Danton - Brief history of the French Revolution

Appendices
I
Brief history of the French Revolution

The French Revolution marked a turning point in European history. The events that began to unfold in 1787 and that terminated with the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in1815 unleashed forces that altered not only the political and so­cial structure of states but the map of Europe. Many attempts were made, in France and in other European countries, to undo the work of the Revolution and to repress the ideas of liberty, equality, constitutionalism, democracy, and nationalism that the Revolution had inspired. But the Old Regime was dead, in France at least, and a Europe dominated by monarchy and aristocracy and by a hierarchical social order could never be fully restored. With the coming of the French Revolution, then, we enter into a more modern world — a world of class conflict, middle-class as­cendancy, acute national consciousness, and popular democracy. Together with industrialization, the Revolution reshaped the in­stitutions, the societies, and even the mentalities of Europeans.

The origins of the French revolution

By the last half of the eighteenth century, France appeared to have overcome the dismal cycle of famine, plague, and high mortality that, previously, had inhibited both demographic and economic growth. The vast majority of Frenchmen who lived in the villages and tilled the fields were better off than their

Yet, despite evident signs of prosperity, there was great dis­content and restlessness in France in the 1780s. French insti­tutions were obsolete, inefficient, and uncoordinated. They were controlled by the nobility and by self-perpetuating corpo­rations of hereditary officeholders. To anyone touched by the ideas of the Enlightenment they seemed irrational and unjust. The middle classes, especially, were offended by the legal and social distinctions that kept them from attaining high office or exerting political influence. Every bishop in France was of noble birth; only nobles could receive commissions in the army; bour­geois plans for economic reform were constantly thwarted by the privileged classes. The economy, particularly in agriculture, remained unstable and subject to fluctuations that could drive the peasants and urban poor to starvation. An inefficient and inequitable tax system yielded too small an income to support the state, discouraged economic growth, and fell most heavily on the poor. On the eve of the Revolution, France faced a conjunc­ture of crises. Three of these crises — agrarian distress, financial chaos, and aristocratic reaction — were particularly acute.

Agrarian Distress

Bad weather and poor harvests in 1787 and 1788 weakened an agricultural economy that was already somewhat unstable. The poorer peasants lived at a subsistence level; with poor crops they starved. The purchasing power of well-to-do peasants declined. Grain shortages led to sharp price increases, particularly in the cost of bread. Moreover, from the late 1770s the long-term growth of the French economy had been interrupted in several

Financial Chaos

The finances of Louis XVI's government were a shambles. By 1787 one-half of the nation's tax revenues went to service the massive public debt that Louis XIV had left to his successors. France's involvement in the Seven Years' War and in the American War for Independence had driven the government further along the road to bankruptcy. Without a reform of the tax system the king could not meet his obligations. But such a reform would mean an attack on the privileges of the upper classes, and this Louis could never quite summon the courage to do.

Three ministers struggled with the problem. The first, the Swiss banker Necker, was dismissed by the king in 1781 after he had proposed some modest reforms. Necker's successor, Calonne, thought he could carry on without much change. But as the deficit mounted he grew alarmed, and in 1786 he proposed a much more radical program than Necker's. The most striking provision of Calonne's program was a direct tax on all landown­ers-noble and commoner, lay and clerical. ... In addition, older taxes, such as the faille, which weighed on the lower orders, were to be reduced. Calonne's reforms struck at the very heart of the system of privilege and the social hierarchy of the Old Regime.

Calonne, aware that there would be bitter opposition to his plans, persuaded the king to call a conference of notables hoping that they could be induced to back his program. But the members of this assembly, meeting in February 1787, were drawn largely from the privileged orders and refused to support Calonne.

The king now dismissed Calonne and put in his place one of Calonne's chief opponent, Lornenie de Brienne, Archbishop of

Aristocratic Reaction

During the 1780s, then, aristocratic demands on the peasantry were aggravating the distress of the countryside, and aristocratic resistance to tax reform was hampering the government in its attempts to revamp the nation's financial structure. These were two facets of the aristocratic reaction that was directly respon­sible for the coming of the French Revolution.

