14th French Revolution: Storming of the Bastille Buy this Giclee Print at AllPosters.com |
The Revolution was a popular, spontaneous uprising which had its roots in a variety of causes dating back into the previous century. A major cause was the feudal system of French government, the old regime (ancien régime). An absolute monarchy perpetuated the status quo by granting valuable privileges and exemptions from many royal taxes to the first two orders, or Estates, of the realm, while imposing punitive levies on the third and least able to pay (the Third Estate). Another source of grievance was the lettre de cachet (a sealed letter) -- a warrant, given under the king's hand, for imprisonment without trial. This was usually issued for outspoken criticism of the king, but was also dispatched at the request of favoured aristocrats to detain their enemies.
French involvement in the American War of Independence (1775--83), revenging their earlier defeat by Britain in the Seven Years' War (1756--63), effectively bankrupted the country. It also exposed its troops to the personal and social liberties enjoyed in England and the newly formed United States, making them aware of the inequalities and unfairness of their own system. One veteran who had fought alongside Washington was the Marquis de Lafayette, who would later take a leading part in championing the Third Estate - the majority of French society. Consequent upon national bankruptcy were soaring inflation and desperate food shortages, both of which had a disproportionately harsh effect on the Third Estate. Successive directors-general of finance, Jacques Necker, Jacques Turgot, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734--1802), and Archbishop Etienne Charles Loménie de Brienne (1727--94), had all fought unsuccessfully to restore national solvency, but Louis XVI generally ignored their advice. Eventually, however, Necker and Brienne persuaded the king to accede to mounting demands to call a meeting of the national legislative body, the Estates-General.
While the majority of the Third Estate comprised peasants and labourers, it also included educated professionals and affluent merchants, the bourgeoisie, who resented their lack of opportunity to occupy positions of authority in government service whilst being continually taxed to pay for government decisions.
Prominent for the influence of their writings on the Third Estate were such philosophers as François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), himself twice a victim of lettres de cachet; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; and Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu. All of them had drawn unfavourable comparisons between the democratic British and the despotic, feudal French styles of government. An influential pamphlet of the period, What is the Third Estate?, was written by Abbé Emmanuel Sieyès, who was later to achieve prominence in the Revolutionary Government.
The king agreed to call together the Estates-General on 8 August 1788, to meet on 1 May 1789 (the first time they had been called together since 1614). His prime aim was to resolve the national financial crisis. During the preceding months, all cities and regions represented by the Estates were called upon to produce compilations of local grievances (cahiers de doléances). At this stage the population was generally grateful to the king for permitting such an opportunity for free expression, but emerging aware-ness of the true nature of his motivation, along with their unfulfilled expectations, later gave rise to widespread dissatisfaction.
The king opened the meeting of the Three Estates at Versailles (5 May 1789), but in the absence of a formal agenda or adequate guidance from Necker, the chairman, the assembly quickly fell into unproductive argument over procedure. The First and Second Estates wanted separate Estate sessions and a block vote by Estate, thereby retaining between them the ability to outvote the Third Estate. The Third Estate wanted joint sessions and individual voting which, with the help of some liberal clergy and aristocrats, such as Lafayette and Philippe, duc d'Orléans (Philippe Egalité), could tip the balance in their favour. The king, insisting that the three Estates deliberated separately, barred representatives of the Third Estate from entry to the assembly hall on the pretext of redecoration. Fearing a royal coup, the Third Estate met in a nearby indoor tennis court, under the presidency of Jean-Sylvain Bailly, and took the Tennis Court Oath (20 Jun 1789), resolving not to disperse until a new constitution had been implemented. It then declared itself the National Assembly, and invited the other Estates to join it. In the face of the Comte de Mirabeau's election to the Third Estate, and his success in recruiting rebellious nobles and clergy to its ranks, the king was obliged to recognize the new Assembly (27 Jun 1789), with Bailly as president and Lafayette as vice-president. Tension was increased by threatening troop concentrations throughout Paris and the breakdown of the rule of law, which prompted the formation of a National Guard.
