La Révolution Française: Causes and Events That Lead up to the Terror
The year is 1789, and King Louis XVI rules a French Nation that is heading towards disaster. Economic recession in the 1770’s has frustrated some bourgeois in their rise to power and wealth, and rising bread prices has increased discontent among the working class and peasantry. But it is not the Economy that is causing France to fall, but its internal politics.
By 1789 many French people had become critical of the monarchy, even though it had been largely successful in militarily defending France and in quelling domestic religious and political violence. They resented the rising and unequal taxes, the persecution of religious minorities, and government interference in their private lives. These resentments, coupled with an inefficient government and an antiquated legal system, made the government seem increasingly illegitimate to the French people. The royal court at Versailles, which had been developed to impress the French people and Europe generally, came to symbolize the waste and corruption of the entire Old Regime.
During the 18th century, criticism of the French monarchy also came from people who worked for the Old Regime. Some of the king’s own ministers criticized past practices and proposed reforms, but a more influential source of dissent was the parlements, 13 regional royal courts led by the Parlement of Paris. The parlements were empowered to register royal decrees, and all decrees had to be registered by the parlements before becoming law. In this capacity, the parlements frequently protested royal initiatives that they believed to threaten the traditional rights and liberties of the people. In widely distributed publications, they held up the image of a historically free France and denounced the absolute rule of the crown that in their view threatened traditional liberties by imposing religious orthodoxy and new taxes.
These protests blended with those of others, most notably an influential group of professional intellectuals called the philosophes. Like those who supported the parlements, the philosophes did not advocate violent revolution. Yet, they claimed to speak on behalf of the public, arguing that people had certain natural rights and that governments existed to guarantee these rights. In a stream of pamphlets and treatises—many of them printed and circulated illegally—they ridiculed the Old Regime’s inefficiencies and its abuses of power.
The discontent of the French people might not have brought about a political revolution if there had not been a fiscal crisis in the late 1780s. Like so much else in the Old Regime, the monarchy’s financial system was inefficient and antiquated. France had neither a national bank nor a centralized national treasury. The nobility and clergy—many of them very wealthy—paid substantially less in taxes than other groups, notably the much poorer peasantry. Similarly, the amount of tax charged varied widely from one region to another.
Furthermore, the monarchy almost always spent more each year than it collected in taxes; consequently, it was forced to borrow, which it did increasingly during the 18th century. Debt grew in part because France participated in a series of costly wars—the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and the American Revolution (1775-1783). Large existing debts and a history of renouncing earlier ones meant that the country was forced to borrow at higher interest rates than some other countries, further adding to the already massive debt. By 1789 the state was forced to spend nearly half its yearly revenues paying the interest it owed.
Financial reform was attempted before 1789. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, Louis XVI appointed the reform-minded Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as chief finance minister. Between 1774 and 1776 Turgot sought to cut government expenses and to increase revenues. He removed government restrictions on the sale and distribution of grain in order to increase grain sales and, in turn, government revenue. Jacques Necker, director of government finance between 1777 and 1781, reformed the treasury system and published an analysis of the state of government finance in 1781 as a means to restore confidence in its soundness. But most of these reforms were soon undone as the result of pressure from a variety of financial groups, and the government continued to borrow at high rates of interest through the 1780s.
Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed minister of finance in 1783, and three years later he proposed a new general plan resembling Turgot’s. He wanted to float new loans to cover immediate expenses, revoke some tax exemptions, replace older taxes with a new universal land tax and a stamp tax, convene regional assemblies to oversee the new taxes, and remove more restrictions from the grain trade.
To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it from an Assembly of Notables—a group of hand-picked dignitaries he thought would sympathize with his views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly refused to believe that a financial crisis really existed. They had been influenced by Necker’s argument that state finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only trying to squeeze more money from the people. They insisted on examining state accounts. Despite a public appeal for support, Calonne was fired and replaced by Loménie de Brienne in April 1787.
Brienne was also unable to win the support of the assembly, and in May 1787 it was dismissed. Over the summer and early fall, Brienne repeatedly tried to strike a compromise with the Parlement of Paris. But the compromise fell through when the king prevented the Parlement from voting on proposed loans, an act that was seen as yet more evidence of despotism. In May 1788 the government abolished all the parlements in a general restructuring of the judiciary.
Public response to the actions of the king was strong and even violent. People began to ignore royal edicts and assault royal officials, and pamphlets denouncing despotism inundated the country. At the same time, people began to call for an immediate meeting of the Estates-General to deal with the crisis. The Estates-General was a consultative assembly composed of representatives from the three French estates, or legally defined social classes: clergy, nobility, and commoners. It had last been convened in 1614. Under increasing political pressure and faced with the total collapse of its finances in August 1788, the Old Regime began to unravel. Brienne was dismissed, Necker reinstated, and the Estates-General was called to meet on May 1, 1789.