The tremendous strength of the French privileged classes had been built up steadily during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. At every turn the poor, the aspiring middle class, and en­lightened reformers in government confronted the fact of privi­lege. Some men of the Enlightenment, in particular Voltaire, and such royal ministers as Turgot and Calonne encouraged the king to rationalize state finance and to bring a measure of justice to French society at the expense of the privileged groups. Louis XVI supported several of these plans for reform, but he always backed down when the privileged classes protested. By the 1780s it appeared that the French king was the prisoner of the nobility and that he would do nothing to displease them.

Moreover, the nobles were particularly skillful in confusing the issue. Certain privileges, such as those that protected the laws, institutions, and customs of the provinces from encroachments

There were those, however, who were not deceived by the rhetoric of the privileged orders. The hesitations of the king and the intransigence of the aristocracy increased the bitterness of large sections of the population. They wanted to put an end to privilege, and they felt that the unreformed monarchy would not help them in this struggle. The attack on privilege and the demand for equality before the law were the driving forces in the Revolution from beginning to end. Aristocratic stubborn­ness and royal weakness made it impossible to achieve equality through peaceful reform. In the end, privilege could be destroyed only by attacking aristocracy and monarchy.

The French Revolution and the King

The Estates General, which had not met since 1614, was con­vened by the king at Versailles on May 5, 1789. The electoral pro­cess by which deputies were selected was a relatively generous one: all adult French males had the right to vote, indirectly, for representatives to the Third Estate, which served the interests of the commoners. Moreover, following some recent examples in provincial assemblies, the Third Estate was given twice as many representatives as those of either the First or the Second Estate. The First and Second Estates (the clergy and the nobility, re­spectively) represented the privileged orders. The king had asked

Tennis Court Oath, drawing by David

The Estates General and the National Assembly

The mood of the Third Estate was best expressed by one of its deputies, the Abbe Sieyes. In a famous pamphlet, What Is the Third Estate?, Sieyes argued that the real French nation was made up of people who were neither clergymen nor noblemen, and that this majority should have the decisive voice in all political matters. This idea, which approached the doctrine of popular sovereignty, was translated into action during the opening debate on voting procedures in the Estates General. Since the Third Estate had as many representatives as the other two combined, it wanted the three Estates to meet and vote together. A few liberal nobles and a somewhat larger number of the lower clergy were sure to support the Third Estate, so joint meetings would give the Third Estate a clear majority. The king and the privileged orders, on the other hand, demanded that the Estates vote separately. This was traditional procedure in meetings of the Estates General, and it assured that the first two Estates would retain control.

The Third Estate not only rejected the king's plan for separate meetings: it declared itself the National Assembly of France and invited the other Estates to sit with it. The National Assembly then assumed the right to approve all taxation and to withhold all taxation if its political demands were not met. In the face of this bold initiative, the king hesitated but finally resorted to a show of force. On June 20 he had the Third Estate barred from its

In a dreary repetition of the political ineptitude he had shown in previous crises, Louis XVI missed his chance to act as impartial mediator between the hostile Estates. On June 23 he went before the Estates General and offered a program of re­form that only partly satisfied the demands of the Third Estate for tax reform and did nothing to abolish the privileges of the nobility. At about the same time, the king began to concentrate troops around Versailles and Paris. His aim was to put down any disturbances that might occur should he decide to dissolve the Assembly. By now, however, neither partial reform nor brute force was a sufficient answer to the political crisis. The revolu­tion had already become a battle between those who desired a more equal and open society and those who wanted to preserve the privileges of the aristocracy.

The Popular Revolt

Most of the deputies in the Third Estate were lawyers, profes­sional men, and lesser officeholders. Their aspirations were those of the French bourgeoisie. In the urban centers and the country­side resided yet another element of the Third Estate — the mass of artisans, shopkeepers, and peasants who lived in poverty or on the edge of it. Their aspirations and needs were not identical with those of the deputies at Versailles. But in the summer of 1789 a series of spontaneous popular disturbances and revolts broke out that linked, for the moment at least, the bourgeoisie and the common people in an uneasy alliance against the aristocracy.

Notable among these uprisings was an attack on July 14 (still France's national holiday) on the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison in Paris. By the end of June the city of Paris had grown tense. The economic depression of the 1780s and the poor har­vests of 1788 and 1789 had reduced the urban poor to misery, and to misery was now added the fear that the king and the aristo-

The fall of the Bastille was an event of small consequence —the crowd had destroyed little more than a building — but its implications were immense. The attack was regarded as a blow against royal depotism. It showed that the Revolution was not simply a debate over a constitution. More crucially, it brought the city of Paris and the political leaders of Paris to the forefront. A new, insurrectionary municipal government was formed; hence­forth Paris would shape the direction of the Revolution. Finally, the events in Paris set off revolts in the provinces.

