Daily Life During the French Revolution (4 page)

The representatives brought to the Assembly
cahiers de
doléances
(notebooks of grievances) produced by every parish and corporation
or guild in the country. These provided the information needed by the 1,177
delegates, consisting of 604 representatives of the Third Estate, mostly
lawyers; 278 nobles (the vast majority nobles of the sword); and 295 clerical
delegates, three-quarters of whom were parish priests sympathetic to the misery
of their parishioners.

All three estates expressed their loyalty to and love for
the king in the
cahiers,
but all declared that absolute monarchy was
obsolete and that meetings of the Estates-General must become a regular
occurrence. The royal ministers were chastised for their fiscal inefficiency
and arbitrary decisions. The king was urged to make a full disclosure of state
debt and to concede to the Estates-General control over expenditures and taxes.

The belief was also widespread that the church, whose noble
upper echelon lived in splendor but whose parish priests often were mired in
poverty, was in dire need of reform. The
cahiers
expressed the need for
fiscal and judicial changes, demanding that the church and the nobility pay
their share of taxes and that justice be uniform, less costly, and more
expeditious and the laws and punishments more humane. The abolition of internal
trade boundaries and free transport of goods throughout the country were also
generally considered to be highly beneficial to the realm.

There were sharp differences among the three estates,
especially in the countryside, where peasant, bourgeois, church, and noble
interests conflicted. The Third Estate wished to see the abolition of all
exemptions, such as those concerning taxes and lodging of soldiers in peasant
homes, for which the poor carried the brunt. It also hoped to see the end of
seigneurial justice and to have all cases settled before the nearest royal
judge. The clergy hoped for a rejuvenated social order and a monopoly on
morality and worship, while the lower clergy supported making high positions in
the church available to men of talent, noble or otherwise. The bourgeoisie and
the nobility each wanted a larger say in running a government in which the
power of the king would be far from absolute.

Troops firing on rioting workers
at Faubourg St.-Antoine.

Opening of the Estates-General
at Versailles, May 5, 1789.

REVOLUTION AND CONSTITUTION

The deadlock on voting procedure persisted for six weeks,
but finally, on June 17, the Third Estate, led by abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès
and the comte de Mirabeau, proclaimed itself the National Assembly. This
display of defiance of the royal government, which had given its support to the
clergy and the nobility, was followed by the passage of a measure vesting the
National Assembly with sole power to legislate taxation. In swift retaliation,
Louis deprived the National Assembly of its meeting hall, and it responded, on
June 20, by gathering at a Versailles tennis court and swearing what is known
as the Tennis Court Oath, a pledge that it would not dissolve until it had
drafted a constitution for France. At this juncture, serious divisions split
the ranks of the upper two estates, and numerous representatives of the lower
clergy and a number of liberal nobles broke off to join forces with the
National Assembly.

Prominent factors leading to this display of disobedience
to the established order were the indecisive and immature nature of the
monarch; the inability of the ruling classes to cope successfully with the
problems of state; the demands of the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the
nobility for more influence in government; the oppressive taxation that fell on
the Third Estate, especially the peasantry; the impoverishment of workers; the
intellectual ferment of the Age of Enlightenment; and the example of successful
rebellion by American colonies. Unequal distribution of land under the
seigneurial system and the unending cycle of wasteful government spending were
causes of discontent, as were the remnants of feudal obligations in some areas.
Perhaps most important of all was the shortage and the rising cost of bread and
the inability of the common people to afford the prices, which led to hunger
and further poverty. There were also a host of minor grievances, from hunting
rights to the right to gather firewood and to use open land.

On the morning of July 14, 1789, incensed by the dismissal
of Necker yet again, Parisian mobs roamed the streets in search of weapons and
finally attacked the dominant symbol of despotic royal authority, the fortress
prison of the Bastille, on the eastern edge of the city, an institution that
epitomized injustice and arbitrary rule. Citizens of every class and profession
had been arrested by secret warrants
(lettres de cachet)
and imprisoned
indefinitely in the fortress without formal accusation or trial. The bloody
battle to take the Bastille heralded the violent onset of the revolution. Even
though only seven prisoners were incarcerated there on July 14, the commander
of the military garrison was beheaded by the mob. Two days later, the
dismantling of the stronghold was begun amid public rejoicing.

