Constitutions

Constitutions
French Revolution
session iv
Destruction of the Old Order

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

RIGHTS
OF
MAN

Constitutions
French Revolution
session iv
Destruction of the Old Order

HO ANAGENNEMENOS ANTHROPOS EUCHARISTEI
TO HYPERTATO ON
REGENERATED MAN GIVES THANKS TO
THE SUPREME BEING


And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more diﬃcult to take in hand, more
perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the
introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those
who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may
do well under the new.

Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. vi, “Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One's Own Arms And Ability”


adopted description

Civil Constitution
• laws for regulating the Catholic Church, not a
of the 12 July 1790
government constitution at all
Clergy
• drawn up by the National Constituent Assembly, the
first written French constitution
• created a constitutional monarchy with two separate
Constitution of 1791 3 September 1791 branches (Legislative Assembly & monarchy)
• unicameral legislature elected by “active
citizens” (based on property)

• republic with universal manhood suffrage
• added rights to work, public assistance, public
Constitution of the education, the right and duty to rebel
24 June 1793
Year I unicameral National Convention, no separate exec. br.
• on 10 October 1793 the constitution was suspended
“until the peace”

• more conservative than the aborted Constitution of
the Year I
• established a liberal republic with a bicameral
22 August 1795
Constitution of the legislature (Council of Elders, Council of 500)
(5 Fructidor
Year III • franchise based on payment of taxes as in 1791
of the Year III)
• the executive was a five-man Directory
• after Bonaparte’s coup of 18 Brumaire, the
Constitution of the Year VIII set up the Consulate


Major topics for this session

• Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 1790

• Flight to Varennes

• Constitution of 1791

• the tenth of August

• National Convention


The notion that between 1789 and 1791, France basked in some sort
of liberal pleasure garden before the erection of the guillotine is a
complete fantasy. From the very beginning, the violence which made
the Revolution possible in the ﬁrst place created exactly the brutal
distinctions between Patriots and Enemies, Citizens and Aristocrats,
within which there could be no shades of gray.

Schama, p. 436


Constitution civile du clergé


Constitution civile du clergé

I swear to maintain the constitution with all my power

Paris; a new seat of government

Palais
Égalité
(Royale)

Hotel de Ville
city government
Manège le Comune de Paris
Tuileries
meeting place of
new royal
Nat’l Constituent
palace
Assembly
Palais de
Justice &
La
Conciergerie


meeting place of the Constituent
HE
FT
T O IE S
UR
CO ILER

Se
TU

in
e
Jacobins

the Manège was formerly a riding hall; the Feuillants, a former monastery, now the
meeting place of one of the political factions, as were the Jacobins

Sa$e du Manège
• seat of deliberations during most of the revolution

• 9 November 1789-the National Constituent
Assembly moved here from Versailles

• its proportions, ten times as long as it was wide,
made for wretched acoustics

• the seating, left and right of the speaker’s rostrum,
gives us that famous orientation of the political
spectrum

• the steep six tiers of the banquettes gave the name
Mountain to the “hard left” Jacobin faction

• the moderates or independents sat lower and were
called “the Plain”

• the public found places to witness the spectacle at
either end of the hall and in the loge seats above


down to business in the new capital
• 10 October 1789-in temporary quarters,
while the Manège was being remodeled,
Talleyrand begins to address the debt
with a divisive proposal

• the very secular Bishop of Autun, he
had been in charge of surveying all
church properties

• he now proposed that they should
become the property of the government
and that the Church should be
reorganized as a branch of government!

• the material wealth of the church would
solve the ﬁscal crisis and become the
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord asset behind a new paper currency, the
1754 – 1838 Assignats


At hand was the answer, an immense resource lying unrealized in the
property and estates of the Church. Recovered “for the nation” it
might be used as collateral for a new loan or even sold off to meet
the most pressing needs of the state. It was the insouciance with
which this bombshell was dropped that particularly enraged his
clerical colleagues. Affecting his most agreeable manner, Talleyrand
claimed that the matter didn’t even require lengthy discussion since
“it is evident that the clergy is not a proprietor in the same sense
that others are; since the property of which they have the use
cannot be freely alienated and was given to them not for their
personal benefit but for the exercise of an office or function.”

Schama, p. 483


divisions immediately occur

• 13 October-Mirabeau put a succinct resolution to eﬀect Talleyrand’s
proposal before the Assembly

• not all the clergy rejected the plan. The state salary proposed for the
country curates was considerably higher than their current “livings”

• needless to say, it provoked an immediate collision with the papacy and
many of the higher clergy

• but it found allies like the Abbé Grégoire and other like-minded late-
Enlightenment thinkers who felt that the Church needed to be “cleansed”
of worldly wealth in order to return to its real mission

• Dominique Dillon, curé of Vieux-Pouzanges (elected, however, to the
Third of Poitiers), agreed that “if, in these hard times, the sacriﬁce of the
property of the clergy could prevent new taxes on the people,” it should
be done forthwith


the issue advances
• 2 November 1789-the vote on the “national property” passes, 568-346

• 19 December- it was decided to auction off up to 400 million livres worth of ecclesiastical
property

