjects on which he has written several books. He has also published numerous articles and reviews in English, German, Spanish and Polish, and is the Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Cordoba and Toledo.

Featured: Escrutinio de las Novelas llevado a cabo por el Cura y Maese Nicolás, el Barbero (Scrutiny of the Novels carried out by the Curate and Maese Nicolás, the Barber), engraving by Jérôme David, and published by Jacques Lagniet in Paris, between 1650—1652.

History Returns to Europe

The liberation of the Donbas by the Russian army has surprised us all, as I believe that nobody thought that the situation would end in an armed clash. Yesterday, after the commemoration of the Homeland Defense Day, the Kremlin government decided to put an end to a conflict in which the threats of the Atlanticists have been answered with facts by Russia. In these chaotic hours, we have the feeling that history has returned to Europe with the liberating advance of the Russian troops.

A war correspondent in a helmet and bulletproof vest, “reporting” from Ukraine. Behind him, a couple of tourists taking pictures. Source.

It seems that the dogmatic reverie of the foolish social democracy is collapsing, that the old and rotten liberal structure is falling down. NATO, the Western partitocracies, and also we, ordinary Europeans, find ourselves faced with the most unexpected of responses, faced with the thundering echoes of the ultima ratio regum, the motto that Louis XIV inscribed on his cannons and which graphically explains what is the essential core of the sovereignty of a State: force, the element that supports the political decision of a national community. Something the twilight Europeans do not know the meaning of, since they have long since handed over to stateless elites and organizations their ability to act as agents of history. Since the 1960s, Europe has tried to live outside the historical future, to sacrifice community identity—the being of the nation—to the opium of Welfare and the hedonistic aberrations of extreme nihilism. Russia is just the opposite example.

The End of History consisted of the forces of money, personified in the United States, imposing on the whole world the American Way of Life, the free market and democracy according to their regal whim, while Europe limited itself to assisting Washington and justifying its aggressions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Libya. However, this unipolar conception of geopolitics is not real. In 2016, the Americans themselves showed that they did not want to be the instrument of international elites and elected Trump as president, who could only be removed after a very dubious electoral process, a real coup d’état of the globalist oligarchy.

Russia, a power with a much smaller military capability than the United States and its NATO sepoys, stood up to the attempt to sow Islamist chaos in Syria and is now challenging the Anglo-Saxon hegemony with a bold move, responding unexpectedly to the ultimatums that the U.S.-backed government in Kiev had launched against Moscow in the last month. The bluffing game of the Zelensky histrion was accepted by Russia, and Moscow’s envoy has thwarted with blood and iron all the palaver of the NATO rabbis and the Open Society millionaire bonzes and sycophants.

Today, the end of the End of History has begun. American world hegemony is in question. Russia has broken the borders of an artificial state, which was built on the union of the historical Ukraine and New Russia by Lenin, and has defended the rights of its popular community, of that half of today’s Ukraine which is and feels Russian. Faced with these facts, the stateless plutocracy of the West will have to react somehow, or else its dominance will crumble, its New World Order will become a paper tiger that no one fears. The lapsed Joe Biden already has his war—but this one has blown up in his hands, possibly much earlier than he planned; he thought Putin was going to play by Washington’s rules and timelines.

The awakening has been bitter for the decrepit figurehead of the elites. His entanglements are unleashing a disaster that is dragging down his puppet regime, established after the Maidan coup of 2014, the work of Soros, Brussels and the American embassy in Kiev. The essential objective of the Anglo-Saxon strategy, to antagonize Russia and Ukraine, to prevent concord between the two states, had been achieved. The consequences were calamitous for Ukraine itself, whose political authority was erased overnight in Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kharkov and even Odessa. Only Putin’s excessive prudence, which limited itself to securing Russian Crimea and protecting the stable rebel nuclei in Lugansk and Donetsk, prevented the dissolution of Ukraine eight years ago. The Kremlin’s big mistake in 2014 was not to have reached out to Kyiv.

Like Poland in 1939, Ukraine has been thrown into an enterprise from which it will emerge battered and divided. This is what the Maidan “Revolution” and the political adventurism of the global plutocracy and its Ukrainian puppets have led to. America’s credibility will depend to a large extent on its response to this challenge. If it does nothing, the thesis of a unipolar world, of an American sphere, will be no more than a bad dream, a multicultural nightmare dissipated by the cold wind of the Russian steppe.

Sertorio lives, writes and thinks in Spain. this review comes through the kind courtesy of El Manifesto.

Featured: The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Bernardino Licinio; painted ca. 1530s.

With Charles Péguy in the Marne: A Preface

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Péguy (1873—1914), and by coincidence, next year will mark the 109th anniversary of his death, when he was killed in action at Villeroy, one day before the Battle of the Marne. What follows is the Preface, written by Maurice Barrès (1862—1923), to a book of memoirs, (Avec Charles Péguy de la Lorraine à la Marne, aôut-septembre 1914, With Charles Péguy of Lorraine at the Marne, August-September 1914, published in 1916), by Sergeant Victor Boudon, who served under Lieutenant Péguy,

I adored Péguy. These feelings were reciprocal. He showed me a lot of friendship. You know the penchant he had for handing out roles, so like tasks, to each of his friends; which is quite evident in the extraordinary talks that the faithful Lotte noted. To all those who appreciated him, he intended to give a task in his life. In his eyes, I was a boss, an elder, an “old man” on whom he could rely. One day he said to me, “You are our patriarch.” I was astonished.

I can still hear him, I can still see him, as he was that day, arriving in Neuilly, as usual, in his devilish great coat, his eyes full of fire and insight, but a little turned inward and intent on his own concerns. His bushy, ageless face, radiant with the youth of children and the bonhomie of old people, and thus casting me, with a single word, quite unexpectedly, into the cellars of the deepest old age, as much as into the grave. A patriarch! How fast life goes by!

He named me thus out of affection and to mark out my path for me. I was a subscriber to the Cahiers; the first one; I had announced and celebrated the Joan of Arc. If it had been up to me, he would have had the great prize of literature at the Academy. But all the same, we had obtained for him another prize, an equivalent—he gave a part of his work to my publisher and friend, M. Emile Paul. Then, as he reported in his Entretiens avec Lotte (Talks with Lotte), he and I dreamed that he would enter the Academy quickly.

He was happy with all this; but all this is nothing but trifles and dried grass compared to the real service that I was able to render him, comparable to a source of living water that I was allowed to make gush out and that forever preserves him from death.

On December 12, 1914, a soldier wrote to me from hospital no. 17, in Laval: “I had the honor of fighting alongside and under the command of Charles Péguy, whose glorious death on the field of honor you have exalted. He was killed on September 5th, at Villeroy, next to me, while we were marching to the assault of the German positions.”

Just imagine my emotions of pleasure and piety. What! A man wounded at the Ourcq, struck the day after Péguy fell, was able to speak! On the 26th of the same month, without making a single change, I printed Victor Boudon’s admirable account. Two months later, on February 27, 1915, he put me in a position to offer a complement of the highest importance. Today, here he is publishing his incomparable deposition in all its extent and scrupulous sincerity.

With Péguy from Lorraine to the Marne August-September 1914. “These simple pages,” he says in his introductory dedication, “are the modest testimony of a soldier, to the memory of Charles Péguy, his leaders, his brothers in arms, the glorious dead of the 276th, all those who, by their heroic sacrifice, saved Paris and France in September 1914.” And this book, as Anatole France had already done with his precious collection, Sur la Voie Glorieuse (On the Path of Glory), Victor Boudon, wounded in the war, expressly notes that it will be sold “for the benefit of the Fédération Nationale & Assistance aux Mutilés des Armées de Terre et de Mer” (National Federation and Assistance to the Wounded of the Armies of Land and Sea).

May we add our thanks to the gratitude of all. What is this noble witness? What is the merit of this companion who will never leave Péguy down the centuries?

