To What Extent Was The French Revolution Brought About By Misery?

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

11 October 2003 Noor Nanji L62PAM

There can be no doubt that misery prompted the majority of French population into action, in that the starving peasantry made up 85% of the nation in the late 18th century, and thus their basis for joining the French Revolution. Similarly, on 14 July 1789, a quarter of a million impoverished Parisians stormed the Bastille, again suggesting the importance starvation and misery played in spiralling the events of the Revolution. Yet it would be a gross underestimation to suggest that the Revolution itself was nothing but a rising against wretched conditions which, after all, had been an ongoing state of affairs. It was, rather, a combination of political and financial causes, that is, the long-standing governmental troubles and the eventual collapse of the indebted Royal Treasury, coupled with the provocation of Enlightened ideas flooding Europe, the escalating rivalry between a rising bourgeoisie and an entrenched aristocracy, and, finally, the somewhat more apparent social problem of the misery, that accumulated and, in August 1789, focused into what became the French Revolution. In order to determine to what extent misery led to this Revolution, we must first explore these respective political, economic and social discontents which arose and together culminated in the Revolution.

It can be suggested that the earliest origins of the French Revolution lie in the Aristocratic Revolution, which marked the start of political stirrings, and stemmed from the program of economic reform, attempted by successive finance ministers to lessen the debt brought on by war. Calonne’s proposal of a single land tax met clerical opposition in the Assembly of Notables and inflamed the Parlement of Paris, despite being influenced by the Enlightenment to appear revolutionary. The Parlement’s subsequent call for resistance against Louis led to its expulsion, followed in quick succession by its recall but with restricted powers imposed by Lamoignon on 8 May 1788. This initiated the Aristocratic Revolution, the most violent political opposition the government had yet met, from citizens to whom the Parlement appeared a defender of their rights, and to whom this restraint on its power suggested a return of ministerial despotism to France. Both the first estate, breaking its tradition of loyalty to Crown, and the second estate, launched riots in provincial capitals where the Parlements met. Hence, as a result of the failed attempts at economic reform, 1788 became a year of huge political disputes, ‘a war on words’ between the King and the upper classes, and thus we can see that the earliest tremors of the French Revolution were due to political and financial causes.

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Trouble persisted because of the Royal Treasury’s declaration of bankruptcy at the start of August 1788. Until this point, creditors were assured that the interest on their loans was secure, following Necker’s ‘Compte Rendu au Roi’, the first public statement of royal finances, showing a surplus rather than a deficit in capital. As financiers hence became unwilling to lend money to the government, the King was forced, by the strength of the political opposition and the financial crisis to abandon reform and call a meeting of the Estates-General. Thus far, it had been the Aristocratic Revolution stimulating this tide of political discontent, rather than misery. Yet with this call for the Estates-General came a class struggle for power, as the upper classes insisted upon their right to a veto, and to oligarchy, as in the last meeting of this body in 1614, while the Third Estate categorically refused this. At this stage, the Revolution hence began to broaden beyond the Nobility, as well as to gather pace because of the severe harvest problems over 1788. It was then that ‘misery first started contributing to the revolutionary spirit’, in that it stimulated discontent and excitement, although not producing any real results nationally. Nevertheless, it became obvious that, due to a series of not only political and economical but also social crises, unrest was bubbling throughout France from the summer of 1788.

Misery started to play a substantial role in the impetus behind the looming Revolution as the poor harvest drove 50,000 starving rural dwellers to swamp Paris, where unemployment and bread prices soared. The insolvent government with its weak control on the grain trade could not intervene to keep these prices down, escalating the riotous, volatile atmosphere so that by August of 1788, the city was in state of near anarchy. As the Cahiers de Grievances flooded Paris, illustrating the wretchedness of France, deputies of the Estates-General became more and more determined to attack the feudal privilege system. Yet despite this, the Revolution still had not really spread to the misery of the poor in the countryside when the essentially political Bourgeoisie Revolution began. At the meeting of the Estates-General on 5 May 1789, Third Estate deputies demanded the upper classes join them in forming one National Assembly, a request that was primarily refused. The dispute eventually culminated in the Tennis Court Oath of 23 June which, after four days, forced the Nobles and the Clergy to meet with the Third Estate, and thus the Bourgeoisie Revolution ended with the birth of the National Assembly. In this way, it is clear that misery, despite heightening the sense of general excitement, had not yet, to this point, instigated any particular action.

