Episode 58 – The Revolution and the Rights of Man

Hello, and welcome to Relevant History! I’m Dan Toler. This is the second of a planned six episodes about the French Revolution. If you want to start at the beginning, I recommend starting with Episode 57 – Bastille Day. As a reminder, a Relevant History Patreon membership is now only $1 a month, and gets you access not only to the private Discord server but also to all 24 episodes of my video series, Dan’s War College. This is for a limited time only, so check it out now while the discount is still good. Link in the description. Also, please share this episode if you enjoy it. It’s the best way to help the channel grow. Also, I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Ro Martin of the Stoned Genius podcast. We talked about presentism in popular culture, conspiracy theories, and some random historical themes. It was a great interview, and I hope you check it out. Link in the description. Finally, I’m sorry if the audio sounds a bit off. I’ve just moved, and the new recording space has a hardwood floor and more windows than the old space. I much prefer hardwood and windows to the carpeted dungeon that was my New York apartment, but this might create some echo. We’ll see how well I can clean up the audio, and I’ll adjust the space more in the future if necessary. Now, let’s get started.

Where we left off at the end of the last episode, King Louis XVI had tried to resolve a financial crisis by calling a meeting of France’s old legislative body, the Estates General, in order to approve new taxes. The upper middle-class representatives of the common people had gone rogue and established a new legislative body, the Constituent Assembly, to draft a French constitution. Conservatives in Louis’ government had convinced him to fire the popular finance minister Jacques Necker and call a bunch of foreign troops into the capital, officially to keep order, but most likely to dissolve the Constituent Assembly. In response, Paris had rioted, a mob had seized control of a bunch of weapons, and they famously stormed the Bastille and lynched its commander on July 14th 1789.

        -In the aftermath of the storming of the Bastille, King Louis goes into damage control mode. The next day, July 15th, he goes to the Constituent Assembly in person, joined only by his left- and right-leaning brothers, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois respectively. Received coolly at first, Louis quickly garners cheers when he announces that the foreign troops are being withdrawn from Paris and sent back to the frontier. This goes against the advice of the conservative faction in the royal ministry, which is urging a crackdown. Once again, Louis XVI is vacillating – the guy can’t seem to make up his mind whether he’s a liberal Enlightenment monarch or a more reactionary figure. The only constant is that he seems to genuinely care about public opinion. But by constantly changing his mind, he’ll ultimately end up alienating everybody. If you ask me, this is his downfall, and that’s what I meant last episode when I said that he would have no one to blame but himself for his own demise; not that he’s a bad person, but that he’s a bad king. Louis XVI the reform-minded liberal could have kept his head attached to his shoulders and led France into a new era of enlightened governance. Louis XVI the arch conservative could have decisively cracked down and strangled the Revolution in its cradle. The real Louis XVI does neither, and pays for it with his life.

        -Anyway, the timeline gets a bit muddled here. I messed up last episode and said that the Marquis de Lafayette was made commander of the Paris National Guard on July 14th. That actually happens on the 15th or 16th, depending on which source you use. The other dates I’m about to mention are also different from source to source, so if I say that something happened on the 16th and you’ve read that it happened on the 17th, your other source is just as likely to be right. And I’m not sure what’s going on here. It’s not like Paris doesn’t have newspapers in the late 1700s, so we should have accurate dates for everything, so it’s possible that one of my sources – professional historians – simply made a mistake. Maybe there’s a history professor out there listening who wants to chime in. Really, the exact dates here don’t matter; it’s the sequence of events that’s important.

        -On the 16th of July, Louis makes another decision, and fires his unpopular Chief Minister, the Baron de Breteuil. He also fires Joseph-François Foullon, who is the Finance Minister he’d appointed to replace Jacques Necker. He also writes to Necker asking him to come back and take the job back over, which Necker does. This move is designed to further mollify the Paris mob, but as we’ll see, Necker will find it increasingly difficult to stabilize the nation’s finances in the face of an ever more radical Constituent Assembly.

