There could theoretically be two major underlying themes in European history from between 1789 to 1914: the spread and transformation of industrialism in Britain, where it first assumed modern forms, and the spread and transformation of the liberal, democratic ideals for society and politics that were first given practical expression through the American and French revolutions. The political history of the nineteenth century is also closely intertwined with economic changes, since new and newly strengthened economic groups were able to exert pressure on governments. These demands that the rising classes made on their governments were largely derived from the French revolution. The famous slogan, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity may be translated into the language of the nineteenth century as liberalism, socialism and nationalism, which were three political movements that motivated people to take action according to these prevailing beliefs.
The French revolution that later set these forces in motion may be distinguished in four different phases: 1. a liberal phase, from May 1789 to August 1792, during which absolutism was replaced by a constitutional monarchy in which bourgeoisie (the middle classes – businessmen, shopkeepers, small producers, employees, wealthier farmers) managed to abolish the economic and political privileges of the landed aristocracy ; 2. a moderate republican phase, from August 1792 to June 1793, during which a political group known as the Girondins tried to stabilize a bourgeois republic in France and conduct revolutionary war abroad; 3. a radical republican phase, from June 1793 to July 1794, during which a political group called the Jacobins organized France for successful foreign war and tried to establish a Republic of Virtue in France; 4. a prolonged period of reaction and consolidation from July 1794 to 1814. This last period of reaction and consolidation also passed through different phases, including the period of the Directory from 1795 to 1799, then the Consulate from 1799 to 1804, and then Empire from 1804 to 1814, when the more radical aspirations of revolutionary leaders were discarded and the changes that had been made during the first phase of the Revolution were incorporated into more or less stable institutional forms.
Louis XIV left an insurmountable debt that crippled the French economy as a result of his expenditures for constructing the military, fighting wars and building his palace at Versailles. Meanwhile, the whole French social system was based on the idea of privilege. The French nobility received all of the top posts in society on the basis of their birth. They were also exempt from paying taxes, while everyone else had to pay taxes, including a poll tax, a salt tax and a tenth tax and a tax in kind when they had to go work on building roads. Meanwhile, France in the eighteenth century under King Louis XV was rapidly going bankrupt. Every time one of the royal ministers came up with a scheme for increasing revenue by taxing the nobles, the nobles quashed the idea. Meanwhile, France kept going to war, so the national debt worsened.
When Louis XVI inherited the throne in 1774, he also inherited a nation burdened with tremendous debt not only from Louis XIV, but also from the Seven Years’ War. He also inherited a power struggle between the crown and the Parlements that represented the national population. Louis XV’s efforts to raise taxes had been met with resistance from the Parlements, which were regional law courts that enjoyed to right to register royal decrees for their regions at their discretion, and therefore refused to acknowledge them as law enforceable in the courts. These courts increasingly used their powers to frustrate any attempt by Louis XV’s ministers to introduce reforms that might infringe on their rights, and Louis XVI’s efforts were met with the same.
In 1776, Louis XIV tried to increase taxes to fund the Americans’ fight for independence, but his request for new taxation was denied, and so he was forced to borrow money to do so. The debt soared as the government practiced deficit spending and never recovered from the cost of the War of American Independence. Additionally, French farmers experienced two very bad harvests in 1787 and 1789, which caused food prices to rise considerably, and the agricultural depression that started in 1778 caused an economic recession. In addition to bad harvests and food shortages, unemployment rose by 50 percent. Wheat prices doubled, and wage earners had to devote 80 percent of their income to purchase bread. The economic situation also contributed to the tendency of the lay and clerical aristocracy to meeting falling rents by reviving feudal rights and establishing a virtual monopoly of official posts. An emerging middle class of professional and business people was faced with exclusion from public office, in addition to the latter’s grievances against mercantile regulations that limited free trade. Meanwhile, during this time of financial crisis, 50 percent of total expenditure was devoted to servicing the existing debt. One of the reasons this situation ensued was enormous defence costs, including due to a century of war and the recent involved in the American war of independence, which had raised defence costs to 25 percent of the total budget by 1780. Another reason was inadequate revenue. The value of land tax was very much reduced by aristocratic exemption and regional variations with a cumbersome system of indirect taxation. Hence, nothing short of fundamental reform that would mobilize the real capacity of the country could cope with a situation in which expenditure outran revenue by at least 20 percent. The American war of independence and its debt thus broke the financial back of the monarchy.
