Martires y anticristos: Analisis bibiografico sobre la Revolucion Francesa en España

In this examination of sources Yvonne Fuentes explores the Spanish response to the French Revolution in printed and archival texts during the decades following the 1789 storming of the Bastille. Her study offers a rich bibliographical analysis of how the semantic power of the French Revolution took different directions in Spain after the execution of Louis XVI and through the restoration of the Spanish monarch Fernando VII. This book seeks to determine to what degree the French Revolution, defined in broad terms, served as a centerpiece around which to articulate Spanish social, political, and economic concerns. On a larger scale, the author seeks to expand our knowledge about how Spanish intellectual culture of the late eighteenth century was complex and not dependent on a facile reproduction of French trends. The book is organized into three discrete sections: a preliminary analysis divided into three chapters; a compilation of texts published between 1789 and 1799; and a collection of royal decrees and orders from that same decade.

Part I offers a brief historical panorama of three periods:  the French Revolution (1789-1799); the Napoleonic war in Spain (1808-1814); and Spain’s post-Bonaparte liberation and reconciliation with Europe (1823-1833). In the first chapter, “Los años de la Revolución francesa: 1789-1799,” the author demonstrates that until the regicide of Louis XVI in 1793, references to the French Revolution in Spanish print culture were virtually absent. The French monarch’s execution marks a dramatic increase in the number of plays, newspapers, sermons, bibliographies, and official decrees that reference the Revolution and subsequent events, including Spain’s declaration of war against France. Official courtly discourse focuses much more on the economic impact of the war against France than the specifics of revolutionary ideology. Even though publication trends on the subject take a new direction after the regicide of 1793, the author demonstrates that there is no evidence that Louis XVI’s demise led to any kind of larger social response in the Spanish reading public. However, the Spanish Bourbon crown does decide to officially limit the publication of texts about France so as not to threaten “public felicity.”  The author once again addresses this same time period, 1789-1799, in Parts II and III of the book when she catalogs specific published and archival texts.

Chapter II, “La retórica de la guerra: 1808-1814,” argues that the Napoleonic invasion triggered a rhetorical shift with regard to the French Revolution and its pertinence to Spain. Fuentes briefly presents several works published between 1808 and 1814 that demonstrate how the perception of the Revolution changed on the Peninsula during that time.  This chapter is a kind of bibliographic Wunderkammer supported by meticulous footnotes. Fuentes questions the absolute dichotomy between those in favor of Bonaparte (the serviles or afrancesados) and the patriots loyal to Fernando VII (the patriotas), arguing that the reality was much more complex. The absolutist reign of Fernando VII put an end to both the liberal aspirations of the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz as well as the hopes of the Francophiles. These two camps become conflated as ideologically poisoned by the Enlightenment and were considered anti-Spanish, even though they were far from it, Fuentes argues. Thus, demonizing the invader means demonizing the invading ideology and yields a double silencing of the liberal patriots and the Francophiles. By surveying texts written during this span of six years, the author concludes that the French Revolution was being remembered as a historical source of the Napoleonic invasion. It is during this process, she argues, that conservative revisionist historiography conflates the concept of being “enlightened” with being “liberal,” both of which were characterized as representing opposition to authentic national identity.

Chapter III, “España librada y reconciliada con Europa: 1823-1833,” represents the culmination of how the philosophes, liberals, and the eighteenth century in general became demonized as anti-Spanish. The restoration of Fernando VII becomes a victory for Spanish identity and nationalism. The author describes a series of nine texts written between 1793 and 1864 that establish a causal relationship between the Revolution and the Napoleonic invasion. Whereas little attention was dedicated to the French Revolution in the years following 1789 compared with other topics, this event began to be seen as a catalyst for the invasion of Spain as the conflation of the events became standard. Compared with other topics, the French Revolution received little attention in the post 1789 years.  However, over time the Revolution was seen as a catalyst for the invasion of Spain, and the conflation of these two events became standard. Fuentes looks to the play La muerte de Luis XVI, Tragedia Original­, written by José Cagigal in 1826, as a prime example of this semantic phenomenon. This illustrates how the Revolution, liberalism, and the restoration of Fernando VII was increasingly portrayed as a battle between good and evil. The king becomes mythically good, and the conspirators of the Revolution represent the essence of evil. Little attention is paid to historical accuracy in the play as Louis XVI is a messianic martyr for the Spanish conservatives. This argument is important for the link that the author makes between early nineteenth-century conservative historiography and later Francoist ideology, which continued to view the eighteenth century as anti-Spanish.

