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REVOLUTION
How a peasant protest toppled France’s ruling elite
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CONTENTS From the storming of the Bastille to the Terror and beyond, explore the events that changed the course of history
8 L ouis XVI & the Revolution
52 The March on Versailles
18 Origins of the French Revolution
54 The Attack on Clergy
26 The Legacy of Louis XIV
56 Civil War in the Provinces
28 Louis XV & the Debilitation of France
58 The EmigrĂŠs
30 The Enlightenment & the Philosophes 32 Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette 34 Warnings of Trouble 38 The EstatesGeneral & the Rights of Man 42 The Tennis Court Oath 48 The Storming of the Bastille
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62 The King’s Flight to Varennes 70 The Descent of the Revolution 74 War is Declared 76 The Convention: Danton, Marat & Robespierre Arrive 80 The Executions of Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette 86 War on Three Fronts 90 Valmy
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98 The Vendée Rising 102 Economic Crises 104 The Terror 108 Innovations 112 Thermidor: The End of the Terror 114 A “Whiff of Grapeshot”: Napoleon Arrives
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120 The Collapse of the Economy: The Directory 124 Style of Life 130 The Aftermath of the Revolution 132 The Legacy of the Revolution 136 What if… Louis XVI had survived? 140 Chronology 142 Credits
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The Enlightenment & the Philosophes An unprecedented period of radical thought set the stage for the French Revolution
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ehind the deceptive banter of la fête galante, with its imagery of privilege and pleasure, there was serious intellectual ferment in France acting unseen to accompany the misery of the many. The rot started back in the age of Louis XIV, when the absolutist tendencies of the Ancien Régime came under assault both from the devastating wit of Voltaire (1694–1778) and the magisterial logic of Charles de Montesquieu (1689–1755), who commented that “Justice is eternal and does not depend on human conventions”. Both were dead well before the Revolution. So, too, was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), who, more than any other individual, was to set the moral and social tone of the revolutionaries. All three played essential roles in the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment, a movement that affected England just as much as it did France, and all fell foul of the French authorities. The sceptical thinking of these philosophes – and of others such as Diderot – was disseminated to the widest public by the remarkable (and also immensely profitable)
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Encyclopédie, which gained a readership right across the literate classes in France. Though as individuals they differed greatly from one another, their net impact seriously undermined all the assumptions and beliefs that lay at the foundations of French society. The message of the philosophes was based on reason as opposed to faith; by extension, they questioned the validity of the existing order and the divine right of kings. They also provided a fountainhead for anticlericalism. Though they were wedded to thought rather than action, and none played any part in public affairs, between 1750 and 1770 the gentle reasoning of the philosophes and encyclopédistes had a profound effect throughout France, while their discrediting of the Ancien Régime in all its facets did much to prepare the ground for the revolution of 1789. Since the days of Louis XIV, the press in France had grown immeasurably in strength and in virulence; between 1745 and 1785 alone, the number of periodicals had risen from 15 to 82. The lifting of
above centre: The Enlightenment writer François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, whose defence of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial, influenced the instigators of the Revolution. Above Top: This eighteenth-century print depicts the hysteria induced by the increasingly powerful press.
The Enlightenment & the Philosophes censorship in 1788 created a sense that every citizen had a right to say how the government should operate. Pamphlets, of ever-increasing scurrility, found an ever-wider market. As the perceptive English visitor Arthur Young wrote at the time, “The business going forward in the pamphlet shops of Paris is incredible.” As a group, the women of France became a factor in the pre-revolutionary ferment. In no other country did bourgeois and upper-class women wield so much power and influence. Their star had been ascendant ever since the last century, when a courtesan like Ninon de Lenclos could reject even a royal summons to Versailles. The Scottish philosopher David Hume despaired at how France “… gravely exalts those … whose inferiority and infirmities are absolutely incurable …” and the Englishman Joseph Addison was similarly horrified, asserting that Frenchwomen were “… more awaken’d than is consistent either with virtue or discretion”. In contrast, the morality of the women of the working class was mostly based on concepts of “purity”. This attitude was not mirrored by their husbands, or by those middle- and upper-class
women Addison and Hume railed against. At both the top and bottom of the social ladder, however, women played important roles as opinion makers, even as a branch of the media. Visitors from the United States were often shocked by the gossip and intrigue endemic to the Parisian salons, such as those of Madame Necker and Madame de Stael, “the upper regions of wit and graces”. Indeed, Gouverneur Morris, a visiting American, was so impressed upon by the ferocity of the salon women that he gently chided Louis XIV for his “uncharacteristic chastity”.