About the same time that the Parisian crowds were taking the Revolution into their own hands, the French peasants, also disappointed with the slow pace of reform, began to take action of their own. Like the poor of the cities, the peasants had been heartened by the political promise of the winter of 1788/89. They had patiently drawn up their cahiers and they had chosen their electoral committees; then they had waited confidently for relief to follow. The Estates General met in May. Spring passed and summer came, but the peasants were still poor; they were still not allowed to till the unused land of the nobles; and they still had to pay their customary dues.

Then, during July 1789, the month of the storming of the Bastille, rumors spread through rural France that there would be no reforms and that the aristocrats were coming with troops to impose reaction on the countryside. The result was panic and

The Destruction of Privilege

The popular revolts and riots had a profound impact on the king, the aristocracy, and the deputies of the Third Estate alike. Already in June, before the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI had recognized the National Assembly and ordered the clergy and the nobles to sit with the Third Estate. He also recognized the revolutionary government of Paris and authorized the for­mation of a National Guard composed largely of members of the bourgeoisie. But the king received no credit for his concessions from the revolutionary leaders, who felt, quite rightly, that his sympathies were still with the nobles. At the same time, Louis' indecision had discouraged many of the strongest supporters of the Old Regime. The most reactionary noblemen, headed by the king's brother, the Count of Artois, began to leave the country. Other members of the aristocracy sought to preserve their prop­erty by making dramatic concessions to the call for reform.

On the night of August 4, one nobleman, the Viscount de Noailles, stood before the Assembly and proposed that all feu­dalities and obligations be abolished. In a performance at once impressive and bizarre, nobles, clerics, and provincial notables arose to renounce noble privileges, clerical titles, and provincial liberties. The Old Regime was dismantled in one night of heated oratory, and the way seemed clear for the Assembly's main busi­ness — to provide a constitution for France. The implementa­tion of the concessions of August 4 was somewhat less tidy. The structure of aristocratic privilege was indeed abolished by de­cree, along with tax exemptions and hereditary office holding, but peasants were to continue paying customary dues to their

The Declaration of the Rights of Man

On the whole, the National Assembly had succeeded in wiping out the privileges of the upper classes, the corporations of officeholders, and the provinces. Now it faced the task of cre­ating new political, legal, and administrative structures for the country. The ideological framework for this task was set forth by the constitution-makers in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which they adopted on August 27, 1789.

In this preamble to a constitution yet unformed, the members of the National Constituent Assembly (the National Assembly acting in its constitution-making role) established a set of prin­ciples idealistic enough to sustain the enthusiasm of the mass of Frenchmen for the Revolution and sweeping enough to include all humanity. Basic ideas were personal freedom, equality under the law, the sanctity of property rights, and national sovereignty. The first article said: "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights; social distinctions may be based only upon general use­fulness." There were to be no class privileges and no interference with freedom 'of thought and religion'. Liberty, property, secu­rity, and resistance to oppression were declared inalienable and natural rights. Laws could be made and taxes levied only by the citizens or their representatives. The nation, not the king, was sovereign, and all power came from and was to be exercised in the name of the nation. Thus was established the framework for a system of liberty under law. The Declaration was a landmark in the fight against privilege and despotism, and it had a great appeal to revolutionary and democratic factions throughout Europe.

The October Days

The Declaration of the Rights of Man was not simply a page lifted from John Locke, the philosophes, and the Americans. It was a highly political document hammered out in an Assembly that was showing itself to be increasingly divided. There were

The king's recalcitrance, the divisions in the Assembly, and the food shortages combined to produce yet another popular ex­plosion. On October 5, 1789, a crowd of some twenty thousand armed Parisians marched on Versailles, demanding bread and in­sisting that the royal family return to Paris. The king considered flight, but he was persuaded by Necker, who had been recalled to the government, and by Lafayette, leader of the National Guard, to appease the crowd and leave Versailles. On October 6 the king, Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the royal family drove into Paris in their carriage, surrounded by shouting crowds, and established themselves at their palace in the center of the city. A few days later, the National Constituent Assembly followed.

