CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. The Origins of the French Revolution

III. The Estates General and the Beginning of theRevolution

IV. The Revolutionary Crowd: The Bastille and theGreat Fear

V. The Legislative Revolution of the NationalAssembly, 1789–91

VI. Europe and the Revolution

VII. The Legislative Assembly and the Wars of theRevolution

VIII. The First Republic: The Convention

IX. Civil War and the Reign of Terror

X. The Thermidorean Reaction and the Directory,1794–99

XI. The Revolutionary Wars and the Rise ofNapoleon

XII. France under Napoleon

XIII. The Napoleonic Wars

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CHAPTER 21THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ANDNAPOLEON, 1789–1815

The end of the eighteenth century brought ex-traordinary upheaval. The French Revolution(1789–99) challenged the institutions of theOld Regime and provoked bitter struggles in

which millions of people died. The turmoil in Francegave way to a general European conflict (1792–1815)as great coalitions formed to halt the spread of revolu-tion. The revolutionary government survived these at-tacks until 1799 when one of its own military heroes,Napoleon Bonaparte, seized power and created an au-thoritarian government. In a series of brilliant cam-paigns he extended French rule over much of Europeuntil he was defeated by the combined armies of a Eu-ropean coalition.

Chapter 21 surveys this upheaval, starting with itsorigins in the economic and social problems of the OldRegime. The French attempt to address those problemsled to a series of revolutionary governments that abol-ished the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the estab-lished church. A revolutionary bill of rights and anidealistic constitution promised an age of liberty andequality, and the revolutionary government fulfilledmuch of this promise by abolishing slavery and byemancipating religious minorities. The French Revolu-tion, however, is a complex, paradoxical subject. Thestory of great accomplishment is also a story of greatviolence. The revolution produced dictatorial govern-ments and public executions, so many people remem-ber the revolution as a “reign of terror.” One of the bestknown passages in English literature, the opening ofCharles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859), summarizesthis revolutionary duality: “It was the best of times, itwas the worst of times . . . it was the spring of hope, itwas the winter of despair.”

!The Origins of the French RevolutionThe French Revolution grew from the combination ofan intractable economic crisis and the inability of the

392

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 393

government to govern. King Louis XVI could neitherraise taxes nor pay his bills. A recession and fallingprices hurt farmers and workers. Manufacturing suf-fered in competition with the English, especially in thetextile industry. Unemployment reached dangerous lev-els, passing eighty thousand in Paris in December 1788(approximately one-third of the adult workforce), whilepoor harvests in 1787–88 produced shortages of wheat,which rose in price to record levels by mid–1789. Theprice of bread in Paris, normally eight or nine sous for afour-pound loaf, hit 14.5 sous.

Ominous signs were evident in 1788–89 thatFrance was a volatile society. Bread riots occurred inmany districts. Some villages refused to ship their grain.In towns, crowds, often led by women, attacked gra-naries, mills, and bakeries. The crowds typically forcedsales at “the just price” (an old Christian idea); inRouen, for example, they cut the price of bread in half.

Historians generally agree that such troubles be-came a revolution when four overlapping movementsconverged: (1) An aristocratic revolution had beenbuilding for many years, as aristocrats used institutionssuch as the parlements to thwart the king, especially ontax reform. This revolution forced Louis XVI to holdelections for the Estates General in 1789. (2) A bour-geois revolution challenged the aristocratic leadershipof the reform movement and sought to limit aristocraticcontrol of high government offices. (3) A peasant revo-lution went beyond disturbances over grain and becamean armed uprising against the remnants of feudalism.This rebellion connected the common people to the re-formers and made it extremely difficult for Louis XVI toact against them. (4) An urban working-class revolutionturned the fury of the crowd to large political targets.The revolution of the crowd pressed reformers to ex-tend the revolution.

!The Estates General and the Beginning of the RevolutionFaced with bankruptcy, Louis XVI promised his criticsin November 1787 that he would hold elections for theEstates General (the first since 1614) within five years.Under continuing pressure, Louis finally agreed thatrepresentatives from each of the three estates (theclergy, the aristocracy, and all others) that comprisedthe population of France (see chapter 17) could assem-ble in May 1789. His decision launched the first mod-ern political debate in French history (see illustration21.1). Should the third estate (97 percent of the popu-

lation) have more deputies than the others? Should thethree estates meet together or separately? Such issuesproduced a flood of political pamphlets. The most fa-mous of these was written by a provincial priest, theabbé Emmanuel Sieyès (1748–1836), who defended thethird estate in a work entitled What Is the Third Estate?Sieyès’s answer was “Everything!” The aristocracy, headded, was like “some horrible disease eating the livingflesh of some unfortunate man.”

Louis XVI agreed to double the representation ofthe third estate, but he insisted upon preserving tradi-tions—the estates would meet separately. He permittedfreedom of the press for the elections and asked thateach district submit statements of their grievances(cahiers des doléances). Most cahiers condemned abso-lutism and praised constitutional monarchy; manypledged loyalty to Louis XVI, but none acknowledgedhis “divine right.” They called for a French parliamentto control taxation and legislation. The cahiers attackedhated aspects of the Old Regime (such as the arbitraryroyal power of arrest by lettres de cachet) and demandednew freedoms (such as freedom of the press). Eachcahier also expressed the interests of the estate thatproduced it. The first estate, for example, wanted cleri-cal control of education, denounced immorality in thepress, and objected to the toleration of Protestantism.

The Estates General met in Versailles, a short walkfrom the royal palace. It opened with a royal speechasking for new taxes. The deputies of the third estate,

Illustration 21.1

" The Three Estates. Cartoons are often effective politicaltracts. The message of this one is clear and revolutionary: Thetwo privileged estates, the clergy and the aristocracy, are crush-ing the common man, who must support them and the boulderof taxation.

394 Chapter 21

chiefly lawyers, rejected holding such discussions inseparate meetings, and they asked other deputies tojoin them in legislating reforms. Nine priests agreed,and the combined group proclaimed itself the FrenchNational Assembly. A political revolution had begun.The deputies were locked out of their meeting hall, sothey assembled at a nearby indoor tennis court andswore not to adjourn without preparing a constitution.Within a few days, 612 of 621 deputies of the third es-tate had signed the Tennis Court Oath; 149 priests anda few nobles joined them.

The king naturally resisted these events. He didnot panic because he had learned from dealing with theparlements that he could suspend their business, trans-fer the meeting to a distant province, or even arresttroublesome leaders. Thus, he simply declared the deci-sions of the third estate illegal. He offered the hope ofa constitution, with important reservations. “The Kingwills,” he said, “that the traditional distinctions betweenthe three orders of the state should be preserved in itsentirety.” Deputies of the defiant third estate chose tocontinue the National Assembly. As one liberal deputy,the Count de Mirabeau (1749–91), said, “We shall notleave our places except by the power of bayonet.” Louisconsidered using the army but his ability to use Frenchtroops against the National Assembly was uncertain.Few were stationed in Versailles, and their loyalty wasdubious. One regiment had refused to fire on demon-strators and another had vowed not to act against thethird estate. So Louis called in German and Swiss rein-forcements from the provinces (foreigners constituted25 percent of his army). He still felt confident enoughto do nothing when the National Assembly discussed aconstitution. The revolution, however, quickly passedbeyond his ability to control it.

!The Revolutionary Crowd: The Bastille and the Great FearThe political revolution begun by the aristocracy andexpanded by the deputies of the third estate changed inJuly 1789, driven by crowds of commoners in bothtown and country. The revolutionary crowd (“the mob”to hostile observers) has been the subject of historicalcontroversy. Some authors depict the crowds as purelydestructive and conclude that they were comprised ofcriminals, vagabonds, and the unemployed. EdmundBurke, the most eloquent enemy of the revolution,called the crowd “a band of cruel ruffians and assassins.”Recent study, however, has shown that the revolution-

ary crowds were comprised of wage earners, journey-men, artisans, and shopkeepers (see table 21.1).

The Parisian crowd changed the revolution in July1789. The price of bread, fear of foreign troops, con-cern that the National Assembly would be closed, andthe agitation of revolutionary orators (notably CamilleDesmoulins, a twenty-nine-year-old radical lawyer) cre-ated a volatile situation. On July 11, the king dismissedhis most popular advisor, Jacques Necker alarmingmoderates. Parisians burned the customs gates to thecity, as a protest against the tariffs that they blamed forthe high price of bread and wine. The next day, Ger-man soldiers fired on a crowd, and a riot followed. Onthe morning of July 14, eight thousand people attackeda royal barracks and took thirty-two thousand musketsand twelve artillery pieces. They used those arms laterthat day in the most famous act of the revolutionarycrowd—the attack on the Bastille. The Bastille was aformidable fortress, towering nearly one hundred feetover eastern Paris. It was less important for the sevenprisoners it held than as a symbol of despotism, inwhich such famous prisoners as Voltaire had been con-fined. (Studies have found that 10 percent of all Frenchwriters of the eighteenth century were locked up in theBastille at least once.) Perhaps more important, it heldfive tons of gunpowder, defended by only eighty-twoFrench soldiers and thirty-two Swiss. During a four-hour battle on July 14 (which became a French nationalholiday), one soldier and ninety-eight civilians werekilled. The victorious crowd, which included manycabinetmakers and cobblers but no lawyers (see table21.1), finished the day with an act that led to their im-age as a blood-thirsty mob: the brutal murder of thegovernor of the Bastille. Louis XVI spent the day hunt-ing; his diary entry for July 14 read: “Nothing.” Thenext day, stunned by the news from Paris, he went tothe National Assembly and promised to withdraw theprovincial troops.

