Introduction
to the French Revolution
In
1789 the French Revolution ended the relative political and social stability of
the Ancien R6gime. This, and the earlier American Revolution, led to political
and social changes that swept through Western civilization in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
Although
the causes of the French Revolution are deep and controversial, most agree it
was precipitated by financial problems that led Louis XVI to call a meeting of
an old representative institution, the Estates General, in 1789. A struggle for
power soon developed between a resurgent aristocracy and a rising middle class,
both demanding support from the king. In an environment where peasants were
turning against the aristocracy in the countryside and crowds were resorting to
violence in Paris, the king managed to alienate both sides. Revolutionary
legislation soon followed. By 1792 France was a constitutional monarchy,
feudalism was abolished, liberal principles echoing Enlightenment thought were
formally recognized, Church lands were confiscated, and government
administration was reorganized. The country was at war internally with
counterrevolutionary forces and externally with much of the rest of Europe.
A
second revolution in 1792 set France on a more radical course. Louis XVI was
executed, and the government was declared a republic. Real power rested in the
hands of the small Committee of Public Safety, which attacked internal dissent
through the Reign of Terror and external wars through national mobilization. The
period ended with a return to a more moderate course in 1794 and 1795, known as
Thermidorian Reaction. With power in the hands of the well-to-do middle class,
an uneasy balance was maintained between forces clamoring for more radical
policies and those wishing to return the monarchy until 1799, when Napoleon
Bonaparte rose to power by means of a coup d'6tat.
Historians
are fascinated by revolutions, for change is unusually rapid and dramatic. They
are particularly interested in the causes of revolutions. In this chapter
several primary documents address questions related to the causes of the French
Revolution. What were some early signs of revolutionary discontent? What
complaints were voiced by the middle class and by the commoners the Third
Estate? How did leaders of this Third Estate see themselves? Related secondary
documents explore some of the interpretive debates over the revolution: Was this
mainly a social revolution? What was the influence of the Enlightenment on the
French Revolution? Should the French Revolution be viewed as part of a broader
revolutionary movement throughout Western civilization? Other sources examine
the course and effects of the French Revolution. What happened is of particular
importance, since the French Revolution was seen as a model for other
revolutions and hoped-for revolutions. What were the main changes enacted during
the Revolution? How can we explain the most radical phase-the Reign of Terror?
What role did women play in revolutionary events? What part did nationalism play
in revolutionary developments?
In
short, the selections should provide broad insights into the nature and
significance of the French Revolution, which more than any other event marks a
dividing line between the Early Modern and the Modern eras of Western
civilization.
Travels
in France:
Signs
of Revolution
Arthur
Young
In
one sense, the French Revolution came as a great surprise. One of the last
places people might have expected a revolution to occur was in a country so
advanced and with such a stable monarchy as France. Yet to some sensitive
observers of the time, the signs of revolution were at hand during the late
1780s. One of these observers was Arthur Young (1741 -1820), a British farmer
and diarist, best known for his writings on agricultural subjects. Between 178 7
and 1789 he traveled extensively throughout France, keeping a diary of his
experiences. In the following selection from that diary, Young notes deep
dissatisfactions among the French.
Consider:
The problems and dissatisfactions that gave the French a sense of impending
revolution; the specific problems that seemed most likely to lead to a
revolutionary crisis and the steps that might have been taken to avoid such a
crisis; how Young felt about these problems and dissatisfactions.
