The proof necessary to convict the enemies of the
people is every kind of evidence, either material or moral or verbal or
written. . . . Every citizen has the right to seize conspirators and
counter-revolutionaries and to arraign them before magistrates. He is
required to denounce them when he knows of them.

Law of 22 Prairial Year II (June 10, 1794)
Inflamed by their poverty and hatred of wealth, the
>

SANS-CULOTTES
>

insisted that it was the duty of the government to guarantee them the right to existence.
>

Such a policy ran counter to the bourgeois aspirations of the National Assembly. The
>
sans-culottes
>

demanded that the revolutionary government immediately increase wages, fix prices, end
>

food shortages, punish hoarders and most important, deal with the existence of
>

counter-revolutionaries. In terms of social ideals the
>
sans-culottes
>
wanted laws to
>

prevent extremes of both wealth and property.
> Their vision was of a nation of small
shopkeepers and small farmers. They favored a democratic republic in which the voice of
the common man could be heard. In this respect, their ideology falls into line with that
of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the
English radical who argued that the best form of government was the one which governed
least: government should guarantee basic natural rights and then lay off the
citizen (on Paine, see Lecture 14). In
other words, and this is important to grasp, the social and economic ideas of the sans-culottes
were politicized by the Revolution itself.
On
AUGUST 10, 1792, enraged Parisian men and
women attacked
the king’s palace and killed several hundred Swiss Guards. The result of this journee
was the radicalization of the Revolution. Louis and Marie Antoinette were
forced to flee the Tuileries and took refuge in the Legislative Assembly
itself. The royal family was placed under house arrest, and lived rather
comfortably, but the king could not perform any of his political
functions. Although the revolutionaries had drafted a constitution, now
they had no monarch.
By September, Paris was in turmoil. Fearing
counter-revolution, the sans-culottes destroyed prisons because they believed they
were secretly sheltering conspirators. More than one thousand people were killed. Street
fights broke out everywhere and barricades were set up in various quarters of the city.
All this was done in order to consolidate the Revolution – to keep it moving forward.
On September 21^stand 22^nd, 1792, the monarchy was officially
abolished and a republic established. The 22^nd of September, 1792 was now known
as day one of the year one. In December, Louis XVI was placed on TRIAL
for
violating the liberty of his subjects and on January 21, 1793, Louis was
executed like an ordinary criminal. From this time on, the Revolution had no recourse but
to move forward.
After the
execution of Louis, the National Assembly, now known as the National
Convention, faced enormous problems. The value of paper currency (assignats) used
to finance the Revolution had fallen by 50%. There was price inflation, continued food
shortages, and various peasant rebellions against the Revolution occurred across the
countryside. France was close to civil war.

Meanwhile, the revolutionaries found themselves not only at war with Austria and
Prussia, but with Holland, Spain and Great Britain. As the Revolution stumbled under the
weight of foreign war and civil war, the revolutionary leadership grew more radical. Up to
June 1793, moderate reformers had dominated the National Convention. These were the
Girondins, men who favored a decentralized government in which the various provinces or
departments would determine their own affairs. The Girondins also opposed government
interference in the economy.
In June 1793, factional disputes with the Convention resulted in the replacement of the
Girondins with the Jacobins, a far more radical group. The Jacobins and Girondins were
both liberal and bourgeois, but the Jacobins desired a centralized government (in which
they would hold key positions), Paris as the national capital, and temporary government
control of the economy. The Jacobin platform managed to win the support of the sans-culottes.
The Jacobins were tightly organized, well-disciplined and convinced that they alone were
responsible for saving and "managing" the Revolution from this point forward. On
June 22, 1793, 80,000 armed sans-culottes surrounded the meeting halls of the
National Convention and demanded the immediate arrest of the Girondin faction. The
Convention yielded to the mob and 29 Girondin members of the Convention were arrested.