Neither the king nor the National Assembly hadadjusted to the insurrection in Paris when similar eventsoccurred in rural France. The rural disturbances of Julyand August 1789, known as “the great fear,” were a re-sponse to rumors. Some rumors held that the kingwished to liberate the peasantry but expected them totake the lead. Worse rumors held that aristocrats, frus-trated by events in Versailles, were preparing some ter-rible revenge or that armies of vagrants (whosenumbers were high) were to be set loose on the peas-antry. Peasants armed themselves in self-defense. Whenbrigands did not appear, the frightened populationturned their anxiety on the chateaux of their seigneurs.Some aristocrats were forced to renounce their feudal

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 395

rights. In other places, peasants burned the records ofthe feudal dues that they owed, and sometimes thechateau as well.

!The Legislative Revolution of the National Assembly, 1789–91The actions of the Parisian crowd and the peasantryhad two important effects on the National Assembly(also called the Constituent Assembly because it waswriting a constitution). First, they strengthened the assembly because the king could not suppress it without fear of violence. Second, the rebellions en-couraged the deputies to extend the revolution (seechronology 21.1).

A legislative revolution began on “the night of Au-gust 4th.” Debates on the great fear led to a remarkablescene: Some aristocrats proposed ending their own

privileges. Without preparation or committee studies,the deputies voted a series of decrees that began with:“The National Assembly completely abolishes the feu-dal regime.” The night of August 4 marked the end offeudal servitude and taxes, the feudal rights of the aris-tocracy (such as hunting on peasant farmland), themanorial courts of aristocratic justice, “tithes of everydescription” owed to the Catholic Church, and the saleof public offices, which were opened to all citizens.

Three weeks later, the National Assembly adoptedanother historic document, a French bill of rightsnamed the Declaration of the Rights of Man (see document 21.1). It promised freedom of religion, free-dom of speech, freedom of the press, due process oflaw, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punish-ment. It did not grant equal rights to religious minori-ties (Protestants received this in December 1789; Jewshad to wait until September 1791), freedom for theblack slaves in French colonies (adopted in February1794, see illustration 21.2), or equal rights for women

Arrests at the Bastille Emigrés(1789) (1789–99)

Trade category Percentage Class category Percentage

Furniture trades 17.1 Third estate 58.0

Building trades 14.2 (Peasantry 19.4)

Clothing trades 10.1 (Workers 14.3)

Metal workers 10.1 Clergy 25.2

Transport trades 6.8 Nobility 16.8

Food Trades 5.3

Other 36.4

Deputies in the convention Jacobin clubs(1792–95) (1793–95)

Profession Percentage Profession Percentage

Lawyers 47.7 Shopkeepers 45.0

Businessmen 8.9 Farmers 9.6

Clergy 7.3 Businessmen 8.2

Civil servants 6.8 Lawyers 6.8

Medicine 6.1 Other professions 6.9

Farmers 5.1 Civil servants 6.7

Other 18.1 Other 16.8

Note: Total percentage may exceed 100 because of rounding.

Source: Colin Jones, ed., The Longman Companion to the French Revolution (London: Longman, 1988), pp. 120, 168, 186, 199; and George Rudé, The Crowd inthe French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 246–48.

! TABLE 21.1 !

The Social Composition of Revolutionary Groups

396 Chapter 21

(which the revolution never accepted, see document21.2)—but in 1789 it was the greatest statement of hu-man rights in Europe.

Louis XVI rejected the August reforms. This actiondefended tradition, but it angered the National Assem-bly and the people of Paris. The people forced the issue.Their fears of a royal counterrevolution were exacer-bated by the food crisis. The harvest of 1789 was good,but a late season drought had slowed the work of thewater-powered mills that ground grain into flour. Thus,August and September 1789 again witnessed bread riotsled by the women of Paris.

Historians call those days on which the action ofthe crowd changed the course of events “revolutionaryjournées” (“revolutionary days”). The angry housewivesand working women of Paris led such a journée on Oc-tober 5, 1789. Their target was the king. When Louisblocked the August reforms, talk circulated in Parisabout a march to Versailles to bring him to Paris. Onthe rainy Monday morning of October 5, the womenof Paris did just that. A procession of several thousandset out for Versailles, chanting “Let’s fetch the baker!” A

few hours later, a reluctant Lafayette led the NationalGuard to support them. After a small clash on thegrounds of the royal palace, Louis XVI agreed to acceptthe August decrees and to move into his TuileriesPalace (today the Louvre Museum) in Paris.

The National Assembly moved to Paris, too, confi-dent that it now controlled France. The deputies de-prived the king of the right to dismiss them or to vetothe constitution they were writing. Their effort toshackle royal power included one mistake: They ex-cluded royal ministers from the assembly. This blockedthe evolution of a cabinet system of government andthe principle of ministerial responsibility to parliament.

The move to Paris stimulated the growth of politicalclubs (the precursors of political parties), which becameone of the distinguishing features of the revolution.These clubs had roots in the salons of the Old Regime,organizations such as Masonic lodges, and the excitedpolitical meetings of 1788–89. They became the voiceof Parisian radicalism and then the center of revolution-ary power. One of the most influential clubs was theCordeliers, named for a Catholic order whose

July 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy

June 1791 Chapelier Law outlaws unions andstrikes

June 1791 Louis XVI’s flight to Varennes and arrest

July 1791 Massacre on the Champ de Mars

July 1791 Law against seditious meetings

September 1791 Emancipation of Jews

September 1791 Constitution of 1791 adopted

September 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman

The Legislative Assembly (1791–92)November 1791 Decree against émigrés

November 1791 Decree against nonjuring priests

August 1792 King’s powers suspended

August 1792 Prussia invades France

September 1792 Legalization of divorce

September 1792 September massacres

September 1792 Battle of Valmy

September 1792 French monarchy abolished

# CHRONOLOGY 21.1 #

May 1789 Opening of the Estates General

The National Assembly (1789–91)June 1789 Third estate proclaims the National

Assembly

June 1789 Tennis Court Oath not to disperse

July 1789 Fall of the Bastille

July 1789 Beginning of “the great fear” in ruralFrance

August 1789 Abolition of feudalism, tithes, venaloffices

August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man

October 1789 Women’s march on Versailles

November 1789 Nationalization of church property

December 1789 Civil equality of Protestants

February 1790 Suppression of monasteries

March 1790 Abolition of the lettres de cachetMay 1790 Nationalization of royal land

June 1790 Nobility abolished

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 397

monastery it rented. The Cordeliers included three ofthe most prominent radicals of the city: CamilleDesmoulins (the orator who helped to precipitate theattack on the Bastille), Jean-Paul Marat (a physicianwhose radical newspaper, the Friend of the People, hadshaped the journée of October 5), and Georges Danton(a radical lawyer who had married into middle-classwealth and purchased a venal office in the royal courts).The most important club, the Jacobins, drew their namefrom a rented Jacobin convent and their membershipfrom Parisian small businessmen (see table 22.1). The Ja-cobins were especially influential because their member-ship included more than two hundred deputies. Jacobinsranged from moderates such as Lafayette to radicalssuch as Robespierre, but the latter soon predominated.In the first year, the club grew to more than twelve hun-dred members and 150 affiliated provincial clubs. Theterm Jacobinism soon entered political discourse to iden-tify their militant ideas and actions.

Pushed by these radical clubs, the National Assem-bly continued its revolutionary legislation. Its attentionsoon fell on the Catholic Church, which seemed tohold an answer to the economic crisis. In November1789 the revolutionary, and nonreligious, bishop of Au-

tun, Charles Talleyrand, convinced the assembly to “putat the disposal of the nation” all lands belonging to thechurch. This confiscated a huge amount of land—typically 20 percent of the farm land in a region, al-though it reached 40 percent in some areas. The assem-bly then sold interest-bearing bonds, called assignats,secured by this land. The assignats gradually circulatedas revolutionary paper money. The notes could be re-deemed for land and the value of the land was sufficientto cover them, but the public had little confidence inpaper money, so assignats depreciated in value. By late1792 inflation had taken 40 percent of their value.

Other legislation on the church followed. The lossof its lands and the abolition of the mandatory tithe leftthe church with limited income. This led the assemblyto create a new relationship between the church andthe state, known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergyof July 1790. The Civil Constitution converted priestsinto state employees and doubled their salaries, but itcut the number, income, and powers of the aristocraticbishops by changing their posts into elective state of-fices. Clerics had to swear loyalty to the constitution orbe removed from office. By mid-1791, 60 percent ofFrench priests (the “juring,” or constitutional, clergy)

# DOCUMENT 21.1 #

The Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.Social distinctions can be based only upon public utility.

2. The aim of every political association is thepreservation of the natural and imprescriptable rights ofman. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resis-tance to oppression.

