The French Revolution

Jocelyn Hunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134682812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In the French Revolution, Jocelyn Hunt examines the major issues and background to the revolution, including its causes, and disputes as to when it ended. The author also surveys the views of historians on this period and looks at wider questions such as the nature of revolution.
Beginning with the pre-revolution economic and political situation, and covering through to the fall of Robespierre and the rise of Bonaparte, this book provides both challenging analysis and a concise introduction.

1 WHY DID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BEGIN?

BACKGROUND NARRATIVE

The French Revolution began in May 1789, with the meeting of the Estates General. Each group in French public life expected its own interests to be served by the meeting, and the fulfilling and frustration of those expectations mark the start of the Revolution. This Assembly, meeting 175 years after the last, was a measure of the desperation of the French government. From his accession in 1774, Louis XVI had faced a worsening financial situation, compounded by the money and troops sent to assist the Americans in war against Britain. France failed to gain the expected benefits: the liberated colonists continued to trade mainly with Britain, and were slow to repay the French loans. Turgot had warned that the first shot would drive France into bankruptcy, and he was proved right.

The appointment of Necker as Director of Finances in 1776 was a popular one, since he financed the war by borrowing, issuing five- and seven-year bonds at rates of 8 per cent or more. In 1781, however, the need to find new lenders led to his publication of the highly optimistic ‘Compte Rendu au Roi’. By the time Calonne became Finance Minister in 1783, willing lenders were hard to find, so radical action was needed. His first schemes were designed to ‘create wealth’ and might today be called Keynesian: in the eighteenth century, they were merely extravagant. His other strategy was to reform the entire taxation system. The Parlement was most unlikely to register these reforms, but his idea that an Assembly of Notables would be more tractable was mistaken. It raised objections to these reforms and tried to establish a constitutional role for itself. Calonne was replaced by Archbishop Brienne, himself a member of the Notables. He, too, failed to persuade the Notables, who demanded that the representatives of the whole nation should be consulted. The next months were spent in trying to persuade the Parlement to accept the reforms, while the financial situation worsened and public order was threatened. By August 1788 the King was forced to agree to the summoning of an Estates General for the next May, and to reappoint the ever-popular Necker. Decisions about the precise structure of the Estates General were assigned to a second Assembly of Notables, and rules for election were agreed. The Assembly which had seemed impossible in 1786 met at Versailles in May 1789.

The question of why the Revolution began has long been a matter of historiographical debate. One of the clearest discussions of the debate can be found in Rethinking the French Revolution by G.C. Comninel.¹ Marxist historians assert that this was a social revolution: a fundamental process of historical development. Barnave, in his Introduction à la Révolution Française (1792), had written that commercial property was totally different from and much more valuable than traditional landed property; thus the Revolution aimed to align political power with economic wealth. Barnave could be said to have predicted Marx. Later Marxist historians concurred. Lefebvre, for instance, wrote ‘The Revolution is only the crown of a long economic and social evolution which has made the bourgeoisie the mistress of the world’.² And, for Marxists, the bourgeois revolution is the inevitable precursor of the proletariat revolution, since ‘the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations’ (Communist Manifesto).³

Historians who reject the determinist view prefer to argue that this was a revolution led by ideas: concepts like egalitarianism, justice, organisational rationalism and anticlericalism led to a search for a better society. R.R.Palmer, Jacques Godechot and Claude Manceron have put forward a conservative/liberal view that Revolution was needed to restore justice. They agree that a wider movement can be traced, linking the American and Dutch experiences to that of the French. J.M.Thompson provides a theoretical link between the Marxists and these historians, suggesting that the bourgeois and liberal nobles used their wealth in a creditable way to improve society. Among those who argue for a less clear cut view are Cobban and Doyle. Historians such as Souboul and Rudé add the dimension of the popular revolution, and the involvement of the menu peuple: the peasants in 1789, for example, and the sansculottes.

The two analyses in this section consider two aspects of these many arguments: Were the privileged classes responsible for the outbreak of the French Revolution? Is it possible to say that the Revolution was a middle-class phenomenon?

ANALYSIS (1): WERE THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTBREAK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION?

The privileged classes could be held responsible in three ways: they helped cause the problems since their wealth was not subject to serious taxation; they provoked the hatred of the groups below them in society; and they used the strength of their position to resist attempts at change, while finally demanding, for their own ends, the meeting of the Estates General which gave voice to the Third Estate and ensured their own downfall.

Privilege was a complex concept in ancien régime France. The word lacked the modern connotation of injustice, since privilege was a form of property. The first two estates were identified as privileged. Manceron has this to say about the First Estate, the Church:

The clergy is the first order of France, even richer in land and money than the nobility. The bishops, all of whom in the past century have come from the nobility, as well as the powerful abbots of the great monasteries, hold almost half the real estate of France. Property is presumed to be the product of accumulated centuries of endowments and is regarded as sacred, untouchable by any form of taxation. Every year, thanks to the tithe system…it grows’.⁴

Of course the Church did make its ‘free gift’ to the government every year, but it decided the amount itself, and was often in arrears.

The Second Estate, the nobility, for long had exemption from many taxes. Capitation, or tax per head, was paid by the nobility, but was divided into only four grades, and so did not hurt the rich. Nobles in the pays d’état paid the taille, but calculated their own contribution. The vingtième was the only proportional tax which the nobility paid. They resisted Calonne’s planned single land tax precisely because it would have been collected according to size and value of holdings, regardless of the social status of the land holder.

