The French Revolution: Part One

The French Revolution: Part One

Last update: 2/4/17

The French Revolution (1)
The Causes

Three great revolutions were produced in the 1600’s-1700’s. The first, the Glorious Rebellion in England in 1688, appeared to demonstrate that it was possible to have a rational, bloodless revolution which confirmed and provided impetus for the ideas of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. The second, the American Revolution, which began in 1776, placed in power leaders who had been nurtured on the works of science: people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Furthermore, it produced documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the newly formed United States, which were simply restatements of the words of Locke and Montesquieu. But now these words had become a reality. The third, the French Revolution, was to be the grandest and most significant in the minds of those who participated. France was indeed the most important country in Europe politically and culturally. For science, one would turn to England. But for literature, music, art, fashion, architecture, and conversation, one always turned to France. Surely, then, when the revolution of Reason swept out the royalty and clergy of France, a new political and social system would come, based on the ideals of the Enlightenmentand democracy.

France in bankruptcy

France was in serious trouble in the 1780’s, both financially and socially. Louis XIV had spent incredible sums on wars to expand France’s borders and on Versailles and other palaces. His son, Louis XV, was hardly better. Raised at Versailles and kept away from power by his father,Louis XV spent his reign simply squandering more money. By the time his son Louis XVI came to power, the royal treasury was in deficit, much like we are today in the United States. Taxes brought in 500 million livres (their form of money), but expenses totaled over 629 million livres. Though Louis XVI was a completely inept monarch, the financial situation was a shared responsibility. Only 6% of the budget went for Louis' personal expenses while over 50% went to repay the loans his predecessors had taken out to fund their extravagant lifestyles. In some ways, you ungrateful Americans  were also to blame! Why? Louis' XVI had decided to enter the American Revolutionon your side, providing the American Colonies with money, weapons, clothing, as well as French warships and troops. Without France and Louis XVI, the US might never have freed itself from English control. Without him you probably would be speaking today with a funny English accent. If I want to be quite honest with you, Louis did not do thisout of love for America, but simply as a way of hurting France's age-old rival, England. So in 1788, Louis was broke! The French mainly blamed his wife, the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette, who spent exorbitant amounts of money on jewelry and dresses and was known to have fooled around constantly.

The vast majority of this money was owed to the bourgeoisie.As good businessmen, these bourgeois were however beginning to see Louis as a bad investment. As a result, loans became for Louis harder and harder to get, especially as the social crisis also deepened. The social crisis was based on the growing antagonism between the old nobility and the rising bourgeoisie. France since the Middle Ages had been divided into three classes or Estates, as they were called. The First Estate was the clergy who numbered about 100,000. The clergy were virtually a country within the country. They had their own law courts, their own administration, and only paid voluntary taxes to the king. They ran all the schools and had power of censorship over the press. However, the clergy were hardly a unified front. The same class divisions that divided the masses from the elite were also present in the priesthood. All of the authority positions were held by priests who were also nobles, while the poor neighborhood priests and monks were mostly from the bourgeois or working class among whom there was deep resentment at being permanently cut off from church power.

The Second Estate was the nobility who numbered around 400,000. They also were granted special privileges. They paid little in taxes yet owned 1/5 of all French land. Times had become hard for them, though. Life at Versailles was becoming increasingly expensive and many nobles had fallen deeply into debt to bourgeoisie lenders and the deeper they fell into debt the more jealous they became of their noble rights and honors.

The Third Estate was composed of anyone non-noble and non-clergy. The overwhelming majority of the Third Estate was peasants, but it also included the newly forming urban working class, the small shopkeepers, as well as the wealthy bankers and merchants. All together the Third Estate numbered some 23 million people. The natural leaders of this Estate were the literate bourgeoisie that had produced thinkers and writers like the philosophes.

Enlightenment and Salons

The works of the philosophes, the empiricists, and others only added fuel to the flames. Nature’s laws of equality and liberty were being violated and while England and Holland moved into the Age of Science, Industrialization, and Commerce, France was being held back by the antiquated ideas of the aristocracy attempting to retreat back into the Middle Ages. The Enlightenment, a movement that advocated the challenge of traditional authority, started to challenge pre-conceived and antiquated social norms such as social inequalities, slavery and even in some circles women’s role in society.

Image result for madame geoffrinIn this context,some women found ways to combine the new intellectual movements evolving in the public sphere with their appointed place in the domestic private sphere. For example, women during this period frequently participated in the salon culture. A salon was a social and intellectual gathering of people who would meet at the house of a well-known or intellectually inspirational person to discuss the latest cultural trends, from literature to politics, from art to philosophy. Salons were meant to be social gatherings for fun and entertainment as well as sources of intellectual stimulation.Traditionally, the bourgeoisie, or wealthier segments of society participated in salons, which typically took place in urban settings. The fact that the salon took place in the home allowed women to participate and contribute, mostly as hostesses who decided the agenda of topics to be discussed, and regulated the conversation. This powerful ability to control the content of discussions also determined on which matters philosophers would focus, and therefore steered the direction of their works. Common perception of women as gentle leaders contributed to their ability to govern salons.The most famous salon was the one hosted by Madame Geoffrinwhich grew quickly and became the basis for the Republic of Letters, a community of scholars and literary figures that stretched across national boundaries. She was revered by most in Paris and beyond, and no foreign minister or person of note arriving in Paris would fail to call on her in the hope of receiving an invitation to her salon.

