French Revolution 1789

Quatre-vingt-neuf
French Revolution
session iii
‘Eighty-nine

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Quatre-vingt-neuf Prise de la
Basti"e by
Jean Pierre
French Revolution Houël, 1790

session iii
‘Eighty-nine


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, …

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, (1859), p. 1


Edmund Burke in his Reﬂections written in 1790 was right enough in perceiving
the radicalism of the Revolution at its outset. By “radicalism” I mean a deep
estrangement from the existing order, an insistence upon values incompatible
with those embodied in actual institutions, a refusal to entertain projects of
compromise, a mood of impatience, suspicion, and exasperation, an
embittered class consciousness reaching the point of hatred, a determination
to destroy and to create, and a belief that both destruction and creation would
be relatively easy. In such a mood the men of 1789 took steps which never
could be retracted.

R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution, vol. i, pp. 447


Major topics for this session

• Causes

• Summoning of the Estates General

• 14 Jui"et

• Jacquerie & la Grande Peur

• National Constituent Assembly

• Les Poissardes


Causes


Causes

“The court created an irresponsible and frothy environment…-R.R. Palmer
“...everything the revolutionaries had in mind when they characterized the
court as a playpen of spoiled and greedy children.” -S. Schama

• political--a broken system
• economic--agricultural and ﬁscal crisis
• social--archaic class structure
• intellectual--revolutionary ferment


a broken political system


a broken political system After me, the Deluge

Louis xv-1710-1715-1774

Louis
a broken political system the
last

Louis xvi-1754-1774-1791

The fatal ﬂaw of le despotisme éclairé
(enlightened despotism)?

Everything depends on the despot


At a time [summer of 1787] when the King himself might have been
expected to oﬀer some leadership, he had collapsed into a world of hunting
and eating, killing and gorging.

Schama, Citizens. p. 260


a foreign queen


“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the
Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed
to touch, a more delightful vision.” --Edmund Burke, Reﬂections on the French Revolution, 1790


“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the
Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed
to touch, a more delightful vision.” --Edmund Burke, Reﬂections on the French Revolution, 1790

Élisabeth-Louise
Vigée-Le Brun
1755-1842


the aﬀair of the diamond necklace; 1785


With your
kisses, excite
my desires, I
am, my
darling, at the
height of
pleasure.”
18th-century
pornographic
portrayal of
Marie
Antoinette and
the duchess of
Pequigny.
Louis Binet.
From Marie-Jo
Bonnet, Les
Deux Amies
(Paris: Éditions
Blanche, 2000).


All these sexual demonologies--of the spy-whore, the King’s dominatrix,
the infector of the constitution--were stirred up into a richly poisonous
polemic and undoubtedly contributed to the rapid erosion of royal
authority in the late 1780s….
The deconstruction of her image was a pathetic thing. She had stripped
herself of the mask of royalty in the interests of Nature and Humanity (as
well as her own predilections) only to end up represented as, of all women,
unnatural and inhuman.



All these sexual demonologies--of the spy-whore, the King’s dominatrix,
the infector of the constitution--were stirred up into a richly poisonous
polemic and undoubtedly contributed to the rapid erosion of royal
authority in the late 1780s….
The deconstruction of her image was a pathetic thing. She had stripped
herself of the mask of royalty in the interests of Nature and Humanity (as
well as her own predilections) only to end up represented as, of all women,
unnatural and inhuman.


1773 1793

To say that Louis the Last’s weaknesses or the popular dislike of la putain
Autrichienne are the causes of the French Revolution is as inadequate an
explanation in the negative; as it is to say “the Reformation, Martin Luther, he
did it!” is inadequate as a positive cause. Each of these “Great Men” certainly
had their impact on events; the ﬁrst two negatively; the last, positively. But to
focus on them while ignoring the “Blind Forces” is simply bad history.


The eighteenth century was a period of declining absolutism in France. The
centralized administrative machine created by Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis
XIV still governed the country from Versailles and the royal will was still the
most important factor in determining almost every aspect of foreign,
economic and religious policy. But the palace of Versailles was a complex
institution that housed Court and Government under one roof. Louis XIV
had tried to keep the two apart...he kept the nobility from political power….
Louis XV and Louis XVI had neither the ability nor the authority of their
illustrious predecessor, with the result that the Court was able to inﬁltrate
into the Government and eventually to monopolize ministerial posts. By 1789
all the ministers were noble, with the single exception of Necker, the Swiss
banker whose professional skill and contacts alone kept the monarchy from
bankruptcy.

Norman Hampson, A Social History of the French Revolution, p. 2


The word “democracy,” like “aristocracy” and “monarchy,” was of course as old
as the Greeks or their translators, and the three terms had been in the
common vocabulary of political thinkers continuously since the Middle Ages.
There is some evidence that the most rural and innermost of the Swiss
cantons, and some of the German free cities, thought of themselves as
democratic in the eighteenth century. Except for “monarchy,” however, none
of the three terms seems yet to have entered the common speech. They were
the political scientists’ words, tools of analysis, closely defined, dry in
connotation, and without emotional impact. It was generally agreed that
“pure democracy’ could not exist, except possibly in very small states with
simple habits. This was Rousseau’s view as expressed in the Social Contract. At
the most, democracy was a principle, or element, which might profitably enter
into a “mixed constitution,” balanced by principles of monarchy and
aristocracy, as was believed to be the case in England or the Venetian
Republic. It was rare, even among the philosophes of France before the
Revolution, to find anyone using the word “democracy” in a favorable sense in
any practical connection.

Palmer, Democratic Revolution, vol. i, p. 14


Aristotle’s taxonomy in the Politics, c. 325 BC

ideal real

one monarchy tyranny

few aristocracy oligarchy

many polity democracy


Aristocracy meant the rule of certain constituted bodies, which claimed
sovereignty for themselves, were self-perpetuating in a limited number of
families, and denied the rights of outside persons, or excluded classes, to
have any inﬂuence on their policies or their personnel.

