Attempt a critical analysis of the popular forces in the French revolution.

Generally revolutions are viewed as a historical oxymoron, extremely complex and contradictory. French revolution is no exception. While some acclaim it in the name of democracy and liberalism, others see it in the light of class conflict. F.Furet perhaps correctly says the French revolution should be regarded as “French revolutions” underlining the various strands in the movement highlighted by the studies of the ‘popular forces’ in revolutionary France. Furthermore, popular forces were seen as a result and not a cause of the revolution.

France in the 18th century was in a crisis. The existing political divisions were no longer in line with reality. The drafting of cáhiers de doleances, or lists of grievances, drawn up before the constitution of the Estates-General, which mobilized a mass of public opinion between 1788 and 1789, disclose layers of socially differentiated protests, demands and suggestions for fundamental reforms. The importance of the convocation of the Estates-General lies perhaps in the creation of an identity – that of the Estate (the three Estates were the clergy, the aristocracy and the rest of the population). Since the Estates-General had not been convoked since 1614 what was being created (or recreated) was a dead institution. The Third Estate was too enormous, and too divided, to constitute a homogeneous bloc. However, this identity was to be a major rallying-call during the Revolution, appropriated and reconstituted time and again by groups with divergent, often conflicting, demands and ideologies. This new identity was best seen in the pamphlet, Qu’est-ce-que le Tiers État? By Abbé Sieyes’ who identified the third estate with the nation. He asserted that this group contained within itself all that was necessary to constitute a nation, and criticized the rich and the aristocratic for living off the labor and industry of the mass of people – bourgeois, peasants and urban workers – whose demands for representation and rights were founded on their toil.

J.Habermas pointed out that the 18th century saw the rise of “political public sphere” -a metaphorical space between state and civil society. Its institutions included salons, cafes, academics and journals and it depended on the circulations of printed material. According to K.M.Baker, it was within this space that French revolution became possible -a public space in which nation could acclaim its rights against the crown. It is through media that popular opinion was mobilized and politicized, and the relationship of ideas to historical change can be borne out concretely through an assessment of these processes, whereby the ideological was rendered material and vice versa. D.Mornet wrote that the result of enlightenment literature was a product that he vaguely calls “intelligence” and this quality was one of the principal causes of the revolution.

R.Darnton further elaborates this. His study centers of the role of the anonymous libels or libelles, often pornographic in nature which attacked the royal family, the French court and the clergy. he shows how the readers appropriate and transform the messages conveyed by authors, placing the study of books in context of other media, noting that ideas spread via “gossip, songs, letters, prints, pamphlets, newspapers and manuscript gazettes”. Most important of these ideas was that monarchy had degenerated into despotism which made people sympathetic to anti monarchical position. Libels were “newsworthy” in the sense that, like the gazettes and gossip they contained stories of well known figures and although many of those figures were from the previous reign, they exemplified the themes of the contemporary times. Moreover, they were in the form of books and hence lasted longer- gaining extended life to the anti-Versailles “political folklore”. He also argues that the pamphlet literature from 1787-1789 suggest that contemporaries did not perceive an “aristocratic reaction” that the historians have posited. “Public opinion’ while not always siding with the parlements, consistently opposed the “despotism” of the monarchy, especially of its ministers. Sarah Maza’s innovative use of contemporary literature and drama decodes the prevailing beliefs regarding luxury, morality, and nature of society. She writes that literate French had an acute sense of moral void and had a “fear of luxury”. Her study assumes significance when we see that the poor also share a culture of virtue, seeing themselves as morally superior to the rich.

Clearly it was the beginning of mass politics. Influenced by Tocqueville analysis, Furet explores the role of intellectuals in determining the public opinion. He felt that by abolishing the ancient ‘liberties’ and destroying the political function of the nobility without creating a new ruling class, the monarchy unwittingly set up the writers as imaginary substitutes for that ruling class. Thus, literature took a political function and gave authority to men of letters. Furet borrowing from A.Cochin, adds that the channels of revolutionary ideology were the cafes, salons, Masonic lodges, the so called societies de pensee or philosophical societies. These were the “centers of democratic sociability” which were not recognized as legitimate forums through which grievances might be aired. When revolution broke out only the people could claim the right to absolute power and politics consequently, became a matter of persuasively expressing or interpreting the will of the people. Consequently, Revolution ushered in a world where mental representations of power governed all actions and where a network of signs completely dominated political life.” Revolution activity par excellence was the production of a “maximalist language” through which the intermediary of unanimous assemblies were mythically endowed with the general will. In this respect the revolution is marked by a fundamental dichotomy-the deputies made laws in the name of the people, whom they presumed to represent; but the members of the sections and of the clubs acted as the embodiment of the people. Hence, between May-June 1789 and 9 thermidor there was a struggle between the representatives of the successive assemblies and club militants to attain the symbolic position of attaining the people will. Lynn Hunt noted that language was the only guarantee that power would belong to the people. This led to inversion of power or as K.M Baker says “the transfer of authority from the public person of sovereign, to the sovereign person of the public”. It was in this context that we can understand the fact that the popular movements saw themselves as true defenders of the revolution.