Yet as the Revolution continued to spread, the Revolt of Paris became the first demonstration directly originating from the misery suffered by the sans-culottes, labourers of the working class districts, thousands of whom gathered nightly to listen to revolutionary speakers at the Palais Royal. It was these speakers who, on the news of Necker’s dismissal on 11 July, called on the public to take up arms and march on the Fortress of the Bastille, thus turning what had begun as spontaneous rioting into a general rising: the Artisans Revolution. At the height of the rebellion, it was clear that the penniless crowd simply wanted bread, and thus it was misery and starvation that prompted the storming of the Bastille, which was in turn being exploited by the leaders of the mob for their own political purposes. Their aims, to save the National Assembly and destroy the ancien regime, were supported by the sans-culottes only because of their conviction of ‘the interdependence of food and freedom’, yet the consequences of their actions resounded on a much wider political scale: when Louis found over 80% of French Guards to be unreliable so he could not crush the uprising, real power had henceforth passed from him to the Assembly and the Commune.

The news of the fall of the Bastille came as the final spark to a fire that was already smouldering, that is, the simultaneous Peasants Revolt, which was the largest yet explosion against misery. Up until 1778, peasants, despite their misery, had played little part in the events leading to the Revolution. Intense hunger was the main ingredient of this rural crisis and arose not only from the poor harvests in this pre-industrial society, but also from the economic crisis of the 1770s, which had triggered a surge in prices and unemployment due to a fall in demand for manufactured goods. Peasants were heavily affected by this depression, being the backbone of France’s industrial labour, and thus their great misery, worsened by rising bread prices, hailstorms and drought. From January of 1789 onwards, violent food protests broke out, and these were more important that they usually were in times of dearth because of the ongoing political events, particularly the calling of the Estates-General. This aroused excitement amongst peasants and ‘a “great hope” suffused the countryside that the miseries of the last few years would soon be over’.

The food revolts took place against a background of popular hysteria known as the Great Fear, beginning with rumours that bands of brigands were coming to destroy the ripening crops. Peasants took up arms to await the brigands, and then directed their anger to burning the chateaux of landowners which were storehouses of grain, as well as of the terriers. The President of the Grenoble Parlement accounted these actions to more than simply a rising against misery; he claimed that it all sprung ‘from that spirit of equality and independence’ stemming from the Revolution. Hence through this combination of ongoing misery, sharpened by the political events, the Peasant Rising spread through most of rural France, and law and order began to break down. Therefore, when the news came of the king’s capitulation to the Artisans Revolt, the Peasants Revolt ripened further into a kingdom-wide revolt against all forms of taxation in the spring of 1789. In this way, we can see how misery caused by bread prices and unemployment were for the first time pushing France towards Revolution, having created an fiery discontent which was soon to be used by political groups as the excuse to dismantle the feudal system.

Essentially, the upshot of the Peasant Revolt was the creation of the August Decrees in 1789. The National Assembly could not allow the anarchy of the countryside to continue, and therefore consented to draw up a plan giving the peasants part of what they wanted. On the night of 4 August, ‘swept along by a wave of altruistic enthusiasm’, Noble deputies, led by the Vicomte de Noailles and the Duc d’Auguillon, queued up to renounce their privileges in a spirit of patriotic intoxication. Feudal dues, the tithe and venality of offices were henceforth abolished, and the decrees launched the period of Constitutional Monarchy, with a new society based on civil equality accentuated by the ensuing ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’.

Thus we can conclude that although the French Revolution was largely caused by misery, for it was this that involved the majority of the population in the upheaval, this was by no means the only element which brought about the fall of feudalism in August 1789. After all, ‘for all its horrors, the winter of 1788-89 should not be taken as an advance death sentence on the great political experiment then under way’. Instead, it was a combination of underlying economic and political causes, prompted by the Crown’s debt, which laid the foundations of the Revolution. These were subsequently expanded due to a realisation of the inequalities in France such as the system of social hierarchy, highlighted by the Enlightenment. Hence it emerges that the misery of the peasantry could not have been expressed in such a way, had not the preceding uprisings of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie paved the way. In this way, we can see that although to some extent the French Revolution was brought about by misery, in that it is this that finally leads the whole nation into united uproar, it was the underlying political events of the previous years that essentially triggered the landslide of Revolution.

Bibliography:

‘Citizens’ – Simon Schama, 1989

‘Origins of the French Revolution’ – William Doyle, 1980

‘France in Revolution’ – Duncan Townsen, 1990

‘Citizens’ – Simon Schama, 1989

‘Origins of the French Revolution’ – William Doyle, 1980

‘France in Revolution’ – Duncan Townsen, 1990

‘Origins of the French Revolution’ – William Doyle, 1980

‘Citizens’ – Simon Schama, 1989