Louis and his ministers decided to call an assembly of notables in 1787, or a meeting of wealthy and powerful nobles and higher clergymen from around France, and presented a plan for a new tax on their property, but this effort came to nothing. While the monarchy was theoretically absolute, the monarchies edicts could be blocked by the aristocracy acting through the parlements, which claimed the power of ratification or rejection regional law courts, and they refused to pay without an extension of their privileges. This assembly informed that the far-reaching taxation could only be approved by the Estates-General, the legislative body of France, which had not met since 1614. Louis XVI then decreed the new tax, but the parlement in Paris disallowed it. He tried to dismiss the judges of the Paris court, but the public reacted disagreeably with numerous pamphlets that urged government reform, and demanded a revival of the Estates General. Hence, he conceded in August 1788 and called a meeting of the Estates General in 1789 to approve his proposal to raise taxes on the basis of popular support.
Calling the Estates-General caused a stir among the social classes. Everyone looked to the future, perhaps without an absolutist and a future with at least considerable change. Each social group that made up the legal social classes in France called the estates had it own ideas about what needed to be changed and how. The clergy had ideas about church reform, the nobility had ideas about taxation, and the common people had ideas about all kinds of social and political reform.
The clergy, composing a hundred thousand members, composed the first estate. The church, which numbered roughly about 150,000 owned about 10 to 15 percent of the land in France, and were exempt from paying taxes. The second estate, numbering about 350,000, accounted for about 25 to 30 percent of French land while they had hereditary claims to membership because their ancestors were nobles. They were often wealthy because of their holdings of land or because of the right to tax peasants for their own benefit. They also enjoyed tax exemptions. More than 24 million others, everyone who was neither clergy nor nobility, fell into the third estate, regardless of the wealth they may have possessed as part of the growing middle class, or bourgeoisie, with most of the delegates being lawyers and government officials, but wealth at this time was nothing without status. Although the delegates came from different estates, there were a few things that nearly all wanted to see changed. By 1789, the bourgeoisie was especially demanding that all Church, army and government posts be opened to individuals of talent, a parliament that would make all laws for the nation, and a constitution that would limit the king’s powers. This was in stark contrast to the nobility whose only interest was that everyone maintain their place in society.
Meanwhile, the peasantry consisted of at least 21 million individuals who lived in poverty. Most of them rented their land from wealthier peasants who owned 30 to 40 percent of the land or from the nobility, and were victimised by heavy taxation that were necessary to pay for the costs of war. Hence, the peasants paid taxes to the king, taxes to the church, taxes and dues to the lord of the manor, as well as indirect taxes on wine, salt and bread. Moreover, the peasants also owed labour obligations to their lord, and the throughout the 18th century, the price of rent was always increasing, as did the duties sold in markets. The price of bread continued rising, and prices continued to rise faster than wages. The urban poor also lived in poverty, as wages by 1789 increased by 22 percent, while the cost of living increased by 62 percent.
In addition to these reasons that would break out in revolution, there were also other causes. Eighteenth century France was an absolute monarchy since the Hundred Years’ War. There was no Parliament, and the French administered their country through a bureaucracy of officials who had bought and sold their offices. There was no unified system of law, as each region determined its own laws based on the rule of the local Parlements. Meanwhile, the king’s representatives, the intendents, became known for arbitrary abuses of power, such as arbitrary taxation. Financial life was another cause. France by 1789 was bankrupt. The country could no longer pay its debts as a result of many wars ranging back to the late 17th century, while many social groups and institutions, such as the Parlements, cities including Paris, the Church and clergy, and aristocracy and many members of the bourgeoisie and many universities were exempt from taxation. At the same time, the ideas of the philosophes of the Enlightenment helped produce a revolutionary mentality by advocating the use of reason in all human affairs, which could effect change. In addition, the American Revolution served as an example to European observers about what kind of change was possible when tyranny was challenged, a new government could be constructed that could introduce a written constitution. It thus gave proof that a better world was possible if was created by individuals using reason. In the face of unresolved and mounting financial crisis, along with increasingly more frequent and violent public manifestations of discontents, Louis XVI convoked a meeting of the Estates General in July 1788 that was to meet the following year after electing the deputies to prevent the outbreak of a civil war. For the next several months, each Estate drew up a list of grievances, which included calls for a written constitution and an elected Assembly.
When the Estates-General had last met in 1614, the three estates met separately and votes were counted by estate. As a result, the first and second estates often voted 2 to 1 against the third estate, and thereby maintaining power over the commoners. For the 1789 meeting, the third estate’s number of representatives was increased to equal the first and second estates’ delegates combined. This change came by royal decree largely in response to the rather vocal demands of the members of the third estate and pamphleteers who championed the cause, but the estates were still going to meet separately. Although calling representatives of the different elements of society could be considered by the population as being a favour granted to them by the monarchy, there were not any preconditions that were affixed to this meeting, which led to precipitous outcomes.