When the war called him to the regiment, Victor Boudon was a salesman. Before that, still very young, he had worked as secretary to Francis de Pressensé at the Human Rights League. That is to say that no one more than he would have been able to immediately become intoxicated with our friend’s theories on the Mystery of the Revolution and of the Affair, and very quickly with his theories on the Mystery of Joan of Arc. But, curiously enough, Boudon was unaware of these meditations when the chance of mobilization put him under Péguy’s command in August 1914, in the 276th Infantry Reserve Regiment: “I knew,” he told me, “that Péguy was writing the Cahiers de la Quinzaine. I had read a few issues, at the time of the Affair; but since then nothing.”

He regrets not having “exchanged ideas” with Péguy. “I had my place. We hardly spoke. And then it was all so short, so full of fatigue, of events. Yes, I promised myself on occasion to ask him questions and to listen to him.”

Let Boudon rest assured. He knows a truer, more beautiful, more eternal Péguy than the one we used to see; and his testimony brings us the Charles Péguy of eternity.

I am not simply saying that in this Memorial you will see Péguy standing upright in the midst of his men and as posterity welcomes him. He will appear to you in the course of these thirty days of war as a man of the oldest France; and you will see in action what you have already distinguished in Péguy’s geniality, a contemporary of Joinville and Joan of Arc—in short, the Frenchman of eternal France.

Keep in mind that there are, in these pages written by this Parisian of 1916, passages which seem to be of “the loyal servant” of Bayard type (See the place given at night to a poor woman, on page 94).

Such scenes, so pure and, so to speak, holy, are mixed in with other scenes that are far cruder and which, moreover, show prodigiously innocent souls. That is the beauty of this book; one sees in all its reality the swarming of life, the common crowd not yet quite become the warlike troop, the sancta plebs Dei, so dear to the historians of the Crusades.

There was, in the first psychology of our armies of 1914, a shade of sansculottism. A combatant who knew how to observe said to me: “At the beginning of the campaign, I was often struck by the unabashed sansculotte attitude with which the mobilized workers and peasants pretended to maintain, in front of the Kaiser and his henchmen, the right they recognized, to have neither God nor master, to practice a cordial alcoholism and a cheerful anticlericalism as they pleased.”

To what extent had this initial disposition changed? What is the truth behind the stupor in which some seemed to live, the peaceful obstinacy of the majority, the indifference to danger of the best, the docility of most of the others?

Victor Boudon (August 6, 1914).

At present, there is something uniform in many people, with very simple, very primitive feelings, from which emerge above all resentment against the henchmen and exploiters and a certain obsession developed by solitude. Under the influence of suffering, sacrifice, in the gravity of this terrible or tedious life, in short, with experience, everything has changed. It seems that other combinations of qualities, virtues and defects have forced themselves on all, on the professionals as well as on the soldiers coming from the civilian world. Even the small de facto aristocracies that provided the framework have found their value in a different order of magnitude from the one they initially placed as the highest.

But the army that Péguy saw was the army of the early days, which had not yet undergone the crushing and recasting that the war imposed on it, and in which the superb elements of the suburbs and the professional military elements were juxtaposed rather than amalgamated.

Read, at the very beginning of Boudon’s account, this very characteristic scene of the brave mobilized drunkard who quarrels with an officer on the departure platform. Everything goes wrong, but Péguy intervenes with the tone of a Parigot, and the amazed man says: “For a lieutenant, he is a nice guy.”

Throughout the thirty days that Boudon recounts, you will constantly find this popular vein. Observe, for example, with a bit of divination, the feelings inspired in these workers of Belleville and Bercy, in these peasants of Seine-et-Marne, by Captain Guérin, a great figure of an older, more austere model, less completely accessible to those who from the first moment knew how to see in Péguy “a nice guy.” Captain Guérin, a professional of purely military discipline and science, embodied doctrine and tradition. Whether or not he is “a nice guy,” I will let you decide, but that he is a guy, I mean a man who is strongly drawn and who has authority as a model. Péguy knows it. Péguy notices it; accepts the exemplary lesson of a Guérin against whom native independence, more warrior-like than military, is first raised.

Péguy, and this is his incomparable value, is placed at the confluence—do I make myself heard?—of our traditional and revolutionary forces; he can be at the same time the man of doctrine and of the most ardent individual excitations. Our friend, those who know his work and his nature realize it easily, was capable, better than anyone, of recognizing and using the bold independence and the rich humanity of these suburbanites of Paris, of these farmers of Crécy and Voulangis, and making a noble imagination out of them. Son of a worker, grandson of a peasant, given a scholarship, proud of his poverty, regarding himself a journeyman typographer even more than a man of letters, all nourished by Joinville and Joan of Arc, and added to that the infinitely noble and warm heart, Péguy always wanted to operate by way of friendship, without disciplinary measures, for the benefit of a higher friendship, for the benefit of the fatherland. Péguy marched off with his brothers.

No one had the understanding of the companionship of arms, in the old sense of our country, more than him. In the old days, in the France of the Middle Ages, what constituted the political system, was not the fief, the land, the real (landed) relationship, it was the personal relationship. What wove together the threads of the feudal fabric was the attachment of man to man, the faith. And the same need to support the relations of leader to soldier on a free acceptance, on a voluntarily consented fidelity, subsists in our peasants, in our workers, in the bottom of all our hearts. In the past, between leaders and companions, or between companions of the same leader, pacts were formed with extreme energy which sometimes amounted to brotherhood: Oliver and Roland, Amis and Amile, Ogier and Oberon, Clisson and du Guesclin. You will recall the beautiful words of the agreement that Bertrand du Duesclin and Olivier Clisson concluded, putting nothing above their friendship but their loyalty to the king, that is to say, to their country: “Know that… we belong and we will always belong to you against all those who may live or die, except the king of France… and we promise to ally and support you with all our might… Item, we want and agree that of all the profits and rights that may come and fall to us from here on out, you will have half entirely. Item, we will keep your own body at our disposal, as our brother… All which things we swear on the holy gospels of God, corporally touched by us, and each of us and by the times and oaths of our bodies given to each other.” Well! Our Péguy spent his life sealing similar pacts with Joseph Lotte, Charles de Peslouan, the Tharauds, Claude Casimir-Périer, Daniel Halévy, the two Laurens, Suarès, Julien Benda, Moselly, Lavergne, Eddy Marix, Louis Gillet, and with all the regulars of the little store in front of the Sorbonne, or more simply with the subscribers to the Cahiers de la Quinzaine; and then, a little bit further away from this portico open to all the winds, with Monseigneur Batiffol, Dom Baillet, the pastor Roberty, Georges Goyau and Madame Goyau. And then he sealed this pact with each of the “guys,” as he liked to say, whom he led to war.

It is not a game to bring Péguy closer to the noble men of old. If we loved his character with respect, even in his excessive originalities, at the time when he was not yet a hero of France, it is because we recognized in him the ancient virtues that he took as models. And these men of the people, mobilized workers and peasants, if they took to him immediately, it was because they too belonged to olden times; I mean they carried proud and good instincts in them, always vigorous, which could not be better disciplined than by an attachment of man to man.

Victor Boudon has added to his Memorial the letters that Péguy, during his month of war, wrote to his family and friends. Precious treasure. One seeks there what the hero thought. These quick writings are not enough. I give you something better. What Péguy thinks, or rather what forms in his conscience, deeper than his clear thoughts, what animates and obliges him, you will know by meditating on the great book that we have and that he certainly knew, loved and revered. It is Joinville who speaks. He says: “The Sire of Bourlémont, may God bless him! declared to me when I went overseas: You go overseas; beware of returning, for no knight, neither poor nor rich, can return, unless he is disgraced, if he leaves in the hands of the Saracens the little people of Our Lord, in whose company he has gone.”

Thus thought Péguy. And now that you know the warm, animating thought that places him in the direct line of eternal France, watch him act and die as portrayed by his true witness.

