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.