PARIS,
OCTOBER 17, 1787
One
opinion pervaded the whole company, that they are on the eve of some great
revolution in the government: that every thing points to it: the confusion in
the finances great; with a deficit impossible to provide for without the
states-general 'of the kingdom, yet no ideas formed of what would be the
consequence of their meeting: no minister existing, or to be looked to in or out
of power, with such decisive talents as to promise any other remedy than
palliative ones: a prince on the throne, with excellent dispositions, but
without
the resources of a mind that could govern in such a moment without ministers: a
court buried in pleasure and dissipation; and adding to the distress, instead of
endeavouring to be placed in a more independent situation: a great ferment
amongst all ranks of men, who are eager for some change, without knowing what to
look to, or to hope for: and a strong leaven of liberty, increasing every hour
since the American revolution; altogether form a combination of circumstances
that promise e'er long to ferment into motion, if some master hand, of very
superior talents, and inflexible courage, is not found at the helm to guide
events, instead of being driven by them. It is very remarkable, that such
conversation never occurs, but a bankruptcy is a topic: the curious question on
which is, would a bankruptcy occasion a civil war, and a total overthrow of the
government? These answers that I have received to this question, appear to be
just: such a measure, conducted by a man of abilities, vigour, and firmness,
would certainly not occasion either one or the other. But the same measure,
attempted by a man of a different character, might possibly do both. All agree,
that the states of the kingdom cannot assemble without more liberty being the
consequence; but I meet with so few men that have any just ideas of freedom,
that I question much the species of this new liberty that is to arise. They know
not how to value the privileges Of THE PEOPLE: as to the nobility and the
clergy, if a revolution added any thing to their scale, I think it would do more
mischief than good. . . .
RENNES,
SEPTEMBER 2, 1788
The
discontents of the people have been double, first on account of the high price
of bread, and secondly for the banishment of the parliament. The former cause is
natural enough, but why the people should love their parliament was what I could
not understand, since the members, as well as of the states, are all noble, and
the distinction between the noblesse and roturiers no where stronger, more
offensive, or more abominable than in Bretagne. They assured me, however, that
the populace have been blown up to violence by every art of deception, and even
by money distributed for that purpose. The commotions rose to such a height
before the camp was established, that the troops here were utterly unable to
keep the peace. . . .
NANTES,
SEPTEMBER 22, 1788
Nantes
is as enflamm~ in the cause of liberty, as any town in France can be; the
conversations I witnessed here, prove how great a change is effected in the
minds of the French, nor do I believe it will be possible for the present
government to last half a century longer, unless the clearest and most decided
talents are at the helm. The American revolution has laid the foundation of
another in France, if government does not take care of itself.
The
Coming of the French Revolution
Georges
Lefebvre
Probably
no event in modern history has been interpreted at greater length and with
greater passion than the French Revolution. The historiographic tradition
related to this event is so extensive that numerous books and articles have been
written on this historiography itself. A central controversy involves the cause
or causes of the revolution and is dealt with in the following selection from
The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre. Lefebvre held the
prestigious chair of French revolutionary history at the Sorbonne until his
death in 1959. His work on the French Revolution continues to be highly
respected and accepted among historians, many of whom differ greatly among
themselves.
Consider:
The most important cause of the French Revolution, according to Lefebvre; how
this interpretation relates the revolution in France to areas outside of France;
how social, economic, and political factors are linked in this interpretation of
the French Revolution; how this view is supported by the primary documents.
The
ultimate cause of the French Revolution of 1789 goes deep into the history of
France and of the western world. At the end of the eighteenth century the social
structure of France was aristocratic. It showed the traces of having originated
at a time when land was almost the only form of wealth, and when the possessors
of land were the masters of those who needed it to work and to live. It is true
that in the course of age-old struggles (of which the Fronde, the last revolt of
the aristocracy, was as recent as the seventeenth century) the king had been
able gradually to deprive the lords of their political'power and subject nobles
and clergy to his authority. But he had left them the first place in the social
hierarchy. Still restless at being merely his "subjects," they
remained privileged persons.