The Parisians seemed satisfied with the king's capitulation, and the Assembly, together with the king and his ministers, turned to the question of the constitution. Henceforth, how­ever, the deliberations of the Assembly were to take place in the heated atmosphere of Parisian politics. Here in the capital many political clubs were formed to debate the issues and settle on policy. The most famous was the Jacobin Club, which included many of the radical members of the Assembly like Robespierre, Couthon, Saint Just. Here too were political agitators, journalists  of all opinions, and, above all, crowds that could be mobilized to bring pressure on the Assembly. From the autumn of 1789 on, the Revolution became more and more a Parisian affair.

The Achievements of the National Constituent Assembly, 1789-91

It took two years to draft the constitution. By the end of that time the government had been reorganized, the Church had been

The Monarchy. By acts passed in September 1789, Louis XVI was reduced from his position as a monarch by divine right to the role of a constitutional officer of the nation. He was given the right of suspensive veto over legislation, a right that allowed him to delay the passage of laws for two years. The monarchy remained a hereditary institution, and the king retained control of military and foreign affairs.

The Legislature. The Constitution of 1791 provided for a unicameral Legislative Assembly, elected for two years. The Assembly had the power to initiate and enact legislation and to control the budget. It also had the exclusive right to declare war. Members of the Constituent Assembly were forbidden to serve in the new legislature, an unfortunate decision that barred expe­rienced men from a body that had few precedents to guide it.

The Electorate. The Constitution did not provide for universal manhood suffrage. It divided Frenchmen into active and passive citizens. Only the former, who met a property qualification, had the right to vote. The active category comprised some 4 million men in a total population of about 25 million. Active citizens voted for electors, who in turn elected the Legislative Assembly. These electors, as well as officeholders in the Assembly, were drawn from some fifty thousand of the country's wealthiest men. Even with these restrictions, a far larger percentage of the population could vote and hold office than in England.

The Administration. The elimination of aristocratic privilege invalidated most of local administration, controlled by the no­bility or small oligarchies of officeholders and rich bourgeois. The Assembly completed the process of dismantling the admin­istrative apparatus of the Old Regime by abolishing all former provinces, intendancies, and tax farms. On a clean administrative map they drew eighty-three departments, roughly equal in size, with uniform administrative and judicial systems. Administration was decentralized and put in the hands of some forty thousand

The Church. The reorganization of the French Church was decreed by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, promulgated in August 1790. It was one of the most important and fateful acts of the Revolution. The Assembly confiscated the lands of the Church and, to relieve the financial distress, issued notes on the security of the confiscated lands. These notes, or assignats, cir­culated as money and temporarily relieved the financial crisis. In addition, clergymen became paid officials of the state, and priests and bishops were to be elected by property-owning citizens.

The Constitution of 1791, together with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, summed up the principles and politics of the men of 1789. In its emphasis on property rights, its restric­tive franchise, and its fiscal policy, the Constitution had a dis­tinctly bourgeois bias. To look upon the document simply as a product of selfish interest, however, would be to underestimate the achievement of the constituents. A new class of peasant pro­prietors had been created. The framework for a society open to talent had been established. Administrative decentralization, it was thought, had overcome the prevailing fear of despotism: Equality before the law, if not political equality, had been made a fact. These were impressive and revolutionary achievements. But to succeed and mature, the new order established by the Constituent Assembly needed peace, social stability, and the co­operation of the king. None of these was forthcoming. Within a year the Constitution of 1791 had become a dead letter, and the Revolution had entered a new phase.

The Failure of Constitutional Monarchy

The Constitution of 1791 was surely an imperfect instrument. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy offended the pope, who had not been consulted. His disapproval forced a crisis of con­science on French Catholics. Many bishops and priests refused to accept the Civil Constitution, and they found broad support in the country. Schism in the Church became a major factor in the eventual failure of the Assembly to create a stable govern-

Arrest of the royal  family in Varennes

ment for France. Moreover, the restrictive franchise opened the constitution-makers to the charge that they wanted to substitute an oligarchy for an aristocracy. Such obvious defects, however, were not alone responsible for the failure of constitutional mon­archy. The principal culprit was the monarch himself.

