Chapter 15 Part One Development Chapter Three The French Revolution 1

The Englishman must have lost all sense of morality and liberty, or else he would have no admiration for the most important revolution the world has ever experienced, and the majestic way in which it is being carried out.Those of my compatriots who have had the honor of witnessing the development of this great city during the last three days will certainly not think my words are exaggerated. —Morning Post, July 21, 1789, on the Fall of the Bastille Soon the enlightened nations will judge those who have ruled them hitherto.Kings will be forced to flee to the desert to live among beasts like themselves.And nature will restore its rights.

—Saint-Just, "On the French Constitution", speech delivered at the National Convention on April 24, 1793 1 If the world economy in the 19th century was mainly developed under the influence of the British Industrial Revolution, then its politics and ideology were mainly influenced by the French Revolution.Britain gave the example of the railroads and factories of the world, and the economic explosives that shattered the traditional economic and social structures of the non-European world; became a symbol of virtually every nascent nation, and European (or indeed world) politics between 1789 and 1917 were largely for or against the principles of 1789, or the even more inflammatory principles of 1793. struggle.France provided much of the world with the vocabulary and issues of liberal and radical democracy.France provided the first great example, concept and vocabulary of nationalism.Dieguo provides legal codes, technological organization models, and metric systems of weights and measures for most countries.Through French influence, the ideas of the modern world penetrated for the first time into an ancient civilization that had hitherto resisted European thought.These are the masterpieces of the French Revolution. (The differing effects on England and France should not be overstated. Neither revolution centered its influence on any particular sphere of human activity; the two revolutions were complementary, and Not in competition. But even when the two converge most clearly (like socialism, which was invented and named in two countries almost at the same time), they converge from different directions.)

As we have seen, the end of the eighteenth century was a time of crisis for the ancien régime and its economic system in Europe, and the last decades of the century were filled with political agitation and colonial movements for self-government, sometimes reaching almost the point of rebellion, This kind of movement can sometimes even make them break away from the mother country, and it occurs not only in the United States (1776-1783), but also in Ireland (1782-1784), Belgium and Liege (1787-1790), the Netherlands (1783-1787), Geneva , even England (1779, this point was disputed).So dramatic was this sequence of political upheavals that some historians have recently described it as an "era of democratic revolution."The French Revolution was the only democratic revolution, though the most radical and the most far-reaching.

There is some weight in suggesting that the crisis of the ancien régime is not a purely French phenomenon.Because of this, it might be argued that the Russian Revolution of 1917, which occupies a similarly important place in our century, was but the most dramatic of a series of similar movements of which the years preceding 1917 , and eventually buried the ancient Turkish Empire and the Chinese Empire.However, this is a bit off topic.The French Revolution may not have been an isolated phenomenon, but it was far bigger than other contemporaries, and its consequences far more far-reaching.First, it took place in the most powerful and populous country in Europe (except Russia).In 1789, almost one in five Europeans was French.Secondly, among all the revolutions that occurred successively, it is the only real mass social revolution, and it is much more radical than any similar great upheaval.It is no accident that American revolutionaries and British 'Jacobins' who emigrated to France for their political sympathies with the French Revolution found themselves moderates in France. Thomas Paine in England and America is an extremist, but in Paris he was one of the most moderate figures of the Girondins. Broadly speaking, the American revolution, like revolutions in many countries before it, resulted only in getting rid of England. Political control of the French, Spaniards and Portuguese. The result of the French Revolution was that the era of Balzac replaced the era of Mme Du Barry (Mistress of King Louis XV).

