The revolutionaries of 1789 wanted a constitutional monarchy that was organised on sound democratic principles and accountable to the people. They also wanted to reform and simplify the way France was governed and administered. Under the Ancien Regime, France had grown into a cluttered and chaotic jumble of regions and jurisdictions, while its localised and haphazard systems of weights and measures made trade difficult. The new regime set out to rectify these problems – and went even further, even changing the nature of times and dates.

Administrative confusion

Under the Ancien Régime, France had become a confused array of administrative divisions and jurisdictions.

Maps of late 18th century France reveal just how complicated the nation had become, with its myriad of provinces, généralités, pays d’état, bailliages, parlements, dioceses and parishes. These divisions often had overlapping or conflicting borders, employed different tariffs and duties, had different customs regulations and used different systems of weights and measures. To further complicate government, the expansion of the national bureaucracy under Louis XIV had created new offices and positions without abolishing ancient ones.

Because of this unregulated and inefficient growth, France’s government and bureaucracy became top heavy, cumbersome and difficult to reform. As historian Sylvia Neely puts it, the Ancien Régime was like “a large palace to which rooms and wings were added over the years, without any overall plan”.

Remaking the map

The new regime wanted to address these issues by remaking France from scratch. Maps of the Ancien Régime would be wiped clean and redrawn with a steady hand. Old provinces would be scrapped and replaced with new administrative divisions, their borders and powers decided rationally.

The task of administrative reform was begun by a committee of the National Constituent Assembly. Most of the committee’s recommendations were passed on March 4th 1790. These reforms abolished the provinces (généralités and pays d’états) and replaced them with 83 départements.

These new départements were much smaller than the previous provincial divisions – an intentional decision, made to limit the power of the départements and ensure that département officials could respond quickly to unrest or problems (the departmental capital, or chef-lieu, was never more than one day’s travel away from the rest of the département).

The départements were given responsibility for gathering taxes, overseeing public works, providing education and dispensing charity. In addition to their secular duties, each département also constituted a new religious diocese. This greatly reduced the number of dioceses (down from 130 in 1789) and therefore the number of bishops and archbishops.

Weights and measures

Once it had streamlined France’s administrative divisions, the National Constituent Assembly turned its attention to simplifying and standardising weights and measures.

The systems for weighing and measuring items in the Ancien Régime were notoriously confusing. Before the revolution, France used more than 100 different ways of dividing and measuring land. Units of weight and measurement were usually determined by local custom, city officials or feudal seigneurs.

This meant that standards were often fixed locally – for example, units of length for rope, cloth or building supplies might be measured against a beam at the town market or markings on a cathedral wall. Weights were often determined by containers – baskets, barrels, carts and so forth – but the size of these could vary considerably from one place to the next.

The lack of national standards and consistency was particularly frustrating for merchants, importers and wholesalers who traded in different regions. In March 1790, the National Constituent Assembly resolved to adopt a uniform system of weights and measures – however there were several ideas about how to proceed and contention about what system to adopt.

The metric system

Being a technical matter, the Assembly left the issue of weights and measures with the Académie Française, the nation’s elite scientific academy. Among the contributors to the debate were Charles de Talleyrand, the noted chemist Antoine Lavoisier, Italian mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, the ‘French Newton’ Pierre-Simon Laplace and the Marquis de Condorcet.

Of these luminaries, Lagrange, Laplace and Condorcet sat on the Académie’s committee. On October 27th, they recommended the adoption of a decimal system – that is, a system where units of weight and measurement were based on divisions or multiplications of 10. On March 19th 1791, the Académie presented a further series of recommendations, one being the use of the metre (French for ‘measure’) as a base unit of distance.

The National Constituent Assembly gave approval for the Académie to continue developing what is now known as the metric system. The system they eventually presented to the National Convention in 1793 created new units of measurement called metres, grams and litres. Prefixes derived from Greek – deci, centi, milli, deca, hecto, kilo – were used to indicate divisions or multiples of these units.

Adaptation and spread

The men of the Académie were pleased with their creation. The metric system was based on mathematics, geometry, physics and longitude, yet its decimal base meant that it was practical, functional and easy to calculate. “Nothing so great and so simple”, said Antoine de Lavoisier, “has ever come from the hand of man”.

The Académie’s scientists believed the new system would become popular in France, then spread around the world. Revolutionary politicians also supported the proposed new system. The Assembly’s 1791 decree had as one of its aims “extending this uniformity to foreign countries… committing them to a new measuring system [based on] nothing arbitrary or peculiar to the situation of one people of the world”.

Their predictions were largely justified but it would take years before the new system was embraced in France, let alone worldwide. The National Convention fixed July 1st 1794 as the date when the metric system would become compulsory. But by the time this date arrived, almost all French citizens – including most government departments – were still using old systems of weights and measures. The national government’s failure to supply ‘metre sticks’, standardised weights and educational material about the new system was partly to blame.

Changing time

As the Académie was devising its metric system, a like-minded group began lobbying for changes to the measurement of time. Unlike the reforms to weights and measures, there was no pressing need to change the clock or the calendar. This was a movement driven more by ideology and utopian dreams than practical need.

The Gregorian calendar was a creation of the Catholic church, for example, and thus seen as an artefact of the old order. Some in the government and the Académie saw intervals of time as simply another measurement, to be decimalised along with weights, lengths and volumes. Others had grander visions about reforming society on rational principles or restarting the calendar from scratch.

Whatever the motives, the National Convention gave its support to decimalised time in September 1792. It handed the matter to one of its sub-committees, the Committee of Public Education (French, Comité de l’instruction Publique) and the mathematician Gilbert Romme, the committee’s de facto leader. Romme finalised his recommendations while held hostage in Caen during the federalist revolt there. They were officially adopted by the Convention on October 5th 1793.

A 10-hour day, a 10-day week

The premise of Romme’s changes was relatively simple. The measurement of time should also be decimalised: radically reorganised so that it was based on units of 10. There would be 100 minutes in an hour, 10 hours in a day and 10 days in a week. A new decimal minute would be the equivalent of 86 ‘old’ seconds; the decimal hour would span 144 ‘old’ minutes.

The number of months in a year remained at 12, however, each month would contain three 10-day weeks. Months were named after aspects of nature or climate relevant to that time of year, for example Brumaire (‘fog’), Frimaire (‘frost’), Germinal (‘germination’), Floréal (‘flowering’), Prairial (‘pasture’) and Thermidor (‘heat’).

The days of the week were numbered rather than named, while the 10-day weeks were known as décades. This decimalisation still left five or six days left over at the end of each calendar year. These surplus days were called jours complémentaires (‘complementary days’) or sanculottides, because they were designated holidays for the working classes.

Gregorian years were replaced by numbered years, beginning with Year I, the first year of the French Republic (September 22nd 1792 to September 21st 1793).

Initial optimism

These reforms were supported with printings of the new calendar, government publications and the design and production of new timepieces. Clockmakers produced clocks and watches that showed decimal time or, more commonly, a combination of decimal and 24-hour time. The government, its departments and agencies all used revolutionary dates and times in their reports and correspondence.

The men who devised the revolutionary calendar and decimal time gushed about the progressive social change they had fathered. Fabre d’Eglantine described it as a victory for Enlightenment principles:

“The regeneration of the French people and the establishment of the Republic have brought with them the reform of the common calendar. We could no longer count the years during which kings oppressed us… the prejudices of the throne and the church, and the lies of each, sullied each page of the calendar we were using. You have reformed this calendar and substituted another, in which time is measured by more exact, symmetrical figures… it is necessary to replace visions of ignorance with the realities of reason, sacerdotal prestige with the truth of nature.”

Adaptation and reception

Among the general population, these reforms were not warmly received. It is difficult to accurately gauge public opinion, not least because the first year of the revolutionary calendar coincided with the Reign of Terror. To criticise the Convention’s reformist policies on time was to risk condemnation as a counter-revolutionary.

This was particularly true in Paris, the epicentre of the Terror, where the revolutionary calendar was more widely used. The working classes expressed some bitterness that the new calendar reduced their four Sundays or rest days each month down to three.

Outside the cities and larger towns, however, life went on as before. Peasants and workers continued to follow the Gregorian calendar and the seven day week; they continued to observe Sundays as a day of rest and worship. Government officials tried to fine those who breached the designated rest days or continued to observe Sundays and Christian feast days – but it had little effect.

By the end of the 18th century, the revolutionary calendar had fallen into widespread disuse. It was formally abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte in January 1806.

“We cannot escape the fact that the calendar was a failure. For most of the years of its existence, we can detect an awkwardness, even an embarrassment about the artificiality of the new system, its continued coexistence with the old, forbidden calendar, and its contrast with the calendar used by the majority of other nations. Its existence and widespread disuse was a constant reminder that the aims of the Revolution had not been achieved, and an admission that the republic was, at best, a work in progress.”
Matthew Shaw, historian

1. The revolutionary government in France attempted to reform the nation by changing its administrative divisions and creating a standardised system of weights and measures.

2. In 1790 the National Constituent Assembly abolished the old provincial divisions, replacing them with 83 départements of limited power and roughly equal size. The départements also served as ecclesiastical dioceses.

3. In consultation with scientists in the Académie, the government also sought to develop a system of weights and measures, to replace the myriad of systems in use in pre-revolutionary France.

4. After adopting the metric system, the National Convention also advocated a revolutionary calendar and decimalised time, based on units of 10. This came into effect in 1793.

5. The adoption of the metric system was slow and not complete by the mid-1790s, while the revolutionary calendar and decimal time were widely ignored by the French people and eventually abolished in 1806.

