Chapter 16 Part One Development Chapter Three The French Revolution 2

2 Between 1789 and 1791, the victorious moderate bourgeoisie, through what has now become the Constituent Assembly, embarked on a massive rationalization of France, which was its goal.Most of the Revolution's lasting institutional achievements arose from this period, as did its most notable international achievements, the introduction of the metric system of weights and measures, and the earliest emancipation of the Jews.Economically, the views of the Constituent Assembly were completely liberal: its peasant policy was the enclosure of the commons and the encouragement of rural entrepreneurs; its labor policy was the prohibition of trade unions; its petty craft policy was the abolition of guilds and guilds.It afforded little concrete satisfaction to the common man, except, from 1790, through the secularization and sale of ecclesiastical lands (and the lands of the fugitive nobles), from which the common man reaped a triple benefit: weakening the ecclesiastical power, strengthening local and peasantry Entrepreneurial power and limited rewards for the revolutionary activities of many peasants. The 1791 Constitution eschewed excessive democracy through a constitutional monarchy based on the property rights of "active citizens".Passive citizens, they believe, will live lives worthy of their title.

In fact, this did not happen. On the one hand, the monarch, although now supported by powerful factions of the ex-revolutionary bourgeoisie, was unwilling to submit to the new regime.The court dreamed of a conquest by the prince to drive out the ruling mob and restore the most orthodox Catholic king of France to his rightful place. The Clergy Organic Act (1790), misunderstood as an attempt to destroy the church's loyalty to Roman absolutism rather than the church, drove most priests and their followers to the side of the opposition and helped force the king's attempted flight country, it was a desperate and proved suicidal attempt.With the capture of Louis XVI at Varennes (June 1791), republicanism became a mass force, losing its right to the loyalty of its subjects to traditional kings who had deserted their people.On the other hand, the uncontrolled moderate free-enterprise economy exacerbated the volatility of food prices and thus the militant spirit of the urban poor, especially those of Paris.The price of bread reflects with thermometer-like accuracy the political temperature of Paris, whose masses are the decisive revolutionary force: the French tricolore combines the old royal white with the red and blue of Paris.

Things came to a head with the outbreak of war, which refers to the fact that it led to the Second Revolution in 1792.The Jacobin Republic in the second year of the Republic eventually led to Napoleon's rise to power.In other words, it transformed the history of the French Revolution into the history of Europe. Two forces - the extreme right and the moderate left - pushed France into an all-out war.As the king, a growing number of nobles and ecclesiastical exiles, concentrated in the cities of western Germany, it became clear that only foreign intervention could restore the ancien régime (some 300,000 French were in exile between 1789 and 1795).Due to the complex international situation and the relative political calm in other countries, it is not so easy to organize such an intervention.However, it became increasingly clear to the aristocracy and divine rulers of other countries that restoring Louis XVI to power was not just an act of class solidarity, but an act of preventing shocking ideas from spreading out of France Important precautions.As a result, forces to recapture France were assembled abroad.

At the same time, the moderate liberals themselves, most notably the group of statesmen gathered around representatives of the more commercial Gironde, were a belligerent force.This is partly because every true revolution has a tendency to become worldwide.For the French, as for many of their sympathizers abroad, the notion that the emancipation of France was only the first sound of the Liberty Triumph in the world was easy to believe that emancipation under oppression and tyranny All nations that groan, is the duty of the revolutionary motherland.The existence of this lofty passion, which tried to transmit liberty to moderate and extreme revolutionaries, could not, indeed, separate the cause of the French nation from that of all enslaved nations.This point of view would have been accepted or adopted in France and in all other revolutionary movements, and would have been so at least until 1848.Until 1848, all plans for the liberation of Europe hinged on the joint uprising of peoples under the leadership of the French people to overthrow European reaction; and after 1830 national and liberal uprisings in other countries, such as those in Italy or Poland, also All tend to see their own country as a kind of savior, destined to use their freedom to mobilize all other nations.