The importance of language and symbol is highlighted by Mona Ozouf’s study on Revolutionary festivals. Influenced by E.Durkheim’s theory that even secular societies need a shared belief in the sacrality, she perceives the phenomenon of festivals as manifestations of collective human need for the sacred. A medium through which eternal and sublime social bond was to be formed. The revolutionaries after attacking traditional catholic worship as ”fanatical, superstitious and supportive of tyranny” nevertheless understood the need to substitute the old religious forms with new doctrines ,symbols, and above all rituals. Fearing popular immorality or resurgent “fanaticism”, they sought to fill in the dangerous vacuum with a new “religion’. From Catholicism they borrowed such familiar devices as catechisms, alter, tabernacles, sermons, and even envisaged the use of “republican mass” officiated by the priests. Yet they purged catholic practice of those elements which they regarded as superstitious, unnatural, or tainted with tyranny. The result was an airy, abstract religiosity that culminated in the cult of Theo philanthropy (deistic movement based on love of god and man). So the new festivals were the “festivals of Reason”. Revolutionaries also used symbols of Antiquity and the rituals of Freemasons. Antiquity because it appeared as a golden age in which equality and liberty co existed and there was no contradiction between morality and natural inclinations. Most of all it represented a time of instituting, of founding a society governed by wise laws and overseen by a sage lawgiver. Revolutionaries saw themselves embarking on a new path probably sought to have invoked a prior “founding moment”. Therefore an aspect of revolutionary festivals was a sense of inauguration. Mason symbols on the other hand, represented “reasonable religion of the lodges” that emphasized the creative, hence sacred power of human beings and their ability, through scientific study, to learn the secrets of creation.

Revolutionaries repeatedly used the revolutionary festivals to emphasize the links between human beings, links portrayed as biological, domestic, and civic. The famous revolutionary artist Jacque Louie-David organized many festivals from 1790 onwards. Thus the festivals solved a problem of its own by reconciling the individual (liberty) with the community. The revolutionary festival marked the beginning of a new era and a new form of legitimacy. Therefore, festivals of revolution provided the sense of sacred successfully.

According to K. McDonough the politicians tried to take advantage of the turmoil in order to “unify and “purify “the population. The importance of music was recognized by the contemporaries such as Jean-Bapiste Leclere(member of national convention)who wrote in one of his essays that the people will respond positively to music which embraces the morals of the republic and the government should therefore organize and regulate music to influence citizens. Laura Mason feels that recent historians of revolutionary political culture have over- estimated its unity and incorrectly attributed its creation to a restricted group of literate elites. Instead, she argues, the uses of song remind us of the contingency of the Revolution on and off the streets of Paris In fact, as she explicitly states at one point, “the Jacobins did not lead the way in appropriating songs to the revolutionary project”. Rather it was the royalists in the early phases of the Revolution who used the satirical potential of song in print and performance to perhaps greater effect than the leaders and supporters of the new regime. Further, after the August 1792 overthrow of the constitutional monarchy, it was the fraternal singing practices of the sans-culottes and the commercial opportunism of publishers anxious to cash in on patriotic sentiment which made song such a powerful revolutionary and republican force. For instance, in late summer 1791, royalists adopted an air from a comic opera staged at the Comedie- italienne as their own signature song. This tune, titled O Richard, o mon roi, implied in the theater and in popular usage that the King was being held hostage by the Revolution.On the other hand, Mason emphasizes how the Marseillaise, initially written as a battle cry to inspire the troops, “became a wholesale republican attack on despotism at home and abroad”, allowing singers and audiences to imagine they were rebuking a variety of enemies. Between 1792 and 1796, the song expanded the role of revolutionary anthem as it was sung at festivals, in the theaters, in public gardens and at fraternal dinners, by soldiers and civilians, and at moments of victory and defeat alike.

