Discuss the Origins of the French Revolution

The French Revolution, arising from the conditions of eighteenth century France, occupies a position of immense symbolic importance in marking the rupture between the “Old” (the ancient regime), and the “New” French “nation”. Late Eighteenth century France, apart from witnessing the intensification of old socio-political struggles, was also characterized by certain forces of change that seemed to confront the Old Order. These forces were represented by new ideas, rising social groups, prospering commerce and increasing political tensions. The question of the nature and thus, the origins of the Revolution can be addressed depending on which of the above features one would see as characterizing the Revolution.

There is debate amongst historians on the dates of the revolution. Most agree that the French Revolution was between 1788 to 1799 (including the pre-revolutionary period of 1789-91 and ending in 1799 with the beginning of the Napoleonic phase). Liberal historians believe that the real revolution was only between 1789-1791, while Marxist historians say that the phase 1789-1791 was that of a bourgeois revolution—the true revolution was from 1792-1794 (the Jacobin phase at which the popular movement was at its height). The debate still continues on whether the Napoleonic phase (1799-1815) was a continuation of the revolution. Until the later 17th century, the word ‘revolution’ had limited political meaning, to changes of ministers for instance, but the word was not connected with political upheaval. In the 18th century people went on using it in its pre-political sense, but after the events of 1688 in England, the word acquired a new political meaning.

The first person to comment on the French Revolution was Edmund Burke. In his opinion, the revolution was the outcome of the evil machinations of selfish and socially disruptive groups against the two foundations of society, religion and landed property. He detected two sinister influences. The first was constituted by that clique of literary men who had conducted so long and infamous a campaign against religion. The second was the growing moneyed interest, which moved by its jealousy of the old aristocracy, joined in an alliance of destruction with the disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau for the purposes of uprooting French society from its foundations. This belief that the revolution had been caused by the spread of enlightened ideas was later schematized by the Abbé Barruel in the form of a triple conspiracy.

The 18th century belief in the primacy of ideas persisted even when the 19th century brought economic motivation to the fore. For Lamartine the revolution came into existence the day when printing was invented, for this made public opinion possible. Louis Blanc writing in the 1850s, while describing the revolution as one of conflicting principles, also saw the importance of the parlements as a constitutional check on the ancient regime and was aware of the efforts at reform by various ministers, he realised the factious nature of the aristocratic campaign against Marie Antoinette—things which his predecessors never noticed.

Michelet like Carlyle, believed that the outbreak of the French Revolution could be studied in terms of the tyranny of the ancient regime on one side and the principles of justice and liberty on the other. These factors coupled with the rise of new ideas, in the writings of Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu, led to the revolution. The revolution was the day of judgement for the ancient regime.

Tocqueville saw the French Revolution as the natural conclusion to the long term evolution of the ancienregime. He criticised the revolution for not being revolutionary enough as it merely accepted and continued the process of building up the power of the centralised state. He believed that increasing resentment at seigneurial obligations might have been the result not of deteriorating, but of improved conditions among the peasantry, and of the fact that the privileged classes kept their social and economic privileges when they had lost all powers of government. The philosophes’ campaign according to him, was not anti-religious, but was directed against the church as a political force. Their criticism he thought, was mainly legal and social in its impact, and in favour of administrative reform rather than political change.

  1. R. Palmer puts forward the theory that the French Revolution was a part of a general democratic revolution which Europe and the Americas were experiencing in the last three decades of the 18th century. Along with J. Godechot, Palmer has also called it the Atlantic revolution. This thesis has won little acceptance.

Alfred Cobban on the other hand believes that there was no revolution at all. There was neither an economic nor a social revolution, nor was there a transition from feudalism to capitalism. The monarchy came back, and the notables remained.

According to George Lefebvre, the outbreak of the revolution occurred in 4 stages; it was carried out by 4 different social classes; and was dominated by class conflict. Many historians have accepted the interpretation of George Lefebvre ‘the first act of the Revolution, in 1788, consisted in a triumph of the aristocracy…but, after having paralysed the royal power which upheld its own social pre-eminence, the aristocracy opened the way for a bourgeois revolution, then to the popular revolution in the cities, and finally to the revolution of the peasants—and found itself buried under the ruins of the old regime’.

