French Revolution Question # 1 - Was the French Revolution an "Enlightenment" revolution?
Source # 1 - This is the preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789):
“The representatives
of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the
ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public
calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth
in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in
order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the
Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order
that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive
power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all
political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order
that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and
incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and
redound to the happiness of all.”
Source # 2 - Poster of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)
Source # 3 - La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. It was composedt during the French Revolution (April 24, 1792) by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a captain of the engineers and amateur musician stationed in Strasbourg in 1792. Originally entitledChant de guerre de l'armeé du Rhin (War Song of the Army of the Rhine), the anthem became called La Marseillaise because of its popularity with volunteer army units from Marseilles.
Let us go, children of the fatherland
Our day of Glory has arrived.
Against us stands tyranny,
The bloody flag is raised,
The bloody flag is raised.
Do you hear in the countryside
The roar of these savage soldiers
They come right into our arms
To cut the throats of your sons,
your country.
To arms, citizens!
To arms, citizens!
Form up your battalions
Let us march, Let us march!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields
Source # 4 - Maximilian Robespierre speech "Justification on the use
of the Terror" (1794)
"But, to found and consolidate democracy, to
achieve the peaceable reign of the constitutional laws, we must end the war of
liberty against tyranny and pass safely across the storms of the revolution:
such is the aim of the revolutionary system that you have enacted. Your
conduct, then, ought also to be regulated by the stormy circumstances in which
the republic is placed; and the plan of your administration must result from
the spirit of the revolutionary government combined with the general principles
of democracy...
...This great purity of the French revolution's
basis, the very sublimity of its objective, is precisely what causes both our
strength and our weakness. Our strength, because it gives to us truth's
ascendancy over imposture, and the rights of the public interest over private
interests; our weakness, because it rallies all vicious men against us, all
those who in their hearts contemplated despoiling the people and all those who
intend to let it be despoiled with impunity, both those who have rejected
freedom as a personal calamity and those who have embraced the revolution as a
career and the Republic as prey. Hence the defection of so many ambitious or
greedy men who since the point of departure have abandoned us along the way
because they did not begin the journey with the same destination in view. The
two opposing spirits that have been represented in a struggle to rule nature
might be said to be fighting in this great period of human history to fix
irrevocably the world's destinies, and France is the scene of this fearful
combat. Without, all the tyrants encircle you; within, all tyranny's friends
conspire; they will conspire until hope is wrested from crime. We must smother
the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in
this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people
by reason and the people's enemies by terror.
If the
spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular
government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue,
without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless.
Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is
therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it
is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's
most urgent needs."
Source # 5 - Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes from a pamplete "What is the Third Estate" pubished in 1789 before the meeting of the Estates General.
"What is necessary that a nation should subsist and prosper?…
The pretended utility [usefulness] of a privileged order for the public service is nothing more than a chimera… All that which is burdensome in this service is performed by the Third Estate… Who then shall dare to say that the Third Estate has not within itself all that is necessary for the formation of a complete nation? It is the strong and robust man who has one arm still shackled.
If the privileged order [the nobility] should be abolished, the nation would be nothing less, but something more. Therefore, what is the Third Estate? Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? Everything, but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing can succeed without it, everything would be infinitely better without the others…
What is a nation? A body of associates, living under a common law, and represented by the same legislature, etc. Is it not evident that the noble order has privileges and expenditures which it dares to call its rights, but which are apart from the rights of the great body of citizens? It departs there from the common law. So its civil rights make of it an isolated people in the midst of the great nation. This is truly imperium in imperia [one state within another]…
The Third Estate embraces all that which belongs to the nation; and all that which is not the Third Estate, cannot be regarded as being of the nation.
What is the Third Estate? It is the whole."
Source # 6 - Writing in his diary in January 1790, Adrien Duquesnoy, a delegate to the Estates General said,
"January 16th 1790 …Putting aside priests, nobility, magistrates and financiers, it is clear that all the rest of the kingdom reaps infinite benefits from the revolution. And indeed, amongst those citizens whom I have just listed there are a great number who should judge it advantageous to them, because in truth it is. Thus the clergy of second degree and almost all provincial noblemen, who were recently oppressed by bishops and court nobles, should consider themselves fortunate to be relieved of this aristocracy.
