The French Revolution

I. France Before the Revolution

Source 1: Travels During the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789 ~ Arthur Young Arthur Young (1741-1820) was an English traveler who wrote extensively on his

journeys through France in the years prior to the French Revolution. His recordings have proven extremely valuable in illustrating the sense of misery,

resentment, and anger brewing among the Third Estate shortly before the French Revolution. Among the many complaints were the roles of Royal tax collectors

called intendants, which you will read about below among other complaints by the Third Estate who accounted for over 90% of the population in France during the

“ancien regime” (France before the Revolution).

…Everything conspires to render the present period in France critical: the want of bread is terrible: accounts arrive every moment from the provinces of riots and disturbances, and calling in the military to preserve the peace of the markets. The prices reported are the same as I found at Abbeville and Amiens, 5 sous (2½d.) a pound for white bread, and 3½ sous to 4 sous for the common sort eaten by the poor: these rates are beyond their [ability to pay] and occasion great misery.

...The abuses attending the levy of taxes were heavy and universal. The kingdom was parceled into generalities [administrative districts], with an intendant at the head of each, into whose hands the whole power of the crown was delegated for everything except the military authority; but particularly for all affairs of finance.

The [various taxes] were distributed among districts, parishes, and individuals, at the pleasure of the intendant, who could exempt, change, add, or diminish at pleasure. Such an enormous power, constantly acting, and from which no man was free, must…degenerate in many cases into absolute tyranny. It must be obvious that the friends, acquaintances, and dependents of the intendant,…and the friends of these friends, to a long chain of dependence, might be favoured in taxation at the expense of their miserable neighbours; and that noblemen in favour at court, to whose protection the intendant himself would naturally look up, could find little difficulty in throwing much of the weight of their taxes on others…

Instances, and even gross ones, have been reported to me in many parts of the kingdom, that made me shudder at the oppression to which [people have been subjected] by the undue favours granted to such crooked influence. But…what must have been the state of the poor people paying heavy taxes, from which the nobility and clergy were exempted? A cruel aggravation of their misery, to see those who could best afford to pay, exempted because able! ... The corvees [a tax paid through labor service rather than in money], or police of the roads, were annually the ruin of many hundreds of farmers; more than 300 were reduced to beggary in filling up one [valley] in Lorraine: all these oppressions fell on the tiers etat [Third Estate] only; the nobility and clergy having been equally exempted

from tailles [the King’s tax on the commoners], militia and corvees. The penal code of finance makes one shudder at the horrors of punishment inadequate to the crime....

…In passing through many of the French provinces, I was struck with the various and heavy complaints of the farmers and little proprietors of the feudal grievances, with the weight of which their industry was [burdened]; but I could not then conceive the multiplicity of the shackles which kept them poor and depressed. I understood it better afterwards…

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Source 2: A Summary of French Royal Spending (1789)The Livre Rouge (or ‘Red Register’) was Louis XVI’s personal account book. In

1790 the National Assembly ordered that it be examined and published, to inform the public about French Royal spending:

Summary of the Livre Rouge

The total amount entered in the Red Book from May 19th 1774 to August 16th 1789 is 227,983,716 livres.

This sum can be broken down under several headings:To the king’s brothers: 28,364,211 livresGifts, gratuities: 6,174,793 livresPensions, salaries: 2,221,541 livresCharity: 254,000 livresIndemnities, advances, loans: 15,254,106 livresAcquisitions, exchanges: 20,868,821 livresFinancial transactions: 5,825,000 livresForeign affairs, postal costs: 135,804,891 livresVarious expenses: 1,794,600 livresPersonal expenses of the king and queen: 11,423,750 livres.”

[Source: http://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/summary-french-royal-spending-1789/]

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Source 3: Cartoon of the French Estates System before the Revolution~ 12/1/1788, author unknown

Bottom quote (translated): “You should hope that this game will be over soon.”[Source: French National Library]

II. France During the Revolution

Source 1: Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen ~ 1789 Passed by France's National Assembly in August 1789, The Declaration of the

Rights of Man and the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution and in the history of human and civil rights. The inspiration and content of the document emerged largely from the ideals of the American

Revolution. The key drafts were prepared by French General Lafayette, working at times with his close friend, Thomas Jefferson, who drew heavily upon The Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted in May 1776 by George Mason (which was based in

part on the English Bill of Rights 1689), as well as Jefferson's own drafts for America’s Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, these provisions would soon be ignored and corrupted by more radical revolutionary actors, including

Maximilian Robespierre, who ironically was a leading proponent of the Revolution itself in favor of these provisions before becoming a ruthless, murderous tyrant of

France during its Reign of Terror period.

