The French Revolution: a Concise History 068414302X, 9780684143026

Citation preview

The French

A

Revolution:

Concise History J

Norman Hampson he French Revolution, which shook France between 1 787 and 799, has been a fertile source of myth: much of what it symbolizes for the general public is as untrue as the familiar story of Marie Antoinette saying, “If they have no I

1

them eat cake.” Professor Hampson refutes these myths in an absorbing new work which is an overview of the salient events and bread,

let

He

their significance.

intellectual to 1787; the

describes the social

background

to

and

French society prior

euphoria of 1789 that attended the

climax of the revolutionary movement the National Assembly decreed the abolition of the feudal regime; the .Assembly’s first

when

work on a new constitution up

to

September

1791 ; the chaos of the period 1791-93, against a background of revolutionary wars abroad, that resulted in the king’s execution and the

establishment

of the first Republic; the strengthening of extremist positions in 793-94, which saw the Terror and the fall of Robes1

pierre;

when

and the search the

for stability in

1795,

Directory

was established and Napoleon Bonaparte began his rise to power. While concentrating attention on the chief personalities

involved

Danton, Saint-Just

— such

as

Robespierre,

— Professor Hampson in the

course of his narrative corrects many popular misconceptions about the period: the Revolu-

drown France in blood; it did not ownership of the means of production

tion did not

transfer

from one

He maintains, rather, that the real import of the French Revolution lay in its attempt to make good the claim of a class to another.

people to liquidate

its past and provide itself the constitution, laws and institutions that believed to correspond to its needs.

\(vith it

Norman Hampson at

Thi

the

University

is

Professor

of York

First European Revolution:

of

History

and author of ijjS-iSi

with 170 illustrations On

the jacket: Detail from Planting of a Tree of Liberty by Pierre-Etienne Lesueur (fl. 17911810),

Musde Carnavalet,

Paris.

NORMAN HAMPSON

The French Revolution A CONCISE HISTORY

u>ith 1

JO

illustrations

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

NEW YORK

:

To

Franfoise and Michele

Marat acclaimed

Frontispiece

by a jubilant crowd

Copyright

©I975 Thames

and Hudson Ltd, London

Copyright under the Berne Convention

All

may

rights reserved.

No

part

of this book

be reproduced in any form without the

permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons. I

357911

13

151719I/C2018161412108642

Printed in Great Britain

Library of Congress Catalog

ISBN 0-684-14302-X

Card Number 74-33925

1

Contents

Preface

1

The

social origins

2

The

intellectual origins

3

4

5

Bliss

was

It

in that

of the Revolution

9

of the Revolution

dawn

to be alive’:

37

1789

57

New

wine and old bottles: October 1789-September 1791

The breakdown of authority

87

105

:

October 1791-June 1793 6

The triumph of will

:

1

3

June 1793-June 1794 7

The

search for stability:

153

June 1794-November 1799 Conclusion

173

Chronology

177

Bibliography

181

List of illustrations

Index

1

8^

I9Q

Preface

Every year French scholars publish more books and

Revolution than on the sixteenth, centuries put together. This at least lost

historians.

for

interest

its

information available

There

assimilate.

is

is

to invalidate

and too much

generalization

every view idea of

seem

as the

amount of

for systematic analysis. Historians

most important

to

almost any impressionistic

only put forward personal interpretations that

what they regard

that the

beyond the capacity of anyone

far

enough

subjea has not

that the

means

also

It

on the

and eighteenth

seventeenth

shows

articles

facts.

fit

can

a fair proportion of

As perspectives change,

challenged and revised. Each generation has a different

is

what

the Revolution

though, that

to agree,

it

was about and why

mattered. All

it

mattered a great deal.

In a short essay of this kind there can be no question of stopping to justify every controversial interpretation or buttress every hypothesis

with supporting evidence.

What

follows

rather than a digest of accepted opinion.

who

is

It is

a personal statement

intended for the layman

enjoys reading history rather than for the examinee.

readers will,

without

all

my

hope, accept the bald statement of

I

the qualifications that

would

Such

opinions

rightly be expected of a

more academic work. None of my views is merely arbitrary and all rest on some factual basis, but none is unchallengeable and if I provoke anyone to a refutation I shall have achieved one of my purposes.

Nothing happens role

of individuals

in history unless is

someone makes

it

happen. The

not always obvious in stable societies where

work of men who, having risen to the top for conventional reasons, behave in the way that society expects. Stable policies are often the

societies

impose

idiosyncrasy

Ts

their

conservative values, and the price of

often impotence. Revolutions have their

too, but they offer

When

own

more scope

to the ideologist

the old rules are discarded there

opportunity for the

man

they were

a brilliant

with a mission.

overthrown, careers are opened therefore tended to

is

When

to the ruthless

emphasize the

role

more important than usual and

of personalities that fascinated

posterity.

the buccaneer.

-

if often

brief-

the old dites are

and

resolute.

I

have

of individuals, partly because partly because the

influence of the Revolution outside France clash

and

orthodoxy

is

both

immense

inseparable from the

contemporaries and

Unfortunately, the most conspicuous individuals were

rarely the to

those

most

likeable.

who

sacrificed

I

should have preferred

pay more attention

ambition, reward and sometimes

the service of a revolution that they

of mankind.

to

saw

as a

means

life

to

to the regeneration

One

could very well argue that they were the people who mattered, that the achievements of the Revolution were mainly the product of their self-abnegation. Most of them, however, at least

as individuals,

he below the waterdine of history. If the reader is disappointed by the behaviour of some of the more eminent men, he should remember the extraordinary pressures to

subjected,

which help

Though my

what cannot be excused. my own and would often be

rejected

have built with the bricks that the latter have who writes about the Revolution is conscious of I

provided.

Anyone

belonging

to a great international family.

its

they were

to explain

conclusions are

by other historians,

which

feuds and antipathies, but the

Like other

families,

it

has

whole would be incomplete

if

any

of its members were excluded.

To

and those known only through

print,

of them, both personal friends I should like to offer my thanks.

all

7

8

CHAPTER ONE

The The French Revolution had started to describe the society

Although

begun before Frenchmen had overthrown as the (jttcicn yc^inic. scarcely

it

they underestimated the extent to

survived in

new

of the Revolution

social origins

which old

attitudes

disguises they were right to believe that a

whole

system of social and legal relationships had come to quite an abrupt end. Looking back from almost two hundred years later it is not easy to penetrate this pre^^revolutionary

was

closer to ancient

Superficially,

Rome

world which,

in

some

than to the civilization of our

French and British society had

respects,

own

day.

good deal in common in the eighteenth century. Both were overwhelmingly agrarian. Most people found it hard to feed themselves and there was not much surplus available, either for the growing towns or for the luxuries of a minority. Land was the main source of wealth and the ownership of land was the best means to economic security and social prestige. Most towns existed primarily as markets. Some were also centres of law courts

and

local

government, where the

mattered most were judges and royal sisted

a

officials.

men who

Most industry com

of handicrafts, often carried on by part-time farmers or their

wives and children. Such large-scale enterprises usually the creation of great landowners estates.

The one

pattern of

significant

economic

and were

exception to

and

this

as

existed were

situated

on

their

largely traditional

main point of growth, was overseas trade. Maritime commerce was expanding very rapidly and Nantes, Bordeaux and Marseilles were the prototypes of a new kind of society whose wealthy merchants were part of an international economic community. activity,

Although France was

the

a rich country by contemporary standards,

most of its people could hope for little more than survival. The rapid growth of population in the eighteenth century, unaccompanied by

any significant increase

in

agricultural

productivity,

put severe

on the available land. Many were permanently dependent on charity to remain alive, and a bad harvest threw tens of thousands on the roads in search of relief Governments did what they could, pressure

by time-honoured methods,

keep the markets supplied and

to

control the price of grain but the country

communications were too poor

•1L1-Javailable in a distant

province.

to

was too big and land

one area be made 1^. Large-scale famines were a thing of

for a surplus in T

to

.

^

the past but the poor lived with the continual threat of dearth,

^ o Uo/joy/ff’ bocial relations in the •

i

,

•

countryside; a seigneur

visits a

substantial tenant farmer

9

V

10

1

The stomach of

Paris:

les

Halles

Paris: the Halle to the state

aux

Bles, key

of grain supplies

Opposite ‘The roads here are

stupendous

works’

(Arthur

Young)

1

I

Overseas trade was the growth point of the French

economy:

view of the port of Bordeaux

The new economy and society:

wealth

a

lady

choosing

ported products

12

the old

of obvious

from

im^

ytffVr

•

u

The game laws made poaching a profession

13

The

veillee,

memories ^

filled

when

folk^

the long winter

Nothing

could

statesmanship

that

When

difference in the short run.

do

made any

harvests were

of law and order was a precarious business

bad the maintenance

as vagrants drifted into

Violence was also endemic in the poorer quarters of

rural banditry.

the

appreciable

towns where

So much was

life

was brutal and precarious.

common

both England and France; but there

to

were many differences between the two countries.

One

of the most

important arose from the faa that the French peasantry

between a quarter and a third of the a

mixed

scientific

to feed

blessing,

themselves

knowledge

all

difficult.

the year

In

economic terms

this

was

ownership made enclosure and

since peasant

farming very

soil.

owned

Few

peasants possessed

enough land

round and most lacked the

capital

and

wealth of what they had. Never^

to exploit the potential

of ownership gave them a certain independence.

theless, the fact

Villages resisted encroachments by their manorial lords, despite the fact that they

almost always

since both the manorial

and

lost

when

they resorted to litigation,

the royal courts reflected the viewpoint

of the seigneurs. Conditions varied enormously throughout the country; but in

many

of the lord’s income

parts for

manorial dues formed a big enough share

him

to prefer legal

chicanery and rack/'

renting to the long-term investment of capital in his land.

French social

life

importance attached 14

differed

from

that of

to the separate identity

England

in the greater

of the three traditional

Clerical

pomp: Monscigncur

de Valras

Opposite

The

Sourche and

marquis

his

family -

de la

douceur de vivre

had not much in common with the Anglican Church. Although the French upper clergy were closely integrated into aristocratic society — thirteen families com Orders.

The

clergy, or First Estate,

of the 130 bishoprics - celibacy reinforced their

trolled a quarter

collective

The Church owned immense

corps.

de

esprit

drawing a substantial income from

besides

This wealth

autonomy of the Gallican was exempt from taxation, and its representatives,

provided a firm economic basis

Church.

tithes.

estates,

It

for the

meeting in periodic assemblies, voted such subsidies to the king as they thought fit. The clergy were disciplined in church courts and the

poor the

responsible for education, most hospitals

Church was relief,

and providing dissemination of information about goverm

besides sharing in control of censorship

main means

ment

and much

for the

policies.

The

case of Charles

Maurice de Talleyrand

offers a

good example

way things worked. His distinguished birth and connections made him Agent General of the clergy at twenty^six, though his

of the

scandalous

prevented his becoming a bishop until the com/'

life

As Agent

paratively late age of thirty^four. collective interests of the

courts to encroach

Crown and

on

Church

against attempts by the secular

the disciplining of the clergy

the Princes of the

same time he turned

General he defended the

Blood

to pry into

to the state to protect the

and

its

efforts

wealth.

of the

At

the

upper clergy against

and co-operated with the secular suppression of blasphemous, heretical and seditious

the claims of the parish priests,

courts in the In the

army

between

there

officers

was

a gulf

and men

literature.

Both

and individuals

institutions

in eighteenth-century

France were generally engaged in the simultaneous pursuit of multiple interests whose reconciliation called for

The Second

Estate

much

finesse.

grouped together a very heterogeneous

nobility,

ranging from the Princes of the Blood through ancient warrior families fry

and

who had

acquiring that all

it

ennobled royal servants of past ages

the

recently

through

members of a

bought noble office.

status or

to the

humbler

were in the process of

France differed from England in the

family,

and not merely

eldest sons,

fact

were noble.

The French nobility also had much closer links with the army, most men of distinction serving for a time, although many left after a few years.

These

factors

gave them a sharper sense of distinctiveness and

imparted a more martial character

to the

they claimed to conduct themselves. This British travellers,

between the two

who

code of honour by which

was something

that struck

otherwise found a good deal in

societies.

