Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (28 page)

Fauchet, who believed property pertains “to need, not luxury,” felt obliged to reassure his colleagues in Cercle meetings that what he wanted was that every man should have his own domain on which to exist on earth, that the poor man be assured of his bread, and that the multitude not be at the mercy of the rich, things they all agreed on. Nowhere had he maintained that the way to “assure a sufficient and free existence to all men” necessitates an “equal distribution of the land.” Such a plan would indeed be “an apple of discord that would destroy the human race.” He urged only what Rousseau demanded, namely, that all the poor should have something and no wealthy person have too much.
¹²⁷
Besides ridiculously rating Voltaire above Rousseau as “a reasoner,” Cloots, in his opinion, had a mistaken conception of la philosophie, wanting no religion at all.
¹²⁸
Fauchet was the Revolution’s foremost representative of Christian Radical Enlightenment. Most of the Cercle’s directors and leading lights expounded materialism, atheism, and hostility to organized religion. But for the moment, there was enough common ground to bridge the gap. The leadership all agreed that they sought an enlightened philosophique “democracy,” a term Fauchet frequently used; they all wanted the whole population to be “enlightened,” however vast this task. They were all without exception crypto-republicans.

To engage with the illiterate peasantry, the Cercle launched a successful paper specifically addressed to the villages,
La Feuille villageoise
, designed to be read aloud to peasant gatherings by village curates and schoolmasters. Its circulation rose to perhaps fifteen thousand during 1791.
¹²⁹
The education needed for participation in politics, announced the first issue of
La Feuille villageoise
in October 1790, had thus far mostly been confined to the towns “where good books had gradually enlightened minds and prepared the Revolution,” from which, however, the peasantry “reaped the first advantages.” It was through reading that the courageous men “you have charged to represent you and defend your rights were cultivated: through reading you yourselves will learn to know and defend your rights.”
¹³⁰
The ancien régime rested on “prejudice,” “superstition,” and “ignorance.” Without ignorance there can be no kings, aristocrats, parlementaires, or other privileged elite oppressing the peasantry. However, without la philosophie, ignorance and prejudice cannot be eradicated. Some claimed ignorance was the
peasant’s natural portion. But peasants too must make judgments, and, hence, comprehend politics and the Constitution, and this can happen only via reading. If the people failed to become “enlightened,” the Rights of Man, the new revolutionary order, and the Constitution would not survive, and the Revolution would indubitably perish. The great Franklin had pursued philosophy with such energy, explained
La Feuille villageoise
, that “like Newton, Leibniz, Voltaire, and other illustrious
philosophes,
” he kept his special vision to the last. He began his career as a printer: printing and la philosophie—the one aiding the other—“have been of greater service to the human race than all other arts put together.”
¹³¹

France’s peasantry needed to know why and how their revolutionary leadership was so deeply split. All those designated “aristocrats,” explained
La Feuille villageoise
on 11 November, “were
privilégiés
in our
ancien régime
and aspired still to re-introduce that régime and recover the privileges that they lost.”
¹³²
Dialogues featuring villagers appeared regularly in this journal, continually reminding the peasantry that it was the new philosophique ideas that had made the Revolution and freed them from feudalism, which alone, with liberty of the press, could protect their newly won rights. When the “peasant” in these dialogues inquired why the Rights of Man only came to light as recently as 1789, he learned that human rights were discovered so late because, earlier, most people could not read. “The people could not educate itself on its own, and so it let itself be deceived by others.” To the peasants’ question, “What is the greatest service villagers can render their children?,” the paper answered: teach them to read and to examine everything they are told before believing it, for the peasants have long been deceived at their cost.
¹³³

Peasants were also taught basic international and world politics. How should peasants understand the struggle in India between the British and princes, like the son of Hyder Ali, who opposed the East India Company and was supported by the French and Dutch? Eventually, explained
La Feuille villageoise
, the Revolution would overthrow the colonial regime, like the ancien régime in France, and the English in India would be “exterminated.” Should Frenchmen rejoice over the death of these exploiters? No, the English “are our brothers; but so are the Indians and we should wish that the oppressors, the English, be punished and the oppressed, the Indians, become ‘independent.’ ”
¹³⁴
But neither French peasants nor India’s oppressed would enjoy freedom, peace, and happiness without reading, a free press, and the reign of la philosophie.

CHAPTER 6

Deadlock

(N
OVEMBER
1790–J
ULY
1791)

The Unviability of the 1791 Monarchical Constitution

Could constitutional monarchism consolidate in a land infused with so powerful a philosophique republican undercurrent? The Revolution’s first Constitution, though not officially finalized until September 1791, was already substantially in place by the summer of 1790. Its eventually 208 articles opened with a ringing declaration that there no longer existed in France any nobility, hereditary distinctions, division of society into orders, titles, feudal regime, servile dues, or religious vows or obligations contrary to natural rights. It was certainly a comprehensively liberal monarchist Constitution that firmly anchored some fundamental human rights, ensured the primacy of the legislature, and attached an elaborate constitutional apparatus to monarchy. It guaranteed freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression. But for multiple reasons, there was little chance that it could last long or form the basis of a stable polity.
¹