Heureux ceux qui sonl morts dans les grandes batailles,
Couchés dessus le sol à la face de Dieu.
Heureux ceux qui sonl morts sur un dernier haul lieu,
Parmi lout l’appareil des grandes funérailles,

Heureux ceux qui sont morts, car ils sont retournés
Dans la première argile et la première terre.
Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans une juste guerre,
Heureux les épis murs et les blés moissonnés.

(Charles Péguy, “Prière pour nous autres charnels,” 1913).

Blessed are they who died in great battles,
Laid upon the soil in the face of God.
Blessed they who died on the last high place,
Amidst all the pomp of grand funerals.

Blessed they who died, for they have returned
To the very first clay and the first earth.
Blessed are they who died in a just war,
Blessed the ears ripened and the wheat reaped.

(Charles Péguy, “Prayer for us Mortals,” 1913).

Win or Die: The Whites on the Big Screen

At the beginning of this year, the first film production of Puy du Fou, Vaincre ou mourir (Win or Die), was released. And what have we heard from the critics? An extreme right-wing, fundamentalist, reactionary, anti-republican (horresco referens), hateful and ideological film. Musty France, the bottom of the rotten barrel. The relentless criticism of Libération further adds so much vitriol that it passes for being funny. These hack-writers carry out their vile orders, driven by a hatred of the Catholic religion, along with a progressive left-wing ideology of the narrowest kind. Their frivolous and superficial agitation seems to appear like a devil thrown into the font or a vampire shrinking from garlic. So, it’s a pleasure to see this film, for the entertainment, certainly, but also to give the middle finger to these paragons of good taste and opinion.

If this film disturbs the media and cultural fauna and flora, it is mainly because it contrasts radically with the current production. The long agony of a French cinema, a slot machine for the small screen, subsidized, petty bourgeois, for easy-consumption, never ceases to churn out painful films, using the same ideas and the same ideology. And sure enough—during the trailers, two films, before the screening, were like pulling teeth. The first one, Léo et moi (Leo and Me) by Victoria Bedos, tells how a teenager, in love with the new boy in her class, tries to approach him during a party by dressing up as a boy. Léo becomes friends with the transvestite and much more, as he falls in love with her. Questions of gender, choice of sexuality, confusion of feelings and identities are all part of the story. And then, Un Homme heureux (A Happy Man), where Luchini, learns that his wife, Catherine Frot, has just changed sex to become a man. And that’s it.

There’s also nothing much to say about Têtes givrées (Frost Heads), either, in which Clovis Cornillac plays a teacher who goes to save a glacier with his students, to fight against global warming—the Ministry of Ecological Transition validated this fi;m. Then, there’s the latest Asterix, entertainment for vegetative underdogs, gorged with filthy inculture and lukewarm Coca-Cola, coming in at a bloated budget of 65 million euros.

Between all this, there is Vaincre ou mourir (Win or Die). This film, without a big budget, without massive promotion, is good entertainment and nice propaganda. For a part of the film, however, something seemed to be wrong—there were no hysterical misandrist crazy women, no soy-boys in overalls, no one-legged black transsexuals, and no crazy non-binary interlopers. On the contrary, the women were as elegant and beautiful as they were virile and warlike; the brave and strong men of the Vendée had their orchids well-cultivated.

It is good to see a film about the period 1793-1796 from the other side. We have too often been formatted by the French Revolution of 1989 and fed with the great preconceived ideas about equality, liberty, the people, the poor against the rich, the evil, very evil nobility, the invincible Republic and the triumph of democracy over tyranny, all summed up in a kind of history for average Frenchmen in the Jack Lang sauce. The Villiers’ film has the merit of speaking to a wide audience about things so far removed from today’s France, so intimate to our society but so deep, however, in our common history—the king and the Catholic faith.

In this film, what do we see? Men who do not want to die out or surrender. They have an ideal: a Catholic and royal order. They will go to death, with bravery; they summon the great Roman virtues; they follow Christ; they go from feast to confession, from gallantry to artillery, sometimes with panache, sometimes with obstinacy. A phrase said by Charette is striking: “They are the new world but they are already old. We are the youth and the light of the world.” The glow in the lantern held by one of the king’s followers in the Vendée in the night, while they are being hunted, illustrates the hope of any struggle; the faith in the ideal, following the Lord who died for the truth. Throughout the film, we see white flags, priests and an ad orientem Mass, a close-up of a raised host. “For God and for the King” and other slogans that one could hardly hear except in meetings of the Action Française among young cubs full of testosterone, reach the viewer’s ears.

This well-paced film, which alternates between captivating battle scenes and informative scenes of hardly any length, pits the Whites against the Blues, the royalist Vendeans against the Republicans, in wars turned into butchery, where pitched battles give way to massacres and ravaged villages; where the art of war becomes a project of extermination of the Vendean race and has as its answer the defense of one’s land, the cult of the dead, the gift for one’s family, the loyalty to the King and the love of God, and oscillates between defeat and victory, hope and bitterness, the multitude of men and the solitude of the hero. A heroic breath breathes in the film. Charette, going to death and glory, becomes the romantic hero of lost causes and ruins. There are no concessions; peace is aborted because of the death of King Louis XVII, so one must either win or die. If one does not win, one dies. A beautiful radicality.

If Hugo Becker as Charette seemed, at the beginning, overcome by his role, undoubtedly himself frightened, he ends up before the firing squad as a martyr, rising to the heavens, alone and weary, piercing. Rod Paradot’s performance as a mad-dog resembles the boldness of the guys in my parish and complements Gilles Cohen’s performance as a quiet force. The actresses who play Céleste Bulkeley and Marie-Adélaïde de La Rochefoucauld are pearls among women. The dialogue sometimes lacks confidence; some lines are hollow, some ideas are avoided; the beginnings of the plot fall apart; but the whole, for lack of an extra sixty million euros, remains good, engaging, well directed.

As Alsatian as I am, far from Cholet and the two Sevres, the love of the Vendeans and the horror of the military expeditions of Kleber, a compatriot, touch me as if I were linked to these dead, French, massacred in hatred of religion and the old world replaced by a new one. The more we move away from the Revolution, the more we measure, in France, its terrible and deep effects; the violence of the ideas and the regime established, authoritarian under the guise of neutrality. This Vendéen heart, which has become a memory, summons a whole string of names, the illustrious viri of our France, and always reminds us, whether we are from the North, the South, or the East, of the blood of these Catholics who were led into genocide.

And the term, thrown like a ball and chain in the public debate, packed with all its explosive powder, does not detonate and divide as much the partisans, who see the mechanical will of the Republic to destroy the soul of the French and of France, with Reynald Secher or Le Roy Ladurie and Jean Tulard, as the more measured historians, like Jean-Clément Martin, cautious about the term “genocide” but sure of abominable massacres.

The film, although partisan, has many nuances. On the side of the Republicans, we find as many little gray and hateful men, little corporals, with the psychology of Manuel Valls, formed by a fascist and racist vision of the enemy, as those who, by opportunism or the march of history, took sides with the Republic for business or by chance. There were Kléber or Haxo, terrorists on legs, and Travot, seen as a just man, combining Catholicism and republic, assuming everything; and also Albert Ruelle, that kind of cynical deputy with the smile of a shrewd merchant. Among the Whites, the Count of Artois has it easy and confirms his mental obesity, his cowardice and his smugness. Against the intrepidity of Prudent Hervouët de La Robrie, there are the peace negotiations and the will to stop the fight by some, which stop the Vendeans from being made into total fanatics. The hero himself, Charette, brilliant, charismatic, brave and good, is caught in the trap of his radicalism, ending up isolated, answering an eye for an eye, worn out, on the verge of madness.

The film succeeds in being complex, and detaches itself from a thesis to be defended by posing a major problem: should the leader of men go all the way, even if it means running towards the massacre and his own defeat, in the name of an ideal, romantic in the end, despite the direction of history, and against political data? Or should he care, above all, about the common interest and his own, seek peace and compromise, if not survival, without ending up lukewarm, a centrist, or a coward in the eyes of history?