Denis Diderot (1713–84)
Born in the city of Langues in eastern France, the highly intelligent Diderot was disowned by his father when he refused to enter either the clergy or the legal profession and instead decided to write. Moving to Paris, he began translating academic works into French, but when approached by the publisher André le Breton to translate Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, he persuaded Breton to develop it into something very different – L’Encyclopédie, a multivolume work that would gather together all the radical new ideas and knowledge of the philosophes and others. He was himself hailed as an original thinker with the publication of such works as Lettre sur les aveugles (Letter on the Blind), for which he was thrown into prison by the authorities, and Pensées Philosophiques (Philosophical Thoughts). A noted art critic as well, he made little money from his writing, eventually having to rely on a salary from Catherine the Great of Russia, who bought his library when he needed a dowry for his daughter.
LEFT: Promenade at Longchamp by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. La fête galante style belied the growing political unrest in prerevolutionary France. Above inset: The opening page of the famous Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot, whose writings also included Regrets on Parting with my Old Dressing Gown, which detailed the causes and symptoms of excessive consumerism.
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The Attack on Clergy As the national situation worsened, attentions turned to the Church
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ut how was the Revolution to pay for itself? The national debt had now reached uncontrollable levels. Endeavouring to be meticulous in paying off Louis’s commitments, the Assembly found that compensation for “purchased” offices which had been suppressed alone came to £25–30 million, while the debts that had been run up by the navy ran to over a year’s normal expenditure. In acts of extraordinary, spontaneous generosity and self-sacrifice, women led the way, donating their jewellery. Nuns in Versailles sent in their silver; a marquise her earrings. Men donated their silver shoe-buckles; Louis himself gave up the royal table silver. But these contributions were mere drops in the ocean. Like England’s Henry VIII, and earlier French kings in need of cash, the Assembly now turned towards the Church. On 3 November, it made the
Charles-Maurice de TalleyrandPérigord (1754–1838)
Though unique in himself, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord also typified the upper-crust, dissolute clergy who had rendered the Church unpopular with many French. He was dedicated to the pursuit of women and the lifestyle of the rich. In 1789, he quit the Church as Bishop of Autun to join the Third Estate, and as revolution became more ferocious he took off to London in 1792, then to the United States, returning to France in 1796 on the advent of Napoleon. He became France’s most legendary manipulator of foreign affairs – and an astonishing survivor of regime change.
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decision to secularize the Church’s vast estates and to suppress the monasteries and seize their enormous wealth. One of the principal proponents of the policy was former Bishop Talleyrand – who calculated the value of Church properties at nearly two billion livres (1 livre = approximately £560 or €725 in 2008 terms). As it became apparent just how much wealth the Church possessed, so anger and hatred against it swelled. There were scenes of great brutality against the clergy throughout France, and in Paris’s StAntoine area even nuns were reported to have been whipped. All of the Church’s privileges and its autonomy were stripped away, in one of the most momentous moves of the Revolution; as well as the dissolution of the monasteries, tithes were completely abolished. The Assembly issued “assignats” – a form of promissory note – against former ecclesiastical property, but these rapidly multiplied in number and became worthless. The Pope, infuriated by such measures, threatened the Assembly with excommunication.
