The French Revolution

This is Unit Seven of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: Thermidor, five procedures on the Revolution, and the chain that runs from bankruptcy to the Terror and out of it. Part one carried the chain to the Vendée. This part ends it, because victory in the summer of seventeen ninety-four removed the emergency that had justified the Committee, and Thermidor removed Robespierre. Then the exam's methods: the Revolution on one line between three fixed points, the Declaration read article by article for what each denies and whose idea it enacts, measures sorted into liberal, radical and Thermidorian, Sieyès read for the nation he defined, and causes sorted into financial, social, intellectual and contingent. Then the chain whole, the unit's governing idea: each link forced the next. By the end you will be able to describe Thermidor. To sequence the Revolution. To read the Declaration and Sieyès. To classify a measure and a cause. And to state how the Revolution radicalized.

One entry on the end: victories that removed the Committee's mandate, a conspiracy, and a government of property owners.

Victory removes the mandate.

WC2 0628 Thermidor, July 1794, and the Directory

Victories in summer seventeen ninety-four removed the Committee's mandate; on the ninth of Thermidor, July twenty-seventh, a conspiracy arrested Robespierre and executed him. The Directory of ninety-five governed for property owners, rescinded price controls, and let a white terror kill former radicals, a count the anchor gives and historians put lower. In October ninety-five a young general dispersed a royalist rising.

Five procedures: the Revolution on one line, the Declaration and Sieyès read, and measures and causes sorted.

The Oath, the republic, Thermidor.

WC2 0629 Sequencing the Revolution, 1787 to 1795

Three fixed points: the Tennis Court Oath of June seventeen eighty-nine, the republic of September ninety-two, and Thermidor in July ninety-four. Then place: the Bastille, July fourteenth, weeks after the Oath; August fourth and the Declaration, the same summer; the March on Versailles, October eighty-nine; Varennes, June ninety-one, before that October's constitution; war on Austria, April ninety-two, before the republic; the king's execution, January ninety-three; the Committee, September ninety-three, before Thermidor; the Directory, ninety-five. Oath, Bastille, August, October, Varennes, war, republic, execution, Committee, Thermidor, Directory. The anchor's September ninety-two was a proclamation, not a constitution, and its calendar mappings beyond Thermidor are wrong; the order holds either way.

What each article denies, and whose idea it enacts.

WC2 0630 Reading the Declaration of the Rights of Man

Ask of any article what it denies the old order and which philosophe's idea it enacts, from Avalon's text, paraphrased. Article one: men born and remain free and equal in rights, distinctions only for the general good; denied, rank by birth; Locke's equality. Article three: sovereignty in the nation, no authority not proceeding from it; denied, divine right and the king as the state; Rousseau's and Sieyès's nation. Article six: law the expression of the general will, the same for all, every office open by talent; denied, noble monopoly of office; Rousseau and careers open to talent. Article seven: no arrest except as the law prescribes; denied, arbitrary imprisonment; Beccaria. Principles, not a constitution, as the witness says, and it names no king. A passage on the nation as the source of all authority is this document, not the American one.

Privilege, coercion, property.

WC2 0631 Classifying a Revolutionary Measure: Liberal, Radical, Thermidorian

Three phases answer three questions: does the measure dismantle privilege while keeping property and a king, does it mobilize and coerce the nation for the republic's survival, or does it undo coercion for property owners. Feudal dues abolished and offices no longer sold: liberal, eighty-nine. Church lands auctioned for the debt: liberal. Every adult man conscripted and prices fixed by a committee of twelve: radical, ninety-three. Churches made temples of reason and the calendar restarted: radical. Price controls rescinded under property owners: Thermidorian, ninety-five. The metric system: begun radical and kept by every regime since, the exception. The trap is universal manhood suffrage, introduced by the radical republic in ninety-two and withdrawn by the Directory's property franchise, so a franchise question turns on the year.

Everything, nothing, something.