In the first place, it compelled the radical-minded republican leaders in the press, clubs, Paris Commune, and the Assembly, who had forged the great legislative enactments of 1789, to steer a tortuous, contested course hardly likely to be viable for long. They felt obliged to conform outwardly to a Constitution they did not believe in, able neither uninhibitedly to avow their republican goals nor disavow the Constitution’s assertion of monarchical principles and antidemocratic tendency. A leading Assembly radical who admitted profound reservations about the Constitution was Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve (1753–94), a deputy for Chartres, whose
Avis aux français
ranked among the prime assaults on the ancien régime of 1788. Pétion, affable and honorable but hesitant, published his political profession of faith in the
Mercure national
,
one of the papers overtly propagating republican ideas, on 24 April 1791. That he entertained such reservations had lately been revealed to the public by the Belgian republican publicist, François Robert, the
Mercure
’s editor. Pétion acknowledged, albeit guardedly, three fundamental objections to the 1791 Constitution. First, the king, in his view, should have no role in legislation at all, and hence, no veto. Second, the Constitution should be democratic, according all citizens, without distinction, both the vote and eligibility for office; this meant France’s suffrage limitations should be abolished. Third, the nation’s finances should be not just mainly but wholly under the legislature’s control, with the king wielding no influence whatsoever over the appointment or activities of deputies, ministers, military commanders, or other officeholders. At some future point, the
bons citoyens
must, in the people’s interest, eliminate royal executive power and democratize suffrage. Meanwhile, he and his colleagues respected the Constitution and the law, if only provisionally.
²

Pétion, like his colleague François-Nicolas Buzot (1760–94), a declared foe of Bailly, figured among the Assembly’s ablest orators and critics of the liberal monarchist center. His underlying stance was one of outright democratic republicanism, but he stopped short of publicly endorsing overtly republican views like those propagated by such leading journalists as Gorsas, Carra, Robert, and Desmoulins, who were, he acknowledged, attacking the Constitution and breaking the law. In addition, outspoken, impatient republicans like these were, he admonished, frightening France’s vast majority, especially the artisans, laborers, and peasants, most of whom had not the slightest idea what
républicanisme
was.
³
Readers, he warned, needed to guard against harsh, simplistic terminology classifying républicanisme and monarchy in black-and-white terms. The best government is not one that carries a particular label but one that yields the highest sum of happiness and security (
la plus grande somme de bonheur, de surêté
) and is safest from bad administration. Pétion perceived the risk of a damaging rift over republicanism. A major destabilizing factor in 1790, then, was that republicanism pervaded the Revolution’s Left political and press leadership (though rejected by Robespierre and the Jacobins) while there was only very limited support for republicanism among the population. Most members of what was to become the largest and most important political club, the Jacobins, at this time remained forthrightly both centrist and monarchist.

Pétion’s dilemma was equally that of Brissot, Condorcet, Bonneville, Cérutti, Desmoulins, Lanthenas, and a long list of other democratic republicans,
in fact, all those forming the authentic backbone of the democratic Revolution. Left republican radicalism completely dominated the thought and practice of the main revolutionary press, the Cordeliers and other radical clubs, and the Cercle Social, and remained a substantial contingent in the Paris Communal council. If, after October 1790, Brissot himself no longer occupied a place on the Paris Commune committees, several of his allies did. Prominent among these was Louis-Pierre Manuel (1751–93), a former teacher and bookseller’s assistant, imprisoned briefly in the Bastille when still young, for his subversive
Essais historiques
(1783). Manuel was yet another leading revolutionary who was convinced that the path had been cleared by la philosophie prior to 1788, and that France was now ridding herself of the legacy of centuries of oppression. La philosophie drove the Revolution by establishing the people’s rights, proving that existing laws derived from “prejudice” and “ignorance,” and that laws “made by nature and reason are lacking.” The pens of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal, claimed Manuel, had contributed more to the Revolution than the swords of the revolutionary militias. “The nobility cited charters, titles and privilege” in 1789, but in vain. The principle of equality introduced by philosophy taught the people that they possessed natural rights and that these rights should ground the new order.
⁴

During 1790 and early 1791, the republican leadership sought to make the best of the constitutional monarchy they were stuck with while safeguarding basic freedoms, rights, and equality. These men were resolved to ensure that, as the
Chronique de Paris
expressed it, France acquired a “constitution worthy of a free people.” They would be “vigilant and courageous sentinels,” denouncing old and new abuses, pursuing foes of the public good, uncovering plots, and unmasking “false patriots,” of whom there seemed to be a vast number.
⁵
They hoped to attain their goals by propagating Enlightenment ideas among the public. A nation is only free, held Condorcet and his editorial colleagues, “when it is enlightened, as prejudices are additional fetters.” It was both essential and, he and his allies believed, also inevitable that “ ‘la philosophie,’ like the sun, should cast its light everywhere.” Before 1789, the two greatest enemies of human freedom and well-being—ignorance and superstition—had domineered, blocking reason’s progress. But now that liberty of thought and the press prevailed, nothing could prevent the swift advance through society—and soon the entire world—of the Rights of Man. Provided their authors and titles were well publicized, the “good books” that earlier planted “the seeds of the Revolution,” held
the
Chronique
(those of Boulanger, Diderot, Raynal, d’Holbach, Helvétius, Paine, Price, and Priestley) “will govern both kings and peoples.”
⁶