        -The same day, a delegation of between 50 and 100 members of the Assembly make their way to Paris to officially announce the good news at the Hotel de Ville, which as you’ll recall is the Paris city hall. These Assembly members are led by the Marquis de Lafayette and Jean Sylvain Bailly, two of its most important members. As I mentioned, Lafayette is quickly appointed head of the Paris National Guard, which you may remember is an armed body of upper middle-class citizens that’s supposed to act as a buffer between the royal government and the unruly Paris mob.

        -Jean Sylvain Bailly, on the other hand, is elected mayor, although he will eventually get his head lopped off when he proves to be too moderate for the Parisians’ tastes. Bailly is a figure I haven’t talked about yet, and that’s almost criminal, because he’s been one of the leading figures of the early revolution. He’s the son of a well-known Paris artist, and is one of the handful of members of the Third Estate who’s already famous when the Estates General first meet. But he’s not initially known for politics. In fact, he first becomes famous for writing a treatise on the moons of Jupiter, which he uses to launch a career as a historian of the sciences. Once the Estates General becomes the National Assembly, he’s elected president of that body, and is the first person to take the Tennis Court Oath. Now, he happily accepts his job as Paris Mayor, and is so capable a man that he continues to serve in the Constituent Assembly until he’s forced to step down in late 1791 after the Champ de Mars Massacre. We’ll get to that in the next episode.

        -On July 17th, King Louis himself arrives at the Hotel de Ville to speak with the city council. The crowd outside greets him with quiet coolness, but once he gets inside he basically agrees to go along with everything the council has done. He approves their election, the creation of the National Guard, Lafayette’s appointment as head of the National Guard, and Bailly’s election as mayor. Then he famously allows Bailly to pin the revolutionary red, white, and blue tricolor cockade to his hat, and heads back for Versailles. Incidentally, this is the first time the color white is used in the cockade, and it symbolizes the unification of the monarchy and the Revolution. When Louis leaves and the crowds see him wearing the cockade, there are cheers and cries of “long live the king!”

        -At the same time, some of the conservative members of the government are already preparing for more violence. As we’ve seen, the Paris mob is more than capable of lynching people they don’t like, and Louis’ younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, has been begging the royal family to get out of Versailles and travel to the city of Metz, near the German border, where they can be protected by loyal troops. Historians Will and Ariel Durant even write that Marie Antoinette packs up her clothes and jewelry to be prepared for just such an escape, but Louis won’t hear of it. After all, what kind of king runs from his own people? When Louis returns from Paris to Versailles on July 18th, he supposedly embraces Marie Antoinette and their children, who are happy just to see him alive. He says: “Happily no [more] blood has been shed, and I swear that never shall a drop of French blood be spilled by my order.”

        -The Comte d’Artois, who will later become King Charles X, packs up his family and takes off to his wife’s homeland of Savoy, which sits between France, Switzerland, and the Republic of Genoa. The recently-fired Chief Minister, the Baron de Breteuil, also goes into exile, along with several other leading conservative nobles. This begins a steady stream of high-ranking people, mostly nobles, who leave France throughout the Revolution. These people are collectively known as emigrees, and while their numbers are small at first, they grow over time, and eventually become a powerful lobbying group in several European countries. This will become important later, so we’ll put a pin in it.

On July 20th, a few days after Bailly’s election as mayor, the self-appointed city council holds elections for what will come to be called the Paris Commune. Each of Paris’ 60 electoral districts elects two representatives, for a total of 120, or one person for every 5,000 Parisians in the city of 600,000. If we were to scale that up to modern Paris, a 21st century Commune would have 420 members. Even 120 members is unwieldy, and in early 1790 the city districts will be redrawn so there are “only” 48 of them instead of 60, with a correspondingly smaller Commune. Each district is called a “section,” and has its own local militia and revolutionary committee. Think of each section as a neighborhood with a heavily-armed neighborhood watch and you won’t be too far off the mark.