The concept of `politicization’ can be discerned not only in revolutionary ideology but also with the ways in which revolutionary activity was organized. Rúde has systematically set out the various forms of revolutionary organization and mobilization in his study of the Parisian crowd during the Revolution. These forms grew out of a climate of intense discussion and debate, centered in all the major urban public spaces: taverns, wine shops, markets, and so on. Mediated through the printed word – in various journals – these took a more recognized shape in various institutions that came into being at this time and espoused radical ideas: clubs like the Cordelier and Jacobin Club, the societés populaires, and the Sections, agencies of direct democracy. The Commune in Paris played a major role in stimulating revolutionary activity, witnessing a progressive radicalization as the Revolution grew in scope.

Michelet identifies the revolutionary crowds with the ‘people’ and idealizes them whereas Taine sees them as nothing more than a ‘mob’. Rude argues, instead, that urban protest was organized primarily around the older quarters of Paris, such as the Faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marcel. These areas housed a ‘pétit-bourgeoisie’ of small shopkeepers, master craftsmen and artisans (menu people), who were on a delicate line between moderate bourgeois status and a descent into proletarianization. These people, were desperately keen to preserve lower middle-class respectability, and a distance from the urban working groups. At the same time, the organization of urban workshops, studios and corporations implied that the lower bourgeoisie and the working classes were in close proximity to one another, eating, working, and often living together. Thus, social solidarities in the Revolution were a complicated matter. Essentially, Rúde’s argument is that the lower bourgeoisie of the older quarters of Paris provided leadership to the popular movement, and the working-class groupings collected together as a militant force under their command. Although Wage earners played a substantial role, the Reveillon riot of 1789 was in fact the only real movement of wage earners. Vagabonds, criminal, petty thieves –the so called “dregs of the society” did mingle with the crowd but were always in a minority.

Richard Cobb offers a methodological critique of this identification of the popular movement with `respectable’ petit-bourgeois initiatives. Cobb points out that police records, which are Rúde’s prime source, often tell us more about what the police expected to find in `disturbances’ ( the categories into which `offenders’ could be fitted being very neatly defined and compartmentalized in the police imagination ) than about the actual social composition of crowds. Thus, Cobb raises a concrete instance of the problem of the relationship between representation and reality.

The term used for revolutionary crowds is sans-culottes which for A.Saboul has a political connotation. Sans culottes can not be seen as a class because they included people with diverse socio-economic background. Outwardly recognized by their dress, sans coulottes can be best understood in relation to its enemies. They readily judged a person’s character from his appearance and then his character depended on what his political opinions would be. All who offended their sense of equality and fraternity were suspected of being an aristocrat. This failure to identify a real aristocrat from a member of upper bourgeoisie underlines the distinct character of the urban popular movement. One manifestation of sans-culottes was the appearance of local armiesrevolutionaries of ardent patriots. Cobb who has studied their composition has pointed out that in Paris they included shopkeepers and artisans mostly and only a minority of wage earners. So could be used for the suppression of demands for higher wages. This points to the fact sans culottes never really left economic considerations behind and with the sharpening of economic crisis these conflicts came out in the open. Shopkeepers would clearly not generally favor severe price regulations for their commodities, which might cut into their profits. Neither could workshop-masters be expected to support the demands for higher wages that laborers periodically made. Thus, because of economic differences of the sans culottes they were united only in political ideology and behavior (principle of sovereignty of the people, hatred of the rich and violence against all who refuse to join them in their struggle)they clearly had a political consciousness as seen from expressions like “people’s axe” and “scythe of equality”. The Camp de Mars demonstration and its preparatory movement, and the active support they gave to exclusively politico-military actions such as the assault of Bastille and the expulsion of the Girondins from the convention further highlight their politicization. They however, lacked any degree of political insight as they were wanting to receive the benefits of the revolution and once victory was insight their movement faded away.

 Soboul and Rúde thus, point to a difference between `political consciousness’, concerned with putting forward demands for rights, liberties and powers, and `economic consciousness’, grounded in the invariant logic of rising prices, shortages, and acute social misery. Rúde points out the unexpected fusion of these two forms of consciousness at certain conjunctures: as in the October 1789 March of the Women. As they marched, they chanted, `We are going to bring home the baker, the baker’s wife and the baker’s son. The demonstrators of 1795 proclaimed demands for `bread and the Constitution of 1793’. As the Revolution progressed, the ideology of the revolutionary crowds underwent considerable `politicization’. Thus, Rude correctly adds that without the impact of political ideas from the bourgeois leaders, such movements would have remained purposeless and so political ideas gave it a direction but it was the economic motives which alone accounts for the continuity of social ferment.