The Jacobins now had firm control not only of the Convention, but the French nation as
well. They were the government. And they now had even more pressing problems: civil war
was everywhere, economic distress had not been lifted, they had to keep the sans-culottes
satisfied, they suffered continued threats of foreign invasion and the nation’s ports
had all been blockaded. They lived, dreading the possibility that if they failed, so too
would the Revolution. Only strong leadership could save the Revolution. The Committee of
Public Safety assumed leadership, in April 1793. As a branch of the National Convention
itself, the Committee of Public Safety had broad powers which included the organization of
the nation’s defenses, all foreign policy, and the supervision of ministers. The
Committee also ordered arrests and trials of counter-revolutionaries and imposed
government authority across the nation. What is amazing is that only twelve men controlled
the CPS, although the CPS was ultimately led by MAXIMILIEN
ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).
In

Robespierre's utopian vision, the individual has the duty "to detest bad faith and
>

despotism, to punish tyrants and traitors, to assist the unfortunate and respect the weak,
>

to defend the oppressed, to do all the good one can to one's neighbor, and to behave with
>

justice towards all men." Robespierre was a disciple of
>
Rousseau
>
--both considered the
>

general will an absolute necessity. For Robespierre, the realization of the general will
>

would make the Republic of Virtue a reality. Its denial would mean a return to despotism.
>

Robespierre knew that a
>
REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE
>
could
>

not become a reality unless the threats of foreign and civil war were removed. To preserve
>

the Republic, Robespierre and the CPS instituted the Reign of Terror.
>

Counter-revolutionaries, the Girondins, priests, nobles, and aristocrats immediately fell
>

under suspicion.
>
Danton
>

(1759-1794),
>

a revolutionary who sought peace with Europe, was executed.
>

The CPS also closed the numerous political clubs of the
>
sans-culottes.
>
The CPS
>

feared spontaneous action, that is, that the revolutionary leadership might pass into
>

other hands. About 17,000 people died as a result of the Terror. The choice instrument,
>

was the
>
guillotine
>
-- it
>

was quick and humane. In 1794, there were mass executions at Lyons. Boats were fired upon
>

and sunk at Nantes -- 500 were killed in one execution. About 15,000 people perished
>

officially and over 100,000 people were detained as suspects.
>

Robespierre and the CPS resorted to the Terror but not because they were blood-thirsty
madmen. They did, however, wish to create a temporary dictatorship in order to save the
Republic (a Roman idea). By the summer of 1794, there seem to be less need for the Terror.
The Republic seemed a reality, an aristocratic conspiracy had subsided, the will to punish
traitors decreased, and most sans-culottes went home to tend to business. And, as
the need for the Terror decreased, so too did Robespierre's power and leadership. Some
members of the Convention, fearing for their own lives, ordered the arrest of Robespierre.
On July 27, 1794, (the NINTH of THERMIDOR) Robespierre was
arrested and guillotined the next day -- the sans-culottes
made no attempt to save him. With the 9th of Thermidor, the machinery of the Jacobin
republic was dismantled. Leadership passed to the property owning bourgeoisie, that is,
those men of the moderate stage of the Revolution (see Lecture
12).
With all this now behind us, what did the Revolution accomplish? First, the Revolution
weakened the political influence and leadership of the aristocracy. The aristocrats lost
their privileges based on birth because from this point on, privilege would now be based
on property and wealth. As the sans-culottes quickly realized,

17Expand

Lecture 12: The French Revolution - Moderate Stage, 1789-1792

Tags: french revolution, history, textbook on 2007-01-22 and saved by25 people -All Annotations (1) -About

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Beloved and loyal supporters, we require the assistance of our
>

faithful subjects to overcome the difficulties in which we find ourselves
>

concerning the current state of our finances, and to establish, as we so
>

wish, a constant and invariable order in all branches of government that
>

concern the happiness of our subjects and the prosperity of the realm.
>

These great motives have induced us to summon the Assembly of the Estates
>

of all Provinces obedient to us, as much to counsel and assist us in all
>

things placed before it, as to inform us of the wishes an grievances of
>

our people; so that, by means of the mutual confidence and reciprocal love
>

between the sovereign and his subjects, an effective remedy may be brought
>

as quickly as possible to the ills of the State, and abuses of all sorts
>

may be averted and corrected by good and solid means which insure public
>

happiness and restore to us in particular the calm and tranquility of
>

which we have so long been deprived.
>

Louis XVI's letter regarding the convocation of the Estates
General at Versailles (January 24, 1789)
The aim of every political
>