The

specific privileges conferred

common by noble

- exemption from some taxation and a near-monopoly of the most coveted occupations - went with an aggressive assertion of noble separateness; and it was difficult to win a lawsuit against a

status

great lord or to

16

make him pay

his debts.

V

K^

si

j^m w ^jHBl

i^V* >ilM^/M ’

'-

'j|H||

^

!uiu'

.‘t

Rrtnf/u

uu

/v

.

!

-

managed

./tt/n,’

-

as a

/i4=

>m.u.-ru'

to force his

had behaved

way

popular hero and a statesman in

royal servant.

^

his

own

He called off the attack on the

man once

he had

Necker saw himself

right, rather

Parlements and

than

as a

made no

attempt to manage the elections to the Estates General. France was now committed to major innovations of one kind or another, but the

form they would take was

from accident. 34

into ministerial office,

J

./|^

as the king’s

still

unpredictable and was to result partly

.

/

.

a

H

CaRTF, J)KS

TH rH

N S

I

I

1.1^4^ T^trn

iC'iABKI.l.KS

# 9t*n^

Auto

I

-

•

^

Ann/&w

t 2^ l'4^eAriK>n

..«

•.

•\i*'\

/. OrenoUe

K R16 ORDj

V»r—

»Jarbt^

.

..l-l,

Qvk rcy

\i5*a

(r

V I M N N E 7-i

f-

’.

»

3^ •A’sa ’iY\

;

\

/

w

^

^

R/ttJ^ran

35*»o‘

/A M

RoVBROVK

•

»' «* ‘

'•
\

//’ «

»' j?

A U f*4fs’*hm Jt ^ m JtJri^Ar Mt AttJhtrth J/ S An, A .# .a a_a^# .#a_ .. U et Otrrrt H.u fi; Pm f/.ut* H.'nthut' '** fjfrr^ rrt ,iu.t ^i/' .r fAATtr '" !,tirr^ n to it ttA m/%AJtm..

t.tirry


^.//f/ / i' '« l*tnAuf.h,' .

Pjtrfu /.'fit/r^r

.

tfr^rrmrur f*r

ull.'n

hmu

l.f A'r! ,fiu

a

Map A

.

,>

^ |•r^

.

(.AH, K

'rtrtti-

U

I

I

Jt/t r

.

.

,r .

a

A**"

,'i

.

/•

.

*

.

c

.

A

rt

.

,

Mjulfft uy%^ «v

K.WCIIV

I

^m/rv-'/r

Prii

t!u

•

Sri

a

A/jur;, »V

*

// 4s.** I :

HjtnAu

/,•-

I,iyy ./. ^'.\l t /J/i/.'" A.

I

K

.S

l)K

.^

M INKS

ruUtirm f\'t$r

fAtr
li'

(

.III

ml

.

.

tjm*

1 ‘tri'

puni

!»'

loul hninjiir

t’t.ini

larr (ou|mI>)i'. s

ipiriir

I

(|iii

lie

(1

Ml

nr

i.a

*omn

pnit

m

(Ml c*uv iii«|intHe

imre

t

Ml-ler

It

.1

I

plus pret

ipe

lie (inifr

*>(iii\

er.uiirie

la iMltoii.mil (orpii,iiiil tihiivjilu

inu>

)00

fliTi-'-.J ymj

"

r

f

tnht^^tx

00

0t**tH0rt/

f

f

tycn/r* mruj

ft

>Hti

0ts/

ue,*r

J

tfst

V«,

1.1

7“^ /^/04f ,

^

^

f

.

/t^4^

oc 1

1

,

^ auc

Lro L

Ut

mnoo

U Vemc,

tarribArc 4it< 4e

^s****—*! f btUoiccc, cdu*>«c

m^mte tern

VocTtvr

CcndciCMC, 4 .1 c

ic Im i« c«

•ctitc trnc

L'nc terrr ot^lkrrr «u

^

^

U'nift.eme Ut-

i»m

Ia oo-uc •!# 1a bliU i bat iH.rcc» I

T'fmueme Im

Li tuHlacra

U

.i-

t J-

Repression gone

mad Le Bon

and

revolutionary

the

tribunals

Cambrai

twin at

:

Arras

Stood.

j

-

.

Most of

the evidence

throwing Robespierre,

comes from those who,

tried to save their

and for everything that

had happened.

It

own

lives

sible to stop the

Terror without

first

it

over^

by blaming him

looks as though he and

eventually supported by Saintz-Just, argued that

after

Couthon,

would be impose

executing half a dozen deputies

too closely implicated in the atrocities in the provinces to tolerate any

and Collot saw no need to stop the remaining members of the committee -

policy of moderation. Billaud

Terror

at all,

and most of the

perhaps mindful of the their control

-

Carnot and

fact that

Danton’s

trial

had almost escaped

refused to accept any further purge of the Convention.

Saintz'just

were engaged in a private feud about the

conduct of military operations, while Robespierre, whose nerves were inclined

to let

him down

in periods

colleague, suspicious of the others

commit them 154

to policies

of

crisis,

was

a difficult

and increasingly inclined

to

about which they had not been consulted.

On

26 July Robespierre precipitated the crisis by demanding that the Convention purge the Committee of General Security, sub^ ordinate

it

to the

Committee of Public

Safety,

and purge

that too.

The Assembly, after automatically approving his speech, changed its mind and adopted a noivcommittal attitude. The Jacobins

came

support but their influence was now too slight to matter much. During the night of the 26-27 July desperate negotiations among

to his

the

Montagnards

up an anti^Robespierrist coalition. On the following day - 9 Thermidor Year II in the revolutionary calendar built

Saint^Just tried to persuade the

Convention

to

censure Billaud and

Collot, though without excluding them from the committee.

shouted

good

down and

Robespierre was denied a further hearing. After a

deal of noisy vituperation, the

Assembly voted

Couthon and Saint^Just; of the Committee of General

Robespierre,

Le

Bas,

He was

the arrest of

Robespierre’s brother Security,

who

insisted

and on

associating themselves with the three accused deputies, were also arrested. In view of the tendency of Robespierrist historians to identify their hero with the Committee of Public Safety, it is worth

emphasizing

that, at this stage, the crisis

for the majority

of the committee, and the

continuation of the Terror.

had produced result

looked

a victory

like

being a

The

execution of Robespierre

155

The

situation

was transformed when Robespierre

Commune

Paris

organize an insurrection in his support.

tried to

with Paris that the deputies had

like the confrontation

This looked

During

feared for so long.

the evening both sides

Commune

seemed imminent. The

initial military superiority

and

the rebel deputies

and when

the

competed

for the

war

in the

Guard, and

allegiance of the Parisian National capital

friends in the

s

the

Commune,

civil

failed

exploit

to

its

Convention outlawed both support for the insurrection

gradually melted away. In the early hours of 28 July National

Guards

quarters in the Hotel de Ville to

death the

seven of

five deputies, six officials

ordinary members.

its

virtually annihilated

was

free

Commune’s head^ without opposition. The victors put

Convention occupied

loyal to the

from any

expected sequel

Commune

The municipal

for the

and

administration was

threat of direct action in the streets.

no longer needed

eighty^

time since 1792 the Assembly

first

to the political crisis upset the

since the deputies

When

and

of the

the

a strong

This un^

balance of power,

government

to protect

Committee of Public Safety proposed to replace their former colleagues and carry on as before, the Assembly refused. It broke the supremacy of the com^ mittee by confining its powers to war and diplomacy, and ordering

them.

the surviving

only done what he was told, was arrested; and the decision

that the revolutionary tribunal

when

the

membership. The unfortunate Fouquier^Tinville,

the rotation of its

who had

members of

was

to

impose the death penalty only

marked the end Public opinion assumed that the outcome meant the end of the reign of fear, and its

counter-revolutionary intent had been proved

of the organized Terror. of the Thermidor

crisis

pressure reinforced the spontaneous inclination of the deputies. In the

euphoria almost everyone found some ground

general

rejoicing.

When Laurent Lecointre, at the end of August, denounced and

Billaud, Collot

Barere, together with four

Committee of General Security, chorus of indignant Montagnards of the recent It

for their share in the

the

Terror, a

silenced this imprudent reminder

before the unanimity arising from relief gave

way

to

ambition and the remembrance of past wrongs and

indignities.

Former

career

themselves

for

encouragement,

two

members of

past.

was not long

personal

for

terrorists

as

such

aggressive

men who had been

years took over control of

were soon

as far to the

merly been to

Freron and Tallien

as

its

Left.

anti-Jacobins.

persecuted during the previous

most of the Paris Sections, which

Right of the government

The

made a new With their

trial

as they

had

for-

of a batch of prisoners sent from

Nantes by Carrier, one of the most ferocious of the representatives

on mission,

led not merely to their

own

acquittal but to the indict-

ment of Carrier himself In December he wls sentenced

to death.

As

the recoil from the year

gathered

II

momentum,

the imprisoned

Girondin deputies were allowed to resume their seats. Those of the outlawed Girondins who had survived - they included Isnard - were amnestied and allowed back in March 1795. Understand, ably, perhaps, they were in

no mood

for reconciliation

and turned on

theirformerpersecutorswithalltheiroldimplacableself.righteoLisness.

When

Lecointre returned to the charge in December he found a much more appreciative audience for his attack on the revolutionary government. The Convention voted to create a commission to investigate the charges against Billaud, Collot

and Barcre, together

with Vadier, of the Committee of General Security. In March 1795 this commission persuaded the Assembly to send deputies for

of

3

1

trial.

A week

May-2 June

1793.

the four

later

it

When

formally disavowed the insurrection

Convention began to debate the charges against the four accused, their former colleagues came to their support. Robert Lindet in particular, perhaps the most moderate the

and humane member of the former Committee of Public

Safety, in a six.hour speech defended the record of the revolutionary govern, ment and appealed to the Convention not to destroy its

own

reputation: ‘Reject a policy that will lead you to send all your colleagues to the scaffold one after the other.’ He pointed out the unwelcome truth that, if the Montagnards rejected the defence of the four

- however implausible

might be -

that they had been deceived or intimidated by Robespierre, the uncommitted majority

would

reject the

terrorized by the

it

Montagnards’ plea

that they themselves

Committee of Public

had been

of whose measures had been accepted by the Assembly. Reminding some of the present accusers of the deputies of their to all for a policy ofoblivion.

This

Safety, all

own

bloody

past,

he appealed

one of the resurrected Girondins to declare that he would shortly propose the arrest and trial of Lindet. By April 1795 the clock seemed to have been put back by

two

led

years.

In the

meantime

the

economic policy of the Thermidoreans was

rums. Their attempt to dismantle the controls of the year II, notably by abolishing the maximum, or control of the price of neces. sides, had met with a good deal of initial support, since educated in

people agreed that controls violated every sound economic prin. ciple, while the sans^culottes probably associated them with queues, rationing and high prices. Even given favourable climatic coiv ditions, scale

however,

of the war

inflation.

it

would have been impossible

effort

without

to

maintain the

either rigorous controls or

In fact, the harvest of 1794

was poor, and

runaway

a winter of

exceptional severity produced the worst food shortages so

far.

The

government had to resume requisitioning in order to keep the towns from starving, but it was now too weak to enforce its will as it had

done

Requisitioning grain

in the previous year.

The

death rate rose sharply and the

junketings of a handful of speculators and war contractors, although majority, they made little difference to the physical suffering of the served to exacerbate social tensions.

means

In Paris, by no

the hardest hit of the French towns, a

hunger

April 1795 provided the Assembly with a pretext for deputies cutting short the interminable debates on the four accused more serious and ordering their deportation without a verdict.

riot

on

i

A

riot in the itself

and

month led to the invasion of the Convention disorders in which one deputy was murdered. Without

following

to

proper organization or leadership the insurgents failed to take advantage of their opportunities and the government was eventually

show of force. This time fourteen Montagnard deputies who had come out in support of the insure In rection were arrested, six of them being later condemned to death. of Paris as a whole there were over 1,200 arrests. The disarming

able to over^awe

them by

a

^

.

J

former pikes,

terrorists

and

deprived them of

their civil rights as well as their

the leaders of the popular

victims of authority, picked

up by

movement became

the police

whenever

.

the helpless there

was

a

and ruined by intermittent imprisonment. Things were much worse in the provinces where the partial collapse of authority, the shortage of food and the revival of royalism led to

threat of trouble Opposite,

above

The

White

Terror in the south: a bour^

member of the Company of the Sun

geois

,

,

invaded and a deputy mur. dered; Prairial 1795

158

widespread brigandage, more or south, organized

murder gangs,

the local authorities

less

politically

inspired.

