Daily Life During the French Revolution (3 page)

The English agriculturist Arthur Young found the language
barrier a serious obstacle in his research just before and during the revolution.
He writes about Flanders and Alsace: “not one farmer in twenty speaks French.”
In Brittany, he had a similar experience. Henry Swinburne, who climbed in the
Pyrenees Mountains, came across an incomprehensible language—Basque—and Sir
Nathaniel Wraxal, writer and parliamentarian, wrote in 1775 that even in
Bayonne, “they speak a jargon called the Basque, which has scarce any affinity
either with the French, Spanish, or even the Gascon dialect.” At the eastern
end of the Pyrenees, Young declared, “Roussillon is in fact a part of Spain;
the inhabitants are Spaniards in language and in customs; but they are under a
French government.”

As travelers ventured down the Rhône valley toward Avignon,
they encountered
langue d
’
oc.
It was in this region, after
leaving Le Puy de Montélimar and heading for Aubenas, that Young barely escaped
injury in August 1789 when his horse backed his chaise over a precipice. If he
had been injured, he mused:

A
blessed country for a broken limb . . . confinement for six weeks or two months
at the Cheval Blanc, at Aubenas, an inn that would have been purgatory itself
to one of my hogs: alone, without relation, friend or servant, and not one
person in sixty that speaks French.

MONARCHY, VENAL OFFICES, AND DEVELOPMENT

A major issue dating back to the Middle Ages was the notion
of the absolute and divine right of kings to rule over their subjects. Such
power reached its zenith under Louis XIV, who died in 1715, and it remained the
case, at least in theory, under his successors.

Through negotiations with the papacy, French kings won the
right to fill all bishoprics and other benefices with persons of the king’s
choice, instead of the pope’s, thus assuring a pliable clergy dependent on the
monarch’s will.

French kings were obliged to supplement the royal income
from taxes by selling government offices to pay for the interminable wars and
for the expenses of the royal court. The purchaser, noble or not, paid the
crown a sum of money and derived the financial benefits and privileges of the office.
These positions, such as secretary to the king, of which there were many (Louis
XVI had 800), or magistrate of a court, became the individual’s private
property. Wealthy bourgeois who secured such a position were often elevated to
the noble class, creating a new type of nobility that did not derive its
legitimacy from family and birth; these new nobles were referred to as Nobility
of the Robe, as opposed to the old Nobility of the Sword, which scorned the
newcomers. These offices remained a source of money for the monarchy until the
revolution when, it has been estimated, there were 51,000 venal offices in
France.

The eighteenth century was nonetheless one of the great
ages in the country’s history, with France the richest and most powerful nation
on the European continent. French taste and styles in architecture, interior
decoration, dress, and manners were copied throughout western society. The
political and social ideas of French writers influenced both thought and
action, and French became the second language of educated people around the
world. Excellent roads were constructed in the vicinity of some of the larger
cities, although they remained poor in other places. The French merchant marine
expanded to more than 5,000 ships that engaged in lucrative trade with Africa,
America, and the West Indies and enriched the merchants of the French seaports.
The income of urban laborers and artisans, however, barely kept pace with
inflation, and most peasants, with little surplus to sell and heavily burdened
by taxes, tithes, and, for some, leftover feudal obligations to their lord of
the manor, continued to eke out a miserable existence. The advocates of badly
needed governmental fiscal and social reform became increasingly vocal during
the reign of Louis XVI but were resisted by those who wielded power.

AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

It was taken for granted that even a bad king was better
than none at all, and alternative forms of government were not discussed, at
least publicly, until the eighteenth century, when intellectual opposition to
the monarchy was led by French writers who focused on political, social, and
economic problems. Points of view expressed in letters, pamphlets, and essays
ushered in an age of reason, science, and humanity.

Such men argued that all mankind had certain natural
rights, such as life, liberty, and ownership of property, and that governments
should exist to guarantee these rights. Some, in the later part of the century,
advocated the right of self-government. These ideas resonated both among nobles
discontented with the centralization of power in the king and within the
growing bourgeoisie, which wanted a voice in government.

Men of reason often viewed the church as the principal
agency that enslaved the human mind and many preferred a form of Deism,
accepting God and the idea of a future existence but rejecting Christian
theology based on authority and unquestioned faith. Human aspirations, they
believed, should be centered not on a hereafter but rather on the means of
making life more agreeable on earth. Nothing was attacked with more intensity
and ferocity than the church, with all its political power and wealth and its
suppression of the exercise of reason.

Proponents of the Enlightenment were often referred to by
the French word
philosophes.
Charles de Montesquieu, one of the earliest
representatives of the movement, began satirizing contemporary French politics,
social conditions, and ecclesiastical matters in his
Persian Letters
(1721).
His work
The Spirit of Laws
(1748) examined three forms of government
(republicanism, monarchy, and despotism). His criticism of French institutions
under the Bourbons contributed significantly to ideas that encouraged French
revolutionaries. Similarly, the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, especially his
Social
Contract
(1762), a political treatise, had a profound influence on French
political and educational thought.

The
Encyclopedia,
in which numerous philosophers
collaborated, was edited by the rationalist Denis Diderot in Paris between 1751
and 1772 and was a powerful propaganda weapon against ecclesiastical authority,
superstition, conservatism, and the semi-feudal social structures of the time. It
was suppressed by the authorities but was nevertheless secretly printed, with
supplements added until 1780.