This is the difficulty of the one who sacrifices himself and puts his skin in the game, while others are complaining about their hemorrhoids in their country house in the Luberon, and in-between two appointments with the psychologist, as we all too often see, still, on screen, in the cinema.

Nicolas Kinosky is at the Centres des Analyses des Rhétoriques Religieuses de l’Antiquité and teaches Latin. This articles appears through the very kind courtesy La Nef.

Featured: Exécution du général Charette place de Viarmes à Nantes, mars 1796 (Execution of General Charette, Place de Viarmes, Nantes, March 1796), by Julien Le Blant; painted in 1883.

The First Schleswig-Holstein War: The Beginning of Military Interposition

1848 was a turbulent but critical year in the modern history of Europe, which saw the major crisis of the so-called “Vienna system,” with politically and socially originated revolutions and revolts across the continent.

Within this context, the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were caught between rising nationalism and the will of the German-speaking people for unification.

The case of Schleswig and Holstein remains a minor part of that momentum, overshadowed by other major events, while also overlapped by the first Prussian-Danish war. Thus one of the first neutral interposition operation in Europe has been marginalized and largely forgotten.

The majority of Schleswig-Holsteiners were German speakers (despite a prominent minority of Danes), who believed that the inclusion of their territory within the German Federation, with its own constitution, was the optimal option for their own future.

In this light, they naturally looked to Prussia.

In Denmark, as in many other European countries, the call for a democratic constitution was initially triggered by the February riots in Paris against King Louis-Phillipe of Orleans.

The Danish Crown, in crisis, constitutionally and in terms of monarchical succession, wished to keep a firm hand on the southernmost duchies and sent military forces to crack down on the insurgents and the Prussian forces that supported them.

During the conflict, a truce was established, and a Swedish-Norwegian force, supported by a British naval squadron, was dispatched to the region, with the mandate to garrison one part of the disputed area.

This could be considered the first interposition experiment carried out by a neutral actor.

This force often at the center of skirmishes and clashes, anticipated similar situations in peacekeeping operations in the 20th century.

Finally, also, the withdrawal of the neutral force saw many clashes.

The Region

The Schleswig-Holstein situation, one of the most intricate grids because of ethnic and dynastic reasons in all of entire Europe, was seemingly solved by way of another conflict in the second half of the 19th century, and was finally resolved with a plebiscite, carried out under the joint auspices of the Allied and Associate Powers and the League of Nations after WWI.

The Schleswig-Holstein represented, as mentioned above, one of most complicate situations, due to the ethnic and dynastic quagmire of contrasting trends and interests, both local and regional.

This conflict was the mirror of several ongoing mutations in the political, economic and social landscape of the European continent.

Denmark, like many other countries in Europe, was caught in the broader transition between absolute monarchies to a constitution-led state model.

In this already complex scenario, emerged a new military model—the use of neutral force between warring parties.

In the past, there had been some cases (Italy, during the “Salt War” and in Switzerland); but the case of Schleswig-Holstein represented, for the time, one of the most coherent experiment.

It should be noted that the deployment of Swedish-Norwegian troops in Schleswig-Holstein was the transformation of initial, planned deployment in support of Denmark, into a neutral-intended intervention, representing a major change in the political stance of Stockholm.

The Political Landscape

The German communities, who lived in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, governed from Denmark, revolted, in April 1848, against the Copenhagen rule, inflamed by similar revolts which swept across all of Europe.

The German Federation, an organization which brought together all states of the post-Vienna Congress Germany, inflamed by self-determination and national unification principles, mandated Prussia to support the insurgents.
Facing a serious threat, Copenhagen asked help from Great Britain, Sweden-Norway and Russia.

The three foreign parties brought in their own international and regional interests to the crisis as well as their broader worldviews.

Stockholm, in one of the first examples of Nordic solidarity, and on the request of Copenhagen, sent a contingent, in May, to Denmark (4.000 out of the 15.000 men deployed in Scania), ready to intervene, supported by a large naval force.

Aside from the deployment of troops, not involved in clashes, and aside from Danes against pro-Germans and Prussians, Sweden sent to Prussia a declaration, stating that any further action against Denmark would lead Stockholm into a direct intervention into Copenhagen, a city considered vital for the strategic security of Sweden.

The mere presence of Swedish-Norwegian troops, which landed in Fyn, blocked further progression of pro-Germans forces and Prussian elements up towards the north.

However, it should be said that Sweden-Norway also asked Denmark to refrain from any action that might lead to a worsening of the crisis, like launching counteroffensives against Schleswig-Holstein, under control of the pro-Germans and Prussians.

London, following her traditional approach and policies, sought to avoid any possible change in the balance of powers in the continent, as much as possible.

The strategic position of Denmark, a key area between the North Sea and the Baltic, made the request for assistance from Copenhagen, a matter of strategic interest for Great Britain.

Russia, which since the Napoleonic wars considered Prussia her protégé, did not appreciate the liberal shift ongoing in Berlin and interpreted the move for Schleswig-Holstein, not coordinated with St. Petersburg, as a sign of political independency.

For St. Petersburg, this initiative risked dismantling the legitimacy of the political system ongoing in the continent, set up with the so-called “Vienna System.”

On British initiative, in the month of May 1848, peace negotiations were organized in London, between Prussia and Denmark, with Britain as mediator.

In the talks, it was proposed to split the territory between Schleswig and Holstein, but which was not accepted by the Danes.

Despite this initial failure, Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister, insisted on continuing the negotiations in Malmoe, Sweden.

The negotiations, coupled with the provisional halt to military operations, led to the signature of the first cease-fire signed in Malmoe, under the auspices of London, St. Petersburg and Stockholm.

The issued ceasefire put Berlin in an embarrassing situation, given that the German League Parliament, seated in Frankfurt am Main, did not ratify it. Consequently, the King of Prussia did not ratify it, either—while Denmark did ratify the ceasefire.

Then, a rift took place. The pro-German forces, refused to accept the ceasefire, reflecting the ambiguous stance of Berlin and Frankfurt.

In this regard, Denmark, despite talks ongoing since mid-July, on the 24th of that same month, declared the temporary armistice null and void.

Copenhagen, though it did not resume ground operations against the pro-Germans and Prussians, established a rigid naval blockade of Baltic coasts, enjoying the support of London, St. Petersburg and Stockholm, and was strongly hostile to Berlin’s refusal to ratify the truce.

A new truce was signed in Malmoe on 26 August 1848. During this truce, lasting seven months, no political results were obtained.

At the expiration of the truce, fighting erupted again between the Danish forces on the one side and the Prussians and local insurgents on the other; but this time it saw the dominance of Danish forces, testified by the Battle of Fredericia on 7 July 1849.

The Neutral Force

In Malmoe, with the reopening of war, a new session of negotiations was immediately promoted by Norway-Sweden, Russia and Great Britain, and in July 1849 led to a result.

Russia and Great Britain were strongly interested in normalization, given that their commercial trade with Prussia was heavily affected by the Danish naval blockade.

This led to a new truce for six months, which was extendable for a further six weeks.

Despite fierce resistance, Denmark accepted the idea of partition of the disputed territory (an option that emerged during talks between the other stakeholders) as the only way to solve the issue.

Prussia signed the armistice on 10 July and Denmark on the 17th.

Prussia provisionally administered Southern Schleswig and Holstein, inhabited mostly by German populations, and garrisoned the area with 6.000 troops.

Northern Schleswig, with a stronger ethnic mix, was administered by an international commission, directed by a British diplomat, along with a Prussian and one Danish deputies, thus setting up a tripartite administration, based in Flensburg.

The international commission was assisted by a force of 4,000 Swedish-Norwegian soldiers, supported by a British naval squadron and one (much smaller) Swedish-Norwegian naval force.

The Swedish-Norwegian troops arrived in Flensburg on 27 August 1849, and they policed the area, disarmed the pro-German forces and monitored the withdrawal of Danish troops back into Jutland.

The Force Commander was the Commanding Officer of the Värmland Regiment (one of the oldest units of the Royal Swedish Army), Colonel O. A. Malmborg, who for this duty was promoted Major-General.