During the early months of 1789, the three estates prepared for the coming meeting by selecting deputies and drawing up cahiers des doléances (lists of grievances). These lists reflected overwhelming agreement in favor of limiting the power of the king and his administrators and establishing a permanent legislative assembly. In an effort to satisfy the third estate, the monarchy had agreed to double the number of their representatives but then took no firm stand on whether the voting would proceed by estate or by head.
When the Estates-General assembled at Versailles in May 1789, the monarchy proposed no specific financial plan for debate and left the voting issue unsettled. As a result, the estates spent their time engaged in debate of the voting procedure, and little was accomplished.
Five wasted weeks later, the third estate finally took the initiative by inviting the clergy and nobility to join them in a single-chambered legislature where the voting would be by head. Some individual members of the other estates did so, and on June 17, 1789, they together proclaimed themselves to be the National Assembly (also later called the Constituent Assembly).
When officials locked their regular meeting place to prepare it for a royal address, members of the National Assembly concluded their initiative was about to be crushed. Regrouping at a nearby indoor tennis court on June 20, they swore not to disband until France had a constitution. This pledge became known as the Tennis Court Oath.
On June 23, 1789, Louis XVI belatedly proposed a major overhaul of the financial system, agreed to seek the consent of the deputies for all new loans and taxes, and proposed other important reforms. But he spoiled the effect by refusing to recognize the transformation of the Estates-General into the National Assembly and by insisting upon voting by estate—already a dying cause. Moreover, he inspired new fears by surrounding the meeting hall of the deputies with a large number of soldiers. Faced with stiffening resistance by the third estate and increasing willingness of deputies from the clergy and nobility to join the third estate in the National Assembly, the king suddenly changed course and agreed to a vote by head on June 27.
Despite much rejoicing, suspicions of the king’s intentions ran high. Royal troops began to thicken near Paris, and on July 11 the still-popular Necker was dismissed. To people at the time and to many later on, these developments were clear signs that the king sought to undo the events of the previous weeks.
Crowds began to roam Paris looking for arms to fight off a royal attack. On July 14 these crowds assaulted the Bastille, a large fortress on the eastern edge of the city. They believed that it contained munitions and many prisoners of despotism, but in fact, the fortress housed only seven inmates at the time. The storming of the Bastille marked a turning point—attempts at reform had become a full-scale revolution. Faced with this insurrection, the monarchy backed down. The troops were withdrawn, and Necker was recalled.
In the year leading up to the storming of the Bastille, the economic problems of many common people had become steadily worse, largely because poor weather conditions had ruined the harvest. As a result, the price of bread—the most important food of the poorer classes—increased. Tensions and violence grew in both the cities and the countryside during the spring and summer of 1789. While hungry artisans revolted in urban areas, starved peasants scoured the provinces in search of food and work. These vagrants were rumored to be armed agents of landlords hired to destroy crops and harass the common people. Many rural peasants were gripped by a panic, known as the Great Fear. They attacked the residences of their landlords in hopes of protecting local grain supplies and reducing rents on their land.
Both afraid of and politically benefiting from this wave of popular violence, leaders of the revolutionary movement in Paris began to massively restructure the state. On the night of August 4, 1789, one nobleman after another renounced his personal privileges. Before the night was over, the National Assembly declared an end to the feudal system, the traditional system of rights and obligations that had reinforced inherited inequality under the Old Regime. The exact meaning of this resolution as it applied to specific privileges, especially economic ones, took years to sort out. But it provided the legal foundation for gradually scaling back the feudal dues peasants owed to landlords and for eliminating the last vestiges of serfdom, the system that legally bound the peasants to live and work on the landlords’ estates.
The National Assembly next focused on writing a new constitution, a process that took more than two years. Although it was agreed that France would remain a monarchy, the Assembly decided almost immediately that the constitution would not simply reform the old order, as the more moderate deputies wanted. Instead, it transformed the political system of the Old Regime, but preserved the monarchy.
It proclaimed France as a united, sovereign kingdom, dissolved the entire system of royal administration, and adopted a system of federalism that shifted authority from Paris to the localities. France was divided into 83 districts called departments, each of which would elect administrators to execute laws, maintain public order, levy taxes, and oversee education and poor relief.