Citation information
Title: ‘Remaking France’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/remaking-france/
Date published: October 23, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

In October 1789 thousands of Parisians, many of them women, marched 12 miles to Versailles, the residence of Louis XVI and the National Constituent Assembly. After 24 hours of tension, intimidation and some confrontation and violence, the king and agreed to leave Versailles and accompany the mob back to Paris. The October march on Versailles or ‘October Days’, as these events have become known, brought a century of royal government at Versailles to an end. Not for the first time or the last, threats of mob violence produced a significant political shift. France’s monarch and national government relocated to Paris and became subject to groups and forces within the capital.

Versailles

Located 12 miles (20 kilometres) south-west of Paris, Versailles had been the seat of France’s royal government since the late 1600s. It was not a single palace but a sprawling complex of buildings and outbuildings, manicured lawns and gardens, roads and decorative features.

Most of Versailles was built by Louis XIV and reflected the grandeur of his absolutist reign. The main palace had 2,153 rooms, 67 staircases and floor space exceeding 67,000 square metres. Its interior was adorned with more than 15,000 paintings, statutes and knickknacks.

Many of Versailles’ artworks reinforced Louis’ royal absolutism, by extolling the strengths and virtues of kings. There were scenes from Greek and Roman mythology; lavish tapestries and sculptures; numerous ballrooms and staterooms lined with the finest glass, marble and gold leaf. The massive grounds were filled with statues, ornaments, grottoes and fountains. The buildings and grounds at Versailles were costly to maintain, requiring a staff of more than 2,000 people.

Though it was a royal residence, Versailles was never closed to the public. Those of the lower classes could come and go freely, as the English chronicler Arthur Young noted with amusement while visiting there:

“Again to Versailles. In viewing the king’s apartment, which he had not left a quarter of an hour [before], with those slight traits of disorder that showed he lived in it, it was amusing to see the blackguard figures that were walking uncontrolled about the palace, and even in [the king’s] bedchamber; men whose rags betrayed them to be in the last stage of poverty, and I was the only person that stared and wondered how the devil they got there. It is impossible not to like this careless indifference and freedom from suspicion. One loves the master of the house who would not be hurt or offended at seeing his apartment thus occupied if he returned suddenly.”

Soldiers disrespect the revolution

Like many of the revolution’s fateful journées, the October Days were triggered by provocative rumours. The most significant of these involved alleged misbehaviour by a group of soldiers.

On October 1st 1789, troops of the Royal Flanders Regiment arrived at Versailles from Douai after being summoned to strengthen the king’s royal bodyguard. The royal court provided the regiment with a welcome banquet which, according to eyewitness accounts, became progressively rowdier as the soldiers consumed more wine. Late in the evening, drunk soldiers were reportedly seen standing on tables, shouting and singing bawdy songs.

All this was probably harmless enough but the popular press in Paris seized on it nevertheless. According to Jean-Paul Marat‘s L’Ami du Peuple, drunken soldiers had insulted the revolution by throwing tricolour cockades onto the floor, then stomping and urinating on them. Some officers, Marat claimed, had also donned black and white cockades of the Ancien Régime.

It was also said the soldiers sang verses of O Richard, ô mon Roi!, an operatic song praising an imprisoned king and calling for his freedom. Louis XVI himself had attended the banquet earlier in the evening, albeit briefly – but reports in Paris claimed he had stayed for hours, watching the proceedings with both approval and amusement. Some publications pondered why royal soldiers were permitted to eat and drink heartily at a time when ordinary Parisians could scarcely find a loaf of bread.

Food crisis in Paris

These reports, along with other stories of more gluttony and debauchery at Versailles, caused outrage among the working people of Paris. By October 4th, Parisians were taking to the streets in protest – not just about the conduct of soldiers at Versailles but also chronic shortages of bread and other foods.

The harvest had been gathered in September so supplies should have improved but this had not eventuated in Paris. The government of Jacques Necker, anticipating a shortage of food, had negotiated imports of grain but they were yet to arrive. Bread queues outside bakeries stretched for entire city blocks. Many Parisians queued for hours, only to go home empty-handed.

The shortages of bread in early October were unexpected and gave rise to conspiracy theories. Some suggested the king and his ministers, having lost power to the National Constituent Assembly, had orchestrated the food shortage to starve the people into submission. This idea was perpetuated by the radical militia leader Claude Fournier L’Héritier, who claimed: “the detestable aristocratic and royalist horde had plotted to submit the nation to slavery by starvation”.

The mob sets out

By October 5th, the situation in Paris had reached critical mass. That morning, a crowd of between 5,000 and 10,000 people gathered outside the Hôtel de Ville and demanded the city release its supplies of bread. Many of the crowd were women from the unruly district of Faubourg Saint-Antoine; a sizeable number were veterans of the attack on the Bastille three months earlier.

When the Commune did not respond, the crowd elected to march on Versailles and take their grievances directly to the king. Armed with pikes, scythes, clubs, muskets and some small cannon stolen from the Hôtel de Ville, they marched out of Paris at noon and trudged the 12 miles to Versailles, arriving shortly after dark. Their de facto leader was Stanislas Maillard, a coarsely spoken officer in the National Guard and one of the leaders of the July raid on the Bastille.

The crowd had conflicting aims but there was a general consensus that the king must return to Paris, take command of the capital and address the food crisis. An account of the October Days by Adrien Duquesnoy recalls that “ten, twenty, thirty thousand people were coming to Versailles, intent on seizing the king according to some, seeking to force the [National] Assembly to hasten its work, according to others”.

Confrontation and negotiation

When the crowd arrived at Versailles, some of them invaded the hall of the National Constituent Assembly, though only to escape the heavy rain falling outside. Many of the Assembly’s deputies, including Honore Mirabeau and Maximilien Robespierre, mingled freely with the people and listened to their grievances. According to Duquesnoy’s account:

“Imagine the surprise of many members of the [National] Assembly when some 20 fishwives entered, led by a reasonably well-dressed man called Maillard, who spoke on their behalf with great skill and in well educated French. The women had come to say that Paris was short of bread. They sought the help and support of the Assembly. This action was simple and justified, for to be hungry is a terrible state. A proposed decree [by the Assembly] was read out to the women. The king was requested to take the strongest possible action to improve the free circulation of grain, etc. All this took place honourably and peacefully – until some members were unwise enough and bold enough to leave their places to go and chat with the women, which led to some disorder. Viscount Mirabeau (the brother of the famous Mirabeau) grabbed the bosoms of the prettiest women, and the most indecent behaviour occurred in the sacred place of representative government.”

Meanwhile, the Assembly’s president, Jean-Joseph Mounier, arranged for a deputation of six women to be admitted to the palace. The king heard their case and promised to take action to alleviate the food shortages in Paris. When his promises failed to calm the agitated mob, Louis ordered the food stores at Versailles be opened and distributed to the protestors.

The National Guard arrives

By this time Marquis de Lafayette and a regiment of National Guard had arrived from Paris, however, the king preferred not to deploy the Guardsmen or his own soldiers, perhaps fearing a bloodbath.

Instead, Louis delivered a message to the crowd, promising that he would endorse the Assembly’s reformist legislation and give his assent to the August decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

The king’s promises settled the mood somewhat and the night passed with some sporadic gunfire but little violence. The soldiers were given no orders to fire on civilians and many soldiers openly mingled with them.

The palace breached

One radical section of the crowd, comprised mainly of women from Faubourg Saint-Antoine, had been demanding stronger action since their arrival at Versailles. They refused to accept the king’s assurances, claiming that whatever he promised now would later be reversed by Marie Antoinette.

Around dawn on the morning of October 6th, this group gained access to the palace through an unguarded side entrance. They stormed through the palace halls, intent on finding and murdering the queen. When a sentry spotted the women and fired on them, killing one, the mob overpowered, murdered and dismembered two soldiers. Antoinette avoided the women by fleeing through the palace’s maze of bedrooms, which probably saved her life.

Additional soldiers were mobilised to restore order and clear the palace of invaders. On Lafayette’s advice, Louis XVI addressed the largest section of the crowd from a window balcony. “My friends”, he told them, “I shall go with you to Paris, with my wife and children. It is to my good and faithful subjects that I confide all that is most precious to me”.

These remarks brought cheers, applause and shouts of “Vive le roi!”, as did the king’s gesture of wearing the tricolour cockade of the revolution. Louis departed the balcony and was replaced by Marie Antoinette, who bravely risked her life by standing before the crowd, some of whom were armed with muskets.

“The October Days illustrate the delicate balance in the relationship between the people and the monarchy… Constitutional monarchy [was] the only political system really considered at this time, but even violent protestors showed no real hostility to the king’s role. In the face of perceived injustice, a violent mood could easily generate, but it overlay a basic willingness to believe good of the king, an acceptance of his paternal role, and a hope that he would fulfil the new role placed on him, of ‘restorer of French liberty’. In October 1789 most would blame Marie Antoinette and her advisers rather than Louis himself.”
David Andress, historian

The king sets off for Paris

On the afternoon of October 6th, Louis, his family, his royal retinue and several deputies to the Assembly departed Versailles for Paris. Their carriages were accompanied by the crowd, the procession numbering between 30,000 and 40,000 people.

The mood of the people was joyous and optimistic, yet also triumphant and intimidating. On July 14th, the people had triumphed over royal absolutism; on October 6th they had triumphed over the king himself.

On their return to Paris, the royal family was installed in the Tuileries, a dilapidated palace on the banks of the Seine, not used as a royal residence for decades. Some furniture, clothing and other royal belongings were carted from Versailles to the Tuileries. Even so, the royal court in Paris was much more austere.

