From 1789 to 1791, the National Assembly acted as a Constituent Assembly, laboring productively on a constitution for the new regime. While recognizing the civil rights of all French citizens, it effectively transferred political power from the monarchy and the privileged estates to the general body of propertied citizens, in which the former nobility remained as individuals without titles or privileges. the constitution
At the center, the constitution created a limited monarchy with a clear separation of powers. Real sovereignty lay in the legislative branch, which would consist of a single house (the Legislative Assembly), elected for two years by a system of indirect voting. The king was to name and dismiss his ministers, but he was given only a suspensive or delaying veto over legislation; if a bill passed the Assembly in three successive years, it would become law even without royal approval.
The Assembly limited the franchise to "active" citizens who paid a minimal sum in taxes, but the property qualification was higher for those standing for public office. Under this system about two-thirds of adult males attained the right to vote for electors who would choose deputies, and also to elect certain local officials directly. Although it favored the wealthy, the system was vastly more democratic than the political structure in Britain.
Political rights did not extend, however, to women. In delegations to the Assembly and in pamphlets such as Olympe de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791), women's rights activists demanded suffrage for women without success. Sieyès spoke for most deputies when he answered that women contributed little to the public establishment and should have no direct influence on government. Besides which, he claimed, women were too emotional and easily misled. This weakness of character made it imperative that they be kept out of public life and devote themselves to their "natural" nurturing and maternal roles.
Yet the formal exclusion of women from politics did not mean that they remained passive spectators. Women were active combatants in the local conflicts over religious policy that will be discussed in the next section. In the towns they agitated over subsistence issues, formed auxiliaries to the local Jacobin clubs (and a handful of independent clubs), participated in civic festivals, and did relief work.
Nor was the Revolution indifferent to women's rights. Its remarkably egalitarian inheritance law insisted that all children regardless of sex were entitled to an equal share of a family's estate. And in 1794 a national system of free primary education provided salaried teachers for both boys and girls.
While the Assembly excluded women from "active" citizenship without much debate, other groups posed a greater challenge on how to apply the rights of man to French society. In eastern France, for example, where most of France's Jews resided, public opinion scorned Jews as an alien race unentitled to citizenship. Eventually, however, the Assembly rejected that argument and extended civil and political equality to Jews.
A similar debate raged over the status of free Negroes or mulattos in France's Caribbean colonies. In St. Domingue, alongside the 35,000 whites and 500,000 slaves lived 28,000 free Negroes, some of whom owned slaves themselves. White planters, in alliance with merchants who traded with the islands, were most concerned to preserve slavery. To this end they demanded control over racial policy in the islands.
Only by maintaining racial distinctions and disenfranchising free Negroes, they argued, could they ensure the foundation of slavery. Despite Jacobin opposition, the Assembly adopted this view. In response, the mulattos rebelled, and the unrest caused by their abortive uprising eventually helped ignite a slave rebellion, which, in turn, led to the independence of the island, now known as Haiti. local government
With regard to local government, the Constituent Assembly abolished the Parlements and intendants, and obliterated the political identity of France's historic provinces. The Assembly instead divided the nation's territory into 83 departments of roughly equal size. Unlike the old provinces, each department would have exactly the same institutions. The departments were, in turn, subdivided into districts, cantons, and communes (the common designation for a village or town).
On the one hand, this administrative transformation promoted local autonomy: The citizens of each department, district, and commune elected their own local officials, and in that sense political power was decentralized. On the other hand, these local governments were subordinated to the national legislature in Paris; they became instruments of greater national integration and uniformity. judicial reform
The new administrative map also created the boundaries for judicial reform. Sweeping away the entire judicial system of the old regime, the revolutionaries established a justice of the peace in each canton, a civil court in each district, and a criminal court in each department. The judges on all tribunals were to be elected. While rejecting the use of juries in civil cases, the Assembly decreed that felonies would be tried by juries; if the jury convicted, judges would apply the mandatory sentences that were established in the Assembly's new penal code. Defendants also gained the right to counsel for the first time. In civil law, the Assembly encouraged arbitration and mediation to avoid the time-consuming and expensive processes of formal litigation. In general, the revolutionaries hoped to make the administration of justice more accessible, expeditious, and popular. economic institutions
The Assembly's clearing operations extended to economic institutions as well. Guided by laissez-faire doctrine, and by its complete hostility to privileged corporations, the Assembly sought to open up economic life to unimpeded individual initiative. Besides dismantling internal tariffs and chartered trading monopolies, it abolished the guilds of merchants and artisans, and proclaimed the right of every citizen to enter any trade and conduct it freely. Regulation of wages or of a product's quality would no longer concern the government.