In the

connivance of

that of the representatives

on mission, massacred prisoners in a White Terror prison massacres of September 1792*

'

j

often acting with the

and sometimes with

|

as

gruesome

as the

With

things in this state and the Convention on against the Montagnards, a royalist restoration

tlie

became

possibility. Fortunately for the republicans, the royalists

warpath a serious

were no

less

divided than they themselves. Aristocrats, pure royalists and coiv stitutional monarchists could perhaps have agreed on the restoration of the fourteeivyear.old son of Louis XVI. Since he would have needed a regent or a council of regency, such a solution might also have been acceptable to some of the more conservative republicans and ofterea a means of reuniting the country. His death in prison in

June 1795 put an end to any such hopes. Within a month, an mi^^rc landing at Quiberon in the west of France had been routed and a proclamation by the Pretender, the former comte de Provence, showed that he had no intention of accepting any compromise along the lines of the constitution of I79i»

The

emigres were powerless to invade France; the country would not accept an unconditional restoration; the constitutional monarchists had no constitutional monarch to put forward. For the time being there was no alternative to the

Convention.

The

constitution of 1795 as the

answer

to

Jacobinism

The Assembly, however, was was

officially

was, in

preparing

its

own

demise.

What

presented as a ‘revision’ of the constitution of 1793

fact, a

new

constitution

— was voted

in

~

August. Intended

it

to

safeguard the country against both Jacobinism and royalism, the constitution of 1795 divided executive power between five Directors,

be chosen by the legislature. There were two Chambers, elected on the same basis and differing from each other only in the age of their members. One^third of the deputies and two of the Directors

who were to

were

to

be changed every year. Although

those

all

who

paid direct

taxation were entitled to vote in primary elections, they could only

choose

as electors

thousand

electors

of substantial means. There were about thirty

men and

it

was they who chose

This was

the deputies.

a

considerable retreat from the democratic principles of the constitu/

but

tion of 1793

standards.

To

still

revolutionary by contemporary

guard against a possible

which would have endangered deputies, the Convention voted the

first

legislature

royalist victory at the polls,

the lives of

hundreds of regicide

that two^thirds of the

should be taken from

European

its

own

members of

ranks.

A

referendum gave a substantial majority in favour of the new constitution, which all shades of opinion were hoping to exploit to their

own

thirds rule

tion in the

advantage; but

revealed

much

opposition to the two^

- which would prevent any of them from such immediate

control over

160

it

many

future. Royalists in Paris profited

Sections to launch an insurrectionary

exploita^

from

their

movement

whose Its

strength

failure

efficiency

showed

was due, not

that they to

had

a

good

deal of popular support.

any reaction by the

but to the

sans^culottes,

with which Barras and Bonaparte, with the help of

five

thousand regular troops, organized the defence of the Assembly.

The this it

hundred

insurgents lost about three

killed,

which made

one of the bloodiest of the revolutionary journks. In a way

symbolized the combination of

political

weakness and military

government from 1794 milder than it had been in the

strength that characterized the revolutionary to 1799*

Repression was significantly

case of the food riots of the previous spring.

did, however, lead to the release of those

The threat from

who had

the Right

then been arrested

for political offences.

The constitution of 1795 weak government. It tried where war,

inflation,

the Revolution

ensured that the Directory would be a to

apply

liberal policies in a situation

food shortages and the whole violent legacy of

made

liberal

government impossible.

few supporters, and historians have been reluctant either

the achievements of these able

problems

that defeated

men

It

to

has found

recognize

or the extraordinary

them. They achieved outstanding military

successes, but the country

was ungovernable by normal

constitutional

means.

The

Thermidorean Convention had overrun Holland and forced Prussia and Spain out of the war. The annexa-' armies

of the

The

defeat of the royalist in^

tion of Belgium, however, prevented any easy settlement with the

surrection

Habsburg Empire

1795

or Great Britain.

The campaigns of 1796 and

--

ir

of

Vendemiaire

f

m-m

i|^B|

‘Liberated’ Holland

1797 saw the French armies win century in

Germany and

their

With

Italy.

Habsburg Emperor, Francis ing Lombardy and agreeing

II,

most decisive his capital

was forced

to the

to

make

victories

in

of the

danger the

peace, surrender^

French occupation of the Rhine^

land in return for the annexation of Venetia. By 1798 a string of ‘sister^republics’

-

in other

entire eastern frontier

from Flolland

rather precarious extension

down

to the tip

of

words, puppet^states - covered France’s

Italy.

to the

through the Papal States and Naples

The

Directors themselves

preferred a less ambitious policy in Italy territory

162

to

buy a

lasting

Mediterranean, with a

and

would have

the surrender of Italian

peace with the Habsburgs, but since

Bonaparte had provided them with he was able to enforce his

own

their

most spectacular

terms. France

was

still at

victories

war with

Great Britain, but a Franco^Spanish alliance forced the British to evacuate Corsica and withdraw their fleet from the Mediterranean.

Although

the French attempt to invade

Ireland in

1797 was a

fiasco, the British

naval mutinies of 1797 and the Irish revolt of the following year considerably reduced the threat from across the

Channel. The Directory could reasonably hope

would

that the British

eventually have to accept the French annexation of Belgium

The Revolution on horseback: Bonaparte

163

and come to terms. While the war lasted it had supplied the French government with about a quarter of its revenue, in the form of spoils from the conquered provinces, and by 1797 there was at last a prospect of a return to a normal peacetime economy. Where the war was concerned the Directory had inherited a position of strength; economically

Another bad

Toward the end of 1795*

assignats were printed in a single

month.

whose accounts have been

roughly

took over a bankrupt business.

harvest followed by a second hard winter administered

the coup de^^race to the assignat.

wife,

it

month

a

at

the

her attempts

at

A wealthy Nantes houses

preserved,

end of i794i

expenditure on bread alone had risen

to

8,000 million

^

had been spending naonthly

over ;{^8oo and she gave

up

household budgeting. In February 1796 the assignat

r.l.hr.finp the armistice of

was abandoned and replaced by the mandat territorial, which in turn was demonetized a year later. In 1797 two^thirds of the national ^^bt was reimbursed in bonds for the purchase of what was left of the

Leoben

property of the

.a*.

Church and

.

‘A

,1

ni'oNArCkit ill Aj mi il l-

1

m\ L

9

i

1

li .ilii

the emigres. In the following year the

government refused

accept the bonds for this purpose. This was, a declaration of national bankruptcy. However catastrophic

in effect,

to

for individuals, this brutal liquidation

of the debt, together with the

ending of the war on land, brought a partial return to stability. The collection of taxes improved when responsibility was transferred from elected local officials to agents of the central government. By 1798 the fiscal system was no more inefficient than it had been before the Revolution.

impossible to generalize about the state of the economy since conditions varied from one extreme to another. Land It IS

communica^

tions suffered

from brigandage and the neglect of the roads since 1789; coastal shipping was exposed to British attacks. There was a

shortage of both labour and capital on account of the general reluctance to invest when conditions

war and

a

were so unstable.

Despite the unsettling consequences of inflation, there were signs of a return to the pre-revolutionary level of activity. The Anzin mines,

example, which had produced 300,000 tons of coal a year before the Revolution and had fallen to 65,000 in were back for

1794,

at

248,000 by 1799. By comparison with the rapid expansion taking place in Great Britain at the same time, the recovery of lost ground still meant a relative regression but it was better than nothing.

Some

industries could

hope

to find

new markets

in the

conquered

terri-

but the outlook for overseas trade was black indeed. The Atlantic ports, the most dynamic sector of the economy in 1789, were strangled by blockade and it was not until long after the Napoleonic tories,

wars that they recovered

their

pre-Revolutionary

activity.

The

Directory has often been described as a bourgeois regime and it did, on the whole, represent property rather than birth or numbers. But

although to

It

do enough

whom

the country

set

to

recovery

it

was never able

to satisfy either the

electoral

its

on the road

businessmen or the landowners on support depended.

The

Achilles heel of a regime that has been described as ‘a board of executors for the revolutionary settlement’ was the political legacy

of the Revolution

itself Its vital

problem was

to retain the political

support necessary for that settlement to survive. The Convention, even when the Thermidoreans had been proscribing many of its former leaders, had shown some residual solidarity. Despite its savage internal divisions, there were limits beyond which it would not go. The constitution of 1795, which involved annual elections

from 1797 onward, could only provide

would endorse principle

and

Convention.

the

conservative

self-preservation

republicanism

bound

the

which both former members of the

If the electorate opted for royalism, in

or the extreme republicanism of the fallen thirds rule

stability if the electorate

would only

to

any of its forms,

Montagnards, the two-

protect the cotwetttionnels for

a^

few

years.

165

another way, a constitution that reflected the opinions of the the country was bound to provide a legislature as divided as country itself. When this happened the men of Thermidor would

Putting

it

only be able to maintain order by violating the constitution.

The

checked the swing

unsuccessful insurrection of 1795

to

Right by reminding the new government of the strength of royalism in Paris. The Directory therefore purged its civil service and the

promoted

reliable republicans.

government was

lifted the

was

their headquarters

the

thousand members by the

pronounced

social

-

if

As

soon

as the repressive

hand of the

former Jacobins began to revive. In Paris

new Pantheon club, which enrolled two end of 1795- The new Jacobinism had a

not yet socialist

-

character that

arms of the

frighten conservative republicans into the

was

liable to

The

royalists.

Directors therefore sent Bonaparte to close the Pantheon club, together with one or two royalist clubs, in February 1796. After this

demonstration that neo^Jacobinism would not be allowed to pro^ gress far by constitutional means, Babeuf, its most active exponent,

went underground and began preparing for the forcible seizure of power. BabeuP s egalitarianism was of a more radical kind than any of the it

Babeuf

had been

policies that

aired in the year

in the sense that

II,

involved abolishing the private ownership of the means of

production. This did not

commend

it

either to the notables or to

many sans'culottes (who thought of themselves as men of property in a small way). Babeuf s conspiracy therefore involved the creation of an whose members would be unaware of leaders. The whole enterprise was a desperate

elaborate ‘front’ organization the ultimate aims of the

The

amounted

never

affair that

to

much

of a threat

to the

government.

what was going Their trial was a

Directors were reasonably well informed about

on and

May

in

1796 they had the leaders

arrested.

protracted business, with the government giving the conspiracy

more publicity than it merited in order to emphasize the threat of anarchy. In the end Babeuf and his associate, Darthe, were shot others deported.

and seven

The

first

major

test

of the

new regime came with

the elections in the

spring of 1797. Possibly helped by the government’s exploitation of the Babeuf plot, the royalists made a good deal of headway and

seemed

likely to

win an

overall majority at the next election.

Ah

though the republicans remained in control of the legislature, many local authorities were in royalist hands and the result was an influx of emigres to

and

which

refractory priests, in anticipation of the royalist restoration

they

hoped

prime importance unable

much

to

to arrive at

to contribute.

religious issue

was

still

were predominantly

of

of the population, and the Directory was

any tenable religious policy. The country

mained predominantly

166

The

Roman

royalist.

re^

Catholic and the Catholic clergy

The

policy

of religious neutrality

attempted

by the

Thermidoreans

therefore

broke

down. The

Directors had not the authority, and perhaps not the cynicism either, that later allowed

Bonaparte

to escape

The execution of

the

Babou^

^796

from the dilemma by striking a

bargain with the Pope. Their attempt to provide a substitute for Catholicism, in the form of the cult of theophilanthropy, made

few

converts, and they themselves were curiously indifferent toward their potential allies, the constitutional clergy who were trying to reconcile the claims of

God and

predicament contributed

to their political

down,

the country

Rather than Reubell,

On

3

was opting

wait

for

the

for a

next

the Republic.

new

dilemma; trial

far

from

settling

of strength.

elections,

La ReveillihexLepeaux and

Their religious

Barras

three

-

Directors

—

resorted to force.