• this would allow the government to float a major new loan against the security of the
proceeds and was the beginning of the state’s expropriation of the Church

• before the first sales, commissioners were sent to the diocesan chapter houses to inspect
the books and seal the title deeds


In February, 1790, the contemplative orders were abolished

The day has arrived my Sisters, when the two names
of mother and wife are preferable to that of nun,
and the rights of Nature are now ours


the issue advances
• 2 November 1789-the vote on the “national property” passes, 568-346

• 19 December- it was decided to auction off up to 400 million livres worth of ecclesiastical
property

• this would allow the government to float a major new loan against the security of the
proceeds and was the beginning of the state’s expropriation of the Church

• before the first sales, commissioners were sent to the diocesan chapter houses to inspect
the books and seal the title deeds

• March and April 1790-more men in tricolor sashes arrived at the convents and monasteries
to ensure that the decrees of the Assembly were being communicated and respected by the
Abbots and Mothers Superior

• 11 April-the entire property of the Church should be put under the new local authorities
pending its sale

• “throughout the spring and summer of 1790, a growing sense of alienation from Paris and
from the secular bullying of the Revolution began to make itself felt throughout the
Church.”--Schama, p. 490


Meanwhile, in a parallel development, the Constituent
Assembly addressed the issue of local government and the
modernization of French political and economic policy
throughout the nation


France-the patchwork before 1789

“a civil ser vant’s
nightmare:
35 provinces,
33 ﬁscal généralités,
each under its
intendant,
175 grands bai!iages,
13 parlements,
38 gouver nements
militaires, and
142 dioceses


France-the patchwork before 1789

“a civil ser vant’s
nightmare:
35 provinces, Avignon
33 ﬁscal généralités, was not
each under its French at
intendant, all!
175 grands bai!iages, belonged
13 parlements, to the
38 gouver nements pope
militaires, and
142 dioceses


[The principle of equality required] the Assembly to tear to shreds
the crazy-quilt pattern of overlapping jurisdictions that
characterized the old regime and cover France with a single mantle
of uniform government. No one was more enthusiastic about this
work than those two arch-rationalist men of the cloth, Sieyès and
Talleyrand. It was the latter who ﬁrst proposed uniformity of
weights and measures, and Sieyès who was behind the startling
proposal to substitute for the provinces of France a grid of eighty
identical squares to be known as “departments….”

Each would then be...divided into nine districts and then by a
further nine into communes. Each unit would have a local
representative assembly from which the bodies of local government
would be elected.

Schama, p. 475


France
the 83
Departments
of 1790


the Civil Constitution of the Clergy
12 July 1790

• passed two days before the first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille

• there were 83 bishops, one for each of the new departments, instead of the previous 135

• Bishops (known as constitutional bishops) and priests were elected locally; electors had to
sign a loyalty oath to the constitution. There was no requirement that the electors be
Catholics, creating the ironic situation that Protestants and even Jews could elect the
nominally Catholic priests and bishops

• Authority of the pope over the appointment of clergy was reduced to the right to be
informed of election results

• The tone of the Civil Constitution can be gleaned from Title II, Article XXI:
• Before the ceremony of consecration begins, the bishop elect shall take a solemn oath, in the presence of the
municipal officers, of the people, and of the clergy, to guard with care the faithful of his diocese who are confided
to him, to be loyal to the nation, the law, and the king, and to support with all his power the constitution decreed
by the National Assembly and accepted by the king

• Louis delayed approving the constitution pending the reactions of the pope and the
present clergy


paper inﬂation more paper more inﬂation


paper inﬂation more paper more inﬂation

in 1795 the new government replaces livres with "ancs

The Abbé Montesquiou, who was well enough respected to serve as
president of the Constituent, saw this not as reform but as
annihilation. Was the constitution, he had asked in April, “now to be
one of those pagan cults that demands human sacriﬁces?” Was it to
sacriﬁce the holy clergy? Was “the exterminating angel to pass over
the face of this Assembly?”

The Civil Constitution was not simply another piece of institutional
legislation. It was the beginning of a holy war.

Schama, p. 491


Fête de la Fédération; 14 July 1790
The Civil Religion


The Civil Religion

• the new revolutionary religion, the cult of the federation


The Civil Religion


• “a vast lodge in which all good Frenchmen will truly be
brothers”


The Civil Religion


brothers”

• the organizing forces were always National Guardsmen
who, at this time, were better-oﬀ “active citizens”


The Civil Religion


brothers”


• 7 June-Talleyrand reported on the proposed
arrangements to the Assembly. The Champ de Mars would
be converted into a vast “altar of the Patrie”


The Civil Religion


brothers”



• Parisian volunteers, the journée des brouettes (Day of
Wheelbarrows), Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!


The Civil Religion


brothers”




• Lafayette’s oath to the future Constitution, the royal
assent, Talleyrand’s mass


The Civil Religion


brothers”




• Lafayette’s oath to the future Constitution, the royal
assent, Talleyrand’s mass

• 4-day holiday of banquets, ﬁreworks, theater


However repetitive and redundant these ceremonies may have been,
conscientious citizens never seemed to tire of imitating David’s
Horatii, their arms achingly outstretched, their individual identities
fused into a single patriotic will.