Meanwhile
the growth of commerce and industry had created, step by step, a new form of
wealth, mobile or commercial wealth, and a new class, called in France the
bourgeoisie, which since the fourteenth century had taken its place as the Third
Estate in the General Estates of the kingdom. This class had grown much stronger
with the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the
ensuing exploitation of new worlds, and also because it proved highly useful to
the monarchical state in supplying it with money and competent officials. In the
eighteenth century commerce, industry and finance occupied an increasingly
important place in the national economy. It was the bourgeoisie that rescued the
royal treasury in moments of crisis. From its ranks were recruited most members
of the liberal professions and most public employees. It had developed a new
ideology which the "philosophers" and "economists" of the
time had simply put into definite form. The role of the nobility had
correspondingly declined; and the clergy, as the ideal which it proclaimed lost
prestige, found its authority growing weaker. These groups preserved the highest
rank in the legal structure of the country, but in reality economic power,
personal abilities and confidence in the future had passed largely to the
bourgeoisie. Such a discrepancy never lasts forever. The Revolution of 1789
restored the harmony between fact and law. This transformation spread in the
nineteenth century throughout the west and then to the whole globe, and in this
sense the ideas of 1789 toured the world.
The
Influence of EighteenthCentury Ideas on the French Revolution
Henri
Peyre
Some
historians emphasize economic factors to explain the causes of the French
Revolution.
Others consider certain ideas, particularly the ideas of the Enlightenment, as
the crucial cause of the revolution. This latter reasoning is illustrated in the
following selection by Henri Peyre. Born and educated in France, Peyre taught
for a long time at Yale. Although his interests ranged widely, most of his work
was in the history of French literature.
Consider:
The support Peyre offers for his attack on those stressing economic causes~ of
the French Revolution; how one of these hatorians might respond; whether
documents on the Enlightenment and the primary documents in this chapter support
Peyre's interpretation.
If
there is really one almost undisputed conclusion on the origins of the
Revolution reached by historical studies coming from radically opposite
factions, it is that pure historical materialism does not explain the
Revolution. Certainly riots due to hunger were numerous in the eighteenth
century and Mornet draws up the list of them; there was discontent and agitation
among the masses. But such had also been the case under Louis XIV, such was the
case under Louis-Philippe and deep discontent existed in France in 1920 and 1927
and 1934 without ending in revolution. No great event in history has been due to
causes chiefly economic in nature and certainly not the French Revolution.
France was not happy in 1788, but she was happier than the other countries of
Europe and enjoyed veritable economic prosperity. Her population had increased
from 19 to 27 millions since the beginning of the century and was the most
numerous in Europe. French roads and bridges were a source of admiration for
foreigners. Her industries such as shipfitting at Bordeaux, the silk-industry at
Lyons and the textile-industry at Rouen, Sedan and Amiens were active while
Dietrich's blast-furnaces and the Creusot were beginning to develop modern
techniques in metallurgy. The peasants were little by little coming to be owners
of the land. Foreign trade reached the sum of 1, 153 million francs in 1787, a
figure not to be attained again until 1825. The traffic in colonial spices and
San Domingo sugar was a source of wealth. Banks were being founded and France
owned half the specie existing in Europe. So misery in France was no more than
relative. But truly wretched peoples such as the Egyptian fellah, the pariah of
India or even the Balkan or Polish peasant or Bolivian miners for example rarely
bring about revolutions. In order to revolt against one's lot, one must be aware
of his wretched condition, which presupposes a certain intellectual and cultural
level; one must have a clear conception of certain reforms that one would like
to adopt; in short, one must be convinced (and it was on this point that the
books of the eighteenth century produced their effect) that things are not going
well, that they might be better and that they will be better if the measures
proposed by the reformist thinkers are put into practice.