September 1797, with the help of Augereau (who was 167

:

loaned

them by Bonaparte from

to

army of

the

two Directors and

bullied the legislature into deporting the other

The

of the deputies.

fifty^three

about half of the

in

elections

they

Italy)

Departments were annulled. This coup d etat of Fructidor was followed by a partial return to the methods of the Terror. Refractory were ordered out of the country again. Over a hundred mitres were shot and i,8oo priests deported. It looked as though the only way to deal with the royalists was by reactivating

and

priests

emigres

the Revolution.

The government’s

offensive against the royalists of every persuasion

produced another Jacobin

in Paris, the politically active

number of them,

- and

were

there

in spite of all the deceptions

divided into two camps.

even more than

revival. In the provinces,

still

a surprising

of the past years - were

Any upsurge of the various kinds of royalists

involved the persecution of the various kinds of Jacobins, and vice Fructidor brought the old hands of the year

versa.

office in

many

jumping out of the the previous year,

Directory,

which had no

royalist frying-pan into the

of 1798 would prove

fear that the elections

the

The

places.

though

government made

for the

II

as

Jacobin

back into

intention of

began

fire,

embarrassing

as those

opposite reason. For the

a serious attempt to

to

first

of

time

‘manage’ the elections, by

propaganda, the suppression of opposition newspapers and the use of its agents to press the claims of officially approved candidates. It however, and inexperienced in this kind of business, with the result that some of its less well-informed agents in the provinces were still trying to rally support against the royalists.

was

late in reacting,

The

elections of 1798

were

those of the previous year. relied

on

to

support

were a few

there

it;

less

threatening to the government than

About

half the

new

the remainder were mostly Jacobins,

royalists.

who might

managed

the

and

Directors

invalidated 106 of the elections. This time there force.

The means

strated

who had

being deported in 1795* R3.ther than face

opponents,

formidable

such

Safety in the year II

have been acceptable, and Barere,

to escape whilst

though

The newcomers, however, included two

men who had served on the Committee of Public Lindet,

deputies could be

used were technically

legal,

the

legislature

was no

resort to

but the result

demon-

once again that there was no majority in the country

for the

government’s interpretation of the revolutionary settlement. Directory was trying to do more than merely perpetuate stability

had become

chances of the Three

Opposite Barras,

La

Directors:

Revelliere-'Lepaux

and Reubell. ‘Property’ has replaced

‘Fraternity’

slogan of the Republic

168

in

the

The

new

identified

with

its

itself,

self-preservation,

constitution’s striking root

The but

and

all

had disappeared.

next year saw the return of the two scourges which had driven

the Revolution into violent courses so often before: food shortage

and

military defeat.

of 1799 but

for the

The regime might have

survived the poor harvest

resumption of the war, which meant a return

to

I !j

1 t

H

^

‘

I

W-

^

4»

'

£

ff

> j

169

Bonaparte’s ignominious de^ parture from Egypt

and

requisitioning of food, a shortage of credit prices.

The immediate

a sharp rise in

new outbreak of fighting was

occasion for the

Bonaparte’s irresponsible invasion of Egypt,

itself partly

due

to the

him out of the way. Bonaparte’s initiative brought Russia into the war when he captured Malta from the Knights of St John, whose Grand Master was the Czar, and encouraged Austria to join in the new alliance. The more exposed of the French^controlled republics in Italy fell weakness of a government that had been glad

to get

and

apart; Austro^Russian forces took the offensive in Switzerland;

an Anglo^Russian expedition landed

in

Holland.

from the French point of view, was a good deal

less

The

situation,

serious than

it

looked, largely because of the disunity of the Allies, and the French

armies had the situation in hand on

all fronts

turned to France from Egypt in October.

before Bonaparte re^

The

had

initial reverses

nevertheless helped to discredit the regime.

In the legislature the Jacobins were joined by former supporters

of the government, disconcerted by military defeat. term of office expired in

was known

to

May

1799 he was replaced by Sieyh,

and malcontents

of his colleagues. Merlin and

new wave of

La

to force the resignation

Reveilliae.

who

own

the danger of foreign invasion,

purposes.

The

of two

Conscription

dissent that the royalists tried,

success, to exploit for their

170

Reubell’s

favour a revision of the constitution. Siey^ used the

coalition of Jacobins

off a

When

without

set

much

royalist threat, like

had been mastered by the autumn, but

government was more

the

stability

and

isolated

the country farther from

than ever.

Sieyes thought that the revision of the constitution

way

was

the only

to give the

executive the power to govern. This would involve yet another coup d ctaty for which he needed the help ofa general. When Joubert, his first choice, was killed in action, the return of Bonaparte,

whose

prestige as the hero

of the

Italian

campaign was undimmed by

his recent failure in distant

Egypt, seemed providential. Bonaparte, however, while quite prepared to overthrow the Directory, had no intention of doing the 1

8

in anyone’s interest but his

it

outcome but had Brumaire.

On

to

The crisis broke on November 1799) the

accept Bonaparte’s terms.

the following day

lower Chamber, in a

own. Sieyh foresaw

(ii

spasm of republicanism, refused to vote for its own destruction and its deputies were dispersed by Bonaparte’s troops, who had been given to believe that their general’s life was in danger.

last

The upper Chamber and

a small minority of the lower

then agreed to transfer power to three consuls, one of Bonaparte.

Ten

years of revolution

whom

was

had exhausted the country, and most

people were disillusioned with politicians of every colour. What decided Bonaparte s victory was not so much the success of the coup d*Hat itself as its favourable reception by public opinion at large.

Siey« comes into

his

last

much left that seemed worth fighting for, and know that their acceptance of Bonaparte meant

There was not

people were not to that the fighting

would go on and

on.

Bonaparte’s coup d’kat

own

at

172

Conclusion

Tlic French Revolution has been a

of what

it

fertile

much

source of myth, and

symbolizes for the general public

is

as

untrue as the familiar

of Marie Antoinette saying, ‘If they have no bread, let them eat cake. It did not do away with the Bourbons: they were back in 1814 and, if they finally lost the throne sixteen years later, it was through the folly of Charles X, the former comte d’Artois. The Revolution did not drown France in blood: the total number executed in the whole country during the terrible year II was similar to the number

Opposite, above

The

society

the Terror

life after

revival of

story

that

at

Waterloo

be

known,

Although the actual more people were put

in a single day.

it

is

likely that

Opposite, rentier

and

below

The ruined

the nouveau riche

fell

figures will never

death

to

after the

liberation of France in 1944- Judicial

murder should not be quanti^ proportion. By twentieth^century

but things must be kept in standards the bloodshed was on a limited fied,

The Revolution expropriate them.

more

scale.

did not exterminate the nobility;

Noble

birth excited suspicion

likely to be arrested, but

it

it

did not even

and made

was never a crime

man Some

a

in itself

distinguished families suffered very heavy casualties but, of the i4>ooo victims of the Terror and civil war whose social origin is known, only 1,158 were nobles. About 16,000 more nobles fled the

country and found their property liable to confiscation, but their ingenuity was often able to circumvent the law. After the Restoration the wealthiest

men

noble landowners.

in

class exercise

a

life

arising

Bourbons did

the restored

any significant degree of

distortion of economic

war favoured

had always been,

bourgeois succeeded in making careers for not have been possible before the Revolution,

would under Napoleon nor

but neither

as they

Many

themselves that

middle

France remained,

political

power.

the

The

from inflation and twenty years of

few individuals but retarded industrial development

whole, besides ensuring that influence and prestige would be monopolized by the military whose values and way of life were

as a

essentially aristocratic.

To

suggest that the Revolution gave the land to the peasants is almost equally misleading. They already owned about a third of it in

1789 and, although no accurate calculations are possible, they do not seem to have gained very much of what the Church and the

had

lost.

Landowners,

abolition of the tithe,

and

rich

village

and poor,

benefited from the

communities

as a

whole were 173

and some oppressive manorial obligations. There was perhaps more land available to rent, but it was the land/owner who took the lion’s share of whatever profit was available.

relieved of many irksome

The

decline in rural violence after the Revolution suggests that con^

ditions

had become

easier,

but

this

easing of demographic pressure In terms of

who owned

personal triumphs and

may have been

largely

due

to the

on the land.

what, the Revolution produced

many

catastrophes, but nothing that could be

some

described as a transfer of the ownership of the means of production

which successful into landed society had been accele^ townsmen bought their rated and the more prosperous peasants had gained in wealth and

from one

At way

class to another.

most, the process by

selRrespect.

The importance of the Revolution the

to

life

precision.

lies

elsewhere.

of France were immense but

As

the

men of the

Its

difficult

time realized

when

consequences

to

define with

they invented the

way of life.

expression ancien regime, the Revolution put an end to a

The old order implied divine^right monarchy, an autonomous Church actively involved in the administration of the country and a which government was a matter of negotiation about precedents between royal Ministers and the various corporate bodies whose composition and claims were the living embodiment of hierarchical society in

tradition.

For a society of Orders and a kingdom of provinces the

Revolution substituted a unified

more than

birth or

state

where property counted

numbers, though birth

still

conferred respect

property in sufficient quantity always had done. forth

codified principle rather than local custom.

legacy of the Revolution

open

Law

society

where

was

constitutional

rules, at least in theory,

The

first

govern

time

were the same

it

at all

and only the Bonapartes were

and

hence/'

political

government and an

was possible to think of the country as a Henceforth the monarchy had to govern by consent

the

was

for

for all.

For

nation-state. if

autocrats.

it

was

to

Until the

Revolution, the government and society of France had shared some

of the characteristics of Great Britain and some of those of the despotic monarchs and stratified societies of central and eastern

Europe. Throughout the nineteenth century France and Great Britain were liberal states, radically different

and

from Austria, Prussia

the Russian Empire.

Unlike England, however, France was a country where tradition

had come

to a stop

and the appeal

rather than of harmony.

Many

to the past

was

a source of discord

old attitudes admittedly persisted and

spanned the revolutionary gap. The centralized pattern of Bourbon administration,

which

also

lasted to the present day,

became

and

part of the

Jacobin heritage, has

a pre-revolutionary tendency to cultural

chauvinism was reinforced by the conviction of the republicans that

France was once again showing the way all this,

everyone

to

else.

In spite of

much was

swept away and the new framework was more a repudiation of the past than an extension of it. One consequence has been the persistent strength of extremes in a country which has still not digested the Revolution.

The weakness of the divided centre that crippled the Directory has plagued much of subsequent French history. Another result has been to make France a country of paradox. Since the Revolution

it

has been both more and

less aristocratic

than

England. Tocqueville saw this when, commenting on the evolution of the word ‘gentleman’ in England and North America, from the description of a social category to a mere form of politeness, he noted that in Fva.ncc ^^entillwnwie dropped out ofgeneral use after the Revolu^ tion, since

implied a qualitative distinction between different kinds of people that continued to be felt even though it was no longer it

still

mentioned. The French middle it

was already frightened of what

considered to be socialism even before a belated industrial revolu^

tion II

class

had created

and

scores

of any importance. Memories of the year were etched deep and too many people had old

a proletariat

the year III to

and old wrongs

settle

to

avenge.

Nineteenth^century

France was both very Catholic and very anti^clerical and this was not simply another form of class antagonism. The man who read Voltaire while his wife and daughters went to church was peculiarly

Much

French.

in fact the

broken It

of what came

to be

regarded as typically French was

product of a Revolution that

the country with a

left

past.

was

the Revolution that reversed the stereotypes of England

and

France. Formerly England had been the land of social conservatism, bold speculation and ferocious political faction, while in France, as

Beaumarchais

said.

Tout Jimt par

and government was always a matter of compromise. Nineteenth^century France was both socially very conservative and almost impossible to govern. Perhaps this

is

simply

societies,

and

century or so

say that

to

des chansonSy

successful

revolutions

produce

stable

French were following the British pattern a But the French Revolution, unlike the British, has

that the

later.

survived in the historical consciousness of the people as a whole.

Where else could

a

newspaper ask

of the revolt of the Algerian

its

settlers)

readers if 1

May

1958 (the date was 18 Brumaire? This aware^ 3

ness of the Revolution as a kind of national

myth is part of the air that 1848 and again in 1871. The

Frenchmen breathe. It imposed itself in Vichy government of 1940 set out to exorcise

the

awkward

ghost by

the pathetic substitution of Travatly FamillCy Patrie for that rather

more inspiring

triad:

Liherte.

E^alite.

Fratemitc.

