FRENCH REVOLUTION 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 



FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789-1795 



A. D. Innes, Author of A General Sketch of Political History 



This article deals with a special movement in French and European 

 history. See the articles on Mirabeau ; Robespierre, and the great 

 figures of the Revolution ; those on Directory ; Feuillants ; Girondists ; 

 Jacobins, etc. See also Europe; France; Louis XVI ; Napoleon 



The French Revolution is the 

 name given to that period of vol- 

 canic upheaval in France, usually 

 reckoned as beginning with the 

 meeting of the States-General in 

 May, 1789, and closing with the 

 establishment of the Directory in 

 Oct., 1795. Its ideal was set forth 

 in the three wordsLiberty, Equality , 

 Fraternity. In form it was a terrific 

 convulsion; its methods trampled 

 its principles in the mire ; it issued, 

 not in democracy, but in Caesarism. 

 Nevertheless it undermined the 

 foundations of the old order of 

 privilege, and inaugurated the long 

 struggle for the political, social, 

 and economic emancipation of the 

 masses of the European population. 



France in 1788 had reached the 

 stage at which drastic reforms had 

 become a sheer necessity ; failing 

 reforms, the only possible alterna- 

 tives were a stormy revolution or 

 the establishment of an irresistible 

 tyranny. Her political system, 

 consummated under Louis XIV, 

 was an uncompromising absolutism 

 which allowed the people no share 

 whatever in the government. The 

 king ruled through ministers whom 

 he appointed or dismissed at his 

 own pleasure ministers nearly 

 always chosen from the aristocracy. 



and responsible to no one save to 

 the king himself. Socially, the 

 population was divided into rigid 

 castes, forming primarily three 

 groups, the noblesse or aristocracy 

 of birth, the clergy, and the com- 

 mons. In France all the members 

 of a noble family remained of the 

 noblesse, not commoners at all, 

 from generation to generation. The 

 clergy were separated from the rest 

 not by birth, but by the rule of celi- 

 bacy and by their sacred functions. 

 In the towns there was a middle 

 class the bourgeoisie, professional 

 men and traders and a working 

 class ; in the country districts the 

 peasantry were virtually the serfs 

 of the seigneurs, the landed pro- 

 prietors who owned the soil, to 

 whom they were legally bound to 

 render payments and unpaid ser- 

 vices, and who exercised a broad 

 jurisdiction over them. Economi- 

 cally, noblesse and clergy were al- 

 most exempt from taxation. The 

 whole burden of providing the 

 national revenue, the cost of the 

 court, of war, of administration, 

 was on the shoulders of the com- 

 mons, and pressed most heavily 

 upon the peasantry who were least 

 able to bear it. There was no 

 liberty of the individual. 



But the seeds of change had been 

 sown by the " intellectuals." The 

 mockery of Voltaire had shattered 

 the sense of reverence for conven- 

 tions. The writers in the Grande 

 Encyclopedic, D'Alembert, Dide- 

 rot, and others, had challenged all 

 the principles upon which the social 

 and political structure was based. 

 Jean Jacques Rousseau had pro- 

 pounded palpably revolutionary 

 doctrines, notably in his Contrat 

 Social, teaching that the organiza- 

 tion of society rested upon an 

 original contract imposed by the 

 strong, for their own interest, upon 

 the weak, claiming that the ulti- 

 mate authority is the Will of the 

 People, and insisting upon " natu- 

 ral rights," the Rights of Man. 



With a light heart France, in 

 order to injure England, had taken 

 the part of the Americans, and 

 French aristocrats, unconscious 

 that they were sporting on the 

 crater of a volcano, played gaily at 

 advocating those same revolution- 

 ary ideas. Meanwhile, France was 

 rushing towards bankruptcy, the 

 result of accumulated expenditure 

 upon wars of aggression from which 

 there had been but very brief re- 

 spites during the last century and 

 a half. 



The immediate cause of the cata- 

 clysm was this financial chaos. The 

 crushing burden of taxation and 

 forced labour imposed upon the 

 unprivileged classes, the obvious 

 need for reorganization, the oppo- 

 sition persistently offered to any 



French Revolution. The mob invading the Tuileries palace in an attempt to intimidate the king and queen, June 20. 1792 



: drawing in the Louvre, Paris 