The democratic movement, in one way or another, ...sought to broaden the
basis of participation in political life, and to make the government
accountable to some kind of a public.

Palmer, Democratic Revolution. vol. 1, p. 365


economic and ﬁscal crisis


the Laki eruption; 1783
The two years previous to the revolution (1788–89) saw meager harvests
and harsh winters, possibly because of a strong El Niño cycle caused by
the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland


Laki
1783

Eyjafjallajökull
2010


the “Little Ice Age”?

The impact of this phenomenon on the French crop failures of the late 1780s is not
doubted. Only the current polemics about global warming make experts diverge about
when and how much the cold spell from the late Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth
century aﬀected European living conditions.

Much of the movement from wheat to potatoes as the staple crop of the poor outside of
France was attributable to the colder growing conditions of the Little Ice Age. Cultural
prejudice in France against potatoes, a “dirty food,” alternately, “the Devil’s food,”
prevented adoption of this root crop which better resisted cold climate, hailstorms, and
even the scorched-earth of warfare or civil disturbances.

In a country where 80% of the domestic product was agricultural, crop failures meant
economic catastrophe. And the rural and urban poor were the most directly aﬀected.


pain (bread)
• In 1789, a normal worker, a farmer or a laborer, earned
anywhere from fifteen to thirty sous per day; skilled
workers received thirty to forty.

• A family of four needed about two loaves of bread a day
to survive.

• The price of a loaf of bread rose by 67 percent in 1789
alone, from nine sous to fifteen

• Many peasants were relying on charity to survive, and
they became increasingly motivated by their hunger.
The 'bread riots' were the first manifestations of a
roots-based revolutionary sentiment

• Mass urbanization coincided with the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, and more and more people
moved into French cities seeking employment

• The cities became overcrowded with the hungry, destitute, the boule (ball)
and disaffected, an ideal environment for revolution baguettes are a 19th century style


“Let them eat cake!”
• the most famous example of la
Autrichienne’s (that Austrian woman’s)
incredible callousness

• not really! the anecdote appears in
Rousseau’s Confessions in 1769


“Let them eat cake!”
• the most famous example of la
Autrichienne’s (that Austrian woman’s)
incredible callousness

• not really! the anecdote appears in
Rousseau’s Confessions in 1769

• Qu'ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat brioche.)

• there a “grand princess” thought her
lady-in-waiting was informing her that
the peasants had run out of a type of
bread, the country loaf of the poor, and
merely needed to choose another style

• this unidentiﬁed naive princess was later
brioche conﬂated with the hated “Austrian
woman.” Brioche, though not a cake, was
way beyond a peasant budget

• the Farmers-General was the IRS of the Ancien Regime. They ran the excise tax collection
system on salt (gabe"e), tobacco (tabac) leather, ironware & soap. Also significant were the
customs as grain & wine moved from zone to zone
• they were brutally efficient and the gap between what the people paid and what the royal
Treasury received was most glaring
• 1789-as the famine effects were felt in Paris, rumors accused the Farmers of deliberately
holding grain off the market to raise prices. Mobs attacked and destroyed the customs gates
and walls (10 ft high, 18 mi in circumference, 54 barrières)


If there was one symbol of the callous
unaccountability of the old regime to the
basic wants of the people, the Farmers-
General embodied it….

Not surprisingly they would be singled out
for attention by the revolution….One of
the earliest and most spectacular acts of
the great uprising in Paris in July 1789
would be to tear down the Farmer ’s
customs wall erected to thwart smugglers….

In May 1794, amidst one of the more
spectacular mass executions, a group of
[farmers] including the great chemist
Lavoisier was guillotined.
Schama, Citizens, pp. 72-73


the Financial Crisis


If the causes of the French Revolution are complex, the causes of the downfall
of the monarchy are not. The two phenomena are not identical, since the end
of absolutism in France did not of itself entail a revolution of such
transformative power as actually came to pass in France. But the end of the
old regime was the necessary condition of the beginning of a new, and that
was brought about, in the ﬁrst instance, by a cash-ﬂow crisis. It was the
politicization of the money crisis that dictated the calling of the Estates-
General.

Simon Schama, Citizens; A Chronicle of the French Revolution, p. 62


The end of the [American Revolutionary] war...left the monarchy with a
burden of debt in the region of 3,400 million livres and an annual deﬁcit of
about 80 million. As the debt increased so did the proportion of the public
revenue devoted to servicing it, on which no economy was possible without a
breech of faith with the state’s creditors. The scope for retrenchment in the
remaining sectors of the economy was inadequate to balance the budget. The
level of taxation could not be materially increased in a period of declining real
wages. Louis XVI, unlike some of his royal predecessors, regarded a partial
repudiation of the Debt as dishonorable. In these circumstances the only
course left open to him was to increase the taxation of the privileged orders.
This provided the latter with an excellent opportunity to win a ﬁnal victory
over what was left of royal absolutism by using the power of the purse to force
the king to accept some form of aristocratic constitution.

Hampson, Social History, pp. 34-35


an archaic social system


A growing demand for equality went along with a more troubled class
consciousness...a vague and widespread desire, among people hitherto
outside the political scene, to take part in aﬀairs, to do good for society, to
play the patriot, to act the citizen.

Palmer, Democratic Revolution. vol. 1, pp.253-254


intellectual ferment


They were steeped in the philosophy of the eighteenth century...acutely aware
of change. Business had been expanding for a century; new inventions were
appearing on every side. Thinkers set forth elaborate theories of progress.
Change seemed to be easy; the most ingrained customs were to be refashioned
by the enlightened reason. Society was artiﬁcial; it needed only to be made
more natural. It was confused; a mere hand-me-down from the past. It should
be given a new and purposeful “constitution.” Never had there been an age
with such faith in social planning.