The powers of the national government were divided among separate, independent branches. The chief executive was to be the king, who would continue to inherit his office, but his powers were to be limited, particularly in legislative matters. The king was allowed only a suspensive veto, whereby he could at most delay the laws passed by the assembly. As the only law-making body, the single-chambered Legislative Assembly was the heart of the state, enjoying wide powers. Although the right to vote was extended to more than half the adult male population—called active citizens—election to the assembly was made a complex process. Very restrictive qualifications made only about 50,000 men (out of about 26 million French people) eligible to serve as deputies. Like the administration of the departments, the judiciary was also decentralized. Legal procedure was streamlined, and torture banned.
Political and social restructuring on this scale raised complicated issues regarding the Catholic Church. The clergy had enjoyed extensive property rights and special privileges under the Old Regime and had long been a target of criticism. The National Assembly incorporated the church within the state, stripping clerics of their property and special rights. In return, the state assumed the large debts of the church and paid the clergy a salary. Dioceses were redrawn to correspond to departments. A presiding bishop would administer each diocese, with local priests beneath him. Since active citizens would elect the bishops and the priests, a Protestant, Jew, or atheist might be chosen to fill these positions. Finally, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 required all priests and bishops to swear an oath of loyalty to the new order or face dismissal.
Almost half the parish priests and bishops (called the refractory clergy) refused to take the oath. This marked an important turn of events. Before the Civil Constitution, opposition to the Revolution had remained a scattered affair. It had been led by an ineffective group of high nobles called the émigrés, who had fled the country beginning in July 1789 and had been conspiring from abroad ever since. More than anything else, the Civil Constitution and the oath solidified resistance to the Revolution by giving the resistance a religious justification and publicly designating a group of influential individuals—the refractory clergy—as enemies of the new state.
Although there were many reasons for the Civil Constitution, financial considerations were some of the most important. The government’s fiscal problems continued well past 1789. The assembly had assumed the Old Regime’s debts, but tax collections had been interrupted by administrative disorders and simple refusals to pay. To cover expenditures, the assembly issued bonds, called assignats; then to repay the assignats, it confiscated and sold the church’s considerable property holdings. The government justified this practice by saying that church property belonged to the nation.
All these measures were vigorously debated inside and outside the assembly. The assembly had been divided from the start into a conservative right that wanted to limit change and a radical left that wanted major social and political reforms. The assembly therefore lacked a unified voice. As head of state, the king was expected to provide this unifying influence, even if his power was formally limited. However, hopes that the king would step in and fill this role were dashed in June 1791 when the royal family fled Paris in disguise, leaving behind a manifesto denouncing nearly all the Revolution had accomplished since 1789. Poorly planned and executed, the effort ended with the royal family’s arrest at the border town of Varennes. From there they were returned to Paris under heavy guard, now more prisoners than ever.
Because so much had been expected of the king, the Varennes fiasco proved more of a shock than could be absorbed all at once. In an attempt to recover, assembly leaders announced that the incident had been a case of kidnapping, not an escape, and in mid-July the assembly voted to clear the king of all responsibility for what had happened. But these fictions were hardly convincing, and once they collapsed, so did the likelihood of ending the Revolution and establishing a stable government. On the left, moderate revolutionaries who sought to keep the monarchy, called Feuillants, split from the more radical revolutionaries, known as the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, who now began to talk openly about replacing the monarchy with a republic.
The king reluctantly approved the new constitution on September 14, 1791. Alarmed by the radical direction the Revolution was taking, more nobles began to cross the border to become émigrés. Pressured by these émigrés and concerned about the potential effects of the Revolution on their own kingdoms, the Austrian emperor and Prussian king issued the Declaration of Pillnitz on August 27. In this declaration they announced a rather vague willingness to intervene militarily on behalf of the French monarchy. Unclear as it was, the declaration provoked fears of an invasion.
It was under these threatening circumstances that the new constitution took effect and the Legislative Assembly first met on October 1, 1791. At first, the assembly got along remarkably well with the king, but this situation changed when the assembly proposed retaliatory actions against the émigrés and the refractory clergy. On November 9 it passed legislation requiring that the émigrés return to France or face death and the loss of their estates. On November 29 it required the refractory clergy to take the oath to the constitution or fall under state surveillance and lose their pension rights.
It was at this time that France fell into what is called the Reign of Terror. Led by Radical Jacobians, such as Maximillion Robespierre, the French Government laid waste to the people it considered ‘enemies’. Hundreds of executions and deaths followed over the next two years. The Reign of Terror ended when Robespierre and 82 of his associates were executed after a coup occurred on July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, Year II, in the revolutionary calendar)
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Originally Posted by Darth Revan