Versailles was maintained, an acknowledgement that the king would eventually return – but neither Louis or his family would see the splendour of Versailles again. The National Constituent Assembly also relocated to the Tuileries, its sessions held in the Salle du Manége, an indoor hall used for riding lessons. The king became a virtual prisoner in the Tuileries and, in many respects, the revolution became a prisoner of Paris.

1. The October Days refers to the journée of October 5th and 6th 1789, when a crowd of several thousand Parisians, many of them women, marched on Versailles to pressure the royal government.

2. Located 12 miles from Paris, Versailles was a sprawling complex of palaces and buildings that housed the king and the royal government since the days of Louis XIV.

3. The march on Versailles was precipitated by severe food shortages in Paris, then rumours of a banquet given to royal soldiers on October 1st, where drunken soldiers allegedly trampled symbols of the revolution.

4. During the October Days, as many as 30,000 people laid siege to Versailles and petitioned the king and the National Constituent Assembly. Some even penetrated the palace and threatened Marie Antoinette.

5. On October 6th Louis XVI appeared before the crowd and agreed to return to Paris. The royal procession, accompanied by Assembly deputies and the crowd, departed Versailles later that day.

A participant in the October March on Versailles (1789)
A French nobleman describes the October Days (1789)
Three eyewitness accounts of the October Days (1789)
A bourgeois man describes the mistreatment of his son during the October Days (1789)

Citation information
Title: ‘The October march on Versailles’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/october-march-on-versailles/
Date published: October 10, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was a pivotal document of the French Revolution and indeed, of modern democratic Europe. It was drafted in mid-1789 by members of the National Assembly, who crystallised Enlightenment positions on freedom, natural rights and human equality into a single document. The Declaration became a foundation stone of the revolution, though its ideals were seldom met and its principles were often transgressed.

The call to codify rights

In July 1789, the National Constituent Assembly began deliberating how to guarantee and protect individual rights in the new nation. One solution was to enact a document that codified [outlined in law] and explicitly protected these rights. Rights-based documents were already a feature of British law and at the time, the newly created United States of America was negotiating a bill of rights for its own constitution.

The National Assembly formed a committee to draft a bill of rights and, on August 26th 1789, passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This declaration became a cornerstone document of the French Revolution – and according to some historians, its greatest legacy.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen would serve as a preamble to all three revolutionary constitutions and a cornerstone document for political clubs and movements. It also set goals and standards for subsequent national governments – though these standards would be ignored and trampled during the radical phase of the revolution.

The role of Lafayette

The main sponsor of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. A veteran of the American Revolution and a student of the philosophes, Lafayette embraced Enlightenment doctrines of constitutionalism, popular sovereignty and natural rights.

On July 11th, three days before the attack on the Bastille, Lafayette delivered an address to the Assembly, maintaining the need for a constitutional document that guaranteed the rights of individuals.

Lafayette went as far as tabling his own draft declaration of rights, prepared in consultation with Thomas Jefferson. A prominent writer and political leader, Jefferson authored some of the American Revolution’s most significant documents, including the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the United States Declaration of Independence (both 1776).

Division and debates

Despite Lafayette’s enthusiasm, there was considerable division in the Assembly about whether a declaration of rights was actually needed. Many of the points of difference that emerged continue in debates over rights-based laws today.

Most conservative and Monarchien (constitutional monarchist) deputies rejected the idea. They accepted that the royal government needed reform and limitations on its power – but they considered a bill of rights an unnecessary step. The Assembly’s more radical deputies thought otherwise. The new government, they argued, must have explicit constitutional limitations on its power, particularly where this power could infringe on individual liberties.

Other deputies had structural, procedural and legal concerns. What form should a declaration of rights take? Should it be part of the constitution? Should it exist as separate legislation? Should it be a broad philosophical statement or a legally binding set of points?

The committee sets to work

The debate continued through July and into the first days of August. On August 4th, the deputies reached a consensus about drafting a declaration of rights. Responsibility for this was given to the Assembly’s constitutional committee. This committee contained around 40 deputies, including Honore Mirabeau, Emmanuel Sieyès, Charles Talleyrand and Isaac Le Chapelier.

For six days the committee thrashed out a declaration of rights. They studied similar documents from Britain and America and received numerous submissions and drafts from interested locals.

The committee eventually emerged with a draft declaration of rights, containing a preamble and 24 articles. On August 26th, they whittled this back to 17 articles. The committee then voted to suspend deliberations and accept the draft as it stood, intending to review it after the finalisation of a constitution. Thus was born the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (in French, Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen).

An Enlightenment document

The Declaration was a crystallisation of Enlightenment ideals. According to historian Lynn Hunt, it was “stunning in its sweep and simplicity”. It encapsulated the natural and civil rights espoused by writers like John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jefferson, and entrenched them in French law.

It was a short document, containing only a preamble and 17 brief articles. These articles provided protection for numerous individual rights: liberty, property, freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion and equal treatment before the law. The Declaration guaranteed property rights and asserted that taxation should be paid by all, in proportion to their means. It also asserted the concept of popular sovereignty: the idea that law and government existed to serve the public will, not to suppress it.

All of this was articulated in language that was clear, brief and unambiguous. The Declaration was also universal in its tone – its rights and ideas applied to all people, not just the citizens of France.

A cornerstone of the revolution

The Declaration was endorsed by the National Constituent Assembly and delivered to Louis XVI for endorsement. As Eric Hobsbawm puts it, the king “resisted with his usual stupidity” and refused to sign. He continued to refuse his assent until October 5th, when he signed the Declaration to placate angry crowds at Versailles.

Passed into law, the Declaration became a cornerstone of the revolution. The National Constitution Assembly adopted the Declaration as a preamble to the Constitution of 1791. An amended version of the Declaration also formed the basis of the Constitution of Year I, drafted by the Montagnards.

It also served as a beacon for revolutionary groups, both moderate and radical. The political clubs and cercles considered the document sacrosanct. The formal name of the Cordeliers club was the Société des Amis des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (‘Society of Friends of the Rights of Man and Citizen’) and a copy of the Declaration was pinned to the club’s wall beneath a pair of crossed daggers. The Jacobin rulebook required members to show loyalty to the Declaration and uphold its values at all times.

Impact

While the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was held up as sacred and inviolable, there was debate and disagreement about who these rights applied to.

Like the great documents of the American Revolution, the Declaration said nothing about the rights of women, nor did it extend any rights to the slaves and indentured servants in the colonies. This selectivity rankled with the most radical democrats. In October 1789, Robespierre used the Declaration to suggest that Jews – a marginalised group excluded from voting and political office, even during the revolution – were entitled to equality and civil rights.

Despite these gaps and shortcomings, the Declaration remains one of history’s foremost expressions of human rights. It served as a death warrant for the absolutist monarchy, an articulation of Enlightenment values, and a model for future societies seeking freedom and self-government.

“The August Decrees and Declaration of the Rights of Man represented the end of the absolutist, seigneurial and corporate structure of eighteenth-century France. They were also a proclamation of the principles of a new golden age. The Declaration, in particular, was an extraordinary document… Universal in its language and in its optimism, the Declaration was ambiguous on whether the propertyless, slaves and women would have political as well as legal equality, and silent on how the means to exercise one’s talents could be secured by those without education or property.”
Peter McPhee, historian

1. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was, as its name suggests, an articulation of individual rights. It was drafted in mid-1789, passed on August 26th and signed by the king in October.

2. The idea for a declaration of rights came from the Marquis de Lafayette, who provided his own draft, prepared in collaboration with American philosopher Thomas Jefferson.

3. The final Declaration was drafted by a committee of the National Constituent Assembly. It contained a preamble and 17 individual articles, guaranteeing and protecting specific rights.

4. The Declaration became a cornerstone document of the revolution. It served as a preamble to national constitutions and an inspiration to various political clubs and societies.

5. Like documents from the American Revolution, the Declaration did not specifically guarantee the rights of women, slaves or racial minorities, a fact highlighted by some political radicals.

Citation information
Title: ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/declaration-rights-of-man-and-citizen/
Date published: October 3, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The Great Fear (in French, Grande Peur) was a wave of peasant riots and violence that swept through France in July and August 1789. It was apparently sparked by economic concerns, news of political developments in Paris and rumours of counter-revolutionary attacks. Though historians are divided on how this panic became so widespread, the consequences of the Great Fear are more apparent.

Summary

Already excited by the summer’s political developments in Versailles and in Paris, France’s peasants began hearing rumours about roving bands of hired brigands reportedly rampaging through the countryside, raiding villages and stealing grain.

These rumours appeared in different places, took different forms and invoked different levels of response. Many peasants responded by arming themselves and mobilising to defend their property. Some went further and engaged in revolutionary violence, taking to the road, looting the châteaux of landed aristocrats and destroying feudal contracts. The peasants, it seems, became the destructive brigands they had initially feared.

While few people were killed during the Great Fear, property worth millions of livres was either stolen or destroyed.

Peasant xenophobia

The context for the Great Fear was rural paranoia about outsiders. French peasants were accustomed to strangers arriving in their region, usually in the middle of the year when good weather made travel easier. Some of these travellers were landless labourers or destitute townspeople in search of paid work. Others were beggars, vagrants and outcasts who decided that living off the land or seeking the charity of farmers was better than starving in the cities.

Peasant communities were, by their nature, insular and suspicious of outsiders. They considered these strangers with a suspicious eye. New arrivals competed for labour, food and charity provided by the local parish.