Eighteenth-century
philosophy taught the Frenchman to find his condition wretched, or in any case,
unjust and illogical and made him disinclined to the patient resignation to his
troubles that had long characterized his ancestors. It had never called for a
revolution nor desired a change of regime; it had never been republican and
Camille Desmouslins was not wrong in stating: "In all France there were not
ten of us who were republicans before 1789." Furthermore he himself was not
one of those ten. But only an over-simplified conception of influence would
indulge in the notion that political upheaval completely embodies in reality the
theoretical design drawn up by some thinker. Even the Russian revolution imbued
as it was with Marxian dialectic did not make a coherent application of Marxism
or quickly found it inapplicable when tried. The reforms of limited scope
advocated by LEsprit des Lois, LHomme aux quarante &us ' LEncyclopMie and
the more moderate writings of Rousseau struck none the less deeply at the
foundations of the ancien r6gime, for they accustomed the Frenchman of the Third
Estate to declaring privileges unjust, to finding the crying differences between
the provinces illogical and finding famines outrageous. The propaganda of the
"Philosophes" perhaps more than any other factor accounted for the
fulfillment of the preliminary conditon of the French revolution, namely,
discontent with the existing state of things.
The
Age of
Democratic
Revolution
R.
R. Palmer
For
a long time the French Revolution was studied in relative isolation from other
political and social developments of the time. In the years after World War II,
some historians viewed the French Revolution in a broader context. The most
forceful exponent of this broader view is R. R. Palmer. He places the French
Revolution
within the context of the Atlantic civilization and argues that the French
Revolution was one aspect of a much broader Age of Democratic Revolution. The
following is an excerpt from the first volume of his two-volume work on this
age. In it he tells the reader what he will argue.
Consider:
The role the Enlightenment would play in this interpretation; any
inconsistencies between this interpretation and the implications of Lefebvre's
argument; how this view might elevate the significance of the American
Revolution and The Declaration of Independence.
Let
us pass from the concrete image to the broadest of historical generalizations.
The present work attempts to deal with Western Civilization as a whole, at a
critical moment in its history, or with what has sometimes recently been called
the Atlantic Civilization, a term probably closer to reality in the eighteenth
century than in the twentieth. It is argued that this whole civilization was
swept in the last four decades of the eighteenth century by a single
revolutionary movement, which manifested itself in different ways and with
varying success in different countries, yet in all of them showed similar
objectives and principles. It is held that this forty-year movement was
essentially "democratic," and that these years are in fact the Age of
the Democratic Revolution. "Democratic" is here to be understood in a
general but clear enough sense. It was not primarily the sense of a later day in
which universality of the suffrage became a chief criterion of democracy, nor
yet that other and uncertain sense, also of a later day, in which both Soviet
and Western-type states could call themselves democratic. In one way, it
signified a new feeling for a kind of equality, or at least a discomfort with
older forms of social stratification and formal rank, such as Thomas Shippen
felt at Versailles, and which indeed had come to affect a good many of the
habitu6s of Versailles also. Politically, the eighteenthcentury movement was
against the possession of government, or any public power, by any established,
privileged, closed, or self-recruiting groups of men. It denied that any person
could exercise coercive authority simply by his own right, or by right of his
status, or by right of "history," either in the old-fashioned sense of
custom and inheritance, or in any newer dialectical sense, unknown to the
eighteenth century, in which "history" might be supposed to give some
special elite or revolutionary vanguard a right to rule. The "democratic
revolution" emphasized the delegation of authority and the removability of
officials, precisely because, as we shall see, neither delegation nor
removability were much recognized in actual institutions.
It
is a corollary of these ideas that the American and the French Revolutions, the
two chief actual revolutions of the period, with all due allowance for the great
differences between them, nevertheless shared a good deal in common, and that
what they shared was shared also at the same time by various people and
movements in other countries, notably in England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium,
Switzerland, and Italy, but also in Germany, Hungary, and Poland, and by
scattered individuals in places like Spain and Russia.
Loaves
and Liberty: Women in the French Revolution
Ruth
Graham
Historians
have long recognized that women played an important role in certain aspects of
the French Revolution. But only in the last twenty years have extensive
examinations been made of the significance of the French Revolution for women's
history. The following selection by Ruth Graham is a good example of this recent
work.