The international presence was constantly punctuated since its arrival by serious incidents and clashes, especially with pro-German insurgents, and in-between those with the Danish-speaking irregular armed elements.

The surveillance of the line separating northern from southern Schleswig was very problematic due to the nature of the area.

The Southern Schleswig remained the base for pro-independence militias, which despite the heavy losses in the war against Denmark, remained ready to fight.

The Prussians, who were tasked to disarm them, instead supported their raids in the north.

In January 1850 a Swedish-Norwegian detachment was attacked by 800 armed units in a heavy battle, south of the demarcation line, southeast of Flensburg.

The international troops, in a recce mission, following an incursion of pro-German units, was forced to cross the demarcation line and engage the insurgents in clashes, and thus defeating them.

The mandate of the international force expired in January 1850, but was extended for other six months, as in Berlin a decisive phase of the negotiations between Prussia and Denmark, ongoing since December 1849, was taking place.

The talks required many weeks; and only on 2 July was there reached a final agreement, in which Denmark returned to exercising sovereignty over the Duchies, but with the commitment not to conduct unfair policies and/or reprisals in the German minority.

During the spring of 1850, Russia suggested that the Swedish-Norwegian force should also garrison Southern Schleswig, replacing the Prussians forces.

The proposal was rejected by Sweden, on the ground of a substantial risk of even greater involvement in dealing with a hostile, pro-German, population.

On 2 July 1850 peace was signed in Berlin between Denmark and the Prussia and German League.

The agreement allowed the withdrawal of Swedish-Norwegian and Prussian forces from their areas of responsibilities.

In late July, the Scandinavian troops left the territory. The operations of re-embarkation were characterized by incidents, heavy gunfire and several fallen among the troops and the German separatists.

At the same time Prussia withdrew its forces from southern Schleswig and Holstein. As soon as foreign forces were withdrawn, the duchies were re-occupied by the forces of Copenhagen, according to the peace treaty.

The Danish forces crushed in few days another uprising of the pro-German armed groups, which exploded immediately after the arrival of the troops of Copenhagen.
Comment

Although little known, this mission contains within itself the harbingers of future peace support missions: interim administration, approval of the parties involved in a conflict with regard to the deployment of a neutral military force, disarming of irregular military formations, and patrolling the lines of demarcation.

The other point which led this operation to a success, and often forgotten when there is an analysis of the achievements of a peacekeeping operation, the existence of a serious political will in supporting the forces on the ground.

Finally, a politically-minded observation. The role of London, Stockholm and St. Petersburg, even if appearing as neutral, in reality, none of these were “honest brokers,” given their political interests and/or strategic imperatives; and these kinds of dynamics should be analyzed for a proper interpretation of third parties in international crisis.

Enrico Magnani, PhD is a UN officer who specializes in military history, politico-military affairs, peacekeeping and stability operations. (The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations). This paper was presented at the 53rd Conference of the Consortium of the Revolutionary Era, Fort Worth, Texas, USA, 2-4 February 2023.

Featured: Danish Soldiers Returning to Copenhagen, by Otto Bache; painted in 1894.

What Ukraine Tells Us about the Coming War… Continued

“The Braudelian conception of time is fundamental to the student of war because it allows him to inscribe his vision as well as his theoretical reflection over the long duration, that which helps to access the time of war. The latter is opposed to the Man of the 21st century, a man in a hurry whose mental and temporal horizon is subject to the diktat of the instantaneousness of journalistic analyses, mass media and social networks” (Olivier Entraygues, Regards sur la guerre: l’école de la défaite [A Look at the War: The School of Defeat]).

After the acclamation of President Zelensky by the US Congress, the British Prime Minister’s public promise of an uninterrupted flow of ammunition to Ukraine in 2023, and, last but not least, Ukraine’s request to exclude Russia from the UN, the media is now talking about a great Ukrainian victory, a turning point in the war and a probable Russian defeat.

Faced with this media overkill, it is more important than ever to put into practice the principle of analysis elaborated by Fernand Braudel: “Events are only dust; they only make sense when they are placed in the rhythms and cycles of the conjuncture and the long duration.” By this, Braudel means that it is important first to understand the macro-social-economic and political framework as well as the major trends of the historical long term in which the events take shape, only then to be able to grasp their significance or, on the contrary, their marginality. Mutatis mutandis, we join the approach of the prospectivist Thierry Gaudin for whom, “recognition precedes knowledge.”

In the case of the war in Ukraine, we must keep in mind the following parameters in terms of long duration, if we want to take a somewhat relevant look at the events:

  1. We are dealing with a confrontation between a declining hegemonic power (the United States) and an emerging regional power (Russia).
  2. Following Paul Kennedy’s masterful study, we know that hegemonies in decline are particularly bellicose, seeking to compensate for their gradual collapse through war;
  3. As far as Europe is concerned, since 1945 it has become a dependency of the American empire (Marshall Plan, OEEC/OECD, NATO, and today the EU), and therefore shares the fate of its guardian—minus the military force;
  4. Symptomatically, Saudi Arabia (a faithful ally of the United States, a great oil power and protector of the holy places of Islam) is now distancing itself from the empire.

Consequently, rather than asking ourselves, as in a good old Western, “Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” we should take advantage of this Ukrainian moment to try to decipher what is happening to us and, if possible, to plan an appropriate response. For there is every reason to believe that it is in the matrix of this war that the world of tomorrow is being born.

It is with this in mind that I offer the following reflections:

1) Ukraine is on the brink of collapse. Since the end of the 1990’s, emigration has cost it more than 20 million inhabitants (out of the 51 it had when it became independent). With the war, its economy and its infrastructures are destroyed, the generation of men between 18 and 35 years old has been bled dry in the fighting (more than 500 killed and wounded per day since May 2022). Ukraine has been sacrificed by its mentors—it is now a failed state at the gates of Europe, an ideal platform for all mafia trafficking and the grey economy.

2) Russia, on the other hand, has time. Its economy is industrial and, unlike China’s, it is not financialized. It is therefore relatively solid because it is not very dependent on fluctuations in the dollar and is not a party to the abysmal American debt. It is based on the sale of products (gas, oil, cereals, etc.) to very large countries (China, India, Pakistan, to name but a few). This element is very important, especially if we admit that the Russian war aim is not mainly Ukraine, but the Western system and its destabilization. Therefore, the economic strength of Russia explains why it has time, why for it the territorial gains in Ukraine remain secondary. Moreover, concerning the fact of “having time,” let us also recall that Russian strategic thinking is accustomed, since the Napoleonic wars, to cede ground in order to gain time and, in the long run, to exhaust the opponent. Under these conditions, I would like to make the following points:

  • Given the hemorrhaging of manpower, there are not many Ukrainians in the Ukrainian forces anymore. Most of them are mercenaries (Poles, Slovaks and Germans for the most part), who are apparently now in charge.
  • On the Russian side, there should be no major offensive on Kiev. Why put yourself inside immense ravaged territories whose populations are hostile to you?
  • For the Western bloc, the exit from the war is becoming more and more urgent, given Ukrainian exhaustion and the increasing cost of the war for its arsenals (not to mention the financing of the mercenaries). Let’s not forget that, on the one hand, the United States cannot afford to disarm at a time of rising tensions between China and Taiwan, and, on the other hand, the frenzied printing of money since 2020 suggests that the dollar is its last instrument of power—namely, to finance proxy wars.
  • The main obstacle to getting out of the war—it is President Zelensky who, with his incredible political acumen, has undoubtedly understood that his mentors were manipulating him and who, in return, is raising the stakes by demanding hundreds of billions of dollars. So, his removal from the picture becomes crucial—but highly problematic. It is interesting to note in this regard that for some time now, the Russian and Ukrainian press have been buzzing (each in its own way, of course) about the hypothesis of a military coup in Kiev.

