To arms, citizens! These famous and chilling words from La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, call for armed insurrection amidst the tumult of revolution.
But they could also be a preview of the immediate future of France, a country on the brink of collapse.
There are five days left to save not only Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, but also the nation’s political stability.
The President himself has admitted that France could be heading for disorder, unrest and even civil war if, as seems overwhelmingly likely, Marine Le Pen and her right-wing nationalists win a large majority in the National Assembly this weekend.
Shops and government offices in Paris are barricaded in their premises. Police permits have been cancelled.
It seems overwhelmingly likely that Marine Le Pen and her right-wing nationalists will secure a large majority in the National Assembly this weekend.
On Sunday evening, thousands of left-wing demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and other French cities to protest Le Pen’s victory.
Macron has already squandered his majority in the National Assembly thanks to last Sunday’s hastily called general election, in which his Renaissance party (formerly En Marche) and its coalition supporters were humiliated by Le Pen’s National Rally (RN).
Now the French sans-culottes are preparing to vote again in a decisive second round that will determine the final allocation of parliamentary seats.
Polls show Macron heading for another crushing defeat, with the likelihood of bloodshed or worse, as far-left agitators revolt against rising support for the right.
This is no exaggeration. France remains proud of its revolutionary past, when the Ancien Régime of Louis XVI was overthrown by the people, with the terrible help of the guillotine.
The country has seen rising violence and social unrest in recent years, including riots in the Paris suburbs in 2005 and the long-running “yellow vest” movement.
On Sunday evening, thousands of left-wing demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and other French cities to protest Le Pen’s victory.
The millions of visitors arriving for the Olympics starting in just over three weeks could be greeted by the sight of street battles and the stench of tear gas rather than carefree waiters and expensive pastry shops.
But if Macron – often described as the reincarnation of Napoleon – has finally met his Waterloo, the blame lies solely with him.
It was his own petulant decision to dissolve the National Assembly after his party performed poorly in last month’s elections for the European Parliament.
Barricade set on fire as protesters demonstrate against National Rally party
The president bet that French voters would decisively turn their backs on Le Pen when the general election (rather than the European ones) came around, but he lost decisively.
There are four possible scenarios for when the votes are counted this weekend, and all of them are worrying.
The first – and most likely – is that Le Pen’s RN will win again, but will narrowly miss out on an absolute majority.
This is a recipe for political disaster: the French parliament will descend into chaos and the country will become ungovernable.
Why? Because if no government is formed, the unelected “Council of State” made up of retired politicians – many of them Macronists – would oversee the day-to-day running of the government, but would lack the authority to implement new measures. This would mean political paralysis, financial turmoil, voter frustration – and, quite possibly, given the huge democratic deficit – street battles.
The second scenario is that the RN wins an absolute majority and forms a government, but that this triggers a general uprising by the so-called “black bloc” of the far left. Once again, widespread violence, looting and attacks on the police can be expected.
Left-wing unions have already threatened to strike in the event of a RN victory, shutting down public transport and government services.
Hundreds of civil servants have pledged to disobey such a government, which they hysterically call “fascist.” The third scenario is even worse: the left, which is infested with extremists, manages to secure a majority through shady deals behind closed doors with the remnants of Macron’s battered party.
This also guarantees political instability because it would be another blatant rejection of the democratic choice made by the voters.
However it is achieved, a victory for the left would likely push the country into a financial crisis as nervous bond markets withdraw support for the country’s nearly 3 trillion euro national debt.
Inevitably, this will only increase the potential for social unrest.
Finally, there is the ominous possibility that a desperate and cornered Macron might declare a “state of emergency” and seize absolute power for himself under Article 16 of the Constitution, amid warnings of armed conflict.
I am not exaggerating: Macron himself admits that France is a powder keg.
In a rare podcast interview last week, the president claimed his political opponents had stoked tensions between communities and “pushed people towards civil war.”
But if anyone is pushing the country into conflict, it is Macron himself.
The one-time wunderkind of the globalist consensus, memorably photographed walking on water on the cover of The Economist magazine, is now watching his legacy drown in the polluted waters of the Seine.
The results of last Sunday’s elections speak for themselves: his centrist political philosophy, based on his own personality, has come to an end.
How bitterly Macron must now regret his vainglorious decision to call elections! Was it simply a serious political miscalculation, a gamble that went terribly wrong?
Or, I wonder, has a deep-rooted narcissistic personality defect caused Macron to lose touch with reality?
The President certainly believes himself to be intellectually superior to others, warning early in his presidency that his thoughts were “too subtle” to be understood by ordinary mortals.
Macron, who compares himself to Jupiter, the king of the gods, considers himself special and unique, a man who can only be understood by other special or high-status people. This attitude has done him much good.
France, where I have lived for over 20 years, is a charming nation that has given the world much in culture, science and the arts.
But time and again, it has been driven into the abyss by the vanity, incompetence and indifference of its leaders, including Louis XVI (who had a fateful tryst with Madame Guillotine), Napoleon and the Nazi collaborator Marshal Pétain, to name but a few.
Macron’s career, which ended in personal failure and national catastrophe, is now following the same sordid path.