The situation was particularly critical in the spring of 1789, as France endured its worst food crisis in years. Even the small stores of grain retained by peasants for their own survival were dwindling. According to John Albert White, who translated Georges Lefebvre‘s pivotal study of the Great Fear, the numbers of itinerants in rural areas reached levels never seen before:

“Unemployed workers, displaced by the crisis in industry, were everywhere in search of jobs… Vagrants and beggars, always a source of concern to the small rural proprietor, choked the roads and threatened reprisals against householders who refused to give them shelter or a crust of bread. Hungry men and women invaded forests and fields and stripped them of firewood or grain, before the harvest was ripe to the gathered.”

News and rumours

Peasant communities were also unsettled by the political events of 1788-89. The convocation of the Estates General and the drafting of the cahiers created a mood of optimism and expectation across the country. The process of writing the cahiers had brought peasants together to discuss their situation and share their grievances, particularly the burdens of royal taxes and feudal dues.

News of the formation of the National Assembly, the Tennis Court Oath and the king’s acceptance of reform caused excitement in peasant communities – but this excitement was short-lived. In mid-July, news reached the provinces that the king had mobilised his troops and sacked his director of finance, Jacques Necker. This sparked rumours and conspiracy theories that a royalist or aristocratic counter-revolution was imminent.

These stories took different forms in different regions. The most common rumour was that the king or his conservative nobles had employed bands of foreign troops or brigands to march into the provinces and bring the people to their knees with violence, looting and wanton destruction.

‘Fear breeds fear’

These fears of royal and aristocratic retribution spread exponentially in late July (as Lefebvre himself put it, “fear bred fear”). Lefebvre and later historians have attempted to track the course of the Great Fear, though with limited success.

The circulation of rumour was fast – almost too fast for the age – and sporadic. It did not always follow logical transport routes, such as rivers and roads. There are accounts of the same rumour appearing in places 20 miles apart on the same day. As these rumours circulated, some peasant communities became convinced that hired brigands were marching toward their village.

In this paranoid climate, even the most benign event (a sighting of strangers, movement in the distance, smoke on the horizon) could trigger a panicked response. In Angoulême, for example, thousands of men were armed and mobilised after spotting a cloud of raised dust. A peasant militia in Champagne was raised after locals saw men sneaking through a nearby wood; the ‘invaders’ turned out to be cows.

“The political crisis played an important part, for the excitement it provoked made the people restless and unruly. Every beggar, vagrant and rioter seemed a ‘brigand’. There had always been great anxiety at harvest time: it was a moment the peasants dreaded… The uprising in Paris… spread the fear of brigands far and wide, and at the same time the people anxiously waited for the defeated aristocrats to take their revenge on the Third Estate with the aid of foreign troops. No one doubted for a moment that they had taken the promised brigands into their pay.”
Georges Lefebvre, historian

Destroying feudal records

In some villages or small towns, the Great Fear had a measure of organisation and leadership. Locals gathered on the village green or square to hear from their local representatives. Some resolved to make a preemptive strike against potential counter-revolutionaries. Large bands of peasants, sometimes entire villages, gathered up arms and hit the road in search of targets.

Their violence was not indiscriminate (they targeted only the symbols of feudal authority) nor was it bloodthirsty (fewer than 20 people were reported killed during the panic of July-August). The damage to private property, however, was extensive. The landed aristocracy and seigneurs suffered worse. Their châteaux (country homes) were besieged, invaded, looted and, in most cases, set alight.

Written records bearing names, land holdings, feudal contracts and obligations were eagerly sought and, if found, promptly destroyed. These might take the form of ledgers showing which peasants were subject to the champart, whose quitrents were due and who owed labour for the corvée. If this sabotage did not kill off seigneurial feudalism, the peasants hoped, it would at least make it unworkable.

Minimal violence against nobles

The worst of the Great Fear riots broke out in Dauphiné, south-eastern France, in late July. Beginning in Bourgoin, gangs of peasants engaged in a five-day orgy of destruction, ransacking and burning numerous châteaux until they were dispersed by volunteer soldiers from Lyons and Grenoble.

The nobles themselves were not harmed – unless they tried to resist. Lefebvre reports only three murders during the Great Fear. One of the victims was Michel de Montesson, a nobleman from Douillet who weeks before had sat with the Second Estate at Versailles. Another killed by the mob was Cureau, who had a reputation for hoarding food.

Scores of nobles, however, were chased out of their homes, if not the district. There were instances of aristocrats being held to ransom and forced to renounce their feudal rights over peasants on the estate.

Some nobles were themselves taken in by rumours of roaming brigands. At Limousin in central France, Baron de Drouhet and Baron de Belinay gathered a militia to protect the citizens of Saint-Angel from a rumoured attack. Unfortunately for both barons, guards at Saint-Angel mistook them for spies, and they were bound, gagged and transported by cart to Limoges.

The ergot theory

The Great Fear was a peculiar uprising in that it was spontaneous, sporadic and disorganised. Historians have not yet presented a full or convincing account of what drove the panic of July and August 1789.

One theory, advanced by Mary Matossian in the late 1980s but disregarded by most historians, was that riotous peasants had eaten stored flour contaminated with ergot. The ergot fungus contains lysergic acid, the active compound in the narcotic LSD, and if eaten in sufficient quantities can cause hallucinations and paranoid delusions.

Whatever its true causes, the Great Fear had three significant outcomes. First, it showed that the peasantry in France was prepared to mobilise, take up arms and defend itself. Second, it was destructive and eradicated many aspects of an already weakening seigneurial system. Third, the Great Fear sent a clear message to members of the National Constituent Assembly about the depth of peasant hatred of seigneurialism and feudal dues.

1. The Great Fear (Grande Peur) was a brief but intense wave of peasant riots and uprisings in July and August 1789, triggered by political unrest, rumour and panic.

2. The context for this panic was the economic suffering of mid-1789, the political developments at Versailles and the peasantry’s long-standing fear and suspicion of outsiders.

3. In mid-July, peasants heard rumours that the king and/or his aristocrats had hired gangs of mercenaries or brigands to destroy their crops or property, as a means of imposing political control.

4. They took up arms and mobilise to defend themselves. Some went on long marches, attacking the châteaux of nobles, looting, burning and destroying feudal records.

5. The Great Fear not only exposed the depth of peasant feeling about feudal dues, it caused some consternation among the Second Estate and the deputies of the National Constituent Assembly.

Perigny on the Great Fear peasant uprisings (1789)

Citation information
Title: ‘The Great Fear’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/great-fear/
Date published: October 7, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The National Guard (French, Garde nationale) was a citizens’ militia formed in Paris the day before the assault on the Bastille. Those who created the National Guard intended it to protect Paris from counter-revolutionary attacks and internal stability. As the revolution unfolded, however, the National Guard, which was dominated by affluent bourgeois interests, would come into conflict with the working classes of Paris more than any external threat.

Background

By the summer of 1789, the National Assembly was ensconced at Versailles, Paris was in a state of agitation bordering on open rebellion and the French king, Louis XVI, was uncertain what to do.

In the first week of July, royal troops began massing at several critical points near Paris and Versailles. Parisians began to fear a royalist counter-revolution and the imposition of martial law. The city fell into panic and disorder; petty crime and acts of violence began to increase. The sacking of popular minister Jacques Necker on July 11th exacerbated these fears and Paris slipped into a state of insurrection.

Leading figures of the Paris bourgeoisie decided to act. On July 13th, a group of Parisian delegates to the National Assembly met in the Hôtel de Ville, the riverside building housing the municipal government. Concerned the capital was at risk from an invasion by the king’s soldiers, as well as rioting and looting by its own citizens, the delegates voted to form a citizens’ militia. They asked the king to endorse this move – he declined but they resolved to form it anyway. The militia they created became known as the National Guard.

Formation

At first, the new body was conceived as a ‘city guard’ tasked with protecting Paris from external threats and maintaining order in the capital. It was to be an instrument of its organising committee, independent of the army, beyond the control of the king and, most importantly, loyal to the National Assembly and the bourgeois revolution.

Planners expected the National Guard, when fully complemented, would number around 48,000 men. It would be led by a commander-in-chief, who would be stationed at the Hotel de Ville alongside the municipal government. The Guard would employ the city’s blue and red flag as a standard; its soldiers would wear cockades of the same colours.

The formation of the National Guard was met with popular support and enthusiasm. There was a surge of volunteers eager to join this new Parisian brigade. Many came from the ranks of the French Guard, the royal battalion garrisoned in Paris. Caught up in the fervour of the revolution, many of these soldiers volunteered their services to new corps.

Within a few hours, militia groups formed haphazardly across Paris and declared their loyalty to the National Guard. They adopted suitably coloured clothing and cockades, where they could, and some marched on the Hôtel de Ville to await instructions. Arms were still in short supply so very few of these groups carried guns. They were not sufficiently organised to have any impact on events at the Bastille on July 14th, though some volunteers undoubtedly participated in the siege on the royal fortress.

Lafayette appointed commander

On July 15th, the day after the Bastille was stormed, the committee appointed the Marquis de Lafayette as commander-in-chief of the recently formed National Guard.

Lafayette’s appointment reflected both their politics and their hopes for the National Guard. The new commander was a nobleman, a liberal and a military veteran of the American Revolution. The committee saw in Lafayette a French George Washington, a political moderate who could maintain order in Paris yet still appeal to both the nobility and the Third Estate.

One of Lafayette’s first directives was to add white, the colour of the Bourbon monarchy, to the red and blue cockade of the National Guard. Thus was born the famous red, white and blue tricolore of the revolution. Lafayette’s high profile, his leadership of the National Guard, his support for the revolution and his attempts to reconcile the monarchy, aristocracy and common people would enhance his popularity, at least for a time.