The Representatives of the French people, organized in National Assembly, considering that ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public miseries and the corruption of governments, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man, so that this declaration, being ever present to all the members of the social body, may unceasingly remind them of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, and those of the executive power, may at each moment be compared with the aim and of every political institution and thereby may be more respected; and in order that the demands of the citizens, grounded henceforth upon simple and incontestable principles, may always take the direction of maintaining the constitution and welfare of all.

In consequence, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and citizen:

1. Men are born free & remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only on public utility.

2. 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.

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4. Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; accordingly, the exercise of the rights of each man has no limits except those that secure the enjoyment of these same rights to the other members of society. These limits can be determined only by law.

5. The law has only the rights to forbid such actions as are injurious to society. Nothing can be forbidden that is not interdicted by the law, and no one can be constrained to do that which it does not order.

6. Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part personally, or by their representatives, and its formation.  It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.  All citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally eligible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacities, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.

7. No man can be accused, arrested, or detained, except in the cases determined by the law and according to the forms it has prescribed.  Those who procure, expedite, execute, or cause arbitrary orders to be executed, ought to be punished: but every citizen summoned were seized in virtue of the law ought to render instant obedience; he makes himself guilty by resistance.

8. The law ought only to establish penalties that are strict and obviously necessary, and no one can be punished except in virtue of a law established and promulgated prior to the offense and legally applied.

9. Every man being presumed innocent until he has been pronounced guilty, if it is thought indispensable to arrest him, all severity that may not be necessary to secure his person ought to be strictly suppressed by law.

10. No one should be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious, provided their manifestation does not upset the public order established by law.

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; every citizen can then freely speak, write, and print, subject to responsibility for the abuse of this freedom in the cases is determined by law.

12. The guarantee of the rights of man and citizen requires a public force; this force then is instituted for the advantage of all and not for the personal benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.

13. A general tax is indispensable for the maintenance of the public force and for the expenses of administration; it ought to be equally apportioned among all citizens according to their means.

14. All the citizens have a right to ascertain, by themselves or by their representatives, the necessity of the public tax, to consent to it freely, to follow the employment of it, and to determine the quota, the assessment, the collection, and the duration of it.

15. Society has the right to call for an account of his administration by every public agent.

16. Any society in which the guarantee of the rights is not secured, or the separation of powers not determined, has no constitution at all.

17. Property being a sacred to and inviolable right, no one can be deprived of it, unless legally established public necessity evidently demands it, under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.

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Source 2: Cartoon of France After the Revolution of 1789 ~ undated, author unknown

Quote in upper-right hand corner (translated): “Long live the King. Long live the Nation.”

[Source: French National Library]

III. France During the “Reign of Terror” Period of the Revolution (1792-1794)

Source 1: Nicolas Rétif Describes the September Massacres During the French Revolution (1792)

Nicolas-Edme Rétif was a Parisian novelist of moderate political views. Here Rétif recalls witnessing the violence of the September Massacres, which were the mass

killings of prisoners that took place in Paris   from September 2nd – 6th,1792. The massacres were an expression of the collective mentality in Paris in the days after

the overthrow of the monarchy where many people believed that political prisoners loyal to the king and the Church were planning to rise up in their jails to join a

counterrevolutionary plot against French Revolutionary forces. The actual killing began on September 2, when a group of prisoners being transferred to another

prison were attacked by an armed mob. In the next four days the massacres spread to the other prisons of the city, and the civil authorities were powerless to stop them. In all, about 1,200 prisoners were killed, most after a rushed trial by a hastily constituted “popular tribunal.” Of these, more than 220 were Catholic

priests- who were part of the ancient regieme’s “1st Estate”- held for refusing to disavow their faith and refusing to support Revolutionary goals.