        -The idea, once again, is to establish some kind of order. The Revolutionary leadership is, after all, made up mostly of upper middle-class people, and the last thing they want is for the mob to go crazy again as it had on the 14th. But only two days after its establishment, the Paris Commune will once again be proven almost powerless when the people get it into their heads to do some mischief. On the 22nd of July 1789, the mob does just that. Their target is Joseph-François Foullon, the guy who had briefly replaced Necker as Finance Minister. After being unceremoniously fired, Foullon had read the room and decided he’d wanted nothing to do with Paris, and instead fled to his friend’s farm a few miles south of the city. But on the 22nd, some peasants recognize him and drag him into custody. He’s paraded barefoot to the plaza in front of the Hotel de Ville, and forced to carry a bundle of hay on his back to his place of execution, where he is lynched, beheaded, and has his head paraded around the city. In his book Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution, British Historian Simon Schama explains the symbolism of this act at the end of a chapter about the Storming of the Bastille:

        “Nine days later there were two more heads to display: those of Bertier de Sauvigny, the intendant of Paris, and Foulon, one of the ministers in the government that was to have replaced Necker’s. The latter was accused of the famine plot, so the mouth of his severed head was crammed with grass, straw and ordure to signify his particular crime. The young painter Girodet thought this popular symbolism so picturesque that he made a careful sketch as the heads passed before him.

        “More than the actual casualties of fighting (which, as we have seen, were very limited), it was this display of punitive sacrifice that constituted a kind of revolutionary sacrament. Some, who had celebrated the Revolution so long as it was expressed in abstractions like Liberte, gagged at the sight of blood thrust in their faces. Others whose nerves were tougher and stomachs less easily turned made the modern compact by which power could be secured through violence. The beneficiaries of this bargain deluded themselves into believing that they could turn it on and off like a faucet and direct its force with exacting selectivity. Barnave, the Grenoble politician who in 1789 was among the unreserved zealots of the National Assembly, was asked whether the deaths of Foulon and Bertier were really necessary to secure freedom. He gave the reply which, converted into an instrument of the revolutionary state, would be the entitlement to kill him on the guillotine:

        “‘What, then, is their blood so pure?’”

        -The lynching of Foullon demonstrates how little has changed in the few days since the Paris Commune took command, but just as the mob remains thirsty for blood, so, too, the spirit of capitalism remains alive and well, and some people are already figuring out how to turn a profit from the Revolution. One of the most famous is a former junior army officer and building contractor named Pierre-François Palloy, who secures the contract to demolish the Bastille on July 16th, a mere two days after it’s stormed. After Mirabeau ceremonially knocks the first stone off the top of a rampart with a pickaxe, Palloy’s men immediately set to work. It takes a few years for the Revolutionary government to pay him for the job, but that’s no problem. He preserves the underground medieval dungeon and makes a small fortune selling tours, while operating a museum on the above-ground portion of the site. He even carves a number of small scale models from individual stones, many of which are still in existence. Palloy will eventually be imprisoned in 1794 for expressing sentiments that are too radical even for the later revolutionaries, but he’s eventually released and spends the rest of his life in relative comfort. It’s good to remember that for as long as there has been human tragedy, there have been people grifting off of it.

Outside of Paris, the Revolution takes an entirely different form. Starting on July 22nd 1789 bands of armed peasants begin roving the countryside in an event that will come to be known as La Grande Peur, meaning “The Great Fear.” The Great Fear only lasts a couple of weeks, and will die out by the end of the first week of August. But as early 20th Century American Communist Louis C. Fraina wrote, “…in a revolution, the masses are in motion; the developments of years are compressed into months and days.” That’s a good description of the Great Fear.

        -It begins with a conspiracy theory. Remember, France has experienced a series of bad harvests and food has gotten expensive, and many people think the King and the nobles are going to intentionally starve people to crush the revolution and restore the Ancien Regime. As rumors filter out into the countryside, people in villages, small towns, and even some cities get the idea that the royal government is employing armed groups of brigands to go around burning crops. To make matters worse, there are rumors that France is being invaded by Austria, Britain, or Spain, depending on what your local rumor mill is churning out. So the French people arm up, and each town forms its own militia to keep the locals safe.

        -This is no good for anybody. One village’s patrols will often spot the neighboring village’s militia over the next hill and assume they’re brigands, which only adds to the fearful atmosphere. Towns with walls close their gates and post guards by night and day. Trade grinds to a halt. In one incident in Champagne, a 3,000-man militia mobilizes to chase down a cloud of dirt that they think has been kicked up by brigands; it turns out to be a herd of cattle.