3. The source of all sovereignty is essentially in thenation; no body, no individual can exercise authority thatdoes not proceed from it in plain terms.

4. Liberty consists in the power to do anything thatdoes not injure others. . . .

5. The law has the right to forbid only such actionsas are injurious to society. . . .

6. Law is the expression of the general will. All citi-zens have the right to take part personally, or by their rep-resentatives, in its formation. It must be the same for all,whether it protects or punishes. . . .

7. No man can be accused, arrested, or detained ex-cept in the cases determined by the law. . . .

8. The law ought to establish only penalties that arestrictly and obviously necessary. . . .

9. Every man being presumed innocent until he hasbeen pronounced guilty. . . .

10. No one should be disturbed on account of hisopinions, even religious. . . .

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions isone of the most precious rights of man; every citizen thencan freely speak, write, and print, subject to responsibilityfor the abuse of this freedom. . . .

14. All the citizens have the right to ascertain, bythemselves or by their representatives, the necessity of thepublic tax, to consent to it freely. . . .

17. Property being a sacred and inviolable right, noone can be deprived of it, unless a legally established pub-lic necessity evidently demands it, under the condition ofa just and prior indemnity.

Anderson, Frank M., ed. The Constitutions and Other Select DocumentsIllustrative of the History of France, 1789–1907. Minneapolis: 1908.

398 Chapter 21

had accepted this arrangement; more than 95 percentof the bishops refused.

The legislative revolution proceeded rapidly. Theassembly addressed the economic crisis by abolishinginternal tariffs (October 1790), nationalizing royal land(May 1790), and creating a land tax (November 1790).It sought governmental efficiency by reorganizing localgovernment (December 1789) by abolishing the par-lements (September 1790). It decreed the civil equalityof Protestants (December 1789) and ex-slaves (May1791). And it continued to attack the elites of the OldRegime: The assembly abolished monasteries and mostreligious orders (February 1790) and then the nobility(June 1790). One of its most far-reaching reforms, how-ever, restricted the rights of workers. The ChapelierLaw of June 1791 abolished the guilds and outlawedtrade unions, shaping French labor history for nearly acentury.

One omission in this torrent of reform waswomen’s rights, despite the active role of women in therevolution. The pamphlet campaign of early 1789 hadincluded women’s grievances; one petition to the king,for example, had called for educational and economicopportunities. A few women in religious orders hadvoted for representatives of the first estate. More than adozen women had been among the conquerors of theBastille. Women had led demonstrations over bread andthe march on Versailles. They had formed politicalclubs, such as Théroigne de Méricourt’s Friends of the

Law, which was denied affiliation by the Cordeliers.And when the Declaration of the Rights of Man failedto mention women, Olympe de Gouges respondedwith a brilliant manifesto entitled Declaration of the Rightsof Women (1791). “Man, are you capable of being just?”she asked (see document 21.2). Although a few men,such as Condorcet, responded supportively, the answerremained no. Traditional attitudes about the role ofwomen in society persisted, fears about the sub-servience of women to the church abounded, and amultitude of arguments (such as the lesser education ofwomen) were advanced to perpetuate male dominance.Soon, the revolutionaries even closed women’s clubs.

In September 1791 the National Assembly pro-duced the first written constitution in French history.This document incorporated many of the decrees ofthe previous months. The Declaration of the Rights ofMan formed the preamble. Louis XVI retained power asa constitutional monarch, but most power was vested ina unicameral parliament called the Legislative Assem-bly, which he could not dissolve. Elections were com-plicated. Adult male citizens were divided into “active”citizens (who got to vote, based on how much tax theypaid) and “passive” citizens (who had full civil rights,but no vote). Elections were indirect: Active citizenschose representatives who met to elect deputies. Thisallowed 4.3 million people to vote, fewer people thanhad voted for the Estates General but higher percent-age than the electorate for the House of Commons inBritain.

Illustration 21.2

" The Revolution and Equality. Atits most idealist stage, the French Revo-lution emancipated Protestants, Jews,and slaves. In this illustration, the revo-lution is glorified for proclaiming “allmortals are equal.” The scales of justicefind a white man and a black man to beprecisely equal. The emancipated slaveholds a copy of the Declaration of the Rightsof Man, while the devils of inequality aredriven away.

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 399

Before the Constitution of 1791 took effect, an-other dramatic event changed the course of the FrenchRevolution. On June 20, 1791, Louis XVI fled for theeastern frontier. A postmaster recognized the king, andat the village of Varennes the National Guard arrestedhim. Louis XVI returned to Paris as a prisoner. “There isno longer a king in France,” he said. His flight toVarennes led to talk of abolishing the monarchy andcreating a republic. For more than a year after the king’sarrest, however, the revolutionary government allowedan aristocrat to continue publishing a royalist newspa-per on his behalf.

!Europe and the RevolutionThe arrest of Louis XVI accelerated the growth ofcounterrevolutionary opinion. The most dramatic ex-pression of this in France had been emigration from the

country. The émigrés (those who fled) had been led bythe king’s younger brother and future successor, thecount of Artois, who left in July 1789. Each major eventof the revolution increased the number of émigrés. Thetotal ultimately reached 104,000. Adding twenty-fivethousand people who were deported (chiefly nonjuringpriests), 2 percent to 3 percent of the population leftFrance. Most émigrés came from the third estate, butpriests and aristocrats fled at higher rates (see table21.1). In contrast, counterrevolutionary emigration toCanada during the American Revolution took 3 to 5percent of the population. The émigrés concentrated inKoblenz and other towns near the border where theysought assistance from the crowned heads of Europe,aided rebellions in southern France, and built ties tononjuring priests, especially in western France where abitter civil war would soon be fought.

The émigrés got little help at first. European opin-ion was divided, but it was generally more favorable tothe revolution than to émigré nobles. The English poet

# DOCUMENT 21.2 #

The Revolution and Women’s Rights

Olympe De Gouges’s Declaration of the Rights ofWoman, 1791Olympe de Gouges (1748–93) was the illegitimate daughter of aprovincial butcher. She ran away with a soldier at age sixteen andwound up as a writer in Paris. She supported the revolution andfounded a club for women that Robespierre closed. Her opposition toRobespierre and her opposition to the execution of Louis XVI sent her tothe guillotine in 1793. Compare the words of her articles with the simi-lar ones in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman whoposes the question; you will not deprive her of that rightat least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to op-press my sex?

1. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in herrights. . . .

4. Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that be-longs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of thenatural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; theselimits are to be reformed by the laws of nature andreason. . . .

10. No one is to be disquieted for his very basicopinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; shemust equally have the right to mount the rostum.

The Committee of General Security RejectsWomen’s Rights, 1793Should women exercise political rights and meddle in af-fairs of government? To govern is to rule the common-wealth by laws, the preparation of which demandsextensive knowledge, unlimited attention and devotion, astrict immovability, and self-abnegation . . . . Are womencapable of these cares and of the quality they call for? InGeneral, we can answer no. . . .

[W]omen’s associations seem dangerous. If we con-sider that the political education of men is at its begin-ning, that all its principles are not developed, and thatwe are still stammering the word liberty, then how much more reasonable is it for women, whose moral education is almost nil, to be less enlightened concern-ing principles?

Gouges, Olympe de. Declaration of the Rights of Woman. 1791.Levy, Darline G., Applewhite, Harriet B., and Johnson, Mary D., ed.Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795. Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1979.

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William Wordsworth summarized the enthusiasm ofthe educated classes in a few lines of poetry: “Bliss wasit in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was veryheaven!” Such opinions were not limited to intellectu-als. Charles James Fox, a leader of the Whig Party inBritain, called the revolution “much the greatest eventthat ever happened, and much the best.”

The earliest opponent of the French Revolutionwas King Charles IV of Spain who was horrified by thetreatment of the Catholic Church, but Spain was tooweak to intervene. Catherine the Great of Russiadreaded the menace of French revolutionary ideas, butshe was too far away to act, except against her own in-telligentsia. The Habsburg emperors Joseph II andLeopold II carefully watched events in France becausetheir sister, Marie Antoinette, was the queen and a tar-get of popular abuse, but they initially accepted Frenchreforms.

The most thoughtful critic of the revolution wasFox’s rival in the House of Commons, Edmund Burke.Burke became one of the founders of modern conser-vatism with his attack on the revolution, Reflections on theRevolution in France (1790). “France,” he wrote, “by theperfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone oflenient council.” The revolution was an “undignifiedcalamity.” The most influential early enemy of the revo-lution was Pope Pius VI who chiefly directed his angerat the Civil Constitution because it removed the churchfrom papal control. In April 1791 he sent the encyclicalletter Caritas to French bishops, forbidding the oath tothe constitution. That oath, Pius insisted, was “the poi-soned fountainhead and source of all errors.” The Frenchassembly answered by annexing the papal territory ofAvignon (once the seat of the medieval papacy). Soonthe French ambassador at Rome had been murdered,Parisian crowds had burnt the pope in effigy, and Pius VIhad become a leader of the European counterrevolution.