The final spark that ignited open hostilities was struck by the king's dismissal of Necker, his reforming director-general of finance (12 Jul 1789). During the subsequent rioting in Paris, the Bastille prison and fortress, a potent symbol of political and royal oppression, was stormed (14 Jul 1789). What had started as a confrontation between the Bastille garrison and armed rioters turned into a sacking when the governor, the Marquis de Launey, first fired on a flag of truce and later reneged on a guarantee of safe conduct to some 40 representatives of the mob, killing all of them. The enraged mob then stormed the Bastille and, after a summary trial, executed the governor and paraded his head on a pike. With the rebels effectively in control of the city, an autonomous government was set up under the elected Mayor of Paris, Bailly, and based in the Hôtel de Ville. This Commune answered only to the National Assembly, and was soon copied throughout France. At the same time, order was restored by the National Guard under its newly appointed leader, Lafayette.
Confronted by the evident anger of his people, Louis bowed to pressure to restore Necker and to withdraw his troops from Paris. He suffered a further humiliation when, following a disorderly demonstration in the National Assembly by a starving mob from Paris (5--6 Oct 1789), he was forced to withdraw his opposition to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the abolition of feudalism and Church tithes, or taxes, and the relocation of the Court from Versailles to the Tuileries in Paris. The Declaration, which had been drafted largely by Lafayette, summarized the revolutionary ideals and principles, drawing inspiration from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract. It enshrined the principles of "liberty, property, security, and the right to resist oppression'.
Nonetheless, proceedings in the National Assembly soon fell into chaos, with moderate deputies being driven out by extremists. Having abolished many of the taxes which provided the national revenue, the Assembly resorted to selling off the Church's assets (at the instigation of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun and representative of the Third Estate), and printing inflationary paper money in the form of interest-bearing bonds (assignats). In taking Church property, the state also had to undertake the responsibilities of the Church: payment of the clergy, and the provision of education and poor relief. The new status of the clergy as state servants was defined in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (Jul 1790). This also provided for the election of clergy, a measure which provoked a split with Pope Pius VI.
This new law and severance with Rome was deeply repugnant to the king. Worried by this, and by the increasingly dangerous political situation, he and his entire family were smuggled out of the Tuileries Palace (20 Jun 1791) under the protection of a Swedish noble, Count Hans Axel von Fersen (nd). The king's aim was to halt the Revolution by seeking aid from his brother-in-law, Emperor Leopold II of Austria, and by uniting loyal French troops and emigrés who had fled in increasing numbers as the situation in France had deteriorated. His escape attempt foundered when the local postmaster at Ste-Menehould, Jean-Baptiste Drouet (nd), recognized the king and queen, and made arrangements for their route to be blocked at Varennes. Posing respectively as a valet and the Baroness de Korff, they were arrested by the National Guard and returned to Paris on the orders of Lafayette. Such was the humiliation meted out to them by the mob during the four-day journey back to Paris that it is reputed Marie-Antoinette's hair turned white.
In the absence of political parties under the ancien régime, popular expression had been channelled through political debating clubs with branches throughout France. These also served as sources of news and information. Chief amongst the clubs were the Jacobins, the Cordeliers and, subsequently, the Feuillants; each taking their name from their meeting place. Following the king's return, the left-wing Cordeliers, influenced by such men as Jean Paul Marat, Georges Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Jacques René Hébert, organized a demonstration and petition calling for the deposition of the king and the establishment of a democratic republic. The crowd became disorderly when two people were accused of attempting to place a bomb under the platform on which the petition was being signed. They were summarily hanged by the mob. Lafayette, still at the head of the National Guard, imposed martial law, and dispersed the demonstrators by ordering his troops to fire into them, killing 50. The unrest, subsequent arrests, limitations on public expression, banning of some newspapers, and the unpopularity of Lafayette benefited the extremists in the political clubs, particularly the Jacobins.
The National Assembly then completed a new and written constitution which incorporated the Declaration of the Rights of Man as its preface (3 Sep 1791). This provided for a new Legislative Assembly drawn from a limited electorate. At the insistence of Maximilien de Robespierre, existing members of the National or Constitutional Assembly were excluded from election to it. This provision effectively removed from office those most able to conduct the business of government. These former National Assembly members then channelled their energies into the Paris Commune and political clubs, which soon challenged the authority of the Legislative Assembly.