Society in 18th century France was divided traditionally into the three estates under the authority of the monarchy. Their legal definition corresponded to social and economic realities of which most were long dead. The social elite was divided in two by the imposition of the outdated and legal distinction between noble and non-noble; the Third Estate of commoners (roturiers) embraced at one end millionaires who had far more interests in common with rich noblemen than with the poorest peasants at the other end of it. The effect of this was to change the terms of political debate.

The monarchy which organised its executive impetus through royal councils, ministers and a network of officials, represented the centralising principle and provided the institutions which brought 18th century France closest to being a modern state. But the 18th Century was a period of declining absolutism in France. The power of the Bourbon monarchy was subject to powerful checks—the corporate organisation of the church; the independent position and prestige of the parlements or high courts of appeal; the contractual relationship between crown and the pays d’etats. Public policy was discussed in terms of its effects upon the legal rights of interested parties. Even the mode in which laws were made suggested this, for royal edicts were not enforceable in the courts until they had been registered with the parlements.

The difficulty of the bourbon monarchy in levying direct taxes arose from a fundamental weakness in the absolutist structure—the government ruled without the express consent of influential groups within the country. The church, nobility and the privileged provinces, took the position that if they were not represented in the government they were under no obligation to pay taxes to it. The king’s government unwilling or unable to allow participation of these groups in the formation of policy, persuaded them to accept its authority by assuring them ‘liberties’, such as immunities to taxation.

The main political conflict of the 18th century France was the struggle of the aristocracy against the declining power of royal absolutism. In fact, Louis XVI’s decision to summon the States-General, or national representative assembly, which had not met since 1614, marked the crown’s capitulation to the concerted pressure of the lay, ecclesiastical and judicial authority.

The first estate of the clergy was an organized, corporate body with approximately 130,000 members, equipped with its own administration and with its own courts of law. The Gallican church’s influence was partly because it alone was privileged to conduct public worship. It kept the official registers of births, marriages, and deaths; it controlled education and poor relief, and shared in the censorship of all that was printed. 

The clergy depended neither on the state nor on donations from the faithful. In addition to the income derived from the tithe on all products of the soil, they drew title from land that amounted to 1/10th of the kingdom. It was subject to none of the ordinary direct taxes but instead determined on its own authority a “free donation” (don gratuit) to the king.

But the clergy was not as Sieyes said, a profession nor a social class. The organisation of the church mirrored that of lay society. There was a fairly sharp distinction between nobles—especially the upper clergy, such as bishops, abbots and many canons—and commoners, who included almost all parish priests and most persons in the monastic order. Many chapters and religious houses for men and women were similarly the exclusive domain of the aristocracy.

The nobility which made up the second estate, owned about 1/5th of the land of France, and enjoyed important legal privileges rights of jurisdiction and immunity from varying types of taxation like the taille, poll-tax and the vingtiemes. Certain occupations, such as commands in the armed forces, ambassadorships and high preferment in the church, were reserved for the nobility. But despite its social prestige, the aristocracy had significant internal divisions. There were differentiations made between the nobility of the sword and the nobility of the robe. There were poor nobles and rich nobles, those who lived in the provinces and those who lived at court. The division between rich and poor tended to be self-perpetuating, since the main source of income open to the nobility was to be found at court and the purchase of a post at Versailles was beyond the reach of the majority. There were also reasonably well to do nobles not easily distinguishable from the prosperous bourgeoisie. And there were also the provincial nobles who led a less decadent existence; many were scarcely comfortable and some even very poor.

Since a noble would fall into the common mass if he followed a business or profession (Colbert had allowed them to engage in maritime trade), many of the of the nobility neither knew how nor wished to adapt themselves to a bourgeois order, preferring to grow poorer and live as impecunious squires rather than forfeit noble title.

But as the 18th century progressed, some nobles began to take an interest in the progress of capitalism and tried to obtain some profits through using their influence with the administration or invoking their feudal rights. Many nobles invested in industry. Some bought shares in the Tax Concessions while some speculated on the Stock Exchange. The more traditionally minded seigneurs tried to raise their incomes by developing their estates according to methods advocated by the physiocrats and imitated from England. But most confined to demanding their feudal rights more firmly and vigorously, a turn of events often called a feudal (seigneurial) reaction. The terriers which listed their rights were kept up to date to prevent old claims falling into disuse and were valuable, apart from the sale of produce, as a means of controlling village communities and a weapon for expropriating peasants whose accumulated arrears left them indebted to the seigneurs. The increased feudal pressure gave rise to a spate of recrimination, litigation and peasant violence that aggravated the social tensions of the countryside.