Third, of all contemporary revolutions, only the French Revolution was universal.Its armies set out to transform the world; its minds actually did the same.The American Revolution has been a crucial event in American history, but (aside from the countries directly involved or by it) it has left few significant traces elsewhere.The French Revolution was an important milestone for all nations.Its repercussions were greater than the American Revolution, which gave rise to the uprisings that led to the liberation of Latin America after 1808.Its direct influence extended as far as Bengal, where Ram Mohan Roy, inspired by the French Revolution, founded the first Indian reform movement and became the father of modern Indian nationalism (when he visited England in 1830 when he insisted on taking a French ship to show his zeal for his faith).As noted above, it was "the first great movement of thought in which Western Christendom had an actual influence on the Islamic world," almost immediately.By the middle of the 19th century, the Turkish word "vatan," formerly denoting only one's place of birth or residence, began to mean something like "patrie" (fatherland) under the influence of the French Revolution; before 1800, "liberty" (freedom) ) was originally a legal term denoting the opposite of "slavery" (slave status), and now began to take on new political meanings.Its indirect influence is omnipresent, as it provided the model for all subsequent revolutionary movements, and its lessons (interpreted at will) were incorporated into modern socialism and communism. (The author does not underestimate the impact of the American Revolution. No doubt it helped motivate the French and, in a narrower sense, it also provided a constitutional example for various Latin American countries program], and occasionally inspired radical democratic movements.)

The French Revolution was thus a revolution of its day, not merely the most prominent of them.Its origin must therefore not only be sought in the general conditions of Europe, but also in the peculiar conditions of France.Its uniqueness is perhaps best illustrated in international relations.Throughout the 18th century, France was Britain's main international economic rival.Its foreign trade quadrupled between 1720 and 1780, causing England to worry; its colonial system in some areas (such as the West Indies) was more dynamic than that of Britain.France, however, was not a power like Britain, whose foreign policy was already largely determined by the interests of capitalist expansion.France was the most powerful and in many ways the most typical of the old aristocratic absolute monarchies in Europe.In other words, the conflicts between official institutions and vested interest groups of the old system and emerging social forces are more acute in France than in other countries.

The emerging powers know exactly what they want.Physiocratic economist Turgot advocated the effective development of land, free enterprise and free trade, effective administration of a unified national territory, the abolition of all restrictions and social inequalities that hinder the development of national resources, and reasonable fairness administration and taxation. His attempt to carry out such a plan as Louis XVI's first minister between 1774 and 1776 failed tragically, and this failure is very typical.Reforms of this nature, even the most modest, are incompatible or unpopular with an absolute monarchy.On the contrary, once the reformers had strengthened themselves, as we have seen, they were widely preached among what were then called "enlightened princes."But in most "enlightened autocratic" countries, such reforms are either impossible, so they are only theoretically fashionable; they cannot change the overall nature of their political and social structures; or they are resisted by local aristocrats and other vested interest groups Downfall is a failure, reducing the country to a slightly rectified form of its former state.In France, reforms failed faster than in other countries because vested interests resisted more effectively.But the consequences of this failure were all the more disastrous for the monarchy, because the bourgeois forces for change were already too strong for inaction.They merely transferred their hopes from the enlightened prince to the people or "nation."

Still, such generalizations do not allow us to understand why the revolution happened at this time, and why it took that remarkable course.It is for this reason that it is instructive to study the so-called "feudal reaction," which actually provided the spark that detonated the powder magazine of France. Of the 23 million French, the aristocracy of some 400,000 was undoubtedly the "first class" of the country, and while it was not absolutely immune to challenge from the lower classes, as it was in Prussia or other countries, it was still fairly solid.They enjoyed great privileges, including some exemptions from taxation (though not as many as the more organized class of monks), and the right to collect feudal taxes.Politically, their status is less prominent.Absolute monarchy, though still aristocratic and even feudal in character, deprived the nobility as much as possible of their political independence and responsibilities, and reduced their old representative bodies—the States-General and Supreme Court.This fact continued to cause resentment among the nobles and noblesse de robes.Robe nobility was later canonized by kings for various purposes, mainly financial and administrative, a knighted government middle class expressing both nobility and bourgeoisie as long as it survived the remaining courts and councils of state double dissatisfaction.The financial concerns of the nobility were by no means insignificant.They were, and traditionally have been, fighters rather than money earners, and nobility were even formally barred from commerce or specialized occupations.They depended on their estate income, or, if they belonged to the privileged few great and court nobles, on wealthy marriages, court annuities, bounties, and dry salaries.But the expenses of men of noble rank are great and rising; and their incomes fall, for few of them are shrewd stewards, if they manage at all, of their fortunes.Inflation gradually reduces the value of fixed income such as rent.