Consider:
Any connections between sex and class lines in the French Revolution; the ways
in which women became a "revolutionary force unprecedented in history"
during the revolution; what Graham means by women's victories and defeats.
It
would be wrong to assume that because women had come into the Revolution in 1789
asking for bread and liberty and had come out in 1795 with starvation and
restriction of their movements, they had gained nothing. They won laws
protecting their rights in marriage, property, and education. True, women were
denied political rights in the French Revolution (as were the majority of men
when the Convention scrapped the democratic constitution of 1793) but nowhere
else at the time did women share political rights with men.
Although
women were a cohesive group during the Revolution, they responded mainly to the
needs of their class and were never an autonomous force. The ideology of the
revolutionary authorities who distrusted women's political movements derived
seemingly from Rousseau, but actually from the facts of their lives: France's
small-scale, home-based economy needed middle- and working-class women to
contribute their special skills and labor to their families. Women were not yet
a large, independent group in the working class.
In
the early days of the French Revolution, women from the middle classes (as can
be seen from cahiers written by them) welcomed the restoration of their natural
rights as wives and mothers to participate in society as men I s "natural
companions." Women of the urban poor wage earners, artisans of women's
crafts, owners of small enterprises, such as the market women - agitated for
bread rather than for women's rights. There is, however, evidence that
"respectable" middle-class women joined them. Although these movements
crossed class lines, which were perhaps not rigidly fixed, they did not cross
sex lines. When men participated, as they did in the October Days of 1789, they
came as armed escorts or separate detachments.
As
the Revolution entered its more radical phase, as economic crisis followed war
and civil strife, the polarization between the rich and the poor sharpened the
older struggle between aristocrat and patriot. During the last days of the
National Convention, the women who surged into the hall crying "Bread and
the Constitution of 17931" truly represented the poor, whom the upper
classes and their women now feared. The bread riots belonged to the women of the
poor, who incited their men to insurrection, but the insurrection belonged to
both of them, the sans-culottes and their women.
Yet,
the Revolution had called upon women to make great sacrifices and they did; in
consequence, women became a revolutionary force unprecedented in history. The
men in power feared women who challenged the Revolution's failure to guarantee
bread for the poor. So feared were the women of the French Revolution that they
became legendary - they became Mme. Defarge later to those who feared revolution
itself.
A
new elite of the upper middle class, men of wealth and talent, rose to power in
the four years of the Directory following the dissolution in 1795 of the
National Convention. Their women had no political rights but emerged as
influential ladies of the salon, such as the brilliant writer Mme. de Sta6l, and
Mme. Tallien, former wife of an aristocrat and now derisively called "Our
Lady of Thermidor," as a symbol of the reaction. One of these ladies,
Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of a general, became the mistress of one of
the Directors before she married the young Napoleon Bonaparte, who soon
afterward became general of the armies in Italy.
Outside
of Paris, away from the glamour of these women, middle-class morality prevailed.
Napoleon subscribed to this morality. When he became emperor in 1804, he wrote
laws into his code to strengthen the authority of the husband and father of the
family as a safeguard for private property. Women lost whatever rights they had
gained in the Revolution, for now they had to obey their husbands
unconditionally. Napoleon left women the right to divorce (for Napoleon to use
against Josephine when she failed to provide him an heir). but this right was
taken from them after 1815 by the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
What
could not be taken from women was their memory of victories during the French
Revolution: their march to Versailles in the October Days, their petitions to
the legislature, their club meetings, their processions, their insurrections.
Their defeats served as lessons for next time. "We are simple women,"
a women was reported to have said at a club meeting in the days of the uprising
of the Paris Commune in May 1871, nearly a century later, "but not made of
weaker stuff than our grandmothers of '93. Let us not cause their shades to
blush for us, but be up and doing, as they would be were they living now."