The new constitution created a constitutional monarchy, by which the king had the power of suspensive veto over legislation for a maximum period of five years. Lacking a second chamber, advocated by Montesquieu as a check and balance to its function, the Legislative Assembly was effectively a dictatorship. Deadlock, bred out of mutual distrust between the king, his ministers, and the Assembly, was inevitable. It was exacerbated by arguments between rival political groups, particularly between the conservative Feuillants, whose leaders included Lafayette, Sieyès, and Antoine Barnave, and the more extreme members of the Jacobin Club, the Brissotins (later known as the Girondins), led by Jacques Pierre Brissot and Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud.
A major new development in the progress of the Revolution was the move towards foreign war. Emigré forces, marshalled at Coblenz by the king's youngest brother, Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, together with Emperor Leopold II of Austria, Marie-Antoinette's brother, threatened invasion of France. The national paranoia which this created was heightened by pockets of counter-revolutionary agitation from resistance groups established within France. The king, advised by forceful ministers such as Comte Louis de Narbonne (nd), an illegitimate son of Louis XV, and later by Charles François Dumouriez, saw war as a means of ending the Revolution, either by the army, or through invasion by Austria. Conversely, the influential Girondins thought that a war would expose the king's sympathies with the enemy while uniting the country behind them. Therefore, popular support for war was almost universal, though Robespierre and Danton argued unsuccessfully that the enemies of the Revolution first needed to be defeated at home. War was eventually declared on Austria (Apr 1792) and on its allies, Prussia and Sardinia (Jul 1792).
The war began disastrously for France when the army had to retreat from its advance against Tournai in the Austrian Netherlands (29 Apr 1792). Returning in disarray to Lille, the troops murdered their commander. This strengthened the standing of Robespierre and his anti-war faction within the Assembly. The king further undermined his now precarious position by vetoing some of the Assembly's decrees and dismissing his Brissotin/Girondin ministers (13 Jun 1792), among them Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, minister of the interior. This, and his appointment of Feuillant ministers, provoked a further series of serious demonstrations in the city. One demonstration, to celebrate the anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath, gathered a petition to abolish the king's power of veto. An 8000-strong armed mob invaded the Tuileries Palace and forced the king and his family to fraternize with them and wear the symbol of the revolution -- the bonnet rouge, or red cap of liberty. On this occasion the king's calm behaviour disarmed the mob, which withdrew, temporarily satisfied.
The Assembly then called for the conscription of all able-bodied men to protect the country against external military threat (11 Jul 1792). The 20 000-strong provincial National Guard, which had already been summoned to Paris to cover the Bastille Day celebrations, was augmented by conscripts recruited in Paris. The National Guard from Marseilles brought with them the marching song of the French Army of the Rhine, "The Marseillaise', written by Captain Rouget de Lisle; this would be adopted first as the song of the Revolution, and later as the French national anthem.
The concentration of soldiers in the city acted as a catalyst for renewed calls for the king's deposition. Popular anger was further fuelled by a manifesto, issued in the name of the commander of the Austro-Prussian forces, the Duke of Brunswick, threatening severe retribution if the king were to be harmed, and also by the suspicion that the army's reverses had been brought about by the king's and queen's complicity with the enemy. Lafayette, sensing the dangerous turn of events, offered to turn the National Guard against the extremists in an attempt to save the king, but this move was thwarted by Marie-Antoinette who, suspicious of Lafayette's intentions and seeking to sow dissent amongst the revolutionaries, informed the Jacobins of his plans. Lafayette was forced to flee the country, and was later captured and imprisoned by the Prussians.
