The French Revolution
Abstract
Traditional Europe developed from a largely fragmented society where individuals of different classes in society hardly interacted. In France, the divide between the bourgeoisie and noble classes of the community was so vast, with a monarchy being the sole custodian of divine power and authority. Institutions were developed around this monarch and were established to protect the interests of the nobility. The result of this was a monarchy that was removed from the needs of the people, leading to the French revolution, where the French people demanded better from their monarch and executed King Louis XVI. The resulting reforms enhanced the development of a society based on equality with a monarchy that owed its power to the people. Beyond this, the revolution precipitated the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte, a leader credited with bringing the reforms of the revolution to the rest of Europe. This paper reviews the revolution to test the hypothesis that the revolution was the beginning of the modern world.
Keywords: French Revolution, monarchy, nobility
Introduction
The French Revolution is arguably one of the single most impactful revolutions that changed the political and social structures throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Around Europe and in France at the time, a great disconnect existed between the majority population and the aristocrats. Public participation at the time was not allowed with a rule of absolutism that enhanced the power of the monarchy to control the lives of the common man. Enlightenment in the 18th century resulted in new ways of thinking that changed what people thought about the role of the monarchy and political structures in their lives. From a system where France as a nation existed due to the monarchy, the revolution changed affairs to a monarchy that existed to serve the country. In accordance with Francois Furet’s statement, this paper points to the French revolution as a turning point for political institutions in France. The work hypothesizes that the beginning and spread of the French revolution to neighboring countries by the revolutionary army and the work of Napoleon signified a new era in the political institutions of Europe and the rest of the world, which was the onset of the modern world.
Beginning of the revolution
Acemoglu and colleagues (7) point to the extensive financial crisis in France as the factor that exposed the need for the revolution. In 1789, the Estate-General was convened on 5th May in Versailles with a decision reached to call together the more powerful national assembly. The meetings started the radicalization process that led to the incursion into the Bastille prison on 14th July of the same year. A national constituent assembly was formed that led to the abolishment of feudalism as well as the privileges of the First and Second Estates in August. After this, the church’s authority that previously allowed it to employ clergy as state workers and levy taxes on the masses was stripped and from then on, separation of the church and state started. A constitution was then passed on 29th September 1791 that established France as a Constitutional monarchy. Power was then passed to a collective government, then a consulate consisting of three persons, including the young general Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1799, a coup took place that led to the election of Bonaparte as First Consul and his self-declaration as emperor in 1804. Napoleon’s contests in continental Europe allowed him to impose the new legal changes in the conquered nations that enhanced the impacts of the revolution.
A republic under the name of monarchy
Prior to the revolution, France and most of Europe were led by two forms of oligarchy, nobles who had land and led in agriculture and oligarchies controlling occupation and commerce within urban areas. Entry barriers existed between the two oligarchies either established explicitly or implicitly enabled. Landowners maintained serfdom, a system through which workers were tied to a particular landowner and could not sell their labor to other nobles or participate in other economic activities. This serfdom existed in Germany (Grab 86). Beyond this obligation to provide cheap agricultural labor, the lower classes of society were also under personal servitude
Dues included . . . the ‘blood tithe’ to be paid after an animal was slaughtered, a ‘bee tithe,’ a ‘wax tithe’ . . . as well as large fees owed to the lord whenever a piece of property changed hands.” (Lenger 96).
Where serfdom did not exist, nobility and the clergy enjoyed excessive privileges that resulted in very unequal economic and political situations in rural regions. In an anonymous submission, Turgot criticized nobles who were useless and did not contribute a thing to the development of France saying that
“foundations have sometimes become positively harmful before they have even been suspected of being useless” (Turgot 94).
The criticism of the existing social order is also shown in Maza (704), who indicates that although the revolution was political, it is the social issues, especially favoritism of the nobility and clergy that precipitated the revolution.
The existence of France at this time was limited to the actions and deeds of the nobility. Nobility was isolated from the rest of the society with prohibitions that existed to prevent intermarriage between the classes; keeping nobles diverged from the rest of the society. Being the largest landowner in the society (Foster 71), the nobility maintained their influence in the society for a while, representing their interests in the political affairs of the nation. However, with time, French aristocracy became excessively marginalized and cheapened by the generous donations they received from the royal coffers. The marginalization was self-perpetuating where nobles were deprived of duties but kept their privileges. In effect, they tried to hold on to power the more they lost it, using their distinction to gain funds. This created an even wider margin, and by the time of the revolution, they became more aloof from the society (De Tocqueville 3). Nobility and clergy were also exempted from the constant taxation and were largely responsible for taxing those under their rule (Lenger 94).
While all these elements existed prior to the revolution, this section seeks to illustrate how France as a nation was under the monarchy. While the nobles and clergy were part of the social order that existed in France, it is the monarchy that stood apart from this social order and created the greatest crisis. In Vovelle (25), King Louis XV addresses the Paris Parlement declaring that sovereign power resides in his “person alone.” The king said that he would not tolerate the formation of a magistrate’s body or a legislative organization in his kingdom and that his power was not to be shared or dependent on anyone else. The king was considered the father of his subjects, and Louis XVI refused to abandon what he indicated as his nobility even during the revolution leading to his execution and end of the monarchy. Institutions existing for taxation, justice, and policing were all meant to enhance and establish the rule of the monarchy over its subjects.