The

Free French

forces prided themselves

on having inherited

I’esprit

so sure about

/

One can translate

Rh/olution notre

English, but

it

esprit

g^.

does not

make

la

sense in English terms.

they were not

mhc

into

There

is

more

to

it

than

that.

The Revolution was

a

world event

and not merely an episode, however important, in the history of France. Before 1789 the statesmen of the great Powers had occasion^ ally

had

with peasant revolts or outbreaks of urban rioting

to deal

but not with revolutionary movements in the modern sense. Hence^

was always present to their imaginations and sometimes outside their windows. The French revolutionaries the

forth

threat

appealed, not to the rights of a particular past, but to universal

common

principles they believed

to all

men.

Edmund Burke - and excited his temporary, Kant. As legend, symbol and myth, shocked

tion

was

the affair of everyone. This

was

It

this that so

distinguished con^ the

was not because

French Revolu^ the French

had

abolished their internal customs barriers or the hunting rights of their seigneurs.

What

caught the imagination of Europe and the Atlantic

world, whether as an inspiration or a warning, was something simpler and more universal. Put in one sentence, people’s right

and

ability to liquidate

the constitution, laws to

its

past

institutions that

it

was

the claim of a

and provide

itself with

believed to correspond

needs.

Perhaps

this

is

no longer

displaced 1789, in in

and

its

it

much

France

itself the

which

true.

case

looked elsewhere

something will have been

old symbols

students in 1968, unlike the

Outside France, 1917 may have

may

settlers

for their inspiration.

be giving

way

to

lost.

Even

new. The

in Algeria ten years earlier,

Whatever

the future brings,

however, the Revolution will always remain one of the great milestones in the history not merely of France, but of the world.

Revolutionary religion makes

few

convens.

Rousseau

are

Voltaire its

and

patron saints

but the pulpit and crucifix have a

more enduring look

176

Chronology

Publications

Dc

1748

Montesquieu:

1749

First

1758

Voltaire: Candide

1760

Rousseau

1762

Rousseau: Contrat

1776

Adam

Fesprit des lois

volume of Encyclopedic

Notwelle HHoise

:

Social

Smith: The Wealth of Nations

Events Accession of Louis

1774 1774

-

1776

-

XVI

Turgot, Controller-'General

Necker

in charge

1778

France enters

1783

End

of finances

War

of American Independence

of War of American Independence

Calonne, Controller^General 1787

February: Meeting of the Assembly of Notables

April: Dismissal of Calonne

Appointment of Lomenie de Brienne

May: Dissolution of Assembly of Notables 1788

May:

Judicial reforms reducing

power of Parlements

by Lamoignon June: Revolt in Grenoble

August: Convocation of Estates General Recall of Necker

December Doubling of number of Third :

Estate dep^

uties

1789

April: Riots in Paris 5

May: Opening

17 June:

Session of Estates General

Third Estate assumes

title

of National

Assembly 20 June: Tennis court oath 23 June: Louis

XVI

II July: Dismissal

announces programme of reform

of Necker 177

12 July; Riots in Paris 13 July:

Formation of National Guard

14 July: Fall of Bastille 16 July: Recall of Necker July/ August: Grande Peur

4-1

1

August:

)

Abolition

of

feudal

rights

and

privileges

26 August: Declaration of the Rights of Man

October: March of women of Paris

5

to Versailles

6 October: Return of king to Paris

November:

2

Secularization of Church lands

December: Introduction of Assignats

1790

20

Civil Constitution of the Clergy

Division of Paris into 48 sections 14 July: Fete de

la

Federation

August: Crushing of Nancy mutiny September: Resignation of Necker

1791

April: Death ofMirabeau

June: The king’s July:

17

during

Varennes

flight to

Shooting by National

Champ

Guard

at

crowd

de Mars meeting

27 August: Declaration of Pilnitz

September: The king’s approval of Constitution

1 3

30 September: Dissolution of Constituent Assembly

October:

I

1792

First session

of Legislative Assembly

20 April: France declares war on Austria 13

June: The king’s dismissal of Girondin ministers

20 June: I

I

Armed

demonstration invades Tuileries

July: ‘La Patrie en danger’

Duke 10 August:

Commune

of Brunswick’s manifesto

Constitution

of

the

Insurrectionary

of Paris

Attack on Tuileries

August: Prussian capture of Longwy 2-6 September: Prison massacres 23

20 September: French victory

at

Valmy

Dissolution of Legislative 21

September:

First session

of Convention

22 September: Abolition of monarchy 178

Assembly

Year

I

of the Republic

November: Annexation of Savoy and Nice 19 November: Decree offering assistance to tionary

movements

in

Europe

10 December: Beginning of king’s

1793

21 January: Execution of Louis

February: Declaration

1

revolu^

trial

XVI

of war on

England and

Holland 25 February: Food

riots in Paris

March: Declaration of war on Spain March: Revolt in Vendee 7

9 March: Creation of Revolutionary Tribunal 6 April: Creation of

Committee of Public

May: Revolt of Lyons 4 May: Fixing of maximum 31

May: Rising

Safety

prices for flour

and grain

against the Girondins

2 June: Arrest of Girondin deputies

24 June: Constitution of 1793 voted by Convention 13 July: Assassination

of Marat

17 July: Abolition of remaining seigneurial rights

27 July:

Robespierre’s

election

to

Committee of

Public Safety 23

August: Leuk

en masse

27 August: Surrender of Toulon

to British

4-5 September: Demonstration of sans'culottes 17 September:

Law

of suspects

29 September: Price and wage controls 5

October: Adoption of Republican calendar

9 October: Recapture of Lyons by Republicans

Year

II

16 October: Execution of Maries Antoinette

17 October: 4

Ceremony ofReason

December:

Law

of

14

in

Notre^Dame

Frimaire

centralizing

work of Revolutionary Government Defeat of main Vendean army 1794

March - Germinal: Executions of ‘Hebertists’ April - Germinal: Executions of ‘Dantonists’ 8

June - 20

Prairial

-

Festival

of Supreme Being 179

10 June

- 22Prairial - reorganization of revolutionary

justice

26 June: Victory 27

at

of

Arrest

July:

Fleurus Robespierre,

and

Saint^Just

Couthon I

August: Revocation of law of Prairial

Year 1794

November: Closing of Jacobin Club

12 8

III

December: Release of Girondin deputies

24 December Abolition of wage and price controls :

1795

and May -Germinal and

April

discontent 5

and food

Prairial

- Popular

riots

April: Peace with Prussia

May- 1 2

31

of Revolutionary

Prairial- Suppression

Tribunal 22 August -

Fructidor

5

-

New

constitution

Year IV 1795

I

October: Annexation of Belgium

5

October -

Vendemiaire - Suppression of Royalist

13

insurrection 3 1

1796

October - 9 Brumaire - Election of Directory

March Bonaparte GeneraPin^chief of the Army of Italy :

May: Babeuf conspiracy 10 May: Bonaparte’s victory at Lodi over Austrians 1797

Foundation of Theophilanthropy 18 April: Peace treaty of

cult

Leoben

9 July: Proclamation of Cisalpine Republic

4 September - 18 Fructidor - anti^royalist coup

d’etat

Year VI 1798

May: Bonaparte’s

departure for Egypt

Year VII 1799

May: Sieyh 9

a Director

November -

18

Brumaire - coup

commander of army 19

Bonapane

in Paris

Brumaire - election of Bonaparte,

Sieyes

180

d’etat.

and Ducos

as consuls

Bibliography

The

list

wish

of books that follows has been prepared chiefly

to explore particular aspects

The

sheer

volume of material

tion are published each year)

of the Revolution

(several

for those

in greater depth.

hundred items on

must mean

that

who

the Revolu^

any short selection

is

based on principles rigorous enough to exclude 99 per cent of what has been published. It has therefore seemed most useful to concentrate here

on more recent books and

have been cited

1963;

frati(aise,

some of which

in other bibliographies.

selection the reader

Paris

articles,

is

referred to J.

G. Walter,

1 vols. Paris 1941-45;

Catalogue de I’Histoire de

la

For a more substantial

Godechot, Les

Repertoire

de

will not yet

RaHjlutions,

rHistoire

de

la

1

Jjo-gS

Rhfolution

and A. Martin and G. Walter,

Re'volution Jrattfaise,^ vols. Paris

1936-55.

Abbreviations of titles of periodicals

AHR

American Historical Review

AhRf

Annales

Bull.

Bulletin of the John

EHR

English Historical

FHS

French Historical Studies

JMH

Journal of

P&P

Past and Present

RHes

Revue

d'Histoire

RHmc

Revue

d'Histoire moderne et contemporaine

historiques de la Rhjolution franfaise

Rylands Library

Review

Modern History

honomique

et sociale

181

after

Revolution

chusetts 1953

R.C. Cobb The Police and the People London 1970 A.B. Cobban The Social Interpreta' tion of the French Revolution London and D. Richet La Revolution Paris

vols.

i960

The House of Saulx'Tavannes

A

Social History of the

French Revolution

London

1963

G. Lefebvre La Rholution Paris

English

London

Century Oxford 1967

G. Lefebvre

Paris 1939; English

1

The Coming of the French

translation

1962,

Revolution Princeton 1947

Les Thermidoreans Paris 1937; Eng^ lish translation

Directoire

G. Lewis

London

1965

1922; English trans^

London 1922

Mackrell The Attack on Feudalism Eighteenth'Century France

Demo'

Revolution 2 vols. Princeton

Farms

New York

Origines intellectuelles de

Rholution franyaise Paris 1933

R.R. Palmer

Catholics and Unbelievers

Eighteenth'Century France Prince^

Oxford 1966 G. Rude The Crowd in the French Revolution Oxford 1959

ijSj-g2 Paris 1972

i

C.B. A.

M.J. Sydenham The French Revolu'

Taxes

London 1965

A. Behrens The London 1967 B.

Ancien Regime

ijyo-

at the

and

end of the History

R.C, Darnton Mesmerism in

and

France

the

end

Cam^

bridge, Massachusetts 1968

Egret La

PrTRholution

franyaise

Paris 1962

grouping

of the

RHes 1961 R.C. Darnton ‘The Grub Street del’ancien regime’

style

of Revolution: J.P, Brissot’ 1968

‘The High Enlightenment and the

French

the

re'

Aristocracy

Life

of Literature

revolutionary France’

in

pre^

P^P 1971

W.

Doyle ‘The Parlements of France and the Breakdown of the Ancien Regime’

‘

F.L. Ford Robe and Sword:

‘Les Intendants eclaira a

la fin

Low

London 1967

of the Enlightenment

M. Bordes

fMH

Bosher French Finances,

1795

J.

France

in

‘Privileges

Review 1963 ancien regime

Books

J.F.

Behrens

Ancien Regime’ Economic

and the origins OF THE Revolution C.

de la Monarchie,

Articles

London 1964

Revolutionary Europe

The

France

1958

D. Mornet Les

in

General

Eighteenth'Century

in

M. Vovelle La Chute

tion

London

G.T. Mathews The Royal

Roberts French Revolution Docu' ments vo\.

in

ton 1939

1959, 1964 J.

A

1973

la

of the

Ecclesiastical

Study of Angers Manchester 1961 J,

London 1972 J, McManners The French Revolution and the Church London 1969 A. Mathiez La Revolution franyaise

R.R. Palmer The Age

French

Society under the Ancien Regime.

1965

Life in Revolutionary France

vols. Paris

McManners

J.

1937; English

Paris

London

translation

cratic

York 1966,

N. Fiampson The Enlightenment Lon^ don 1968 O. Hufton Bayeux in the late Eighteenth

1969

lation

New

1969

franyaise

ed.);

(rev,

1951

translation 2 vols.

3

Baltic

Enlightenment: an Inter'

pretation 2 vols.

London

1970

N. Hampson

Gay The

P.

English

1955-56;

(abridged)

translation

Le

Baltimore

Century

Eighteenth

the

in

more 1971

F. Furet

2

Louis

R. Forster The Nobility of Toulouse

1964

182

XIV Cambridge, Massa.'

General histories of the

W

FHS

as there

1970

an Aristocratic Reaction

in pre-revolutionary France?’

1972

PO“P

1

R.

‘The

Forster

Producers

Noble

Wine^

in the Bordelais in the

Eighteenth Century’ Economic His' tory

1924

Egra La

J.