Along with this nobility of the sword, a new nobility was created by the monarch who in need of money, put up public offices for sale—including judgeships and financial, military, administrative and municipal offices. Noble status was conceded only as a personal right but became transmissible to heirs after a certain number of years. This was known as the nobility of the robe. These nobles, of bourgeois extractions, were wealthy because their offices had a high market value and because they knew how to administer and augment their inheritances. There were other more expensive, though easier ways to acquire noble status and to hasten the ascent of a family. For example, the position of secretary of the king which conferred nobility in the first degree, was expensive but required only unimportant duties. The nobility of the sword held them in contempt but the lure of dowries brought on marriages that hastened assimilation.

However, this section of the nobility began to find the doors of entry into aristocratic institutions and political power closed as the eighteenth century drew to a close. The noblesse d’epee (nobility of the sword) wanted their order to be closed and venality in office to be suppressed so commoner entry into the nobility would end. They wished offices compatible with their dignity to be reserved to them. The parliaments and other high offices increasingly began to emphasize the nobility of blood for office.

The fundamental conflict between the aristocracy and the non-nobles was thus, neither political nor economic but social. The nobility were determined to preserve their existence as a separate order in the hierarchical society. They valued privilege more as an indication of status than as a source of wealth. Seigneurial rights, including that of justice, the virtual monopoly of military and naval commissions, the provision of noble chapters for titled ladies, were not so much specific claims as illustrations of a concept of society.

The third estate consisted of all those who were non-nobles. This was an amorphous classification, ranging from the bourgeois and the peasantry. The bourgeois were themselves not homogenous. Nothing was more pronounced that the ordering of ranks within the bourgeois society.

Those who considered themselves the true bourgeoisie were a small number of commoners who had enough resources to dispense with manual labour and to live ‘nobly off their possessions’ i.e. principally off revenues from land, ground rent, and less frequently, transferable securities. They condescended to associate with members of two ‘labouring’ groups, provided that those members were wealthy, and did not work with their hands. The first was the civil service which formed a sort of intermediary class through which social advancement, assured by money, had always been possible.

The other group included financiers and directors of the economy. They included the bankers to the court, the purveyors and contractors who supplied the army and navy with all kinds of transport and provisions, and above all the ‘farmers-general’. These were men who formed companies to operate the ‘farm’ or concession by which the government ‘farmed out’ the indirect taxes, receiving an assured fixed sum, and leaving the farmers to make collections and retain the proceeds.

The bourgeoisie were powerful due to economic changes. They were ranked along the nobles as the ‘notables’. This was a social category based on money and transcending the legal classification of orders or corporate bodies. But the traditional aspiration of the bourgeoisie was to insinuate themselves with the nobility. For example, Danton changed his name to d’Anton and Derobespierre to Robespierre.

But towards the end of the 18th century, as the nobility began to claim a separate status for themselves, the non-nobles felt that their ascent to formal nobility was being made difficult and they began to ally themselves against the nobles. It is tempting to equate this anti-aristocratic feeling with the self-confidence of a rising generation of capitalists impatient to overthrow a system of government and a social order that stood in the way of their advancement. But the causes of this hostility were social rather than economic. It was not that the middle class could not expand and prosper, but that it was increasingly excluded from the social status and privilege that previously been able to buy more easily. They wanted the social recognition of the position they had already won.

Peasants, who accounted for 80% of that of France, owned about 30%-40% of land. They were known to be very unprogressive. The agrarian problem arose mainly from the clash between the monarchy’s efforts to improve agricultural productivity and the determination of the peasants to retain their traditional methods. The physiocrats encouraged enclosures and the division of common lands. The peasants disliked the scheme because the former required capital which they lacked, and the latter destroyed their collective rights like the right to free pasturage, without which they declared, they could not raise their livestock.. They failed to understand how their interests would be served by the physiocratic programme by means of a single but universal tax on land.