R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled; The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution, p. 18


the Summoning of the Estates General
“Messieurs, this is not a game for children; the ﬁrst time France sees the Estates
General she will also see a terrible revolution.”


the Summoning of the Estates General
“Messieurs, this is not a game for children; the ﬁrst time France sees the Estates
General she will also see a terrible revolution.”

Sa"e des Menus Plaisirs (hall of the lesser pleasures)
Palais de Versai"es
5 May 1789

Palmer’s “Constituted Bodies”

In France there were two kinds of bodies of a public character that played an
active role in political life, as distinct from the bureaucrats and functionaries
of the king. They were the [1]Provincial [emphasis added] Estates and the
[2]Parlements. The former resembled the assemblies of estates, diets, or
parliaments found in other parts of Europe….

The French parlements were more important than the provincial estates. A
parlement...was at work in every part of France, each a supreme court of law for
the area under its jurisdiction. All the parlements, in addition to judicial
functions, exercised an executive role...and also enjoyed what was in eﬀect a
share in legislation, claiming that they must register or “verify” every royal
ordinance before it could take eﬀect….

Palmer, Democratic Revolution, vol. i, pp. 41-43


the Assembly of Notables--”...a group hand-
picked for compliance discovering instead the excitement of opposition.”-Schama

• a group of 144 “notables” invited by the king to consult on matters of
state

• composed of royal princes, peers, archbishops, important judges and,
occasionally, major town officials

• previous assemblies had met in 1583, 1596-97, 1617, & 1626
• 1787-88--the final such appointed body was summoned to advise on
meeting the financial crisis


the Assembly of Notables--”...a group hand-
picked for compliance discovering instead the excitement of opposition.”-Schama

• a group of 144 “notables” invited by the king to consult on matters of
state

• composed of royal princes, peers, archbishops, important judges and,
occasionally, major town officials

• previous assemblies had met in 1583, 1596-97, 1617, & 1626
• 1787-88--the final such appointed body was summoned to advise on
meeting the financial crisis

• Charles Alexander de Calonne, the Controller-General of Finances,
hoped that this aristocratic body would support a reform of the tax
structure

• the aristocratic push-back led to Calonne’s dismissal and another
rejection of his reforms by the Parlement of Paris


royal indecision

• May 1788-then Louis in eﬀect abrogated the parlements countrywide by
reducing them to mere judicial bodies. The edict also conﬁned their
jurisdiction to cases involving more than 20,000 francs

• the parlements thus lost out in income, in volume of business and general
importance in the world of lawyers. There was a universal outcry against
the “royal despotism”

• June 1788-the church also joined in criticizing the May Edicts and granted
their smallest “free gift” (in lieu of taxes) ever, 10% of the last amount

• it must be noted that the prelates were also facing “revolutionary” stirrings
from the priests and lesser clergy

• September 1788-as so often in the past, the benign Louis XVI yielded and
revoked the edicts. He also promised that the Estates General would meet
the following May


The Estates General

• 1789-in contrast to the two types of existing “constituted bodies,”
Provincial Estates and Parlements, the national Estates General had not
met for 175 years! Not since Henri IV had convened them in 1614

• during the growth of royal absolutism the monarchs wanted no part of a
parliament, which, like the English one, might be the focus of classes
determined to share in the sovereignty

• 1640-1660-as Louis XIV was growing up, England had fought a civil war
and executed their king over just this issue

• so, after this long hiatus, the exact form of the French Estates General was
open to debate

• how many delegates and how chosen for each of the three estates?

• voting by “head” or by estate?


Cahiers des Doléances; March & April, 1789
• January 1789-along with the instructions that each province should elect delegates by estate,
in stages for the Third, to convene at Versailles; came the royal instruction to prepare, by
estate, lists of “observations and grievances” to provide the basis for the Estates’ debates

• the First Estate’s cahiers reﬂected the discontent of the lower clergy. They objected to
pluralism (bishops and others holding more than one appointment) and the requirement of
nobility for becoming a bishop

• the Second Estate’s showed a surprising (89%) willingness to make some concessions on tax
privileges. They criticized the “despotic” monarchy

• the Third Estate’s were consistently critical of the privileges of the ﬁrst two and often had
local objections to modern economic innovations and the “corruption” of city life--”the scum
of the gilded world--bankrupts, usurers, grain speculators,” -Schama, p. 322

• each meeting was a little school of political education and there were forty thousand such
meetings (speeches, debates, voting, airing of grievances)

• the act of debating and drafting these lists, many of which survive, served to increase the
expectations and dissatisfactions of the entire country


With considerable rhetorical skill, these grievances were fed into a great
furnace of anger by the radical politicians of 1789. And from the other end
issued a language of accusation, which was also a means of classifying
enemies and friends, traitors and Patriots, aristocrats and the Nation.



Twenty-ﬁve thousand cahiers were drawn up in a simultaneous act of consultation and
representation that was unprecedented in its completeness.--Schama, Citizens. p. 308


This was, of course, to
ask for the impossible.
But asking for the
impossible is one good
deﬁnition of a
revolution.
Schama, p. 322

Twenty-ﬁve thousand cahiers were drawn up in a simultaneous act of consultation and
representation that was unprecedented in its completeness.--Schama, Citizens. p. 308


the Abbé Sieyès
• son of a provincial commoner, a tax collector

• wanted to be a soldier, but his frail health and his
parents’ piety led to the seminary of St Sulpice

• 1772-after courses at the Sorbonne, where he preferred
the Philosophes to theology, still, he was ordained

• 1775-as secretary to a bishop in Brittany, he sat in the
provincial estates and became disgusted by the
behavior of the privileged classes

• 1780-he followed his bishop to Chartres where he
became vicar general, later chancellor of the diocese

• his vocation was more one of convenience as he wrote,
by ordination, he had "freed himself from all
superstitious sentiments and ideas."
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
( 1748 – 1836) • 1789-he was elected to the Third Estate for the
painting in 1817 district of Paris

Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état? (January, 1789)
“What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been in the political
order until now? Nothing. What does it wish to be? Something.