Review 1961

‘Obstacles to

Mounier

Economic Growth

in

AHR

Eighteenth^'Century France’

Duport Paris

Parti Feuillant: Adrien

Revolution des Notables:

et

Monarchiens

les

Paris

1950

M. Reinhard La Chute

1970

de la

Royaute

Paris 1969

A. Goodwin ‘Calonne, the Assembly of the French Notables of 1787 and the Origins of the “RcVolte

EHR

Nobiliaire”’

The

1946

Social Origins

Articles

R.C. Cobb ‘The

Police, the Repress

sive Authorities

and the Beginning

and Privileged

Status of the French

of the

Eighteenth^

Paris’

century Nobility’ Bull. 1965

Hampson ‘The

N.

Pieces

pour

interessantes

de

I’Histoire

“Recueil servir

Revolution

la

de

in

‘Who

AHR

1788?’

intervened in

1965; see also the

discussion provoked by this article

en

in

AHR

1965, 1967

M. Hutt ‘The Role of the Cures

in

the

Third

the Estates General of lySg Journal

Reform

in the

of Ecclesiastical History 1955

M. Hutt ‘The Cures and Estate; the Ideas of

Crisis

Welsh History Review 1967

E. L. Eisenstein

a

France” and the Origins of the French Revolution’ Bull. 1964

Revolutionary

Pamphlets of the French Lower Clergy in the Period 1787-89’

D. Ligou ‘A propos de la Resolution

Lon^

B. Rose ‘Jacquerie at Davenscourt in

don 1957 C. Lucas ‘Nobles, Bourgeois and

1791’ Tasmanian Historical Research

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

the Origins of the French Revolu^

PO“P

tion’

G.V, in

Association 1973

G.V.

Taylor

and

‘Revolutionary

non^Revolutionary Content

1973

Cahiers of 1789’

Taylor ‘Types of Capitalism Eighteenth^century

EHR

RHes i960

municipale’

FHS

in the

1972

France’

1964

The Terror Wealth

‘Non^capitalist

and

the

Books

Origins of the French Revolution’

AHR

R.T. Bienvenu

1967

thermidor:

(ed.)

Fall

the

The

ninth

of

of Robespierre

London 1968

The TRANSFORMATION OF FrANCE UNDER THE CONSTITUTIONAL monarchy: 1782-92

ijSg-iygf^

Politics

in

France,

Cambridge,

Massa^

Godechot la

1

959

la

Rhfolution

et

I’Empire

Prise de

P.

Paris 1965

G. Lefebvre La Grande Peur

de

mime

Van

Essai

sur

BHistoire

du

Deville La

II Paris

Coni'

1946 a reluctant

Princeton 1962

Godechot La

Contre'rcvolution Paris

1961

D. Gueran La

Paris 1932

G. Michon

de

1961, 1963

L. Gershoy Bertrand Barere,

J.

ijSg

10 aout

Les Armees revolution'

Sainte-'Claire

Terrorist la Bastille

du

Massacres de septembre

naires 2 vols. Paris

Paris 1951

La

Commune

Paris 1935

Histoire des Institutions de

France sous

jacobine

1

Caron Les

P.

Histoire j^hhale du Droit

privefranyais 2 vols. Paris 1953, J.

Paris 19

R.C. Cobb

chusetts 1972

M. Garaud

Braesch La

Provincial Magistrates and

Revolutionary

Bouloiseau La Republiijue

Paris 1972 F.

Dawson

Le Mans

1960

M.

Books P.

P. Bois Paysans de I’Ouest

la

Lutte des Classes sous

Premiere Rqmblique Paris 1946

Qmhine Billaud'VarenneP MIS 1969 N, Hampson The Life and Opinions of

Period of the Convention’

J.

Maximilien

1946

London

Robespierre

‘The Fundamental Ideas ofRobes^

Club of

Jacobin

iygo-g4 Cornell 1973 A. de Lestapis La 'Conspiration de Marsailles,

Batz’ Paris 1969

C. Lucas The

Structure of the Terror:

Example ofJauo^ues and

the

la

Terreur:

1’

La Vie Chere sous

la

R.R.

et le

la

Pr esters

Corruption

A.

de Lestapis le

1961

‘Un Grand Corrupt

Due du

Chatelet’

AhRf

Patrick ‘Political Divisions in the

French

JMH

1920

Mouvement

Convention’

National

1969

social

July 1794-NovEMBER 1799

Who

Twehe

RHes

Revolution Francaise’

teur,

Com'

la

Terreur Paris 1927

Palmer

N. Flampson ‘Les Ouvriers des Arsenaux de la Marine au cours de

1953, 1955

Affaire de

pagnie des hides Paris

Revolution’ Bull, i960

the Loire

des

1948

A. Goodwin ‘The Federalist Move^ ment in Caen during the French

A.

London 1973 W. Markov Die Freiheiten Roux Berlin 1967 A. Mathiez Un Proces de sous

EHR

pierre’

1974

M. L. Kennedy The

EHR

Ruled Books

Princeton 1941

A.

Patrick The

Republic,

Men

of the First French alignments

political

M. Dunan toire

the

in

National Convention of ijgj Baltic

2 vols.

B. Rose The Enra^h: Socialists of the

French Revolution? Scott

Terror

Revolutionary

Melbourne 1965

and

Repression

Marseilles

in

London

en

vols.

C. Mazuric Babeuf

et

Conspiration

la

pour I’Egalite Paris 1962

A. Ollivier Le 18 Brurnaire Paris 1959 M. Reinhard La France du Directoire 2 vols. Paris 1956

1973

A. Soboul

J.

Lyon Lyons 1957 Godechot La Grande Nation 2

a

Paris 1956

Paris 1950

W,

1950

Paris

R. Fuoc La Rhetion thermidorienne

more 1972

M. Reinhard Le Crand Carnot

Histoire Interieure du Direc'

Les Sans'culottes Parisiens

A. Soboul

(ed.) Babeuf et

les

Problemes

du Babouvisme Paris 1963

Fan 11 Paris 1958

M.J. Sydenham The Cirondins Lon^ don 1961

E. Tarle Germinal

J.M. Thompson

K. Tonnesson La

Robespierre 2 vols.

C. Tilly The Vendk London 1964 G. Walter Robespierre 2 vols. Paris

Moscow

1959 culottes Paris

London 1935

et Prairial

Defaite des SanS'

1959

D. Woronoff La Republique

Bourgeoise

Paris 1972

1936, 1939 Articles

Articles

R.

C.H. Church ‘The

Andrews ‘Le Neo^stoicisme

et le

Legislateur Montagnard’ in Gilbert

Romme et son Temps (eds J. Ehrard, A. Soboul) Paris 1966 R.C. Cobb ‘The Revolutionary Mentality

in

France,

1793-94’

History 1957

RHmc

A. B. Cobban ‘The

la

Mentalite

1959

Political Ideas of

Maximilien Robespierre during the

Bureaucracy

Directory’

PCTP

under

the

1967

Search of the Directory’ in J.F. Bosher (ed.), French Government

‘In

and Society

London

R.C. Cobb ‘Note contre

‘Quelques Aspects de revolutionnaire’

French

Social Basis of

le

1973

sur la Repression

Personnel Sans^culotte de

1795 a 1801’ A/1R/1954

‘Quelques Aspects de

Fan

III

la

Crise de

en France’ Bulletin

Societe d'Histoire

Moderne 1966

de

la

;

List of illustrations

2 Frontispiece;

'a^e

Lc

Triomphe

de

16 Colonel of the

des

Marat; painting by L'L. Boilly.

Gardes de la Porte de Sa Majeste;

Musee

print by

des

Beaux-'Arts,

Lille.

Photo Giraudon

8

Compagnie

The

manor visiting after Moreau le

his tenants; print

1

7

Hoffmann, 1786. Musee

The marquis de Sourche and family;

painting

by

F/>H.

country road; painting by

Demarne

Jz-L.

nette

1

8

Demar^'

called

3 1

Michel Gerard and

Halle,

N.B.

1779;

painting

Lepicie' (1735-84).

lection

by

Cob

Marquis de Ganay

View of

by

Le

Camus

Mezieres; print by Roger

3

The

21

de after

Testard. Bibliotheque Nationale 2-1

la

by N^B.

Elisabeth Vigee^ Lebrun, 1784.

M.

By gracious permission of Her

Bordeaux

de Lavoisier and his wife;

15

porary

canoon,

Private collection. Photo Bulloz

th^ue Nationale

XVI

receiving

mem^

34 Estates

drawing

Louis

XVI

robes,

1774; painting by A^F.

25

Vegetable print.

in

his

sellers;

print.

1805).

J/'B.

Musee de

(1725-

Musee de Macon

recall

roses;

contemporary

Musee Carnavalet

1775;

27 Necker

acclaimed,

Map

of the

salt

tax (gabelles).

The Comte de Mirabeau (174991) welcomed in Elysium; detail of

contemporary

Moreau

le

print

after

Jeune (1741-1814).

Bibliotheque Nationale

August

37 Charles^ Louis

liothcque Nationale at

Photo

Bibliotheque Nationale

of Necker,

BiL

Nationale.

Giraudon

Bibliotheque Nationale

28 Marie Antoinette Village priest crowning

Burgundy,

of

thcque

contemporary

1788; contemporary print.

Greuze

Biblio^

Dauphine, 28 October 1788; contemporary print. Biblio^

coronation

August 1788; contemporary

Bibliotheque Nationale

by

1787.

Bibliotheque Nationale

Bibliotheque Nationale

26 Allegory of the 25

trait

contem/-

drawing by Francois Devosge.

35

by J^J. de Boissieu (1736-1810).

Monseigneur de Valras; por^

Calonne;

de

36 14 Peasants by their fireside; print

Queen

C^A.

33

mentation photographujue

his son; paints

Photo courtesy Gailleux, Paris

Majesty the

painting by J^L. David, 1788.

Versailles. Photo Service de docu'

Lepicie (1780).

The depanure of the Dragoon for the American War of Inde^

32 Cz-A. de Calonne; painting by

Callet (1741-1823).

Leipzig 1784

ing

above

Allegory of the Estates of the

Contemporaines,

The poacher and

Petit

Louvre 23

Foreign wares; from Restif de

1 3

the

pendence; painting by Michel

by P. Prud’hon (1758-1823).

Vernet (1714-89).

Les

as

at

Bordeaux; painting by Pierre Lacour, 1786. Musee des Arts

Tesse,

bers of the Parlement;

Musee de la Marine. Photo Bulloz

Bretonne

Belvedere

Biblioteca

and consuls of the Bourse,

22 Louis

port of Bordeaux; painting

by Joseph

Modena

Petit

Le Mans

Musee de

Decoratifs,

the corn stores, Paris,

designed

Estense,

du

Gamier (exhibited 1793-1814). Musee Carnavalet. Photo Bulloz

1786.

19 Judges

La

his children

painting ascribed to J/-L. David,

(1744-1829). Photo Girau'

don

11

by Mique.

Trianon,

Trianon

des plans

Trianon

The

his

Bulloz

A

at the Petit

Drouais, 1758. Versailles. Photo

Jeune (1741-1814) 10

The Hamlet

from Recueil

L’Armce

de

lord of the

30

Secondat

de

Montesquieu; caricature drawn by Pier Luigi Ghezzi, 1729

Versailles,

with

1775; gouache by T. Gautier^

drawing.

Dagoty. Versailles. Photo Girau'

by C-L. Secondat de Montes-

don

quieu. British

girl

3

8

Title-page of De PEsprit des Loix

Museum

Title-page of Contrat Social by

Rousseau,

Jean-Jacques

54

The Assembly of February

British Library

XVI,

Louis

addressed by

1762.

Guard of

the Notables

22

69 coloured

contemporary

1787;

contemporary

Paris;

Museum

print. British

taken by the people from

Guns

print

Temple

of Le

39 Frontispiece

Gnide by Charles-Louis Secondat

Montesquieu,

de

engraving by N. of

40 Title-page

41

le

55

and

privileges

L'Encyclopedie,

abolition

the

feudal

August

Library

coloured print. British

Order of

the

the

58

1743). Louvre. Photo

service de

59

documentation photographique Sellers print,

Vues

habitations de J'J.

des

litho-

61

dijjhentes

cartoon.

contem-

Bibliotheque

72 The demolition of the

British

cartoon by

Cruik-

I.

Museum

73

showing double

table

of

Third

the

Bastille,

Museum

Dancing

among

ruins,

1789;

fabric.