Another major source of peasant discontent was the revival of obsolete feudal claims and the bringing up to date the manorial rolls and records of feudal obligations (terriers) by the landlords. If the peasants ventured to contest any of the new feudal claims their suits came for judgement before the local parlements, which usually rejected them.

All village inhabitants were subject to manorial authority and obligations. But, though his legal obligations were less oppressive than in many other states, the French peasant bore a heavy burden of taxation: he paid tithe to the Church, the taille (which the nobility and the clergy were exempt of), vingtieme, capitation and gabelle (salt tax) to the State, and he paid a varying toll of obligations, services and payments ranging from the corvee (exacted in cash or kind) and cens (feudal rent in cash) to the champart (rent in kind) and lods et ventes (a charge on the transfer of property) to the seigneur. The incidence of such burdens varied greatly but in year of bad harvests and depression, they proved to be vexatious and intolerable.

C.E. Labrousse has shown that the peasants were the worst sufferers from the 18th century changes in the levels of general and relative prices. The average general prices of consumers’ goods were 65% higher in the period of 1785-89 than they had been in 1741. The 12 years before the revolution most agricultural prices fell. In a predominantly agrarian economy the result was a general recession and growing unemployment. The bad harvest of 1788, coming on top of this, produced an economic crisis, of which the financial crisis which precipitated the revolution was part; for the burden of taxation became unendurable in time of general distress.

The chief weakness of France’s pre-revolutionary form of government was faulty finance. Throughout the 18th century, there had existed a serious annual deficit. Contemporaries attributed the deficit to the court’s wastefulness and financiers’ profits. The debt alone required 318 million. The increase in the cost of administration reflected a greater expenditure on public works, notably road improvements, and an increasing tendency of the central government to take over some of the responsibility for public assistance, poor relief and medical care.

Government expenditure was also being incurred on wars. Between 1733 and 1783 France waged a total of 4 wars costing approximately 4,000,000 livres. The surge in production which had followed the seven years’ war was checked by difficulties rooted in agricultural fluctuations, a continual problem of the old economy. These setbacks became established in cyclical depressions and caused what C.E. Labrousse called the ‘decline of Louis XVI’.

At the end of the ancien regime, over 3/4th of the annual state expenditure was being incurred on defence and on the service of the public debt. The essence of the financial problem on the eve of the revolution was the impossibility of reducing these heavy items of national expenditure for otherwise public credit would be undermined and national security imperiled. Financial retrenchment could only be attempted in the field of civil expenditure.

The benefits of receipts of indirect taxes on consumer goods—the salt tax, the internal custom duties (traits) and other excise duties went not to the treasury but to the farmers-general. The yield of the direct taxes could only have been permanently increased by a radical reform of the machinery of collection and by the destruction of the fiscal exemptions of the clergy, lay nobility and a host of middle-class office holders. However, financial reform in 18th century France would have amounted to social and political revolution. Privilege was so closely associated with special favours that the extinction of fiscal exemptions could only have been imposed by an all-powerful sovereign.

The struggle between the monarchy and the nobility, between the years 1787 and 1788, was precipitated by the attempt of the French minister Calonne to solve France’s mounting financial difficulties by comprehensive fiscal, economic and administration reforms. Calonne’s proposal went beyond the immediate needs of the monarchy to include a general overhaul of much of the financial system. The abolition of the internal customs barriers, the commutation of the corvee and the reduction of the salt tax were calculated to attract the support of the economists and of the public opinion in general.

He suggested remodelling of local government in the pays d’elections. The reforms were not to be extended to the pays d’etats. He wanted to create new provincial assemblies. He suggested that in these institutions, the distinctions between the separate orders or estates be obliterated. Also that the assemblies should possess advisory functions only and their executive powers be confined to a narrow range of matters of local significance. While this reform was designed to achieve greater administrative uniformity, the disregard of privileged status and social precedence in the new provincial assemblies would have deprived the lay and clerical nobility the chance of exercising in the local government of the pays d’elections the influence they exercised in the pays d’etats.

Calonne also believed that the gap between the revenue and expenditure could be reduced by substituting the vingtiemes—whose assessment tended to favour the privileged orders and whose renewal required registration of the parlements—by a direct tax on land, irrespective of the status of its owners. This new tax was to be collected in kind. It would also be graduated, in order to ensure greater distributive justice between the poorer and richer agricultural areas.