association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of
>

man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to
>

oppression.
>

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
>

(August 26, 1789)
>
We now come to the Revolution
itself. We have already outlined some of the basic causes of the French Revolution as well
as the general features of the ancien regime. It seems fairly clear that the closed
social structure of 18^th century France, administrative inefficiency,
bankruptcy and the example of the American Revolution as well as Enlightenment thought all
had their effect on what would indeed occur in the last decade of the 18^th
century. Above all, a revolutionary mentality had been created and this alone,
perhaps, is what drove the revolutionaries forward.
Our discussion will suggest that there
were actually two revolutions, or two distinct stages within the Revolution: the moderate
stage of 1789-1792, followed by the radical stage of 1792-1794
In July 1788, and because of its unresolved and mounting
financial crisis, Louis
XVI called for a meeting of the Estates General. After electing deputies, the full
body was to meet in June the following year. For the next twelve months following
Louis’ request, each Estate drew up a list of grievances, the Cahiers de
doléances. Among the lists drawn up by the deputies of
the Third Estate were expressed loyalty to Louis, loyalty to the Church and the sanctity
of private property. Several lists called for a written constitution as well as an elected
Assembly.
As the Estates General prepared to meet, there was a general consensus of high hope
amongst all concerned Frenchmen. As yet, no one was talking about revolution. The Estates
General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789
and there ensued an immediate stalemate over procedure. The nobility argued that the three
Estates meet separately and vote as individual bodies. Since the First and Second Estates
were the privileged orders, they would stand together against the Third Estate, 2 votes to
1. The Third Estate recognized this and instead proposed to the nobility and clergy that
all members of the Three Estates would meet as one body and vote by head. This is an
important consideration. The First and Second Estates were composed of 300 delegates each.
But the Third Estate consisted of more than 600 solidly middle class deputies from the
ranks of government officials, lawyers, merchants, property owners and other
professionals. Since the Third Estate had the support of liberal minded priests and
members of the nobility, they were almost assured of a majority.
On June 10, 1789,
the Third Estate broke the stalemate. They invited the First and
Second Estates to join them. Some of the more liberal-minded members of the nobility and
clergy did in fact come over, but the stalemate continued. On June 17, 1789, the Third
Estate began the French Revolution by declaring itself a National Assembly.
This was a profoundly revolutionary act indeed. Days later, now locked out of their
meeting hall, the Third Estate moved to a tennis court and took the OATH
OF THE TENNIS COURT, which stated that they
would not disband until a constitution had been drafted.
Louis ordered the National Assembly to disband immediately. A Declaration sent to the
Third Estate from Louis on June 23 expressed the following demand:

The King wishes that the ancient distinction of the three Orders of
the State be preserved in its entirety, as essentially linked to the constitution of his
Kingdom; that the deputies, freely elected by each of the three Orders, forming three
chambers, deliberating by Order . . . can alone be considered as forming the body of the
representatives of the Nation. As a result, the King has declared null the resolutions
passed by the deputies of the Order of the Third Estate, the 17^th of this
month, as well as those which have followed them, as illegal and unconstitutional . . . .