So naturally, the aristocrats had to draw on one of their major assets, the recognized class privileges.Throughout the eighteenth century, in France as in many other countries, they continued to encroach on offices that the despots preferred to fill them with professionally competent and politically harmless middle-class men.By the 1780s, even the coat of arms of the nobles could be used to purchase military commissions. All bishops were nobles, and even the post of court steward who managed the royal family was mostly seized by them.As they successfully competed for office, the aristocrats not only offended the sensibilities of the middle class, they also shook the foundations of the state by their growing tendency to take over local and central power.Similarly, they, especially those local gentry with few other sources of income, tried their best to use their powerful feudal power to seize peasants' money (or labor, but this is relatively small) in order to cope with their declining income.In order to restore such obsolete powers or to maximize the benefits from existing powers, a full-time expert in feudal law (feudist) was created.The most prominent of them, Babeuf, became the leader of the first communist uprising in modern history in 1796.Thus, the aristocracy offended not only the middle class but also the peasantry.

The peasantry, that vast class which constituted perhaps 80 per cent of the French population, had an absolutely unenviable position.By and large they are practically free and often landowners.In actual figures, the nobility held only one-fifth of all land, and ecclesiastical estates perhaps another 6 percent, a proportion that fluctuated by region.For example, in the diocese of Montpellier, farmers already own 38%-40% of the land, the bourgeoisie 18%-19%, the nobility 15%-16%, monks 3%-4%, and One-fifth is public land.However, the fact that most people do not have land or do not have enough land, this problem is exacerbated by the general backwardness of technology, and the problem of general land shortage is exacerbated by population growth.Feudal taxes, tithes, and levies robbed a large and increasing proportion of the peasant's income, while inflation diminished the value of the remainder.Only a small number of farmers, who regularly have a surplus to sell, benefit from the price increase; the rest suffer more or less from the increase, especially in poor harvest years when high prices due to shortages dominate the market.Undoubtedly, for these reasons the situation of the peasantry worsened in the twenty years preceding the revolution.