At the head of the government stood a king who was thor­oughly discredited. In June 1791, Louis XVI tried to escape from France in order to join the forces of counterrevolution outside the country. He very nearly succeeded but was caught at Varennes, near the eastern frontier, and was brought back to Paris. This humiliating episode destroyed what little authority Louis still possessed. In order to keep himself from being com­pletely displaced, he swore to obey the new constitution; but he was now no more than a figurehead. From the very beginning, the constitutional monarchy was flawed.

The Legislative Assembly, September 1791-September 1792 The Legislative Assembly met in an atmosphere of intrigue, fear, and factional strife. The Assembly, itself bitterly divided, was de­prived of the hard-won political experience of the men who had drafted the Constitution.

There were two issues on which it was almost impossible to find a solid majority. The first was the position of the king. He could not be trusted, and he would not commit himself to the principle of equality, on which everyone did agree. Was it worth compromising with the king in order to preserve the constitu­tion and the unity of the country? If not, how far should the Assembly go in restraining or in punishing the king?

The second problem, which caused even sharper divisions of opinion, was that of defining "equality." Was the emphasis to be on equality before the law, or on equality of opportunity, or on political equality, or on economic equality, or on a mix­ture of two or more of these ideals? Here there was not only no clear majority, but no consistency within groups and even

There were no parties in the Assembly, but there were the "clubs," loosely organized associations with affiliates in the provinces. One of the largest and best-organized groups was the Jacobin Club, with 136 members out of the 745 representa­tives. The Jacobins were republicans and wanted to get rid of the king. But they were also well-to-do bourgeois; no poor man could afford to pay their membership dues. They were far from agreement on political and economic equality, or on the pace at which change should take place. They were divided into at least two factions. One faction was led by Brissot de Warville, the ablest politician in the Assembly. The other, composed mainly of Parisians, eventually found a leader in Maximilien Robespierre.

The issue that temporarily united the Assembly was declaring war on Austria. Stupid diplomacy by European monarchs, even more stupid politics in the French royal court, and a very real threat of counterrevolution convinced millions of patriotic Frenchmen that the forces of reaction were about to destroy all that had been gained since 1789 and that war was the only way to save their country and their freedom. The emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz (August 1791) proclaimed that European monarchs must unite to restore order and monarchy in France. This was largely bluff, but it sounded ominous. Some conservative ministers thought that a victorious war against Austria would strengthen the king and allow him to end the Revolution. However, Louis XVI and his Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette, apparently hoped for a French defeat that would lead to the restoration of royal authority.

External threats and court plots played into the hands of Brissot's republican faction. Brissot believed that a crusade to unseat the monarchs of Europe would rekindle the revolutionary fervor of the French people and rally them around his plan to establish a republic in France. He was opposed in the Jacobin Club by Robespierre, who feared that a war would strengthen the conservatives and lead to dictatorship. But Brissot proved the stronger, and the powerful Jacobin Club passed a resolution

Rouget de I'Isle sings la Marseillaise for the first time on 25 April 1792

advocating a declaration of war. Brissot took the issue before the Assembly, and in April 1792 all but seven deputies voted for war with Austria.

The First War of the Revolution

The declaration of war transformed the Revolution. With war came the end of the monarchy and the constitution. With it also came terror and dictatorship. France became not simply the home of the Revolution but the exporter of revolutionary ideals. Finally, under the stress and emotions of war, France became a modern, unified nation-state.

Two things saved the Revolution at this moment of crisis. The Austrian and Prussian generals, who were as incompetent as the French, delayed and divided their forces. And there was a genuine outburst of patriotic and revolutionary enthusiasm in France. It was during this crisis that the Marseillaise was com­posed, a stirring appeal to save the country from tyranny. The French kept on fighting, despite their failures, and their army did not melt away as the refugee nobles had predicted. So, when the Austro-Prussian army was checked at Valmy, one hundred miles from Paris, in September 1792, its cautious commander decided to call off the invasion. The allies had lost their best chance to crush the Revolution before it gathered strength.

