From 1789 to 1791, the National Assembly acted as a Constituent Assembly,
laboring productively on a constitution for the new regime. While recognizing
the civil rights of all French citizens, it effectively transferred political
power from the monarchy and the privileged estates to the general body of
propertied citizens, in which the former nobility remained as individuals
without titles or privileges. the constitution
At the center, the constitution created a limited monarchy with a clear
separation of powers. Real sovereignty lay in the legislative branch, which
would consist of a single house (the Legislative Assembly), elected for
two years by a system of indirect voting. The king was to name and dismiss
his ministers, but he was given only a suspensive or delaying veto over
legislation; if a bill passed the Assembly in three successive years, it
would become law even without royal approval.
The Assembly limited the franchise to "active" citizens who paid
a minimal sum in taxes, but the property qualification was higher for those
standing for public office. Under this system about two-thirds of adult
males attained the right to vote for electors who would choose deputies,
and also to elect certain local officials directly. Although it favored
the wealthy, the system was vastly more democratic than the political structure
in Britain.
Political rights did not extend, however, to women. In delegations to
the Assembly and in pamphlets such as Olympe de Gouges' Declaration of the
Rights of Women (1791), women's rights activists demanded suffrage for women
without success. Sieyès spoke for most deputies when he answered
that women contributed little to the public establishment and should have
no direct influence on government. Besides which, he claimed, women were
too emotional and easily misled. This weakness of character made it imperative
that they be kept out of public life and devote themselves to their "natural"
nurturing and maternal roles.
Yet the formal exclusion of women from politics did not mean that they remained
passive spectators. Women were active combatants in the local conflicts
over religious policy that will be discussed in the next section. In the
towns they agitated over subsistence issues, formed auxiliaries to the local
Jacobin clubs (and a handful of independent clubs), participated in civic
festivals, and did relief work.
Nor was the Revolution indifferent to women's rights. Its remarkably egalitarian
inheritance law insisted that all children regardless of sex were entitled
to an equal share of a family's estate. And in 1794 a national system of
free primary education provided salaried teachers for both boys and girls.
While the Assembly excluded women from "active" citizenship
without much debate, other groups posed a greater challenge on how to apply
the rights of man to French society. In eastern France, for example, where
most of France's Jews resided, public opinion scorned Jews as an alien race
unentitled to citizenship. Eventually, however, the Assembly rejected that
argument and extended civil and political equality to Jews.
A similar debate raged over the status of free Negroes or mulattos in France's
Caribbean colonies. In St. Domingue, alongside the 35,000 whites and 500,000
slaves lived 28,000 free Negroes, some of whom owned slaves themselves.
White planters, in alliance with merchants who traded with the islands,
were most concerned to preserve slavery. To this end they demanded control
over racial policy in the islands.
Only by maintaining racial distinctions and disenfranchising free Negroes,
they argued, could they ensure the foundation of slavery. Despite Jacobin
opposition, the Assembly adopted this view. In response, the mulattos rebelled,
and the unrest caused by their abortive uprising eventually helped ignite
a slave rebellion, which, in turn, led to the independence of the island,
now known as Haiti. local government
With regard to local government, the Constituent Assembly abolished the
Parlements and intendants, and obliterated the political identity of France's
historic provinces. The Assembly instead divided the nation's territory
into 83 departments of roughly equal size. Unlike the old provinces, each
department would have exactly the same institutions. The departments were,
in turn, subdivided into districts, cantons, and communes (the common designation
for a village or town).
On the one hand, this administrative transformation promoted local autonomy:
The citizens of each department, district, and commune elected their own
local officials, and in that sense political power was decentralized. On
the other hand, these local governments were subordinated to the national
legislature in Paris; they became instruments of greater national integration
and uniformity. judicial reform
The new administrative map also created the boundaries for judicial reform.
Sweeping away the entire judicial system of the old regime, the revolutionaries
established a justice of the peace in each canton, a civil court in each
district, and a criminal court in each department. The judges on all tribunals
were to be elected. While rejecting the use of juries in civil cases, the
Assembly decreed that felonies would be tried by juries; if the jury convicted,
judges would apply the mandatory sentences that were established in the
Assembly's new penal code. Defendants also gained the right to counsel for
the first time. In civil law, the Assembly encouraged arbitration and mediation
to avoid the time-consuming and expensive processes of formal litigation.
In general, the revolutionaries hoped to make the administration of justice
more accessible, expeditious, and popular. economic institutions
The Assembly's clearing operations extended to economic institutions as
well. Guided by laissez-faire doctrine, and by its complete hostility to
privileged corporations, the Assembly sought to open up economic life to
unimpeded individual initiative. Besides dismantling internal tariffs and
chartered trading monopolies, it abolished the guilds of merchants and artisans,
and proclaimed the right of every citizen to enter any trade and conduct
it freely. Regulation of wages or of a product's quality would no longer
concern the government.
