The French Revolution

 

The October Days, 1789

 

In October, 1789 the French Revolution hung in the balance. There was a stand-off between the Constituent Assembly and King Louis XVI at Versailles about who had ultimate authority. Then a large mob led by women tipped the balance against the king.  The people of Paris had just received the frightening news that king had summoned additional troops to Versailles.  It looked as though he was preparing to crush the Assembly that was meeting there by force and restore his absolute rule. In the meantime, in Paris, terrible bread shortages in the city drove many women from poorer districts to the extremity of assembling at City Hall to demand the distribution of bread supplies.  Some 6,000 women then decided to march armed with pikes to Versailles,  20 miles away, to ask the King and the Assembly directly.  As one woman said on the march, before she was hushed by the others,  "we'll bring back the Queen's head on the end of a sword!"  As they began their march, they were joined by hundreds of men, and regiments of the National Guard, the Paris militia, commanded by Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington's old friend and ally.

 

Not permitted into the palace to see the King, the mob proceeded to the Assembly, where they made their demands for food provisions. Two members of the Assembly joined with 9 women in a delegation to the King.  As the king faced a growing mob still streaming from Paris in the wake of the women's march, he agreed to assure grain supplies to the city, and to approve the legislation passed by the Constituent Assembly, including the "Declaration of the Rights of Man." But for many people this was not enough; they wanted something more tangible than promises.  Early the following morning, a mob of women and men invaded the palace, killing several guards who attempted to stop them, and entered the King and Queen's bedrooms, sending them fleeing.  To quell the riots, the King was forced to appear on the balcony.  The crowd shouted "Long live the King!  The King to Paris!"  The King and Queen, asking for mercy, agreed to be escorted to Paris.

 

The people of Paris had raided Versailles and forced the King out.  He was no longer in his palace or in control of events.  He was a virtual captive of the people and militia of Paris.  The absolute monarchy was ended.  How could the descendant of the magnificent absolute monarch, Louis XIV, have fallen so low, and what was to happen to France after so dramatic a turn of events?
 

The Bankruptcy of France

 

The case of the so-called "October Days" in 1789 illustrates the way in which the Revolution was inspired by both political and economic motives.  The finances of the state were in a disastrous state by 1787, and it was this financial crisis that triggered revolution.  In the simplest terms, the French government went bankrupt, and did not maintain enough confidence among the people to pull through it.  Instead, it was the signal to a great number of French people, including many in the aristocracy and clergy, but especially the middle classes of Paris, that it was high time to reorganize society the basis of reason and equality.

 

The government's finances were so bad because France had waged almost constant warfare with its neighbors during the 18th century, and especially with England.  That did not always mean war in Europe, but often war in America, Asia or the high seas.  Unfortunately for France, they were usually on the losing end.  Their worst loses were Canada and India to Britain in 1764 after the 7-years' war, though they did exact some revenge by helping the American colonies gain independence 19 years later.  But all of this was very expensive, and debts had been mounting for some time. (The British had a similar problem, and their attempts to make the American colonists pay some taxes to defray the costs of defending America against the French and Indians led to the American Revolution).

 

Although France was the richest kingdom in Europe, the king was simply unable to raise enough money to cover his debts because of the inadequacies of his financial system.  As a privilege of their rank, the nobility and clergy, who owned most of the land, were exempt from most taxes.  This was a privilege the monarchs had granted to keep the nobility happy and loyal to the king.  The king was obliged to borrow money from these groups at increasingly higher interest as he asked for more and more.  Another source of revenue for the monarchy was the sale of offices and privileges, but there were only so many of these to offer.  The king would often resort to forcing individuals, companies or towns to give him loans.  The system was not only financially unsound, it was irrational and often socially disruptive.  More and more people, including wealthy and privileged people, had reasons to dislike the French monarchy, and the elaborate system of social privileges it manipulated to its advantage.  These feelings were strengthened by economic crisis as a result of poor harvests in 1787 and 1788, and by a trade depression and rising unemployment in these years.
 