...who would dare to deny that the Third Estate has within itself all that is
necessary to constitute a nation? … Take away the privileged orders, and
the nation is not smaller, but greater…. What would the Third Estate be
without the privileged orders? A whole by itself, and a prosperous whole.
Nothing can go on without it, and everything would go on far better
without the others…. This privileged class is assuredly foreign to the
nation by its do nothing uselessness.”

a famous pamphlet by Sieyès


Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau; 1749-1791

• fifth son of a minor noble (d’épée) he was
destined for the army

• surrounded by sexual and financial scandal, he
was thrice imprisoned by lettre de cachet (lastly
at Vincennes with the Marquis de Sade)

• his risky publications, denouncing political
and financial practices, led both to exiles and
public popularity as a reformer

• 1789-denied a place in the First Estate, he
stood for and won a seat in the Third as a
delegate from Aix

• his hard work, vigorous oratory and previous
notoriety as a critic of the regime made him
an early leader in the National Assembly


By his own account Mirabeau was not just esteemed. He was loved. The
black sheep of his family had become the white knight of the People. The
man whose own reactionary brother hated and despised him had a whole
province of brothers. The son who could never please his implacable father
had become father to a country of adopted children. “I was obeyed like an
adored father,” he wrote of this time, “women and children bathed my
hands, clothes, steps, with their tears.”



Pleurons la perte de Mirabeau,
plat commémoratif de la
mort d'Honoré Mirabeau. c.
1791. Musée Carnavalet, Paris.
■ Photography : Luis
Fernández García (L.
Fdez.). 2005-07-24.
■ License : Creative
Commons
■ “Let’s weep for the
death of Mirabeau”


a disappointing beginning

• 5 May 1789-the opening ceremony set somber mood after so much
anticipation

• Louis’ address seemed of “two voices,” hopeful and fearful
• Necker’s was too long, three hours of ﬁgures, with no plan for recovery,
just bad ﬁnancial news

• the next six weeks were spent in a parliamentary deadlock:
• the Third Estate would not proceed as a separate body. They insisted on combining
with the other two orders for debate and voting

• the Second Estate was becoming even more uncompromising. The rural disorders were
beginning, and although the nobles were willing to give ground on taxes, they were
digging in on seigneurial dues. They adamantly refused to sit with the Third.


Things stood quite otherwise, however with the clergy. And that, in the
end, was what broke the deadlock. Where small electorates often produced
disproportionately archaic results in the second order, the opposite was
true for the ﬁrst. For it was in the Church, more than any other group in
France, that the separation between rich and poor was most bitterly
articulated. At stake was not some abstractly deﬁned principle of social
justice or natural rights--but the fate of the Christian mission itself. The
Enlightenment cliché of a steadily secularizing France completely fails to
take into account of just how deeply rooted the hold of Christian belief was
in a very large areas of the country. (Of all the failures of the French
Revolution, none would be so inevitable and so dismal as the campaign of
“dechristianization”) … [The Church] “was going through one of its
periodic upheavals in which the claims of the pastoral clergy to embody the
true spirit of the primitive evangel--humble, propertyless and teaching the
Gospel through works of charity and education--were argued against the
worldly reality of episcopal big business.

Schama, Citizens. pp. 349-350


the impasse is broken

• 13 June-three curés join the Third Estate as Sieyès calls the roll. Their
leader, Jallet, the curé of Cherigny, well known for his piety and patriotism

• they are greeted with a roar of acclaim, embraced, carried shoulder-high to
their seats

• 14 June-more priests from Brittany and Lorraine
• 19 June-more than a hundred join the assembly which had debated its new
name:

• “The Known and Verifiable Representatives” --Sieyès

• “Representatives of the People”--Mirabeau

• “National Assembly,”the final choice, at 10 p.m.

• Mirabeau proposed the final act of defiance, all present taxes were repealed

the royal response
• as the Third Estate became more and more militant Necker urged the
King to preempt them by making a royal counterproposal

• this was to be done in a séance royal in the Sa"e des Menus Plaisirs the
original site of the opening meeting and where the Third Estate was
accustomed to meeting

• 20 June-when the National Assembly arrived at their meeting place they
found it locked, armed guards barring the way, carpenters were inside
installing a dais and preparing for the séance

• chagrin turned to fury as the deputies stood about in heavy rain
• Dr. Guillotin remembered a tennis court owned by a friend of his in the
rue du Vieux Versailles

• the six hundred wet delegates trooped there followed by a gathering
crowd


Serment du jeu de paume(tennis court oath); 20 June 1789


Serment du jeu de paume(tennis court oath); 20 June 1789

Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath. David later became a deputy in the National Convention in 1792

the Tennis Court Oath
that wherever they might meet the National Assembly would be in being, and that
they would not dissolve without writing a constitution

“...Mounier’s motion set the vessel of state oﬀ on a sea of abstraction. Wherever
they were gathered was to be the National Assembly.”


the Tennis Court Oath
that wherever they might meet the National Assembly would be in being, and that
they would not dissolve without writing a constitution

Le Serment du Jeu de paume, Jacques-Louis David, 1791


Jacques-Louis David, Le serement des Horaces (The Oath of the Horatii), 1784

aftermath

• 23 June-the séance royale with the three orders forcibly seated separately,
was delivered by a nervous king

• Necker’s policy of reconciliation and compromise had been overruled by
the king’s brothers Artois and Provence and his conservative ministers

• after the royal party left the Sa"e des Menus Plaisirs and the carpenters came
in to noisily dismantle the royal dais, the Third, joined by over 150 clergy
and several nobles remained and began to debate their next step

• a nervous young master of ceremonies returned with the command that
they leave the hall immediately

• Mirabeau later insisted that he had replied, “Go tell those who have sent
you that we are here by the will of the people and that we will not be
dispersed except at the point of bayonets.”