Schama, p. 502


Flight to Varennes


DEPARTURE OF LOUIS XVI
the 21st of June 1791-at half past midnight

Flight to Varennes

the King, his wife, his sister M. Elizabeth, M. de Tourzel and a garde du Corps carrying the Dauphin
went to join the ﬁacre which was provided at the Guichet de Marigny [a structure near the Tuileries]


“The Incontinence of Polemics”--Schama
• the liberties enshrined in the Declaration ended
censorship and “brought forth a political culture in
which the liberation of disrespect literally knew no
bounds”

• before the revolution there had been 60 newspapers
in all of France. By August 1792 there were close to
500 in Paris alone

• the critics of the crown and, increasingly, of the
Constituent Assembly, vied to outdo one another in
nastiness

• Marat’s L’Ami du Peuple (The People’s Friend)


bounds”

500 in Paris alone

nastiness


• Camille Desmoulin’s Histoire des Révolutions de
France et de Brabant, later, The Old Cordelier


bounds”

500 in Paris alone

nastiness



• Jacques Hébert’s Le Père Duchesne


bounds”

500 in Paris alone

nastiness



• Jacques Hébert’s Le Père Duchesne

• Stanislas Fréron’s L'Orateur du Peuple

Louis is offered help from an unexpected source

• May 1790-Mirabeau began secretly taking the King’s money, not, in his own mind, being
bought off, but paid for advice on how the crown might reestablish its authority

• he hoped to become a powerful minister in a constitutional government

• 3 July 1790-he met with the queen and assured her, “Madam, the monarchy is saved.”

• his generally sound advice was largely ignored because of Louis’ indecisiveness

• Spring 1791-but what finally pushed Louis to give up trying to manage the revolution along
the lines Mirabeau advised was the religious question

• Pope Pius VI rejected all collaboration with the revolution and threatened
excommunication for clergy who did so

• after much agonizing Louis had been persuaded by liberal bishops to sign the Civil
Constitution. So now he was deeply troubled by religious scruples

• as the crisis deepened he became more committed to his wife’s counter-revolutionary
stance


Mirabeau and the debate of 28 February
• the Assembly took up a law to control the movement of suspected émigrés
• a committee of three, appointed by the Assembly, would determine the right
of anyone to exit and enter France, and to identify suspect absentees and to
command their return on pain of being declared rebels and forfeiting their
property

• Mirabeau instinctively opposed this measure and rose to speak against it
• when his fellow Jacobins murmured against his points, he was publicly hostile
to his critics and humiliated them

• that evening he was denounced at the Jacobin Club, much to his surprise
• he had been a respected leader since the early days, but now his colleagues on
the left were suspicious that he had abandoned them

• a month later he was dead at the age of 42 of perdicarditis, the product of his
hard living. Still, his friends suspected poisoning

• his last words had been a request for
opium to dull the pain

• but a grieving public needed something
more edifying

• so an oracular epitaph was made up: “I
take with me the death of the monarchy.
The factions will prey upon its remains.”

• in this copy of Borel’s print, Death
approaches a grieving monarch and
citizenry. Mirabeau points to a drape lifted
by Truth revealing a dismal scene of strife
as “faction” reduces crown, clergy and
people to a warring chaos

• now, for a suitable place to inter such a
grand homme


the Pantheon


the Pantheon
Suﬄot’s handsome, still unﬁnished church of Sainte-Geneviève was thought suitable because
its austere neoclassicism seemed to project the virtues associated with the Grands Hommes


the Pantheon
Sufflot’s handsome, still unfinished church of Sainte-Geneviève was thought suitable because
its austere neoclassicism seemed to project the virtues associated with the Grands Hommes

Mirabeau was the first person honored with burial in the Panthéon, 4 April 1791.
He will be disinterred on 25 November 1794.


a desperate plan
• 18 April-the Monday of Holy Week, as the
King and Queen prepared to drive to Saint-
Cloud, a mob gathered to block them

• they were insulted and Lafayette was
powerless to clear a way for them

• a guardsman told the king he was a fat pig
whose appetite cost the people 25 millions a
year

• this led the king to embrace a more drastic
plan of escape

• Mirabeau’s death had removed the one ﬁgure whose persuasiveness and intelligence might have
made a constitutional monarchy possible

• the King’s troubled conscience over religion and increased fear for his family moved him
further towards the secret plan for ﬂight which Marie-Antoinette had long favored


Did they or didn’t they?

• “The co-ordinator of the plan of escape was Axel
Fersen, an oﬃcer of the Swedish regiment of the
French army who had become a passionate devotee
of the Queen…

• “Reams of paper have been wasted in an attempt to
discover whether Fersen and Marie-Antoinette were
or were not lovers, provoking prurience from her
detractors and indignation from her defenders

• “...a sexual liaison seems wildly unlikely, but in any
event it misses the point. Fersen’s passion was of a
kind in which chivalric feeling overwhelmed erotic
ambition.”--Schama, p.551

Hans Axel von Fersen
1755 - 1810


Did they or didn’t they?