There was always a price to pay for enlightened ideas
considered irreverent and blasphemous to church and crown. Voltaire, for
example, one of the most celebrated writers of the day, known in Paris salons
as a brilliant and sarcastic wit, spent 11 months in the Bastille and was often
exiled for his satires on the aristocracy and the clergy. The language of the
Enlightenment entered the vocabulary and the words “citizen,” “nation,”
“virtue,” “republican,” and “democracy,” among others, spread throughout
France.

The Seven Years War ended in 1763 with Great Britain’s
acquisition of almost the entire French empire in North America and shattered
French pretensions to rule India, resulting in abject humiliation for France,
while the costs greatly increased the country’s already heavy debt. By 1764,
the country’s debt service alone ran at about 60 percent of the budget. The
unpopular Louis XV died at Versailles on May 10, 1774. His reported prophecy
“After me, the deluge” was soon to be fulfilled.

LOUIS XVI

Home to about 50,000 people, the town of Versailles,
primarily a residential community, lies 12 miles southwest of Paris and is the
site of the royal palace and gardens built by Louis XIV, who, along with his
court and departments of government, occupied it beginning in 1682. Louis XV
lived here, and Louis XVI, his grandson, was born here on August 23, 1754. The
deaths of his two elder brothers and of his father, the only son of Louis XV,
made the young prince dauphin of France in 1765. In 1770, he married
Marie-Antoinette, the youngest daughter of the archduchess Maria-Theresa of
Austria. In 1774, upon the death of his grandfather, Louis XVI ascended the
throne of France.

Twenty years old and inexperienced when he began his reign,
Louis XVI ruled over the most populous country in Europe, where millions
belonged to a fluid population in search of work or were involved in
lawlessness. The country was burdened by debts and heavy taxation, resulting in
widespread suffering among the ordinary people. If there was ever a time for a
strong and decisive king, it was now. Louis XVI was indecisive and easily
influenced by those around him, including his wife, who intervened to block
needed reforms, especially the pressing problems of taxation. Matters of state
were not high on his agenda. He preferred to spend his time at hobbies such as
hunting and tinkering with locks and clocks or gorging himself at the table.

AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

The ideals of the American struggle for independence,
coupled with those of the Enlightenment—liberty, justice, equality for
all—resonated strongly among many educated French people, some of whom went to
fight on the side of the American colonies. These included the marquis de La
Fayette (anglicized as Lafayette), who in 1777 left French military service to
enter the American continental army, where he was commissioned major general
and became an intimate associate of George Washington. In the minds of many,
the American Declaration of Independence signaled, for the first time, that
some people were progressing beyond the discussion of enlightened ideas and
were putting them into practice. To those who clamored for a voice in their own
government and who detested the abuses of the monarchy, the American republic
appeared an ideal state. French philosophy had prepared segments of society to
receive with enthusiasm the political doctrines and the portrait of social life
that came from across the Atlantic.

Bitter over the results of the Seven Years War and with a
profound dislike of the English, Louis XVI granted aid to the American
colonies. By intervening in support of the Americans, he hoped to weaken
England and recover colonies and trade lost in the war. The price of aiding the
budding United States of America was about 1.3 billion livres. The French
government could ill afford the expense and hovered on the brink of bankruptcy.

JACQUES NECKER

In August 1774, the king appointed a liberal comptroller
general, the economist Turgot, baron de L’Aulne, who instituted a policy of
strict economy in government expenditures. Within two years, however, most of
his reforms had been withdrawn, and his dismissal, forced by reactionary
members of the nobility and clergy, was supported by the queen.

Turgot’s successor was a Swiss banker, Jacques Necker, who
was made director general of finance in 1777 and was expected to bring
stability to the chaotic finances of the state. Idolized by the people for
attempting to bring about much-needed reforms, he was disliked by the court
aristocracy and the queen, whose wildly extravagant spending he tried to curb.
Weak-willed and irresolute, Louis XVI, who made erratic decisions based on the
interests of officials ingratiated at court, dismissed Necker in 1781, only to
recall him in September 1788 as the state sank deeper into bankruptcy.
Continuing depression, high unemployment, and the highest bread prices of the
century alienated and incensed the people of Paris, but their faith in Necker
persisted. He was acclaimed by the public as the only man capable of restoring
sound administration to the hectic French financial system. In the following
year, his popularity was further increased when, along with others, he
recommended to the king that the Estates-General, a representative assembly
from the three estates, which had not met since 1614 and which was the only
body that could legally sanction tax increases, be convened. The assembly met
in Versailles on May 5, 1789.

Opposed by aristocrats at court for his daring reform
plans, which included both the abolition of all feudal rights of the
aristocracy and the church and support for the Third Estate, Necker was again
dismissed, on July 11, 1789. This act of dismissal and rumors that royal troops
were gathering around the city aroused the fury of the populace of Paris.

ESTATES-GENERAL AND
CAHIERS DE
DOLÉANCES

Just prior to the meeting of the Estates-General,
censorship was suspended, and a flood of pamphlets expressing enlightened ideas
circulated throughout France. Necker had supported the king in the decision to
grant the Third Estate as many representatives in the Estates-General as the
First and Second Estates combined, but both men failed to make a ruling on the
method of voting—whether to vote by estate, in which case the first two estates
would certainly override the third, or by simple majority rule, giving each
representative one vote, which would benefit the Third Estate.