“The National Guard was, in essence, a civilian institution endowed with military capabilities. The Parisian electors debated the name to be given to it. The word ‘militia’ was laden with unpleasant memories, so the term ‘guard’ was preferable, to be further defined with the adjective ‘bourgeois’ or ‘citizen’ following the traditional usage. This citizen militia was directed as much against the threat of the so-called dangerous classes, the turbulent mass of day-labourers and paupers, as against mercenaries in the king’s army. It was recruited from those with a steady job, a bit of property to protect and a stake in society.”
Albert Soboul, historian

Who joined the National Guard?

By the end of 1789, Lafayette had around 6,000 full-time National Guardsmen under his command. The composition of the National Guard reflected its origins as a bourgeois militia. Many recruits were former members of the French Guard who had defected after the fall of the Bastille. The remainder of the French Guard was absorbed into the National Guard in October 1789.

The officers of the National Guard were elected rather than appointed. Most officers were property owners or the sons of affluent bourgeoisie. While there were some political idealists in their ranks, most officers of the National Guard were more concerned about maintaining order and protecting private property than defending the revolution.

In October 1791, the National Constituent Assembly reinforced the middle-class composition of the National Guard by ordering that its ranks only be filled by tax-paying ‘active citizens’.

Conflict with the people

As a predominately bourgeois institution, the National Guard soon came into conflict with the radical goals and provocative methods of ordinary Parisians. Scanning the timeline of the revolution reveals examples of this conflict.

In his two years as commander, Lafayette often had to walk a fine line between loyalty to the Ancien Régime, the values of the revolution and the people of Paris. Lafayette’s good judgement, coupled with a degree of showmanship, helped defuse the October march on Versailles, preventing violence against the royal family and escorting them back to Paris.

In the months that followed Lafayette and the National Guard faced even greater challenges. On February 28th 1791 (the ‘Day of Daggers’) Lafayette and his men encountered a threatening standoff between 400 armed aristocrats, who had gathered at the Tuileries to protect the king, and an angry mob of Parisians. Lafayette’s actions probably prevented a massacre.

Frustrated by the worsening situation in Paris, Lafayette attempted to resign his commission. Though he was persuaded to stay, Lafayette found himself in an impossible situation, responsible for security in a city that was fast sliding into anarchy and virtual civil war.

1. The National Guard was an organised militia, intended to defend Paris from external military threats while functioning as a local garrison and maintaining order in the city.

2. It was officially formed on July 13th 1789 by Parisian delegates to the National Assembly, who were concerned about the presence of royalist troops outside Paris and growing disorder in the city.

3. The first commander of the National Guard was the Marquis de Lafayette, a nobleman and political liberal, famous for his military leadership in the American Revolution.

4. Under Lafayette’s command, the National Guard became a noticeably bourgeois institution, its officer corps filled with middle-class businessmen and property owners.

5. The growing radicalism of the revolution in 1791 pushed Lafayette and the National Guard into difficult situations, such as the ‘Day of Daggers’ and the Champ de Mars massacre.

Citation information
Title: ‘The National Guard’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/national-guard/
Date published: October 12, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

On July 14th 1789, a crowd of several thousand people laid siege to the Bastille, a royal fortress on the eastern fringe of Paris. The Bastille had served as a royal armoury and a prison, though on this particular day it held few prisoners and was only lightly guarded. After a stand-off of several hours, the crowd gained access, overwhelmed the guards and arrested and murdered its governor. The fortress was claimed by the people and later demolished on the order of the new Paris Commune.

The capture and the fall of the Bastille was chiefly a symbolic victory. The French Revolution would have days of greater consequence, more political change and more bloody violence and destruction. Despite this, the events of July 14th have become a critical moment in history and a classic motif of people in revolution.

What was the Bastille?

The real history of the Bastille is more mundane than its legend. The Bastille began life as a fortress, built in the mid to late 1300s to house a garrison of royal soldiers belonging to Charles V. The fortress and its garrison were installed to protect the eastern flanks of Paris from English raiders during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453).

By the early 1400s, the fortress had been expanded to become one of the largest structures in Paris, with its crenellated walls standing some 25 metres above the streets. Its tower loomed over Faubourg Saint-Antoine, a working-class district known for its rowdiness and occasional defiance.

A contingent of royal troops was permanently housed in the Bastille, both to defend the city walls and, if necessary, to keep order inside them. Over time, the building acquired the name Bastille, a generic French term for any fortress at the gate of a city.

A royal prison

By the reign of Louis XI (1461-1483), the Bastille had become a royal prison. It continued this function until the French Revolution, though by the late 1700s there were rarely more than 20 or 30 prisoners.

The majority of those detained in the Bastille were not common criminals but political prisoners or men held at the king’s pleasure. They tended to be rebellious or troublesome noblemen, aristocrats with large gambling debts, rogues caught in affairs with the wives of powerful men, religious heretics or critics of the church, seditious journalists and political pornographers. Some inmates were detained there by the courts, others by royal lettres de cachet.

Several notable philosophes and revolutionary figures spent time in the Bastille, including Voltaire (twice), Denis Diderot, Jacques Brissot, the playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, the pornographer Marquis de Sade and military commander Charles Dumouriez.

Indeed, a stint in the Bastille was useful for establishing one’s credentials as a writer or an intellectual. The Enlightenment economist André Morellet was detained there for slandering a princess, later writing “Once persecuted I would be better known… those six months in the Bastille would be an excellent recommendation and infallibly make my fortune”.

A symbol of royal tyranny

On the eve of revolution, the Bastille held very few prisoners. The frequency of lettres de cachet had declined through the 1780s – though Louis XVI‘s use of lettres de cachet against two magistrates of the Paris parlement (August 1787) and the Duke of Orleans (November 1787) triggered a wave of outrage.

The parlement itself issued a strongly worded remonstrance, criticising the king’s use of arbitrary power. The Paris press seethed about Louis’ actions, while writers like Honore Mirabeau and Emmanuel Sieyès condemned the lettres de cachet as an instrument of absolutist oppression. Sending rogues, fornicators and philanderers to the Bastille was one thing – but detaining magistrates for upholding the law and the general will was an act of tyranny.

In the eyes of the people of Paris, the Bastille fortress was a physical manifestation of this royal misuse of power.

Fears of counter-revolution

The attack on the Bastille followed a tumultuous six months. At Versailles, representatives of the Third Estate had defied the king to demand a constitution and form a national assembly. France looked to be transitioning toward constitutional monarchy, though many doubted the royal government would yield its power so easily.

In Paris, the working classes had endured months of bread shortages and high prices. Bread had peaked at 14.5 sous per loaf in February; it eased slightly during the spring but had returned to those levels by mid-July. Most Parisians were now spending at least three-quarters of their daily income to buy bread.

Louis XVI then made the first of two fateful decisions. Sometime around July 4th the king, probably on the advice of conservative ministers, ordered the assembly of royal troops at several critical locations: at Versailles, at Sèvres, at the Champ de Mars in south-west Paris and at Saint-Denis in the city’s north. Even those not given to suspicion could not miss the significance of this order: it appeared the king was planning to impose martial law to regain his power.

Parisians take action

Those fears intensified on July 11th when Louis dismissed his popular finance minister, Jacques Necker, and replaced him with the arch-conservative Joseph-François Foullon. Necker’s dismissal would trigger several days of insurrection in Paris.

On July 12th, a crowd of several thousand people gathered outside the Palais-Royal. They marched to the Tuileries, demanding Necker’s reinstatement. At the Tuileries, they were forced to scatter by a royal cavalry regiment, an incident later depicted as an intentional attack on harmless civilians.

The city’s military garrison, the French Guard, was called out to restore order but its soldiers refused to open fire on the people; in fact, many Guardsmen broke ranks and joined the insurrectionists. Royal officials were attacked or chased out of the city and 40 of the government’s 54 customs posts were looted and destroyed.

The people of Paris also spent July 12th and 13th gathering arms, in order to defend the city from an anticipated Royalist assault. Gun shops, small armouries and private collections were looted.

March on the Bastille

On the morning of July 14th, a crowd of several thousand people marched on the Hôtel des Invalides in western Paris. Though used chiefly as a military infirmary, the Invalides had a large store of rifles and several small artillery pieces in its basement. The mob entered the building and looted these weapons, while officers of nearby military regiments refused to intervene.

The invaders made off with around 30,000 rifles but found little gunpowder or shot with which to load them. The solution came from deserting guardsmen, who reported that 250 barrels of gunpowder had recently been stowed at the Bastille. The crowd then set off on a two-and-a-half mile march to the fortress, hauling several small cannons.

They arrived at around 11 in the morning and formed deputations to speak with the Marquis de Launay, the Bastille’s governor. De Launay was a colonel with a clean but unremarkable military record. He was an authoritarian who was disliked by his prisoners and soldiers alike (one chronicler later described him as a “proud and stupid despot”). In the colonel’s favour, he knew the Bastille well; his father had also been its governor and De Launay himself had been born within its walls.

The fortress was lightly guarded by around 120 soldiers, most old or infirm – but the Bastille’s strong high walls and its numerous artillery pieces made it almost unassailable, even for a crowd of several thousand people.

Tense negotiations

“Nothing is more terrible than the events at Paris between 12th and 15th July… cannon and armed force used against the Bastille… the Estates declaring the King’s ministers and the civil and military authorities to be responsible to the nation; and the King going on foot, without escort, to the Assembly, almost to apologise… this is how weakness, uncertainty and an imprudent violence will overturn the throne of Louis XVI.”
King Gustav of Sweden, 1789

Details of what transpired on the afternoon of July 14th are complex and confused. At first, the crowd seemed hopeful that De Launay, like the officers at the Invalides, would relent and simply grant them access to the Bastille’s stores. De Launay was not the compromising sort, however, and he had received official orders from the Hôtel de Ville to hold the Bastille at any cost.