WC2 0632 Reading Sieyès: What the Third Estate Is

Sieyès's pamphlet of January seventeen eighty-nine, read in Fordham's excerpt, asks three questions of the Third Estate and answers everything, nothing, something, then argues the first in three moves. The definition of a nation: what is necessary for a nation to subsist and prosper, individual effort and public functions, and he finds the Third Estate in every class of effort, agriculture, industry, commerce, the professions. The exclusion: the privileged order holds the honors and does none of the work, so the nation would be nothing less without it but something more. The conclusion, in the anchor's caption: everything, but shackled; without the privileged order, everything, but free and flourishing. The argument turns three orders into one nation and a parasite. Sieyès is a theorist of the nation, not of democracy; he voted for the Consulate in ninety-nine. The nation as those who do its work is Sieyès; the general will is Rousseau.

Immediate, structural, enabling, trigger.

WC2 0633 Causes of the Revolution: Sorting Financial, Social, Intellectual, and Contingent

Four kinds of cause: the state's finances, the society of orders, Enlightenment ideas, and the accidents of eighty-eight and eighty-nine; the anchor's answer is that the first was immediate, the second structural, the third enabling, and the fourth the trigger. Interest consuming sixty percent of revenue: financial, immediate. Nobles holding a third of the land and every senior post while paying few taxes: social, the structure that blocked repair. Readers who had learned from Locke that legitimacy rests on consent and from Beccaria that law must be the same for all: intellectual, the language the grievances used. Two bad harvests and bread doubling in the spring of the election: contingent, the trigger. The American war, a victory with no return: financial again, the last straw. What was not a cause is usually an industrial one; France in eighty-nine had no factory proletariat, and unit nine explains why. Finances first, figures the anchor's.

One capstone entry: the chain from interest to the Directory, and why each link forced the next.

Bankruptcy, flight, war, Terror, Thermidor.

WC2 0634 From Bankruptcy to Terror: How the Revolution Radicalized

The exam's fifth band asks what the Revolution in France was, and the anchor's answer is a chain in which each link forced the next. It began with money: a century of war financed by private loans left sixty percent of revenue going to interest, by the anchor's figure, while two hundred thousand nobles and the church held the land and paid almost nothing, and the American victory emptied what was left. Louis could not tax the privileged, so in seventeen eighty-nine he revived the Estates General, and the act of asking ended absolutism. The election drew up grievances, bread prices soared, and the question of voting by estate or by head became the constitutional question, which Sieyès answered by calling the Third Estate everything. In June the Third Estate swore the Tennis Court Oath; in July Paris took the Bastille as the army defected; in the villages the Great Fear burned the debt ledgers. The Assembly abolished feudal privilege on August fourth and declared the Rights of Man on the twenty-sixth. Church lands were sold, titles abolished, the clergy made state employees, and equality's logic reached Protestants, Jews and, by force from St. Domingue, the enslaved, while women were refused. Then the chain radicalized. The king fled and was caught at Varennes in June ninety-one, and a constitutional monarchy with a king who had tried to leave it could not last. Radicals declared war on Austria in April ninety-two; defeat brought the republic and universal manhood suffrage in September; the execution of January ninety-three brought Britain in; invasion, shortages and the Vendée brought the Committee, the levée en masse, price controls, the guillotine, a new calendar and temples of reason, with the anchor's thirty-five to fifty-five thousand dead. Victory in summer ninety-four removed the emergency, and Thermidor removed Robespierre; the Directory restored property's rule. Bankruptcy made the Assembly, the flight made the republic, the war made the Terror, and the Terror's success ended it.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe Thermidor, the ninth of that month and July twenty-seventh, and the Directory of property owners. You can sequence the Revolution between the Oath, the republic and Thermidor. You can read the Declaration for what each article denies and whose idea it enacts, and read Sieyès for the nation of those who do its work. You can classify a measure as liberal, radical or Thermidorian, with suffrage as the trap, and a cause as financial, social, intellectual or contingent, with finances first. And you can state the chain, each link forcing the next, which is this unit's one idea. Unit eight opens on the general who dispersed the rising of October ninety-five.