An
Evaluation of the French Revolution
John
Hall Stewart
Although
most would say that rapid and vast changes occurred during the French
Revolution, it is difficult to evaluate the extent to which these changes were
more apparent than real. Many historians have concluded that while the
revolution stood for much, most of the promises made by the Third Estate and
contained in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen were not carried
out. In the following selection John Hall Stewart, compiler of an extensive
documentary survey of the revolution, attempts to strike a balance between what
was and was not accomplished between 1789 and 1799.
Consider:
Examples of what Hall calls "disestablishment, " "innovation
" and "compromise" during the French Revolution between 1789 and
1799; ~ow Hall's argument might be used by those opposing revolutions in
general.
it
might safely be said that never in human history, or at least never prior to
1799, had so much been achieved by one people in such a short span of time! Yet,
lest the uninformed nalvely assume that between 1789 and 1799 some divine force
had transformed France from a purgatory into a paradise, the foregoing
impressive list of apparent achievements must be balanced against the actual
accomplishments. In other words, how much of what was done progressed beyond the
"paper 11 state, how much failed in the effort? And, it must be admitted,
here the opponents of the Revolution find much of their material for criticism.
A few significant examples will suffice as evidence.
Politically,
constitutionalism had been accepted, but the constitution of 1799 was a farce;
declarations of rights had been made three times, but each time they had been
more form than substance, and in 1799 they were omitted entirely; democracy had
never been really tried 1799 inaugurated a dictatorship; the liberties of the
subject had been flagrantly violated during the Terror; in 1799 it appeared that
equality and security were preferable to liberty; and protection of property had
been of little help to the clergy or the ~migr&
Economically,
"free" land was a reality only for those who possessed the wherewithal
to purchase it; agricultural reforms were still in the future; workers lacked
the right to organize and to strike; and the fiscal and financial situation left
by the Directory was worse than that facing the Estates General -stability was
still lacking.
Socially,
the bourgeoisie had supplanted the clergy and nobles, but the common man still
awaited his due; class consciousness persisted, and privilege was still sought;
many of the social reforms proposed never passed outside the legislative halls;
and socialism was a dead issue.
Religiously,
France was still Catholic, and neither the Revolution nor its attempt at a
synthetic faith had altered the situation; anti -Protestantism and anti-Semitism
were by no means obliterated; and the revolutionary legislation affecting the
Church had produced a schism which remained for Napoleon to heal.
Finally,
despite a brief taste of the several freedoms, France was entering upon a period
in which censorshop was to keep news of Trafalgar from the columns of the
Moniteur, and education was to become little more than Bonapartist propaganda;
in fact, the educational projects of the Revolution remained, for the most part,
decently interred in statute books.
Yet
this situation was by no means abnormal. It should neither encourage the
counter-revolutionary nor discourage the revolutionary. As fundamental change,
the Revolution inevitably worked through a three-fold process: disestablishment
(of outmoded old institutions); innovation (through badly needed new
institutions); and compromise (by adaptation of existing institutions to the
necessities of the moment). The original objectives -which, for convenience, may
perhaps best be summed up as liberty, equality, and order-could be achieved in
no other way. What appears to be failure is nothing more than proof that in such
movements the forces of reaction are strong, and the ambitions of men usually
far exceed the ability of those same men to put their plans to practical use.
The
Revolution of the Notables
Donald
M.G. Sutherland
Georges
Lefebvre's interpretationfi)r the causes of the French Revolution became part of
what has been called the "classical view" of the origins of the
revolution. In recent years this view has been strongly criticized by increasing
numbers of historians, most Of whom reject Lefebvre's social-econoinic view in
favor of a more political analysis. In the following selection Donald M. G.
Sutherland reviews this controversy.
Consider:
The basis for the attack oti the classical view; tchy, "exclusivism"
is so importantfor these interpretations; how a representative qf the classical
view "light respond.