Moreover, anyone who can for an instant put aside all private interest, cannot but bless this revolution. When one thinks of the great abuses of all kinds which burdened this poor kingdom, it seems obvious that only an upheaval of such intensity could achieve such an end. In any case, one thing is certain — it would be difficult for things to be worse than they were under the former regime.
I often hear people around me asking a very strange question: they enquire, ‘What has the assembly been doing for the last six months?’ I only know of one reply to this question: ‘Look, and observe: clergy and nobility abolished, provincial privileges gone, ecclesiastical property nationalized. Could you have achieved so much in ten years?"
Source # 7 - From the document "What is a Sans Culotte" (1793)
A sans culotte, you rogues? He is someone who always goes about on foot, who has not got the millions you would all like to have, who has no chateaux, no valets to wait on him, and who lives simply with his wife and children, if he has any, on the fourth or fifth storey.
He is useful because he knows how to till a field; to forge iron; to use a saw; to roof a house, to make shoes, and to spill his blood to the last drop for the safety of the Republic...
...Finally, a sans culotte always has his sabre well-sharpened, ready to cut off the ears of all opponents of the Revolution: sometimes he carries his pike about with him; but as soon as the drum beats you see him leave for the Vendee, for the Army of the Alps, or for the Army of the North."
Source # 8 - Jean Paul Marat was a leader of the Jacobins and also editor of a newspaper "L'Ami du peuple" or "The Friend of the People",.in 1793 he wrote,
"I founded the Ami du Peuple. I began it with a severe but honest tone, that of a man who wishes to tell the truth without breaking the conventions of society. I maintained that tone for two whole months. Disappointed in finding that it did not produce the entire effect that I had expected, and indignant that the boldness of the unfaithful representatives of the people and of the lying public officials was steadily increasing, I felt that it was necessary to renounce moderation and to substitute satire and irony for simple censure. The bitterness of the satire increased with the number of mismanagements, the iniquity of their projects and the public misfortunes. Strongly convinced of the absolute perversity of the supporters of the old regime and the enemies of liberty, I felt that nothing could be obtained from them except by force. Revolted by their attempts, by their ever-recurrent plots, I realized that no end would be put to these except by exterminating the ones guilty of them. Outraged at seeing the representatives of the nation in league with its deadliest enemies and the laws serving only to tyrannize over the innocent whom they ought to have protected, I recalled to the sovereign people that since they had nothing more to expect from their representatives, it behooved them to mete out justice for themselves. This was done several times.”
"I founded the Ami du Peuple. I began it with a severe but honest tone, that of a man who wishes to tell the truth without breaking the conventions of society. I maintained that tone for two whole months. Disappointed in finding that it did not produce the entire effect that I had expected, and indignant that the boldness of the unfaithful representatives of the people and of the lying public officials was steadily increasing, I felt that it was necessary to renounce moderation and to substitute satire and irony for simple censure. The bitterness of the satire increased with the number of mismanagements, the iniquity of their projects and the public misfortunes. Strongly convinced of the absolute perversity of the supporters of the old regime and the enemies of liberty, I felt that nothing could be obtained from them except by force. Revolted by their attempts, by their ever-recurrent plots, I realized that no end would be put to these except by exterminating the ones guilty of them. Outraged at seeing the representatives of the nation in league with its deadliest enemies and the laws serving only to tyrannize over the innocent whom they ought to have protected, I recalled to the sovereign people that since they had nothing more to expect from their representatives, it behooved them to mete out justice for themselves. This was done several times.”
Source # 9 - French Tax Payments
Source # 10 - Literacy Rates in France
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Source # 11 - Drawing of the Tennis Court Oath by David (1789) Source # 12 - Print of the the Tennis Court Oath (1789)  Source # 13 - Print of the September Massacres (1792)  Source # 14 - Map of the Reign of Terror & Rebellion  Source # 15 - Women marching to Versailles (1789)  Source # 16 - Cult of the Supreme Being (1794)  |