Members of the nobility, and of the clergy, were also involved in capitalist enterprises. France was potentially a very rich country. As well as the range of climate and crops which should have ensured its wealth, it had a growing population, rich mineral resources, colonial possessions abroad and harbours on both the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. But the French government could not tap this wealth in taxation, since the tax systems dated from the Middle Ages, using land as the measure of wealth: even the vingtième, collected in peacetime since 1749, was assessed on ‘real property’. Thus, either directly or indirectly, it was the common people who bore the weight of taxation; and not all of them: many towns had purchased exemption from taille. These villes franches did not pay the most oppressive taxes. Those who did were the paysans of France, the country folk. The King’s government faced the thankless task of taking as much as it could from the very poor, while taking little from the wealthy. The failure of these sums to add up brought about the crisis which began the Revolution. Members of the prosperous classes collected certain taxes ‘en ferme’: that is, they paid in advance for the right to collect the tax from a certain area. While this benefited the government, who got their money ‘up front’, it naturally meant that the taxpayer paid more, in order to cover their investment. And the system became less than adequate when the fermiers généraux took to ‘paying’ in IOUs rather than in actual money.

The rentiers, who invested in government stocks, were also, of course, the rich. They received their dividends and their repayments from those liable to tax, imposing a further burden on the poor.

The privileged classes also alienated the rest of society. The seigneurs, the land holders, whether clergy, noble, bourgeois or corporation, most directly oppressed the paysans. The peasants paid to the King the tallies, vingtièmes, capitation and the gabelle (salt tax); they also paid the dîme or tithe to the Church, but, above all, they paid their landlords. The luckiest, those who paid a fixed money rent, had actually benefited from the inflation of the 1770s. Others were métayers, share croppers, who gave between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of their produce to the landlord in return for the land and tools. In many areas, peasants still held their land according to the medieval rules of feudalism. They paid both in money and in kind for use of the land, and were liable to other obligations as well: the banalités of mill, oven, wine press and cider press were almost as hated as the hunting laws, which prevented them killing game animals, including pigeons and rabbits, building stone walls or harvesting crops till birds had finished nesting in them. There was little that peasants could do to resist their seigneurs: but, when events in Paris set the example, they liberated themselves in their own way, seizing the land and burning the infamous terriers, where their many obligations were set down. Many nobles had alienated their tenants still further, by employing féodistes, lawyers who specialised in discovering and enforcing forgotten feudal dues.

Some historians suggest that a further aspect of this ‘feudal reaction’ had been the attempt to close the ranks of the nobility to new entrants. In the past there had been various routes to attaining all the privileges of nobility: inheritance; purchase; direct grant from the King; or securing appointment to a position which carried with it nobility. ‘Robe’ nobles were resented by the nobles of the sword, although ‘robe’ nobles were accepted as ‘sword’ nobles after three generations, or ‘four quarterings’. During the eighteenth century, formal decrees were made, limiting the officer ranks of the army and the senior jobs in Church and State to those with four quarterings. It may be that the wealthy bourgeoisie in their turn resented this closing of the doors to privilege and tax exemption.

Above all, it was the privileged classes who turned a financial crisis into a constitutional and political revolution. The Assembly of Notables refused to accept Calonne’s reforms, or even Brienne’s much less radical reworking of them. They, like the members of the Parlement, were reluctant to lose influence over future tax raising, and so refused to accept Calonne’s permanent tax; the privileged classes attempted to retain some control over amounts, by demanding that his planned regional councils met ‘par ordre’ and not simply according to size of land holding. When the Parlement rejected the decrees, and the King registered them by lit de justice, the parlementaires depicted themselves as protectors of the traditional rights of the French against the encroachment of the King, and, for a few months at least, convinced the people that they were defending liberty. When it became clear, in the autumn of 1788, that they were simply defending their own privileges, the reaction was all the stronger.

The arrogance of the privileged groups can be seen in their intention to use the Estates General for their own ends. If the meeting had been in the form of 1614, the three estates would have had equal numbers. The domination of the privileged would have been further assured by meeting and voting ‘par ordre’ so that there would always be a two to one majority against radical change. When Louis concluded that there should be double representation for the Tiers, the privileged hoped that this was to be the only change. The members of the Third Estate knew that the change in representation would be pointless without voting ‘par tête’. The refusal to meet separately was their first act of defiance.

Thus the privileged classes both prevented the Crown from solving its financial problems and escalated these problems into a full-scale revolution. On the other hand, the vocal and belligerent response of the prosperous and educated members of the Third Estate, and the proreform attitudes of some of the nobles are also significant factors. Nobles had resisted the king in every century of French history, without the far-reaching repercussions experienced in the 1780s and 1790s.

Questions

1. Would it have been possible for the Crown to reform the entrenched systems of French class and privilege without a revolution?

2. Does the fact that the privileged classes ‘lost’ in the French Revolution help to explain why they are blamed for bringing it about?

ANALYSIS (2): WAS THE REVOLUTION A ‘MIDDLE CLA...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• SERIES PREFACE
• 1: WHY DID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BEGIN?
• 2: WHEN DID DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE BECOME REVOLUTIONARY?
• 3: THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
• 4: THE WAR IN EUROPE
• 5: THE TERROR
• 6: THE DIRECTORY AND ITS ACHIEVEMENTS
• 7: THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION
• 8: DID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION END WITH BONAPARTE?
• NOTES AND SOURCES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY