The French Revolution seed

 INTRODUCTION

It is usually not the strength but the weakness of existing institution which brings about revolution. This is particularly true of France in 1789.

The causes of the revolution which began in that year had really been at work for a long time and undertaking the existing order of things in France. There were many causes which prepared the ground for this great upheaval- the French Revolution- which sounded the death knell of the ancient regime by shattering the structure of royal absolutism and destroying a social order based upon aristocratic privileges.

Unjust Social Order

One of the most important causes of the Revolution was the social disparity in France on the eve of Revolution. In its social structure. France then legally consisted, as had been the case for centuries past, of three classes or estates. The first and second estate, respectively, were the minority of the total population of the country- in a total population of more than twenty-five million there were approximately 130,000 clergymen and an equal number of nobles. Their combined strength was thus one per cent of the total population. It is estimated that each of these two classes held about one-fifth of the land of population owed forty per cent of the land of the country for which they paid no taxes.

The Clergy

The clergy had, of course, several welfare duties to perform but they were never rendered, and with passage of time they had even they were been forgotten. Oblivious of their duties, the clergy competed with the nobility in the field of riches, lands and luxuries. To quote just one example, the Archbishop of Strasbourg had an annual income of 300,000 dollars. 

In a manner of speaking, the Church was a state within the state. Apart from owning innumerable holdings of land, consisting perhaps of one of the extent of the kingdom, the clergy for their own benefit levied a tax called the tithe on their landed parishioners. It is no wonder that the Church came under fire at the hands of Voltaire, ''Crush the infamous thing'' he exclaimed.

It would be wrong to suppose that the huge income occurring to the Church was equitably divided among the clergymen of all shades. Even in the ranks of the clergy there was a disparity. A wholly disproportionate amount of the revenue was appropriated by the higher clergy, while the mass of parishood, wearing themselves out in service of their parishioners, received a pittance hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together. Not only that there was no love lost between the higher and lower clergy, the former even looked down upon the latter as a class apart ''coarse, discharged their normal duties and lived among the peasants sharing their food, sorrows and trials. It was through no accidental, impulsive propulsion of emotion that the lower clergy forsook their order and joined the Third Estate in 1789,'' It was, therefore, hardly surprising if common suffering and mutual sympathies should lead the lower clergy and the third estate to common action against a regime that treated them so badly.

The Nobility

The rank of the nobility was acquired by virtue of birth, military service, purchase of nobility or holding certain public offices. Quite a number of well to-do commoners by purchasing vast estates of the old nobility (with patents of nobility, manorial rights and the titles of Dukes, Counts and Viscounts). or by holding public offices attained the status of nobility. These constituted the official  nobility, the nobles of the robes (the nobesses de robe), to distinguish them from the feudal nobility.   

The nobles enjoyed unique privileges. They were exempt from most of the taxation- a burden borne only by the common man. The nobles had exclusive rights of hunting and fishing, of keeping doves and market-places. They possessed authority to enforce in their courts the obligations of the peasants who lived on their estates. The nobles were harsh and over bearing and jealous of maintenance of their privileges.

The Third Estate

Beneath the two privileged groups of higher clergy and nobility was the unprivileged mass of the nation called the third estate. The third estate had only duties and no privileges. They paid all the taxes to the state and enjoyed no rights in return. They great mass of the third estate was made up of peasants who constituted probably nineteenths of the populations. (The third estate in towns and cities constituted the bourgeoisie, the middle class, which included industrial and commercial entrepreneurs, professional men, shopkeepers and independent artisans).

Peasants

Out of about 23 million peasants in France on the eve of the French Revolution, hardly a million were then serfs - a condition that contrasted with most of Europe and most of peasants were nominally landholders to some extent.

The improved legal status of most of the peasants not being serfs - did not, however, save them from extreme exploitation. They paid many, often very vexatious, dues to the noble owner of the land; they contributed the tithe to the church; and they owed a long list of direct and indirect taxes to the king, to the Church tithes, and to the nobles feudaldues. If the calculation of a close student of this period, that the exaction from these three sources absorbed four-fifths of the income of the peasant, could not be established with mathematical accuracy, one could be sure that in any case he was ground down by taxation and thus inhumanly burdened. The nobles, on the other hand, who ''fought'' and the clergy who ''prayed'' contributed an insignificant proportion of the revenue. The taxes were thus distributed in such a way that the bulk of them fell on the class least able to pay them.

There was thus a glaring inequality of all sorts in the French society on the eve of the Revolution which, directly and indirectly, was primarily responsible for its outbreak. It has been aptly said that ''the Revolution of 1789 was much less a rebellion against despotism than a rebellion against inequality. 