• “The co-ordinator of the plan of escape was Axel
Fersen, an oﬃcer of the Swedish regiment of the
French army who had become a passionate devotee
of the Queen…

• “Reams of paper have been wasted in an attempt to
discover whether Fersen and Marie-Antoinette were
or were not lovers, provoking prurience from her
detractors and indignation from her defenders

• “...a sexual liaison seems wildly unlikely, but in any
event it misses the point. Fersen’s passion was of a
kind in which chivalric feeling overwhelmed erotic
ambition.”--Schama, p.551

• but this sort of historical thinking has never
deterred Hollywood

Hans Axel von Fersen
1755 - 1810


• at a posthouse near Châlons they were given consommé by the wife of the postmaster’s wife who
recognized the King but kept a devoted royalist silence



• soon after a wheel broke, the carriage turned on its side and put them seriously behind schedule to meet
the military escort from Montmédy



• soon after a wheel broke, the carriage turned on its side and put them seriously behind schedule to meet
the military escort from Montmédy

• the young Duc de Choiseul was to provide a military escort when the royals arrived at Pont de Somme-
Vesle. When mounted soldiers arrived there at 2:30, the locals grew fearful and summoned forces to resist


• 4:30 p.m.- Choiseul grew impatient, the plan had miscarried, so he left



• at Sainte-Menehould, the news from Paris of the King’s escape had already arrived before the royal coach.
So the local National Guard disarmed the party of dragoons whom they correctly suspected of being part
of the plot



• at Sainte-Menehould, the news from Paris of the King’s escape had already arrived before the royal coach.
So the local National Guard disarmed the party of dragoons whom they correctly suspected of being part
of the plot

• 11:00 p.m.-when the royals ﬁnally arrived at Varennes, with no military escort, they were detained by the
local postmaster, Drouet. He checked the face of the large “valet” in the corner of the coach against the
image of the King printed on a ﬁfty-livre assignat


Scads of imaginative, inaccurate and some contemptuous
illustrations appear


La Fin de Deux Légendes. L'Aﬀaire Léonard, le Baron de Batz,


ARRESTATION DE LOUIS CAPET À VARENNES
le 22 Juin 1791


The words gourmand and gourmet overlap in meaning but are not identical. Both mean ‘a connoisseur of
good food,’ but gourmand more usually means ‘a person who enjoys eating and often overeats.’


One...production...has Louis attacking a roast as the decree for his arrest arrives. “Be damned with
that,” he replies,”let me eat in peace.” Marie-Antoinette, admiring herself in the mirror, implores
her husband, “My dear Louis, haven’t you ﬁnished your two turkeys yet or drunk your six bottles of
wine, for you know we must dine in Montmédy.” The Dauphin is being congratulated for his eﬀorts
on the chamberpot, while on the walls a print of the fall of the Bastille is hung beside a royal
proclamation turned upside down.

Schama, p. 557


The tall building is
the Barrière du
Roule, part of the
Wall of the Farmers-
General, and
designed by the
architect Claude
Nicolas Ledoux.


“Anyone who applauds the King will be beaten,” read a widely posted sign;
“anyone who insults him will be hanged.”


Declaration of the King Addressed to All the French About His
Flight from Paris; 21 June 1791

….But the more one sees the Assembly approaching the end of its work, the more one sees the
wise men discredited, the more dispositions increase daily which could render the conduct of
government difficult if not impossible, and inspire mistrust and disfavor. Other regulations have
only augmented disquiet and embittered discontent instead of applying healing balm to the
wounds that still bleed in several provinces. . . .

Frenchmen, is it for this that you sent your representatives to the National Assembly? Do you
desire that the anarchy and despotism of the clubs replace the monarchical government under
which the nation has prospered for fourteen hundred years? Do you desire to see your king
overwhelmed with insults and deprived of his liberty when his only occupation is to establish
yours?

. . . Frenchmen, and above all Parisians, you inhabitants of a city which his majesty's ancestors
were pleased to call the good city of Paris, disabuse yourselves of the suggestions and lies of your
false friends; return to your king; he will always be your father, your best friend. What pleasure
will he not have in forgetting all his personal injuries, and in being returned among you, while the
Constitution, which he will have accepted freely, will cause our holy religion to be respected, the
government to be established on a firm foundation and useful in its actions, the property and the
status of each one no longer to be troubled, the laws no longer to be disobeyed with impunity,
and finally liberty to be established on firm an immovable foundations.


Fréron’s paper was typical in seeing the event as the work of an
infernal Austrian committee presided over by the Queen, with
Lafayette as its accomplice and Louis the pathetic tool of its design.
He has gone, this imbecile King, this perjured King, that
scoundrel Queen who combines the lustfulness of Messalina
with the bloodthirstiness of the Medicis. Execrable woman,
Furie of France, it is you who were the soul of the conspiracy.

Enraged crowds went about the Paris streets defacing or smashing
shop and inn signs bearing the King’s name….The more telling
reaction, however, was among relatively moderate politicians whose
faith in a viable active constitutional monarchy was irreversibly
undermined. Condorcet, for example, was immediately converted to
republicanism, hitherto the preserve of only the wilder zealots… and
discussed with Brissot and Tom Paine plans to set up a journal
actively campaigning for an end to the monarchy.