If the land tax were accepted, the noblesse de robe would thereby lose their limited control over taxation, and hence over royal policy, as had been permitted by the vingtiemes, limited in amount and in duration. The clerical estates would be taxed and the church’s power to bargain with the treasury over the grant of benevolences and the gradual extinction of the clerical debt would have affected the clergy’s corporate autonomy. Financially secure, ministers would now be free to disregard the remonstrances of the parlementaires. 

To compensate the privileged classes for their increased liability to taxation on their landed wealth, he offered 3 concessions—the nobility be excused from the poll tax; continued exemption from the corvees; clerical debt be redeemed. He did this to prove to them that he was not attempting complete fiscal equality.

To ensure that his programme would not be opposed by the privileged orders and especially from the parlement of Paris, Calonne decided to submit it to the assembly of ‘notables’. The members of this body would be nominated by the king and their functions were purely advisory. He felt that they would not dare oppose the plan, which he felt had the king’s backing. But the calling of an assembly was an initial surrender: the king was consulting his aristocracy rather than notifying it of his will.

But as soon as the notables began the discussion of the minister’s detailed proposals, opposition by the higher clergy and magistracy broke out. The clerical debt was thought as an attack on property by the clergy, the subordination of the assemblies to the intendants; the abolition of the distinctions of the separate orders; the land tax was deemed unnecessary.

When the assembly refused to accept his reforms, Louis XVI was persuaded to dismiss Calonne, whose place was taken over by Lomenie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse and the leader of the opposition to Calonne’s proposals.

To soothe the notables, Brienne submitted the treasury accounts to them, promised to retain the three orders in the provincial assemblies and to leave the clergy’s manorial rights alone. But he took over the plan for a territorial subvention and to it added an increase of the stamp duty. The notables replied that Brienne would have to approach the parlements to obtain consent to the taxes.

The parlement of paris made no protest over registering the liberation of the grain trade, commutation of the corvee des routes, and institution of provincial assemblies. But it drafted remonstrances against the stamp tax and land tax proposals which had the effect of deferring the registration of royal edicts and preventing the recognition of their full legality. This was because they were in a better position than the monarchy to appeal to progressive public opinion. The remonstrances reflect the language of Enlightenment that they used, holding the nobility as a bulwark against despotism and claiming to represent the “nation”, reflecting their interpretation of Montesqieu. It declared that the Estates General alone had the right to vote new taxes, they demanded its convocation with the ulterior motive of restoring their own power vis-à-vis the monarchy. Brienne had no choice but to proceed to an enforced registration (lit de justice); the parlement declared it null and void. On 8th May 1788, members of the Parlement of Paris were exiled after protests against the reform decrees.

There was widespread popular agitation on behalf of the parlements. They were seen as the only secular institutions in France which could claim some theoretical independence of the crown. They came to be looked upon as the defenders of liberty and established local rights and personal and corporate privileges of the parlements and other local representative bodies against ‘ministerial despotism’, an attitude which did not die out completely even after 1789.

Brienne persuaded the king to agree to summon the Estates-General in 1792. The decision to call the Estates General is seen by many as the capitulation of the monarchy. But negotiations broke down again in November. This prompted the Parlement to issue a declaration condemning the whole system of arbitrary government. Overwhelmed by this national movement of protest, the government was compelled to surrender. The States General was promised for May 1789; Brienne was replaced by Necker; all other projected reforms-were withdrawn; and the Parlements were recalled soon after.

The calling of the Estates-General was seen as the victory of the aristocracy. With the support of the non privileged classes, it had forced the government to withdraw its taxation proposals and to reinstate the Parlments, the States General would meet in May; and the Estates-General, it was confidently believed, would solve all the nation’s problems. The peasants looked upon the calling of the Estates-General as “The Great Hope”, anticipating that the King would address their economic misery by reduction and abolition of taxes, their principal source of misery. But many also believed that striking further blows at the “despotism” of ministers would proportionately increase the authority, status and advantage of the nobility.

The parlements declared that the national assembly be convoked and composed according to the forms of 1614. If the estates were organised as they had been in 1614 with equal number of representatives, and if each order voted separately, the clergy and the nobility would be able to force their will on the Third Estate. They demanded that the agitation for double representation be dropped as the price of the nobility’s offer to surrender its fiscal privileges and insisted that the existing constitution and the traditional form of the states general be maintained intact. The majority wished to make voting by order the invariable rule.