The Assembly responded in July 1790 with its Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which demanded that the clergy swear an oath of obedience to “the King, the Law and the Nation”. Under it, all priests and bishops alike would be elected by “the people”. It meant the Church breaking with the monarchy. At the same time, they were threatened with loss of their voting rights as “active citizens” if they refused to swear. Robespierre made a long and powerful speech to the Assembly, declaring that any aspect of the Church which was not “useful” would have to go; this included even cathedrals as well as bishops. The large majority of bishops, as well as many parish priests, refused to take the oath. The French Church now found itself split between “constitutionalists” and “dissidents”, a division that would split the nation dangerously in two, powerfully reinforcing the conservative opponents of the Revolution. It would be perpetuated subsequently in the Republican structure of France. As tension between
above: In this lewd cartoon, a churchman is given an enema to relieve him of his wealth, showing the level of ridicule to which the clergy were subjected. LEFT: A monk, representing the Church, is told to render his wealth to the nation. RIGHT: A lengthy procession of homeless nuns, monks and priests, complete with wagons and standards, is shown leaving Church property.
The Attack on Clergy
Assignats The assignats, interest bonds secured on Church property, which totalled 400 million livres at their issue in February 1790, were at first a great success. Business boomed, the State’s debts were paid off and there was a general feeling of prosperity. Then prices began to rise. The assignats became in effect paper money, bearing no interest. Yet in September of the same year, a second issue of assignats was made, twice as big as the first. Inflation then began to bite harder, and by April 1792 there had been five issues. Inflation soared, destroying the savings of the prudent bourgeois. Assignats were to become yet another source of the rage that pervaded the Revolution.
the two camps flared and attacks on Church property grew in number, a state of near civil war took hold in the provinces. Throughout 1790, however, things seemed strangely normal in Paris. Fashionable ladies sported “Liberty” hats and “Constitution” jewellery, while the gossip in the smart salons resolutely refused to dwell on the ominous developments in the provinces. Some tradesmen were hurt by the decline in prosperous customers from the countryside, but on the other hand the printers at least flourished, enriched by the never-ending stream of pamphlets and tracts to which the Revolution gave rise. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Assembly’s work continued unabated. Though it was still driven by the middle classes, Mirabeau saw the danger that things would get out of hand, perceptively noting that, “When you undertake to run a revolution, the difficulty is not to make it go – it is to hold it in check”. Similarly, the acute American observer, Gouverneur Morris, predicted as 1790 began that the “new order of things cannot endure … the present set (of leaders) must wear out in the course of the year”.
“All of the Church’s privileges and its autonomy were stripped away, in one of the most momentous moves of the Revolution”
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The Descent of the Revolution
With tensions mounting, the Revolution increasingly moved towards extremist action
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ith the escape and recapture of the royal family, France’s relentless descent into the revolutionary abyss, towards extremism and ferocity without limit, proceeded with ever-quickening pace. A warning of the mounting storm came on 17 July, only three days after the joyously celebrated first anniversary of the Bastille – and in the very location of its focus, the Champ de Mars. The sans-culottes held a mild demonstration there, intent on petitioning for better conditions of work. But the Assembly was in no mind to make concessions. Trouble was sparked when a couple of supposed spies – or peeping Toms – were dragged out from behind an “altar of liberty” and summarily lynched. Lafayette persuaded the authorities to proclaim martial law and sent in the National Guard, who fired ruthlessly on the unarmed demonstrators, killing a score or more. The increasingly powerful Jacobins, many of whom, like Desmoulins and Danton, were forced into hiding, were quick to vigorously condemn the Champ de Mars massacre. On 14 September, the now powerless Louis signed the new constitution. Nominally it preserved the monarchy, but swept aside many
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of the revolutionary principles of liberty and equality: there were restrictions on the franchise, and public censorship was retained. Deeming its work complete, the Assemblée Constituante then wound itself up. Its successor, the new Assemblée Législative, was established on 1 October 1791. As “dark forces” emerged to replace Mirabeau and his moderates, so the political struggle within the new Assembly became increasingly polarized, with the balance moving constantly towards the radical left. Temporarily, power resided in the feeble hands of a “Triumvirate” of Antoine Barnave, Adrien Duport de Prelaville and Alexandre de Lameth. They were men who (despite their noble-sounding names) had led the left in 1789. Barnave tried, unsuccessfully, to put a brake on the Revolution’s more punitive proscriptions against the Church, which were causing an increasingly bitter religious schism, especially in the southern provinces. Aware that dethronement of the King would be likely to provoke foreign intervention – thereby displaying an unusual degree of realism – the Triumvirate endeavoured to come up with a compromise, pronouncing that, on his excursion to Varennes, the King had been “kidnapped”. This
above: Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud, a Girondin deputy in the Assembly. Below: Bloodbath on the Champ de Mars, 17 July 1791. The military under Lafayette suppress the republican demonstration.