Philippe Citoyen Egalité

• born eldest son of Louis Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of
Chartres and Louise Henriette de Bourbon he was cousin
to King Louis XVI

• 1771-his mother became the richest woman in France by
inheritance and his family was identiﬁed with opposition
to the eﬀorts of Louis XV to increase monarchial power

• 1785-at his father’s death, Philippe, the new duke, became
head of the House of Orléans, one of the wealthiest
families of France, and Premier Prince du Sang, next in line
to the throne should the main Bourbon line die out

Louis Philippe d'Orléans
(Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans, duc d'Orléans)
1747, – 6 November 1793


Philippe Citoyen Egalité

• born eldest son of Louis Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of
Chartres and Louise Henriette de Bourbon he was cousin
to King Louis XVI

• 1771-his mother became the richest woman in France by
inheritance and his family was identiﬁed with opposition
to the eﬀorts of Louis XV to increase monarchial power

• 1785-at his father’s death, Philippe, the new duke, became
head of the House of Orléans, one of the wealthiest
families of France, and Premier Prince du Sang, next in line
to the throne should the main Bourbon line die out

• he was the most prominent liberal noble, a freemason, an
open advocate of the ideas of Rousseau, despised for this
by the queen and the conservatives at court

Insignia of the grand master of the
• 25 June-he brought over 47 nobles to sit with the National Grand Orient de France, the governing
Assembly body of French freemasonry.


Palais Royale becomes Palais de l’Égalité


Palais Royale becomes Palais de l’Égalité

• 1629-originally the residence of Cardinal Richelieu, it was called the Palais
Cardinal
• 1661- it passed to Louis XIV’s younger brother, Philippe de France, duc
d’Orleans
• 1769-Louis Philippe II expanded the gardens and theaters
• 1784-he opened the gardens to the public, he later added a shopping and
entertainment complex, 145 boutiques, cafés, salons, bookshops, museums
and countless refreshment kiosks
• it became a place where the classes mixed, it was frequented by both
freemasons and prostitutes--”a quotidian carnival of the appetites”--Schama

14 Jui"iet


14 Jui"iet

L’arrestation du gouverneur de la Bastille, le 14
juillet 1789. Jean-Baptiste Lallement, 1790

detail of the arrest of de Launay


the spark that lit the fuse (part i)
• 1762-sent from Geneva to Paris to work
in a family bank. Founded his own bank!

• becomes independently wealthy through
speculations (risky investments)

• further enriched by loans to the French
government

• 1776-1781--is made director-general of
ﬁnances, funded the American
Revolution expenses through loans

• advocates tax reforms and laissez-faire
■
■
Sujet : Jacques Necker (1732-1804)
Auteur : Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725-1802)
• 1784--is banished from Paris by lettre de
■ Date : 4e quart du XVIIIe siècle
cachet for publishing pamphlets attacking
■ Lieu : Château de Versailles his successor Calonne


the spark that lit the fuse (part ii)

• 1788-as France reeled from economic and
ﬁnancial crises, he is recalled and again
made Director-General

• 1789-widely regarded as the savior of
France, he convinces Louis to call the
Estates General

• 4 May-his speech at the opening session is a
great disappointment, dry statistics rather
than reforms. Still, the people see him as
their advocate
■ Sujet : Portrait allégorique de
Jacques Necker (1732-1804)
■ Date : v. 1788-1789

ﬂanked by Commerce and Prosperity


A James Gillray (1757-1815) caricature contrasting France under Necker after his recall in the
summer of 1789 with Britain under Pitt the Younger. A wildly optimistic view of the revolution!


the spark that lit the fuse (part ii)

• 1788-as France reeled from economic and
ﬁnancial crises, he is recalled and again
made Director-General

• 1789-widely regarded as the savior of
France, he convinces Louis to call the
Estates General

• 4 May-his speech at the opening session is a
great disappointment, dry statistics rather
than reforms. Still, the people see him as
their advocate

• 11 July-when word of his dismissal reaches
Paris, this is taken as proof that the king ■ Sujet : Portrait allégorique de
plans to dismiss the National Assembly by Jacques Necker (1732-1804)
force ■ Date : v. 1788-1789

ﬂanked by Commerce and Prosperity


café orator, publicist, later Jacobin
• raised in Picardy, father a government oﬃcial

• scholarship classmate of Robespierre and Fréron at the
Co"ège Louis-le-Grand in Paris

• 1785-destined for the law, his father gained him a seat in
the Parlement of Paris. His stammer hampered his practice

• March 1789-elected at the lower levels but not as a deputy
to the Third Estate

• observer to the early meetings of the Estates General

• 12 July-leaps onto a table outside one of the cafés in the
garden of the Palais Royal and announces Necker’s
dismissal to the crowd

• losing his stammer due to excitement: “take up arms and
Lucie Simplice Camille Benoist Desmoulins
adopt cockades...this dismissal is the tocsin of the St
1760 – April 5, 1794 Bartholomew of the patriots” draws two pistols…

• 13 July-riots begin, arms are seized, militias organize

MOTION MADE AT THE PALAIS ROYAL BY CAMILLE DESMOULINS
on the 12 July 1789


PILLAGE OF THE MONASTERY OF ST LAZARE
on Monday 13 July 1789


royal forces
• June 1789-at the urging of his aristocratic privy council, Louis had concentrated 25,000
troops around Paris and Versailles

• approximately half these regiments were Swiss and German mercenaries, considered more
likely than French troops to be willing to ﬁre on the people