The Third Estate which had supported the political campaign of the parlements against monarchial despotism, had been convinced that the nobles would defend their privileges. But the majority of the aristocracy was unwilling to compromise on their privileges. Even the wealthy bourgeois, alienated by the aristocracy, were forced to look downwards. Making an idol of Louis XVI, they turned their attack against the aristocracy. By the winter of 1788, the struggle between the monarchy and the aristocracy was transformed into a social and political conflict between the privileged and unprivileged classes. Cobban believes that the term ‘aristocratic’ was a political one. Not only nobles, but also a peasant could be denounced as an aristocrat, depended on whether they supported.

In aligning themselves against the aristocracy the bourgeoisie took the name hitherto claimed in common by all those who opposed royal power. The ‘patriot’ party was formed. Though mainly voicing the hopes of the Third Estate, it included such wealthy aristocrats as the Marquis de Lafayette, the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, and the Marquis de Condorcet. The committee of thirty exercised considerable influence within the party. This committee inspired pamphlets, circulated models for the petitions of grievances and other propaganda in shaping public political opinion.

The censorship of the press led to an outburst in pamphlet literature and of 500 pamphlets published in the four months following the edicts of May 1788, one half were the work of “patriot” scribes. The works of Target, Volney, Mounier, Rabaut Saint-Etienne and Sieyes were concerned with the nature and the functions of the states general. Three fundamental ideas emerged from pamphlets–the idea of declaration of rights; the concept of national sovereignty and the necessity of endowing France with a constitution.

The idea of national sovereignty was meant to challenge the traditional organisation of French society in separate orders. The demand for the constitution was meant to refute the contention that aristocratic traditionalists already possessed one. Sieyes’ first pamphlet ‘essays on privileges’ displayed the strongest egalitarian bias of all his political speculation. His most influential was ‘what is the Third Estate?’ It identified the “nation” with the majority of the population, i.e. the Third Estate. Sieyes demonstrated that the clergy was not an estate but a profession and that the aristocracy was isolated from the community by privilege. It demanded that its representatives in the states general be recruited exclusively from its own ranks, that the number of representatives should equal in number those of the clergy and nobility combined, and that voting be done not by order, but by head.

But Necker, the minister of Finance was determined to secure from the government double representation of the third estate because if the nobility dominated the estates the government would be at its mercy. By doubling that order, and by limiting the vote by head to financial questions, equality of taxation could be adopted.

Warnings too began to arrive from the intendents in the provinces that if double representation were not given, a civil war might break out. On 27th December 1788, he secured the consent of the royal council to the concession of double representation to the Third Estate but left unsettled the issue whether voting should take place by order or by head.

The whole of January 1789 was taken up with the elaboration of the electoral arrangements. Traditional forms were preserved with the decision that the deputies be elected in separate orders. For privileged orders, it was universal suffrage. All lay nobles over age 25, were entitled to attend the electoral assembly of their order, in person or in proxy. The bishops and parish priests exercised similar privileges in the electoral assemblies of the clergy. The clergy generally elected as its representatives humble parish priests. Only 46 of the total delegation of 300 were prelates.

Deputies of the 3rd estate were chosen through a complicate system of indirect election. Except in Paris where vote was restricted to those who paid six livres in poll tax, suffrage was practically universal. Representatives of the 3rd estate in the states general were practically confined to the middle class although Abbe Sieyes and count de Mirabeau who came from the 1st and 2nd orders were also elected.

The states general were formally opened by Louis XVI at Versailles on 5th May 1789. The choice of Versailles has been considered imprudent. Far from imposing on the on the deputies, the magnificence of the court could only strengthen their prejudices, while Paris was at the same time close enough to encourage them to be firm. The assembly had 1201 representatives, out of which 610 came from the 3rd estate. Most of the deputies were those who had been responsible for the drawing up of the cahiers de doleances. A comparision of the cahiers from all orders reveals that both the privileged and the unprivileged were united in demands for the control of taxation by periodical national assemblies, a lightening of burden of indirect taxes, destruction of internal trade barriers’ and greater measure of decentralisation. There was also a widespread demand for the abolition of the royal right of administrative arrest (lettres de cachet) and for freedom of the press.