        -In the midst of all this, the people turn their guns on the one enemy everyone seems to agree on – their local feudal overlords. The armed, anxious militias attack noble manors, bishops’ estates, and wealthy abbeys. Many nobles and high-ranking clergy are beaten and insulted, but throughout all of this, only three of them actually seem to be killed. The militias are instead focused on the books of records, which they burn.

        -In the movie Fight Club, the anti-hero blows up all the credit card companies to erase all debts and reset the economy to zero. Well, that’s what these militias are doing by burning the record books. Without a record of who owes rent, who is obligated to perform labor, and which lords actually hold title to a particular piece of land, the peasants take control of their own financial destinies. And it’s not just the peasants; more often than not, militias are led by members of the bourgeoisie, who are often in debt and would like nothing more than to see those debts erased. It’s also important to note that many of these militias claim to be acting in the name of the King. They had, after all, petitioned the Estates General to eliminate their old feudal duties. The King had, after all, approved the creation of the of the Constituent Assembly. It’s only a matter of time before the old debts and duties are wiped away, so why not help the process along a little bit? Of course, none of this has been approved by the King or the Constituent Assembly. But as the calendar turns from July to August, some members of the Assembly decide that now is indeed the time to dismantle France’s feudal system.

This isn’t some populist movement for liberty. In fact, the first men to call for the abolition of the feudal system are nobles themselves. These men are members of the liberal Breton Club, and most of their wealth comes from business. Guys like the duc d’Aiguillon, who seconds the motion, don’t really care whether or not they have special hunting rights or whether some peasants are forced to pay a few livres to grind their grain at a designated mill. These are men whose interests are aligned with the bourgeoisie; they want to maintain their business interests, and abolishing the feudal system is a low-cost way for them to do that while signaling to the common people that they’re on their side.

        -In the last episode, I teased an August 28th meeting of the Constituent Assembly, but in fact the members of the Breton Club will take action on August 4th. That’s what I get for pulling a date from my dusty old memory instead of looking it up. Anyway, on what is supposed to be an ordinary day full of dull constitutional debate, the Vicomte de Noailles gives a speech warning that France “floated between the alternatives of a complete destruction of society and a government which would be admired and followed throughout Europe.” He then calls for the complete abolition of the feudal system, after which three more noble members of the Breton Club give prepared speeches agreeing with the motion. These prepared speeches are designed to appear spontaneous, and since the Paris political clubs aren’t yet solidified in the way modern political parties are, this bit of political theater makes it look as if there’s broad, spontaneous agreement.

        -Throughout the rest of August 4th, the delegates propose more and more motions outlining specific steps that will reform all of French society in the Revolution’s image. Only three of the most radical motions fail to pass: one granting full religious freedom to Protestants, another eliminating noble titles altogether, and a third abolishing slavery in French colonies. All of this happens in a wave of enthusiastic revolutionary fervor, with each new speaker hoping to outdo the others.

        -When the dust settles, many members of the Constituent Assembly realize they may have gone too far. A few days later, on August 10th, the statements are modified to provide for buyouts rather than outright abolition of dues. So, for example, peasants will still owe rent, but will have the ability to buy their land outright at a discount and stop paying rent. But the exact methods for buying your way out of feudal duties are left vague – to be determined later, which, spoiler alert, never happens. When the decrees are published on August 11th as the “August Decrees,” news spreads through the countryside, and most people simply stop paying their rents and taxes. There are sporadic and localized attempts at collection, but eventually the buyouts are canceled altogether, effectively eliminating all feudal dues and back rent in 1793.

-By then, the Revolution has taken a more radical turn. For now, let’s look at what the August Decrees actually say:

“ARTICLE I. The National Assembly hereby completely abolishes the feudal system. It decrees that, among the existing rights and dues, both feudal and censuel, all those originating in or representing real or personal serfdom or personal servitude, shall be abolished without indemnification. All other dues are declared redeemable, the terms and mode of redemption to be fixed by the National Assembly. Those said dues which are not extinguished by this decree shall continue to be collected until indemnification shall take place.”

-This is the most important bit, abolishing rents and other duties owed by peasant farmers to their noble and ecclesiastical landlords. The word “censuel” here is spelled with a “C” and not with an “S,” and it doesn’t mean anything weird or perverted. It’s just a type of legal mechanism for collecting rent. Serfdom is 100% abolished, but people will have to buy their way out of other rents, although as I said, no mechanism is ever established for this and people basically stop paying rent immediately.