Mus^

the

Bastille

de

Toile

Jouy

Carnavalet. Photo

Bibliotheque Nationale

The departure of the three Estates

Philippe

May

Versailles,

contemporary

1789;

John

1845).

Rylands Library, Manchester

by

the

Estates

1789;

A

print

(1747-93); Boilly (1761-

des Beaux-Arts,

woman

being

of quality

for

having

spat

Necker’s portrait, 1789; popular

Museum the

Bailly,

64 J-S.

contemporary

Paris;

mayor of

first

print.

John

75

The comte by

65

Oath

in the

Versailles, 19

49 View of the royal glass factory at Creusot; contemporary print

by

Paume

Jeu de

June 1789;

at

gouache

Alexandre Moitte

(1750-

Mus^

de

Picardie,

Amiens

print

76

Museum

youngest

XVI;

1828).

C. Monet (1732-^.1808).

British

d’ Artois,

brother of Louis

Rylands Library, Manchester

A

landowner trying

to

appease

an angry crowd by the

J-A. Houdon, th^ue Nationale 51

1781.

print.

after

con-

a

drawing by J-L. Prieur

(1759-95)

Biblioth^ue

magnetism;

animal

th^ue Nationale

Moreau

the

in the

Prince

Temple;

painting

by

detail

de

of

Michel-

le

print.

The

sacking of the convent of

print by

13

Benhault

July

after a

A

poacher apprehended by a

of

La

Louvre. Photo Bulloz

commandant of

drawing

Fayette the

print. British

contemporary

Museum

1789; Bribing a judge; contemporary print. British

by J-L. Prieur (1759-95) Allegory

Musee

Carnavalet 78

Jeune (1741-1814)

Bartelemy Ollivier (1712-84).

186

Tuileries

the

gamekeeper; 68

of the

77 Burning of chateaux during La Grande Peur, July 1789;

67 Incident Gardens, 12 July 1789; print by

Saint- Lazare,

Conti

temporary print

contemporary in

Salon

of a meal, August 1789; con-

the people in the Palais Royal,

contemporary cartoon. Biblio-

52-53 The

offer

12 July 1789; print by Berthault

Nationale 52 Mesmer’s

66 Camille Desmoulins addressing

Biblio-

Apotheosis of Voltaire; temporary

by

of statue

detail

on

print

1793. British Library

47 The abbe Sieyh; anonymous canoon. Bibliotheque Nationale

Musee

whipped

C. Monet (1732-^.1808).

British

45 Frontispiece of Le Devin du Village by J-J. Rousseau, Paris,

May

5

L-L.

as

Lyons

The Opening of General,

Egalite

painting by

coloured print by Vion. Biblio-

63

known

74 The due d’Orleans,

th^ue Nationale

print after a portrait bust.

50 Voltaire;

July

Bastille, 14

July 1789; contemporary print.

The deficit;

for

Rousseau 1819-

Rousseau;

of the

Bulloz

British Library

J-J.

porary

Estate.

Rousseau; coloured

graph from

siege

1789; coloured print by P-F. Germain. Bibliotheque Nation-

Museum

Taxes";

representation

Biblioth^ue Nationale J-J.

with

60 Voting

century.

eighteenth

late

70-71 The

ale

'Down

shank, 1788. British

of pamphlets; popular

rights,

contemporary

1789;

Photo Bulloz

of

Nationale

N. Lancret (1690-

painting by

44

on

56 Allegory

fils

Carna-

Musee

(1710-1803). valet.

Mire

1789;

July

14

painting by J-B. Lallemand

Estate.

Archives Nationales

1772;

Saint-Esprit, 1724; detail from

43

Third

of the

Cahier

1751, edited by Diderot. British

Ceremony of

Invalides,

the

de

as

National

Museum

79 The abolition of

August

1789;

privileges,

4

contemporary

93

medal by N^G. Gatteaux (175 1-

Massacre of the National Guard

1832). Bibliothcque Nationalc

at

contemporary

80 Allegory on the exploitation of the Third Estate by clergy and

contemporary

nobility;

print.

new balance of

a

96-97 The

Bibliothcque Nationalc

France; canoon,

Museum

destroy

to

the

Honore Gabriel

1

of Paris

time of the

at the

Marseilles

XVI

12 Louis

taking

refuge

in

Assembly, 10 August 1792; drawing by F^P^S. Gerard the

too Barnave facing both ways, counier of 1791 and

Musk

(1744-1826).

Map

print

as

;

Boze

Musee

cartoon.

Biblio^

Riqueti, comte

de Mirabeau painting by Joseph

act;

National Guard; contemporary

theque Nationalc 83

balancing

Marching song of the

constitution;

contemporary canoon.

theque Nationalc

political

Revolution

99 Louis XVI facing two ways, promising both to suppon and

The Indulgent Father Confessor; contemporary print. Biblio/-

doing

Carnavalet

against 1 1 1

1791. British

Orders; contemporary canoon.

81

marching

revolutionary

three

Paris,

Mayor of

contemporary

headed by Prince

emigres,

Musee

British

Petion,

Gondc,

the

print.

print.

Carnavalet

1790;

Museum

Bibliothcque Nationalc

A

May

Montauban,

temporary English

G ranet, Aix. Photo Bulloz

man

of the

(1770-1837). Louvre. Archives

people of 1789; contemporary

Photographiques

cartoon. Bibliothcque Nationalc

84 Royalist demonstration palace of Versailles,

3

contemporary

1789;

of

October

1 1 3 1

01

contemporary

royal

family,

brought

from

British

102 Massacre

the

drawing by L.

democrat; English canoon,

14 July

woman

and

sans'culottes,

contemporary

prints.

15

Call to arms, June 1792; water/colour

de Mars, July

by

1791;

Carnavalet

Musee

Lafitte.

1

16 Massacre

Feuillant

the

at

September 1792;

3

on the prijit

women

of

Salpetriere,

103 Jacobin and

Musa

Lefebvre.

from Revolutions

de Paris

print.

Musee Carnavalet. Photo Bulloz

104 Attack

88 Seller of pamphlets; design for the Almanack National by

Ph^L.

1 1

on

the

Debucoun, 1791 Rights

of

106

Tuileries,

August 1792;

detail

by

Benaux

Jacques

The

Abbaye

of painting

Girondiste

Man, 20-26 August 1789; com temporary

ing by

Bibliothcque

Nationalc

Carmes,

des

the

5-6

com

temporary cartoon. Staatsbiblio^ thek, Berlin

Pierre^

and

18 Prussians

Vergniaud; drawl-

Austrians

September

retreat,

Durameau (1733Musee Lambinet,

L/'J-'J.

1796).

at

September 1792; coloured

(active

1

Victurnien

7 Interrogation of suspects

10

Mus^de Versailles

1792-1802).

print.

Man

gallows; contemporary cartoon

contemporary

of the

petitioners.

Carnavalet. Photo Bulloz

1791. Bibliothcque Nationalc

89 Declaration

14

1792;

1

of

A

1790;

1

1789;

print.

Federation,

from

Bibliothcque Nationalc

Champ

la

back

Poster advenising sale of emigre

goods. Biblioth^ue Nationalc

Nationalc

Museum

86 F«e de

depicted as

Varennes, 20 June 1791; com temporary canoon. Bibliothcque

October

6

The pigs,

coloured

people

the

Versailles,

the

Museum

print. British

85 Return

at

in

1792;

coloured contemporary cartoon. Staatsbibliothek, Berlin

Versailles

90 Guillotine; contemporary

print.

Bibliothcque Nationalc 91

'Sir,

your

officer’s

contemporary

1

107 The

canoon.

British

British

Procession

anonymous

of

the

priest

print.

swearing

civil

Villeneuve

XVI donning a Phrygian

cap, 20 J une 1 792 ; contemporary

print, 1791.

oath, 1790; contemporary print, after

109 Louis

Museum

Patriotic

Photo

print.

of

com

Musee

Carnavalet

120

Funeral

Clergy;

temporary

detail

17

Bulloz

Museum 92 The

Musee Carnavalet.

1826).

Jemappes,

November 1792;

by Le Barbier I’Ainc (1738-

uniform fts me’;

of

19 Battle

citizen soldier’s farewell; print

no

Musee Carnavalet

The crowd crossing the Pont^ Neuf on their way to the Tuileries, 10 August 1792; com

View

of

the

anonymous

painting,

eighteenth

century.

Carnavalet.

Archives

Temple; end

of

Musa PhotO'

graphiques

Louis

XVI

his family,

saying goodbye to

January 1793; print

187

by T. Ryder after Dupuis. British

759~94)5 drawing by J^L. David (1748"

Museum XVI,

I2I Execution of Louis

de

Place

the

now

Place de

January

Mus^

122-3

Grandmaison made during session of 9 Thermidor Persevel

of

Bombardment Republican

forces,

theque Nationale

by

P'ere

popular

member

Convention;

of

page of the newspaper

painting

137

making

The

of

;

1

collection Bidault de Lisle. Photo

Toulon, 138

A

Convention,

of the

A

appeasing the National Guard, 2

June 1793;

after F-'J.

132

print

revolutionary committee,

Harrien (active 1798-

of the 30

May

1793

contemporary

print.

tribunal, print.

Anglo-French naval

way

October 1793;

committee;

revolutionary

contemporary drawing by L^R. Boquet. Biblioth^ue Nationale

40-41 Personifications

of

Germinal.

Thermidor,

French school. Musee Carna^

Carnavalet. Photo Bulloz

Musee

of Reason’ in Notre

Left: Fabre d’Eglantine; detail

Dame,

17

of

contemporary

eighteenth/'century

Musee

Versailles.

Photo

Service

portrait

Saint/Just;

de

Photo Bulloz

M.

of

Chevrier.

German

A couple reunited by the

by J^B. Greuze (1725-

1805). Collection

188

detail

October

contemporary

toon. British

Museum

155 Execution

.

794)

;

year

en^

Photo Bulloz

July print.

com

158 Requisitioning of

government,

by the

1794; contem-

c.

porary watercolour. efforts

Carnavalet,

de

(29

10

Biblioth^ue Nationale

revolutionary

Bidault

2

contemporary

by P^E. Lesueur (aaive 1791-

colleaion

car-

of Robespierre,

159 Gompanion of

Musee

two

guillotines;

of the divorce judge; gouache

1810).

with

154 Allegory of the Terror, between Robespierre

1793;

graving. Biblioth^ue Nationale

de

documentation photographique

Right:

Photo

Giraudon

Thermidor,

‘Festival

school.

1

June 1794)-

Biblioth^ue Nationale.

1

Photo Bulloz

French

with

Brumaire,

94) ; portrait, eighteenth-'Century

portrait,

battle

battleship Ven^eur in centre, Prairial, year 2 (i

A

th^ue Nationale

valet.

Biblio^

print.

drawing by J/L. David

Biblio/-

130 Maximilien Robespierre (1758-

print.

theque Nationale

revolutionary

to execution, 16

27 July 1794;

to

contemporary

trade;

contemporary

Museum

142

Guard from

National

luxury

the

in

c.

Musee Carnavalet

129 Francois Hanriot, commander

Unemployment

print.

139 Marie Antoinette on her

1805). Biblioth^ue Nationale

51

152 Battle of Fleurus, 26 June 1794;

contemporary

Lyons, 1793-94; popular

by Tassaert

1792;

Musee Carnavalet

British

headed by Herault de Sechelles,

massacres

Biblioth^ue Nationale

1791-1810). Musee Carnavalet,

1794; 128 Deputies

Musee

English contemporary cartoon.

(active

Bulloz

1793

Bertaux.

1778-1804).

150 September

saltpetre;

gouache by P^E. Lesueur

of the

contemporary print

after

147 Camille Desmoulins; detail of bust by Martin de Grenoble (active

Giraudon at

Collot

Museum

British

Duchesne

from the above newspaper

school of David. Louvre. Photo

126 Revolutionary club

by

J/R. Hebert as Pere Duchesne;

em

the

d’Herbois; print

1793; Biblio^

print.

Lyons, December

at

ordered

1793,

graving. Bibliotheque Nationale

125 Milhaud,

145 Massacre

Carnavalet. Photo Bulloz

October

7

Simon.

after

13 July

cartoon.