The Descent of the Revolution
The Montagne and the Montagnards
The Montagnards acquired their name from the habit of their deputies in the Assembly of sitting on the highest benches (“the mountain”). They were extremists and radical Jacobins who spoke up for the Parisian sans-culottes; from their elevated vantage point, they were able to shout down the moderates – like the Girondins – on the lower benches of the Assembly. After a demonstration sponsored by the Girondins broke violently into the Tuileries in June 1792, the Girondin ministers were dismissed and the Montagnards seized power. But they, in turn, were replaced as the radical wing of the Revolution by the Jacobins, the Cordeliers and ultimately by the purveyors of the Terror. Above: Federation is proclaimed in the Champ de Mars, Paris, in 1790. As a gesture of national unity, it was declared in similar fashion in a number of other major cities throughout the country. right: A watercolour of the National Assembly in session, by Louis-Joseph Masquelier.
fudging of the truth only aroused further fury on the left. In the new Assembly, the dominant factions were increasingly replaced by more extreme groups; the monarchist Feuillants were supplanted by the Girondins. Among the latter’s numbers was PierreVicturnien Vergniaud, the man best known for his likening of the Revolution to Saturn, consuming its own children. The Girondin leader was 37-year-old JacquesPierre Brissot, who, like his enemy Robespierre, had grown up under the influence of Rousseau. A journalist and expert on foreign affairs, Brissot sold the Assembly the notion that a “limited war” would force the King to accept political defeat. He believed – like Trotsky under Lenin’s Bolsheviks – in universal revolution, and that the revolutionary armies would be welcomed as liberators in countries like Germany. Brissot also thought that external war would solve all internal problems. It was an old recipe, and one which would be resorted to by subsequent rulers of France. On 20 April 1792, the Brissotin-led Assembly, following an unacceptable ultimatum which demanded action against the émigrés, took the dramatic step of declaring war on Austria. Prussia rallied to Austria’s side. The increasingly radicalized politics of the Revolution had finally provoked open warfare with France’s neighbours.
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would be in a much better defensive position behind the river, insisted Kellermann. Since Dumouriez was not his superior, Kellermann was free to do as he saw best, so issued orders for the majority of his troops to cross the Auve in the morning. A thick fog blanketed the hills and valleys of western Lorraine on the morning of 20 September. The prince of Hohenlohe, whose troops had joined the Prussian main body, led the advance south at 6am. Hohenlohe’s troops were needed for the approaching battle to maintain the fighting strength of the Prussian army. Many of Brunswick’s troops had succumbed to dysentery as a result of unsanitary campsites. A French battery opened fire on the Prussian Advanced Guard as it pushed south along the Heights of La Lune. Hohenlohe ordered a Prussian battery to engage it. When Kellermann heard the cannonading to his west, he countermanded his order to deploy south of the Auve. He decided the best option was to deploy west of Valmy as Dumouriez had suggested. Because of this, Kellermann’s Army of the Centre would bear the brunt of the fighting that day, and Dumouriez would feed reinforcements to him as needed. Kellermann instructed General Etienne DesprezCrassier, who commanded the advanced guard of the Army of the Centre, to take up a position on the north side of the Chalons Road at Orbeval, 1.5 kilometres east of La Lune. He ordered General JeanBaptiste Valence, who commanded the Army of the Centre’s reserve, to extend the French line south of the Chalons Road to the Auve River. While these troops were marching to the sound of the firing, at 7am Kellermann led the main body of his army across the fields towards a low hill west of Valmy, topped by a windmill. Although the French could hear the Prussians and vice versa, the landscape remained engulfed in fog, which prevented the opposing lines from seeing each other. Hohenlohe’s Advanced Guard had been reinforced with additional batteries, and he had most of the Prussian guns under his direct command that morning. While Prussian and French troops skirmished at La Lune, Hohenlohe ordered six batteries to unlimber their guns on the Heights of La Lune. When the fog burned off later in the day, the battlefield of Valmy would prove itself to be an artillerist’s dream. From their positions atop low below: A French postage
stamp commemorating the battle, from 1971.