Calling of the Estates General

 

It was apparent to many of the king's financial ministers that the only solution was to rationalize the tax system, stop relying on the sale of privileges, and impose a tax on wealth for all classes of people.  To get approval for such an idea, King Louis XVI called an assembly of the nobility in 1787.  The nobles, however, did not want to lose their no-tax privileges, and accused the king of attempting to use his power illegitimately.  So it was really the nobility who were the first to attack the absolute monarchy.  To limit the king's authority, the nobles insisted that the King call an Estates General, the parliament of France, which according to medieval tradition was the only body with the authority to make such a drastic change in policy.  The king reluctantly agreed to do so, though no one was quite sure how the Estates General was supposed to work, because it had not been assembled since the reign of Henry IV, 173 years earlier!

 

The Estates General was the simultaneous meeting of the three estates of France in their separate gatherings: the clergy, the nobility, and the "Third Estate," that is, everybody else.  Each estate was to vote separately, and two must agree to pass legislation.  That meant that a tiny elite of the nobility and clergy could always out-vote the vast majority of the French people. Representatives of the Third Estate decided this was not fair, and insisted they should be given at least equal representation and should vote by head, rather than by house, to even things out.  Ironically, the most famous pamphlet advocating this position was penned by a clergyman, the Abbe Sieyes, who was obviously more persuaded by Rousseau's enthusiasm for democratic equality than his own class interest.  The king granted the doubling of the Third Estate from 300 to 600 representatives, but did not approve voting by head.
 

 Conflict of King and Assembly

 

After the Estates General opened its sessions in May 1789 at Versailles, delegates from the Third Estate responded to the rejection of their demands by declaring itself the National Assembly, the only legitimate government of France.  When the King responded to this revolt by augmenting his troops in and around Versailles and Paris, the people of Paris rose up to defend the Assembly (now called the Constituent Assembly after the representatives of the nobility and clergy joined it).  They formed their own militia, called the National Guard, led by the liberal aristocrate Marquis de Lafeyette, and adopted  red and blue (the official colors of Paris) with white (the official color of the Bourbon dynasty) to create the tricolor flag as the symbol of the revolution.  The newly-formed National Guard set about to arm itself.  One major stash of arms was in the fortress prison, the Bastille, where Voltaire, among many others had once been imprisoned.  Although most of the King's troops had withdrawn when fights broke out that July, the commander of the Bastille refused to surrender.  When the garrison at the Bastille fired upon, and killed many in the crowd attempting to enter, the Parisians responded by rolling up some captured cannons, blowing a hole in the fortress, and storming it.  The commander and guards were summarily executed.  July 14--Bastille Day--is now the revolutionary holiday. On that day the people defeated the king.  That initial defeat was to be repeated with more far-reaching consequences with the October march on Versailles.
 

Declaration of Rights and Reorganization of the Church

 

In the meantime, the Constituent Assembly passed significant legislation.  In August it abolished the feudal privileges of the noble landlords, partly to quell a great uprising of peasants that summer.  That same month, it adopted the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," which proclaimed a society based upon liberty and equality under the law. After the King had been forced by the October mob to approve these radical measures, the Assembly proceeded the following summer to take its most fateful step.  It abolished the privileges of the Catholic Church, and reorganized it as a part of the French government.  The number of bishops was reduced, and all the clergy were selected by the Assembly, and paid by the state a generally lower salary.  Much of the vast estates of the Church were sold off, and the proceeds used to pay the enormous national debt. Many new landowners were thus created by the revolution, but so to was the undying hatred of most devout Catholics, particularly in the outlying provinces of France. The revolution and religion were to be enemies ever after.
 

War and the radicalization of the Revolution

 

A new constitution was approved in 1791 that made France a constitutional monarchy.  It seemed the revolution might be complete, but important factions were not satisfied.  One was the radicals, especially the political party called Jacobins, who didn't want a king at all, even though the king now had little real power.  Another dissatisfied party was the king and his supporters.  Louis XVI had no interest in being a figurehead (even though that is what he was intellectually most suited for), and in June 1791, he and his family made a dramatic late-night attempt to escape from France in order to rally his  counter-revolutionary forces in exile.  As he reached the border, however, he was recognized and arrested by National Guardsmen and brought back to Paris.  The king could not be trusted.  What was to be done with him?