The Assembly also insisted that workers must bargain in the economic marketplace as individuals, and it therefore banned workers' associations and strikes. The precepts of economic individualism extended to the countryside too. In theory, peasants and landlords were now free to cultivate their fields as they saw fit, regardless of traditional collective practices. In fact, however, communal restraints proved to be deep rooted and durable.
To address the financial problems that had precipitated the crisis of the old regime, the Assembly did something that the monarchy never dared contemplate. assignats
Under revolutionary ideology, the French Catholic Church could no longer exist as an independent corporation a separate Estate. The Assembly nationalized Church property, placing it "at the disposition of the nation," and simultaneously made the state responsible for the upkeep of the Church. On the basis of these "national lands" (to which the property of émigrés and the crown would subsequently be added), the Assembly issued paper notes known as assignats, which soon came to be treated as money.
The national lands were sold by auction at the district capitals to the highest bidders. This favored bourgeois and rich peasants with ready capital, and made it difficult for needy peasants to acquire the land. The sale of Church lands and the issuance of assignats based on their value had at least three major consequences. three major consequences
First, it largely solved the financial problem and eliminated the need for constant borrowing. Second, the hundreds of thousands of purchasers gained a strong vested interest in the triumph of the Revolution, since a successful counterrevolution was likely to restore their properties to the Church. Finally, there was an unanticipated effect. After war broke out in 1792, the government greatly increased the volume of assignats beyond their underlying value, thereby touching off severe inflation and new political turmoil.
Apart from the question of Church property, the issue of church reform produced the Revolution's first and most fateful crisis. The Assembly intended to rid the Church of inequities that left much of the lower clergy impoverished while enriching the aristocratic prelates of the old regime. Many Catholics looked forward to such reforms, which would liberate the clergy to fulfill the Church's historic ideals.
In the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), the Assembly reduced the number of bishops to 83 and reshaped diocesan boundaries to conform with those of the new departments. Bishops and parish priests were to be chosen by the lay electors and paid according to a uniform salary scale favoring those at the lower end. Like other civil and military officials, the clergy was to take an oath of loyalty to the constitution.
The clergy generally objected to this reform because it was dictated to them by the National Assembly; they argued that it must be negotiated either with the Pope or a National Church Council. But the Assembly asserted that it had the sovereign power to order such reform since it affected temporal rather than spiritual matters. In November 1790 the Assembly forced the issue by requiring all existing clergy to take the oath forthwith; those who refused would lose their positions and be pensioned off.
In all of France only seven bishops and about 54 percent of the parish clergy swore the oath; in the West of France a mere 15 percent complied. French Catholicism was torn by a schism, for the laity had to take a position as well. Should parishioners remain loyal to familiar priests who refused the oath (the refractory clergy), and thus be at odds with the state? Or should they accept the ministry of constitutional clergy sent in to replace them?
The Assembly's effort to impose reform without consideration of traditional Church procedures was a grave tactical error. The oath crisis polarized the nation. It seemed to link the Revolution with impiety, and the Church with counterrevolution. In local communities, refractory clergy began to preach against the whole Revolution. District administrations fought back by arresting them and demanding repressive laws. Thousands of local communities were rocked by civil strife between adherents of the two sides.
Opposition to the Revolution had actually begun much earlier. After July 14 some of the king's relatives left the country in disgust, thus becoming the first émigrés. During the next three years thousands of nobles, including two-thirds of the officer corps, joined the emigration. Across the Rhine River in Coblenz many of these émigrés formed an army that threatened to overthrow the new regime at the first opportunity.
The king himself, who might have provided a measure of stability to the new regime, publicly submitted to the Revolution but privately smoldered in resentment against it. Finally, in June 1791 Louis and his family secretly fled from Paris, hoping to cross the Belgian frontier, where they could enlist the aid of Austria. But Louis was recognized at the village of Varennes and forcibly returned to Paris.
Moderates hoped that this experience would finally end Louis' opposition. The Assembly, after all, needed his cooperation to make their constitutional monarchy viable. They did not wish to open the door to a republic or to further democratization. Radicals such as the journalist Jean-Paul Marat, on the other hand, had long thundered against the treachery of the king and the émigrés, and against the Assembly itself for allegedly betraying the people, as in the restricted suffrage of the new constitution.