Between late morning and mid-afternoon, the governor received deputations from the crowd. They pleaded with him to withdraw the fortress’s 18 cannons, pointed threateningly at the suburbs below, and to surrender the Bastille’s gunpowder to the people. De Launay agreed to the first but not the second.

At around 1.30PM a small group gained access to the Bastille courtyard through a half raised drawbridge. Fearing a full-scale attack, the governor ordered his soldiers to fire on the invaders. It was a fatal miscalculation that would cost De Launay his life.

The fortress falls

Hearing the garrison had opened fire on the people, crowds around the fortress swelled, and for three hours the Bastille came under siege. Two detachments of the French Guard defected and joined the people. The crowd was unable to operate the artillery pieces stolen from the Invalides so the involvement of mutinous soldiers was critical.

By late afternoon, the fortress was coming under cannon fire, much of it targeting the drawbridge. Convinced the situation was hopeless and fearing they would be slaughtered, De Launay’s officers urged him to surrender. He first tried bluff, threatening to ignite the gunpowder stores and blow much of eastern Paris into oblivion. When this did not work, De Launay surrendered the fortress at around five o’clock.

A large contingent then stormed the Bastille, arrested De Launay, fraternised with his soldiers and released the prisoners (there were seven in total, four of them counterfeiters). Those who entered the fortress, just under 1,000 in total, were later honoured with the title Vainqueurs de la Bastille (‘Vanquishers of the Bastille’).

Leaders ordered De Launay to be taken to the town hall to stand trial but on the way, he was seized by the crowd, choked and murdered. The cause of De Launay’s death is in dispute. A popular but unverified account suggests he was stabbed and beheaded by an unemployed baker wielding a small bread knife.

1. The Bastille was a large royal fortress located in the rowdy working-class neighbourhood of Faubourg Saint-Antoine, eastern Paris. It was erected in the 14th century to defend the city’s eastern approaches.

2. Later, the Bastille was used as a royal prison. It housed mainly political prisoners, libellistes and persons detained on royal lettres de cachet, rather than common criminals.

3. By the late 1780s, the Bastille had few prisoners, yet it stood as a symbol of royal absolutism. On July 14th the people of Paris ransacked the Invalides, stealing weapons, then marched on the Bastille to capture its supplies of gunpowder.

4. The Bastille’s governor, Marquis Bernard de Launay, received deputations from the crowd but refused to hand over the powder. On the afternoon of July 14th, the Bastille was stormed by the people and De Launay was arrested and eventually murdered.

5. Though the fall of the Bastille had few political ramifications, its loss represented a powerful narrative, a symbol of the ordinary people destroying an instrument of royal absolutism.

A Paris newspaper on the storming of the Bastille (1789)
An eyewitness account of the attack on the Bastille (1789)
A citizen recalls the taking of the Bastille (1789)
The British ambassador on the storming of the Bastille (1789)

Citation information
Title: ‘The fall of the Bastille’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/fall-of-the-bastille/
Date published: October 2, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The French Revolution began in the halls of Versailles but within a few weeks, Paris had become its beating heart. The French capital had increased rapidly in size during the 18th century, becoming one of the world’s largest cities. This brought with it attendant problems such as overcrowding, unemployment and urban squalor. In 1789, frustration over high food prices and political developments saw the people of Paris assemble to demand change. The Paris insurrection saw tensions between the royal government and its people reach a critical point.

The city of light

It is impossible to understand the revolution without knowing something of revolutionary Paris. By the late 1700s, Paris was a major city housing around 650,000 people. It was Europe’s second largest metropolis and the fifth largest city in the world after Beijing, London, Tokyo and Guangzhou (China).

Like other large cities, the French capital was filled with busy commerce, colour and diversity. Paris housed high society, operas, balls, universities, philosophes and busy salons. Its financial district and stock exchange handled the profits of France’s imperial and foreign trade. The artisans and workshops of Paris produced luxury goods that were stocked in the city’s swanky stores and shipped all around Europe.

As the historian David Garrioch puts it, “some found Paris beautiful, exceeding their expectation… unless the traveller was a blasé Londoner, the scale of Paris came as a shock even to those who had read about it”. By the late 18th century, Paris had acquired the nickname La Ville Lumière or ‘the city of light’, a reference to its culture and pivotal role in the Enlightenment.

Paris’ dark side

As impressive as it was, the French capital had its darker side. Behind the grand houses and buildings, Paris was also a city of squalid tenements, of roads awash with mud and filth, of air filled with cacophonous noises and gut-turning stinks.

By 1789, the French capital was desperately overcrowded, a consequence of the city’s rapid growth through the 18th century. Thousands of people poured into Paris during the 1700s, mostly former peasants who had abandoned the land in search of some kind of unskilled labour. In 1700, the population of Paris was scarcely half a million but by 80 years later, numbers in the capital had increased by almost 30 percent.

Most of Paris’ 650,000 souls ground out a desperate hand-to-mouth existence, relying on poorly paid work, hawking, scrounging, begging, crime and prostitution. Lower-class Parisians spent all of their meagre incomes paying for rent and food staples like bread, meat, oil and wine. Any rise in costs or prices was keenly felt.

The faubourgs

Just as London grew astride the River Thames, Paris was divided and defined by the Seine. This river flowed through the city centre in a north-east direction. Like most urban rivers of its era, the Seine was heavily polluted and ran thick with industrial waste, human sewage and animal effluent.

On both sides of the Seine, Paris was divided into a series of faubourgs (suburbs). The faubourgs on the southern or left bank of the Seine sat on higher ground that was less prone to flooding. These areas housed the city’s wealthier population. The Faubourg Saint-Germain, south-west of central Paris, straddled the road to Versailles and contained the city’s grandest, most opulent homes and châteaux. This quarter also contained Paris’ military infrastructure: the Hôtel des Invalides, the military college and the Champ de Mars parade ground.

The faubourgs directly south of the city housed its universities and colleges such as the Sorbonne. The majority of Paris’ industries and working class occupied the suburbs north and east of the Seine. The most unruly of these suburbs, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, sat on the city’s eastern fringes, in the shadow of the Bastille fortress. Almost all of Paris was surrounded by a high wall, constructed both for defence and to stop goods moving into the city without the appropriate duties or taxes being levied.

Confrontation at the Tuileries

By mid-afternoon, the crowd had encountered and clashed with a small group of soldiers, pelting them with stones and rubbish. As the mob entered the Place de Louis XV and the Tuileries garden, they began to skirmish with cavalrymen commanded by Charles, Prince of Lambesc.

Accounts of what happened at the Tuileries vary wildly. According to revolutionary propaganda, both written and visual, Lambesc assembled his dragoons at the top of the Champs-Élysées and, with sword drawn, ordered his men to advance on the people below. This order to charge on unarmed civilians, wrote some, was the trigger point for insurrection in Paris. Royalist reports, in contrast, suggest that Lambesc acted appropriately to stop the crowd, which had planned to march on the military college, seize its weapons and take over the city. Other reports suggest there was no cavalry charge at all.

Reliable reports of deaths or injuries in the Tuileries incident are difficult to come by. At least one man was killed, an elderly marcher knocked over by a horse, though there may have been other fatalities.

The insurrection spreads

The skirmish at the Tuileries sparked wild rumours that the king’s soldiers were imposing martial law in Paris. Groups of Parisians resolved to defend themselves. From the afternoon of July 12th to the morning of July 14th, mobs broke into gun stores, private homes and small armouries, seizing weapons and ammunition. Government customs posts were also attacked; 40 out of 54 posts were destroyed, their staff beaten or chased away.

The Gardes Françaises (‘French Guard’), the royal garrison in Paris, was called out to quell the disorder. The soldiers refused to open fire on civilians, however, and in some cases openly fraternised with protestors.

On the evening of July 12th, the electors of Paris met to discuss the situation in the city. They decided to remain in session until the crisis was over and to form a bourgeois militia to keep order (the origin of the National Guard). The following day, mobs ransacked the Invalides hospital and a monastery at Saint-Lazare, stealing guns and food respectively.

By midnight on July 13th, Paris was fully in a state of insurrection. What happened the next day would change the course of history.

1. The Paris insurrection describes unrest and anti-government violence that erupted in early July 1789 and culminated in the successful attack on the Bastille.

2. This insurrection had four causes: the desperate food situation in Paris, the political developments at the Estates General, the mobilisation of royal troops and the king’s dismissal of Jacques Necker from the ministry.

3. After Necker’s dismissal, the people of Paris assembled on July 12th and marched across the city, clashing with soldiers before being violently disbursed by Lambasc’s cavalry troops at the Tuileries.

4. Violence escalated through July 12th and 13th, as the people of Paris attacked government customs posts and invaded buildings in search of arms to defend the city.

5. By the evening of July 13th Paris was in a state of full insurrection. Many Parisians were armed and the city’s garrison, the French Guard, could not be relied on. The stage was set for the July 14th attack on the Bastille.

Madame de Stael recalls the sacking of Jacques Necker (1789)

Citation information
Title: ‘The Paris insurrection’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/paris-insurrection/
Date published: October 10, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The swearing of the Tennis Court Oath (French, Serment du jeu de Paume) was a pivotal moment in the French Revolution. It took place in a royal tennis court at Versailles some six weeks into the Estates General. There, more than 500 members of the Third Estate and a scattering of liberal nobles and clergymen swore a solemn pledge to bind together and keep meeting as a National Assembly until France had its own constitution capable of achieving “the true principles of monarchy” and “the regeneration of public order”.