 

The moderates attempted to ignore the King's treachery and installed him once again as the formal head of state.  Meanwhile the majority moderate party hoped to secure its power and the revolution by starting a war against the kings of Austria and Prussia, who had called for the overthrow of the revolution.  These countries had become the home in exile for many French aristocrats and clergymen who clearly hoped to destroy the revolution.  King Louis actually supported the policy of war.  He secretly hoped the French would lose, and the revolution be destroyed.  War was declared against Austria in April 1792, and at first the French lost battles.  The crisis inspired the Paris mob to raid the Assembly in Paris, joined by a revolutionary militia from the city of Marseilles--whose favorite song, the Marseillaise, became the anthem of the revolution-- to demand the arrest of King Louis and the abolition of the monarchy.  Mobs of common people, the so-called "sans-culottes" (meaning "without silk stockings") arrested and killed hundreds of suspected traitors.  At the end of the 1792, the radical Jacobins, and others sympathetic to the cause of absolute equality, condemned the King to death. (He was guillotined in January 1793).  Now the revolutionaries were regicides (king killers) as well as despoilers of the Church.

 

The common people, tasting new-found power, would no longer simply obey this the official government assembly.  The Paris sans-culottes, in overthrowing the Assembly and arresting the king, had demonstrated the principle of the sovereignty of the people.  This direct authority of the people was their primary objective, which they believed with some justice was under attack from aristocratic plotters both inside and outside the country.  When the French armies suffered more defeats in April 1793, and the commanding general (an aristocrat, of course) defected to the anti-revolutionaries, the people once again raided the Convention, and demanded the arrest of the most conservative members (called Girondins) as traitors to freedom.
 

Robespierre and the Terror

 

With only radical republicans left in the Convention, a leader of the Jacobins, Maximilien Robespierre, ascended by force of his political skill and oratory to take charge of events.  In various provincial cities, and especially in the west of France, Robespierre and the Convention faced open rebellion, as well as the continuing war with Austria and Prussia.  The revolt of peasants and artisans in the west of France was partly inspired by economic hardship, and partly by sympathy with Catholicism.  Governing with dictatorial powers, Robespierre declared that all able-bodied citizens were drafted into the revolutionary army to fight against both internal and external enemies.  He declared that terror must be the order of the day--terror, that is, against the enemies of freedom.  A long list of suspected traitors to equality and freedom was drawn up, and the uprisings against the Jacobin government brutally suppressed.  Perhaps 200,000 people may have died in massacres of rebels, while nearly 20,000 were guillotined, including Queen Marie Antoinette.

 

To please the Paris sans-culottes, Robespierre also imposed price controls, but he drew the line on atheism.  He had the leader of the super-radical atheists--who advocated killing all priests--condemned and put to death.  Likewise, when many in his own party began to call for an end of government by terror, notably Jacques Danton, they too were condemned and executed.  It seemed that Robespierre could only govern by killing.  Even those close to him feared that matters were out of hand.  As the French armies succeeded at home and abroad, the methods of terror seemed less necessary, and a group of Jacobins plotted to have Robespierre himself arrested and guillotined.
 

The Directory

 

With the death of Robespierre, there was a tremendous wave of relief in France, and a great reaction against the radicalism he represented.  The Convention acted to curtail the Paris mob, and passed a new constitution that greatly reduced the numbers of people eligible to vote. With only wealthier members of society now voting, the new legislature, made up of two Councils and a five-man "Directory" became increasingly conservative in the following years.  Most Frenchmen were convinced that revolutionary ideas were dangerous, and that a weak government was at least one way to prevent the excesses of egalitarian terrorism.  By 1797, the limited electorate was actually voting in majorities favoring the restoration of the monarchy.  With the collapse of the revolutionary enthusiasm among the common people, the revolution was nearing collapse.  On the other hand, few were really enthusiastic about a return to the bad old days before the revolution.  Many thousands had become well-established landowners thanks to the sale of church land.  They did not want a return to the past, although they certainly were not interested in radical egalitarianism either.  Monarchists (those who favored the restoration of the monarchy) were themselves split over what kind of monarchy to have.  Should it be a return to absolute monarchy of the past, or to a moderate, constitutional monarchy like that in England?  Louis XVI's brother, Louis XVIII, living in exile, declared that he wanted a complete restoration of absolute monarchy, which made compromise among the monarchist factions impossible.

 

The Revolution had ended in political confusion and disillusionment.  And it had left France in a state of war.  Somehow it had to pull itself out of this mess, but how? The answer was to find a national hero everyone could rally around. His name was Napoleon.