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Week 1: Revolutionary Times
- 1. Week 1 Revolutionary Times
- 2. Why the French Revolution matters • Ended absolutist rule and aristocratic privilege in France, corroded it elsewhere • Spread language of popular sovereignty • Blueprint for political and cultural revolution • Politicized masses and popular violence • Seeded European nationalism • Total war?
- 3. A Few Questions 1. Why France? 2. How did the Revolution unfold? 3. Legacies of Revolution?
- 4. Why France? 1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime” 2. New language of rights and critique 3. Administrative reform 4. Triggering events
- 5. The social orders of 18th century France
- 6. The “Absolute” Monarchy: Louis XVI
- 9. The silent majority: Peasants
- 10. The growing burdens of Third Estate
- 11. Why France? 1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime” 2. New language of rights and critique 3. Administrative reform 4. Triggering events
- 12. The Philosphes
- 13. Why France? 1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime” 2. New language of rights and critique 3. Administrative reform 4. Triggering events
- 14. “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform…Feudalism at the height of its power had not inspired Frenchmen with so much hatred as it did on the eve of its disappearing.” Alexis de Toqueville
- 15. Why France? 1. Rising social tensions in the “Old Regime” 2. New language of rights and critique 3. Administrative reform 4. Triggering events
- 16. Poor harvests and high bread prices
- 17. A Few Questions 1. Why France? 2. How did the Revolution unfold? 3. Legacies of Revolution?
- 18. Three Basic Stages • Aristocratic Revolution 1788-1789 • Bourgeois/moderate Revolution 1789- 1792 • Radical/Jacobin Revolution 1792-1795
- 19. The parlements, seats of noble power
- 20. Three Basic Stages • Aristocratic Revolution 1788-1789 • Bourgeois/moderate Revolution 1789- 1792 • Radical/Jacobin Revolution 1792-1795
- 21. Abbé Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789)
- 22. “The Third Estate is like a strong and robust man with one arm still in chains. If we remove the privileged order, the Nation will not be something less but something more. Thus, what is the Third Estate? All, but an all that is shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? All, but an all that is free and flourishing. Nothing can be done without it; everything would be infinitely better without the other two orders...[T]he noble order is not even part of society itself: It may very well be a burden for the Nation but it cannot be a part of it.”
- 23. “It is impossible to say what place the two privileged orders ought to occupy in the social order: this is the equivalent of asking what place one wishes to assign to a malignant tumor that torments and undermines the strength of the body of a sick person. It must be neutralized. We must re-establish the health and workings of all the organs so thoroughly that they are no longer susceptible to these fatal schemes that are capable of sapping the most essential principles of vitality.”
- 24. Tennis Court Oath, June 20 1789.
- 25. Storming of the Bastille, July 14 1789.
- 26. Popular violence
- 27. Sans culottes: Revolutionary shock troops
- 28. The March to Versailles, October 1789
- 29. What the moderate Revolution did • Abolition of aristocratic and church privilege, equality before law. • Declaration of Rights of Man and of Citizen (August 27, 1789) • Vote given to roughly ½ adult males. • Religious freedom granted to Protestants and Jews • Expropriation of Church property • Rights granted to mixed race inhabitants of colonies • Abolition of arbitrary detention and censorship
- 30. Three Basic Stages • Aristocratic Revolution 1788-1789 • Bourgeois/moderate Revolution 1789- 1792 • Radical/Jacobin Revolution 1792-1795
- 31. A Bad Rap?
- 32. Maximilien de Robespierre and the Terror
- 33. Beat of the Revolution La Marseillaise
- 34. No looking back: The execution of Louis XVI (January 21, 1793)
- 35. Enemies without and within
- 36. Crisis management or dictatorship? The Committee of Public Safety Est. in fall 1793 Made up of 12 deputies Concentrated state power Declared mass conscription Set price controls Est. revolutionary trials
- 37. Robespierre’s speech to Convention, 1794 …Within the scheme of the French revolution, that which is immoral is impolitic, that which is corrupting is counter-revolutionary. Weakness, vice, and prejudices are the road to royalty. Dragged too often, perhaps, by the weight of our former customs…towards false ideas and faint-hearted sentiments, we have less cause to guard ourselves against too much energy than against too much weakness. The greatest peril, perhaps, that we have to avoid is not that of zealous fervor, but rather of weariness in doing good works and of timidity in displaying our own courage…
- 38. It has been said that terror was the mainspring of despotic government. Does your government, then, resemble a despotism? Yes, as the sword which glitters in the hands of liberty’s heroes resembles the one with which tyranny’s lackeys are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalized subjects by terror; he is right to do this, as a despot. Subdue liberty’s enemies by terror, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.
- 40. Social reform for some
- 41. The Revolution consumes its own: the execution of Robespierre, July 1794
- 42. A Few Questions 1. Why France? 2. How did the Revolution unfold? 3. What were the legacies of Revolution?
- 43. Young Napoleon
- 44. Coronation of Emperor Napoleon, 1804
- 47. Impact of Napoleon • Spread centralized bureaucratic secular state • Created new social hierarchy based on service, talent, and property • Established Napoleonic (Civil) Code • Spurred nationalist movements • Anticipated populist dictatorship • Up to 7 million dead in Napoleonic Wars
- 48. Corsican or French? Letter to Corsican patriot Paoli, 1789: “I was born when the French were vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of liberty in torrents of blood. Such was the odious spectacle that first met my eyes...Tears of despair surrounded my cradle.” Recounting his early years of French schooling: “Life was a burden...There is nothing but pain...It is a burden because the men and women with whom I live have customs that are as far away from mine as the light of the moon is different from the light of the sun.”
