Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (23 page)

From 6 November to 12 December a similar message issued from the

“second” Assembly ofNotables, called by Necker to advise him on the

composition and procedures ofthe Estates. Only one ofthe Assembly’s

six committees, that chaired by the king’s brother the comte de Provence,

endorsed a doubling ofthe Third (and that by the threadbare margin of

13 to 12). The Notables even more overwhelmingly rejected the notion

of suffrage by head. They would concede to the National party finan-

cial equality and nothing else. What was more, they went on the offen-

sive against their progressive foes. The crusty and reactionary prince de

Conti inveighed against “scandalous writings spreading disorder and dis-

sension throughout the realm,” and in the closing days ofthe Assembly

the Princes ofthe Blood presented a manifesto to Louis XVI restating the

Notables’ opposition to all changes other than those relating to taxation.

“Prejudices, pretentions, caution, habit, all appear to be so deep rooted in

most heads,” disconsolately observed one ofthe outvoted liberal Notables

on 10 November, “that I have no illusion that the simplest logic could ever

penetrate there.”62

Even when the Paris Parlement attempted in a decree of5 December

to restore its popularity, shattered by its earlier invocation ofthe 1614

Estates General, it stood adamantly by its guns insofar as suffrage by

order in the national convocation was concerned. Moreover, J.-J. Duval

d’Eprémesnil, author ofthis latest parlementary pronunciamento, candidly

restated his unflagging support for “the just prerogatives of the Nobility

and the Clergy” in a pamphlet he had published on 7 December.63 Soon

Duval d’Eprémesnil would be splitting with his erstwhile liberal allies on

the “Committee ofThirty” and establishing a conservative “Committee of

One Hundred,” which, Timothy Tackett has suggested, “probably had a far

greater influence on the nobility ofFrance than the Committee ofThirty.”

That nobility, acting in Brittany, Franche-Comté, Provence, Burgundy, and

wherever else it could make use ofinstitutions such as parlements or provin-

cial Estates to make its voice heard, found common cause with Parisian

reactionaries in opposing the renovation ofFrench institutions. As Tackett

has observed, many ofthe soon-to-be deputies to the Estates General

unavoidably had in such circumstances “a keen sense of
. . .
political

polarization over stakes that were extremely high.”64

62 See Egret,
French Prerevolution
, pp. 199–202, on the subject ofthe “second” Assembly of Notables.

63 On the parlementary decree of 5 December 1788 and its aftermath, refer again to Stone,
French Parlements
, pp. 104–6.

64 Timothy Tackett,
Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National
Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789–1790)
(Princeton, N.J.:
The descent into revolution

91

It was against this backdrop ofdeepening division between advocates

and opponents ofpolitical and social change in France that the hard-pressed

Necker promulgated his conciliatory
Résultat du Conseil
on 27 December

1788 and soon thereafter set forth electoral procedures for the national

convocation. Yet it was likely beyond the abilities ofany individual to

reverse the process ofpolarization within the elitist ranks ofsociety.

“Aristocratic” initiatives taken against “subversive” innovation in Paris

and in the provinces only provoked counteractions and counter-rhetoric in

Patriot quarters. In Provence, the Third Estate boycotted the sessions ofthe

provincial Estates. In Brittany, where “the class conflict degenerated into

civil war,” law students championing the reformist cause besieged their ad-

versaries in the hall ofthe Breton Estates. Rabaut Saint-Etienne, throwing

his recent call for British-style bicameralism to the winds, now demanded

a unicameral legislature and voting by head. Abbé Siéyès, in his celebrated

tract
What Is the Third Estate?
, poured cold scorn upon the aristocracy.

And Mirabeau, excluded by class snobbism from the Provenc¸al Estates,

lionized Marius in print “less
. . .
for having vanquished the Cimbrians than for having exterminated the order of nobility in Rome.”65

Ofcourse, none ofthis goes to show that compromise between conser-

vatives and progressives would have been impossible at this time – had only

the former been willing to concede the entrance of affluent and aspiring

commoners into the purlieus ofpower and status in France. The assemblies

of1788 in Dauphiné, at Vizille and Romans, had shown that deliberation

in common and voting by head on substantive issues could be squared with

the traditional hierarchy oforders; and the evidence suggests that for some

time to come the political moderation exhibited in Dauphiné would hold

more attraction for France than the extremism of the Bretons.66 Indeed,

analysis ofthe
cahiers de doléances
has revealed a widespread desire among

the electors to the Estates General in early 1789 to proceed on a traditional

basis. Many
cahiers
, it turns out, regarded the division ofthe French

nation into three estates as fundamental to the French “constitution.” Few

ofthese writs ofgrievance actually condemned the hierarchy oforders as

such, but were more concerned to equalize conditions
among
the three

estates.67 It seems that even concentrating exclusively on the petitions of

Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 94. See pp. 90–94 for a discussion of the aristocratic side in this growing polarization ofattitudes.

65 Lefebvre,
Coming of the French Revolution
, pp. 60–62.

66 Tackett,
Becoming a Revolutionary
, p. 85. On the politics ofDauphiné in 1788, see Egret,
La R
é
volution des notables: Mounier et les monarchiens
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1950); and Robert H. Griffiths,
Le Centre perdu: Malouet et les
“
monarchiens” dans la R
é
volution
franc¸aise
(Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1988).

67 Beatrice Hyslop,
French Nationalism in 1789 According to the General Cahiers

(New York: Octagon Books, 1968), p. 83.

