A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794

5. “Mountain, Become a Volcano”

L e Jugement dernier des rois, a play written by sylvain Maréchal, opened to enthusiastic reviews at the théâtre de la république in vendémiaire of y ear ii (october 1793). “the theater of the republic...has never better fulfilled its title than since it has been putting on a play of an original genre, which has as its title, Le Jugement dernier des rois,” extolled Prudhomme’s Révolutions de Paris on 28 october 1793.1 the Père Duchesne exclaimed, “there [at the théâtre de la république] is a fit spectacle for republican eyes.”2 the play gave an account of the exile of all europe’s monarchs, as well as the Pope, to a remote volcanic island . the radical théâtre de la république, subsidized by the revolutionary government, was also given a special bequest from the Committee of Public safety for this especially patriotic production: a donation of twenty pounds of saltpeter, an extremely valuable commodity, to create the spectacular explosion that marked the play’s conclusion—a volcanic eruption that would “launch stones and burning coals” into the theater.3 Maréchal subtitled his play, “a prophecy in one act.” the future foreseen by the playwright and hoped for by the supportive Committee of Public safety was also embraced by Prudhomme. “the theatrical fiction will not take long to become historical fact,” he wrote.4 the overthrow of europe’s kings, their return to an “uncivilized” state, and their ultimate destruction by natural forces was a fiction that was presented to, and patronized by, a broad French public, playing in Beauvais, Compiègne, grenoble, le Mans, lille, Metz, and rouen.5 And the volcano, symbol of revolutionary fervor and destruction, became the ultimate demonstration of nature’s justice, annihilating the monarchs in a single, terrifying, and glorious moment described in the play’s liner notes: “the explosion takes place: the fire attacks the kings from all sides; they fall, consumed in 5 “MouNtAiN, BeCoMe A volCANo” 140 Chapter 5 the innards of the opened earth.”6 the quite literal fall of the monarchs, although enabled by the revolution itself, was portrayed as the work of natural forces. the image of the volcano, so dramaticallyevoked byMaréchal, provides an illuminating case study for the fusion of the language of natural history with the rhetoric of political transformation, revealing the simultaneous politicization of the natural world, and the naturalization of political rhetoric.7 like the images of lightning and mountains, revolutionaries drew on the symbolic language of volcanoes in ways that demonstrated shifting ideas about authority, justice, and political virtue; in even more striking ways than the previous images, the volcano’s connotations transformed with changes in the political realm. During the early years of the revolution, it symbolized the potential for unbridled force and destruction ; it represented volatility, and a fear of cataclysm, playing a crucial role in the revolutionary language of watchfulness and surveillance. y et, for a brief period that began with the call for terror as the order of the day, the volcano became a positive symbol of revolutionarytransformation, emblematic of patriotic passion and republican virtue. the image of the volcano was deployed as a symbol of constructive and purgative change at the very moment at which “terror” itself became a positive and regenerative concept. volcanoes in scientific inquiry Natural histories of the eighteenth century allowed for the positing of volcanic eruption as a potentially constructive and purifying event, despite its destructive capabilities. As the eighteenth-century philosophical community struggled to understand and explain the natural world, volcanoes proved both fascinating and troubling. Key discoveries of the period facilitated the century’s enthrallment with volcanic activity, including the excavation of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii in the 1730s and 1740s, and, an event of far more regional importance in France, Jean-Étienne guettard’s 1752 pronouncement that the mountains of the Auvergne were extinct volcanoes. sylvain Maréchal, whose fascination with volcanoes was apparent from his revolutionary play, had previously published a book on the antiquities of Herculaneum in 1780; Winckelmann’s letters written from Herculaneum and Pompeii were published in French in 1784.8 Furthermore, both etna and vesuvius erupted in the 1770s and 1780s, and paintings of both volcanoes, often stunningly Fig. 11 vesuvius’s 1754 eruption. Encyclopédie, “Histoire Naturelle: règne Minéral. sixième Collection,” Plate ii (23:6...