The arrest of the French royal family at Varennespersuaded Leopold II to help his sister and her family.In July 1791 he sent a circular letter to the monarchs ofEngland, Spain, Prussia, Naples, Sardinia, and Russia,urging them to join him in a protest to the French. Hewanted “to vindicate the liberty and honor of the mostChristian King and his family and to limit the danger-ous extremes of the French revolution.” Most rulerswere unwilling to act. King George III of Britain ab-stained because the revolution weakened France, andhe felt it was divine retribution for the French interven-tion in the American Revolution. The only ruler whojoined Leopold II was King Frederick William II ofPrussia. Together they issued the Brunswick Manifesto

(1792) denouncing “the anarchy in the interior ofFrance.” Soon they would invade France.

European opinion gradually became polarized. As aDutch conservative wrote in 1791, two parties wereforming in all nations. One, a party of popular sover-eignty and democratization, attacked all governments“except those arising from the free consent of thosewho submit to it.” The other party held traditional val-ues and, therefore, counterrevolutionary sentiments. Itaccepted government “by one or several persons overthe mass of the people, a government of divine originand supported by the church.” The French Revolutionwas only the largest part of a democratic revolutionthat included liberal Polish nobles struggling againstRussian influence; English dissenters campaigning forparliamentary reform; Rhineland Jews seeking emanci-pation; Irish peasants dreaming of French aid againstthe English; and Dutch, Belgian, and Swiss “patriots”who revived earlier rebellions.

!The Legislative Assembly and the Wars of the RevolutionElections for the Legislative Assembly took place in theaftermath of the flight to Varennes and the promulga-tion of Caritas and the Brunswick Manifesto. The newassembly of 745 deputies left a permanent mark on po-litical discourse as a coincidence of its seating arrange-ment in a semicircular amphitheatre. As a speaker facedthe assembled deputies, conservative members who de-fended the king sat on the right side. This group, led bymembers of the Feuillant Club, became the Right. Onthe left wing sat the radical members from the Jacobinand Cordeliers clubs. Less militant revolutionaries, wholater became known as the Girondins (because manycame from the region of the Gironde), sat in the mid-dle. Thus was born the political vocabulary of “left,”“right,” and “center.”

International tension distracted the Legislative As-sembly from further reform. Instead, the assemblyadopted legislation against the émigrés, branding thosewho did not return as conspirators. In February 1792the state seized their property. Similar decrees againstnonjuring priests followed in November 1792. Suchlegislation worsened French relations with the Austro-Prussian alliance. In March 1792 a belligerent, counter-revolutionary Francis II had succeeded to the Habsburgthrone. By this time, the Girondins, whose foreign pol-icy was more radical than their revolutionary aims,

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 401

dominated the French assembly. They argued that warwith the counterrevolutionaries would rally the Frenchto defend the revolution, test the sympathies of LouisXVI, and export the revolution to other peoples. Theleading Girondist, Jacques Brissot, said simply: “War is ablessing to the nation.” Francis II and Brissot had ledtheir countries to war by April 1792.

A Prussian army invaded eastern France in August1792 and won several victories, but the course of thewar shifted in September when a French army underGeneral Charles Dumouriez defeated the Prussians inan artillery duel near the town of Valmy, bolstering re-publican enthusiasm. In the words of the German poetJohann von Goethe, the battle of Valmy meant that“here and today begins a new age in the history of theworld.” This was poetic exaggeration, but it made apoint: The allies would not quickly crush the FrenchRevolution. A few weeks later, Dumouriez and an armyof forty-five thousand underscored that point bymarching into Habsburg lands on France’s northernborder (today’s Belgium) and winning a decisive victoryat the town of Jemappes.

The War of 1792 grew into the War of the FirstCoalition (1793–95) when Britain, Spain, and Russiajoined the alliance against the revolution, which hadbecome passionately antimonarchical. Though thisseemed like one of the most unevenly matched wars inhistory, the French not only survived it, but they alsooccupied the lowlands, the German Rhineland, andNorthern Italy. They were able to do so because therevolution, among its other accomplishments, trans-formed the nature of modern warfare.

France had a larger population than most of her ri-vals, and in the early years of the revolution high un-employment made recruitment easy. The army grewfrom 180,000 men in 1789 to 650,000 in 1793. Then inAugust 1793 the assembly decreed universal militaryconscription (the levée en masse), placing the entire nation“in permanent requisition for army service.” France soonhad an unprecedented one million men in uniform. Aconscript army of this size could not function accord-ing to the time-honored rules of European warfare.Though armed with the proceeds of revolutionary con-fiscations, it could feed itself only by living off thelands it conquered. Moreover, tactics had to be revisedbecause intensive training had become impossible. Un-der reforms adopted by “the organizer of victory,”Lazare Carnot, the French infantry advanced in deepcolumns instead of the traditional line, taking advan-tage of its superior numbers and revolutionary enthusi-asm to overwhelm more disciplined enemies.

!The First Republic: The ConventionThe War of 1792 changed the revolution and led to theabolition of the monarchy and the creation of a repub-lic. Once again, the Parisian crowd took the initiative.Austro-Prussian threats on Louis XVI’s behalf inspireddemonstrations against the king, including an attack onthe Tuileries Palace. The Legislative Assembly then sus-pended Louis’s remaining powers and reenacted all leg-islation he had vetoed. Then, in “the revolution ofAugust 10th” the assembly decided to create a new leg-islature. It would be called the Convention in honor ofthe Constitutional Convention recently held in Amer-ica. Representatives to the Convention would beelected by universal manhood suffrage, and they wouldwrite a more democratic constitution. Among its finalacts, the Legislative Assembly moved Louis XVI to aroyal prison and urged the Convention to abolish themonarchy.

The late summer of 1792 also saw ominous hints ofrevolutionary authoritarianism. The assembly sent com-missioners into provincial France hoping to rally sup-port, but their powers often created opposition. Thenthe assembly required a loyalty oath of all governmentemployees, and it gave those who refused two weeks toleave the country. Other laws permitted searches ofhomes for arms and counterrevolutionary suspects. The attack on the Catholic Church also continued. Allsurviving Catholic associations (such as teaching or-ders) were abolished, religious processions and publicceremonies were prohibited, and divorce was legalized.

This same period witnessed one of the worst atroci-ties of mob violence, known as the September Mas-sacres. The allied invasion, the implications of theBrunswick Manifesto, and the defection of people suchas Lafayette (seen as proof of widespread treason) cre-ated fears of a conspiracy linking the internal and exter-nal enemies of the revolution. The resultant panic waslike the great fear of 1789, but this time the target wassuspected enemies rather than châteaux. There weresixty-five lynchings around France. In Paris, the resultwas a massacre. During the first week the governmentdid nothing for five days while the mobs slaughteredeleven hundred inmates, three-fourths of whom werenonpolitical prisoners such as common criminals andprostitutes.

Elections for the Convention thus took place involatile circumstances. The 749 new deputies werechiefly lawyers (47.7 percent); fifty-five were priestsand several others were former aristocrats, includingLouis’s revolutionary cousin, the former duke of

402 Chapter 21

Orléans, now called Philippe Egalité (see table 21.1).The deputies were young—two-thirds were under ageforty-four. No faction held a majority, but universal suf-frage and the war produced a radical body. Jacobins andtheir allies, called Montagnards (mountain dwellers) be-cause they sat in the upper levels, accounted for 40 per-cent of the seats; their ranks included a Parisiandelegation led by such radicals as Danton, Marat, andRobespierre. The Girondins and their allies, led by Bris-sot and Roland, fell to less than 25 percent. The firstyear of the Convention was a struggle for predominancebetween these two factions, and the Jacobins won.

The Convention proclaimed a new order during itsfirst week. Deputies voted unanimously to abolish themonarchy and create a republic. A committee beganwork on a new constitution, to be submitted to thepeople for ratification. When the Convention later in-vented a new calendar, this week in September wouldbegin the new year, and September 1792 started Year Iof the republican era.

The success of republican armies in 1792–93 meantthat the greatest issue before the Convention became thefate of Louis XVI. A committee recommended that he be

tried for treason, based upon his secret contacts with thegovernments that had invaded France. The trial of theking before the Convention began in December. Fewdoubted his guilt, revealed by his secret correspondence,and the deputies convicted him by a vote of 683–0. Thedebate over his sentence, however, caused bitter divi-sions. Jacobins advocated the normal death penalty. Pas-sionate speakers insisted that “[k]ings are in the moralorder what monsters are in the natural.” Many leaders ofthe revolution, such as the abbé Sieyès, favored execu-tion; even the king’s cousin voted with the regicides.Louis XVI was condemned by a vote of 387–334 and beheaded on the guillotine in January 1793 (see illustration 21.3).

War consequently dominated the life of the Con-vention (1792–95) but deputies still aspired to reformsociety. Noteworthy laws envisioned schools open toall citizens. Robespierre, who had long championed the rights of minorities, scored his greatest triumphwith the abolition of slavery in French colonies (Febru-ary 1794), pushing the republic far ahead of Britain orthe United States. The Convention’s constitution,adopted in June 1793 and known as the Constitution of

Illustration 21.3

" The Execution of Louis XVI. The French republic, pro-claimed in 1792, convicted the former Louis XVI of treason forthe crime of plotting with the foreign powers that had invadedFrance. He was executed in January 1793 in a large public square,located at the end of the former royal gardens. In this illustration

the crowd is shown the head of the king. The square where theguillotine stood, previously known as “Place Louis XV” and re-named “Place de la Revolution,” is today known by the peace-making name of “Place de la Concorde.”