92

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

the Third Estate does not enable the historian to find examples (at least

outside ofParis) ofcommoners viewing the foundation of“national

sovereignty” as requiring the destruction ofthe hierarchy ofestates. And

even those commoners who in their
cahiers
called the impending Estates

General a “national assembly” implied that each ofthe three orders should

follow custom by selecting its own deputies to that assembly.68

Yet these selfsame analyses make it equally clear that the Third Estate

(and progressives in the clergy and nobility as well) viewed a substantial

broadening ofaccess to status and power in France as essential. In nearly

36 percent ofthe general
cahiers
, one can find the “civic” principle ofenno-

blement for service prevailing over the “mercenary” principle of ennoble-

ment by purchase. To express such a preference may not have amounted to a

forthright assault upon hereditary nobility; still, its implementation would

in time transform the French aristocracy into an elite ofpublic servants,

an elite to which all could aspire.69 Yet we know that this was
not
what

most nobles were hankering for when, in their
cahiers
, they railed against

purchase ofnobility and advanced their more exclusionary conception of

a state-serving elite. The majority ofthem, obdurately wedded to the past

on this question as on so many others, were therefore bound to see voting

by order in the approaching convocation at Versailles as a crucial bridle on

change in the kingdom.

Even the most prominent anti-Marxist “social revisionists” in the field,

however eager they have been to unearth in the
cahiers
evidence ofa fusion

ofnobles and bourgeois on the threshold ofthe Revolution, have had to

concede a real difference between the noble and the Third Estate
cahiers

de doléances
on a number ofimportant issues. One ofthese scholars, for

instance, acknowledged a general insistence among commoners on voting

by head, whereas, in contrast, he could find only a small proportion ofthe

nobles’ petitions pronouncing unambiguously for such an arrangement.70

Another revisionist, concentrating more narrowly upon the
cahiers
ofthe

Second Estate, arrived at similar conclusions regarding the nobility.71 At

the same time, passing beyond this immediate procedural issue, the latter

historian admitted in a more general vein that only a “radical fringe” of

noble
cahiers
accepted “the access ofall, without distinction ofbirth and

status, to public and military employments, [and] the suppression ofdis-

tinctions and formalities humiliating for the Third Estate.”72 Again, both of

these revisionists documented a significant divergence between noble and

68 George V. Taylor, “Revolutionary and Nonrevolutionary Content in the
Cahiers
of1789: An Interim Report,”
French Historical Studies
7 (1972): 494.

69 Hyslop,
French Nationalism in 1789
, p. 88.

70 Roger Chartier, “Cultures, lumières, doléances: Les Cahiers de 1789,”
Revue d’histoire
moderne et contemporaine
28 (1981): esp. 90–91.

71 Chaussinand-Nogaret,
La Noblesse au XVIIIe siècle
, p. 190.

72 Ibid., p. 219.

The descent into revolution

93

bourgeois grievance lists on the subjects ofseigneurial dues and seigneurial

justice.

Significantly, this last point (like all the others, for that matter) has been

substantiated by sociological inquiries unrelated to the academic wars of

Marxists and revisionists. Those investigations have confirmed the revi-

sionists’ finding that a considerable number ofnoble
cahiers
were less en-

thusiastic about the idea ofabrogating seigneurial rights than were the writs

ofgrievance drafted by commoners. Third Estate
cahiers de doléances
typ-

ically left the door open for the possibility that peasants still saddled with

the obligation ofpaying seigneurial dues could redeem them altogether.73

It seems, then, that the electors’ writs ofgrievance, although testifying to a

rudimentary consensus among urban and rural elitists on a variety ofcon-

stitutional and administrative issues, also betrayed the continuing potential

divisiveness ofprivilege, and especially
social
privilege, in the politics of the “natural rulers” ofthe realm.74

The electoral process itselfincreased the likelihood that this latent divi-

siveness would become actual discord. Those contests within the Second

Estate, it has been frequently noted, generally played into the hands of

nobles unlikely to meet aspiring bourgeois halfway on contentious so-

cial issues. Only those with full and transmissible noble status (and hence

not
anoblis
) had been admitted into the electoral assemblies in the first

place. Not surprisingly, therefore, these contests were something of a tri-

umph for those in the Second Estate who hailed from the provinces, often

lacking in wealth and previously inactive in public affairs but now bent

upon using this serendipitous opportunity to wrest the role ofspeaking

for noble interests from the more progressive members of their order.75

And, ifone may judge from what some ofthese deputies-designate ofthe

Second Estate were saying in speeches published at the time, noble appre-

hension over demands being voiced by the Third Estate, and opposition to

those demands, were increasingly common. “One cannot but be impressed

by the extent to which all ofthe noble orators either felt that their positions

were directly threatened by the Third or sensed that many oftheir peers

were experiencing such threats.”76

In analogous fashion, the electoral process within the Third Estate

ensured that the untitled laity would enjoy an aggressive advocacy in the

debates ofthe Estates General. Those who were conspicuous in city and

73 John Markoff, “Violence, Emancipation, and Democracy: The Countryside and the French Revolution,”
American Historical Review
100 (1995): 364–65. For a fuller discussion of these and related issues, see Markoff,
The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, and
Legislators in the French Revolution
(University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).

74 See again, on this point, Fitzsimmons, “Privilege and the Polity in France,” esp. pp. 279–80.

75 Doyle,
Origins of the French Revolution
, pp. 152–54.

76 Tackett,
Becoming a Revolutionary
, p. 115.

94

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

bailliage
meetings had already assisted in drawing up
cahiers
ofparishes and urban corps, and at each stage ofdeliberation they probably gained a

clearer sense oftheir order’s interests, greater skill in promoting them, and