There
was a time when historians could be fairly confident in describing the origins
of the French Revolution. The operative concept was I aristocratic reaction'. It
meant several things at once. Politically, it referred to the undermining of the
absolutism of Louis XIV which was thought to have subverted the independence and
privileges of the aristocracy. The parlements, the regional sovereign and appeal
courts of which that of Paris was by far the most important, were the driving
forces behind the noble offensive. They were able to transform their right of
registering laws and edicts into a veto on progressive royal legislation. The
Crown was consequently much weaker. This had implications in the social sphere
as well. In the course of the eighteenth century, the aristocracy ended up
monopolizing the highest offices in government, the military, the Church and
judiciary. This in turn had its effects on the bourgeoisie. No longer able to
advance to the top of the major social and political institutions of the day,
the bourgeoisie became increasingly alienated fron-i the state and from
respectable society. Frustrated from achieving its highest ambitions, its
loyalties strained, ever open to suggestive criticisms of the system, it was
well placed to take advantage of the political crisis of 1788-9 to overthrow the
old order altogether. One of the inany crises of the Old Regime was a crisis of
social mobility.
The
argument was irresistibly attractive, partly because of its internal elegance
and partly because it explained so much. It made sense of the reign of Louis
XIV, the eighteenth century and the Revolution too. The struggle between
revolution and counterrevolution could be reduced to two actors, the bourgeoisie
and the aristocracv, who had first come to blows in the closing years of the
reign of Louis XIV. The aristocracy lost, of course, and specialists of the
nineteenth century could move on to the next round, the struggle between the
bourgeoisie and the working class.
Unfortunately,
research and reflective criticism over the past twenty years have rendered the
classical view of the origins of the Revolution utterly untenable. In the first
place, it assumes rather than demonstrates the aristocracy's progressive
monopoly of high posts. It assumes, too, that the society of the seventeenth
century was more open than its successor but relies on incomplete evidence and a
limited range of contemporary complaints. The Duc de Saint-Simon's famous
observation that Louis XIV raised up the 'vile bourgeoisie' turns out to be
untrue in the case of the episcopate,, partially true but grossly misleading of
the ministry and unknown in the case of the officer corps of the army....
Closer
examination of some of the major signs of noble exclusivism shows that
restrictions were often aimed at excluding the rich parvenu nobles, not a rising
bourgeoisie.... The Old Regime aristocracy was thus comparatively young and was
in a constant process of renewal.
The
doors of the Second Estate were well oiled to men of talent but above all to
those with money. Society was therefore capable of absorbing the most thrusting,
entrepreneurial and ambitious men of the plutocracy....
The
effect of the revisionist critique of the classical interpretation has been to
reassert the importance of the political origins of the Revolution. If the
nobility had always been a dominant class, if whatever trends there were towards
exclusivism are problematic to interpret, if opportunities for advancement were
far greater than was ever suspected, and if nobles and bourgeois shared similar
economic functions and interests, the notion that the Revolution originated in a
struggle between two distinct classes has to be abandoned. Politics remains.
Both groups could aLyree to unite to overthrow absolutism in favour of a liberal
constitution but, according to which revisionist historian one follows, they
fell out either over means or because of a failure of political leadership or
the form the political crisis took, or even over something as amorphous as
'style'.
An
Evaluation of the French Revolution
William
Doyle
Although
most would say that rapid and vast changes occurred during the French
Revolution, it is difficult to evaluate the extent to which these changes were
more apparent than real. Many historians have concluded that while the
revolution stoodfor inuch, most of the proi-niscs inadc by the revolution were
not carried out. Others argue that much that has been attributed to
therevolution would probably have come about anyway. In the following selcction
William Doyle attempts to strike a balance between what was and was not
accoinplished by the revolution.
Consider:
How Doyle determines what changes would in all probability have coine about in
any case; what Doyle attributes directly to the revolution; how Doyle's argument
might be used by those opposing revolutions in general.