Schama, p. 555


the progression of the royal image


The two make but one

the King with the body of a goat and the horns of a
cuckold, the Queen with the body of a hyena and
Medusa-like serpents for hair


Two weeks after the return of the royal family a very diﬀerent
journey took place


“Fame” delivers two very The inscription on
diﬀerent “salutes” to the Voltaire’s’ pedestal the
events of 21 June and 11 immortal man At its foot,
July. The inscription on a lyre. Behind, the
Louis’ pedestal Le Faux pas Pantheon. On “Fame’s”
means, literally, the false banner, a quote from one
step. This was Père of his plays: “A king is
Duchesne’s name for the merely a man with an
King. Around it, a rank august title; ﬁrst subject
growth of weeds and of the laws, he is forced to
thistles. be just.”


On the sixteenth of July...a petition [declared] that Louis XVI had
“deserted his post” and that by this act and his “perjury” had, in
eﬀect, abdicated…. the signatories declared, they would no longer
recognize him as their King. A signing demonstration was called for
at the Champ de Mars the following day….Lafayette...succeeded in
persuading Bailly to declare martial law, so that around fifty
thousand demonstrators, unarmed, and many of them from the
poorer district of the city, were confronted by the National Guard.

Showered with stones, the guardsmen opened ﬁre….

Schama, p. 566


At the “altar of the Patrie” on the Champ de Mars
17 July 1791


At the “altar of the Patrie” on the Champ de Mars
17 July 1791

the authorities numbered the dead at 13, the demonstrators at 50


Constitution of 1791


David’s exhibition at the Biennial Salon
the Louvre, 11 September 1791

“...which seemed to proclaim with an eloquence unmatched by any of the orators
of the Assembly the reigning ﬁctions of revolutionary patriotic unity.” Schama, p.569

a milestone reached
• the strategies of the traditional royalists--the Noirs--
in the Assembly had been completely confounded by
the ﬁasco of the King’s attempted escape

• with Mirabeau gone and Lafayette in bad odor after
the Champ de Mars, the role of constitutional
guardians fell to Barnave, Adrian Duport and
Alexandre Lameth


the Feuillants

Adrien Duport
The Feuillants came into existence from a split
within the Jacobins. The great majority opposed
the overthrow of the king and preferred a
constitutional monarchy. The deputies publicly split
Alexandre de Lameth with the Jacobins on 16 July 1791. Initially the group
had 264 ex-Jacobin deputies as members. Only ﬁve
Antoine Barnave or six “hard core,” including Robespierre,
republicans remained Jacobins.
The group held meetings in a former monastery of the Feuillants on the Rue Saint-Honoré, in Paris, and came to be
popularly called the Club des Feui$ants. They called themselves the Amis de la Constitution. The group was led by Antoine
Barnave, Alexandre de Lameth and Adrien Duport. In March 1792, in retaliation for their opposition to war with Austria
the Feuillant ministers were forced out by the Girondins. Labelled by their opponents as royalists, they were targeted after
the fall of the monarchy. In August 1792, a list of 841 members was published and they were arrested and tried for treason.
Barnave was guillotined on 29 November 1793.
The name survived for a few months as an insulting label for moderates, royalists and aristocrats.


Views of the Feuillants
The Feuillant party was formed to advocate a constitutional monarchy. Their goals
were (1) to neutralize the royalists (Noirs--Blacks) by gaining the support of the
moderate right, (2) to isolate the democrats from the majority of patriotic deputies, (3)
to withstand Jacobin inﬂuences, and (4) to terminate the political clubs like the
Cordeliers that threatened mob rule.
The Feuillant group was against “passive citizens” [the lower classes] being enlisted in
the National Guard. They believed the only way to have a strong army was to have a
structured army. “By favoring elimination of “passive citizens” from the National
Guard (April 27, 1791), remaining silent during the debate on the right to petition and
post bills, opposing the political emancipation of the blacks (May 11-15, 1791), the
triumvirs exhausted their popularity within the space of a few months”. The group
knew if the political emancipation of blacks was passed a main source of French
income would be lost. The sugar ﬁelds in Saint-Domingue [Haiti] would be taken over
and the colony would also, in all likelihood, be lost.

an edited version of the Wikipedia article


a milestone reached

• the strategies of the traditional royalists--the Noirs--
in the Assembly had been completely confounded by
the ﬁasco of the King’s attempted escape

• with Mirabeau gone and Lafayette in bad odor after
the Champ de Mars, the role of constitutional
guardians fell to Barnave, Adrian Duport and
Alexandre Lameth

• September 1791-they believed that the chances of
stabilizing the Revolution were better than they had
been for some time

• 13 September-Louis had accepted the Constitution
without demur

• 14 September-he was installed in his political nullity as
“King of the French”


Silver Livre
1792 Rule of the Law

Louis XVI the year 4 of the
King of the French Liberty


the new Constitution of 1791
• “The abolition of the provinces and of regional liberties made the same rights and liberties
prevail uniformly throughout the country.

• “The basis of representation and the liability to taxes became geographically homogeneous.

• “Various local administrations and officials were made locally elective.

• “The constitution gave the vote to “active citizens,” over half the adult male population; or
to more than two-thirds of those over the required age of twenty-five.