3) Europe is defenseless. Both because of its disarmament (abolition of conscription, professional armies with low numbers oriented towards external operations, recourse to mercenarism, dismantling of logistical infrastructures) and because of the suppression of borders between nation-states (the Single Market, the Schengen Area, the Frontex system)—its geographical space is once again open to the “great raids” (understand great invasions).

Let’s go back in history to understand the meaning of such a statement. The last waves of invasion took place in the 9th—10th century. Viking, Saracen and Magyar raids caused the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. Then, from the 11th century onwards, with the advent of feudalism, and later of territorial states, Western Europe was covered with a thick network of fortifications (castles, fortresses, garrison towns), making it almost impossible for barbarian raids to take place. The more the territorial powers are strengthened, the less possible the rides become. Today, this protective glacis no longer exists, the European territory has become an “open city” again. In this respect, we can readily mention the migratory flows, the drug and human trafficking that cross Europe from one side to the other, all of which constitute a conglomerate of mafias, gangs and the grey economy. The Ukrainian failed state will play a multiplier role in this respect with the extravagant quantity of arms dumped in the country and which are beginning to find their way into the parallel markets.

4) From then on, we are heading for a new war. But which one? Everything leads us to say so, and yet this is the most difficult question to answer. Indeed, we must not forget two essential lessons in this respect. On the one hand, history does not repeat itself; each era gives birth to its own conflict-situation; and on the other hand, a common mistake consists in considering the next war in terms of the previous one. Recently, the recurrent evocation of a Third World War is a characteristic example of this type of error.

We must therefore ask ourselves what are the main axes of confrontation that are emerging. In the current context, it is obviously tempting to evoke the hypothesis of an attack by Russia against its immediate neighbors (Poland, Baltic States) degenerating into a wider conflict. While it is obvious that NATO staff cannot ignore such an eventuality, it nevertheless seems very unlikely: Russia has neither the military means nor the logistics for such an ambition. Let us recall, moreover, that the end of the Cold War saw the scheme of inter-state war replaced by that of the empire/barbarian dialectic: namely, the American wars of globalization and the concomitant rise of Islamism-jihadism. This confrontation stretches from the first Iraq War (1991) to the catastrophic evacuation of Kabul in 2021. More than 30 years of war or, in other words, a “Thirty Years’ War” that definitively has exhausted the Western nation-state, transforming it into a penal-prison state controlled by global finance. Today, the war in Ukraine reveals a new pattern that does not cancel the previous one, but supplants it in the order of priorities—the dialectic between a disarmed Europe and the return of the great raids.

5) Disarmed Europe vs. the return of the great raids? With regard to the new axes of confrontation, for Europe it is this one that must first be taken into consideration. And I would like to add that it is not necessary to “stir up the Russian scarecrow” to imagine a war in Europe; armed violence is already very much present there with the actors of the mafia economy and the lawless zones whose trafficking of all kinds acts as a post-modern great battle. The state apparatus is struggling more and more to cope with it, as indicated by the narco-threats currently affecting Belgium and the Netherlands, which are themselves becoming narco-states.

On this subject, let us take the comparison with the last wave of invasions of the 9th— 10th centuries. The raids that precipitated the fall of the Carolingian Empire did not have a political objective. Their goal was the large-scale brigandage of territories and populations, in order to bring back slaves and booty. It was the intensity of these attacks, their repetitive nature over time, and their ability to strike anywhere and at any time that caused the collapse of Carolingian societies. The peasantry in particular (the backbone of the social structures of the time) found itself defenseless in the face of these plunders. For fear of revolt, the Carolingian nobility was more concerned with disarming its peasants than with protecting them. The local populations left the most threatened regions where churches, monasteries and villages were sacked (a bit like the European working classes who today live in precariousness and insecurity).

6) Carolingian collapse—EU collapse? Of course, comparison is not reason, and yet one cannot help but draw a parallel between the fate of the peasantry of that time and the slow destruction today of the middle and working classes of Western Europe, in the triple turmoil of precariousness, inequality and insecurity, abandoned by their political elites and disarmed by a state fearing riots. Mutatis mutandis, we find the type of situation that presided over the fall of the Carolingian Empire. A cycle of more than a thousand years has come to an end—Europe is defenseless and the migratory raids are on their way!

Bernard Wicht is a lecturer at the University of Lausanne, where he teaches strategy. He is a regular speaker at military institutions, including the Ecole de Guerre, and think-tanks abroad. He is the author of several books, including Vers l’autodéfense: Le défi des guerres internes (Towards Self-Defense: The Challenge of Internal Wars), Les loups et l’agneau-citoyen. Gangs militarisés, Etat policier et desarmement du peuple (The Wolves and the Citizen-Lamb: Militarized Gangs, the Police State and the Disarmament of the People); Citoyen-soldat 2.0, Mode d’emploi (Citizen-Soldier 2.0: A User’s Guide); Europe Mad Max demain ? retour à la défense citoyenne (Mad Max Europe Tomorrow? A Return to Citizen Defense); Une nouvelle Guerre de Trentre Ans ? Réflexion et hypothèse sur la crise actuelle (A New Thirty Years War: Reflections and Hypothesis on the Current Crisis); L’OTAN attaque : la nouvelle donne stratégique (NATO Attacks: the New Strategic Order); L’Idée de milice et le modèle suisse dans la pensée de Machiavel (The Idea of the Militia and the Swiss Model in Machiavelli’s Thought).

Featured: “Attila and the Huns,” by Georges Rochegrosse; painted pre-1938.

Crusaders in the Holy Land: A Unique Civilization

The Crusades have long been a contentious topic, and over the years scholarship has largely fallen into two camps: those that view this enterprise as European aggression (Ur-colonialism) and those that view it as a response to relentless Muslim aggression. The former view tends to predominate, especially in popular culture, where films, television shows and novels favor the trendy explanation of the Levant falling victim to “European violence.” Given the wide reach of media, such simplistic views have become “settled history.” Various efforts are made to counter this ideological reading of the Crusades (and the Middle Ages in general), but with little effect. The mainstream narrative yet holds sway, and in the popular mind the Crusades are evidence of innate European belligerence unleashed upon the world. One of the major problems with this narrative approach is Presentism, which then poses the “East” and the “West” as two irreconcilable monoliths that can only but continually clash. Saner scholarship recognizes the silliness of such an approach and has slowly been trying to make a difference by showing that the medieval world was neither ignorant nor parochial, and in which violence was more controlled than in our own day. The most recent example of such scholarship is Helena P. Schrader’s latest book, The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades: Kingdoms at the Crossroads of Civilization, 1100-1300.

This eloquent book is a comprehensive narrative history of a unique Christian civilization in Palestine—the Crusader States. It is also a noble and honest effort to “set the record straight,” by presenting the entirety of the crusading effort as one of interaction, in which the East and the West met and fashioned a unique civilization. In the words of Schrader:

“While historians of past centuries portrayed the Latin Christians living in these states as a tiny, urban elite afraid to venture into the countryside out of fear of their subjects, there is a growing consensus among the scholars of the twenty-first century that the majority of the population was Christian, not Muslim, and that the degree of intermingling and tolerance between Latin and Orthodox Christians was much higher than had been assumed” (xxxiv).

Towards this end, the book seeks to be as meticulous and well-researched as possible, in which it aptly succeeds. It begins with a 24-page chronology that details the history of the Levant within the context of Christianity (which brought Catholics, commonly known as the “Franks” or “Latins,” into the region, who then established various principalities, or “Crusader States,” which were politically linked with each other and with Europe) and Islam (which eventually gave the Turks enduring dominance in the Holy Land).

The book is divided into two parts, wherewith the analysis moves from the larger to the particular. Thus, Part I, “A Short History of the Crusader States,” describes the process through which the Franks came to the Levant and set up religious, political, cultural and military structures which would ensure that the Holy Land would remain territory essential and important to the Christian faith. This meant the establishment of permanent settlements, or what later became known as the “Crusader States,” or “Outremer” (“Overseas”), as the people of that time called this settlement. Schrader carefully traces the course that needed to be followed to ensure success in this undertaking, and as such follows the rise and fall of the Crusader States, from 1099 (when Jerusalem came under Frankish rule) to 1291 when Acre fell and Frankish influence contracted and eventually disappeared from the region.