Women's contributions to the development of intellectual and scientific ideas through their role as salonierres marked a cultural shift in how women should be accepted and involved in society. Though still limiting, salons forged the way for women's rights and leadership in the arts and sciences.The Enlightenment's core ideal of free thinking and the ability to question the surrounding world created an atmosphere where discussion in salons could flourish. This free thinking and skeptical attitude helped to form the new "public opinion" in France.For the first time, French citizens were openly questioning and analyzing the world around them. While salons were primarily popular in Parisian culture during the eighteenth century, they were also found in cities throughout Western Europe, including England, and in the German states as well.

The Tennis Court Oath

In 1788,overburdened with taxes and with little to no political voice, most of the French population was starving, and blamed the nobility for the lack of food. The average French worker needed about two to three pounds of bread a day (the amount is large because that’s about the whole of their diet), but by 1789 a loaf of bread cost an entire month’s earning! This was due to the deregulation of the price of flourthat been decided by Louis’ government, and had driven up the price of bread. A mini-ice age had meant less food also, while the population of France had dramatically increased from 20 to 26 million people in the 18th century (the French population had only increased by a million over the two previous centuries). By 1789, it was estimated that some 3 million people in France were reduced to begging with another 7 million in desperate need of help. The nobles were generally held responsible; they owned the large estates, their warehouses held much of the grain, and they drove the prices high.

Louis was too broke to be able to help his people. Bankers would lend him no more money. The third Estate could no longer afford to pay taxes as they were already being bled dry. And that left only the nobles and their land. The nobles understood that they had Louis where they wanted him. Taxes could be raised according to French law only if they regained the powers they had once had in the Middle Ages. Louis found himself between a rock and a hard place; either get the money and give up absolutism ordon’t get the money and go bankrupt.

Louis agreed to a meeting of the Estates-General, the French congress or parliament which had the traditional power to change the form of government but which had not met since the 1600’s when Louis XIV had dismissed it. In 1789, the Estates-General met at Versailles to discuss tax reforms in order to find a way to solve the financial crisis. All three estates were represented in the Estates-General and all three had come with their own agenda. The First Estate delegates were split between rich and poor. The Second Estate had come intending to turn the clock back to the good old days when nobles ruled France and the King was just a puppet. But the Third Estate had their own agenda. Most of their delegates were lawyers, elected by the people because of their ability to speak well, and they had come to protest the lack of equality and opportunity in France. What had begun as a confrontation between king and nobles soon turned into a contest between nobles and Bourgeoisie.

Noble and clergy delegates were to hold their meetings in the palace of Versailles itself. The Third Estate was told to hold their meetings in the town of Versailles, a sign of their unimportance. Voting traditionally in the Estates-General meant that each estate as a whole got just one vote: the First one vote, the Second one vote, the Third one vote. Traditionally this had also meant that the Third Estate got the shaft, the nobles and clergy joining to outvote them 2 to 1.

Inspired by the ideas of Locke and natural rights, the Third Estate protested. Every individual delegate should have a vote, they argued, and since the Third Estate represented 23 million people they should get more votes. And, moreover, since the Estates-General was the representative of the French people, all Estates should meet together in a room as an equal body. The nobles protested. The noble clergy protested. Louis admonished the Third Estate to mind their tongues and begin working. The Third Estate responded by declaring that they were the true representatives of the French nation and named themselves the new National Assembly. They issued two main demands: (1) they wanted the voting system to be reformed in favor of the Third Estate and (2) they demanded that the nobility and clergy pay more taxes. Louis appeared dumbfounded by all the commotion. He had the hall where they met locked up (supposedly for repairs), but the delegates met at a nearby indoor tennis court where they took the famous Tennis Court Oath(Serment du Jeu de Paume) to not disband no matter what the threat until there was a new constitution for France.

Hoolala, what to do? Louis was befuddled. For days he sat silent in his palace, and then eventually agreed to the new National Assembly. But even as he seemed to be giving in to the bourgeois and their demands, foreign mercenaries in his employ began to surround Versailles. Historians generally believe that Louis intended to abolish the National Assembly and just take his chances financially. The bourgeois and their supporters would, of course, refuse to leave…and that’s what the troops were for. But here the working class, the sans-culottes, took over. In Paris, the people had received daily reports of the negotiations at Versailles. Paris was different than most of France in that it was an urban center dominated by industry rather than agriculture, and therefore was a bountiful breeding ground for the ideals of the Enlightenment. The new National Assembly raised hopes among the Parisians for more equality in government, more liberty in the press, and more business in the streets. And so they watched with anger the gathering troops around Versailles and Paris…

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