However Cobban disagrees and points out that the crowds could easily be taught to chant political slogans and so for him the politicization of crowds should not be over emphasized. Also R.Cobb criticizing Soboul points that the sans culottes movement operated for a limited period through certain institutions but, these institutions of sectionaire politics were not created by the movement.

The urban movements in addition, illustrate the tension that existed between the leadership and the masses. The leadership and the sans-culottes developed an ambiguous relationship: the latter frequently sought extensive government control ( over prices and working conditions, against aristocrats and `traitors’ ), even as they sought to develop practices of direct democracy, and the former ended up betraying democratic principles even as they affirmed them, as for instance, the rights of man and citizen were predicated on the principle of revolutionary patriotism, `loyalty to the nation’, defined in absolute terms, transgression of which signified death .For Cobb the principal contradiction in the popular movement lay less in class tensions than in a conflict between two differing conceptions of the exercise of revolutionary power: granted autonomy, the movement may have achieved a `glorious anarchy’, cutting through all bonds of power and creating a destabilizing but also potentially creative chaos. The opposite pull in the movement led in the direction of dictatorship, and was exemplified by Montagnard terror.

William Sewell examines the implications of the French Revolution for social relations in France, and particularly for labour. The revolutionary discourse of unity, privileging the interests of the organic whole of society over its constituent parts – an idea that is in a sense Rousseauist – implied a complicated breakdown of the corporate structures of the Old Regime. Sectional interests, in this discourse, could only be harmful to society and the nation. This had a twofold impact: it broke down the old feudal privileges, but it also destroyed old corporate solidarities within the working population. This was exemplified by the Le Chapelier law of 1791, which abolished trade corporations, and was thus a major source of discontent for artisans and craftsmen. Sewell also points out a developing dialectic in the sans-culotte mentality between direct democracy on the one hand – which as a principle the sans-culottes championed fiercely, and an obsession with unanimity in decision-making on the other, dissent being suspect as a mark of treachery to the revolutionary cause. Thus, ironically, extreme democratic practices were coupled with an almost fundamentalist intolerance.

France also has a long history of peasant revolts or jacqueries. But what was different this time was the political consciousness showed by the peasants. Still the turbulence of the peasants was an unexpected phenomenon, even for the self conscious revolutionary, since the cahiers had, in their final form, virtually excluded the mass of rural population from consideration.

The peasantry was crushed under multiple tax burdens along with corvee and multiple sate service. A.Cobban has pointed out that if the feudal dues were becoming heavy on the peasants it was because of their increasing commercialization. Thus, the peasant’s revolt was not only against feudalism but also against growing commercialization (capitalism). It was not a bourgeois movement either but on the contrary was directed against the penetration of urban financial interest into the country and was rather autonomous.

One of G.Lefebvre’s vital contributions to the study of the Revolution is his analysis of the dissemination of agitation through rumours – of aristocratic conspiracy, encirclement by royal troops, and so on, which turned the spread of unrest into a self-multiplying, self-generating process and speeded up radical change. The death blow to the ancien regime, however, was delivered by the Grande Peur or Great Fear, in the countryside between July 20 and August 6. The massive peasant uprising that spread in waves across France, wiping out seigniorial rights, appeared as a motive force – the motive force, as Hobsbawm asserts, in the process of accelerated social transformation.

1789 was a turbulent year for the French peasantry. The public spheres mobilized by the convocation of the Estates-General and the cahiers raised enormous hopes, at the very least, of a substantial lightening of feudal burdens. They believed that their king was going to help them. At the same time, the problems caused by acute food shortages bred fears of an `aristocratic conspiracy’ not only to stop the “good king” from helping the peasantry but to starve the poor as well. Vagrancy and vagabondage were major sources of fear, and in the minds of peasants linked concretely to aristocratic plots. Partly, this fear of the unemployed and the destitute as agents of brutal violence was justified, but partly it also reflected an obsession with property that characterized the peasant smallholder.

The spread of rumours fuelled local panics that combined in a chain reaction and by March popular agitations broke out. . It was the storming of the Bastille, however, that really triggered the peasant revolution proper. Their main targets were quite well defined-The building blocks of feudal privilege: they pillaged forests, attacked enclosures and tax-farmers, asserted their rights over common lands, and, most significantly, destroyed archives authorizing the collection of peasant dues. This ultimately forced the National Assembly to pay immediate attention to the question of feudalism. And on August 4th feudalism was abolished and peasant revolution ended abruptly.