The importance of Part I is that it gives the reader a thorough understanding of the complexity of the Crusades in their entirety, while never neglecting the dynamics at play in the Muslim world, where Mongol, Turk and Egyptian rivalries held sway. It is truly commendable that Schrader offers an all-inclusive review of the forces in contention in the Levant over a two-hundred-year period. What emerges is the real picture of the Crusades—that they were a massive investment of effort, talent, money and most of all of faith which allowed for a unique civilization to emerge and flourish, becoming an envy of the world in so many ways.

It is the quality and quantity of this “Crusader” or “Frankish” civilization that Schrader turns to in Part II of her book, which is sub-titled, “A Description of the Crusader States.” Here, Schrader really comes into her own as she takes the reader on a captivating “journey” into the world of Outremer. Each chapter presents facts and analysis, so that a lot of the popular myths about the Crusades are laid to rest. For example, we learn that the population of the Levant was predominantly Christian and not Muslim, as widely and mistakenly assumed. Indeed, the Christian population of what is now known as the Middle East and even Central Asia was heavily Christian. It was only in the fourteenth century that the Christians of the East were methodically annihilated, and the area became what it is today—the final chapter of this annihilation was the Armenian Genocide (which occurred in two parts: 1890-1909 and 1915-1917). Of course, this topic lies outside the scope of Schrader’s book.

Next, Schrader examines the complex polity that emerged in Outremer, the concept of the “nation-state,” which of course had a direct influence on the life of the West in the centuries ahead, down to our own time, where the nation-state is the prime form of civilization. In other words, Outremer was a two-hundred-year long success story—it was hardly colonial “occupation.” The reason for this success, as Schrader shows, is the stability of the institutions that were rather quickly established, such as the very effective judiciary, in which the Muslim peasantry prospered (unlike Muslim peasantry in Islamic-run jurisdictions), as well as the establishment of churches and monasteries which allowed culture, learning and the Christian faith to flourish, especially the ease of pilgrimage (which led to the rise of Holy Land “tourism,” and all of the support industries that tourists need).

Diplomacy was another key component of the success of Outremer, whereby a balance of power was effectively achieved and maintained between the various rivals, namely, Mamluk Egypt, the debilitated Byzantine rule, the many fiefdoms of the Turks, and the Mongol Empire. It was the Crusader States who “micro-managed” this balancing act, so that trade between the East and the West flourished, despite the ambitions of particular rulers: “The willingness… to treat with the religious and strategic enemy on a short-term tactical basis meant that de facto peace reigned in the crusader states far more frequently than war” (193) , because “the Franks maintained sophisticated and largely effective diplomatic relations with all the major players in the Eastern Mediterranean” (196).

As Schrader also points out, the Levant was a backwater before the Crusaders came—but because the land was holy to Christianity, it saw a massive input that transformed the region into a going concern: “Investment into infrastructure revitalised the rural economy and enabled the expansion of trading networks. Existing cities grew, and ancient cities such as Caesarea and Ramla, which had gone to ruin, were revived. Indeed, entire new settlements and villages were built. The larger cities, such as Acre, Tyre, Beirut, Tripoli and Antioch, became booming urban centres with larger populations than the capitals of the West. Not until the mid-thirteenth century did Western European cities start to compete in size with the cities of the Latin East” (197).

As well, this investment returned strategic importance: “Most importantly, the Franks connected the traditional oriental trade routes with the growing, increasingly prosperous and luxury-hungry markets of Western Europe” (198). The reason for this flourishing trade was the building of infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and water management. Trade agreements were struck and banking practices introduced, which then led to manufacturing. Sugar, textiles (especially silk, samite and siqlatin), soap, wine, olive oil, leather goods, glass were all manufactured in the Crusader States.

Given this revitalization program, agriculture returned to this land long considered barren, so that cities began to flourish, and a distinct Outremer culture emerged, such as icon painting, book production, shrines and holy places where the faithful came in droves to receive blessing in the land trodden by God Himself, as the famous 13th century Palestinalied (Song of Palestine) relates: “Ich bin komen an die stat,/ dâ got menischlîchen trat (I am come to the city where God trod as a man).” This spiritual “currency” lay at the heart of this region, a “currency” that could never be depleted. And here the work of charity was paramount, which saw the building of hospitals, caravanserais, inns, as well as monasteries, churches and many chapels by confraternities and monastic orders.

The cities themselves were well-planned, with effective sewage systems, baths and even flushing toilets. Trade supplied the many open-air and enclosed markets. There were orchards and gardens surrounding each city, with aqueducts, pools and fountains to supply water. It is important to note that many of these cities were not fortified—that is, they did not lie inside protective walls—cities such as Nazareth, Hebron, Nablus and Ramla. This detail is important—for it points to the fact that life was, in fact, very peaceful, which flies in the face of the usual and popular trope of Crusader brutality.

But this not to say that the military aspect was not important, for defense was necessary, given the endless ambitions of the rulers of the time (Mongol, Mamluk and Turk). Thus, Frankish Levant saw the emergence of unique castle styles, chief and most impressive of which was the concentric castle, the best examples of which is Krak de Chevaliers and Belvoir which overlooks the Jordan valley (“Belvoir” in Old French means, “Good view”).

Frankish architecture was unique also because it did not destroy what originally existed: “Beyond their sheer scale and number, one of the most striking features of these various projects was the degree to which the Franks sensitively and respectfully incorporated the remains of earlier buildings into their renovation projects. In sharp contrast to the prevailing view of crusaders as bigoted barbarians, when it came to architecture, the crusaders sought to preserve rather than destroy. This was true of Muslim structures as well as Christian ones” (233).

One of the greatest achievements of Outremer was its art and its literature, both little known and studied. There survives, for example, the exquisite Melisende Psalter, with its illustrations that perfectly combine Byzantine, Armenian, Syriac, Coptic and Latin elements to produce a style that is original to Outremer. And then there are the frescoes of the 12th century Church of St. Jeremiah at Abu-Ghosh (the biblical Emmaus), which are the finest expression of Crusader art (despite their Byzantine “look”), although they now survive in a much damaged condition.

This comprehensive book ends with the history of the Ibelin family who typify the kinds of people that came to Outremer and made it the splendorous civilization that it was: “…while the Ibelins were undoubtedly exceptionally successful, they were also in many ways typical. They embodied the overall experience, characteristics and ethos of the Franks in the Holy Land. They came from obscure, probably non-noble origins, and the dynasty’s founder can be classed as an ‘adventurer’ and ‘crusader’. They rapidly put down roots in the Near East, intermarrying with native Christian and Byzantine elites. They were hardened and cunning fighting men able to deploy arms and tactics unknown to the West and intellectuals who could win wars with words in the courts. They were multilingual, cosmopolitan and luxury-loving, as comfortable in baths as in battles” (267).

But why did this great civilization in the Holy Land end, after two hundred years of great success? The answers are as varied as the scholars who seek to give a response to this question. Schrader is accurate in her own conclusion—that Outremer was a victim of its own success. Because it was such a “shining city on the hill,” others fought to possess it. But more tragically, the bane of Frankish rule was the incessant in-fighting, where factions vied for power and where loyalty was circumscribed by personal ambition. As well, the latter rulers had divided loyalty—they were more interested in maintaining their holdings and influence in Europe than looking after what previous generations had built in the Holy Land. It is that old cycle of civilization—the generations that inherent wealth effectively waste it and lose it.

And the legacy of Outremer? This is how Schrader summarizes it: “… the crusader states in the Levant were the home to a rare flourishing of international trade, intellectual and technological exchange, innovation, hybrid art forms and unique architecture, advances in health care and evolution of the constitutional principles of the rule-of-law” (305).

For its scope, its depth and its variety of subject matter, this book truly succeeds as a work of exceptional narrative history. By glancing at the past, we may well learn something about the narrowness of our own age.

