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
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
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.”
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
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.
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
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.