The Third Estate, stood by their solemn oath and refused to yield to Louis’
demands.
In an effort to reach some kind of compromise, on June 27, Louis ordered the clergy and
nobility to join the Third Estate. Of course, some members of both Estates had already
done so but the vast majority refused. I suppose Louis figured that he could control the
Third Estate if it were simply a part of a larger body, but his plan clearly back-fired.
The Third Estate would not compromise and the First and Second Estate would not conceive
of lowering themselves to the same collective body as the Third Estate. Instead, the
nobility joined with Louis against the National Assembly. Louis went on to order the army
to station themselves near Paris and Versailles, just in case. Although not one shot had
yet been fired, the French Revolution had begun.
By the beginning of July, Paris had reached a high level of tension. After all, the
convocation of the Estates General had aroused hope for much-needed reform. But meanwhile,
the price of bread was soaring. For example, in August 1788, 50%of a peasant or urban
worker’s income went toward the purchase of bread. By July 1789, this figure had
risen to 80%.
To compound the situation, there was a growing fear of an aristocratic plot
against the National Assembly. On July 14^th, between eight and nine hundred
Parisians, mostly women, gathered in front of that medieval fortress, the Bastille. They
were looking for weapons and gunpowder. They stormed the prison – 98 were killed and
73 wounded. Although the Bastille contained no hoped-for weapons, the FALL
OF THE BASTILLE served, and has always served, as a great symbol of the Revolution itself. To many,
it seemed there was now no turning back.
As a result of this journee, the aristocrats fled the country and Louis decided
to withdraw his troops from Paris. Keep in mind, the events that we have been discussing
thus far, occurred in Paris alone. Something very different took place in the countryside.
The peasants believed that the Estates General would solve some of their more pressing
problems. After all, they had already sent their list of grievances to Versailles. If
Louis only knew their plight, then he would take care of them. But by June 1789, the
peasants had become restless and violent. As the price of bread continued to soar and its
supply decreased, the peasants began to attack food convoys on their way to Paris. The
peasants also refused to pay taxes, tithes and manorial dues to their landlords, whom they
held responsible for their economic plight. By the end of July, the peasants began to burn
down the houses of their landlords and with them, the records of their obligations to
their lords. The ancien regime was being destroyed by the will of the people. But
why did the peasants turn violent? A rumor began to spread that the aristocrats had
organized an army to kill the peasants. This was only a rumor, but the Great Fear, as this
episode is known, led the peasants to take arms against an imaginary foe. The Great Fear
worked to the advantage of the Parisian reformers and provided the National Assembly with
the opportunity to criticize aristocratic privilege. So, on AUGUST
4, 1789, French
aristocrats surrendered their special privileges by decree (ratified August
11, 1789). This journee marks of destruction
of the remnants of feudalism.
On the night of August 4, several members of the Assembly drew up a key document of the
French Revolution – this was the DECLARATION
OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND THE CITIZEN. On August 26, the Declaration was
formally adopted by the National Assembly. A moral document through and through, the Declaration
outlined man’s natural rights. The purpose of such a Declaration was to rally
the country and to add support to the National Assembly.

The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly,
believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause
of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in
a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that
this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind
them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative
power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the
objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and,
lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and
incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to
the happiness of all.

Barely 300 words in length, it could be printed cheaply on one side of a single sheet
of paper. The Declaration appeared all over France and was subsequently translated
into every major European language. As a symbol, it became the gospel of the new French
social order.
Louis accepted neither the decrees of August 4 nor the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen. However, on October 5, 1789, several hundred Parisian men and
women marched the twelve miles to Versailles in order to protest the lack of bread to
Louis and the National Assembly. At the same time, 20,000 Paris Guards loyal to the
Revolution set out to join the mob gathered at Versailles. Louis had no choice but to
promise bread and return to Paris with the protesters. Louis was now the captive of the
people. He promised bread. He approved the decrees of August 4 including the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
With the
conclusion of the OCTOBER DAYS the King and the National Assembly left
Versailles for Paris. By the end of 1789, Louis had made several concessions to the
National Assembly, none of which he sincerely intended to keep. The people of Paris and
the French countryside loved their king as a child loves his father. Louis was not to
blame for the misfortunes of France, instead, his evil ministers were held responsible.
So, by bringing Louis to Paris, it was hoped he would be less influenced by his evil and
corrupt ministers. But on June 20, 1791, Louis XVI did something which earned him the
general distrust of most French subjects. He planned to raise an army and
crush the revolution. He appealed to Leopold II, the brother of Marie
Antoinette, who promised Louis Austrian troops if Louis could reach
Montmédy and mobilize a sizable French force. Louis did not intend to
leave France except as a last resort.

