The French Revolution

The French Revolution resulted from the catastrophic failure of absolute monarchy in France. This failure created an opportunity for the Enlightenment to come to life, as it were. With the collapse of the monarchy, the French had an opportunity to reshape politics and society according to Enlightenment principles. Monarchy was replaced with democracy. Privilege was replaced by equality. Tradition was replaced by renovation. Not all went well; fear, confusion, civil and international war followed. But one thing seemed certain, however, and that was that history moved in only one direction.

There were several factors that precipitated the revolution: economic, social and intellectual. The finances of a state are the crucial junction of economic and political life, and it is in the financial crisis of the French state that revolution was born.  In the simplest terms, the French government went bankrupt, and did not hold enough confidence among the people to pull through bankruptcy.  Instead, it was the signal to a great number of French people, including many in the aristocracy and clergy, but especially Parisians, that it was high time the promises of a new society founded upon reason should be fulfilled.

The government's finances were so bad because France had been in 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 and Asia and on 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 simply was not able 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 to exploit.  The king would often resort to forcing new payments or loans from his officers in order to keep their posts, making them poorer and feeling less secure.  Worse, he might invent and sell new privileges, such as the exemption from a particular tax, which would conflict with another privilege granted to someone else, such a tax collector.  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 the economic crisis resulting from poor harvests in 1787 and 1788 and a simultaneous depression of trade.

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 tax privileges, and accused the king of attempting to use his power illegitimately.  So it was the nobility who were the first to attack the absolute monarchy!  To limit the king's authority, they nobles insisted that the King call an Estates General, which according to medieval tradition was the 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 since none had been called since the reign of Henry IV, 173 years earlier!

It was known that the Estates were to meet in three assemblies: the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate--everybody else.  They were to vote by chamber, and two needed to 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. The demand soon arose that the Third Estate should be given at least equal representation and should vote by head to even things out.  Ironically, the most famous pamphlet advocating this position was by the pen of 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.

After the Estates General opened its sessions in May 1789 at Versailles, delegates from the Third Estate responded to the refusal to grant voting by head by declaring itself the National Assembly, the only legitimate government of France, confirmed in a solemn oath at a gathering in the tennis court.  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, recruited a sympathetic Marquis de Lafayette to lead them, 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 new 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 held.  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 a red letter day in the commemorations of the Revolution to this day.  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.

Soon afterwards, 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 we compared with our American Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.  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 to be elected, and the to be paid by the state a generally lower salary.  The vast estates of the Church were to be sold, 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.

A new constitution was approved in 1791 that made France a constitutional monarchy.  It seemed the Revolution might be over.  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 had little real power under the new constitution.  Another dissatisfied party was the king and his supporters.  Louis XVI had no interest in being a figure head (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 forces in exile.  As he reached the border, however, he was recognized through his disguise 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.  The party in power proposed to solidify its own power and the prestige of the revolution by starting a war against the kings of Austria and Prussia, who had called for the restoration of Louis to full power.  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.  The Republic was declared. The King was arrested and eventually tried and executed. The radical phase of the Revolution had begun. 

Cultural Manifestations of Modern Politics

As the French dispensed with the political traditions of the past, they turned to Enlightenment thought to guide them in inventing the political future. Many of these inventions failed to stick. Others have endured. One of the enduring symbols is Lady Liberty, or “Marianne” in France. Here was a representation not of a leader, but of an idea. The earliest statue of liberty was placed on a pedestal in Paris to replace a statue of Louis XV that had been torn down with the declaration of the republic in 1792. In this image the classical Greek and Roman past is evoked. This was natural for those who wished to reject medieval traditions of monarchy and replace them with republican ideas. In the case of Gros’s Allegory of Liberty, we see other classical symbols, such as the fasces, the Roman symbol of republican unity and strength which consists of a bundle of spears or rods bound together by a garland. Instead of the hatchet in the middle representing the power of the leader, Gros inserts a carpenter’s level, indicating equality, the cardinal principle of the Revolution. In Lady Liberty, and in her attendant symbols, we have a visual representation of Enlightenment ideals elaborated by thinkers from Locke to Rousseau.

The effort to reorganize civilization according to reason is perhaps most obvious in a more ambitious, though less successful venture, the Revolutionary calendar. The project here was nothing less than the reordering of human time. There was to be a new counting of the years, starting with year I at the declaration of the Republic. The message was clear. The birth of the Republic was a more important event in human history than the birth of Jesus. The years, months and weeks were also reordered and renamed. There were still to be twelve months, but each month was to be an equal 30 days (the extra days would be put together as a special holiday time at the end of the year). Each month was divided in to three weeks of 10 days. The names of the days would be one, two, three, etc., while the names of the months would be changed to reflect the state of nature in that month. The winter months, for example, were name Snow, Wind and Rain. All these changes indicated the triumph of reason and order over the chaos of tradition, superstition and history. By reflecting the reason of equality, nature and the number 10, the new calendar would promote mental and social order in French life generally. Unfortunately, neither order, reason, nor the calendar would prevail in the end.

The collapse of the French monarchy was taken by the French to be an opportunity to put the Enlightenment in action. A Constitutional monarchy replaced the absolute monarchy, and that was in turn replaced by a Republic. In spite of the failure of the Republic, the institution of equality under the law, first enshrined by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, survived. The French also created new institutions and symbols to create a more rational society. Lady Liberty is an example of the enduring legacy of this effort. In the turmoil of Revolution, however, it proved far more difficult than they expected, and disillusionment with the Revolution led also to disillusionment with the Enlightenment itself.