The Estates-General composed of representatives of each of the estates of the Old Regime met at the Palace of Versailles on 5 May 1789, and there ensued an immediate stalemate over procedure. Each estate had one vote and the first two estates would always protect their interests, which would mean maintaining the status quo with perhaps few modifications. Hence, the nobility argued that the three Estates meet separately in different meeting halls, and vote as individual bodies rather than count individual votes. Since the First and Second Estates were the privileged orders, they would always stand against the Third Estate and outvote them two to one. The Third Estate, seeing the inequity of the situation while also perceiving their superior strength of their numbers, called for each member to have a vote while the Three Estates would meet as one body, rather than the old system of one estate and one vote, which would also assure the Third Estate of a majority vote on their demands. The First and Second Estates were composed of three hundred delegates each, which included liberal minded priests and members of the nobility who were in favour or reducing royal power and the elimination of privilege. The Third Estate consisted of six hundred middle class deputies from the ranks of government officials, lawyers composing 25 percent of the total, merchants, property owners, professionals, as well as commoners who composed 97 percent of the population.
At this point, Louis XVI ordered the old system of voting in the Estates General to remain in place. If the third estate was going to abolish the inequality of the system, they were going to have to do it themselves, along with some of the clergy and nobility who sympathised with a sweeping reform program. Hence, the third estate refused to meet as a separate chamber, demanding that Louis XVI agree that all the estates met as a single assembly. On 10 June 1789, the Third Estate broke the stalemate and invited the First and Second Estates to join them. Several members of the lower echelons of the clergy who were opposed to the power of the prelates, and also members of the nobility led by the Dule of Orleans who chose not to consider the Third Estate members are inferior beings and maintaining their privileges, went to meet with the Third Estate, regardless of choosing to act against their privileges, but the stalemate continued.
On 17 June, the members of the third estate began the French revolution by deciding to call themselves the National Assembly that claimed to truly represent the French people, as was indicated by Abbe Emmanuel Sieyes who had written in the influential pamphlet “What is the Third Estate?” that had led to the number of delegates in the Third Estate being doubled. Such subordination on the part of the Third Estate seemed dangerous to some of the king’s advisors, and on 20 June, the room in which the Third Estate had been meeting was locked and put under military guard. The king’s intention was to call a special meeting of the Estates-General on 22 June to impose how voting would take place, but the delegates of the Third Estate had not been informed of the royal intention.
The Third Estate suspected a conspiracy against them, so they found an indoor tennis court where they could meet, where, led by the Sieyes, they swore the famous Tennis Court Oath, by which they vowed they would not leave until the National Assembly had written a new constitution for France that would limit the power of the government. This marked an important step in the development of the incipient revolution, since the Third Estate’s representatives, which included individual members of the clergy and nobility, had in effect denied the king’s power to dismiss them, and had affirmed their intention of establishing a constitution that would put an end to royal absolutism,.
Louis then ordered the National Assembly on 23 June to disband immediately while refusing to recognise it and maintaining the three orders in the interest of maintaining aristocratic privileges in the interest of maintaining an alignment of support with the privileged nobility, regardless of making certain concessions that the Third Estate demanded, such as establishing autonomous provincial estates and press freedom. The king was faced with a military solution to dissolve the Estates-General by force, and resign the state to bankruptcy. However, the Third Estate refused to comply. In an effort to reach some kind of compromise to maintain public order, the king ordered the three estates on 27 June to meet together, and thus transforming that Estates General into a National Assembly, which gave the supporters of thoroughgoing reform a decisive advantage. This surrender was partly due to the mounting violence in Paris during that summer, when sans-culottes, composed of small workshop masters and workers, were involved in destroying 40 of the 54 city customs barriers and seized weapons. This situation worsened with ongoing economic conditions and radical agitation.
While some members of the first two estates had already done so, the vast majority refused to lower themselves to the same collective body in the interest of maintaining their privileges. The king then changed his mind within days later after vacillating between conservative and liberal advisors at his court, and decided to try to be an absolutist instead. Louis then ordered troops to Versailles, leading the Estates-General to believe he or some of his courtiers were contemplating its forcible dissolution. This suspicion took on new plausibility when the liberally-minded Controller General of Finance who had a positive public image, Jacques Necker, was dismissed on 11 July, and seemed to confirm the rumour of an imminent royalist reaction. This led the people of Paris to establish a makeshift committee calling itself the Commune representing the sections in which Paris had been subdivided for the elections to the Estates General, which then usurped the government of the capital and ordered the citizens to organise a National Guard to protect their liberties and keep order. Tension also remained high while the convocation of the Estates General had aroused hope for much-needed reform, and the price of bread kept soaring. For example, 50 percent of a peasant or urban worker’s income went toward purchasing bread, and by July 1789, this number had risen to 80 percent.