As feudalism was now abolished and the inception of agrarian capitalism was stalled, the peasantry at this time became conservative. No longer did they identify themselves with the increasing radicalism of the urban movement. It was from this reaction of the peasantry in the French revolution that Marx concluded that once hunger for land is satisfied the peasantry would seek to be revolutionary. The peasantry reacted by and large unenthusiastically: to deChristianization campaigns, to the terror inflicted by the armies revolutionáires of the sans-culottes, and most of all to the centralization sought by Jacobin power. The imposition of heavy taxes, and conscription in the context of European war, stirred deep peasant protest. This was discernible in many ways such as amplified support for monarchism, pro-clericalism, and anti-urban agitation in the country side

In March 1793, the region of La Vendée in the Western Loire broke out in violent anti-government revolt, two months after the execution of Louis XVI. The revolt was sparked off by peasant conscription, and aggravated by what was seemed as the atheistic tendencies of the revolutionary government. Cobban draws attention to hostility to the perceived sacrifice of rural to urban interests, and to the drain of rural wealth to towns in the countryside which manifested itself La Vendée where modernization had led to tensions. As J.Mcmanners has pointed out they were fighting for their own ideal for liberty: the liberty to practice their religion and to contact out of nations unjust wars and taxation. The La Vendee insurrection was seen as counter revolutionary and suppressed brutally. C.Lucas points that no one wanted to go back to the pre revolutionary period in this area so the term counter revolutionary is a misnomer and perhaps the term anti revolutionary is more appropriate. The word counter revolutionary in the language of the revolution was used for anyone who had different ideas than the reigning revolutionary government. This included not only conservative peasants but also political rivals, Émigrés, disappointed revolutionary idealist etc.Anti-revolutionaries were those who did’nt want to turn back to the ancient regime but merely wanted the revolution which succeeded at the time to have done different things ,or not have done certain things.Revolution had not changed things for better but in some ways had worsen the things. Counter revolutionaries tried to capitalize on this disillusionment .W.Doyle remarks that Counter revolution failed because they were unable to take over anti-revolution. And contrary to popular belief, as a study of counter revolutionary trials has shown, 85% of the counter revolutionaries arrested during the reign of terror belong to the third estate, refuting the view that counter revolution was a movement of royalist aristocrats and clergymen.

In the 18th century women were generally kept out of the political sphere. The vast majority lived in rural areas and had almost no political, economic and social rights. Even thinkers like Rousseau attacked the idea of upper class women’s role in the public life through salons etc. He said women should remain nurturers in order to best serve the nation and cautioned against women reading his books. Pierre Roussel in his biological study of women concluded that nature designated them to be guardians of the family. Some liberal intellectuals such as Jaucourt and Condorcet did raise the issue of women rights and the cahiers do contain some demands that can clearly be seen as proto feminist – equality before the law, marriage law reform, and the protection of women’s trades.1789 saw a flurry of radical feminine activity, and the opening of women’s clubs, reading circles, and growth of women’s press feminism as seen from the figures in the field of literature.In1750-89,there were only 78 women writers which rose to 330 in 1789-99.In initial years hope of new nation ,talk of equality and natural laws , the weakening of church and execution of the French king (seen as a father figure and symbol of subjection of women), liberalization of laws in inheritance and marriage all raised hopes for feminists. There was a broadening of public sphere and women showed great enthusiasm for the revolution.

At one level, women, being the marginalized gender, shared an implied solidarity cutting across class lines, and can so be spoken of as a bloc. At another level, however, the social experience of women was certainly not uniform, and divided sharply by class. Therefore, the women participation has to be studied at two levels-the privileged and the underprivileged. While the elite women practiced the politics of feminism and welfare, the working women or sans jupons practiced politics of subsistence and shared a culture of poverty. Real feminism comes from upper class women as lower class women were playing a more traditional role and were concerned more with socio-economic problems rather than political objectives. This is evident from the cahiers also as the demand for political rights are fewer than the demand for economic, legal and social protection. . Sans jupons represented the bulk of the women who played an active role in the Revolution were socially tied to the popular movement. The unofficial pamphlets of poorer women at this time spoke of the harsh conditions of their trade, of the overcrowding of city hospitals, of the injustice of grain collectors, and of the luxury of bishops and the plight of poor priests. They played an active role in revolution (a leading role in checking that the Maximillan law not infringed upon, had a contingent called Amazon of liberty or Theroigne de Mericourt.). Darlene Gay Levy and Harriet Applewhite argue that the concept of militant citizenship, the right to bear arms and use force as citizens of the Republic, was an important feature of women’s activity during the Revolution. This concept, articulated in women’s revolutionary practice in journees between 1789 and 1792, culminated in the militant activities of the Society for Revolutionary Republican Women, set up in May 1793. This association was founded on the principle of military patriotism as the duty of a citoyenne (a new word coined to define a female citizen). Women radicalized revolutionary politics and sans jupons were instrumental in transforming street politics.