• “Voters, as such, voted only for electors, who in turn chose the national deputies and the
lesser elected officials;

• “but those who might qualify as electors were very numerous...probably being half the men
of twenty-five or older.

• “When “equality” was talked of in the eighteenth century, universal suffrage was one of the
last things it called to mind…

• “...France by the constitution of 1791 was incomparably more democratic than any other
[government] in the Western World at that time with the sole exception of certain
[western] states in the American Union.”--R.R. Palmer, Democratic Revolution, vol. 1, p.501

judicial reform in the new constitution
• perhaps the greatest glory of the Constituent Assembly was its reform of the legal system

• the Ancien Régime had had a chaotic system

• the Assembly was comprised of the ﬂower of the French legal profession, all with rational
ideas for reform

• Adrien Duport was joined by an obscure provincial lawyer, Maximilien Robespierre, in an
unsuccessful battle for abolition of capital punishment

• but its application was dramatically reduced and the medieval cruelty of breaking on the
wheel was replaced by the “painless” machine whose warm recommendation by one of the
Paris deputies, Dr. Guillotin, was to provide it with its famous name

• the confused system of rival courts with diﬀerent boundaries and overlapping jurisdictions
was replaced by a rationalized system of civil and criminal courts in the new departements

• the earlier Parlements disappeared along with the seigneurial courts

• “France now had a judicial system that compared favorably with any in Europe for economy,
impartiality and humanity”--Hampson,A Social History of the French Revolution, p. 119


Robespierre-”Swan Song” and New Beginning
• 29 September-as the Constituent ended its life, Le Chapelier urged
a law to emasculate the political clubs like the Jacobins. He argued
that the Revolution was over

• he was attacked by “a familiar high-pitched metallic voice coming
from a slight bony man with immaculately curled and powdered
hair…”

• Robespierre’s “own eloquence had persuaded the deputies to
disqualify themselves from reelection to the new legislature…

• “this would be the last occasion to impress upon them, and the
political nation beyond, his emphatic denial that the Revolution
was indeed accomplished….

• he lost the vote, but won the battle; the law passed, but was ignored

• in Paris, a huge cheering sans-culotte crowd; on the trip home to
Artois, “something like an apotheosis” --Schama

• he returned to Paris to establish a newspaper that would continue
to project his views now that the parliamentary forum was denied
to him

The new French constitution went into eﬀect in September 1791. “The
Revolution is over,” said Robespierre, in a phrase often quoted. What
he said was that the Revolution was over if the constitution was ﬁrmly
established, if all concerned would live under it peaceably, if it had no
dangerous enemies either inside France or beyond its borders. These
conditions did not obtain. The Revolution was therefore by no means
over. Only a challenge had been issued to the old order; the real
struggle was yet to come.

the concluding paragraph of Palmer, Democratic Revolution; The Cha$enge. vol. 1, p. 502
[emphasis added, JBP]


the most famous political club of the Revolution
• initially moderate, the Jacobins became a by-word for
radicalism because of the Reign of Terror

• 1789-the club began at Versailles, a group of Breton
deputies, Société des amis de la constitution

• at the height of its influence there were thousands of
chapters throughout France and its membership was
estimated at 420,000

• The name "Jacobins", given in France to the
Dominicans (because their first house in Paris was in
the Rue St Jacques), was first applied to the club in
ridicule by its enemies

• 21 September 1792-after the fall of the monarchy, they
styled themselves Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté
et de l'égalité

• the club occupied successively the refectory, the
The Door of the Jacobin Club was on Rue Saint-Honoré library and the chapel of the monastery


The Legislative came to Paris elected by a pathetically small proportion
of the eligible voters: no more than 10 percent. Since the original
elections to the Estates-General, in fact, it was a rule that the more
radical the Revolution became, the narrower the electoral base on
which it rested, for the Convention was to be produced from even
fewer votes…. In the Constituent Assembly...the new regime had seen
oﬀ all the aristocrats and clergy who had hung grimly on to their status
as deputies since the Estates General. The Legislative Assembly did,
however, include a number of revolutionary aristocrats like Condorcet...

Schama, p. 581


from enlightened nobleman to mysterious prison death

• educated by the Jesuits, he ﬁrst showed his intellect as
a mathematician

• 1774-he met and became the protégé of Turgot who
appointed him director of the mint. This began his
interest in politics

• as a outstanding Enlightenment intellectual he
became friends with ﬁgures like Franklin and was
made secretary of both the Académie Française and the
Académie des Sciences

• he favored such liberal causes as ending slavery and
including women as full citizens

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat,
• 1791-elected to the Legislative, he began as an
independent but with friends in the Girondist faction
marquis de Condorcet
1743 – 28 March 1794
• as the Mountain (Jacobins) became more radical, he
became a Girondin


the Legislative Assembly; new alignments

• November 1791-politically, about half the Assembly
declared its hand

• just 136 were aﬃliated with the Jacobins (Montagne)

• 264 were Feuillants, led by Barnave

• they were the more “moderate,” “the Revolution is
over” crowd. They were by no means a decisive
majority

Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave
1761 – 29 November 1793



declared its hand



majority

• 400-odd deputies were determinedly uncommitted to
either faction



declared its hand



majority

• 400-odd deputies were determinedly uncommitted to
either faction

• the Feuillants failed to gain their majority in large
part due to the extraordinary inﬂuence exerted by a
very small group gathered around the journalist
Jacques Pierre Brissot
Jacques-Pierre Brissot, his paper the Patriote Français
1754 – 31 October 1793


“hack writer and police spy in the 1780s”--Schama

• the son of a pastry cook in Chartres

• unlike Robespierre, familiar with grinding poverty

• living hand-to-mouth oﬀ his writing, he had become
something like a professional lobbyist for causes like the
liberation of slaves in the West Indies

• in and out of trouble in Belgium, Switzerland and Boston

• a committed republican, his aim was to thwart Barnave
and the Feuillants’ moderatism by pushing issues that
would force a royal veto

• by marginalizing the monarchy he would destroy it

• Barnave was secretly selling advice to the Queen on how Brissot
best to respond to the oﬀensive of the republicans


Brissotins? Brissotists? Girondins? Girondists?

• Brissot was supported by “a battery of orators the like of
which had never before been heard together in one room”

• not really a “party,” they more often met as friends for dinner

Jacques Pierre Brissot
1754 – 31 October 1793





• three of them were from the southwestern department of the
Gironde, hence the appellation

• unlike Robespierre, deliberately working alone in debate, the
Girondists “played oﬀ each other like members of a string
quartet

• “they were deliberately playing to an audience in the Manège
…both on the benches of the deputies and the public galleries

• “the cumulative eﬀect of their speeches was decisive for the
course of the Revolution.





• three of them were from the southwestern department of the
Gironde, hence the appellation

• unlike Robespierre, deliberately working alone in debate, the
Girondists “played oﬀ each other like members of a string
quartet

• “they were deliberately playing to an audience in the Manège
…both on the benches of the deputies and the public galleries

• “the cumulative eﬀect of their speeches was decisive for the
course of the Revolution.

• “More than anything else--more than food riots or rising
prices or Jacobin propaganda--they converted the deputies of
the Legislative from politicians to crusaders.”--Schama


Brissot’s plan to provoke vetos
• 31 October 1791-the Assembly stated that all émigrés who, by 1 January
1792, had not dispersed from armed camps would be declared
conspirators, sentence to death and their property confiscated

• 9 November-the Comte de Provence, the King’s brother was summoned
to return to France or be deprived of the succession

• 29 November-all the royal princes must return and émigré confiscations
would be extended to the property of all family members, even those who
had remained in France

• on the same day, further measures were taken against those refractory or
non-juring priests (those still refusing to swear allegiance to the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy)

• the royal veto was duly applied to all these measures, setting off violent
demonstrations in Paris and other centers of anticlericalism like Lyon and
Marseille


On 3 January 1792, Vergniaud, whose
oratory could only be challenged by
Mirabeau’s as the most exhilarating of
all the torrents of rhetoric produced
during the Revolution, made the
c l i n c h i n g s p e e c h . He p a i n te d a
frightening picture of murderous
émigrés, blessed by fanatical priests,
gathering at the frontiers of the patrie.
The audacious satellites of despotism,
carrying fifteen centuries of pride and
barbarism in their feudal souls, are now
demanding in every land and from every
throne the gold and soldiers to
reconquer the scepter of France. You
have renounced conquests but you have
not promised to suffer such insolent
provocations. You have shaken off the
Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud
yoke of your despots but this was surely
not to crook the knee so ignominiously 1753 – October 31, 1793

before some foreign tyrants...
Schama, p. 594


By the time that war was declared on the “King of Hungary and
Bohemia” [Holy Roman Emperor Francis II] in April 1792, a substantial
majority of the Assembly was convinced that at stake in what they
themselves called their “crusade” was not just the future of France but
that of humanity at large. And the ﬁrst premise of Barnave’s policy of
stabilization--the preservation of peace--lay in ruins.

Schama, p. 584


Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa’s heirs
birth order 4 9 15
of
the 16
children
of Maria
Theresa
&
Francis I

Joseph II Leopold II Archduchess
1741-1780-1790 1747-1790-1792 Maria Antonia
of Austria
no male issue
Queen of France & Navarre
1755-1769-1774-16 October 1793


Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa’s heirs
birth order 4 9 15
of
the 16
children
of Maria
Theresa
&
Francis I

Joseph II Leopold II Archduchess
1741-1780-1790 1747-1790-1792 Maria Antonia
of Austria
no male issue
Queen of France & Navarre
1755-1769-1774-16 October 1793

Francis II/I Archduke Charles
Holy Roman Emperor 1771-1847
1768-1 March 1792-1806
Austrian Emperor
1804-1835


Europe in 1789

after the First Partition


war; 20 April 1792
• 1 March 1792-Francis II, age 23, had just succeeded to his father’s throne

• he considered the French question and the democratic revolution in the Austrian Netherlands (future
Belgium) as of secondary importance to the Polish Question

• Russia and Prussia were conniving to make a second Polish partition at Austria’s expense