Having established in Part I that the French Revolution was practically absent from texts written between 1789 and 1799, in Part II Fuentes catalogs the few works published during this time frame that do consider the topic. The author includes texts that deal with the French Revolution, Louis XVI, France, uprisings, and the “evils of France.” She relies heavily on Aguilar Piñal’s ten-volume Bibliografía de autores españoles del siglo XVIII as the source for these bibliographic entries, but she also consults other sources such as the Archivo Histórico Nacional and the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid to expand upon a few of the entries. The entries, which mirror Aguilar Piñal’s format and content, include biographical information about the author, publication details, and information about libraries and/or archives that hold the particular text. The majority of the texts listed are held in Spanish collections. However, some are also found in other places not included in Fuentes’s bibliography. Readers are advised to check availability through services such as WorldCat. The bibliography includes a large number of anonymous works as well as a fair amount of texts in translation. Fuentes’s attention may have been initially drawn to dramatic works, but the titles indexed here include several genres, with a proliferation of speeches and sermons. Fuentes concludes the second part of  her book with a statistical analysis of the percentage of books published (1789-1799) that reference the topic. According to her calculations, between 0.04% and 0.08% of published texts in any given year treat the French Revolution or a theme closely related. Whereas the scientific accuracy of these calculations could be questioned, the author does demonstrate, based on the total number of titles published in Aguilar Piñal’s bibliography, that the events of 1789 and the decade that followed in France were not of particular interest to those publishing books in Spain. While the statistical analysis is somewhat useful in advancing the author’s argument, the bibliography of published texts is especially noteworthy for any scholar whose work may intersect with this topic.

Finally, Part III concludes with an inventory of official decrees, orders, and proclamations related to the Revolution that were issued in Spain between 1789 and 1799.  Fuentes argues that these texts especially shed light on Spain’s reasons for declaring war on France, signing the Peace of Basel, and then later declaring war on Great Britain. The raising of money for the war effort and the attempts to restrict the printing of texts addressing any aspect of France emerge as primary concerns in these documents. This section of the book ends with a brief statistical analysis of how the papers are divided among three topics: prohibition of books, war, and economy. As in previous sections of the book, Fuentes proposes that the Enlightenment in Spain was robust and that Spain participated in larger European political and literary discourse during this era, despite the revisionist conservative rhetoric of Spain as anti-Enlightenment.

Mártires y anticristos is an excellent resource for scholars interested in further exploring how the French Revolution functioned as a cipher for Spanish intellectuals who were attempting to map out the political, economic, and cultural future of that nation. The book’s inventory of texts written by exiled Jesuits, Spanish courtiers, anonymous writers, preachers, and the like is a bibliographic trove with much scholarly potential. While the author does critically consider several texts in some depth, the overall focus of her book is more bibliographic in nature, as noted by the title. The dependence on Aguilar Piñal’s bibliography, although certainly an authoritative source, perhaps limits the breadth and innovation of Fuentes’s study, and many of the author’s key arguments are highly dependent on secondary sources.  However, her footnotes are extensive and offer a sound scaffolding both for her argument and for further reading. Fuentes’s project certainly presents a valuable contribution to eighteenth-century Spanish studies and will be of interest to scholars across disciplines in eighteenth-century research that is increasingly interdisciplinary and intercultural.