“These atrocious events [of September 2-6] must be described with impartiality and the writer must be cold when he makes his reader tremble. He must be moved by no passion; otherwise he becomes a declaimer instead of being a historian…

The killing began at Le Chatelet: they were going to the Force Prison. But I didn’t go there. I believed I was fleeing from these horrors by going home. I went to bed. A sleep troubled by the fury of the carnage allowed me only a difficult rest, often interrupted by the start of a frightened awakening. But that was not all. At about two o’clock, I heard a troop of cannibals pass by my windows, and not one of them seemed to me to have a Parisian accent. All were [from other parts of France] – they sang, they bellowed, they yelled. In the middle of all that I heard: ‘Let’s go to the Bernardines! Let’s go to Saint-Firmin!’ (Saint-Firmin was a priests’ prison) … Some of these murderers cried out ‘Long live the nation!’ One of them, whom I would have liked to see so as to read his hideous soul on his atrocious face, cried out maniacally: ‘Long live death!’… I heard it, as well as the galley convicts, and the priests of Saint-Firmin.

Among these priests was [Father] Gros, [who] saw among these murderers a man with whom he had some dealings. ‘Ah! There you are my friend! Hey! What have you come here for at this time of the night?’ ‘Oh!’ the man replied, ‘we come here at an evil time (for misery)’…This man [then] turned his back on Gros, as the kings and Richelieu used to do to their victims, and “signaled” to his comrades; Gros was not stabbed. He was given a more gentle death: he was thrown from the window. His brains gushed out on impact, he did not suffer…The murderers…killed all night in these two prisons, as well as at Le Chatelet…

Finally, I saw a woman appear, pale as her underclothing, held up by a counter clerk. They said to her in a harsh voice: ‘Cry out: “Long live the nation!”’ ‘No! no!’ she said. They made her climb onto a heap of corpses. One of the murderers seized the counter clerk and took him away. ‘Ah!’ cried the unfortunate woman, ‘don’t hurt him!’ They told her again to cry out ‘Long live the nation!’ She refused disdainfully. Then a killer seized her, tore off her dress and opened her belly. She

fell and was finished off by the others. Never had such horror offered itself to my imagination. I tried to flee; my legs failed. I fainted. When I came to my senses, I saw the bloody head. I was told that it had been washed, its hair curled, and that it had been put on the end of a pike and carried under the windows of the Temple. Pointless cruelty!

What is, therefore, the true motive for this butchery?...I wanted to know the truth and I have finally found it. They only wanted one thing: to get rid of non-juring priests. Some even wanted to get rid of all of the [inhabitants there who refused to stand behind the Revolution].”

Source 2: French Revolutionary General Turreau’s Tactics in the Vendee (1794)

Louis Marie Turreau was a French Revolutionary general, best known for commanding the Colonnes Infernales (“Hell’s Soldiers”) who crushed the Vendee

uprising in 1793-94. Vendee was a region in France that strongly opposed the French Revolution and the likes of Robespierre, because people there supported

and needed many of the social programs run by the old “First Estate”- the Catholic Church. It was the epicenter of the largest counter-revolutionary uprising of the

French Revolution. In March of 1793, its residents- more well-off than other peasants closer to Paris- never much engaged with the Paris-based revolution or its radical ideas, and took up arms against the National Convention. There were many reasons for this counter-revolutionary uprising but chief among them were rising land taxes, the national government’s attacks on the Catholic Church, the

execution of Louis XVI, the expansion of the revolutionary war, and the introduction of conscription (a “military draft”). Unfortunately, the people of the Vendee would pay a heavy price for their resistance. The government’s response

was swift and triggered a civil war in the region. The fight for control of the Vendee lasted three years and produced violence and mass killing that left a

conservative death toll of 58,000, but the real loss of life in the Vendee in 1793-96 may well be closer to 200,000. Here, Turreau, writing to the Minister for War in

January of 1794, describes tactics he wants to use there.

“My purpose is to burn everything, to leave nothing but what is essential to establish the necessary quarters for exterminating the rebels.

This great measure is one which you should prescribe. You should also make an advance statement as to the fate of the women and children we will come across in this rebellious countryside. If they are all to be put to the sword, I cannot undertake such action without authorization. All brigands caught bearing arms, or convicted of having taken up arms to revolt against their country, will be bayoneted. The same will apply to girls, women and children in the same circumstances. Those who are merely under suspicion will not be spared either, but no execution may be carried out except by previous order of the general.

All villages, farms, woods, heathlands, generally anything which will burn, will be set on fire, although not until any perishable supplies found there have been

removed. But, it must be repeated, these executions must not take place until so ordered by the general.

I hasten to describe to you the measures which I have just put in hand for the extermination of all remaining rebels scattered about the interior of the Vendee. I was convinced that the only way to do this was by deploying a sufficient number of columns, to spread right across the countryside and effect a general sweep, which would completely purge the districts as they passed. Tomorrow these 12 columns will set out simultaneously, moving from east to west. Each column commander has orders to search and burn forests, villages, market towns and farms, omitting those places which I consider important posts or essential for establishing communications.”