The Assembly also insisted that workers must bargain in the economic marketplace
as individuals, and it therefore banned workers' associations and strikes.
The precepts of economic individualism extended to the countryside too.
In theory, peasants and landlords were now free to cultivate their fields
as they saw fit, regardless of traditional collective practices. In fact,
however, communal restraints proved to be deep rooted and durable.
To address the financial problems that had precipitated the crisis of
the old regime, the Assembly did something that the monarchy never dared
contemplate. assignats
Under revolutionary ideology, the French Catholic Church could no longer
exist as an independent corporation a separate Estate. The Assembly nationalized
Church property, placing it "at the disposition of the nation,"
and simultaneously made the state responsible for the upkeep of the Church.
On the basis of these "national lands" (to which the property
of émigrés and the crown would subsequently be added), the
Assembly issued paper notes known as assignats, which soon came to be treated
as money.
The national lands were sold by auction at the district capitals to the
highest bidders. This favored bourgeois and rich peasants with ready capital,
and made it difficult for needy peasants to acquire the land. The sale of
Church lands and the issuance of assignats based on their value had at least
three major consequences. three major consequences
First, it largely solved the financial problem and eliminated the need for
constant borrowing. Second, the hundreds of thousands of purchasers gained
a strong vested interest in the triumph of the Revolution, since a successful
counterrevolution was likely to restore their properties to the Church.
Finally, there was an unanticipated effect. After war broke out in 1792,
the government greatly increased the volume of assignats beyond their underlying
value, thereby touching off severe inflation and new political turmoil.
Apart from the question of Church property, the issue of church reform
produced the Revolution's first and most fateful crisis. The Assembly intended
to rid the Church of inequities that left much of the lower clergy impoverished
while enriching the aristocratic prelates of the old regime. Many Catholics
looked forward to such reforms, which would liberate the clergy to fulfill
the Church's historic ideals.
In the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), the Assembly reduced the
number of bishops to 83 and reshaped diocesan boundaries to conform with
those of the new departments. Bishops and parish priests were to be chosen
by the lay electors and paid according to a uniform salary scale favoring
those at the lower end. Like other civil and military officials, the clergy
was to take an oath of loyalty to the constitution.
The clergy generally objected to this reform because it was dictated to
them by the National Assembly; they argued that it must be negotiated either
with the Pope or a National Church Council. But the Assembly asserted that
it had the sovereign power to order such reform since it affected temporal
rather than spiritual matters. In November 1790 the Assembly forced the
issue by requiring all existing clergy to take the oath forthwith; those
who refused would lose their positions and be pensioned off.
In all of France only seven bishops and about 54 percent of the parish clergy
swore the oath; in the West of France a mere 15 percent complied. French
Catholicism was torn by a schism, for the laity had to take a position as
well. Should parishioners remain loyal to familiar priests who refused the
oath (the refractory clergy), and thus be at odds with the state? Or should
they accept the ministry of constitutional clergy sent in to replace them?
The Assembly's effort to impose reform without consideration of traditional
Church procedures was a grave tactical error. The oath crisis polarized
the nation. It seemed to link the Revolution with impiety, and the Church
with counterrevolution. In local communities, refractory clergy began to
preach against the whole Revolution. District administrations fought back
by arresting them and demanding repressive laws. Thousands of local communities
were rocked by civil strife between adherents of the two sides.
Opposition to the Revolution had actually begun much earlier. After July
14 some of the king's relatives left the country in disgust, thus becoming
the first émigrés. During the next three years thousands of
nobles, including two-thirds of the officer corps, joined the emigration.
Across the Rhine River in Coblenz many of these émigrés formed
an army that threatened to overthrow the new regime at the first opportunity.
The king himself, who might have provided a measure of stability to the
new regime, publicly submitted to the Revolution but privately smoldered
in resentment against it. Finally, in June 1791 Louis and his family secretly
fled from Paris, hoping to cross the Belgian frontier, where they could
enlist the aid of Austria. But Louis was recognized at the village of Varennes
and forcibly returned to Paris.
Moderates hoped that this experience would finally end Louis' opposition.
The Assembly, after all, needed his cooperation to make their constitutional
monarchy viable. They did not wish to open the door to a republic or to
further democratization. Radicals such as the journalist Jean-Paul Marat,
on the other hand, had long thundered against the treachery of the king
and the émigrés, and against the Assembly itself for allegedly
betraying the people, as in the restricted suffrage of the new constitution.