On the other hand, the less idealistic view is that war also helped to solve a large number of domestic problems.It was attractive and obvious to attribute the difficulties of the new regime to the conspiracy of exiled nobles and foreign tyrants, and to direct the discontent of the masses toward them.Businessmen, in particular, argued that the uncertain economic outlook, currency devaluation, and other problems could only be resolved after the threat of intervention was removed.One need only look at the history of Britain to see that they and their thinkers probably believed that economic hegemony was the product of planned aggression (the 18th century was not a very peace-loving century for successful businessmen); , conducting wars can also create profits.For all these reasons, the majority of the new Legislative Assembly, with the exception of a minority of the Right and, under Robespierre, a minority of the Left, advocated war.For these reasons too, when wars begin, revolutionary conquest combines liberation, exploitation, and political change.

War was declared in April 1792.The failure was attributed to royalist sabotage and mutiny (seems entirely possible), so the failure led to radicalization. In August and September, the monarchy was overthrown through the armed actions of the Sansculottes in Paris, and a unified and indivisible First Republic was established. With the establishment of the first year of the Republic, a new era in human history was announced.The dark and heroic age of the French Revolution unfolded amid the massacre of political prisoners, the election of the National Convention (perhaps the most illustrious representative in parliamentary history) and calls for total resistance to invaders.The king was imprisoned, and the foreign invasion was checked by a mild artillery battle at Valmy.

The Revolutionary War forced its own logic.In the newly established National Convention, the dominant party was the Girondins, who were militant externally and moderate internally, a group of rich, rich and wealthy people representing big businessmen, the local bourgeoisie and many outstanding figures in the intellectual circles. Charismatic and talented parliamentary speaker.Their policies are absolutely impossible to achieve.For only countries with established regular armies waging limited campaigns can hope to confine war and domestic affairs to tightly segregated spaces, as the ladies and gentlemen in Jane Austen's novel happen to be at that time. as the UK did.The Revolution launched neither limited campaigns nor established armies; thus its wars oscillated between the greatest victories of the world revolution, and the greatest defeats, a defeat which would have meant a full-scale counter-revolution, whose armies (remnants of the old French army) had neither Combat power is unreliable.Dumouriez, the chief general of the Republic, soon turned to the enemy.Such a war can be won only with unprecedented revolutionary methods, even if victory means nothing more than crushing foreign interference.In fact, such a way is found.In the course of its crisis, the young French Republic discovered or invented total war: the total mobilization of the state through conscription, rationing, strict control of the wartime economy, and the virtual elimination of distinctions between soldiers and civilians at home and abroad resource.The surprising implications of this discovery have not become clear until our own time.Since the Revolutionary War of 1792-1794 remained a peculiar episode, it is no wonder that most commentators in the nineteenth century were confused about its significance, except to note (which was even forgotten until the late Victorian plumpness) that the war led to revolutions, and revolutions won wars that could not have been won otherwise.Only today do we understand how aptly the efforts of the Jacobin Republic and the "Reign of Terror" of 1793-1794 embody the modern term total war.

The sansculottes welcomed the establishment of a revolutionary war government not only because they rightly argued that only this could crush counter-revolution and foreign armed intervention, but also because its methods mobilized the masses and were closer to social justice (they ignored the following fact that no effective modern warfare can be reconciled with their favored decentralized direct democracy).In addition, the Girondins were afraid of the political consequences of the mass revolution they launched, once combined with war.Nor are they mentally prepared to compete with the left.They did not want to try or execute the king, but had to compete with their opponents the "Mountain" (Jacobins) for this symbol of revolutionary zeal; it was the Montagne who won the reputation, not them.On the other hand, they did want to expand the war into a general emancipation campaign and a direct challenge to the main economic rival, Great Britain.They are getting results in achieving this goal.By March 1793, France was at war with most of Europe and had begun annexing foreign lands (a new theory of France's right to possess its "natural frontiers" legitimized this annexation).

But the expansion of the war, combined with the fact that the war is not going well, only strengthens the left, because only the latter can win the war.Retreating and strategically defeated, the Girondists were finally forced to launch an ill-advised attack on the Left, which soon turned to organized local uprisings against Paris.A quick coup by the sans-culottes overthrew the Girondins on June 2, 1793.Thus was born the Jacobin Republic.