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Cannon Duel in Lorraine
The field of Valmy was an artillerist’s dream, for the gunners enjoyed clear, uninterrupted fields of fire. In the day-long cannon contest, the French prevailed because of superior equipment and marksmanship
07 French artillery triumphs The Prussian infantry attempts to advance twice, but both times its lines become disordered under the blistering fire of the French guns and are forced to halt and reform.
04 Prussian bombardment The Prussians deploy all of their guns in the hope that the French volunteers will not be able to endure the thunderous shelling.
03 Opening clash The Prussian vanguard captures the French outpost at the Inn of La Lune, which expands the field of fire for its artillery.
02 Blocking position General Francois Kellermann and the Marquis of Beurnonville arrive on 19 September with reinforcements. Kellermann blocks the Verdun-Chalons Road, forcing the Prussians to attack if they wish to shorten their supply line to Germany.
Valmy
08 french grit The French infantry stands firm under the day-long Prussian bombardment. The French victory is a combination of revolutionary fervour, skilled handling of artillery and exemplary leadership by the commanding generals.
06 Disappointing results Unable to dislodge Kellermann’s troops on the windmill hill, the Prussian guns in mid-afternoon turn their attention to Mount Yron.
01 Waiting game French General Charles Francois Dumouriez deploys his Army of the North on 16 September. It assembles in a semicircle with its back to the Argonne Forest to await reinforcements.
Š Rocio Espin
05 French counter fire Kellermann masses his artillery on the windmill hill despite direct hits on its ammunition stores. Although the French have fewer guns, their gunners are more skilled than their Prussian counterparts.
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Style of Life Away from politics and war, the Revolution’s impact on everyday life was no less profound
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he aim of the revolutionaries had primarily been to gain equality of rights, not necessarily economic parity with the rich aristocrats that they had overthrown. As the Revolution reached its height during the Terror of 1793–4, so the main focus remained on the establishment of a society where each citizen was treated the same. The sans-culottes waged a war against anything or anyone considered counterrevolutionary. With their fervour, demonstrated in songs and dances such as the carmagnole, together with the tricoteuses, who sat knitting while the aristos and other enemies of the new Republic were led to the scaffold, they adhered to Robespierre’s insistence that “Republican enthusiasm” should be “exalted by all means possible”. Under the imminent threat of the guillotine or violent death in a variety of other guises, it is little wonder that people went in fear of their lives, doing their utmost to convince the new authorities of their worthiness to be awarded a “certificate of citizenship” that would permit them to work. Those who supported the Revolution wore the cockade of blue, red and white, most often attached to the bonnet rouge (red cap) – or “cap of liberty”, as it was also known. Indeed, the wearing of the cockade became compulsory in 1792 and mementoes of the Revolution, in the form of clothing items, mugs, plates and furniture painted in the tricouleur colours abounded.
Restaurants
One of the big social changes in Paris after the Revolution was the proliferation of restaurants and bistros. Under the austerity regime of the Revolution, many cafés had disappeared. Now, with the execution or bankruptcy of their aristocratic employers, large numbers of qualified French chefs found themselves unemployed. Hence they opened up restaurants, providing a new style to Parisian life – and world gastronomy. One such was the Grand Véfour, just off the Palais Royal, frequented by Napoleon and Josephine – there being no regular dining room in their residence, the restored Tuileries, where the late monarchs had spent their last days of freedom. It is still in three-star business today. By 1798, some 2,000 restaurants were listed in Paris alone.