The financial difficulties of the monarchy brought the problem to crisis point.The kingdom's administrative and financial structure was largely outdated, and attempts to repair it through the reforms of 1774-1776, as noted above, failed after resistance from vested interests led by the Supreme Court.Then, France became involved in the American Revolutionary War.The victory over England was bought at the cost of its eventual bankruptcy, so we can say that the American Revolution was the immediate cause of the French Revolution.Various expedients were tried, with less and less success.Expenditures exceeded revenues by at least 20 per cent, and there was no possibility of any effective savings, a situation that could not be dealt with unless a fundamental reform mobilized what was actually a considerable taxing capacity of the state.For, although the profligacy of Versailles was often blamed for its crisis, the court's expenditures accounted for only 6% of the total expenditure in 1788.War, naval and diplomatic spending accounts for a quarter, and the existing debt burden accounts for half.Wars and debts—the American Revolutionary War and its debts—undermined the foundations of the monarchy. The government's crisis brought opportunity for the nobility and the Supreme Court.They refuse to pay unless the government expands their privileges.The first rupture that absolutism faced was the "assembly of notables" in 1787, a carefully selected but still intractable assembly that was supposed to ratify the The government needs to increase tax sources.The second rupture, and the decisive one, was the Conference of the Three Estates - an old feudal conference that had ceased to meet since 1614.Thus, the beginning of the revolution was the aristocracy's attempt to regain control of the country.This attempt miscalculated for two reasons: first, it underestimated the independent will of the third class, a fictitious group that wanted to represent all people who were neither nobles nor monks, but were actually Second, it ignores the deep economic and social crises into which it is drawn while making political gambles. The French Revolution was not led by an organized party or movement, nor by people trying to implement a program.Until the emergence of the post-revolutionary Napoleon, it failed even to elect the kind of "leader" we are used to seeing in the revolutions of the 20th century.However, within a fairly cohesive social group, their common will was strikingly aligned, and the revolutionary movement was powerfully united.This group was the "bourgeoisie"; its ideas were formulated by the "philosophers" and "economists" and preached by the Masonic program and in the informal leagues of classical liberalism.It is in this sense that we can say that it is the "philosophers" who started this revolution.Perhaps revolutions would have taken place without them, but it may be because of them that they made the difference between merely destroying an old system and quickly and efficiently replacing it with a new one. In its most general form, the idea of ​​1789 may be said to have been derived from Freemasonry, an idea which was so purely and solemnly displayed in Mozart's Magic Flute (1791), which is The first great propaganda art of the age, the highest artistic achievements of the age were often propaganda.More precisely, the demands of the bourgeoisie in 1789 were formulated in the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizens of the same year.It was a manifesto against an aristocratic and privileged class society, but not a manifesto for a democratic or egalitarian society.The first clause of the manifesto says, "Men are born and remain free and equal in law"; but it allows social distinctions "so long as they are grounded in the common good."Private property is a natural right that is sacred, inalienable and inviolable.All men are equal before the law, and offices are equally open to men of ability; but if the race begins under equal conditions, it is equally presumed that the runners will not finish at the same time.The manifesto asserted (as against aristocracy or despotism) that "all citizens have the right to co-operate in making laws";And the Congress, envisioned in the manifesto as the main body of government, did not necessarily have to be democratically elected, nor did it refer to a system that would abolish the king.A constitutional monarchy based on the bourgeois oligarchy is more in line with the wishes of the bourgeois liberals than a democratic republic, although logically a democratic republic seems to be more in line with their theoretical goals.Although there are some who do not hesitate to defend a democratic republic, on the whole the typical liberal bourgeoisie of 1789 (and the liberals of 1789-1848) was not a democrat but a believer in constitutional government, a political system with civil liberties. and a secular state that guarantees private enterprise, and a government made up of taxpayers and property owners. However, in terms of official rhetoric, such a system not only expresses pure class interests, but also the general will of the "people", and the people are transformed into the "French nation" (a meaningful identity).The king is no longer King Louis of France and Navarre by the favor of God, but Louis King of the French by the grace of God and the constitution of the country.The Declaration says that "all sovereignty derives from the State", and that the State, as Father Abbe Sieyes said, does not recognize any interest in the world above its own and does not accept laws and authorities other than those of the State , whether it is of ordinary human beings or of other countries.Undoubtedly, the French nation and its subsequent imitators did not initially conceive that their own interests would conflict with those of other peoples, but, on the contrary, they saw themselves as initiating or participating in the general emancipation of peoples from tyranny. of a sport.In fact, however, competition between nations (such as that of French merchants against English merchants) and