• the regular security in Paris was provided by the household regiment, the Gardes Françaises

• However, in addition to local ties with the Parisians, the regiment was resentful of the
harsh Prussian style discipline introduced by its colonel the Duc du Châtelet, who had
taken up his appointment the year before

• also, most of the oﬃcers had negligently left the day-to-day management of their men to
the NCOs

• 13 & 14 July-so when push came to shove, all but one of the sergeants and virtually all of
the men refused orders and went over to the side of the revolutionary mobs

• amazingly, the commanders of the other loyal regiments took no initiative to try to
suppress the attacks on private and government stores of food and weapons


the iconic event

NOTE 1. the Vauban fortiﬁcations 2. the Bastille, survival of an earlier era 3. the customs gate & fence

the iconic event


Ce sang était-il donc si pur?
(Was this blood so pure, then?)--Barnave


François-Noel Babeuf witnessed personally the murder of Foulon and Bertier. Babeuf did not try to
explain away or downplay the violence; he tried to understand it in its own contemporary context.
“Our punishments of every kind, quartering, torture, the wheel, the stake, and the gibbet, and the
multiplicity of executioners on all sides, have had such a bad eﬀect on our morals!

Our masters, instead of policing us, have made us barbarians, because they are barbarians
themselves. They are reaping and will reap what they have sown.”


aftermath

• 15 July-Jean Sylvain Bailly, President of the Third Estate/National
Assembly comes to Paris as the new mayor of a new government, le
Commune de Paris


aftermath

Commune de Paris

• the marquis de la Fayette (Lafayette) took command of the newly created
National Guard


aftermath

Commune de Paris

• the marquis de la Fayette (Lafayette) took command of the newly created
National Guard

• Louis ordered the recently concentrated regiments to return to their
frontier depots

• 27 July-in Paris, he accepted a tricolor cockade from Bailly and entered the
Hôtel de Vi"e, as cries of "Long live the King" were changed to "Long live
the Nation"

• the tricoleur combined the royal white with the colors of Paris, red and
blue


les émigrées

• despite Louis’ decision to accept the
fait accompli of 14 Juliette, many of
the royals did not

• his youngest brother, the Count of
Artois led the exodus, in his case, to
Turin

Charles Philippe de France
as comte dʼArtois
1757-1836


les émigrées

• despite Louis’ decision to accept the
fait accompli of 14 Juliette, many of
the royals did not

• his youngest brother, the Count of
Artois led the exodus, in his case, to
Turin

• he was accompanied by his sons, the
princes de Conde & Conti, and
(slightly later) Calonne, the former
ﬁnance minister

• the ultra aristocratic Polignacs Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron
Duchesse de Polignac
1749 – 9 December 1793


the Jacquerie & la Grande Peur


the Jacquerie & la Grande Peur Portrait d'un sans-culotte by
Louis-leopold Boilly (1761-1845)


origin of the term “jacquerie”

• 1358-a popular revolt in late medieval Europe by
peasants that took place in northern France

• it was violently suppressed after a few weeks of
violence, centered in the Oise valley

• the rebellion acquired the name “Jacquerie” because
the nobles derided the peasants as “Jacques” or
“Jacques Bonhomme” for their padded surplice
called “jacque”

• their leader, Guillaume Cale was referred to by the
aristocratic chronicler Froissart as Jacques illumination from a manuscript
Bonhomme (“Jim Goodfellow”) of Froissart’s history of the Hundred
Years’ War. Révolte des Jacques, 1358

• the word jacquerie has become synonymous for
peasant uprisings


The small people[sic] never resigned themselves to explaining scarcity and high
prices simply by the weather. They knew that the...manorial lords who collected
dues in kind had considerable stores of grain, which they withheld from sale
while waiting calmly for higher prices. Even more bitterly they blamed the
dealers in grain--the small merchants...the millers and bakers…. All were
suspected of withholding... to precipitate...a price increase….

It is not surprising that want and high prices were frequent causes of rioting….

The crisis shook the existing order no less violently...by uprooting part of the
population…. Beggars and unemployed left their own parishes, became
vagabonds and descended upon the towns. Their numbers grew beyond belief
in times of crisis…. In rural districts the situation was worse; homeless persons
banded together and resorted to threats and actual violence. They were
regarded as “brigands,” and their ranks did include troops of malefactors, salt
smugglers and others…. The “fear of brigands” spread from country to town.
Well before July, 1789 local panics broke out.

Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, pp. 105-108


Brigand (from Old French, Brigaunt)

A morta"y wounded brigand quenches his thirst, by Delacroix, c. 1825


Between the “fear of brigands” and the fear of the aristocracy a connection
was rapidly and generally formed. It was maintained from an early date that
the aristocracy favored the hoarding of food, that it held back its grain in
order to crush the Third Estate and that for the same reason it was not
displeased to see the harvest pillaged…. Those who feared that the aristocrats
were resorting to arms naturally expected them to recruit followers among
vagrants and vagabonds, just as the king’s recruiting oﬃcers enrolled their
men among the lowest class.

op. cit., pp. 108-109


The Great Fear; most intense, 20 July-6 August
• beginning in the Franche-Comté, it
spread south down the Rhône valley to
Provence; east towards the Alps and
west into central France

• neighboring villages mistook armed
peasant crop guards for the “brigands”

• châteaux were invaded to destroy the
charters recording feudal dues, in some
cases the houses were burned as well

• “the seigneurs hunted down like wild beasts, their wives and daughters
ravished.” Such rumors left more fortunate seigneurs little inclined to press for
the payment of the dues owing to them.

Hampson, p.79


It was a crucial moment in the collapse of royal authority. First came the
recognition that the père nourricier --the King-as-Father-Provider--could not
feed his subjects. Then followed the ample evidence that neither could he
protect them.