The final move towards the king's downfall came when members of the extremist Cordeliers and forces loyal to them, probably led by their president, Danton, took control of the Paris Commune and declared an Insurrectionary Commune (10 Aug 1792). Posing a direct challenge to the Legislative Assembly, this Commune controlled all National Guard and local security forces. The new Commune immediately ordered the National Guard against the Tuileries Palace. In the subsequent skirmish, some 800 of the king's loyal Swiss Guards were killed, whereupon the king and his family sought refuge in the Legislative Assembly before it also was invaded by the mob. The Assembly was forced to suspend the king's function, pending investigation by an appointed National Convention. It was also forced to confirm the authority of the Paris Insurrectionary Commune and, at the instigation of Robespierre, to dissolve the Assembly and prepare for a new republican national government based on universal adult male suffrage. The king and his family were imprisoned in the Temple.
Following the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, an interim provisional government was formed in which Roland de la Platière retained the ministry for the interior and Danton was elected minister of justice. Nevertheless, effective control was in the hands of the Insurrectionary Commune, which commanded the essential support of the sans-culottes.
The term sans-culottes (literally, without breeches) was originally used as a term of royalist ridicule against the Jacobins, implying discovery in compromising circumstances. It was later associated with the craftsmen, small traders, and workers of Paris who wore ordinary trousers in place of the breeches and stockings affected by the upper classes.
Further military setbacks, with the loss to the Prussians of frontier fortresses at Longuy (19 Aug 1792) and Verdun (2 Sep 1792), and a revolt against the government in the Vendée district, combined to fuel mass panic and fury, provoking extreme mob reaction. Under the direction of Marat's Commune Committee of Surveillance, unofficial tribunals were set up to purge the prisons of clergy and prisoners suspected of loyalty to the king. In Paris, some 1400 prisoners were crudely butchered by the sans-culottes in the September Massacre (2--7 Sep 1792), while extremists in other cities followed Marat's example and set up similar tribunals in the interest of national security.
The success of generals François-Christophe Kellermann, duc de Valmy (1735--1820), and Dumouriez in repulsing the Prussians at Valmy (20 Sep 1792) restored national confidence and, by removing the immediate threat of invasion, opened the way to the ultimate success of the Revolution. The following day, a newly convened and strongly republican Convention deposed the king, declaring France a republic (22 Sep 1792). A revolutionary calendar was started on this day, with descriptive names for the months invented by Philippe Fabre d'Eglantine (1750--94), such as Vendemiaire (vintage month) and Thermidor (heat).
Although forming the majority in the Convention, the Girondins, with Roland, Brissot, and Vergniaud, lost influence to the Jacobins and the elite Jacobin group of Montagnards (their name coming from "mountain', given because of their position at the top of the steeply raked benches within the Manège riding hall in which the Convention met). They were dominated by Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. The Girondins also risked attack from the sans-culottes by proposing a national referendum to decide whether the king should face trial. In the event, extremists forced a trial, and Louis was charged with treason under the name of Louis Capet -- a reference to his ancestry. He was tried by the National Convention and found guilty. His sentence was put to the vote, with each deputy having to make an individual declaration of their recommendation. A Montagnard call for the death penalty prevailed over more moderate views. Louis was executed on 21 January 1793, a guillotine having been erected in what is now the Place de la Concorde.
The monarchs of Europe were horrified. Within months France found itself at war with Britain, Holland, and Spain -- each totally unsympathetic to the revolutionary cause, and fearful of the threat posed by recent French territorial gains in Europe. The British prime minister, William Pitt (the Younger), organized a coalition of forces against France: in addition to Holland and Spain, this included Austria, Prussia, Portugal, Piedmont, and Naples.
France found itself faced with economic blockade, internal subversion, and the threat of invasion. Moreover, French military reverses, renewed revolt in the Vendée region, and severe domestic shortages -- particularly of food -- precipitated further popular unrest and criticism of the Girondins. A major embarrassment to the Girondins was the defection of army commander Dumouriez (5 Apr 1793), with whom they had been earlier associated. The Jacobins seized this opportunity to discredit the Girondins: Danton demanded the formation of the Committee of Public Safety (6 Apr 1793), with Girondins excluded from election. The ruthless dedication of this Committee's 12 members, who were re-elected on a monthly basis, was crucial to the survival of the Revolution; and control of the Committee was the key to power.
