Title The Astonishing Life of Léo Taxil - Part 1.pdf ✅

THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF LÉ O TAXIL ix At fifteen, Léo leaves home for good. He remains in Marseille, making ends meet writing for any radical newspaper that will take his work. He is still five years too young to vote but spends his time volunteering for the city’s revolutionary committees—working shoulder to shoulder with some of his heroes to make the dream of a democratic French Republic come true.5 In their midst, he finds community and belonging. The pre- cocious Léo becomes a frequent fixture on the stage of the city’s radical clubs—the Alhambra and Eldorado—where he hones his skills as an or- ator. In a symbolic act of rupture with his conservative family, he aban- dons his father’s name and claims for himself the name Léo Taxil.6 Few anecdotes capture Léo’s youthful idealism and earnestness as charmingly as his first encounter with nineteen-year-old revolutionary poet Clovis Hughes. Having just heard Clovis speak at one of the city’s clubs, Léo, struck by his passion and eloquence, walks up to shake his hand and asks, “Do you want to be friends, always?” Clovis pulls him into a hug, replying expansively, “In life and in death!” When Napoleon III declares war on Prussia in 1870, Taxil and his fel- low radicals organise marches for peace. But Léo feels called by patri- otism to act when the tide of war turns and Prussia invades France. At sixteen, he is two years too young to enlist but, undeterred, he falsifies his papers and volunteers.7 This is evocative of the man he is becoming, one who cares little for rules when they get in the way of doing what he believes is right. 5 France had been under the autocratic rule of Emperor Napoléon III for the past 18 years. 6 After Léonidas, his favourite grandfather, and Taxiles, the Indian King who forged an alli- ance with Alexander the Great. 7 Here, a note of caution: the historian Robert Rossi discovered that army registers have no record of Gabriel Jogand-Pagès (Taxil’s real name) but do show a Maurice Jogand-Pagès (his older brother) enlisting in August 1870. Either Taxil later appropriated his brother’s story, or young Léo did not only falsify his papers but actually passed himself off as his broth- er—admitting only to lying about his age in order not to get Maurice in trouble. As other details of Taxil’s time in the army stood up to fact-checking, Rossi concluded himself “firmly convinced” that the second hypothesis is most likely the correct one. (Rossi, Robert, Léo Tax- il (1854-1907): Du Journalisme Anticlérical à la Mystification Transcendante, 2015.)
x THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF LÉ O TAXIL Back in France after a month of intense training in Algeria, the new recruits are declared ready for war. But young Léo will not face the Prus- sians. His mother, having discovered her son’s ruse and determined to save him from himself, descends on the barracks. Armed with his real birth certificate, Joséphine demands to speak to his commanding officer. Léo has no choice but to sheepishly admit falsifying his papers. One tongue-lashing later, the sixteen-year-old’s days in the army are over. The Prussians win the war, the French Empire falls, and on the 23rd of March 1871—two days after Léo’s seventeenth birthday—the people of Marseille rise up and declare their city a republican Commune.8 The ad- olescent who dreamt of revolution now finds himself at the vanguard of one. When General Espivent arrives with 7,000 troops to crush the upris- ing, seventeen-year-old Léo grabs a gun and, with two friends at his side, runs for the Court of Justice. The teens do their best to hold a barricade against Espivent’s forces. But when their gunshots are met with canon fire, they decide retreat is the better part of valour. Once in control of the city, Espivent declares martial law and sets to tearing out the roots of revolution: all clubs are closed, all public assem- blies forbidden, and any newspaper promoting radical ideas or speaking against the new government will be immediately shut down. True to form, it takes Léo less than ten days to start publishing his own satirical journal mocking the new regime, aptly named La Marotte. 9 Humorous and irreverent, it showcases Taxil’s razor-sharp wit and weaponization of ridicule. “Enough with old men! Make way for the 8 The war over, the transitional Government of National Defence immediately held national elections. But rural France remained staunchly Catholic and 60% of the newly elected depu- ties favoured the restoration of the monarchy. (In comparison 10 of the 11 deputies elected in Marseille called for a democratic republic.) Betrayed at what they saw as an attempt to drag France back under the yoke of Church and Crown, the citizens of Paris and Marseille rose up in revolution—which were quickly crushed by the new conservative government. 9 A marotte is the French name for a court jester’s sceptre, hence why Taxil also gave his publication the subtitle Journal des Fous (Newspaper of Jesters).