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Although the principles of the Enlightenment seemed a distant dream, they had inspired some practical changes: the ideas of returning to classical civilization for inspiration could be seen reflected in the schemes to regenerate a damaged Lille, and the literary rules of the Academie Française, the body charged since 1635 with the promotion of the French language and the protection of its purity, were abolished. Though little of value was produced, there was more creative freedom in the arts, as exemplified by the artist David, who favoured a
“There was liberty for many, and a new equality, but very little fraternité, except perhaps among those incarcerated” more heroic approach to his subjects, a latitude which inevitably led to the romantic period of the late 1790s and early 1800s. There was liberty for many, and a new equality, but very little fraternité (brotherly love), except perhaps among those incarcerated in the prisons awaiting execution; in the early days of the Revolution, even in the jail cells there had existed a kind of gaiety among the condemned aristos, many of whom conducted sexual affairs on the eve of execution. If anyone benefited economically from the Revolution, it was the bourgeoisie, but more particularly those who had managed to acquire land, buying up Church property made available by the State after its sequestration. A change came about after the death of Robespierre and the end of the Terror in 1794. As the young Napoleon Bonaparte noted in 1795 in a letter to his brother, Joseph: “Everyone appears determined to make up for what they have suffered … determined, too, because of an uncertain future, not to miss a single pleasure of the present.” A different spirit pervaded, perhaps one similar to that of Paris after the Occupation of 1940–4. The radical revolutionaries were derided by the new wave of gilded youth. Paris was gripped by a need to revolt against the grim viciousness and severe austerity of the early 1790s. The “wonderful women”
Style of Life Left inset: Alphonse
de Lamartine, the poet.
Below: The galleries of the Palais Royal, a venue no longer for riots but for dalliance with a fashionable courtesan.
(merveilleuses) appeared in gossamer-thin muslin dresses, inspired by classical Greek forms, which left nothing to the imagination – one noted lady even went topless, while the muscadins were noted for their “uniform” of tight coat, knee breeches, ribbons, monocles and musk perfume, whence came their name. Odd though they may have appeared, they also carried heavy clubs that they used to beat up “terrorists” or those who had abused their executive power. Courtesans returned to the capital and frequented the Palais Royal, which had been such a hotbed of revolutionary zeal, and dances came back into fashion, with ever wilder and more lascivious balls being held that opened the way for a far more permissive society – and then the inevitable backlash of a public morality campaign in 1796. While in one sense a kind of normality returned under the government of the Directory, inflation remained high, worsening the lot of the already impoverished poor. The Bourse (the French Stock Exchange) had also reopened in March 1795, but it was a society of economic and social extremes which Napoleon inherited when he seized power in 1799.
Arts and Letters
Arts and letters did not flourish under the repressive revolutionary regimes, nor later under Napoleon. In an age when England was producing great artists like Constable and Turner and the romantic poets, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron, France’s output was impoverished. Typical was the fate of André Chénier, an outstanding poet and precursor of the Romantic Age, who was executed for “crimes against the state” in July 1794. Between him and Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869), who only made his literary career under the Restoration, the Oxford Book of French Poetry has to offer just three minor poets, Bereanger, Millevoye and Valmore. In music, too, little was produced – except for the world’s most stirring national anthem. Among painters of the age, however, few approached the stature of the regicide Jacques-Louis David.
FAR Left: The tricoteuses of the guillotine
BELOW: The artist Jacques-Louis David was also active in the Revolution.
on the steps of the Church of St-Roch, 16 October 1793.
left: A young Parisian dressed in the muscadin style, foppish and musk-scented.
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BELOW: A Phrygian cap with a red, white and blue cockade dating from the period of the Revolution.
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