- 49. In exile on Elba: “Of all the insults heaped upon me, the one I was most sensitive to was being Corsican.” To the State Council: “ I want the title of French citizen to become the finest and most desirable on earth. I want every Frenchman traveling anywhere…to be able to believe himself at home.” On his deathbed: “My son must have no thought of avenging my death: he must take advantage of it. Let him never forget my accomplishments; let him forever remain, as I have been, French to the finger tips.”
- 50. The (first) war to end all wars? Did total war originate in Revolutionary era? • Popular armies • Total mobilization of society for purposes of war • Blurring of combatants and non-combatants • Radicalization of war aims: all in/all out • Violence as regenerative
- 51. Citizen Armies “It has now been fourteen days and fourteen nights, my friend, since I’ve set foot in a house or slept more than two hours in a row… for fourteen times twenty four hours I’ve had nothing to eat. I’ve lived with army bread, not always any water, and sometimes a little bad pecquet [cheap brandy].” –Claude Simon, grenadier from Paris, 1793.
- 52. Radicalization of war Does democratization of war lead to radicalization of war? War fought for nation, not king More at stake for more people Fusion of politics and war Non-combatants fair game
- 53. Execution of Spanish rebels in Madrid (Goya)
- 56. Regeneration through violence “It is a cruel thing to think but it is becoming more clear every day: peace is taking us backwards. We will only be regenerated by blood. Our shallow national character, and our frivolous or corrupt morals, are incompatible with liberty, and can only be reformed by the rasp of adversity.” –Madame Roland,leader of the Girondin faction, 1791.
- 57. “Revolutionary war is an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy’s poison but also purges us of our own filth.” –Mao Tse Tung, 1938.
- 58. A cautionary note from… “The most extravagant idea that can arise in a politician’s head is to believe that it is enough for a people to invade a foreign country to make it adopt their laws and their constitution. No one loves armed missionaries...The Declaration of the Rights of Man is not a beam of sunlight which shines on all men, and it is not a lightening bolt which strikes every throne at the same time...” –?
Editor's Notes
- The term “TOTAL WAR” originated in WWI, to describe not so much actual conflict but the hypothetical final push in which nation would concentrate itself for one final concussive blow to enemy. It has been ideas about apocalyptic war, all-in war, that has driven atrocities, from Revolution to today. Carl Schmitt, legal scholar but also Nazi sympathizer, wrote in 1932 about the consquences of such as war, when war is viewed as the “last” war: “Such a war is necessarily unusually intense and inhuman because, by transcending the limits of the political framework, it simultaneously degrades the enemy into moral and other categories and is forced to make of him a monster than must not only be defeated but utterly destroyed.” He had in mind the punative treatment of Germany after WWI and treaty of Versailles but was prescient about future wars...as well as relevant for earlier era. Goebbels had shrieked at Nazi flunkies in Berlin just after the surrender at Stalingrad if they wanted total war? Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?!
- For first time, ordinary folk lead the way, not aristocrats. The radicalization of war after 1792, when it became for political leaders in France an all or nothing affair, had to do with not so much the “total” mobilization of resources or the “total” disregard for distinctions between combatant and non-combatant (both often used to define total war), but with the idea of “all-in” war- fusion of politics and war where one could only imagine total victory or total defeat. Drove French conquest and its imposition of revolutionary reforms abroad, even BEFORE Napoleon came on the scene. Also drove its enemies to radicalize their resistance. It was this kind of total war that brought Napoleon to power and which ultimately overcame him
- Spanish artist Francesco Goya, series of 80 or so prints done between 1810-1820, not published until 30 some years after his death in 1860s.
- Estimated 220,000 people (men, women, children) died in Vendee, about ¼ of population of region between 1793-4. General Louis Marie Turreau in charge, came up with “hell columns” – 12 detachments of 3000 soldiers each that canvased region in grid pattern, exterminating everything. Tried to burn heath and bocage. Smoke signals for Vendeeans. In Nantes, to deal with growing prisons, they lashed people to rafts and sank them in Loire. One commander, Francois- Jospeh Westerman, a former minor noble, was particulary known for his ferocity. Writing to Convention after a decisive battle at banks of Loire where remnants of Vendee were attempting to cross: There is no more Vendée. It has died under our free sword, with its women and children. I have crushed children under the hooves of horses and massacred women who, these at least, will give birth to no more brigands… I have exterminated everyone.” A genocide? Republicans did not consider Vendeens a distinct ethnic/racial groups. Rebels outside the region were never persecuted because of their birth. Atrocities more about belief that no revolutionary supporters remained in region, hence all were enemies, or that it was military necessity. But total war? Total war? It was battle to death, enemies were inhuman monsters, existential threats to Revolution, to future. Non-combatants fair game.
- Changing culture of war linked to Enlightenment. Enlightenment introduced new ways of thinking about society. Progress became measure, moving towards civilization, peace, reason. War was a stage in human development, destined to fade away. The idea of perpetual peace arises, something inevitable but also something to strive for. Enlightenment offered secular vision of peace, not tied to salvation but human progress. But at same time, others began seeing war as the antidote to civilization, not its causality, a cure for corruption, materialism. This glorification was different from aristocratic ideals- it was not about displaying superior control and skill and honor; it was about self-expression, the Romantic unleashing of energy.