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Source 3: Maximillien Robespierre’s Speech to the National Convention- February 5 th , 1794: “Justification of Terror”

Between 1793 and 1794, France experienced the most radical phase of the revolution, known as the Reign of Terror. During this period France was

essentially ruled by a 12-member Committee of Public Safety elected by the National Convention each month. The outstanding member of this committee was Maximillien Robespierre (1758-1794), a lawyer and member of the Jacobin Club and gained a reputation as “the Incorruptible” with superb oratory skills. In this speech to the National Convention, Robespierre helps define the revolution and

justifies extreme action to secure its aims.

What is the aim we want to achieve? The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws are engraved not in stone and marble, but in the hearts of all men, even in the heart of the slave who forgets them or of the tyrant who disowns them.

We want a state of affairs where all despicable and cruel passions are unknown, and all kind and generous passions are aroused by the laws; where ambition is the desire to deserve glory and to serve the fatherland; where distinctions arise only from equality itself; where the citizen submits to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people and the people to justice; where the fatherland guarantees the well-being of each individual, and where each individual enjoys with pride the prosperity and glory of the fatherland; where all souls elevate themselves through constant communication or republican sentiments and through the need to deserve the esteem of a great people; where the arts are the decorations of liberty that ennobles them, where commerce is the source of public wealth and not only of the monstrous opulence of a few house.

In our country we want to substitute morality for egoism, honesty for honor, principles for customs, duties for decorum, the rule of reason for the tyranny of custom, the contempt of vice for the contempt of misfortune, pride for insolence, magnanimity for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for well-bred

people, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for pompous action, warmth of happiness for boredom of sensuality, greatness of man for pettiness of the great; a magnanimous, powerful, happy people for a polite, frivolous, despicable people -- that is to say, all the virtues and all the miracles of the Republic for all the vices and all the absurdities of the monarchy.

In one word, we want to fulfill the wishes of nature, accomplish the destiny of humanity, keep the promises of philosophy, [and] absolve Providence from the long reign of crime and tyranny. What kind of government can realize these marvels? Only a democratic or republican government. But what is the fundamental principle of the democratic or popular government, that is to say, the essential strength that sustains it and makes it move? It is virtue: I am speaking of the public virtue which brought about so many marvels in Greece and Rome and which must bring about much more astonishing ones yet in republican France; of that virtue which is nothing more than love of the fatherland and of its laws.

The splendor of the goal of the French Revolution is simultaneously the source of our strength and of our weakness: our strength because it gives us an ascendancy of truth over falsehood, and of public rights over private interests; our weakness, because it rallies against us all vicious men, all those who in their hearts seek to pillage the people…It is necessary to stifle the domestic and foreign enemies of the Republic or perish with them. Now in these circumstances, the first maxim of our politics ought to be to lead the people by reason and the enemies of the people by terror.

If the strength of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the strength of popular government in revolution is both virtue and terror; terror without virtue is disastrous, virtue without terror is powerless. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most urgent needs of the fatherland. It is said that terror is the strength of despotic government. Does ours then resemble the one with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalized subjects through terror; he is right as a despot. Subdue the enemies of liberty through terror and you will be right as founders of the Republic. The government of revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

[Source: Richard W. Lyman and Lewis W. Spitz, eds., Major Crises in Western Civilization, vol. 2 (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), pp. 71-72.]

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(More on Back)

Source 4a and 4b: Enlightenment Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke

4a. Enlightenment philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Social Contract Theory : Book II, Chapter 5, The Right of Life & Death (1762)

“Again, every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on forfeit a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws he ceases to be a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In such a case the preservation of the State is inconsistent with his own, and one or the other must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so much the citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment are the proofs that he has broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer a member of the State. Since, then, he has recognized himself to be such by living there, he must be removed by exile as a violator of the compact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an enemy is not a moral person, but merely a man; and in such a case the right of war is to kill the conquered.”

"When the entire nation is in danger . . . a thing which is a crime at other times becomes praiseworthy”

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Source 4b: John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government , Chapter II, Sec. 8 (1689)

“…In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like mischief. And in the case, and upon this ground, EVERY MAN HATH A RIGHT TO PUNISH THE OFFENDER, AND BE EXECUTIONER OF THE LAW OF NATURE.”