The French Republic

During these gloomy months, when everything seemed to be going wrong, the radical politicians of Paris gained a commanding position in the government. These Jacobins — Robespierre and Danton were the most important — based their power on na­tional guards summoned to protect the capital, on the Parisian crowds, and, from August 10, 1792, on an insurrectionary Paris Commune that replaced the legal municipal government. The poorer classes were suffering from an economic depression caused by war and political uncertainty, and they were terri­fied by the thought that the Old Regime might be revived. The bourgeois radicals in the Assembly never fully sympathized with the desire of Paris artisans and workers for economic equality, but they could agree with them on the need for drastic political changes, In August Danton organized an uprising in Paris that led to the storming of the Tuileries palace and forced the royal

The Convention and the Jacobins

The National Convention met in Paris on September 21, 1792, in the wake of a fierce bloodletting earlier in the month — the so-called September massacres. There was a great popular fear of conspiracies by the nobility plotting their revenge.These mas­sacres, which took the lives of some thirteen hundred prisoners in Paris, were part of a pattern of fear, terror, and revolutionary justice that persisted throughout much of the Convention' s three-year rule.

The delegates to the Convention were elected by a minority of Frenchmen, despite universal manhood suffrage. Many citi­zens were repelled by the deposition of the king and the violence of the summer. Others were intimidated. Some were excluded by governmental decree. Thus the most radical elements of the French population had disproportionate strength in the elec­tions. Not surprisingly, many of the delegates were Jacobins.

The Jacobins were divided. The followers of Brissot, now called the Girondists, made up one faction. They dominated the Convention in its early months. In general, the Girondists rep­resented the interests of provincial republicans, and they were bitterly opposed to the Paris Commune. Their foreign policy was aggressive and expansionistic. It was they, for example, who issued a manifesto in November 1792 offering France's aid to all revolutionaries throughout Europe. In domestic affairs, the

The Jacobins and the War

The Girondists fell before their Jacobin opponents in the wake of crushing French defeats by a new coalition of European powers. The execution of Louis XVI, France's designs on Holland, and its annexation of Savoy and Nice prompted England, Spain, Portugal, and several lesser states to join Austria and Prussia in the war against France. In the face this formidable combination, the French armies suffered a series of reversals. The victor of Valmy, General Dumouriez, was badly defeated in Belgium, and, in the spring of 1793, he defected to the enemy.

Now the government, under the direction of a Committee of General Defense (later the Committee of Public Safety), under­took to organize the entire nation for war. It applied conscrip­tion on a nationwide scale for the first time in modern European history. It raised huge armies, far larger than those of Louis XIV, far larger than those that could be called up by the old-fashioned monarchies against which France was fighting. And it supported those armies by means of confiscation and heavy taxes. The armies were organized by a military genius, Lazare Carnot, an engineer who made a science out of the service of supply. He also established the division as a tactical unit.

The monarchies of Europe, which were used to fighting lim­ited wars with limited resources for limited gains, were overcome by a French nation organized for war. They could not afford to arm all their people; they still depended on the old officer corps

The Instruments of Jacobin Rule

Military success was achieved only through the intensive and often brutal organization of the French people. The Constituent Assembly's program of administrative decentralization had left France without any effective chain of command linking the National Convention in Paris to the provinces. Moreover, the Convention was an ungainly body, incapable of swift ac­tion. Into this void moved the radical Jacobins. In the prov­inces, Jacobin clubs virtually replaced local governing bodies and through their committees of surveillance controlled public life. At the center, executive power was entrusted to two commit­tees — the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee for General Security. The former wielded almost dictatorial power over France from July 1793 until July 1794. It had twelve mem­bers, of whom Robespierre was the most prominent.

The genuine achievement of the twelve capable men who composed the Committee of Public Safety, in coping with in­ternal unrest and external war, is often overlooked because of the "Reign of Terror" they imposed on France. The Terror must be put into the context of the problems that confronted Robespierre, Carnot, and their colleagues. From early 1793 there had been a series of internal rebellions against the govern­ment. Conservative peasants of the Vendee, a region in the west of France, had revolted against the national conscription and in favor of their priests who opposed the Civil Constitution. Later the Girondists, who opposed what they thought was excessive

In all, some forty thousand people were killed by the govern­ment and its agents. The largest number of victims were peasants; next came rebellious citizens of provincial towns, and politicians. Some hundreds of thousands of suspects were imprisoned and proper judicial procedures, such as the right of the accused to counsel, were undermined. Even the Committee of Public Safety finally divided over the excesses of the Terror. When military successes restored a measure of stability to France, the National Convention reasserted its authority. Among its first acts was the arrest and execution of Robespierre in July 1794.

