In the small Provençal town of Aups, where the local Catholic church declares République française: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, above its main entrance, there is a plain and nondescript monument put up in 1881. Its plaque announces that it is there: A la memoire des citoyens morts en 1851 pour la défense des loi et de la République –
In memory of those citizens who died in the 1851 defence of law and the Republic.
Why think of that when watching Emmanuel Macron nail his colours to the mast of Islamophobia and announce that, if he gets his way, Muslim pupils in French schools will have days when they will eat the pork served up on their lunch plates or go hungry?
Aups was the scene of the final battle between a ragged force of locals who had taken up arms to oppose the coup d’état of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the troops of the local Prefect. The latter were party to Napoleon’s plot to remove the democracy installed after the 1848 Revolution toppled the monarchy established on the back of his uncle’s final defeat at Waterloo.
