The French
Revolution
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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'état.
Historians are fascinated by revolutions, for change is
unusually rapid and dramatic. They are particularly interested in the causes of
revolutions. In this section, 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 enflammé 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
Eighteenth-Century 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 eighteenth-century 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; how 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
émigrès.
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 censorship 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 interpretation of 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-economic 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 on the classical view; this, "exclusivism" is so important for 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 from 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 many 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 agree 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 stood for much, most of the promises made probably have come about anyway. In the following selection William Doyle attempts to strike a balance between what was and was not accomplished by the revolution.
Consider: How Doyle determines what changes would in all probability have come 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 de-christianization 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 sans culotte
movement? it certainly transformed and widened out of all recognition the cause
of parliamentary reform in England-although the blood-stained figure of the sans
culotte 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.
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?