Jacobinism and French Society

The militant phase of Jacobinism was of relatively short du­ration. The Committee of Public Safety ruled for a year, and Robespierre had complete authority for only four months. Thus, beyond the brilliant organization of the national defence, the Jacobins made few permanent contributions to French institu­tions and society. Certain of their acts, however, have remained of symbolic significance to the French Left. Among these were the guarantees of the right to a public education for all and the right of public welfare for the poor; these guarantees were set forth in an abortive constitution drawn up in 1793. In addition, the

The Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory, 1795-99

The end of Robespierre and the Jacobins touched off a wave of reaction against the excesses of the Terror. This "Thermidorian reaction," named after the month in the revolutionary calendar, when Robespierre was executed (Thermidor/July), turned against the austerity of Jacobin rule and at times took the form of a "white terror" against the radicals in Paris and the provinces.

In 1795 the Convention finally presented France with a con­stitution, the third since 1789. It provided for a five-man ex­ecutive board, called the Directory, and a two-house legislature. Even the republican-oriented Convention had been sufficiently sobered by the Terror to abandon its promise of universal suf­frage, and the franchise was weighted in favor of the propertied classes. Once in office, the Directory proved both corrupt and incompetent. It maintained a militantly aggressive foreign policy and allowed the French economy to deteriorate disastrously. A more or less communistic movement led by "Gracchus" Babeuf received some support from the poor, but was easily suppressed. The French poor were still largely artisans and peasants, property owners and not wage-earners. More dangerous was a royalist re­vival. Elections in 1797 demonstrated such an upsurge in royalist sentiment that the results had to be cancelled. The Directory's single source of strength was the army. With the economy foun­dering and popular unrest increasing, the Directory was ripe for

Napoleon's Rise To Power

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica in 1769, shortly after the island had been annexed by France. The Bonapartes were members of the minor nobility of Corsica, and at the age of nine Napoleon was admitted to a military school in France. ... When most of the aristocratic officer corps left France after the fall of the monarchy, Napoleon stayed on to serve the Republic. He rose to become a brigadier general in 1793 at the age of twenty-four. He helped to reconquer Toulon — one of the towns that rebelled against the Convention in 1793 — and he suppressed a royalist riot against the Convention in 1795. By 1797, when the Directory felt its power slipping, Barras, one of the Directors, realized that Napoleon's support could be valu­able. He sought Napoleon's friendship first by introducing the young general to one of his cast-off mistresses, Josephine (whom Napoleon married), and then by giving him command of an army that was preparing for an invasion of Lombardy, a province in northern Italy that was then under the control of Austria.

The Italian campaign of 1797 was a success. It removed Austria from the war, gave France control of northern Italy, and estab­lished Napoleon's reputation as an outstanding general. After the defeat of the Austrians only England was still at war with France. In 1798 Bonaparte took an army by sea to Egypt, where he hoped to sever England's lifeline to India. He easily defeated the Egyptians, but the English admiral Horatio Nelson sank the French fleet near the mouth of the Nile. Napoleon's army, trapped in Egypt, was soon decimated by disease and dysentery. In the midst of this crisis, Napoleon heard that the Directory was in danger of falling and that some of the Directors wanted to create a military dictatorship. Leaving his army in Egypt, he

The most important Director was the Abbe Sieyes, and it was with this former leader of the First French Revolution that Napoleon conspired. On November 9, 1799, [18 Brumaire] he used military force to compel the legislators to abolish the Directory and substitute a new government in which a board of three consuls would have almost absolute power. The conspira­tors asked Napoleon to serve as one of the consuls. Apparently they hoped he would provide the personal popularity and mil­itary power needed to support a regime that would be domi­nated, behind the scenes, by the other two consuls. But when the new constitution was written — at Napoleon's orders — the general emerged as First Consul and virtual dictator of France. When the French people were invited to endorse the constitu­tion in a plebiscite, they voted overwhelmingly to accept it. To Frenchmen exhausted by years of revolution, terror, and eco­nomic instability, Napoleon seemed to be the guarantor both of the gains of the Revolution and of order.

From Joseph R. Strayer & Hans W Gatzke,
The Mainstream of Civilization,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979, Ch. 23,
The French Revolution and Napoleon, pp. 522-536.

Napoléon on the day of the Coup d'Eat of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) (detail), oil on canvas by François Bouchot.