Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (22 page)

than three occasions to retreat publicly from the position he had staked out

at the
séance royale
of23 June. He retreated immediately after the
séance
itselfin order to hold onto the services ofNecker, who was riotously championed by the populace ofParis and Versailles; and ofcourse he abandoned

the field again after the July and October Days. In connection with the July

crisis, it has been argued that the Council never really had the stomach to

impose a solution by military means, and that even Necker’s short-lived

and conservative successor Breteuil would have preferred, for personal and

policy related reasons, to negotiate a settlement ofoutstanding issues with

48 Price, “The ‘Ministry ofthe Hundred Hours,’” esp. pp. 322–27.

49 As reported by Lefebvre,
Coming of the French Revolution
, pp. 83–84.

86

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

the aroused parliamentary leaders ofthe Third Estate.50 In a similar spirit,

it has been suggested that some Third Republic historians were too ready

to assume the existence ofa dark conspiracy ofCourt reactionaries lurking

behind the October Days.51 Such revisionism may be well founded. But it

has nothing really new to say about the crucial issue – namely, the attitude

ofLouis XVI. Although this sovereign, in 1789, neither raised the banner

ofcivil war in the provinces in imitation ofCharles I nor ordered his troops

to mow down his countrymen in unknowing prefigurement ofNicholas II,

he does appear to have rejected, in the sullen depths ofhis conscience, the

momentous sociopolitical changes that the year brought to France.

For example, Louis XVI reacted to the decrees pushed through the

Constituent Assembly on the tumultuous night of4 August, decrees that

curtailed seigneurial and particularist privileges in the kingdom, by writ-

ing to the archbishop ofArles: “I will never consent to the spoliation of

my clergy or ofmy nobility. I will not sanction decrees by which they

are despoiled.”52 And he condemned all the concessions wrung from him

over the summer in a statement sent surreptitiously to his Spanish cousin,

Charles IV, soon after the October Days had forced the royal family’s re-

moval to Paris. “I owe it to myself, to my children, to my family and to my

entire dynasty,” the statement read in part, “not to
. . .
let the royal dignity, confirmed in my dynasty by the passage ofcenturies, become debased in

my hands.” Louis informed his regal cousin that he had selected him, as

head ofthe “second branch” ofthe House ofBourbon, “to receive my

solemn protest against all the acts contrary to my royal authority extracted

from me by force since 15 July of this year, and, at the same time, to witness

my determination to fulfill the promises I made in my pronouncement of

23 June.”53 This was the catechism ofsomeone schooled since childhood

to believe in the divinity ofhis rule and ofthe old society ofestates and

privilège
. Louis was never to deviate from this philosophy. His persistent

refusal to do so was one of the factors that in 1789 and subsequent years led

respectable Frenchmen who favored the recovery of Gallic power abroad

and progressive reformism at home to endorse a degree of revolutionary

violence that they otherwise would never have tolerated.

To refer in this connection to “respectable Frenchmen” is to introduce

this chapter’s final task: to place the critical policy differences between

Necker and the king in 1788–89 in a broader political and social context. It

is evident that the two men, in disagreeing over substantive issues, were in

part responding to, and in part helped to further, the process of polarization

50 Price, “The ‘Ministry ofthe Hundred Hours,’” esp. p. 336.

51 See Harris,
Necker and the Revolution of 1789
, passim.

52 Cited in Lefebvre,
Coming of the French Revolution
, p. 185.

53 Cited in Egret,
Necker
, p. 372. My translation.

The descent into revolution

87

within the country’s aroused elite ofleisured Frenchmen – clerics, lay

nobles, and bourgeois. Just as plainly, the readiness ofFrench “elitists”

to fall out over fundamental constitutional and social issues encouraged

humbler souls oftown and country to add their raucous voices to the na-

tional debate over the kingdom’s regeneration. All ofthese social dynamics

were inevitably reflected in the politics ofthe new legislative body toward

which the management of public affairs began to gravitate before the end of

1789.

t h e p o l i t i c s o f p o l a r i z a t i o n :

t o w a r d t h e o c t o b e r d a y s

Historians today generally agree that it took the elections to the Estates

General in the spring of1789 and subsequent events to transform the ten-

sions long festering in elite French society into revolutionary and coun-

terrevolutionary politics and to incite broad-based popular insurrection

as well. Yet the former of these social developments, at least, was fore-

shadowed in the preceding autumn and winter, when clerics, nobles, and

bourgeois were forced by the imminence ofthe Estates General to begin

crystallizing their sociopolitical philosophies.

The authorities from July 1788 on cleared the way for a truly national

discussion ofpublic issues by granting broad freedom to the press, liberat-

ing all or most booksellers and pamphleteers who had recently been incar-

cerated for disseminating antiministerial writings, and tolerating “clubs,”

“societies,” and other associations in the capital and elsewhere. The various

clubs and societies, once given free rein, took it upon themselves to publish

the tracts ofthe abbé Siéyès and other Parisian luminaries ofthe “Patriot”

Party. They also corresponded with “Patriot” societies and individuals in

the provinces and helped to circulate works by such provincial notables

as Rabaut Saint-Etienne, Albisson, and the comte d’Antraigues, all from

Languedoc; Jean-Joseph Mounier and Lenoir-Laroche from Dauphiné;

Brittany’s Volney; and Servan from Provence.54

Prominent among these activist organizations was the Society ofThirty.