136 Front

Mucius Scaevola,

Brutus. Biblioth^ue Nationale

Bibliotheque Nationale

contemporary

Lyons

of

German

1793;

print

contemn

Biblioth^ue Nationale

Biblio^

print.

Constitution,

Death of Marat,

English

porary

124

Assembly;

Carna^

sans'culottes;

June 1794;

8

144 Playing cards published during the Revolution representing the

135 Jean/Paul Marat addressing the

Photo Bulloz

Army

the

pen drawing by

(27 July 1794)

(1741-1814). valet.

Supreme Being,

of

theque Nationale

English print

The widowed Marie Antoim ette; painting by A. Kucharsky

honour

in

Festival

contemporary

134 Robespierre;

contemporary

1793;

143

in

Concorde, 21

la

(i

1825)

Revolution,

la

Damon

Georges

133

Lisle.

White

the

active

Terror,

temporary Nationale

Sun, counter-

print.

1797;

during con-

Biblioth^ue

;

Boissy d’Anglas faced with the

head

of

Feraud

invasion

20

May

during

of the

the

Andrea Appiani (1754-1817). 164 Bibliothcque Nationale

end

(active

century).

of

of Leoben, print

Photo

contemporary

of the year

Carnavalet

III; print

Queverdo

by Massol,

IV' after

(5

Oaober

print.

162 Allegory Republic,

W. H.

c.

van

Batavian

the

1790; print

20

conspirators,

Bibliothcque Nationale

Tassaen

The

Direaors

after

the

by

Corps

Legis-'

Cloud contemporary ;

Museum

72 Ball during the Directoire period coloured engraving by J-'F. Bosio

(1764-1827)

La The parvenu and the rentier,

September 1797; contemporary

contemporary

Bibliothcque Nationale

print.

c. 1

797

British

Museum

British

170 Napoleon’s print

Barras,

the

November

R^ellicre^Lepaux and Reubell,

print.

Bork.

at

(9

8

of 19

d’kat

his

after

Museum 163 Bonaparte;

1799), scene

1

169 of

coup

Brumaire, year

latif at St

C. Monet. Bibliothcque

Nationale

LauroS'

Giraudon

Musce

September 1796; contemporary print.

Bibliothcque

Photo

print. British

print

1795);

con^

Museum

167 Execution of Babeuf and fellow

in

Dcbucoun

(1748-1797).

Events of 13 Vendemiaire, year

Sieyes,

Director;

print.

Nationale.

1797;

166 Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797);

by the friends of the Constitution

Bibliothcque Nationale 61

robes of a

Bonaparte’s

160 Revolutionary tyranny crushed

1

April

18

Ph^L.

after

the peace

at

(1755-1832). British

Giraudon

after

Emmanuel Joseph temporary

Popular rejoicing

eighteenth

Versailles.

1

the

Convention,

795 ; painting by Tellier

1

17

]']'¥.

painting by

1

flight

from Egypt;

799 contemporary English car-' ;

toon. Bibliothcque Nationale

176 Theophilanthropic

contemporary

print.

sermon; Biblio^

th^ue Nationale

189

Champ

Amar, Anzin

J/B. 148

Army

92, 95. 97~8, 108, 122, 136,

de la

Fedhation)

86

165

Champ de Mars

(Massacre) 102,

1

02

Chaumette, P/G. 137, 149

153

Arras

de Mars {Fete

18, 20, 27, 59, 95

Artois, comted’ 62, 75, 85, 97~8, 173.

Cherbourg 150 Choudieu, P^R. 149 ClaviCTe, E. 28, 108, 129

75 Artois, Estates of 20, 59

Clergy

16, 32, 57, 59,

92-3, 106,

Collot d’Herbois, J^M. Babeuf, E^N. 166, i66^ i6j

112

A.

27, 44, 68, 100-2, 139.

134,

H4

1,

Conde

C. 146

Safety 124, 126,

135

Conde, prince de 97

Belgium 118, 124, 161

(1795) 160 Corday, Charlotte

P^A^C.

175

Constitutions (1791)94, (^793) 131.

Cordelier

Besenval, baron de 66

Billaud/Varenne, J-'N.

1

16-17, 134.

Club

1 3

5-6

loi, 114, 117, I3i,

135, 144, 146-8, 153

Couthon, G^A. 140, 150, 154-5

139, 147-8, 153-8

73

Bonaparte, N. 161, 163, 166, 168, 170-1, 161, ijo-i

Bordeaux

9, 37, 124, 12, 15

Bourdon de

Damon, 1 3 1,

G/J. 99, 102, 114, 117, 127, 135-6, 139-40, 146-9, 153,

130

Darthe 166

Bouchotte, J-'B/N. 145

Dauphine

I’Oise 145-7

34, 54,

34

Desfieux, F. 123-4,

Brest 109 Breteuil,

baron de 28

Brienne,

Lomenie de

Desmoulins, C. 102, 3

1-4, 42, 57, sp

Brissot, J^P. 106-8, 116,

118

HO, 1

14,

146, 148

147-8,

Diderot,

Burke, E. 49, 176

Dubuisson 146 Dumouriez, C^F. 124, 127

Caen

Dunkirk 137

C/A.

de 28, 31-2, 4^, 50»

32

47

D. 72

Dubois/Crance, E/L^A. 103

59, 124, 136

1

Dechristianization 140, 146

Brunswick, duke of 109

Calonne,

155,

132, 134, 136-7. 139-40. 144,

72-3, 77 , Jo-} Batz, baron de 28

Bastille 68,

W.

153,

146-51, 153, 155-7

Barras, P^F. 161, 167

Blake,

Security 117,

147-9,

,

Committee of Public 1 3

Beaumarchais,

39—40, 147-

157

100

Basire,

1

153, 156-8

132,

Barhe, B. 147, 156-8, 168 Barnave,

8,

Committee of General

Bailly, J^S. 64, 82, 139,

OJ^M.

14,

166-8, 92

Augereau, P^F. 168

Barbaroux,

1

Duport, A. 90, 100

Duquesnoy, E/-D^F. 82

Carnot, L. 24, 134, 136, 154 Carrier, J^B. 156-7

Chabot, F. 146

Eglantine, Fabre d’ 114, 131,

146-9, 133

140,

Emigres 75. 97-8, 106-7, 114. ^59, 166, 168, ^6-7,

England

jj

1

Levasseur, R. 116, 139, 144-5, 153

118, 145, 161, 163

Liberalism 48-52

Enrages 123

Lindet, R. 157, 168

Espagnac, abbe d’ 28

Longwy

Estates General 33-4, 54, 57-9, 62-3,

Louis

XIV

Louis

XV 24

60-1, 6j, 6s

Evreux

1

H7.

1

1

42

Louis XTVI 24, 26,

34

5,

Fenelon, F. 5^

34,

63-4, 82, 84-

87-8, 98, loo-i, 107-8,

1

12-14,

121, 22-5, 59, 99, 10], log, 120-1

marquis de 62, 73, 75-6, 82, 97-8

Ferricres,

Feuillants 102-3

Louis

XVII

Lyons

135, 159

124, 135, i44. 15

J24, ijS,

3,

M5

Fleurus 153, 1^2

Fosseux, Dubois de 95 Fouquier-'Tinville,

Francis

A^Q.

Mainz 148-9, 156

162

II

Malta 170 Marat, J^P. 24, 114, 117, 135, 1^4 Maribon^Montaut, L. 146

Frankfun 118

S^L^M. 156

Freron,

118, 124, 135

Marie Antoinette

34, 85, 98, 101-2,

107-8, 139, 173, 29, 101, 121, i^g

Carat, D/'J. 146-7

Girondins 106-8,

Marseilles 9, 109, 124 1

12-14, 117-18,

121-3, 126-7, 129, 135. 139, 147,

157 Guillotin, Jz-L. 90

Merlin, Pz-A. 170

Mirabeau, comte de 28, 64-5, 82, too, 5^, 8s

Montagnards 117-18,

123,

126-7,

129, 131, 137, 144. 153, 155. 157,

Hanriot, F. 129, 139, 148, i2g Hebert, J^R. 127, 131, 136-7, 13940, 145-8, 13s

Herault^Sechelles, M^J. 128

Holland 118,

I6i, 170, 165

159

Montauban 95 Montesquieu, C^L^S. de 37-44, 94.

48,

3^9

Morris, Gouverneur 87, 102, 132

Intendants 20-1 Isnard,

M.

107, 129, 157

Jacobin Club 78-9, 102, 107-8, 123,

Nantes 9 Narbonne, comte de 107 National Guard 67-8, 75, 102,

127, 134-5. 137, 146-9, 155

jemappes

1

12,

1

16,

127,

91,

129,

156 1

18, 11 g

Jouben, B^C. 17

Navy 92,95. Necker,

Fayette,

marquis de 84, 98, 107-9,

68

Lameth, A. too

Lamoignon

J.

98, 102, 122, 136-7, 153

26-8, 34. 5°. 57, 61, 65,

67, 75, 26-7, 59

Kant, E. 176

La

108-9,

84,

Neerwinden 124 Newspapers: Le Pere Duchesne

127,

Le Vieux Cordelier 147 Nice 1 18

Normandy

135

33

Launay, B^R, 68

Notables 31, 57, 54

Lavoisier, Az>L. 21

Le Bas, P^Ez-J. Le Bon, J. J54

155

Orleans, due d’ 74

Lebrun, P. 108, 129

Pache, J^N. 148-9

Lecointre, L. 156-7

Pantheon Club 166

Leopold

Pare, J^F. 146

II

98

191

8

Paris 1

11

Commune

,

1

12-15,

16-17, 123, 127, 129, 132, 135-7,

Department 127;

140, 144, 148-9;

.

,

I 3

i,

38, 38,

44-5 J. 123,

135

Russia 170

Parlement (of Paris) 32 3

Rousseau, J /J 37 44“8,

Roux,

Sections 109, 117, 129

Parlements 22, 25,

Rossignol, J^A. 140

3-4, 4^~3, 50, 54, Saint^Just,

57

L^A.

52, 118, 121, 123,

134, 147-8, 153-5,

Pereira 146

Petion, J. 102-3, 106, 109,

1

12, 110

D5

Sans'culottes 10 1-2, 113, 122-4, i-^6-

7 , 133, 135, 137, 150, 158

Philippeaux, P. 146 Physiocrats 48

Savoy

A. 48 Prieur, C^A.

Siey^, E/J. 46-7, 65, 170-1, 47, 171

Pope,

Spain

134, 136

1 1

1

18, 161

Proli, P^J^B. 146

Provence, comte de 97,

1

Talleyrand,

59

C^M.

16,

92

Tallien, J/L. 156

Prussia 108, i6i

Theophilanthropy 167, 178

88-

Tocqueville,

Quiberon 159

Toulon

89-

A.

175

124, 135, 137, 144, 126

Turgot, A^R^J. 50

Reubell 167, 170,

i

RevelliCTe/'Lepaux,

Rights of

Man

6g

La

167, 170,

i

6g

(Declaration of) 82,

Vadier, M/-G^A. 157-8

Valenciennes 135

Valmy

9,

M.

1

18

114, 116-18, 121-3, 127, 129, 134,

Vendee 95, 124, 135, 140, 144-6 Verdun 1 14 Vergniaud, P/V. 106

136-7, 139, 146-50, 153-5,

Versailles 59, 84-5,

D4, ^55

Vincent, F^N. 131, 136, 139, 147-8

Robespierre,

I,

18, 27, 37, 46, 50,

90, 94, 102-3, 106, 108,

1 1

2,

29-jo

Roland, J^M. 108, 1 16-18 Roland, Mme 24, 139

Voltaire 50, 72, 36, 50-j

Ronsin, C^P. 139-40, 147-8

Westermann,

F^J. 140

I

I

I

{

^

»

( i

«

t

.

A

« k'

’if

t

r

944.04 Hampson, N The French Revolution

944.04 Hampson, N The French Revolution

PLX

0EC1976

i X may •

1978

"1978 i

.

Stats of Vermont De par tmsnt of Libraries luiistats Rsrjional Library RFD Hontps L isr Vt, 05602 ,

frenchrevolutionOOhamp

DATE DUE 1 4 2007

JU 0

^

VERMONT

DEPT. OF LIBRARIES

)

Pf‘

P

now.

0

01 Q57b5Sl

S

GA 3j3

mz -5

1^93 -g-isss-

.

4