Week 1

Revolutionary Times

Why the French Revolution matters

• Ended absolutist rule and aristocratic privilege in France, corroded it elsewhere

• Spread language of popular sovereignty

• Blueprint for political and cultural revolution

• Politicized masses and popular violence

• Seeded European nationalism

• Total war?

A Few Questions

1. Why France?

2. How did the Revolution unfold?

3. Legacies of Revolution?

Why France?

1. Rising social tensions in the “Old

Regime”

2. New language of rights and critique

3. Administrative reform

4. Triggering events

The social orders of 18th century France

The “Absolute” Monarchy: Louis XVI

Absolutism embodied: Versailles

The Third Estate

The silent majority: Peasants

The growing burdens of Third Estate

Why France?

1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime”

2. New language of rights and critique

3. Administrative reform

4. Triggering events

The Philosphes

Why France?

1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime”

2. New language of rights and critique

3. Administrative reform

4. Triggering events

“The most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform…Feudalism at the height of its power had not inspired Frenchmen with so much hatred as it did on the eve of its disappearing.”

Alexis de Toqueville

Why France?

1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime”

2. New language of rights and critique

3. Administrative reform

4. Triggering events

Poor harvests and high bread prices

A Few Questions

1. Why France?

2. How did the Revolution unfold?

3. Legacies of Revolution?

Three Basic Stages

• Aristocratic Revolution 1788-1789

• Bourgeois/moderate Revolution 1789-

1792

• Radical/Jacobin Revolution 1792-1795

The parlements, seats of noble power

Three Basic Stages

• Aristocratic Revolution 1788-1789

• Bourgeois/moderate Revolution 1789-

1792

• Radical/Jacobin Revolution 1792-1795

Abbé Sieyès, What is the Third Estate?

(1789)

“The Third Estate is like a strong and robust man with one arm still in chains. If we remove the privileged order, the Nation will not be something less but something more. Thus, what is the Third Estate? All, but an all that is shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? All, but an all that is free and flourishing. Nothing can be done without it; everything would be infinitely better without the other two orders...[T]he noble order is not even part of society itself: It may very well be a burden for the Nation but it cannot be a part of it.”

“It is impossible to say what place the two privileged orders ought to occupy in the social order: this is the equivalent of asking what place one wishes to assign to a malignant tumor that torments and undermines the strength of the body of a sick person. It must be neutralized. We must re-establish the health and workings of all the organs so thoroughly that they are no longer susceptible to these fatal schemes that are capable of sapping the most essential principles of vitality.”

Tennis Court Oath, June 20 1789.

Storming of the Bastille, July 14 1789.

Popular violence

Sans culottes: Revolutionary shock troops

The March to Versailles, October 1789

What the moderate Revolution did

• Abolition of aristocratic and church privilege, equality before law.

• Declaration of Rights of Man and of Citizen (August 27, 1789)

• Vote given to roughly ½ adult males. • Religious freedom granted to Protestants and Jews• Expropriation of Church property • Rights granted to mixed race inhabitants of

colonies• Abolition of arbitrary detention and censorship

Three Basic Stages

• Aristocratic Revolution 1788-1789

• Bourgeois/moderate Revolution 1789-

1792

• Radical/Jacobin Revolution 1792-1795

A Bad Rap?

Maximilien de Robespierre and the Terror

Beat of the Revolution

La Marseillaise

No looking back: The execution of Louis XVI

(January 21, 1793)

Enemies without and within

Crisis management or dictatorship? The

Committee of Public Safety

Est. in fall 1793Made up of 12 deputiesConcentrated state power Declared mass conscriptionSet price controlsEst. revolutionary trials

Robespierre’s speech to Convention, 1794

…Within the scheme of the French revolution, that which is immoral is impolitic, that which is corrupting is counter-revolutionary. Weakness, vice, and prejudices are the road to royalty. Dragged too often, perhaps, by the weight of our former customs…towards false ideas and faint-hearted sentiments, we have less cause to guard ourselves against too much energy than against too much weakness. The greatest peril, perhaps, that we have to avoid is not that of zealous fervor, but rather of weariness in doing good works and of timidity in displaying our own courage…

It has been said that terror was the mainspring of despotic government. Does your government, then, resemble a despotism? Yes, as the sword which glitters in the hands of liberty’s heroes resembles the one with which tyranny’s lackeys are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalized subjects by terror; he is right to do this, as a despot. Subdue liberty’s enemies by terror, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

Revolutionary time

Social reform for some

The Revolution consumes its own:

the execution of Robespierre, July 1794

A Few Questions

1. Why France?

2. How did the Revolution unfold?

3. What were the legacies of Revolution?

Young Napoleon

Coronation of Emperor Napoleon, 1804

Military conquest

Impact of Napoleon

• Spread centralized bureaucratic secular state

• Created new social hierarchy based on service, talent, and property

• Established Napoleonic (Civil) Code

• Spurred nationalist movements

• Anticipated populist dictatorship

• Up to 7 million dead in Napoleonic Wars

Corsican or French?

Letter to Corsican patriot Paoli, 1789: “I was born when the French were vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of liberty in torrents of blood. Such was the odious spectacle that first met my eyes...Tears of despair surrounded my cradle.”

Recounting his early years of French schooling: “Life was a burden...There is nothing but pain...It is a burden because the men and women with whom I live have customs that are as far away from mine as the light of the moon is different from the light of the sun.”

In exile on Elba: “Of all the insults heaped upon me, the one I was most sensitive to was being Corsican.”

To the State Council: “ I want the title of French citizen to become the finest and most desirable on earth. I want every Frenchman traveling anywhere…to be able to believe himself at home.”

On his deathbed: “My son must have no thought of avenging my death: he must take advantage of it. Let him never forget my accomplishments; let him forever remain, as I have been, French to the finger tips.”

The (first) war to end all wars? Did total war

originate in Revolutionary era?

• Popular armies

• Total mobilization of society for purposes of war

• Blurring of combatants and non-combatants

• Radicalization of war aims: all in/all out

• Violence as regenerative

Citizen Armies

“It has now been fourteen days and fourteen nights, my friend, since I’ve set foot in a house or slept more than two hours in a row… for fourteen times twenty four hours I’ve had nothing to eat. I’ve lived with army bread, not always any water, and sometimes a little bad pecquet [cheap brandy].”

–Claude Simon, grenadier from Paris, 1793.

Radicalization of war

Does democratization of war lead to radicalization of war?

War fought for nation, not king

More at stake for more people

Fusion of politics and war

Non-combatants fair game

Execution of Spanish rebels in Madrid

(Goya)

Horrors of Vendée

“It is a cruel thing to think but it is becoming more clear every day: peace is taking us backwards. We will only be regenerated by blood. Our shallow national character, and our frivolous or corrupt morals, are incompatible with liberty, and can only be reformed by the rasp of adversity.”

–Madame Roland,leader of the Girondin faction, 1791.

Regeneration through violence

“Revolutionary war is an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy’s poison but also purges us of our own filth.”

–Mao Tse Tung, 1938.

A cautionary note from…

“The most extravagant idea that can arise in a politician’s head is to believe that it is enough for a people to invade a foreign country to make it adopt their laws and their constitution. No one loves armed missionaries...The Declaration of the Rights of Man is not a beam of sunlight which shines on all men, and it is not a lightening bolt which strikes every throne at the same time...”

–?