On 14 July 1789, mobs of between eight or nine hundred Parisians descended the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison, believing it housed massive supplies of weapons and gunpowder that could be used to equip the new National Guard that would depend on them to defend the population against the monarchy’s troops. The mob demanded entry, but the governor refused. When the mob tried to force its way in, the guards opened fire and killed almost 98 and wounding 73. The mobs continued until the prison surrendered. They killed some of the guards and the governor, and put the governor’s head on a pike, and then did the same with the mayor of Paris. Law and order continued breaking down while citizens established a city commune and a volunteer National Guard under the Marquis de Lafayette in response to popular violence. The poor in Paris had begun the armed revolution and had effectively taken the city away from the king. Following this precedent for direct popular action, most provincial towns followed the lead in Paris, and National Guard units were established. This violent action frightened the king, who appeared the next day at a meeting of the National Assembly to announce he had reinstated Necker and ordered his troops to leave Versailles.
The chaos did not remain isolated in Paris for long, as the revolutionary establishment of the Commune in Paris was widely imitated in provincial towns and cities in the days and weeks that followed the storming of the Bastille. The old government machine lost its power over many parts of France, and new revolutionary authorities seized control. Peasants in the countryside throughout France also suffering from hunger and high prices rebelled against their feudal lords in June and July 1789. They attacked food convoys on their way to Paris, refused to pay taxes rents and tithes to landlords. By the end of July, they became violent after a rumour had spread that the aristocrats had organised an army to kill peasants. During this time of the “Great Fear,” they burned down their landlords’ houses and destroyed records in which their records of leases and debts were officially written. This form of waging civil war against the vestiges of feudalism in the form of peasant revolts attacking the nobility’s privileges and nullifying their earlier traditional obligations also worked to the advantage of the Parisian reformers and provided the National Assembly with the opportunity to criticise aristocratic privilege and proclaim social equality that had been espoused through Enlightenment ideals.
The National Assembly continued to meet, and when news of these peasant uprisings reached the National Assembly, debate shifted to the question of what should be done about them. On the night of 4-5 August, several members of the Assembly composed produced a document called The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was later issued on 20 August 1789. This was intended as a general statement of political principles that was to compose the basis for a new constitution for a new form of government with a limited hereditary monarchy. They abolished the special rights of the first and second estates. Nobles, clergy and representatives of town corporations met together and resolved to abolish old rights and privileges, and these resolutions were transformed into legislation during the following days in an attempt to achieve what was claimed to be completely abolishing the feudal system. In fact, this was an exaggeration, since while the equality of all ranks of citizens before the law was affirmed, it was also decreed that the peasants should continue to pay tithes to the clergy, and rents to the nobles until the Assembly could decide on some method of redeeming these obligations. Nevertheless, this decision had little effect, since in most localities the peasants continued to destroy the records of their obligations and refused to pay dues and rents that they had previously owed to the noble landowners.
The Assembly formally adopted the Declaration on 26 August, which included Enlightenment ideals, such as liberty, equality, freedom from oppression, freedom of the press, and the right to property, which had been inspired by the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the English Bill of Rights. There would no longer be tax exemptions for the first and second estates. All male citizens had a right to take part in the legislative process and all public offices were open to men of talent. Moreover, the national was declared to be the source of all political authority. The old rights of kings, clergy and nobility were discarded, and the people were elevated to a new dignity as a source of political authority, and the slogan Liberty, Equality, Fraternity came into use as a summation of the new system of government, and it seemed that the enlightened principles that had been taught by the philosophes for more than a generation would finally be put into practice.
When the members of the National Assembly that now came to be called the new “Constituent Assembly” came to translate their revolutionary principles into a constitution, they were careful to restrict the meaning of equality and fraternity while devising a constitution. There was no problem in the minds of the majority about sweeping away old abuses and confusions, and the special legal status of clergy and nobility were abolished, and thus making all citizens equal. However, equality was limited, since they established two classes of citizens: active and passive. Active citizens were those who paid taxes over a certain amount, and they alone could vote and bear arms. A higher property qualification was imposed for legislators and office holders, and a system of indirect election was established to soften the impact of this cautious approach toward democracy.
During the next two years, the Assembly enacted changes that seemed destined to put France on course for becoming the liberal state desired by so many prior to the revolution. While it remained in session during this time, its avowed aim was to establish a constitution for France, but it was frequently distracted from this task by government crises that demanded immediate action, especially financial crises. Tax income decreased during the first few months of the revolution, and the government became insolvent. The Assembly decided to deal with this problem on 2 November by issuing a decree confiscating land belonging to the church in France, and thereby placed the revenues of the church at the disposal of the nation. A paper currency as letters of credit, the assignats, were issued to represent the value of the land that was to be sold and redeem its costs. However, they were issued in sums far exceeding the value of confiscated land, even when the lands of the king and of nobles who had fled from France were also confiscated. As a result, the assignat currency underwent drastic inflation, and eventually became worthless by 1795.
The financial element of the revolutionary government had two important consequences. On one hand, the inflation of currency meant a corresponding rise in prices, which worked hardship on wage earners, especially those who lived in towns and had to buy their food. This acted as a constant goad to the revolutionary ardour of the Paris working classes, who blamed their sufferings on the secret machinations of the enemies of the revolution, and this therefore contributed to making Paris and other great towns to become primary strongholds of radicalism. Another more enduring consequence was the widespread transfer of property that resulted from the extensive collection confiscations and resale of land. A great deal of the land was initially purchased by speculators from the towns, but by degrees was resold to peasant farmers who thus came into full and free possession of most of the land of France. During the years of the revolution, this transfer of property had the important consequence of binding the majority of the peasants to the revolutionary cause, since they feared that a restoration of the old system of government would also mean a restoration of their newly acquired possessions to their former owners.
The local government was also reorganised and decentralised on 11 November 1789 into departments, on the basis of the geographic distribution of the former monarchy and renamed according to the nearest mountains, rivers, districts, cantons and municipalities. All previous subdivisions were eliminated, and new administrative units, the departments, were set up instead as a new system of elected local government. Local judicial organisation with elected judges in a standardized system of courts was introduced, the sale of judicial offices was abolished, citizen-filled juries were introduced, and torture was abolished. The dioceses of the Church were all made to coincide with the new departmental boundaries as the old Parlements were abolished. Weights and measures were standardized, and obstacles to trade, such as customs barriers, guild regulations and monopolies were abolished. Workers unions were also prohibited while reflecting the interests of the middle class in the course of the political reorganisation of the state that was in the hands of the Assembly representatives.
The Assembly intended to create a constitutional monarchy limited by written laws, and forced Louis XVI to accept the new government. The National Assembly eliminated the legal order of the nobility, created uniform districts throughout France of roughly equal size, and introduced a standard system of weights and measures for all of the districts. Its representative members also wanted to reform the church in France, which was seen as a pillar of the old regime, in a series of measures collectively entitled the Civil Constitution of the Clergy that was enacted in July 1790. It extended tolerance to Protestants and Jews, and nationalized the church, confiscating all Church property, which was eventually sold to help fund the government to liquidate the national deficit. They also enacted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which made provisions for bishops and priests to be elected by the people and paid by the state.
Throughout this first phase of the revolution, King Louis XVI had initially remained at the Palace of Versailles and refused to accept any of the pronouncements of the National Assembly. Meanwhile, several hundred Parisians walked twelve miles to Versailles on 5 October 1789 to protest the lack of bread, and at the same time, 20,000 Paris Guards loyal to the revolution joined them. Louis then had no choice but to return to Paris and promise bread, and also approved the 4 August decrees, including the Declaration. From this time onward, the power of the Paris populace over the National Assembly increased, since it became much easier to pack the galleries and organise mass demonstrations when it was close at hand, rather than at Versailles. King Louis’s attitude also went through a decisive change, since he began to feel himself to be a prisoner of the revolution, and all of his initial sympathy for reform vanished, especially since the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was especially repugnant to a devout individual. Moreover, a large proportion of the national population expressed dissatisfaction with the political, legal and land settlements that the Assembly formulated.
Before the 1791 constitution had been completed, Louis XVI and the royal family made an attempt to escape from Paris in disguise on the night of 20 June 1791. However, the king was recognized, the royal coach in which they were travelling was stopped at the village of Varennes, and they were forced to return to Paris. The apparent disloyalty of the king to the new order raised a serious question for the National Assembly representatives, since they were proposing to entrust him with substantial powers, while most of the conservative members of the Assembly would not accept republican principles. Meanwhile, the king had objected to the work of the Constituent Assembly that would limit the monarchy’s earlier prerogatives that would have to be shared with a legislature. The king’s attempt to flee the state broke the earlier consensus among the Assembly, which required the unity of bourgeois representatives to enable making a smooth transition from the old regime to establish a constitutional monarchy. Earlier trust in the monarchy was irrevocably breached, and caused new and sharper divisions among the Assembly representatives.
The Jacobins representatives asserted that the king intended to leave France before returning to lead a foreign army to dissolve the National Assembly and re-establish despotism. It was also considered whether a limited monarchy was possible, or if it was necessary. When the king signified his willingness to accept the constitution, he was taken at his word, and elections were organized under its provisions. When these tasks were completed on 30 September 1791, the Constituent Assembly adjourned, and on the following day, the new Legislative Assembly was convened.
The final act of the Assembly was to draft the Constitution of 1791. With this document, the Assembly dissolved itself on 1 October and created a constitutional monarchy with the legislative assembly of 745 members having the majority of the political power. Males continued to have the same rights and additionally only men over twenty-five years of age who paid taxes could vote. Deputies with a property qualification were to be elected by a limited electorate, or the “active citizens,” while a million and a half “passive citizens did not meet the property qualification and possessed legal rights only. Women were extended some property and divorce rights to women, but not voting rights. Authority was divided central government authority between the legislative assembly and the king. The legislative assembly was assigned control of taxation, the right to impeach ministers or call them to account, and a supreme appellate jurisdiction. It was thus in possession of essential sovereign powers, but it legislative power was limited by a suspensive veto entrusted to the king, who could postpone but not prevent the passage of laws that he did not approve. In addition, the king had the right to choose ministers, to head the executive branch of the government, and appointed diplomats and army officers.
The revolution was effectively over in terms of outward appearances. The king had accepted a drastic reorganization of the French government, nobles and clerics had been reduced to the status of ordinary citizens, the peasants had gained effective emancipation from old manorial obligations, and the middle class had secured a predominant voice in the control of the government. Thus, the most important discontented groups in the French population had more or less achieved their goals, while the inherited complex of inefficient, duplicating and unmanageable political institutions had been swept away, and a logical, simple system of administration had been substituted. There was now equality before the law, careers open to talent, a written constitution, and parliamentary government.
While the king was powerless, he was driven to fall back upon a policy of systemic duplicity – accepting the decisions of the National Assembly in public, while plotting in private to escape from Paris and overthrow the revolutionaries, with the queen Maria Antoinette, who was the sister of Leopold II, the emperor of Austria, not delaying to rely on her brother for support against the revolution. By degrees, Louis was won over to the queen’s point of view, and he too entered into correspondence with many of the leading sovereigns of Europe. He planned to raise an army and crush the revolution, having appealed to Leopold II who promised Louis Austrian troops if Louis could reach Montmédy and mobilize a sizeable French force, and would leave France as a last resort.
Meanwhile, the actions of the National Assembly also failed to satisfy the extremes of the social scale. Members of the aristocracy, including the king and his immediate circle, and the upper clergy had fled from France to neighbouring countries where they planned to stir other European governments and dissatisfied elements in France, including staunchly Catholic peasants who were loyal to the Church and the king, to action against the new order. Far from engaging the attention of other European states, the French revolution until 1791 was regarded as a domestic concern, and prevented France from engaging in continental affairs, while political life appeared to be paralysed by civil strife. At the other extreme in France itself, the working classes of the greater towns, including small shopkeepers, artisans and wage earners, especially in Paris, had little to show for their activity on behalf of the revolution. For example, the Law of La Chapelier that was passed in June 1791 forbade workingmen’s associations in restraint of trade and imposed severe penalties for disturbances of the pace, or even threats of strikes. Moreover, the inflation of the assignat currency brought a rise in prices, and as always, wage earners suffered. By January 1792, the assignat had fallen to 63 percent of its face value, the price of sugar tripled, and grain convoys were attacked while passive citizens composed of the sans culottes and the unemployed looked to the assembly for economic measures to control prices. As a result of economic hardship that gripped the country, the revolution seemed to lose its attraction.
The discontent of the Paris proletariat was in some features shared by the lower middle classes who could not always meet the property qualifications for active citizenship. Their dissatisfaction was given voice and organisation by a number of radical intellectuals and professional men who felt the revolution had stopped short of its goal, and had failed to eliminate the last vestiges of privilege. Republican democracy and a more vigorous suppression of the enemies of the new order were the main elements in the radical program. Among the more prominent radical leaders were Jean Paul Marat (1743-93), a failed doctor turned journalist; Georges Jacques Danton (1759-94), a lawyer and powerful orator; and Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94), another lawyer turned politician.
