Bastille and the October Days

1. The Bastille
The October Days
Significance

2.  Most definitions of a revolution agree it must
include some sort of mass movement –
otherwise – it is merely a coup when small
group sizes power.

3.  One of the common images of a revolution is a
leader hailing a crowd to action – such as Camille
Desmoulins on July 12 1789.
 (Role of the Duc d'Orléans on 12 July is also
significant – the self styled Phillipe Egalitarie
used his Palais Royal as meeting point for radical
journalists, many of which he funded. He
encourage men such as Desmoulins to speak to
the crowds and write revolutionary tracts.

4.  However historians such as Rude argue that the
crowd had agency and that working people –
rural and urban - a long tradition of
revolutionary journee s(such as the Revellion
Riots or Day of theTies) and jacqeries (Flour
War).
 Rude argues that in the 1770s crowd protests
had tended to be mainly on local or food issues
but by the 1780s, urban workers are increasing
becoming part of popular opinion (e.g. as seen in
defence the Parlements in the Day of theTiles).

5.  “In respect of social origins, a sharp division is revealed
between the mass of demonstrators and insurgents and
the political leaders directing, or making political capital
out of these operations. [The latter] with few exceptions
were drawn from the commercial bourgeoisie, the
professions or the liberal aristocracy.This discrepancy in
origins between leaders and participants is reflected in a
discrepancy in their social and political aims.”
 “Perhaps not surprisingly, the most constant motive of
popular insurrection during the Revolution, as in the
18th century as a whole, was the compelling need for
cheap and plentiful bread and other essentials.”

6.  Those who had stormed the Bastille were not
the bourgeois who had lead the protests
against the monarchy in the Estate General.
 Rude has shown that most of the ‘victors’ of
the Bastille were small traders, artisans, petty
government officials as well as the
unemployed and women.

7.  The National Assembly no longer had to fear being
dissolved by the King as Louis lacked the military
power to do so after the mutiny of the army. He was
forced to share power with them in a new
constitutional monarchy (July 17th).
 Louis had lost control of Paris, where the Paris elector
had set themselves up as the Paris Commune (a
municipal government)
 Louis was forced to recognise the authority f the
National Guard – a citizen's mulita formed by
bourgeois
 News of the fall of the Bastille intensified activity in
the countryside and triggered off the Greet Fear

8.  US diplomat Gouvernor Morris noted ‘You
may consider the whole revolution to be over,
since the authority of the King and nobles has
been utterly destoryed’.

9.  Louis did not share the enthusiasm for the
changes that were taking place/
 Despite swearing allegiance on July 17th to the
Revolution –
 ‘OnJuly 17, 1789, Louis XVI appeared before a
crowd at the Hotel deVille in Paris with a
tricolored cockade, which had been given to him
by the major of the city.This act received mixed
reviews from the people of France; some
appreciated the gesture, while others, including
Marie Antoinette who stated, “I did not think that
I had married a commoner’.

10.  By August Louis felt differently stating, ‘I will
never consent to the spoliation of my clergy
and my nobility. I will not sanction decrees by
which they are despoiled’.
 As Louis could not use armed force he
adopted policy of non cooperation with the
Assembly and refused to sign the August
Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of
Man.

11.  Louis’ silence forced the Assembly to
consider the question of how much power the
King should have.
 On September 11 it voted for Louis to have a
suspensive veto where he could delay laws
for up to 4 years but not veto them
completely.

12.  In Paris, the Kings refusal to sign the Decrees
increased tensions and Bailly and Lafayette
struggled to keep order.
 At the same time journalist like Desmoulins
and Marat inflamed the situation - calling
deputes who supported the suspensive veto
disloyal and distrustful of the people and
called for aristocrats to be hung.

13.  In this climate Louis chose the summon the loyal
Flanders regiment to Paris.Their arrival gave
Louis the confidence to write to the assembly to
say he would accept some but not all of the
August Decrees and that he had reservations
about the Rights of Man
 Rumours reached Paris about a drunken banquet
to celebrate the regiment in which the tricolour
was trodden underfoot .

14.  When news of the insult to the revolution’s emblem
reached Paris, feeling ran high and there were
demands that the King should be brought back to
Paris.
 This demand coincided with a food shortage in
Paris. On October 5 women had demanded bread
from the Paris Commune.They were persuade to
tke their complaints toVersailles – to the King and
the NationalAssembly.
 6000 women ,accompanied by 20,000 National
Guard set off.

15.  Louis was force to give in. He signed the
August Decrees and Rights of Man, promised
to provide grain for Paris and agreed to go to
Paris

16.  On Louis – Louis' title was changed from King
of France to King of the French (to suggest
that he did not own France ).
 Schama – Louis stay in Paris was one of
‘virtual imprisonment’ by the Paris crowd

17.  Shift in power toward Paris and its increasing
radicalized and militant population from the
Assembly.
 This posed a challenge for the Assembly they
wanted to work on a compromise with Louis
but it was difficult in Paris surrounded by a
population which could impose its will on the
Assembly through another revolutionary
journee.

18.  McPhee –The Revolution of the bourgeois
deputies had only been secured by the active
intervention o the people of Paris.
 Mirabeau's Decree of Martial Law 21 October
1789