A monarchy under the name of a republic
The execution of Louis XVI on 21st January 1793 had been met with indecision at the Convention, which had been ruling France since September of the previous year. The monarch had been tried for crimes against the nation, but the decision to kill him was an issue of authority as well as religion. As indicated above, the monarch was considered the lord’s anointed, and it was important to determine what execution of a monarch would mean to the nation.
French monarchs in the 19th century ruled their people based on sufferance. Eleven years after the execution of Louis XVI, Napoleon crowned himself, then the two brothers to Louis XVI and his cousin to the monarchy. However, none of these would sit on the same throne, where monarchs would think of themselves as the divine leaders of the people. In this respect, the actions of the revolution that led to Louis XVI’s execution had changed monarchy forever in France, desecrating and de-sacralizing the throne.
Monarchs who tried to get back to the old throne were never successful. As an example, Charles X declared his authority divine, indicating that his power and authority were unquestionable. Similar to the crisis facing France before the dethroning of Louis XVI, there was a great economic depression in the nation, and the large masses in Paris were hungry. When the monarch was questioned by the legislature, King Charles X tried to dismiss the questioning, claiming that he was not answerable to anybody in France (Pinkney 490). In a few days, the monarch was also dethroned, a clear indication of power with the people, where the monarch was under the republic.
Enlightenment was a crucial movement that precipitated the revolution (Doyle 22). Revolutionaries openly indicated that in respecting the values of the ideological movement of the 18th century, they would not fail to criticize anything that needed rational criticism. Although the writers of this revolutionary movement did not openly criticize or offer any hostility to the monarchs, Doyle (22) indicates that they undermined monarchy in some way. The writers provided a distinction between monarchy and despotism (one ruler with no law), slowly discrediting the absolute monarchy that Louis XIV perfected earlier. Further, by continually disturbing the established church and religion, the writers discredited the justification that religion provided to the monarchy. By implication, the enlightenment movement indicated that monarchy could only be accepted if it was useful to the subjects it served. Sovereign power now lay in the nation and not the monarchy, and when such a monarchy was not useful, it was irresponsible to keep the monarchy ruling people.
Institutional Impacts
In France, the new order established gave power to the people, making the monarch an extension of the republic that was answerable to the rest of the nation. This marked the onset of a new order in France. The changes, however, did not affect France alone. After the rise of Bonaparte and conscription of one of the largest armies in Europe, France was unstoppable in its conquest for resources to develop the land. In the course of these conquests, the ideologies that developed from the revolution were passed to neighboring monarchies as well as distant lands where French emigrants settled.
Raids into the German Rhineland, Netherlands, Belgium, and Northern Italy led to the establishment of republics. In these territories, all the existing institutions of serfdom and feudal land ownership were abolished. The domination of the clergy and its involvement in political and economic issues was abolished, and power was divided fairly among the deserving institutions. Equality, according to the law, was established in all these territories, and all people were now considered similar without privilege, according to caste.
In Belgium, where the nobility and clergy enjoyed power before, equality before the law was established following the annexation by France in 1795. In the 20 years when Belgium was ruled by France, legal equality was established, and guilds, clergymen, and nobility privileges were abolished (Grab 78). Similarly, in the Dutch region where urban areas were rife with injustices, French occupation led to the abolishment of oligarchy and the establishment of the Batavian Republic. Similarly, in Switzerland, where individuals lacked the ability to choose the occupation they wanted (Grab 113), occupation by the revolutionary armies led to the cessation of feudal liberties. In the Rhineland, too, the abolishment of guilds was undertaken to lead to massive institutional reforms (Blanning 155; Diefendorf 160). Down south in Italy, new republics were established with better systems of government and equality under the law.
According to Grab (xi), while the revolution began in France and brought the changes, Napoleon’s work exported the changes to the rest of Europe, imposing the civil code in all areas under his control. Although there were instances where Napoleon collaborated with the elites to bring the changes, his imposition of the Code Napoleon (Lyons 94) was one of the most important aspects he can be remembered for. In Germany, the reforms instituted in the Rhineland encouraged the development of a modern society that exemplified free trade, opening up the nation for industrialization and new governance (Kisch 212).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the radical reforms that were instituted in France as a result of the revolution led to lasting consequences that were precursors of modernization. Legally, the abolishment of social classes and nobility privileges established a legal code that is used in most countries in the world, based on equality before the law. The impact of this is that people were able to interact and become productive without bias. The abolishment of guilds led to free trade markets that were precursors of the economic development that was experienced in Europe in the later centuries. Therefore in accordance with the guiding statement of the essay, the French revolution caused the monarchy to become responsible to the nation and led to institutional changes that transformed the whole of Europe. Rightly, the French revolution signified the onset of the modern world as it exists today.
Works Cited
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