But while the privileged classes were only willing to sacrifice their fiscal immunities, on the constitutional issue, the nobility advocated the creation of legislative assembly that should control taxation. The royal government was also to lose part of its hold over the provinces, where its powers would be shared by local assemblies. In principle this programme was formulated foe the benefit of the nation. But the Third Estate would have been obliged to accept a subordinate position in the state, because it was the intention of the nobles to control all estates, both general and provincial.

The king had tried to make the orders meet separately. If voting in common were accepted, it was clear that the double representation granted to the Third Estate would enable it to gain its way on all contentious issues by its voting strength in a single assembly. But if the verification of powers were carried out separately as the king intended to do, and the orders were constituted as separate chambers, the Third Estate would find it hard to break down the traditional and legal procedure of voting by order.

The clergy kept a middle path. Conscious of its internal dissensions and afraid of consequences of popular ill will if it supported the nobility, it verified its powers separately but refrained from constituting itself as a separate chamber. Eventually it sided with the Third Estate on the issue of verification of power.

On 10th June 1789, the Third Estate invited the privileged orders, on the motion of the Abbe Sieyes, to a common verification of powers. This was a clear indication that the commons were intent on proceeding to business and that they would refuse to recognise any deputies who did not submit to the common verification of their powers. On 12th June, the Commons proceeded to call over the names and verify the powers of all the deputies. The procedure over by the 14th, by which time only a few members of the lower clergy had joined the Third Estate. On 17th June 1789 they took on the title of ‘National Assembly’.

The decrees of 17 June 1789 are important because they marked the assumption of national sovereignty by the Third Estate. Earlier the assembly had only come to ‘resolutions’, now for the first time, it passed ‘decrees’ and without the sanction of the crown, gave itself the right to recast the constitution.

On 20th June, in the belief that the government was trying to dissolve the states-general, the deputies of the national assembly resolved that the members of the assembly should take an oath, to be confirmed by their signatures, not to separate until the constitution had been established on firm foundation. This oath, known as the Tennis Court Oath, is significant for it was the first act of formal disobedience to the king and also because it was subscribed even by those deputies who had opposed the 17th June decrees.

Even before this act of defiance, Necker had urged the King to break the deadlock between the orders and take the initiative in legislative form. To allow the conflict to continue would only make civil war inevitable. But the King had been prevailed upon by other counsels to quash the self styled assembly decree of 17 June for the programme of reforms which he was asked to sponsor would have converted the king into a limited constitutional monarch. And the monarchy was itself too much a part of the ideology and institutions of privileged France for such a popular and national programme to be feasible. The assumptions and institutions on which it rested presupposed the importance of privilege and the sanctity of the established order.

But after this show of resolution at the Séance Royale, the king appeared to capitulate. He made no attempt to expel the commons, who were joined by the majority of the clergy on the 24th and by 47 members of the nobility on the 25th. When on 27th June, the king ordered the remainder of the clergy and the nobility to meet with the commons, Arthur Young wrote in his diary “the whole business now seems over and the revolution complete”. 

But this was only the beginning. With the movement of troops in the neighborhood of Paris in the beginning of July, rumours spread that they had been called to enforce the policy of the king, announced at the Séance Royale and reverse the victories of the National Assembly on 23rd June. This was followed by the fall of the Bastille and the emergence of the popular masses on the scene.

The crisis transformed the balance of power and effective power passed on to the hands of the third estate. But the fact that there had been no large-scale fighting and that the assembly had not identified with the revolt meant that appearances could still be salvaged and a compromise between the old and new orders was still possible. It is also worth noting that despite the crisis, nobody thought of overthrowing the monarchy.

Many including George Rudé feel that the revolution of 1789 might have turned out differently if the King had proved himself more trust-worthy as a champion of reform, and if the aristocracy had been willing to surrender privilege, the Third Estate might have settled for a compromise. Louis was temperamentally unlikely to respond to urgings to act positively to anticipate difficulties and was personally deeply attached to the nobility.

Mirabeau later expressed the view that if the substance of the royal reforms had been conveyed to the assembly in a more conciliatory fashion, instead through the medium recalling the most arbitrary features of a lit de justice, the kingdom would have been at Louis’ feet. But, after July, it was to late: by his intrigues with court and nobility, the King had already lost all chance of being accepted as the leader of a national movement of regeneration; and the privileged classes were by now damned, in the eyes of “patriots” and people, as the declared enemies of reform.