So fear on both sides of the class divide swelled together into la Grande Peur
(the Great Fear) of July - August, 1789. The privileged classes feared the
widespread Jacquerie and the exaggerated rumors of its atrocities. The
Third Estate, both urban and rural, feared the “aristocratic conspiracy.” It
had begun as paranoid rumor but by this time was becoming real enough.
Also in the mix in the border regions was the rumor of invasion by foreign
armies in the pay of Artois and the émigrés; in the north, Austrians, in the
south, Spaniards, in the west, British.

“It was the ﬁrst instance of the patrie en danger syndrome: the patriotic
emergencies that would empower ever more radically punitive regimes.”

Schama, p. 430


National Constituent Assembly


The Night of 4 August
“the abolition of feudalism”
• the next major event of the revolution occurred when the National Constituent Assembly
abolished feudalism, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the
tithes gathered by the First Estate

• the Viscount de Noailles and the Duke d'Aiguillon proposed the redemption and consequent
abolition of feudal rights and the suppression of personal servitude, as well as the various
privileges of the nobility

• members of the First Estate were at first reluctant to enter into the patriotic fervour of the
night but eventually the Bishops of Nancy and Chartres sacrificed their tithes

• in the course of a few hours, France abolished game-laws, seigneurial courts, the purchase and
sale of posts in the magistracy, of pecuniary immunities, favoritism in taxation, of surplice
money, first-fruits, pluralities, and unmerited pensions. Towns, provinces, companies, and
cities also sacrificed their special privileges

• a medal was struck to commemorate the day, and the Assembly declared Louis XVI the
"Restorer of French Liberty."

• in this enthusiasm nobody remarked the clause for redeeming the feudal rights and tithes,
which the two nobles and the two bishops had introduced into their speeches — a clause
terrible even in its vagueness, since it might mean all or nothing, and did, in fact, postpone…
the abolition of feudal rights for four years - until August 1793


The Rights of Man and of the Citizen
26 August 1789

Preamble
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing
that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public
calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn
declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this
declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them
continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as
well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the
objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected,
and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and
incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound
to the happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the
presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man
and of the citizen: [emphasis added, JBP]


The Rights of Man and of the Citizen
26 August 1789

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general
good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These
rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any
authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the
natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the
enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not
forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.

6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his
representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being
equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations,
according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.


7.! No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one
soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or
arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.

8.! The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment
except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.

9.! As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness
not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law.

10.! No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not
disturb the public order established by law.

11.! The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly,
speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

12.! The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the
good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be entrusted.

13.! A common contribution [taxes] is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This
should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.

14.! All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution;
to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration
of the taxes.

15.! Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.

16.! A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.

17.! Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally
determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.


Two chief constitutional thinkers (1) the right:
Jean Joseph Mounier
• fully familiar with the United States, “a kind of French John
Adams” --Palmer

• often alluded to the events and constitutions of America,
Britain, Holland, and Poland

• felt that the constitution had to be negotiated with the
king, and that he should have a veto

• wanted bicameralism, with men of property in both
chambers, the lower house to be elected by a very wide
popular suﬀrage

• he insisted that his plan was approved by the American
minister, Thomas Jeﬀerson

• his critics dubbed him and his followers Monarchials or
Anglomaniacs

• the Assembly debated this plan for ten days. The spectators
in the gallery added their vocal comments 1758-1806


Two chief constitutional thinkers (2) the left:
the Abbé Sieyès

• he adamantly rejected the idea of a veto. “See how the
king hesitates to approve the Declaration of the
Rights of Man…”

• in a great speech against Mounier’s plan he invoked
the principle of equality, “one man one vote” How
could you let the king cancel the will of the Assembly?

• he attacked the idea of an upper house as the
breeding ground of a new aristocracy

• the Assembly voted 849 to 89 for a single house, with
122 abstaining

• where Mounier had insisted on an absolute veto, the
Assembly adopted a suspensive veto by 673 to 325
( measures would pass over the king’s veto if they
1748-1836 were passed in three consecutive 2-year sessions)


The King thus received a power to delay, for as long as six years, a program
repeatedly endorsed by the legislature and presumably by the electorate.
This was surely a dangerous kind of appel au peuple. In any government such
institutionalized confrontation or stalemate would have been impolitic; in
time of revolution and war it might be fatal. And in 1792 it was to prove
ruinous to the constitution and to the King, “Monsieur Veto,” himself.

Palmer, op. cit., p. 498


“...the essence of the revolution of 1789 was the revolt of the Third Estate
against the nobility. With a hostile nobility to overcome, and a king
sympathetic with the nobility to contend with, the creation of an upper
house and a strong independent executive [like our constitution of 1787]
was simply not among the possible choices for men interested in furthering
the French Revolution.”

The King could not be trusted even by moderate partisans of the new
order. Yet his very existence made it impossible for the French to create a
new executive oﬃce as the Americans had done.

Palmer, Democratic Revolution. vol. 1, p. 282 & p. 499


Les Poissardes
(the female ﬁshmongers)


Les Poissardes
(the female ﬁshmongers)

contemporary print


two harridans from the
market led by Marianne, the
symbolic personiﬁcation of la
Liberté. Marianne wears the
g a r m e n t o f 1 8 t h ce n t u r y
women’s lib, a ﬂowing white
muslin gown, no stays and
corset. She holds up the red
“liberty,” or Phr ygian cap.
Another is more clearly
visible, held up on a pole
behind her.


...the working women of Paris increasingly turned to [violence]. As those
immediately responsible for putting bread on the table, they were
correspondingly most desperate and angry at the shortages which,
following a good harvest, seemed to be all the more inexplicable. The
October terme for rent and tradesman’s bills was fast approaching and
throughout September the tempo of assault on bakers’ shops suspected of
giving short weight or hoarding speeded up….