 Failure of the French Monarchy

It was Henry IV, the first ruler of the Bourbon dynasty (1589-1610), who laid the foundation of absolute monarchy in France. During the reign of his successor, Louis  XIII (1610-1643), the royal authority was consolidated Chief Minister, Due de Richelieu. The next reign that of the le grand monarque (the great monarch), i.e. Louis XIV (1643-1715) registered a further augmentation and consolidation of royal  authority on account of the decline of the power and authority of the great magistrates or of the parlement of Paris, and the mighty and turbulent nobles of the realm. Louis XIV ardently believed that he ruled by the will of God and was responsible to Him alone for all his actions - divine rights theory, simple and pure. He was so autocratic and powerful that he could well boast ''L'elat, e' est moi.''  ''I an the state''. In consonance with this assertion, he said. ''The sovereign authority is invested in my person, the legislative powers exist in myself alone... My people are one with me; natural rights and natural interests are necessarily combined with my own and only rest in my hands''.

Successor of Louis XIV

By the time of the accession of Louis XV in 1715, there had arisen an excessive of political, administrative and judicial power in the hands of the crown at the expense of all the orders of the realm. Legislative power had once had once resided in Estates General of clergy, lords, and commons but no such body had been called in France since 1614; notional laws had been replaced by royal edicts. With the creation and maintenance of such a vast centralization, administrative, legislative and judicial, the energy of the crown was exhausted.

Louis XV (1715-1774)

With such a ruler as Louis XV as its head, the central government of the kingdom could hardly receive careful and effective royal control. As G.P. Gooch has said, ''His (Louis XV's) lamentable reputation in his history derives less from what he did than from what he never tried to do. For him all evils were incurable''. It is no wonder, therefore that ''the legacy of Louis XV to his countryman was an ill-governed, discontented frustrated France''. Louis XV was in the words of M.S. Anderson ''perhaps more hated and certainly more despised than any king of France for generations''. Quite a number of Frenchmen had begun to question the very basis of the existing political and social order.

Louis XVI Marie Antoinette 

Louis XV's eldest son, the former Dauohin* had died in 1765. It was therefore, Louis XV's grandson, Louis XVI, who came to the throne in 1774 at his sudden death at the age of sixty-four. During Louis XVI's reign, events were to take a turn which fifteen years were to bring the ancient regime to an end.

Louis XVI was twenty years old at his accession. A shy awkward looking man, prone to corpulence, he was completely devoid of his grandfather's graceful bearing, but he was in many ways a more praiseworthy character. Uniquely among the others Bourbon kings of France, he led a strictly moral life. ''He was also kindly, honest, pious and almost pathetically well-meaning and full of good intentions.' Yet he was singularly unfitted to be at the helm of affairs in France at the juncture when critical events stirred the country. He was thoroughly weak, vacillating and lacking in self-confidence. His vice was over-eating and over-drinking , his hobby was making and mending locks, and his chief pleasure was hunting, the traditional sport of French kings. Sometimes he spent so long in the hunting-field that he fell asleep from fatigue at council meetings during the discussion of business. On any day when there was no hunting, he felt ill at ease and completely lost, as he did on the day of the tennis-court oath in June, 1789 and on other important dates in that year, e.g., on the day in October when the women of Paris marched to Versailles. Uncomprehending amid the critical events which stirred his kingdom. In fact Louis XVI never really grew up.

For every different reason, Marie Antoinette to whom Louis XVI had been married, was equally unsuited for the position as the Queen. She was a daughter of Francis I and Maria Theresa. Her marriage was disliked in France by a strong party which was set dead against the Austrian alliance which she represented. To that important section of the people in France she was an ''Unwanted Habsburg princess''.

As was to be expected Marie Antoinette, a woman of unusual vivacity and charm, soon established an ascendancy over her husband to whom she was superior in ability. So feminine influence continued to prevail at the court. Louis XV had been guided by his mistresses, but his grandson was  directed by his wife. Such influence as Marie Antoinette exercised on her dull and bewildered husband was prompted by nothing better than personal bias, and was usually harmful to the state. She had not been well educated and remained a foreigner who never understood France.

Moreover, she had little taste for politics, allowing herself to be guided simply by personal likes and dislikes, allowing. She tried to get French support for Austrian policy, which was often contrary to French interest ; she was by no means always able to get what ''she wanted here, but her attempts  acquired for her derogatory nickname of 'I' Autrichienne''. 

The king and queen were at one in just one thing their desire to be aloof. So they lived a life of their own, isolated from the rest of France. Except for a single visit by Louis to new harbour works at Cherbourg, they never journeyed beyond the royal chateaux around Paris. They even isolated themselves from the nobility of the court, who still counted for much and, for this isolation, the Queen was primarily responsible. Since she was so seldom among them in the functions of the court, the great noble men and their ladies rarely came to Versailles, thus eliminating points of contacts between the royalty and nobility.