They now launched a petition campaign against the king, which ended in a bloody riot the massacre of the Champs de Mars on July 17, 1791 - when the Paris national guard was ordered to disperse the demonstrators with force. This upheaval only strengthened the moderates, resolved to maintain the status quo. Adopting the fiction that the king had fled involuntarily, the Assembly reaffirmed his position in the new regime. But his traitorous act assured that radical agitation would continue.
The Assembly had earlier decided that no present deputy could stand for election to the new legislature. This self-denying ordinance meant that the Legislative Assembly would be composed of men less experienced and probably more daring than their predecessors. The new legislature was elected and convened on October 1, 1791. Almost from the start the question of war dominated its mood and work. By an odd coincidence, both the right and the left in France saw advantage in a war between France and Austria. The king and his court hoped that military defeat would discredit the new regime and restore full power to the monarchy. Most Jacobin members of the leading political club in Paris were eager to strike down the foreign supporters of counter-revolution at home and émigrés abroad.
When Francis II took the throne of the Hapsburg dominions in March 1792, the other half of the stage was set. Unlike his father, Leopold, who rejected intervention, Francis fell under the influence of émigrés and shortsighted advisers. He determined to assist the French queen, his aunt, and he hoped in alliance with Prussia to achieve territorial gains for Austria. With both sides eager for battle, France went to war against a coalition of Austria, Prussia, and the émigrés in April 1792.
Each camp expected rapid victory, but both were deceived. The French offensive was quickly driven back, and soon invading armies were crossing French borders. The Legislative Assembly ordered the arrest of refractory clergy and called for a special corps of 20,000 national guardsmen to protect Paris. Louis vetoed both measures and held to his decision in spite of demonstrations in the capital. This was, for all practical purposes, his last act as king. The Legislature also called for a levy of 100,000 volunteers to bolster the French army, and defend the homeland. As France mobilized for war, an officer named Rouget de Lisle composed a marching song for his volunteer battalion, a song eventually known as "The Marseillaise." Now the national anthem of France, it ranks among history's most stirring summonses to patriotic war.
"The Marseillaise" reflected the spirit of determination developing across the land. As Prussian forces began a drive toward Paris, their commander, the Duke of Brunswick, arrogantly demanded that Paris disarm itself and threatened to level the city if it resisted or if it harmed the royal family. When Louis XVI published this Brunswick Manifesto, it seemed the final proof that he was in league with the enemy. Far from intimidating the revolutionaries, the threat drove them into action. Since the Legislative Assembly had refused to act decisively in the face of royal obstructionism, Parisian militants, spurred on by the Jacobin Club, organized an insurrection.
On August 10, 1792, a crowd of armed Parisians stormed the royal palace at the Tuilleries, literally driving the king from the throne. The Assembly then had no choice but to declare him suspended. That night more than half its members themselves fled Paris, making it clear that the Assembly too had lost its legitimacy. The representatives who remained prepared to dissolve the Legislative Assembly permanently and ordered elections under universal male suffrage for a new body, to be called the National Convention.
They left to the Convention the responsibility of declaring a republic in France, judging the former king, drafting a new constitution, and governing France during the emergency. What the events of 1789 in Versailles and Paris had begun, the insurrection of August 10, 1792 completed. The old regime in France had disappeared.
In the eighteenth century major transformations began. The inhabitants of Europe and North America expanded at an extraordinary rate, initiating a population explosion that has continued into modern times. The new industrial economy, if still of small size, created a new organization of production based on steam power and high engineering skill. The overall economic system took on a configuration that differed from the patterns of all prior periods. It had capacity to transform itself and thus to lend a new dynamic quality to the society living from it.
These changes were accompanied by a crisis in social and political institutions. A tripartite struggle developed involving the ruler, the aristocracy, and the people over the proper allocation of power in the state. Several European monarchs sought to impose reform from above. The aristocracies, on the other hand, bitterly resented encroachments on their privileges, and some were willing to pursue the defense of their interests to the point of revolution. Both rulers and patricians appealed to the Third Estate, often with unexpected results.
The emerging claim to power of the unprivileged classes was the greatest change. No longer would the political history of the Western world focus exclusively on the elites. The peoples of the West thus faced the task of building a new economic, social, and political order. What should its character be? How should power be managed, and how should wealth be distributed? What values should now govern human lives? These were the issues destined to occupy the Western nations as they entered the industrial and democratic age.