These and numerous others won prominence during the first two years of the revolution as extreme revolutionaries, and Danton and Marat founded a political club called the Cordeliers in 1790. Robespierre belonged to a similar organisation, the Jacobins Club, which he came to dominate after 1791 when its more conservative members withdrew. These clubs, especially the Jacobins club, created a network of corresponding societies in provincial towns and villages. Itinerant orators and a constant exchange of letters between Paris and these local clubs took on the character of a most effective propaganda machine. By 1791, the population of Paris responded to the exhortations of the Cordeliers and Jacobins spokesmen. When crucial issues arose, the clubs in cooperation with the Paris Commune developed a regular system for calling out the populace for the defence of their liberties. Demonstrations and organized intimidation of members of political groups were systematized, and since the only police force in Paris, the National Guard, sympathized with the revolution, organized crowds had free run of the city whose power could be harnessed by those who had their support.
None of the members of the Constituent Assembly were eligible to be elected in the elections of the new Legislative Assembly in 1791, and the new members who met in October 1791 proved to be more zealous about liberal Enlightenment ideals and more wary of the monarchy. Meanwhile, it faced a highly unstable situation in France and abroad. Sporadic anti-revolutionary outbreaks had begun in France, and the Paris populace was actively discontented, while the king and the émigrés were engaged in treasonable correspondence with the rulers of Austria, Prussia and other states. The Assembly itself was divided into three main sections: the Feuillants, who hoped to keep things as they were and make the constitution a success; the more radical Girondins who favoured only gradual and constitutional changes in government, while the largest group of all were those who belonged to neither organized extreme but shifted back and forth in between. The most radical group was the Jacobins, who called for a centralised republic, extension of the vote to passive citizens, and state economic controls. Led by Robespierre and Danton, they were prepared to ally with the sans-culottes to carry the revolution forward.
At first, the Feuillants were the strongest group, but within a few months, the Girondins had won over the support of a majority of the Legislative Assembly. This was caused by two contributing factors: on several occasions, King Louis used his suspensive veto to prevent acts of the Assembly from becoming law. This raised the suspicion that the king did not really want to make the new government a success, and was merely using his legal powers to sabotage public action. In fact, the attempted escape by the royal family on the night of 20-21 June 1791 had already out them on the same level as the growing tide of émigrés, by then 130,000, who rejected the revolution. Subsequent events practically nullified the validity of the efforts to establish a functioning constitutional monarchy.
When the rest of Europe realized what had happened in France, some nations joined forces to restore the monarchy, as the conservative monarchs were horrified that liberalism had practically removed the French monarch from the throne. Although Louis XVI remained head of state, his power was subject to the constitution and the National Assembly. Fearing that such revolutionary ideas might spread across the continent, and after learning that the attempted escape by Louis XVI had been thwarted, the leaders of Austria and Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz on 27 August 1791 that threatened foreign intervention in French affairs as a result of European princes looked on at the French revolution with fear and hatred, which was further strengthened by the large numbers of French refugees who urged them to wage war on France. The declaration stated that Austria would go to war if and only if all the other major European powers also went to war with France. Leopold chose this wording so that he would not be forced to go to war; he knew William Pitt, the prime minister of Great Britain, did not support war with France. Leopold merely issued the declaration to satisfy the French emigres who had taken refuge in his country and were calling for foreign interference in their homeland. Following Louis XVI having taken an oath of allegiance to the constitution of revolutionary France, calls for immediate foreign intervention were dropped, and Prussia and Austria signed a defensive alliance in Vienna on 20 February 1792, with the express assurance that did not have any intent to interfere in French affairs, while Austria also faced a threat from Russia, which had designs on carrying out its plans in Poland.
Although Leopold’s call for interference in France was meant to intimidate the French and slow the pace of the revolution, it did not have this effect. The National Assembly interpreted the declaration to mean that Leopold was going to declare war. Fear of war after the Varennes incident was rising, with a corresponding widespread sentiment that a preventive war was advisable to protect the post-revolutionary state. The newly elected Assembly thus declared war on the Hapsburg ruler and king of Bohemia and Hungary Francis II on 20 April 1792. Prussia then joined Austria in the First Coalition, who were also aided by 6,000 Hessians and many French refugees. Since it was the Girondins who had most actively advocated war, they were able to profit from the wave of patriotic enthusiasm that swept the nation, while the German states lacked cohesion and uniformity that made France strong, compact and concrete in unified thought, which enabled the revolution to identify itself with the country. German states that were subjected to invasion therefore could not contain even undisciplined French troops, and their social, political and intellectual developments lagged behind those in France. The Prussian military campaigns were also ultimately ruined by financial constraints.