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 403

the Year I, summarized much of this egalitarian ideal-ism. It began with an expanded version of the Declara-tion of the Rights of Man; stating, “The aim of societyis the common welfare.” That led to a constitutional as-sertion (Article Twenty-one) of the welfare state: “EveryFrench citizen has a right to existence. . . . Public assis-tance is a sacred debt . . . Society owes subsistence toits unfortunate citizens, either in providing work forthem, or in assuring the means of existence for thosewho are unable to work.”

!Civil War and the Reign of TerrorWhatever the intentions and accomplishments of theConvention, it is chiefly remembered for one of themost horrifying periods of modern history, the Reign ofTerror (1793–94), when thousands of people were pub-licly executed. At the same time, a bloody civil wartook tens of thousands of lives. The central issue inboth tragedies was whether the revolution or the coun-terrevolution would prevail.

The crisis began with the war against the Europeancoalition. In early 1793 the Austrians defeated thearmies of General Dumouriez in the Austrian Nether-lands and moved toward the French frontier. While theFrench braced themselves for an invasion, Dumouriezstunned them by defecting to the allies, making mili-tary catastrophe seem imminent. In addition to theAustrians on the northern frontier, Prussians were be-sieging French forts in the east, Italian troops were in-vading from the southeast, the Spanish army hadcrossed the southern border, and the English navy wasthreatening several ports. In Paris, many people agreedthat the war effort required desperate measures.

The Convention’s efforts to defend France, how-ever, enlarged the problem. Plans to draft 300,000 menproduced antidraft riots across France, chiefly in thewest. This, plus continuing food shortages, the execu-tion of the king, and the dechristianization of France,created opposition to the republic. By March 1793peasant rebels in the Atlantic region of the Vendée hadwon several battles against the government. The Con-vention soon had to take units of the regular army fromthe frontier to combat the Vendéens, who now calledthemselves the Royal Catholic Army. Resistance to theConvention spread quickly, particularly to cities thatresented the centralized control of Paris. In May 1793moderates in Lyons overthrew the Jacobin municipalgovernment. Their federalist revolt soon reached Mar-seilles and Toulon, and by the summer of 1793 the fed-

eralists were as great a problem as the Royal CatholicArmy. When the new government of Lyons executedthe deposed Jacobin mayor, the Convention sent anarmy to besiege the city.

Ironically, the republic also faced an uprising frompeople who felt that the revolution had not yet gonefar enough. The French colony of Saint Domingue (to-day Haiti) faced a slave rebellion supported by the En-glish and the Spanish. This uprising produced one ofthe greatest black heroes of the resistance to slavery,François Toussaint, known as Pierre Toussaint Louver-ture (see illustration 21.4). Toussaint was an educated

Illustration 21.4

" Toussaint Louverture. Pierre Toussaint Louverture (c. 1743–1803), the son of African slaves, led the greatest slaverebellion in modern history. His insurrection (1791–93) wonfreedom for Haitian slaves and led to the creation of the firstblack republic. Although Toussaint joined with French revolu-tionary forces in fighting the British, Napoleon sought to restoreslavery in Haiti. A French army captured Toussaint and broughthim to France, where he died in prison.

404 Chapter 21

ex-slave who had risen to the powerful position ofsteward on a large plantation before joining the rebel-lion. His abilities were so highly regarded that whenthe Convention abolished slavery (February 1794), thedeputies offered Toussaint the rank of general to jointhem; he accepted because the British and the Spanishkept slavery.

The context of the Reign of Terror, therefore, was adesperate fight to save the republic and the revolution.The men of the Convention, who had executed LouisXVI, were also fighting for their lives, and they choseharsh measures. The revolution had already turned to-ward authoritarianism under the Legislative Assembly.The Convention went much further, reducing newlywon liberties to a Jacobin dictatorship. Enactment ofthe constitution was postponed and severe lawsadopted. Advocacy of a monarchical restoration andeconomic crimes such as hoarding were made capitalcrimes, to be tried before a special Revolutionary Tri-bunal. The freedom of the press to criticize the revolu-tion was curtailed. A Law of Suspects expanded policepowers, allowing the arrest of anyone “who by theirconduct, their connections, their remarks, or their writ-ings show themselves the partisans of tyranny or . . .the enemies of liberty.” And a twelve- person executivecommittee with ill-defined powers, called the Commit-tee of Public Safety, was created.

The Committee of Public Safety defended the rev-olution ferociously. In June 1793 the Convention waspurged of moderate deputies, chiefly Girondins. AReign of Terror, directed against spies, traitors, counter-revolutionaries, profiteers, hoarders, and corrupt officials had begun. Leaders of the Convention spokewith extraordinary candor. Danton called for them to“drink the blood of the enemies of humanity.” LouisSaint-Just, an uncompromising twenty-six-year-old ter-rorist, was even more chilling: “Punish not only traitors,but even the indifferent.” Maximilien Robespierre soondominated the Committee of Public Safety (see docu-ment 21.3). The puritanical provincial lawyer who hadbuilt his career as an opponent of capital punishmentand a defender of human rights led a terror that he de-fined as “nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice.”The instrument of this severe justice was the guillotine,a machine for human decapitation. The guillotine be-came a gruesome symbol of the terror, crudely called“the republican razor” or “the widow” (because it madeso many). It had been introduced, however, by a physi-cian, Dr. Joseph Guillotin, as a humanitarian form ofswift execution, in contrast to the horrible tortures em-ployed by the Old Regime such as being broken on thewheel or drawn and quartered.

The Reign of Terror lasted for thirteen months,from June 1793 until July 1794. During those months,

# DOCUMENT 21.3 #

Robespierre: The Revolution and Its Ideals, 1794

It is time to define clearly the goal of the Revolution andthe end which we wish to reach. . . . What is the goal to-ward which we strive? The peaceful enjoyment of libertyand equality . . .

We wish an order of things where all the base andcruel passions are chained, all generous and beneficientpassions aroused by the laws . . . where distinctions areborn only of equality itself; where the citizen is obedientto the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and thepeople to justice; where the country assures the well-being of each individual . . .

What kind of government can realize these wonders?Only a democratic or republican government: these twowords are synonymous, in spite of the abuses of popularusage. . . .

[W]hat is the fundamental principle of democratic orpopular government. . . ? It is virtue; I speak of the publicvirtue which produced so many marvels in Greece andRome, and which ought to produce even more astonish-ing ones in republican France; of that virtue which isnothing else but love of the country and its laws. . . .

If the force of popular government in peace is virtue,that of popular government in revolution is both virtue andterror; virtue, without which terror is deadly; terror, with-out which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing butprompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is then an emanationof virtue.

Robespierre, Maximilien. “Discours et rapports a la convention” (Paris:1965). In Wallace Adams, ed., The Western World, vol. 2. New York:Dodd, Mead, 1970.

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 405

tribunals around France ordered an estimated fourteenthousand to seventeen thousand executions; the mostfamous, the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, accountedfor more than twenty-seven hundred (see table 21.2).The overwhelming majority of the executions (71 per-cent) were in regions of civil war, especially theVendée; of those, 75 percent were rebels caught withweapons in their hands. Despite stereotypes in popularliterature, most of the people executed were workers(31 percent) and peasants (28 percent), not aristocrats(8 percent) or priests (7 percent). The revolutionary tri-bunals acquitted many people. The tribunal at Mar-seilles, for example, acquitted more than 50 percent ofthe accused and sentenced 31 percent to death. TheParisian tribunal sent many famous figures to the guillo-tine: Members of the royal family (such as the duke ofOrléans), leaders of the Old Regime (Malesherbes),noted scholars (the distinguished chemist AntoineLavoisier), leading Girondins (Brissot), and feminists(Olympe de Gouges) all died there.

The civil war was especially bloody. Lyons wasconquered, with ruthless reprisals, in October 1793;more than sixteen hundred people were executed. TheVendéen counterrevolution dragged on for years withenormous casualties and mass executions of rebels. One ferocious representative of the revolution in theVendée—Jean-Baptiste Carrier—drowned prisoners in

the Loire River by the hundreds, proclaiming, “We shallturn France into a cemetery rather than fail in her re-generation.” A minimum of eighty thousand Vendéensdied; some estimates for the civil war put the dead atmore than 200,000. (By contrast, total war-relateddeaths during the American Revolution were fewerthan ten thousand; in the American Civil War, morethan 600,000.)

!The Thermidorean Reaction and the Directory, 1794–99The Reign of Terror reached its peak in December1793–January 1794, when 49 percent of the executions(mostly in the west) occurred. In Paris, however, the Ja-cobin dictatorship accelerated the terror in June andJuly 1794, accounting for 57 percent of the executionsthere. Like the god Saturn in classical mythology, therevolution consumed its own children; even Dantonwas executed. Revulsion and fear then produced a con-spiracy against Robespierre. The Convention ended theterror by arresting him in what is called the Thermi-dorean reaction (named for the date in the republicancalendar). Robespierre attempted suicide, but he, Saint-Just, and other leading Jacobins went to the guillotine.