There is no evidence that, faced with the news of this hunger, Marie-
Antoinette ever did say anything like “Let them eat cake.” But the
apocryphal fable is nonetheless eloquent testimony to the gathering
suspicion and hatred directed at the court, which...was held responsible for
the plight of the common people.

Schama, Citizens. p. 457-458


the political press fans the flame

• a Swiss-born physician, political theorist, and scientist
better known as a radical journalist and politician
from the French Revolution

• September 1789-Marat began his own paper, which
was at first called Moniteur patriote ("Patriotic
Watch"), changed four days later to Publiciste parisien,
and then finally L'Ami du peuple ("The Friend of the
People")

Jean-Paul Marat
1743 – 13 July 1793


the political press fans the flame

• a Swiss-born physician, political theorist, and scientist
better known as a radical journalist and politician
from the French Revolution

• September 1789-Marat began his own paper, which
was at first called Moniteur patriote ("Patriotic
Watch"), changed four days later to Publiciste parisien,
and then finally L'Ami du peuple ("The Friend of the
People")

• His journalism was renowned for its fiery character
and uncompromising stance towards "enemies of the
revolution" and demands for basic reforms for the
poorest members of society

Jean-Paul Marat
1743 – 13 July 1793


“Open your eyes” he commanded his readers, “shake oﬀ your lethargy, purge
your committees, preserve only the healthy members, sweep away the
corrupt, the royal pensioners and the devious aristocrats, intriguers and
false patriots. You have nothing to expect from them except servitude,
poverty and desolation”



the Parisian women gather at Versailles
• 2 October-a banquet welcoming the Flanders Regiment to
Versailles becomes “a drunken orgy” according to Marat’s
paper

• court women had given out black cockades, the Queen’s
colors. Worse still, the tricoleur cockade had been trampled!

• 4 October-anger and hunger combined. At a bread protest,
one woman suggested a march the next day to Versailles

• 5 October-Lafayette, threatened by his own troops with
mutiny, agreed to lead 15,000 of the National Guards and
would try to keep the 6-7,000 women’s march orderly

• after a rainy six hour march, the women were welcomed to
the town of Versailles with speeches and wine. But both the
Flanders Regiment and the Swiss guards barred them from
the grounds of the palace


the Parisian women gather at Versailles
• 2 October-a banquet welcoming the Flanders Regiment to
Versailles becomes “a drunken orgy” according to Marat’s
paper

• court women had given out black cockades, the Queen’s
colors. Worse still, the tricoleur cockade had been trampled!

• 4 October-anger and hunger combined. At a bread protest,
one woman suggested a march the next day to Versailles

• 5 October-Lafayette, threatened by his own troops with
mutiny, agreed to lead 15,000 of the National Guards and
would try to keep the 6-7,000 women’s march orderly

• after a rainy six hour march, the women were welcomed to
the town of Versailles with speeches and wine. But both the
Flanders Regiment and the Swiss guards barred them from
the grounds of the palace

• the wet angry women then invaded the National Assembly.

• A small delegation was permitted to see the King


Théroigne de Méricourt


At about six o’clock Louis agreed to accept without demur or qualiﬁcation
both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and the August
decrees. He then took counsel from his ministers on the best course of
action. Saint-Priest [the war minister] urged either ﬂight or resistance;
Necker opposed both, arguing that either course would give comfort to
those who said that the King was making war on the Revolution rather
than endorsing it. Louis was torn between concern for the safety of his
family and his distaste for appearing to shirk his duty. He decided to stay
put.

Not much before midnight, the National Guard tr udged into
Versailles….the guardsmen had already determined that they should return
to Paris with the royal family and henceforth keep them there. Everything,
then, was set for a violent tug-of-war between the royal bodyguard and the
National Guard.



caught in between
• at midnight Lafayette told the National Assembly that
the Guard had no coercive purpose but confessed that
he had no choice but to bring it to Versailles

• calm could be restored if the King sent away the
Flanders Regiment and made some sympathetic gestures

• the King agreed to see him if he came unaccompanied

• as he entered, he heard a courtier remark, “There goes
Cromwell.” “Cromwell,” he snapped back,”would not
have come unarmed.”

• “I have come to die at the feet of Your Majesty.” Such
would not be necessary if Louis would send some food
to the capital and consent to come there to live “in the
palace of your ancestors.” Louis promised to consider

Lafayette • 6 October-exhausted, Lafayette returned, reported to
age 32 the National Assembly, his oﬃcers, and ﬁnally fell asleep
at 5:00 a.m.

the Queen’s Bedchamber


[At one o’clock] an immense cortège, which Lafayette put at sixty
thousand, moved off from Versailles. At the front and rear were the
National Guard; in their midst the royal carriage escorted by Lafayette,
with ministers of Necker’s government, deputies of the National Assembly
and the remnant of the court of France following. Behind them was a train
of wagons and carts filled with flour from the palace bins. Soldiers and
women carried bread loaves on the ends of their pikes and bayonets and
sang that they were bringing “the baker, the baker’s wife and the baker’s lad
to Paris.”



The memorable day at Versai"es, Monday 5 October 1789
In this general riot, several bodyguards have been massacred; two among them
were decapitated and their heads carried in triumph by this same people,
+iend of national liberty

Our Modern Amazons, glorious for their victories, return on horse and upon cannons, with several good men of
the National Guard, holding poplar branches to the repeated cries of Vive la Nation, Vive le Roi


No one dreamed that the Revolution was barely beginning. And, after all,
the popular feeling was not entirely mistaken, for the days of October, by
securing the decrees of August, had consecrated the demise of the Old
Regime beyond hope of revival, and at least the Revolution of 1789 was
over.

Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution. p. 205


LIVE FREE

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French Revolution 1789

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