However, in the radical phase the influence of Rousseau prevailed. Radicals took back many liberal reforms and Olympe de Gouges was branded as counter revolutionary after publication of the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizen’. By June 1793 women definitely excluded from rights of citizenship. In March 1793 women were forbidden entry in Jacobin club and latter even forbidden to gather in groups. Execution of the queen (16 Oct 1793) was seen as the symbol of everything that went wrong when a women enters public sphere. Few days latter all women clubs and societies were banned(Using the occasion for a street disturbance between the market women and members of the Society for Revolutionary Republican Women). Lynn hunt points that even in art and literature women played a passive or allegorical role, that is, they stood for abstract ideas such as liberty with a tacit understanding that they would not enjoy actual political liberty. Female characters decline in prominence. For example, in Jacque Louie-David’s ‘The Oath of the Horatii’, the female world is shown in the background earlier but in the latter version it is entirely out of the scene.

Joan Scott points that the terms by which the revolutionaries defined citizenship effectively and inevitably excluded women from national sovereignty that was otherwise loudly proclaimed to be universal and based on the principle of equality. The concept of citizenship was gendered and its gender was masculine. A citizen was to be active, self-reliant, rational, virile, concerned with public good and republican- attributes associated traditionally with men. Beginning with Olympe de Gouges feminist were handicapped by a political language that necessarily defined liberalization in the terms of the “rights of man” and so revolutionary discourse contradicts itself by defining citizenship in masculinist terms. Revolutionaries refuse to recognize the rights of women and emancipated enslaved blacks only after a successful slave uprising in Saint-Domingue. Attempts of Olympe de Gouges are a case point. When she challenged the exclusion of women from right of man she argued on the basis of features that only women possessed-parental and familial love, courage during child birth, superior physical beauty which gave her writing the colour of lobbying for special interests and undermined the universal citizenship. Accordingly in the declaration de Gouges while supporting the universal liberal theory of citizenship stressed that women should be citizens on specific characteristics of sex. She invoked difference to declare equality.

At the same time, it has also been argued by many historians that the French Revolution also frequently articulated an intensely conservative view of the role of women in society, ironically exemplified by the very protests they engaged in. Thus, the centrality of women in the October 1789 journee, being at base a demand for the regulation of soaring bread prices, expressed the conception of women as sustainers of the family, while their resistance to deChristianization campaigns defined their social role as defenders of the community. This argument ignores the very militant and radical nature of women’s action and ideology. It could also be argued, that these conceptions of the social role of women, conservative though they were, in many cases simply reflected the role that women did actually play in French society: thus, this implicit conservatism was neither new nor remarkable. What was remarkable and new was the mobilization of women as active agents in revolutionary processes far beyond their normal social experience. The radical potential of this mobilization is undeniable. Thus, the decade of revolution in many ways ended up as a devastating experience for women, especially working-class women, who were hit hardest of all by the economic ravages and political instabilities of the time, and fell prey to a number of insecurities. What the experience of women in the Revolution represents is really a series of intertwined but ambiguous processes. Joan Landes and others have pointed out that in real terms the Revolution represented a significant regression for women.

Thus, popular unrest was closely allied with the economic realities of the times. Though the French revolution occurred broadly in context of overall growth of the French economy, the years 1787-89 were that of economic depression and the crop failure had worsened the condition of the impoverished. What was common between the urban and rural movement was the rise of the poor against the rich. Moreover, the popular forces did show political consciousness and were largely autonomous movements. A study of different popular movements unveils a confusing picture of changing identities, cross-cutting and often conflicting solidarities, a range of motives, forms of action and demands, all bearing intricate and varying relationships to the `main line’ of revolutionary development.while the classic interpretation saw revolution as one (Jacobin,rebulican,centralized,anti clerical,and terror) a look at popular forces in the French revolution shows that revolution never meant one thing .Revolution differed at different moment in time and for different people. This is the only way we can account for the various contradictory strands during the French revolution.

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