Shortly thereafter, Necker was again recalled by the king,
but he was unable to resolve the financial crisis. Frustrated in his efforts at
reform and at curbing court extravagance, and especially over the issuance of
the disastrous assignats (a new form of government bond), he resigned, in
September 1790, to retire to his estate in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, during the last two weeks of July and the first
week of August 1789, provincial unrest and disorder, known as the Great Fear
(Grande
Peur),
swept the countryside as the rumor spread that aristocrats were sending
brigand bands to destroy peasant holdings and put an end to the revolution.
Châteaux were set alight by peasants, and nobles fled the country. As news of
destruction and chaos reached Versailles, the National Constituent Assembly was
spurred into action. During the night session of August 4, 1789, the clergy and
nobles renounced their privileges; a few days later, the Assembly passed a law
abolishing feudal and manorial prerogatives. Parallel legislation prohibited
the sale of public offices and of exemptions from taxation and abolished the
right of the Roman Catholic Church to levy tithes. The Assembly then proceeded
to deal with its primary task—the drafting of a constitution.

In the preamble, known as the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen (see Appendix 1), the delegates formulated the revolutionary
ideals later summarized as
liberté, égalité, fraternité
(liberty,
equality, fraternity). While the Constituent Assembly deliberated, the
food-deprived population of Paris (a hotbed of anger and of rumors of royalist
conspiracies) clamored for bread and lower prices. Reports of a bountiful
banquet at Versailles given by the royal guards in which the tricolor of the
revolution was said to have been trampled underfoot propelled the political ferment
in Paris into a frenzy. On October 5, 1789, a large body of Parisians, mostly
women, many from the market place, marched on Versailles and laid siege to the
royal palace. Louis and his family were rescued by Lafayette’s National Guard,
but the crowd demanded that they be escorted to Paris and lodged in the palace
of the Tuileries. The Constituent Assembly, following suit, also moved to
Paris. The court and the Assembly, more readily accessible within the capital,
became increasingly subject to pressure from the citizens.

While the draft of the constitution of 1791, the first such
written document in French history, was in preparation, indignation, anger, and
mistrust grew as reports circulated that Marie-Antoinette was in secret
communication with her brother Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire, a man who,
like all monarchs of the time, had no desire to see the revolution succeed and
who offered sanctuary to the French
émigrés.
Suspicions that the king
and queen were devising a means to overthrow the revolution with foreign and
émigré
support were confirmed when, on June 21, 1791, the royal family was
apprehended at Varennes, near the Belgian border, while attempting to flee the
country. Belgium at the time was under the control of Leopold II. The royal family
was brought back to Paris under guard.

After suspending the monarchy for a brief period, the
moderate majority of the Constituent Assembly reinstated the king on July 16 in
the interest of stemming the mounting radicalism and to forestall foreign intervention.
The following day, July 17, 1791, the republicans of Paris massed in the Champ
de Mars, a military parade ground, under the direction of the Cordeliers (more
radical than the Jacobins) and demanded that the king be tried for treason.
Lafayette ordered his troops to fire on the demonstrators, and the bloodshed
widened the gulf between radical and moderate bourgeois sections of the
population.

By the terms of the constitutional document, the provinces
of France were eliminated and the country was divided into 83 departments, each
provided with a local elective administration. Hereditary titles were
abolished, and trial by jury in criminal cases was ordained. The constitution
confined the electorate to men age 25 and older who paid taxes of at least three
days’ wages and vested authority in a Legislative Assembly elected by an
indirect system of voting. While executive authority was in the hands of the
king, strict limitations were imposed on his powers. He was given veto power
over legislation, but his veto merely suspended the legislation for a time,
rather than expunging it. The Assembly took effective control of the conduct of
foreign affairs and placed severe restrictions on the power of the Catholic
Church that were legalized on July 12, 1790 through a series of articles called
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the most important of which confiscated
all ecclesiastical property. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy also provided
for the election of priests and bishops by voters, for remuneration of the
clergy by the state, for a clerical oath of allegiance to the state (November
27, 1790), and for dissolution of most monastic orders.

Church matters were now settled to the government’s
satisfaction, and on September 14, 1791 the first written constitution of
France was finished and reluctantly accepted by the king. Two weeks later, the
Assembly dissolved itself, its work finished.

July 14, 1789, the storming of
the Bastille.

THE GROWTH OF RADICALISM