Summary

On June 17th 1789, members of the Third Estate, joining by a few liberal allies from the other Estates, began calling themselves the ‘National Assembly. On the morning of June 20th, this group gathered to enter the meeting hall at the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs, only to find the doors locked and guarded by royal troops.

Interpreting this as a hostile move by King Louis XVI and his ministers, the National Assembly proceeded to the nearest available space, one of Versailles’ indoor tennis courts. Gathering on the floor of this court, the 577 deputies took an oath, hastily written by Emmanuel Sieyès and administered by Jean-Sylvain Bailly. Together, they pledged to remain assembled until a new national constitution had been drafted and implemented.

Like the fall of the Bastille a fortnight later, the Tennis Court Oath was soon etched into history as a memorable gesture of revolutionary defiance against the old regime. The prominent artist Jacques-Louis David later immortalised the oath in a dramatic portrait.

Background

The Tennis Court Oath followed several days of tension and confrontation at the Estates General. Frustrated by the procedures of the Estates General, particularly the procedure of voting by order, the Third Estate spent the first week of June contemplating what action to take.

On June 10th, Sieyès rose before the Third Estate deputies and proposed inviting deputies from the other Estates to form a representative assembly. This occurred on June 17th when deputies of the Third Estate, along with several nobles and clergymen, voted 490-90 to form the National Assembly.

This was a clear challenge to royal authority – nevertheless, it took several days for the king to respond. Following the advice of Jacques Necker, Louis scheduled a séance royale (‘royal session’) involving all three Estates on June 23rd. There, the king planned to unveil reforms aimed at winning the support of moderates who he believed held the numbers in the Third Estate.

The oath is taken

The king’s plans to win over the Third Estate were thwarted by the events of June 20th and the swearing of the Tennis Court Oath.

Historians have long mused over why the doors of the Menus-Plaisirs were locked. Some have suggested it was a deliberate royal tactic, an attempt to stop the Estates meeting before the séance royale. It was more likely to have accidental, a procedural order that assumed the Estates would not meet again until June 22nd (June 20th was a Saturday).

Whatever the reason, the Third Estate deputies interpreted the barred doors as a hostile act, an indicator of their suspicious mood. They left the Menus-Plaisirs and proceeded to the next open building, the Jeu de Paume, a real tennis court used by Louis XIV. The oath was administered by Jean-Sylvain Bailly and signed by 576 members of the Third Estate. There was one abstention: Joseph Martin d’Auch, the deputy from Castelnaudary, refused to sign the oath on the grounds that it insulted the king.

The full text of the oath read:

“The National Assembly, considering that it has been summoned to establish the constitution of the kingdom, to effect the regeneration of public order, and to maintain the true principles of monarchy; that nothing can prevent it from continuing its deliberations in whatever place it may be forced to establish itself; and, finally, that wheresoever its members are assembled, there is the National Assembly… It decrees that all members of this Assembly shall immediately take a solemn oath not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated upon firm foundations; and that, the said oath taken, all members and each one individually shall ratify this steadfast resolution by signature.”

David’s famous portrait

In 1790, the noted artist Jacques-Louis David began preparations for a grand painting to visualise and honour the swearing of the Tennis Court Oath.

While the events of the revolution prevented David from completing the painting, his preliminary engraving (above) survives and provides the best-known representation of the events of June 20th. The Tennis Court Oath was watched by people in the higher galleries; David consulted these witnesses when deciding on composition and placement.

Among the prominent revolutionaries shown in David’s engraving are Isaac Le Chapelier (1); the journalist Bertrand Barère (2); three religious leaders Dom Gerle (3), Henri Grégoire (4) and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne (5); the famous astronomer and later mayor of Paris who administered the oath, Jean-Sylvain Bailly (6); the author of the oath Emmanuel Sieyès (7); the future mayor of Paris Jérôme Pétion (8); Maximilien Robespierre (9); the constitutional monarchists Honore Mirabeau (10) and Antoine Barnave (11); and the lone abstainer from the oath, Joseph Martin d’Auch (12).

“Jacques-Louis David recognised the gravity of the moment and the enthusiasm it released. He caught history in the making. Faces and bodies are frozen in an instant of the highest emotional intensity. The delegates are possessed by a common mission, which consists in preserving their newly won unity. The oath sworn in the tennis court outside the royal palace in Versailles… marks the beginning of the French Revolution. Language is at a loss as one tries to capture David’s visualisation of a unity manifesting itself as quantity.”
Stefan Jonsson, historian

The king responds

On June 22nd, two days after the Tennis Court Oath, the deputies of the Third Estate met at a Versailles church, together with 150 clergymen and two nobles. The king soon made an appearance and instructed those present to rejoin their Estates to continue their deliberations separately – but the leaders of the Third Estate refused.

When the séance royale opened the following day, Louis began by unveiling his reforms. The king promised a degree of representative government, with regular sessions of the Estates General. The taxation system would be overhauled in consultation with the Estates General, the legal system would be improved and lettres de cachet abolished.

While Louis was prepared to make political concessions and reforms, he would not accept constitutional changes. The Three Estates were an “ancient distinction” and an “integral part of the constitution”, the king declared, and would therefore remain intact.

Defiance continues

Had Louis XVI proposed these reforms in 1788 or earlier, they may well have averted the revolution and saved his throne. As the historian Richard Cobb puts it, the Tennis Court Oath had “cut the ground from under the king’s feet”.

By mid-1789, however, maintaining the Three Estates in their ancient form was unacceptable to the Third Estate, particularly if it continued to be outvoted by the other two Estates. Accepting the king’s reforms would also require the dissolution of the just-formed National Assembly.

When the séance royale ended and the king left the chamber, the deputies of the National Assembly defiantly remained. Stirred up by orators like Mirabeau, Bailly and Barnave, they affirmed the pledges made three days earlier in the Tennis Court Oath. The National Assembly would defy the king’s orders and remain in session. When confronted by one of the king’s envoys and asked to leave the hall, Mirabeau made his famous remark: “Go tell your masters who have sent you that we shall not leave, except by the force of bayonets”.

Death of the Estates

When the king was told of the National Assembly and their continued defiance, he responded with indifference, reportedly muttering “Fuck it, let them stay”.

Over the next three days dozens of clergymen and nobles, including the Duke of Orleans, a member of the royal court and a distant relative of the king, crossed the floor to join the National Assembly. On June 27th, the king backed down completely and ordered the remaining deputies of the First and Second Estates to join the National Assembly, thus giving it apparent constitutional legitimacy. The Tennis Court Oath, both a revolutionary act and an expression of popular sovereignty, had succeeded in forcing a royal backdown.

With one fell swoop, Louis XVI had abolished the Three Estates as separate political orders. Conservatives were furious about what the king had surrendered, however, when the news reached Paris it triggered great excitement and rejoicing. The bourgeois revolution, it seems, had won the day – but with large numbers of royal troops massing near Versailles and on the outskirts of Paris, there was still more confrontation to come.

1. The Tennis Court Oath was a pledge taken by Third Estate deputies to the Estates General. It was sworn in a Versailles tennis court on June 20th 1789.

2. After days of disputes over voting procedures, the king scheduled a séance royale for June 23rd. When the Third Estate gathered to meet on June 20th, they found the doors to their meeting hall locked and guarded.

3. Fearing a royalist conspiracy, the Third Estate responded by gathering in a nearby tennis court. There they pledged not to disband until the nation had drafted and implemented a constitution.

4. The Tennis Court Oath was written by Emmanuel Sieyès, administered by Jean-Sylvain Bailly and signed by 576 deputies with one abstainer. Later, the oath was famously depicted by the revolutionary artist Jacques-Louis David.

5. At the séance royale that followed, the king promised several major political and legal reforms but refused to disband the Three Estates. This led to further acts of defiance and, eventually, the absorption of the Estates into the National Assembly.

A record of the Tennis Court Oath (1789)

Citation information
Title: ‘The Tennis Court Oath’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/tennis-court-oath/
Date published: October 31, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The Estates General (French, États Généraux) was a political assembly of the Ancien Régime comprised of representatives from all Three Estates. This body had assembled 33 times between 1302 and 1614 but with the rise of absolutism, French monarchs came to ignore it completely. By the eve of the French Revolution, the Estates General had not met for 175 years. The summoning of an Estates General in 1789 was therefore a significant development, evidence both of weakening monarchical power and impending change.

What was the États Généraux?

The question was partly answered in September 1788 when the Paris parlement, now recalled by the king, issued the edicts summoning the Estates General. In these edicts, the Estates General was to adopt its 1614 form and procedures, with the Three Estates meeting separately and also voting by order.

This news triggered outrage among the bourgeoisie and in the pages of newspapers. The parlements, previously hailed as defenders of liberty and the people, were now condemned as servants of aristocratic self-interest. This gave rise to two slogans: “voting by head” (a call for votes to be decided by the ballots of individual deputies) and “doubling the Third” (a demand that representation for the Third Estate be increased twofold).

In November 1788, the king, acting on the advice of Jacques Necker, recalled the Assembly of Notables to examine the issue. As might be expected, the Notables only confirmed the ruling of the parlements and insisted on the procedures of 1614.

On December 27th the king, by way of compromise, agreed to double the number of seats for deputies from the Third Estate. The question of voting, however, was left unresolved. It was a significant development because no matter how many deputies were elected to represent the Third Estate, its ability to cast only one vote remained unchanged.

Selecting representatives

On January 24th 1789, Louis XVI issued another edict, providing instructions for electing deputies to the Estates General. Since the Ancien Régime was an absolutist monarchy with no framework for national elections, one had to be designed and implemented from the ground up. For the First and Second Estate, each bailliage formed an electoral assembly to elect its deputies; all nobles and clerics could attend these assemblies and participate in elections.