• his grandmother, Catherine & Frederick the Greats (the “Three Black Eagles”) had made the ﬁrst partition in 1773,
twenty years before

• 1792-his ideological and familial interest in rescuing the French royals was in conﬂict with his
Machiavellian interests to see France weakened and concentrate on the Polish spoils

• August 1791-at Pillnitz, his father, joined by Frederick William II of Prussia and the Comte d’Artois had issued a
declaration warning the French not to harm their royal family or face the united powers of Europe

• Brissot and the war party had used this threat to raise the la patrie est en danger bogey man

• 11 April-the news from France (including a secret message from his aunt, Marie Antoinette) seemed so
threatening to Francis that he moved 50,000 troops to the Belgian frontier

• 20 April-the war party in the Legislative Assembly declares war on Austria, and on Prussia shortly
thereafter


The commander in chief of what Brissot
had called “a crusade for universal liberty”
in which each soldier would say to his
enemy, “Brother, I am not going to cut your
throat...I am going to show you the way to
happiness” was not himself visibly happy. In
a ﬂat, faltering voice Louis XVI then read
the formal declaration of war as though it
were a death sentence upon himself.

Which indeed it was.

Schama, p. 597


the bonnet rouge, Phrygian cap or liberty cap

detail from David’s Tennis Court Oath


the tenth of August


the tenth of August

Jean Duplessis-Bertaux, Prise du Palais des Tuileries, painted in 1793


The ferocious tendencies so common in twentieth-century
revolutions did not appear until the complete breakdown of
national unity in 1792.
Norman Hampson, A Social History of the French Revolution, p. 111


Whatever they might say for the beneﬁt of the galleries, none of the
bourgeois politicians, with the partial exception of Marat, was
anxious to be forced into dependence on the sans-culottes. But the
declaration of war raised the question of whether the politicians
would be able to defend the Revolution without relying on them. If
they could not, what concessions would be necessary to enlist sans-
culotte support under bourgeois leadership, and would the humbler
partners be content with such a subordinate rôle, or would they
claim the right--which Rousseau democrats would ﬁnd it hard to
deny them--to dictate the policies whose execution depended
primarily on their own exertions?

Hampson, p. 141


• as the war, declared at the Girondists’ urging, appeared to be oﬀ to a poor
start; the factors leading to a Parisian uprising against the monarchy began
to build:

• inﬂation raged--assignats in the value of 900,000,000 livres were issued in less than a year

• Monsieur Veto (the King) blocked more and more of the laws

• 20 June-a mob, inspired by the Jacobins, invaded the royal apartments


• as the war, declared at the Girondists’ urging, appeared to be oﬀ to a poor
start; the factors leading to a Parisian uprising against the monarchy began
to build:

• inﬂation raged--assignats in the value of 900,000,000 livres were issued in less than a year

• Monsieur Veto (the King) blocked more and more of the laws

• 20 June-a mob, inspired by the Jacobins, invaded the royal apartments

• 11 July- the Legislative declares- La patrie est en danger. Weapons are issued to the Guard

• 14 July-on the third Fête de la Fédération Paris radicals recruit Guards from the provinces
who supported their radical distrust of the monarchy

• 25 July-the Duke of Brunswick issues his famous and counterproductive Manifesto


the crucial section of the manifesto

8. The city of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction shall be required to submit at
once and without delay to the king, to place that prince in full and complete liberty, and to
assure to him, as well as to the other royal personages, the inviolability and respect which the
law of nature and of nations demands of subjects toward sovereigns. . .Their said [Austrian &
Prussian] Majesties declare, on their word of honor as emperor and king, that if the chateau of
the Tuileries is entered by force or attacked, if the least violence be oﬀered to their Majesties
the king, queen, and royal family, and if their safety and their liberty be not immediately
assured, they will inﬂict an ever memorable vengeance by delivering over the city of Paris to
military execution and complete destruction, and the rebels guilty of the said outrages to the
punishment that they merit. . . .


Danton & the Cordeliers

• a middle class lawyer before the Revolution, he encouraged
both the events of 14 July and 5 October 1789

• May 1790-the Cordeliers Club was formed. It met in the
former convent of the Franciscan Observantists, called
Cordeliers in France. Danton was elected president

Georges Jacques Danton
1759 – 5 April 1794 (age 34)





1759 – 5 April 1794 (age 34)

The Cordeliers Convent in 1793





• the Cordeliers popularized the slogan Liberté, égalité, *aternité

• Fall 1790-Danton was commander of his district battalion of
the National Guard

• January 1791-elected administrator of the departement of Paris

• not elected to the Legislative Assembly, he took a place in the
Commune de Paris

• August 1792-Danton becomes the leading ﬁgure in organizing 1759 – 5 April 1794 (age 34)
the attack on the Tuileries


• the mob, aided by Guards and “authorized” by the Paris Commune, enters the Cour Royal

• shots are exchanged, the Royals ﬂee to the Legislative, their Swiss Guard stand and die


• the mob, aided by Guards and “authorized” by the Paris Commune, enters the Cour Royal

• shots are exchanged, the Royals ﬂee to the Legislative, their Swiss Guard stand and die

• the monarchy is eﬀectively over, the Royals become prisoners, hostages


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