Executions by the ParisRevolutionary Tribunal Total executions in France

Class category Number Percentage Class category Number Percentage

Nobles 533 19.4 Nobles 1,156 8.2

Clergy 240 8.7 (Old 878 6.2)

Middle class 1,443 52.6 (Robe 278 2.0)

(Upper 903 32.9) Clergy 920 6.5

(Lower 540 19.7) Middle class 3,452 24.6

Workers 478 17.4 (Upper 1,964 14.0)

Unknown 53 1.9 (Lower 1,488 10.6)

Total 2,747 Workers 4,389 31.2

Peasants 3,961 28.1

Unknown 200 1.4

Total 14,078

Source: Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935),p. 164; Colin Jones, ed., The Longman Companion to the French Revolution (London: Longman, 1988), p. 120.

! TABLE 21.2 !

The Reign of Terror, 1793–94

406 Chapter 21

During 1794–95, the Convention labored to re-move the more extreme aspects of the Jacobin dictator-ship, starting with the abolition of the Jacobin clubs.The tribunals were closed and prisoners were released.The Law of Suspects was repealed and new judicialguarantees instituted. The Convention recalleddeputies who had been purged. To placate federalists,the powers of the central government were reduced. Anamnesty was offered to all rebels who laid down theirarms. Freedom of religion was gradually restored, withchurches separated from state control. Following theseefforts to restore order, the Convention wrote a newconstitution to keep it. The Constitution of the Year III(1795) was the third in the short history of the revolu-tion. It, too, began with a declaration of rights, whichwas significantly renamed the Declaration of the Rightsand Duties. Article One stated a right of security along-side liberty and equality.

France remained a republic with a broad suffrageincluding most (male) citizens, but it was constitutedwith safeguards, such as the separation of powers. A bi-cameral legislature, for example, included a lower housethat introduced all legislation and an upper house withthe power to block it. As a further safeguard, the upperhouse was a Council of Ancients, whose 250 membershad to be at least forty years old—a reaction to the factthat in 1793 Robespierre had been thirty-five years old,Danton thirty-four, and Saint-Just twenty-six. The newgovernment was called the Directory because the con-stitution also created an executive branch with thatname. The Directory had five members, chosen by thelegislature from among its own members and prohib-ited from succeeding themselves.

The Convention bequeathed great difficulties tothe Directory. Economic problems were so severe thatgovernment ministers were given salaries measured inwheat because the currency was so unstable. Royalismwas resurgent, and in some regions this had produced a“white (the symbol of royalism) terror” against formerJacobins. Simultaneously, however, new militants de-manded further revolution. Gracchus Babeuf, a radicaljournalist, founded the Conspiracy of Equals in 1795,to restore the Constitution of the Year I and to creategreater egalitarianism. Babeuf’s manifesto bluntly pro-claimed, “In a true society, there should be neither richnor poor.”

The Directory preserved the moderate republic byusing the army against royalists, executing extremistssuch as Babeuf, and repudiating much of the nationaldebt. It won a final victory in the Vendée in 1796 butbecame increasingly conservative when elections in1797 returned only thirteen of the surviving 216 mem-

bers of the Convention. The Directory was soon char-acterized by the return of individuals who had goneinto hiding or fled the country. Talleyrand became for-eign minister in July 1797; Sieyès became a director in1799. The Directory thus attempted to stand in the po-litical center, dreading both Jacobinism and royalism. Itwas a republic that distrusted republicanism, reflectingFrench exhaustion and apathy. This made it vulnerableto conspiracies, as Talleyrand realized when he at-tended a meeting of the directors, and guards confis-cated his cane as a potential weapon. “It appears to me,”he said, “that your government is terribly afraid of be-ing poked with a stick.” He was not surprised when theDirectory fell in a military coup d’état in 1799.

!The Revolutionary Wars and the Rise of NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte was born the second son of a mi-nor Italian noble on the island of Corsica. The familybecame French when Louis XV bought Corsica fromthe republic of Genoa, whose government had becomeexasperated with Corsican rebellion. Napoleon’s fatherhad accepted the French occupation, a French patent ofnobility, and a position in the government of Corsica.This enabled him to send the nine-year-old Napoleonto the Royal Military Academy for sons of the aristoc-racy in 1778. The poor, skinny, provincial Bonapartewas unpopular, but he was a good student. His mathe-matic skills determined his future: The artillery neededofficers who could calculate trajectories. He graduatedtwo years early, in 1785, and became a lieutenant in theroyal artillery.

Napoleon harnessed his high intelligence to hardwork. “Work is my element,” he later wrote in a diary.He proved this as a young officer by working eighteenhours per day, typically eating only one meal and sleep-ing four or five hours. He kept these habits as emperor;on the two nights before his victory at Austerlitz(1805), Bonaparte slept a total of three hours. This traitenabled him to issue more than eighty thousand writtenorders in his fifteen-year reign, an average of fifteendocuments per day. Even “the love of a woman,” henoted at age twenty-two, “is incompatible with one’slife work.”

Lieutenant Bonaparte was a political radical. Hehad read the philosophes and admired Rousseau. Hehad contempt for the church and hatred for kings:“There are few of them who have not merited de-thronement,” he wrote. When the revolution began, he

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 407

joined the Jacobin club. His revolutionary politics andthe emigration of royalist officers led to Napoleon’srapid promotion. Then, in 1793, Napoleon found him-self in the right place at the right time. Returning fromCorsica to the south of France shortly after the peopleof Toulon had turned their port over to the British,Napoleon was placed in command of the artillery. Inthree months, Napoleon had forced the British to with-draw. Toulon capitulated to the army of the republic,and Napoleon became a general at age twenty-five.The fall of Robespierre resulted in Napoleon’s impris-onment for Jacobinism, but the republic needed suc-cessful generals and soon restored his rank. Whenroyalist demonstrations in Paris threatened the Direc-

tory, General Bonaparte used his artillery, loaded withsmall balls (the size of grapes), on the crowd. By killingdemonstrators with “a whiff of grapeshot,” he preservedthe government, won powerful friends, and received hischoice of commands.

French armies were in a strong position in 1795.The lowland provinces of modern Belgium had beentaken from the Austrians and annexed to France. Thecoalition had collapsed over the division of Poland. Apeace treaty with Prussia had given France the left bankof the Rhine River and recognized a French claim toHolland. The Dutch had been given their own repub-lic, the first of several “sister republics” in western Eu-rope created by French armies (see map 21.1). Spain

ROMANREPUBLIC(1798)SPAIN

FRANCE

BELGIUM

GERMANSTATES

GREATBRITAIN

AUSTRIA

PRUSSIA

RUSSIAHESSE

BADEN

SARDINIA

OTTOMANEMPIRE

BATAVIANREPUBLIC

(1795)HOLLAND

PARTHENOPEANREPUBLIC

(KINGDOM OF THETWO SICILIES)

(1799)

TUSCANY

HELVETICREPUBLIC

(1798)

CISALPINE REPUBLIC

(1797)LIGURIANREPUBLIC

(1797)

DENMARK

Corsica

Marseilles

Naples

Rome

Genoa

Milan VeniceCampo Formio

Vienna

Buda

Berlin

Paris

ValmyVarennes

London

LyonsBordeaux

Koblenz

Avignon

Mediterranean Sea

AtlanticOcean

North Sea

RhineR.

Danube R .

Po R.

EbroR.

SWEDEN

BalticSea

Pyrenees Mts.

A l p s M t s .

0 125 250 Miles

0 125 250 375 Kilometers

French Republic

Members of FirstCoalition againstFrance (1792-1797)

Sister Republics

SPAIN

MAP 21.1" The Spread of the French Revolution: The Sister Republics "

408 Chapter 21

had left the war against France and Britain had notroops on the continent. Victory in the Vendée freedFrench armies.

Napoleon decided to force the Austrians to acceptpeace by driving them from northern Italy. His victoryat the battle of Arcola (November 1796), where theAustrians lost more than 40 percent of their army, didjust that (see table 21.3). Within a few months,Napoleon had created two sister republics in Italy—theLigurian republic (formerly Genoa) and the Cisalpinerepublic (Lombardy, Modena, and part of Venetia). Ital-ian nationalists began to dream that Bonaparte was the

hero who would liberate Italy and unify the small Italianstates into a strong modern state. In October 1797 Fran-cis I signed the Treaty of Campo-Formio, acceptingFrench expansion and the sister republics. Other sisterrepublics soon followed, in Switzerland (the Helvetianrepublic), central Italy (the Roman republic), and south-ern Italy (the Neapolitan, or Parthenopean republic).

Napoleon next sought a strategy to use against theBritish. He chose to challenge their global position byinvading Egypt—a threat to British control of theMediterranean and to British India. He arrived there in1798 with an army of thirty-eight thousand and a corpsof archeologists who helped found the study of Egyp-tology. A sweeping victory in the battle of the Pyra-mids gave him Cairo, but a British fleet commanded byHoratio Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the battleof Aboukir Bay.