The
shadow of the Revolution, therefore, fell across the whole of the nineteenth
century and beyond. Until 1917 few would have disputed that it was the greatest
revolution in the history of the world; and even after that its claims to
primacy remain strong. It was the first modern revolution, the archetypal one.
After it, nothing in the European world remained the same, and we are all heirs
to its influence. And yet, it can be argued, much that was attributed to it
would in all probability have come about in any case. Before 1789 there were
plenty of signs that the structure of French society was evolving towards
domination by a single Ate in which property counted for more than birth. The
century-long expansion of the bourgeoisie which underlay this trend already
looked irreversible; and greater participation by men of property in government,
as constant experiments with provincial assemblies showed, seemed bound to come.
Meanwhile many of the reforms the Revolution brought in were already being tried
or thought about by the absolute monarchy-law codification, fiscal
rationalization, diminution of venality, free trade, religious toleration. With
all these changes under way or in contemplation, the power of government looked
set for steady growth, too-which ironically was one of the complaints of the
despotism-obsessed men of 1789. In the Church, the monastic ideal was already
shrivelling and the status of parish priests commanding more and more public
sympathy. Economically, the colonial trade had already peaked, and failure to
compete industrially with Great Britain was increasingly manifest. In other
structural areas, meanwhile, the great upheaval appears to have made no
difference at all. Conservative investment habits still characterized the early
nineteenth century, agricultural inertia and unentrepreneurial business
likewise. And in international affairs, it is hard to believe that Great Britain
would not have dominated the world's seas and trade throughout the nineteenth
century, that Austro-Prussian rivalry would not have run much the course it did,
or that Latin America would not have asserted its independence in some form or
other, if the French Revolution had never happened. In all these fields, the
effect was to accelerate or retard certain trends, but not to change their
general drift.
Against
all this, it is equally hard to believe that the specifically anti -
aristocratic, anti-feudal revolutionary ideology of the Rights of Man would have
emerged as it did without the jumble of accident, miscalculation, and
misunderstanding which coalesced into a revolution in specifically French
circumstances. It is equally hard to believe that anything as extraordinary as
dechristianization would have occurred without the monumental misjudgement which
produced the Revolution's quarrel with the Catholic Church. Without that
quarrel, the dramatic revival in the authority of the papacy also seems
inconceivable. Representative government may well have been on the horizon, but
how long would the ideal of popular democracy have taken to establish itself
without the example of the sansculotte movement? it certainly transformed and
widened out of all recognition the cause of parliamentary reform in
England-although the blood-stained figure of the sansculotte probably galvanized
conservative resistance on the other side. Above all, the revolutionaries'
decision to go to war, which all historians agree revolutionized the Revolution,
destroyed an established pattern of warfare in a way no old regime government
would otherwise have promoted. Arming the people was the last thing they would
have dreamed of The emergencies of that war in turn produced the scenes which
have indelibly marked our memory of the Revolution: the Terror. Massacres were
nothing new, and the worst ones of the 1790s occurred outside France. But there
was something horribly new and unimaginable in the prospect of a government
systematically executing its opponents by the cartload for months on end, and by
a device which, however humane in concept, made the streets run with blood. And
this occurred in what had passed for the most civilized country in Europe, whose
writers had taught the eighteenth century to pride itself on its increasing
mildness, good sense, and humanity. This great drama transformed the whole
meaning of political change, and the contemporary world would be inconceivable
if it had not happened. In other words it transformed men's outlook.
Chapter
Questions on the French Revolution
1.
What seems to have motivated many of the revolutionaries, as revealed by
the demands made prior to the French Revolution and the actions taken during the
revolution?
2.
What factors help explain why this revolution occurred in France, one of
the most prosperous and powerful nations of Europe? What does this explanation
add to the significance of the revolution?
3.
With the advantage of hindsight, what might the monarchy have done to
retain control and minimize revolutionary changes?
4.
In what ways should the French Revolution be considered a middleclass
revolution?