The election of Third Estate deputies was more complex and involved several different stages. In the countryside, male taxpayers over the age of 25 were invited to participate in parish assemblies, which elected representatives to bailliage assemblies. In the towns and cities, there was an extra stage, with guilds and corporations sending representatives to a town assembly, which chose representatives to attend the bailliage assembly.

The bailliage assemblies were then responsible for electing deputies to the Estates General, as well as the compilation and submission of the cahiers de doléance. As might be assumed, this lengthy and indirect process was designed to keep radical voices in the Third Estate at arm’s length from the Estates General.

Composition of Third Estate deputies

“It is not at all surprising that most members of the Estates General were not business people… They were otherwise occupied in the market-place, stock exchange and banks. On the contrary, it was lawyers who best understood the state and legal system and who generally were over-represented in such assemblies. Under the circumstances, it is actually surprising that 16 percent of delegates to the Estates General were directly connected to the world of commerce.”
Henry Heller, historian

In addition, deputies to the Estates General needed to be wealthy enough to pay their own way to Versailles and remain there for several weeks. These factors shaped the composition of the Third Estate deputies, who were more representative of the bourgeoisie than the working classes.

Of the 610 Third Estate deputies, almost half held some kind of venal office. Two-thirds were qualified in the law and about half that number were practising lawyers. Only about 80 deputies were involved in trade or industry, most as business owners or managers. No peasants or salaried artisans sat as deputies.

The composition of the First and Second Estate representatives also revealed certain trends. Ordinary priests and clergymen dominated elections for the First Estate. As a result of this, 208 of the 296 First Estate deputies were parish priests while only 47 were bishops. Around 70 percent of the Second Estate’s 282 delegates were military officers, serving or retired, while most of the remainder were landed aristocrats.

1. The Estates General was France’s closest equivalent to a representative national assembly. It was summoned by the king on an occasional basis to provide advice or support, usually in times of war or crisis.

2. Absolutist monarchy during the 17th and 18th century meant that the assembly had not been summoned by the king since 1614. A stand-off between Louis XVI and the parlements led the king to convoke it in 1789.

3. This triggered uncertainty and debate about how the Estates General would be composed and what voting procedures it would use. At previous assemblies the Three Estates had deliberated and voted separately, a procedure many considered unacceptable in 1789.

4. Elections for deputies were carried out by bailliage assemblies. These were straightforward for the First and Second Estates, however the Third Estate elections involved several stages.

5. As a result of these electoral methods, the 296 First Estate deputies were dominated by parish priests, the 282 Second Estate deputies by military nobles and the 610 Third Estate deputies by lawyers and bourgeois interests.

Citation information
Title: ‘The Estates General’‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/estates-general/
Date published: October 31, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

The cahiers de doléance (French for ‘ledger of complaints’) were books or ledgers containing public grievances and suggestions. They were requested by the king in January 1789 and drafted and compiled in the months that followed, before being submitted to the Estates General. Though somewhat tempered and not representative of all views, the cahiers are a valuable source for understanding the mood of the people on the eve of revolution.

The king calls for opinions

Louis XVI announced the convocation of the Estates General in an August 1788 edict. In January 1789, a further royal edict ordered the electors in each district to compile a cahier de doléance.

According to the January edict, the content of these cahiers would be considered when addressing “the needs of the state, the reform of abuses, the establishment of a permanent and lasting order [for] the general prosperity of the kingdom”.

The opportunity to submit complaints and feedback to the royal government was rare, so thousands of French citizens threw themselves into the task with relish. Some historians have suggested the political mobilisation and public debate that compiled the cahiers had a greater impact than the cahiers themselves. Around 40,000 cahiers de doléance were produced, many of which survive today.

Compilation

Each of the Three Estates submitted their own cahiers. The cahiers of the First Estate and Second Estate were drawn up at specially convened assemblies.

Third Estate cahiers were compilations rather than original documents. They began as lists drafted by registered voters, aged 25 and above, in every town, parish, village or guild. These lists were then sent to electoral assemblies, most of which were dominated by bourgeois lawyers and officials. These assemblies reviewed and consolidated the lists into a formal cahier.

Because of this process, the final Third Estate cahiers tended to be filtered summaries rather than raw expressions of the grievances of workers and peasants. According to Merrick Whitcomb, “this method of assembling the local cahiers of the Third Estate resulted in a loss of vigour and personality”. Other historians agree that the final cahiers submitted by the Third Estate were more subdued than the original lists of grievances.

“Members of some 40,000 bodies… assembled, deliberated and sent statements either to intermediate assemblies or directly to the Estates-General. In most cases, local people neither emitted empty rhetoric nor adopted formulas given them by external authorities. They took the opportunity seriously, wrangling or agonising item by item over the contents of collective demands. They produced a set of documents resembling the ballots of a national election in some regards, a national poll in other regards…”
Charles Tilly, historian

Restrained complaint

The vast majority of cahiers did not propose or demand radical political change. Most cahiers were framed politely and deferentially, expressing their loyalty, devotion and supplication to Louis XVI. They thanked the king for the opportunity to have their say and expressed trust that he could reform and improve the nation.

The Third Estate of Carcassonne, for example, promised their “beloved monarch, one so worthy of our affection” the “unmistakable proof of its love and respect, of its gratitude and fidelity”. The commoners of Dourdan humbly thanked the king for being permitted to bring “grievances, complaints and remonstrances to the foot of the throne”.

If there was any revolutionary sentiment in the cahiers then it was buried beneath this royalist sycophancy and grovelling. But while the cahiers were not revolutionary in their tone, within their specific grievances were contained the ingredients for a revolution.

Political grievances

There was a surprising level of agreement across the cahiers of all three estates, particularly about social and political issues. The three estates accepted the principle of constitutional reform and welcomed a move towards representative government in the guise of the Estates General.

The more radical cahiers insisted that the Estates General meet regularly. The Third Estate of Paris, for example, wanted it to meet “at three-yearly intervals”. The cahiers were more divided about the composition of the Estates General and voting procedures. The clergy and nobility wanted ‘voting by order’ at the Estates General, while the Third Estate, echoing the demands of Emmanuel Sieyès and other pamphleteers, sought ‘voting by head’.

The question of tax reform was just as divisive. The peasantry and urban workers were most concerned about disproportionate and rising levels of taxation, particularly the tax on salt (gabelle).

Third Estate cahiers

Third Estate cahiers are of significant value for those seeking causes of the French Revolution. Peasant cahiers are the most radical and the most illuminating.

Various studies of peasant grievances have identified three consistent themes: the lack of equity and fairness in taxation, the need to abolish or reform the seigneurial system, and the burden of payments to the church. Historians Gilbert Shapiro and John Markoff, who have completed a large survey of parish cahiers, found that 42 percent wanted taxation reform and a further 24 percent demanded the abolition of specific taxes. More than 75 percent wanted changes to seigneurialism, with almost half this number calling for the abolition of all feudal dues, without compensation to seigneurs.

Aside from Paris, which was more radical, urban cahiers tended to reflect bourgeois concerns and interests. One such cahier, submitted in March 1789 by the Third Estate in Saint-Vaast, listed four main concerns, three of which were political or legal:

• The abolition of lettres de cachet. The cahier called for an end to arbitrary detention and punishments, to be replaced by due process in arrests, trials and imprisonment.
• The nation should be consulted and give its agreement about any new taxes the king planned to levy on the people. Taxation should fall equally on all classes, including the nobles and the clergy.
• The Estates General should be convened every four years.
• Members of the Third Estate should have access to justices in the parlements.

Many of these Third Estate cahiers engaged in what Ian McNeely calls “political ventriloquism”: the act of bourgeois lawyers speaking on behalf of a large and diverse Third Estate.

Historical significance

As political and legal documents, the cahiers are certainly framed in a civil and restrained way that dulls raw opinion and ignores or dilutes particular grievances. For all their limitations, the cahiers remain our best source for understanding the mood of the French people on the eve of revolution.

David Andress considers the cahiers “the expression of France from below… in purely social terms but also in terms of geographically anchored expectations, concerns and aspirations”. The 19th-century historian Alexis de Tocqueville called them “the swan song of the old regime, the ultimate expression of its ambitions, its last will and testament”.

1. The cahiers de doléance were books or ledgers of grievances, drafted and collected from each Estate in each district in early 1789, then forwarded to the Estates General.

2. The compilation of the cahiers was ordered by Louis XVI as a preparatory measure for the Estates General, ostensibly to help the assembly understand problems and formulate policies.

3. The cahiers reveal common trends and grievances across all three Estates, particularly on social and political matters – but there was division on how to address taxation and voting at the Estates General.

4. Studies of the Third Estate cahiers suggest a large majority of French commoners wanted to abolish seigneurialism, in whole or in part, and to address inequality in taxation.

5. The cahiers remain our best sources for understanding the mood of the French people on the eve of the revolution, though Third Estate cahiers tend to reflect the language and interests of the bourgeoisie.

Louis XVI orders the compilation of cahiers de doléance (1789)
The cahier of the First Estate in Saint-Malo (1789)
The cahier of the Second Estate in Roussillon (1789)
The cahier of the Second Estate in Berry (1789)
The cahier of the Third Estate in Carcassone (1789)
The cahier of the Third Estate in Gisors (1789)
The cahier of the Third Estate in Levet (1789)
The cahier of the Third Estate of Paris (1789)
The cahier of the Third Estate in Versailles (1789)
The cahier of peasants in Menouville (1789)
The cahier of the shoemakers of Pontoise (1789)

Citation information
Title: ‘The cahiers de doléance‘
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/cahiers-de-doleance/
Date published: October 22, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.