At ten o'clock on the night of June 20, a berline,
or heavy coach, drawn by four horses, pulled up at the south end of the
Tuileries. At intervals until
11:30, the coach picked up members of the royal family, all of whom were
dressed in disguise -- Louis as a valet, Marie Antoinette as a children's
governess. It had been planned that as Louis passed through major cities
and towns that his troops would be nearby. If he kept on schedule, Louis
ought to arrived at Montmédy the following day. But it was not to be.
Louis began to treat this serious occasion as an excursion -- he ordered
extra stops so that he could sup on his favorite meals and on one occasion
he was recognized at Ste.-Ménéhould by an old soldier, Jean-Baptiste
Drouet.

Drouet rode ahead to the small village of Varennes and with the help of
the locals, blocked the bridge across the Meuse River. At midnight, Louis'
berline was stopped at the bridge and Louis immediately admitted
who he was. The royal party was treated to dinner and treated with utmost
respect. Of course, all the church bells began to ring and by morning,
10,000 peasants were in the streets of Varennes. Finally, at 6 A.M. on
June 22, representatives of the National Assembly arrived on the scene,
escorted by the National Guardsmen. Three day later, the royal family was
back at the Tuileries. Louis was now a prisoner of the
Revolution and an enemy of the Revolution. With the FLIGHT
TO VARENNES,
the National Assembly began to wonder just how possible a limited monarchy really was, or
if indeed it was now even necessary.
Regardless, between the October Days of 1789 and September 1791, the National Assembly
busied itself with reforms meant to dismantle the ancien regime. They accomplished
this with six basic reforms
1. the abolition of special privileges of the nobility through the legalization of equality
  (August 4, 1789)
2. they made their statement of human rights with the Declaration of the Rights of Man
  and the Citizen (August 4, 1789)
3. they subordinated Church to State. In November 1789, the National Assembly confiscated
  all Church property. And in early 1790, they passed the CIVIL
  CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY
  which reduced the power of the bishops. The clergy was now selected and paid by the State
4. in September 1791, the National Assembly drew up a constitution, something it had been
  trying to do since June 1789. The constitution of 1791 specified such liberal ideas as a
  limited monarchy and full equality before the law
5. the National Assembly also made every effort to replace the inefficient and
  uncoordinated provinces with 83 new administrative units nearly equal in size. A
  standardized system of courts was introduced, the sale of judicial offices was abolished,
  citizen-filled juries were introduced and torture was abolished
6. in terms of economic reforms, the National Assembly adopted a uniform system of weights
  and measures, guild restrictions were abolished and customs on goods transported within
  the country were eliminated
By the end of September 1791, the National Assembly announced that its work was done.
In many ways, the Constitution of 1791 seemed to fulfill the promises of reform which had
been first uttered by the men of 1789. All Frenchmen could now be proud that the
following rights had been secured: equality before the law, careers open to talent, a
written constitution, and parliamentary government

With this in mind, there was a sizeable faction within the National Assembly who were
so satisfied that they claimed the Revolution to be at an end, since its primary aims had
been achieved. But, revolutionary times are unpredictable.
By 1792, the Revolution moved
in a more radical and violent direction. This radical direction was neither desired nor
anticipated by the men of 1789. Why the Revolution became radical is interesting and there
are basically two reasons why it did so. First, a counter-revolution, loyal to Church and
King, was led by the noble and the clergy and supported by staunch Catholic peasants.
Because this counter-revolution threatened the changes of the revolutionaries, the
revolutionaries had to resort to more drastic measures than hitherto imagined. Second, the
economic, social, and political discontent of the urban working classes also propelled the
Revolution in the direction of radicalism. These were the small shop-keepers, artisans and
wage earners. These were the sans-culottes (see Lecture
13), men who defined themselves not only by
their trade but also by the clothes they wore. They wore trousers or pants as opposed to
the knee-britches of their social superiors. The sans-culottes had played a role in
revolutionary events since 1789, but they had, as a class, received few gains. As one
historian has written:

The sans-culottes saw that a privilege of wealth was taking the
place of a privilege of birth. They foresaw that the bourgeoisie would succeed the fallen
aristocracy as the ruling class.

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