The intellectual currents of the period also need to be studied to understand the French Revolution. The principles prevalent in the 18th century were that of the Enlightenment which, although scientific and empirical, was also a system of abstract general principles. It tried to substitute impersonal for personal forces. Systems of ethics based on religious authority and sanctions were replaced by ideas of utilitarianism and humanitarianism.

18th century political theory expressed itself in frequent and violent attacks delivered in the name of reason on many aspects of contemporary life—on inefficient administration, meaningless social distinctions, above all on the powers of the Catholic Church and on religious intolerance. The philosophes attacked intolerance and catholic censorship. They attacked its privileges, decadence, and they benefited from the internal conflicts of the church and also from the popularity of freemasonry which recommended tolerance and natural religion.

They also attacked the privileges, feudal survivals, the imperfections and arbitrary nature of the monarchical administration. They believed that monarchs must justify their existence by efforts to increase the welfare and happiness of their peoples, that they must provide not merely good government but progressive government. The philosophes were united in their appeal to natural laws and in maintaining that reason should play an autonomous role in initiating reforms.

The French enlightenment on the whole was lacking in a systematic political theory. There were three main ideological strands. The first was Voltaire’s who promoted enlightened absolutism as being the answer for the improvement of society. Neither the masses nor the aristocracy were allowed to have a say in politics. A more conservative attitude to political questions was typified by Charles de Montesquieu. His ideas ran counter to the universalism of so many of his contemporaries in a number of ways. He promulgated the separation of powers so that a system of checks and balances may exist. An intermediary institution like a strong nobility was essential so that the monarch’s despotic powers could be checked. 

Jean-Jaccques Rousseau it appears, did more than any other writer of the period to spread the idea of equality, the belief that existing social distinctions were a sign of degeneracy. He postulated in society the existence of a General Will. The government’s true function was to execute the General Will which resided in the people as a whole. The concept was more than the mere decision of the majority: it expressed the real will of each individual member of society, even though that individual may fail to recognise this fact. If society couldn’t discover its general will then in such a situation, an individual should discover the will and follow it, even in the face of all opposition. His theory was to have a great influence in the second half of the century when the transition to romanticism was taking place.

In the long run, the influence of Montesquieu’s emphasis on the virtues of the English constitution did not outlast the third quarter of the century. Neither did Rousseau have a very ascertainable influence before the revolution. It is assumed that Montesquieu’s influence proved to be conservative and “aristocratic” rather than “monarchic” or “social revolutionary”; that Voltaire’s precepts were more congenial to reforming monarchs and ministers than to their rebellious subjects; and that among Rousseau’s political ideas, whatever his personal intentions, none had a more explosive and enduring influence than his conception of the sovereignty of the people.

In France there was no daily paper before the “Journal de Paris” began to appear in 1777. But, in the last decades before the Revolution, the writings of the Enlightenment – tracts and treatises of Montesquieu and Rousseau, the Encyclopedia of D’Alembert and Diderot; Raynal;’s History and Voltaire’s political satires and letters – had begun, in numerous guises and translations, to circulate outwards from Paris and the Netherlands.

The works of writers strengthened oral propaganda in the salons and cafes which multiplied in the 18th century, and in societies of all kinds which were founded in great numbers. The philosophy of the times inevitably entered into conversations and coloured debates. It can be seen in the subjects for which the academies offered competitive prizes. The topic set by the Academy of Dijon provoked Rousseau’s famous discourse ‘On the Origin of Inequality Among Men’. The Masonic lodges, though they included not only the bourgeois but priests, nobles and even members of the royalty, were favourable to philosophic infiltrations because they shared the same ideal: civil equality, religious toleration, liberation of the human personality from all institutions which kept it immature. By such different avenues the thought of 18th century writers penetrated the masses. It finally provided them with system of thought which perhaps contributed to the awakening of their class consciousness.

Furet and Baker point to the emergence of the public sphere in the 18th century, a metaphorical space between the state and civil society within which the French Revolution became possible. It was the beginning of mass politics. It was in this context that language became important in the revolution and political the masses.

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