When Napoleon Bonaparte returned to France in1799, he was a national hero and he was dangerous. Hecombined aristocratic birth with a Jacobin youth. Hehad won great battles against foreign enemies and hadsaved the Directory from its royalist enemies. Now hedelivered learned lectures on ancient Egypt and metwith prominent scholars. Politicians soon had visions ofthe “man on horseback” saving France from the Direc-tory, and Napoleon seized that opportunity. He over-threw the Directory in a military coup d’état inBrumaire (November) 1799. The coup had the supportof several leaders of the Directory, notably Sieyès (thedominant director), Napoleon’s brother Lucien (presi-dent of the legislature), and the unscrupulous ministerof police, Joseph Fouché (a mathematics teacher whohad been a Jacobin during the Reign of Terror and aleader of the Thermidorean reaction). Napoleonblithely announced that “the Revolution is at an end,”and within one month he had produced the Constitu-tion of the Year VIII (1799), dissolving the republic.

!France under NapoleonThe Constitution of 1799 created the Consulate, an au-thoritarian regime with some democratic elements. Itput executive power in the hands of three consuls butadded that “the decision of the First Consul (Napoleon)shall suffice.” Legislative power was fragmented amongmany bodies: one to draft bills, a separate body to de-bate them, another to vote on them, and a fourth torule on the constitutionality of these acts. All wereelected by universal manhood suffrage, but it was di-luted by three stages of indirect voting: voters chose

Decisive States Armybattle at war size Losses

Italian campaign

Arcola France 20,000 4,500

(1796) Austria 17,000 7,000

Egyptian campaign

Pyramids France 25,000 300

(1798) Turks 21,000 5,000

Italian campaign

Marengo France 28,000 7,000

(1800) Austria 31,000 14,000

War of Third Coalition

Austerlitz France 73,200 9,000

(1805) Austria 85,400 27,000

Jena France 96,000 5,000

(1806) Prussia 53,000 25,000

Friedland France 80,000 8,000

(1807) Russia 60,000 20,000

Austrian campaign

Wagram France 170,000 32,000

(1809) Austria 146,000 40,000

Russian campaign

Borodino France 133,000 30,000

(1812) Russia 120,000 44,000

Battle of the Nations

Leipzig France 195,000 73,000

(1813) Allies 365,000 54,000

The 100 days

Waterloo France 72,000 32,000

(1815) Allies 120,000 22,000

! TABLE 21.3 !

The Military Campaigns of Napoleon,1796–1815

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 409

representatives, who chose representatives, who chosea list of representatives from which the first consulnamed the legislators. Even with such restrictions,Napoleon permitted only “a single party and a singlewill.”

The nearest approach to popular sovereignty inNapoleonic government was the plebiscite. Some legis-lation, such as the constitution itself, was submitted to adirect vote of adult men. A plebiscite of February 1800ratified the Constitution of 1799 by a reported vote ofthree million to fifteen hundred. Electoral fraud, di-rected by Lucien Bonaparte as minister of the interior,doubled the favorable vote. The actual vote fell far be-low the turnout in 1793; in Paris only 23 percent voted.It is also noteworthy that Napoleon enforced the con-stitution before holding the plebiscite.

Napoleon’s reign, from 1799 to 1814, mixed suchtechniques with a refined Old Regime despotism andrevolutionary reformism. The trend of his regime, how-ever, was unmistakably toward dictatorship. “Liberty,”he said, “is a need felt by a small class of people. . . .[T]herefore, it may be repressed with impunity.” Heproduced his second constitution in 1802, awardinghimself the consulate for life. Two years later, his thirdconstitution (France’s sixth of the revolutionary era)created an hereditary empire and reduced the legisla-tive bodies to mere ornaments. He celebrated with anelaborate coronation, crowning himself at Notre DameCathedral in December 1804.

Napoleon was not a simple counterrevolutionary,but he used his autocratic powers to undo some of theworks of the French Revolution. He restricted divorceto preserve the traditional family. He legalized slaveryagain, hoping to boost the economy of Caribbeancolonies. Denouncing the “pretensions of gildedAfricans,” he imprisoned Toussaint Louverture, whodied in a French jail in 1803. And Bonaparte reestab-lished nobility as an honor for his generals and civil ser-vants. Whereas Louis XVI had named approximatelyten nobles per year, Napoleon averaged one a day.

Despotism was evident from the beginning ofNapoleon’s rule. In January 1800 he closed sixty of theseventy-three newspapers in France, and he soon shutothers. “Three hostile newspapers,” Napoleon told hisstaff, “are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”Next he added censorship of the theatres. Then hetook control of all printing, requiring the submission ofall manuscripts to the government for prior censorship.Bonapartist thought control even reached into themails. He instructed postmasters to open letters andtake notes for him. Fouché’s police enforced such regu-lations. Although he could sometimes be lenient,

Napoleon usually dealt harshly with his opponents. Heended Vendéen resistance by ordering an army “to burndown two or three large villages as a salutary example.”He jailed political prisoners, including many former Jacobin colleagues, without a trial. A plot against himin 1804 led him to execute a dozen people, including amember of the royal family, the duke d’Enghien, whomNapoleon seized by invading a neutral country.

Napoleon never silenced all of his critics. A re-markable example of defiance was given by Germainede Staël, Necker’s brilliant daughter, who calledNapoleon “Robespierre on horseback.” She organized aParisian salon, with participants ranging from royaliststo Jacobins, as a center of criticism. Napoleon was amisogynist who referred to women as “machines formaking babies,” but Madame de Staël fascinated him,and he merely banished her from Paris. She continuedto insist that defending freedom in France was more im-portant than winning foreign wars.

A balanced portrait of Napoleon must also see anenlightened side to his despotism. He tried to reuniteFrance by welcoming home émigrés willing to accepthis regime, and many aristocrats accepted the amnestyof 1802 to serve Napoleon. A similar compromisereestablished the Catholic Church. Napoleon had noreligious faith himself, and his motive was purely prag-matic. He deposed one pope in 1798 and imprisonedanother in 1809. He felt, however, that “[r]eligion is ex-cellent stuff for keeping the common people quiet.”This led him to negotiate the Concordat of 1801 withPope Pius VII, recognizing Catholicism as “the religionof the vast majority of French citizens” and permittingit to be “freely practised.” This treaty cost the Vaticanmany concessions. Pius VII accepted the confiscationof church lands, agreed that priests would be salariedemployees of the state, permitted Napoleon to nameFrench bishops, and even allowed a clerical “oath of fi-delity” to the government.

In reestablishing Catholicism, Napoleon preservedthe revolutionary protection of religious minorities.Protestants received their own state charter in 1802.Jews obtained new guarantees of their emancipation, al-though this did not prevent outbreaks of anti-Semitismin eastern France. Napoleon’s attitudes toward Jewswere sometimes suspect, but his defense of Jewishemancipation made France a center of nineteenth-century toleration. The Jewish population of Paris,which had been fewer than five hundred in 1789,reached three thousand in 1806, a tribute to his com-parative toleration. And Napoleon carried Jewish eman-cipation into regions that his armies conquered,especially in western Germany.

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Napoleon even enhanced some ideas of the revolu-tionary era. He completed a Jacobin project for thecodification of French laws, producing the Civil Code(known as the Napoleonic Code) of 1804, then codesof commercial law (1807) and penal law (1810). Thecodes eliminated scores of antiquated laws, perpetuatedmuch revolutionary legislation, and standardized thelaws. Among the most far-reaching elements of thecodes were detailed laws of private property, whichprotected people who had acquired property during therevolution. The Napoleonic Code was also bluntly pa-ternalistic, explicitly treating women as subordinates ofmen and blocking their emancipation throughout thenineteenth century.

Napoleon also revived the revolutionary effort toexpand education. A national school system existed,but only on paper. Napoleon considered the schools,like the churches and the law, to be instruments of so-cial stability. “My principle aim,” he said, “is to securethe means for directing political and moral opinion.”Thus he provided the widest educational opportunityin the world, but his schools operated with “militarydiscipline.”

Napoleon’s greatest accomplishment as the heir ofthe French Revolution was to sustain and expand a democratic meritocracy, often called “the career opento talent.” In a world still characterized by corporate so-ciety, the Napoleonic Empire offered great opportuni-ties for the able, whatever their social origin or religion.Bright students from poor backgrounds could rise tothe top. No institution provided greater opportunitiesthan his army, where soldiers could rise rapidly throughthe ranks despite humble origins. In one of Napoleon’sfavorite clichés, every soldier had a field marshal’s ba-ton in his napsack. His closest marshal, Joachim Murat,was the son of an innkeeper. In an act that would havebeen unthinkable under the monarchy, Murat marriedNapoleon’s sister Caroline and became king of Naples.Other marshals were born the sons of a cooper, amiller, a mason, and a stableboy.

!The Napoleonic WarsNapoleon devoted most of his time to war; he stayed inFrance for only one-third of the days in his reign.When he became First Consul in 1799, France was atwar with the remnants of the Second Coalition. Francestill relied on the numerical strength provided by thelevée en masse, but battles were comparatively small.Napoleon’s victory at Arcola, for example, had matched

twenty thousand French soldiers against seventeenthousand Austrians. During the next fifteen years,Napoleon fought nearly permanent war against Europe.His armies occupied Madrid, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, andMoscow. This required the standing conscription ofyoung Frenchmen, usually for five years. By 1814 hehad drafted 2.6 million men and led more than one mil-lion of them to their death.