subordination between nations (such as the subordination of the interests of conquered or liberated Given the formal expression of nationalism. The identification of "the people" with the nation is a more revolutionary idea than the bourgeois-liberal program which purports to express it.But it is also a double-edged notion. Because the peasants and the working poor are illiterate, their political attitudes are either moderate or immature, and the electoral process is indirect, most of the 610 people elected to represent the third class were made from the same mold, and most of them were lawyers, who played an important economic role in the French region; about 100 other capitalists and businessmen.The middle class fought hard and successfully for these moderate aspirations, to win representation equal to the nobility and priesthood combined, to officially represent 95 percent of the people.Now they are fighting with the same determination for the right to a potential majority of the bourgeoisie by converting the three-level conference into a conference of individual independent representatives, who will vote individually instead of the traditional class-based deliberations Or votes, in which case two votes of the nobility and monks were always able to overwhelm the one vote of the third estate.On this issue, the first revolutionary breakthroughs unfolded.Six weeks after the opening of the House of Commons, the representatives of the common people, eager to preempt the action of the king, the nobles, and the clergy, organized themselves and those who were ready to follow them, and in their own way formed the National Assembly (National Assembly).An attempt at counter-revolution led them to formulate their demands essentially on the model of the British House of Commons.Absolutism had come to an end, as Mirabeau, a former aristocrat of brilliance and disrepute, said to the king: "Sir, you are an outsider in this council and you have no right to speak here. " The third estate succeeded in the face of combined resistance from the king and the privileged classes, because it represented not only the views of an educated and militant minority, but also that of a far greater force, the city's , especially the views of the working poor of Paris and of the revolutionary peasantry, although this was brief.What was able to agitate a limited reform into a revolution was due to the fact that the call of the Trinity coincided with a deep economic and social crisis.The late 1780s was a period of great difficulty for all sectors of the French economy for a number of complex reasons. The poor harvests and unusually hard winters of 1788 and 1789 sharpened the crisis.Poor harvests cost farmers, and for a while it means that big producers can sell their grain at a premium, while most of those with small landholdings may have to eat what the rich grow or buy at insanely high prices. Food, especially in the months close to the new harvest (i.e. May and June).Harvest failures hit the urban poor more sharply, whose cost of living (bread is the staple food) may have doubled.The misery of the bad harvests was made ever more serious by the poverty of the country, which dwindled the market for manufactures, and thus caused industrial depression.As a result, the rural poor fell into despair and restlessness, and they took risks, engaged in riots and banditry; when the cost of living skyrocketed, the urban poor lost their jobs, and fell into double despair.In normal times there would perhaps have been only a few blind disturbances, but in 1788 and 1789 a great disturbance in the Kingdom of France, a triumph of propaganda and elections, made the people see in despair a political prospect which they The demand for emancipation from the oppression of the gentry was put forward, which was an extremely huge and earth-shattering idea at the time.The troubled people stood behind the representatives of the third estate, and made their strong backing. The counter-revolution turned a would-be mass uprising into an actual uprising.Undoubtedly, the only natural response of the old regime was to resist, if necessary, with armed force, although the army was no longer entirely reliable. (Only an unrealistic dreamer would think that Louis XVI might accept defeat and immediately convert himself into a constitutional monarch, even if he were not as insignificant and stupid as he really was, even if he married a less simple-minded, Less irresponsible women, he would not have listened to less catastrophic advisors if he had been willing to do so.) In fact, the counter-revolution had mobilized the entire hungry, distrustful and militant masses of Paris.The most exciting outcome of this mobilization was the capture of the Bastille, a state prison symbol of royal authority, where the revolutionaries counted on finding weapons.In the age of revolution, nothing is more influential than the collapse of symbols.The storming of the Bastille represented the downfall of absolutism, an event that symbolized the beginning of emancipation and was cheered throughout the world, and July 14 became Bastille Day in France.Immanuel Kant of Koenigsberg was a steady philosopher, and it is said that his habits were so regular that the inhabitants of his town set their clocks by his activities, even a man like him After people heard the news of the storming of the Bastille, they also postponed their afternoon walks, and the people of Königsberg believed that the world-shaking event had really happened.Even more telling in its impact, the fall of the Bastille allowed the revolution to spread to local towns and villages. The Peasant Revolution was a massive, unorganized and purposeless, nameless, but irresistible movement.What turned the peasant unrest into an irreversible commotion was the combination of local urban uprisings and a wave of mass panic, which spread quietly and rapidly over the vast countryside, the so-called Grand Peur of late July and early August 1789. .Within three weeks of July 14, the social structure of rural France's feudalism and the state apparatus of royal France