In contrast to countering the First Coalition invasion launched on 25 July, a French invasion of Hapsburg ruled Belgium in an attempt to launch a pre-emptive strike to defend sustaining the revolution resulted in retreats into home territory in August 1792. This fiasco led the people of Paris believe, correctly, that the king and queen were plotting with the nation’s enemies. This was exacerbated by the demands of the so-called sans-culottes (not wearing knee breeches), or the urban poor, who were inflamed by their poverty and insisted that the duty of the government was to guarantee them the right to existence, which ran counter to the bourgeois aspirations of the National Assembly. They demanded that the revolutionary government raise wages, fix prices, end food shortages, and deal with counter-revolutionaries. They also wanted laws to prevent the extremes of wealth and poverty, and a democratic republic in which the voices of commoners could be heard as they were politicised by the Revolution itself while the National Assembly was not prepared to take any further radical measures while maintaining its authority.
An insurrectionary committee led Danton and others organised a rising on the night of 9-10 August 1792 that put an end to the constitutional monarchy, as the Jacobins controlled Paris through their links with the 48 Sectional Assemblies and assumed the leadership of the National Guard. Amidst the panic of the war with Austria and Prussia and fearing counter-revolution, the poor of Paris stormed the king’s palace, where Louis and his family lived, killed several hundred Swiss guards, and then the Legislative Assembly in Paris where the king and queen took refuge. Amid the shouts and threats of the mob, the Assembly was persuaded to suspend the king, abrogate the constitution, and summon a new National Convention to compose an improved instrument of government on a much wider franchise that would elect a new National Convention, and producing a new constitution.
A decree of 10 August established universal suffrage for political elections, while other decrees established it for other elections, while the same electoral assemblies that nominated the members of the Convention also nominated administrators and judges. These measures of suspending the authority of the monarchy and establishing a provisional executive council along with the formation of revolutionary commune brought the end of the bourgeois system, along with establishing democracy through a popular insurrection against Louis XVI that was inspired by patriotic sentiments, as well as induced by the fear of external threats. A newly elected National Convention then voted to dissolve the monarchy, and declared the establishment of a republic.
The National Convention was to take measures “to safeguard the sovereignty of the people, and the reign of liberty and equality.” This new uprising also brought more radical leaders forward. Under their pressure, the Legislative Assembly abolished all payments to pre-revolutionary landlords, giving peasants and other purchasers of land full legal possession. One of the results of the revolution was the complete elimination of the feudal regime. Although it had been theoretically abolished, most of its effects still subsisted. A decree of 25 August declared all landed property was declared free of feudal or manorial obligations, which were abolished without indemnity, unless the original deed of enfeoffment, lease or rent was produced. Since former proprietors became responsible to prove their title to their properties dating back several centuries, which was in fact usually impossible. Another manifestation of the new radicalism was secularisation of marriage, and legalisation of divorce. The break from the past from establishing a bourgeois monarchy was completed on 22 September with establishing an egalitarian republic, which was followed by electing a new National Assembly on 1 October, composed of supporters for the newly established state.
The failure of the constitution of 1791 under the pressure of foreign war, popular unrest and the king’s betrayal and being accused of treason marked the end of the first phase of the French Revolution. However, most of the permanent work of the revolution was accomplished during the tow and half years when the National Assembly held its sessions. Nearly all of the inherited institutions of the Old Regime had been overthrown, and were never restored. The liberal, nationalistic and democratic ideas that were to guide subsequent political innovation had been clearly expressed, even though the particular institutions established by the constitution of 1791 were short-lived. Nevertheless, the achievements and principles of the first phase of the revolution remained, and French troops composing a genuinely national military force of volunteers seeking to defend the gains of the revolution against the previous feudal regime succeeded in defeating First Coalition forces at Valmy in September 1792, and any short term expectations to restore the French monarchy were ended when Louis XVI was executed by guillotine beheading on 21 September. French forces subsequently continued advancing into Belgium and the German states in the interest of spreading the ideals of the revolution, which was proclaimed in a decree on 19 November 1792
What were the immediate causes of the initial outbreak of the French revolution of 1789?
What were the immediate effects after the first phase of its effects?
What were the causes that precluded a consolidation of the immediate change in the new state of affairs?
Dyatic essay I:
1. Students write an individual essay question and a model answer
2. Students exchange questions, write a response, and exchange, and then compare their answers
3. Continue with preparing a cause and/or effect essay on the French revolution of 1789.
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