Some ofits members, courtiers ofthe old aristocracy, embraced sociopo-

litical change because they had lost out in the competition for govern-

ment posts and patronage to families of the provincial squirearchy; others,

whether issuing from the military noblesse, the judicial nobility, or the

bourgeoisie, acted out ofgenuine idealism.55 In any case, from such clubs,

54 Egret,
French Prerevolution
, p. 193.

55 On the Society ofThirty, see especially Daniel L. Wick,
A Conspiracy of Well-Intentioned
Men: The Society of Thirty and the French Revolution
(New York: Garland, 1987).

88

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

and from the outpouring of pamphlet literature associated with them,

emerged the challenge ofthe National or Patriot party to the status quo in

France at the end of1788.

Addressing constitutional questions, some in this faction – includ-

ing Huguet de Sémonville, the prince de Beauvau, and Jean-Nicolas

Démeunier – looked hopefully to regular Estates General and rejuvenated

provincial Estates to rescue the kingdom from the yoke of “despotism.”

Others, such as Mounier and Rabaut Saint-Etienne, spoke ofadopting the

English constitution. The most audacious among them, like Siéyès, located

the nation’s sovereignty squarely and without appeal in a hypothetical

unicameral legislature.56

But constitutional issues could not be aired without invoking social is-

sues as well. Declared Mirabeau: “War on privileges and privileged, that

is my motto. Privileges are useful against kings but detestable against na-

tions, and ours will never have a public spirit until delivered from them.”

Exhorted Target: “Provinces, cities, courts, companies, Orders – oppose

the king with your privileges, but strike them [down] before France assem-

bled.” And A.-J.-J. Cérutti pierced to the heart ofthe matter as the Patriot

faction perceived it:

It is said that the people are conspiring on all sides against the nobility, the clergy, and the magistracy. Here is the conspiracy: excluded from brilliant careers in the army, they are allowed only to die there. Excluded from high dignities in the church, they are allowed only to work there. Excluded from important positions in the courts,

they are allowed only to plead there. Excluded from the legal share of legislative

authority in the Estates General, they will be allowed only to pay there.

It does not seem that, at this (relatively early) point, most Patriots were

specifically advocating the abolition ofthe old schema oforders, either

within the impending Estates General or within society as a whole. But

they most certainly were arguing for a France in which social rank would

reflect merit rather than genealogy; and double representation for the Third

Estate and voting by head in the approaching convocation were in their

minds prerequisites to that end. “The fate of the nation is at stake,” warned

Target. “With such great issues every uncertainty is a danger; every worry,

a torment; every truth, a duty.”57

Crucially, too, support for modernizing the Estates General’s makeup

and procedures and for the whole notion of meritocracy in society was

now welling up from the grass roots. “The nobility’s privileges are truly

properties, all the more respected because we are not excluded from them

56 Refer again to Egret,
French Prerevolution
, p. 194. On abbé Siéyès in particular, see William H. Sewell, Jr.,
A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbé Sieyès and What Is the Third
Estate?
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994).

57 Quotations are from Egret,
French Prerevolution
, pp. 195–96.

The descent into revolution

89

but may acquire them,” proclaimed the barristers ofthe Burgundian town

ofNuits. “Why should anyone suppose we would think ofdestroying the

seeds ofemulation, the lodestar ofour labors?” At Rouen in Normandy,

bourgeois in huge numbers signed a petition to the king clamoring for

deliberation in common in the Estates. In Provence, nineteen communi-

ties and nine parishes drafted petitions demanding doubling of the Third.

By 30 December, one
nouvelliste
, generally well informed, could report

that “the number ofdemands from Provinces, Cities, Communities, and

Corporations for the doubling of the Third Estate is immense, and some

put it at more than 800 without reckoning those arriving here daily from all

quarters.”58 Needless to add, many of these manifestoes called as well for

voting “by head” in the Estates and for “careers open to talent” in French

society. Yet, again, a cautionary remark is indicated. “Most advocates of

the Third Estate,” Michael Fitzsimmons has noted, “were simply seeking

a role coequal to that ofthe other two orders in the management ofthe

state.
. . .
Indeed, all over France the Third Estate made clear how mod-

est and limited its goals were and how favorably disposed it was to the

maintenance ofsocial distinctions.”59

Even this, however, was too much in late 1788 for those elitists

committed to the unqualified survival ofthe old regime. Spearheading the

defense of the old France was the Parlement of Paris, which reacted to the

Patriots’ clamor for sociopolitical change on 25 September by counseling

that the Estates be modeled in composition and procedures upon the

convocation of1614. The judges, in other words, raised the specter of

a national assembly that, with equal contingents representing the three

orders and with voting on all issues by estate rather than by head, would

effectively stifle all meaningful reform. Though a case certainly can be

made for discerning in this pronouncement a vestige of the Parlement’s

Jansenism and Gallicanism,60 it probably constituted more than anything

else a conservative reflex against a perceived threat ofdestabilizing

change. This was the interpretation of the Parlement’s action offered

later by two ofthe magistrates who had attended the tribunal’s session

of25 September.61 The parlementaires wished, however quixotically, to

preserve the balance ofsociopolitical forces characterizing the France they

58 Ibid., esp. pp. 206–43.

59 Michael P. Fitzsimmons,
The Remaking of France: The National Assembly, the

Constitution of 1791 and the Reorganization of the French Polity, 1789–1791
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 28–30.

60 See Van Kley, “The Estates General as Ecumenical Council: The Constitutionalism of Corporate Consensus and the
Parlement
’s Ruling ofSeptember 25, 1788,”
Journal of
Modern History
61 (March 1989): 1–52.

61 These testimonies (by Louis Franc¸ois de Paule Lefevre d’Ormesson and Guy Marie Sallier) are discussed in Stone,
French Parlements
, pp. 102–3.

90

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

had always known, and saw an Estates General functioning in 1789 as its

predecessor supposedly had in 1614–15 as instrumental toward that end.