C.B. Forde confesses to being a closet history buff, that is whenever he can tear himself away from the demands of the little bit of land that he cultivates.

Featured: The Last Judgment, a fresco in the Church of St. Jeremiah (Emmaus), in Abu-Ghosh, Israel; painted in the latter parts of the 12th century.

An Exemplary Genocide

To present the genocide of the Armenians means first explaining the extinction of a multi-millennial civilization contemporary to the Romans and Parthians which almost disappeared from the Anatolian region at the dawn of the 20th century. While Western diplomats welcome the ongoing process of normalization between Armenia and Turkey, Armenians around the world commemorated on April 24 an unpunished genocide and their unburied dead.

In their masterful book, The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924, Israeli historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi estimate that the extermination of Ottoman Christians took place over thirty years. These were three historical sequences that were part of a single effort to wipe out the Christian presence in Anatolia. This process began with the proto-genocidal massacre of Ottoman Armenians from 1894 to 1896, followed by the genocide of 1915, and the deportation and annihilation of the remaining Christians (Greeks, Assyro-Chaldeans, Syriacs) during and after the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922, not to mention, in the Caucasus, the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians between 1918 and 1920 carried out by the Turkish-Azerian Islamic army.

Social Darwinism

Could the extermination of the Empire’s Christians have been avoided? Despite the adoption in 1876 of a liberal constitution crowning the era of reforms (Tanzimat) aimed at modernizing the Empire, the idea of a supra-confessional Ottoman citizenship remained a pious wish. The degrading notion of dhimmi, which instituted inequality between Christians and Muslims, remained a reality for millions of Greek, Armenian, Assyrian-Chaldean and Arab Christians. If in the countryside of eastern Anatolia, the Armenian peasantry, reduced to a state of serfdom, was at the mercy of the exactions of its Kurdish “protectors,” the fate of the Armenians of the Empire was relatively more enviable in the large cosmopolitan urban centers (Constantinople, Smyrna) and in Cilicia. The action of the Western missions favored the rise of an educated youth who had acquired the ideals of the Enlightenment.

The middle of the 19th century saw a national cultural revival (Zartonk), with a reform of the Armenian language and the emergence of an exceptional literature. The cultural and socio-economic gap between Armenians and Turks was all the more perceptible. Jealousy, frustration and even the anguish of disappearance haunted the Turks that arose with the defeats in Tripolitania and in the Balkans which, around 1912, accelerated the collapse of the Empire. The “sick man of Europe,” the Empire decomposed, while a new elite from the Balkans secretly organized itself and took power through a coup de force in 1908. The arrival of the Young Turks of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was welcomed by a large number of Armenians, as the 1876 Constitution, which guaranteed equality between all the inhabitants of the Empire, was restored. Influenced by the positivist ideas of Auguste Comte, the Young Turks relied on the militants of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation with whom they had maintained close relations since their exile in Europe.

But the euphoria was short-lived. The Armenians of Adana, an opulent city in Cilicia, were massacred in 1909. The death toll was 30,000. The investigation was suppressed; the responsibility of the authorities was no longer in doubt. The ideal of a decentralized, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Ottomanism was over. As the Young Turks retreated into the Balkans and North Africa, they came to consider Anatolia as the sanctuary of Turkishness. However, the Christian element was practically in the majority there. The Armenian elite was sufficiently seasoned to envisage autonomy, or rather an independent Armenia in the heart of the Empire. Social Darwinism explains the genocidal intention: if the “internal enemies” are not eliminated, the Turkish nation cannot exist within the borders of the Ottoman state.

The massacres of 1894-1896 had initiated a shift in the demographic balance of power reinforced by the influx of Muslim refugees (muhadjir) from the Balkans and the Caucasus, eager to fight the Christians. The Young Turks intended to ensure the transition from a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state to an exclusively Muslim state where the Sunni Turkish element remained the basis of the emerging national identity.

The Last Act

The last act before the final solution was played out in 1913, with the firming of the power of the Young Turks who eliminated all opposition. On October 31, 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined Germany and Austria-Hungary in the war; and from then on, the thesis of the betrayal of Armenians fighting for Russia was used as a pretext to implement the Final Solution. Although they were atheists, the Young Turks used Islam and the Kurds to massacre the “infidel” Armenians. The Special Organization, the armed wing of the Deep State, recruited criminals released from prison.

In January 1915, Armenian conscripts of the Ottoman army were killed; and on April 24 the round-up of 3000 Armenian intellectuals, writers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc. in Constantinople destroyed the elite of this Christian minority. The Armenians of the eastern vilayets (counties) were exterminated on the spot, with the exception of the population of Van, who managed to resist and then to withdraw with the Russian army.

The “General Order for the deportation of all Armenians, without exception,” issued on June 21, 1915 by the Minister of the Interior Talaat, was addressed to all the governors of the vilayets. It no longer referred to threatened border areas, but to all regions of the Empire where Armenian subjects lived, up to the border with Bulgaria. Between May and September 1915, 306 convoys of deportees carried 1,040,000 Armenians from all over Anatolia. Parked in concentration camps, they died of thirst, hunger and disease. The survivors fled to the deserts of Syria.

In September 1915, a law on “abandoned property” of “temporarily” displaced persons legitimized the plundering of Armenian property.

In 1916, the second phase of the genocide began with the extermination of the Armenians who had not been deported from Anatolia, while Chechen irregulars were responsible for the heinous killing of the survivors (women, orphans, etc.) interned in the camps in Syria. A century later, Daech’s soldiers would repeat this barbarity at the exact scene of the crime earlier.

Turkey for the Turks

After having supported, in the years preceding the genocide, the demand for reforms in the eastern vilayets, in order to guarantee the Christian populations a minimum of security for their goods and persons, the Western powers were content to protest. On May 24, 1915, France, England and Russia, in a joint declaration, solemnly warned the Ottoman government of its full responsibility in “Turkey’s crime against humanity and civilization.” They promised the intervention of the secular arm of Justice. Strong words that remained a dead letter.

In 1923, 1.5 million deaths later, the international community cynically buried the Armenian question, sacrificed on the altar of realpolitik and the concern to spare Kemalist Turkey.

Thus, the slogan “Turkey for the Turks” became a reality. This was followed by an ethnocide, targeting the churches and monasteries of Anatolia. But the persecution did not stop there. Armenians, Greeks and Jews of Turkey who remained in the country after 1923 were subjected to a new spoliation by the iniquitous wealth tax of 1942.

In 1955, the pogroms in Istanbul, followed by the crises in Cyprus in 1963-1964 and 1974, put an end to the Greek presence in the city.

Successive military coups sustained an ultranationalism with Pan-Turkist overtones that led, for example, to the assassination in 2007 in Istanbul of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. It is clear that, far from being a single memorial issue, the genocide remains a current one.

The other links in this chain are Cyprus, the Assyro-Chaldeans, the Kurds, the disregard for human rights. They are at the heart of the Turkish malaise. A country haunted by the ghosts of the past, sickened by its ultranationalism. A people that has still not found the path to inner peace and the beginning of a liberating request for forgiveness.

Read an interview with Tigrane Yégavian.

Tigrane Yégavian is a graduate of the Institut d’études politiques de Paris and the Institut des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), holds a Master’s degree in comparative politics with a specialization in the Muslim world, and is a doctoral candidate in contemporary history. An Arabist, he has spent a long time in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. His career has led him to specialize in Eastern Christians and their diasporas. He is also a specialist in Portuguese and contemporary Portugal, on which he has written numerous articles. He is a member of the editorial board of the geopolitical journal Conflits. He is a contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes, Etudes, Carto, Moyen-Orient, Politique Internationale, Le Monde Diplomatique, Sciences Humaines, France-Arménie and regularly appears on Télé Sud, RFI and TV5 Monde. This article appears courtesy of La Nef.

Featured: “The Massacre of Adana,” Le Petit Journal, May 2, 1909.