These huge numbers help to explain Napoleon’svictories. The revolutionary army at Valmy had num-bered only fifty-nine thousand. By the time of theThird Coalition (1805–07), Napoleon often sent100,000 men into a battle, and that number soonseemed small. Much of his success came from havingthe largest army, or from maneuvering until he obtainednumerical superiority. When he had the advantage,Napoleon was ruthless. The Prussians learned this atthe battle of Jena (1806): A French army of ninety-sixthousand crushed a Prussian force of fifty-three thou-sand, then pursued them relentlessly. Napoleon lost 5.2percent of his army while the Prussians lost 47.2 per-cent. When Napoleon lost such advantages, he beganto lose battles. Numbers alone do not account forNapoleon’s military reputation, however. His skillfuluse of artillery, especially concentrated artillery firingrapidly (versus the accepted wisdom of conserving am-munition), won some battles. His use of elite cavalryunits as shock troops to attack infantry won others. Buthis military greatness was less a matter of brilliantstrategies than inspired opportunism.

As warfare changed from formal engagements ofsmall professional armies to the ruthlessness of massarmies, other changes followed. In 1793 the Austrianarmy in the Netherlands had paid rent to Dutch farm-ers for permission to camp in their fields. Later, the re-treating Austrians found themselves pushed against theRhine River without sufficient money to pay for ferryservice across the river; instead of seizing the ferries,the Austrians awaited the French and surrendered. Incontrast, Napoleon encountered a different psychologyof war when he invaded Russia in 1812. The Russiansused a “scorched earth” strategy: They burnt the farmsand fields of the Russian peasantry instead of leavingfood supplies for the French.

By 1805 Napoleon faced a Third Coalition ofBritain, Austria, and Russia. He prepared for an invasionof England until October 1805, when Admiral HoratioNelson’s fleet destroyed the French fleet near the Span-ish coast off Cape Trafalgar, depriving Napoleon of thenaval power needed for an invasion. Napoleon there-upon marched his army into central Europe and won

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 411

major victories over the Austrians at Ulm (October1805) and combined Austro-Russian forces at Austerlitz(December 1805). Napoleon was so proud of his greatvictory at Austerlitz that he adopted all children of theFrench soldiers killed in that battle, promising that thegovernment would support them, educate them, andfind husbands for the daughters and jobs for the sons.He then pressed his troops on, and they defeated thePrussians, who had belatedly joined the coalition, atJena (October 1806) and the retreating Russians atFriedland (June 1807). In less than two years of fight-ing, Napoleon had gained control of central Europe.

Napoleon exploited his victories to redraw the mapof Europe (see map 21.2). He abolished the Holy Ro-

man Empire, reducing Francis I to emperor of Austria.In 1806 he amalgamated western Germany into a pup-pet state called the Confederation of the Rhine. Hol-land was made a kingdom and given to his brother,Louis Bonaparte. The territory that Prussia had seizedin the second and third partitions of Poland was takenfrom her to form another client state, the grand duchyof Warsaw. Italy was divided into three regions: North-ern Italy became the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleonas the nominal king; central Italy was directly annexedto France; and southern Italy became the Kingdom ofNaples, with Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Murat, namedking. Territory along the Adriatic Coast (previouslygoverned by Venice) and the northern coast of

Leipzig 1813

Borodino 1812

Friedland 1807Eylau 1807

Austerlitz 1805

Pyramids 1798

Aboukir Bay 1798

Marengo 1800

Auerstädt 1806Jena 1806

Waterloo 1815

Ulm 1805

Trafalgar 1805

Corsica

Sardinia

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Lisbon

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Cairo

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Napoleon's route, 1812

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Members of the Grand Coalitionagainst Napoleon (1809-1814)

SPAIN

MAP 21.2" The Napoleonic Empire "

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Germany were also directly annexed to France. Spainwas given to another brother, Joseph Bonaparte.

By 1810 most of Europe was under Napoleon’s con-trol, with Portugal, Britain, Scandinavia, Russia, andmost of the Balkans remaining free. Prussia and Austriaretained their independence, but they faced numerouscontrols. Prussia, for example, was limited to an army offorty-two thousand men and was made to host a Frenchgarrison. Austria, after attempting a Fourth Coalitionand suffering another defeat at Wagram in 1809, wasbound to France by a marriage in 1810 betweenNapoleon and Francis’s teenaged daughter, MariaLouisa. As an angry Russian aristocrat said in the open-ing sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the greatcities of Europe “are now just family estates of theBuonapartes.”

Napoleon tried to fight Britain with economic war-fare. His Berlin Decree of 1806 ordered the cessation ofall commerce and communication with Britain. Thisplan, known as the Continental System, failed becauseit required more cooperation than Napoleon couldcompel. The loss of easy access to inexpensive Englishmanufactures caused some Europeans to defy the Con-tinental System. When Czar Alexander I of Russia re-fused to cooperate, Napoleon decided to invade Russia.He did so despite unresolved difficulties in western Eu-rope, where the Spanish resistance to Joseph Bonapartehad already created an independent Cortes (1810) andproduced a liberal constitution (1812). The Spanishhad received the support of a British army commandedby Sir Arthur Wellesley. Spanish and British armieswere already pushing back the French in Wellesley’sbrilliant Peninsular Campaign, which would earn himthe title of the duke of Wellington.

Napoleon’s Grande Armée of 600,000 mennonetheless invaded Russia in June 1812 and won sev-eral initial battles. This included the bloodiest battle ofthe nineteenth century, at Borodino where forty-fourthousand Russians were killed in a single day. (In con-trast, fifty-five thousand Americans were killed in thedecade of the Vietnam War.) Russian armies, however,typically retreated without permitting decisive engage-ments, following the scorched earth strategy of Mar-shal Mikhail Kutuzov. Even when Moscow fell toNapoleon, the Russians refused peace negotiations andset fire to their own city. Napoleon, the author of themaxim that “an army marches on its stomach,” foundhimself with an impossibly long supply line and fewprospects for survival by plunder, as the winter neared.

His only choice was to retreat, which exposed his armyto attacks from the rear, the tactic with which he haddevastated opponents. He retreated, leaving nearly300,000 French soldiers dead in Russia, with another200,000 taken prisoner. Viewed from the other side ofthe field, this was an epic triumph, celebrated by Tol-stoy in War and Peace (1866) and by Peter Tchaikovskyin The 1812 Overture.

Napoleon’s defeat in Russia led directly to the col-lapse of his empire. Just as 1812 became a year cele-brated in Russian patriotism, 1813 became a triumphalyear of German nationalism. Frederick William III ofPrussia immediately joined the Russians and urged Ger-mans to unite against Napoleon. The leading statesmanof the new allied coalition was the Austrian foreignminister, Prince Klemens von Metternich, who broughtAustria into the war against France after Napoleon hadrejected the generous offer of peace based upon the“natural frontiers” of France (shrinking the country backto the Rhine River).

The war in central Europe involved immensearmies, especially in a decisive battle near the city ofLeipzig (Saxony) in October 1813. This engagement,known as the Völkerschlact (the Battle of the Nations) toGerman patriots, saw the allies produce combinedforces of 365,000 men, nearly double Napoleon’s armyand ten times the size of typical armies in the 1790s.Napoleon was thoroughly beaten (see illustration 21.5).Shortly thereafter, allied armies poured into Francefrom several directions. They occupied Paris in March1814, and Napoleon abdicated a few days later. Thevictorious allies granted France a lenient peace treaty,the Peace of Paris (1814), restoring the frontiers of1792. Napoleon was exiled to the Italian island of Elbain comfortable conditions, and the Bourbon family wasrestored to the throne of France. The new king, LouisXVIII, was the brother of Louis XVI; he had survivedthe revolution by joining the émigrés in 1791. (Heskipped the title of Louis XVII in deference to the sonof Louis XVI, who had died in prison.)

In the following year, Napoleon escaped from Elbaand with the support of his veterans seized control ofFrance for a brief reign known as “the 100 days.”Alarmed, the British and the Prussians joined forces un-der the duke of Wellington and defeated him at Water-loo, just south of Brussels, Belgium, on June 18, 1815.The Napoleonic era was over, but the emperor lived onuntil 1821, exiled to house arrest on the remote Britishisland of St. Helena in the south Atlantic.

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 413

Illustration 21.5

" Two Views of the NapoleonicWars. The great neoclassical painterJacques-Louis David became courtpainter to Napoleon and created severalimmense canvases glorifying his regime.None was greater propaganda than his“Napoleon Crossing the Alps” en routeto his victory in Italy, following the pathof earlier conquerers whose names areimmortalized in Alpine stone. Theheroic rider astride a fiery charger is farfrom the truth, however. Napoleonchose a cautious crossing of the Alps onthe back of a sure-footed burro.

The white stallion remains, but littleof the romantic heroism seen in David’spainting survives in Ernest Meissonier’s“The French Campaign, 1814.” Here, asomber emperor leads an exhaustedarmy that had been beaten repeatedlyfor two years.