They now launched a petition campaign against the king, which ended in
a bloody riot the massacre of the Champs de Mars on July 17, 1791 - when
the Paris national guard was ordered to disperse the demonstrators with
force. This upheaval only strengthened the moderates, resolved to maintain
the status quo. Adopting the fiction that the king had fled involuntarily,
the Assembly reaffirmed his position in the new regime. But his traitorous
act assured that radical agitation would continue.
The Assembly had earlier decided that no present deputy could stand for
election to the new legislature. This self-denying ordinance meant that
the Legislative Assembly would be composed of men less experienced and probably
more daring than their predecessors. The new legislature was elected and
convened on October 1, 1791. Almost from the start the question of war dominated
its mood and work. By an odd coincidence, both the right and the left in
France saw advantage in a war between France and Austria. The king and his
court hoped that military defeat would discredit the new regime and restore
full power to the monarchy. Most Jacobin members of the leading political
club in Paris were eager to strike down the foreign supporters of counter-revolution
at home and émigrés abroad.
When Francis II took the throne of the Hapsburg dominions in March 1792,
the other half of the stage was set. Unlike his father, Leopold, who rejected
intervention, Francis fell under the influence of émigrés
and shortsighted advisers. He determined to assist the French queen, his
aunt, and he hoped in alliance with Prussia to achieve territorial gains
for Austria. With both sides eager for battle, France went to war against
a coalition of Austria, Prussia, and the émigrés in April
1792.
Each camp expected rapid victory, but both were deceived. The French offensive
was quickly driven back, and soon invading armies were crossing French borders.
The Legislative Assembly ordered the arrest of refractory clergy and called
for a special corps of 20,000 national guardsmen to protect Paris. Louis
vetoed both measures and held to his decision in spite of demonstrations
in the capital. This was, for all practical purposes, his last act as king.
The Legislature also called for a levy of 100,000 volunteers to bolster
the French army, and defend the homeland. As France mobilized for war, an
officer named Rouget de Lisle composed a marching song for his volunteer
battalion, a song eventually known as "The Marseillaise." Now
the national anthem of France, it ranks among history's most stirring summonses
to patriotic war.
"The Marseillaise" reflected the spirit of determination developing
across the land. As Prussian forces began a drive toward Paris, their commander,
the Duke of Brunswick, arrogantly demanded that Paris disarm itself and
threatened to level the city if it resisted or if it harmed the royal family.
When Louis XVI published this Brunswick Manifesto, it seemed the final proof
that he was in league with the enemy. Far from intimidating the revolutionaries,
the threat drove them into action. Since the Legislative Assembly had refused
to act decisively in the face of royal obstructionism, Parisian militants,
spurred on by the Jacobin Club, organized an insurrection.
On August 10, 1792, a crowd of armed Parisians stormed the royal palace
at the Tuilleries, literally driving the king from the throne. The Assembly
then had no choice but to declare him suspended. That night more than half
its members themselves fled Paris, making it clear that the Assembly too
had lost its legitimacy. The representatives who remained prepared to dissolve
the Legislative Assembly permanently and ordered elections under universal
male suffrage for a new body, to be called the National Convention.
They left to the Convention the responsibility of declaring a republic in
France, judging the former king, drafting a new constitution, and governing
France during the emergency. What the events of 1789 in Versailles and Paris
had begun, the insurrection of August 10, 1792 completed. The old regime
in France had disappeared.
In the eighteenth century major transformations began. The inhabitants
of Europe and North America expanded at an extraordinary rate, initiating
a population explosion that has continued into modern times. The new industrial
economy, if still of small size, created a new organization of production
based on steam power and high engineering skill. The overall economic system
took on a configuration that differed from the patterns of all prior periods.
It had capacity to transform itself and thus to lend a new dynamic quality
to the society living from it.
These changes were accompanied by a crisis in social and political institutions.
A tripartite struggle developed involving the ruler, the aristocracy, and
the people over the proper allocation of power in the state. Several European
monarchs sought to impose reform from above. The aristocracies, on the other
hand, bitterly resented encroachments on their privileges, and some were
willing to pursue the defense of their interests to the point of revolution.
Both rulers and patricians appealed to the Third Estate, often with unexpected
results.
The emerging claim to power of the unprivileged classes was the greatest
change. No longer would the political history of the Western world focus
exclusively on the elites. The peoples of the West thus faced the task of
building a new economic, social, and political order. What should its character
be? How should power be managed, and how should wealth be distributed? What
values should now govern human lives? These were the issues destined to
occupy the Western nations as they entered the industrial and democratic
age.