The Queen's frivolity destroyed her prestige, while her love of pomp and show, which ran counter to the policy of strict economy required by the condition of the state finances, earned for her the nickname ''Madame deficit''.

The Queen's reputation was seriously marred by continual malicious attacks on her personal character made by court factions which were hostile to her. Suspicion and abuse of her character reached its height in 1785 with the mysterious affair of the diamond necklace, which Napoleon said marked the beginning of the French Revolution. This ''affair'' which did much to turn general public opinion against the Queen and so seriously undermined the prestige of the monarchy with the mass of the Frenchman was briefly as under.

Louis troubles were in no small part due to the fact that he was henpecked by the Queen Marie Antoinette. She was disliked because of her rash attempts to dictate government policies. She was largely responsible for the dismissal in 1776 of one minister Turgot who may have averted the Revolution and for thwarting Mirabeau in 1790, who possibly could have saved the monarchy.

The king had no able or reliable relative. It has been very aptly said of him that ''he was wretchedly alone in his incapacities.

After Louis XV's long and inglorious reign, public opinion confidently hoped that the crown would lead the nation towards a better future, but the weakness of the king  and indiscretions of the Queen speedily brought disenchantment and steadily dissipated the national goodwill, and the seriously undermined prestige of the monarchy was to contribute towards the development of the situation which culminated in the outbreak of the Revolution.''

Defects in Administration

The French  Government besides being despotic was highly centralised. Matters great and small were taken up by the king's council a Versailles. Little liberty of action was left to local officials, Such trifles, such as the repair of a bridge or the sinking of a village well were referred to the council for approval, consequently that body was overwhelmed with work. Delays, occurred and decisions were often announced too late to be of use. The administration thus became very inefficient and people became greatly dissatisfied.

 Financial bankruptcy

According to David Thomson quoted above what mattered in 1789,  was the whole 'revolutionary situation the essence of which was ''that the king, who was the linchpin of the whole established social and political system in France was in desperate financial straits.'' Let us, therefore, turn our attention to those desperate financial straits.

Financially France never caught up after the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), and the reign of his successor, Louis XV (1715-1774), served to put her deeper into the mire due to criminal extravagance of court and to 18th century wars with England.

Shortly after Louis XVI came to throne of his unmourned predecessor years of disorder in the royal treasury seemed to have come to an inevitable climax.

By 1787 the financial position of France was well nigh desperate. She staggered under the burden of a huge national debt.

The financial situation in France exhibited the following ominous features.

1. A large debt inherited from the past. 2). an obstinate annual deficit and 3. an embittered public unwillingness to bear additional taxation. The result was that treasury was empty, taxation could no longer be increased and a loan could no longer be raised. Thus financial bankruptcy was at hand. There was only one possible remedy- a levy on ''privilege'', which meant that the privileged classes who had been exempt from the bulk of taxation should be made to sacrifice their immunity from taxation. This they stoutly refused to do. It was a suicidal attitude for the nobles to adopt for as A. Goodwin observes : ''It (the French Revolution) was set in motion by the aristocracy in the years 1787 and 1788 in the attempts to defend its own fiscal and political privileges'' in the face of an acute financial crisis.

The French finance were thus in atrocious confusion, and the finances were, as they still are, the most revealing touchstone of every government's solidity. Something had immediately to be done about the finances, if the services of the state were not to break down and the government cease of function.

King Louis XVI was at his wit's end. In act of desperation on July 5, 1788, he issued a call for the Etate Generaux (the Estates-general), which was the nearest institution France had to a parliament representative of the whole nation. This call was followed by another on August 8th, which summoned the body to meet on May 1st , 1789. The summoning of the Estates General which had not met since 1614 was of tremendous moral significance. Undoubtedly it indicated a defeat for the monarchy and marked a definite shifting of the moral leadership from the crown to the nation as a whole. The summoning of the Estates-general opened the way for the revolution. In this connection we may quote A. Goodwin : ''The immediate causes of French Revolution of 1789 must be sought, not in economic grievances of the peasants, nor in the political, discontent of the middle class, but in the reactionary aspiration of the French aristocracy. The decision of Louis XVI, in July, 1781 to summon the Estates-General marked the Crown's capitulation to the concerted pressure of the lay, ecclesiastical and judicial, aristocracy. These privileged classes expected that the adoption of traditional methods of voting in the Estates-General- by order and not by head - would enable them, not only to prevent radical reform but also to consolidate their victory over the crown by a similar subjugation of the third estate. This gross miscalculation rendered inevitable a revolution which might well have been avoided by the nobility's acceptance of the consequence of political and fiscal equality.

To sum up : An unjust division of society, a rotten political system, an unfair system of taxation, financial bankruptcy of the state, the personal characters of Louis XVI, and his queen Marie Antoinette, coupled with the influence of the French philosophers, brought about the French Revolution.