were disintegrated.State power was reduced to a few fragmented and uncertain armies, a non-coercive National Assembly and numerous autonomous towns or middle-class administrations, which soon formed an armed bourgeois "National Army" on the Parisian model ( National Guard).The middle class and the aristocracy immediately accepted the inevitable: all feudal privileges were formally abolished, although after the political situation stabilized, a high price was set to compensate them.Feudalism did not come to a complete end until after 1793.By the end of August 1789, the Revolution had also issued its official manifesto, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man."Instead, the king rebelled in his usual clumsy fashion, and middle-class revolutionaries, horrified by the social implications of mass unrest, began to think that the hour of conservatism had come. In short, the main shape of French and of all subsequent bourgeois revolutionary politics was now clearly visible.This dramatic, dialectical dance will dominate generations to come.We will also see many times that moderate middle-class reformers mobilize the people to deal with the stubborn resistance of the counter-revolution.We will also see that the masses go beyond the goals of the moderates towards their own social revolution, while the moderates split into conservatives who have since joined the counter-revolutionaries, and those who are determined to pursue with the help of the masses the unfulfilled part of the moderate goals. The Left, even at the risk of losing control of the masses.In this way, through repeated transformations of resistance methods—mass mobilization—left turn—moderate division and right turn—until the majority of the middle class turned into the conservative camp in the future, or was crushed by social revolution.In most subsequent bourgeois revolutions, moderate liberals usually retreated or turned to the conservative camp at the very beginning of the revolution.Indeed, in the nineteenth century we increasingly found (most notably in Germany) that moderate liberals, fearful of unmanageable consequences, did not want to start a revolution at all, preferring to make compromises with kings and nobles.The French Revolution was unique in that there was a section of the liberal middle class willing to continue the revolution until it reached or was really on the verge of an anti-bourgeois revolution.These were the Jacobins, whose name has become synonymous with "radical revolution" in other countries. why?Part of the reason, of course, was that the French bourgeoisie had not yet been terrified by the terrible memory of the French Revolution in the way that the liberals would later be. After 1794 it was clear to the moderates that the Jacobin system had pushed the revolution too far for the comfort and prospects of the bourgeoisie, just as the revolutionaries knew full well that even if the "sun of 1793" were to come again Even if it rises, it will not shine in a non-bourgeois society.Furthermore, the Jacobins had the opportunity to be radical because, at that time, there was no social alternative to them.Such a class arose only in the course of the Industrial Revolution, along with the "proletariat," or, more precisely, with the ideologies and movements based on it.In the French Revolution, the working class (here I mean the whole of the employed, most of whom are non-industrial wage laborers.) has not yet played much of an independent role.They aspired, rebelled, perhaps dreamed, but they followed non-proletarian leaders for specific purposes.The peasantry never proposed a political alternative different from others; they offered an almost irresistible force, or an almost irreversible goal, only when the situation called for it.The only faction that replaced bourgeois radicalism (if not counting the small group of ideologists and militants who were powerless once they lost popular support) was the Sansculotte, a society composed mostly of the working poor, small artisans, shopkeepers, An amorphous, mainly urban movement of bosses, craftsmen, small proprietors, etc.The main organizations of the sansculottes were the Paris "sections" and local political clubs, which provided the main salient forces of the revolution - the actual demonstrators, rioters and barricade builders.Through journalists and local spokesmen like Marat and Hebert, they also propose a policy behind which a vague and contradictory social ) respect for private property combined with hostility to the rich, requiring the government to guarantee jobs, wages, and social security for the poor, and longing for an extreme egalitarian and localized direct democracy.In fact, what the sans-culottes reflect is the mass interest of the vast number of "little people", who are between the "bourgeoisie" and the "proletariat", perhaps closer to the latter than the former, because they are mostly poor after all. .In America (as Jeffersonianism and Jacksonian democrats, or populism), in England (as Radicalism), in France (as the fathers of later republicans and radical socialists), in Italy (as Mazzini) Pie and Garibaldi) and other countries, we can see such figures.In the post-revolutionary period, they mostly became the liberal left of the middle class, but reluctant to give up the ancient principle that the left has no enemies, and ready to rise in times of crisis against the "money barrier", or the "economic royalists", or "The Golden Cross That Crucified Mankind".But the sans-culottes offer no realistic alternative, either.Their ideals, a happy past of countrymen and small artisans, or a bright future free from bankers and millionaires, were impossible to realize.History has turned against them.At most they were able (and this was achieved in 1793-1794) to place barricades on their roads, which have hindered the French economy from that day almost until now.In fact, the sans-culottes were such an unhelpful phenomenon that the name itself has mostly been forgotten or remembered only as a synonym for the Jacobinism that provided its leadership in the Second Republic.