        “ARTICLE II. The exclusive right to maintain pigeon-houses and dovecotes is abolished. The pigeons shall be confined during the seasons fixed by the community. During such periods they shall be looked upon as game, and every one shall have the right to kill them upon his own land.”

        -This might sound silly, but remember we’re talking about a time when passenger pigeons are the fastest means of communication, and any nobleman worth his salt is going to own a few. When these pigeons are allowed to graze, they can tear through a freshly-planted field and eat up all the seeds, ruining people’s crops. Now that’s going to be illegal. Furthermore, non-nobles will also be able to own pigeons, which is a big win for wealthy merchants who want to keep their finger on the pulse of the market, and are constantly getting out-competed by nobles with more up-to-date information.

        “ARTICLE III. The exclusive right to hunt and to maintain unenclosed warrens is likewise abolished, and every landowner shall have the right to kill or to have destroyed on his own land all kinds of game, observing, however, such police regulations as may be established with a view to the safety of the public.

        “All hunting captainries, including the royal forests, and all hunting rights under whatever denomination, are likewise abolished. Provision shall be made, however, in a manner compatible with the regard due to property and liberty, for maintaining the personal pleasures of the King.

        “The president of the Assembly shall be commissioned to ask of the King the recall of those sent to the galleys or exiled, simply for violations of the hunting regulations, as well as for the release of those at present imprisoned for offenses of this kind, and the dismissal of such cases as are now pending.”

        -Again, pretty self-explanatory. Instead of making hunting the sole realm of the nobility, it’s now open to everybody, within reasonable limitations.

        “ARTICLE IV. All manorial courts are hereby suppressed without indemnification. But the magistrates of these courts shall continue to perform their functions until such time as the National Assembly shall provide for the establishment of a new judicial system.”

        -Manorial courts are the lowest courts in the French system, and handle civil disputes at the local level. People have been complaining about these courts because more often than not, the judge is paid by the local nobility and tends to rule in their favor. That’s not going to happen anymore, although once again the assembly has failed to provide any mechanism to replace these courts.

        “ARTICLE V. Tithes of every description, as well as the dues which have been substituted for them, under whatever denomination they are known or collected (even when compounded for), possessed by secular or regular congregations, by holders of benefices, members of corporations (including the Order of Malta and other religious and military orders), as well as those devoted to the maintenance of churches, those impropriated to lay persons, and those substituted for the portion congrue, are abolished, on condition, however, that some other method be devised to provide for the expenses of divine worship, the support of the officiating clergy, for the assistance of the poor, for repairs and rebuilding of churches and parsonages, and for the maintenance of all institutions, seminaries, schools, academies, asylums, and organizations to which the present funds are devoted. Until such provision shall be made and the former possessors shall enter upon the enjoyment of an income on the new system, the National Assembly decrees that the said tithes shall continue to be collected according to law and in the customary manner.

        “Other tithes, of whatever nature they may be, shall be redeemable in such manner as the Assembly shall determine. Until such regulation shall be issued, the National Assembly decrees that these, too, shall continue to be collected.”

        -So, the 10% church tax is going to be abolished once the Assembly can figure out some way of funding the Catholic Church. Unlike many of the other things they put off until later, they do find a solution for this. Next year, as we’ll see, the Revolutionary government will make priests and bishops into civil servants and pay them out of regular government funds. As we’ll also see, this will end up backfiring on them in a big way.

“ARTICLE VI. All perpetual ground rents, payable either in money or in kind, of whatever nature they may be, whatever their origin and to whomsoever they may be due, as to members of corporations, holders of the domain or appanages or to the Order of Malta, shall be redeemable. Champarts, of every kind and under all denominations, shall likewise be redeemable at a rate fixed by the Assembly. No due shall in the future be created which is not redeemable.”

        -I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what the difference is between ground rents and regular rents. None of my sources are clear on this point, but it seems like they’re rents due to corporations and organizations as opposed to individual noble landowners. At any rate, these rents will continue to be due, but the Assembly is going to institute price controls.

“ARTICLE VII. The sale of judicial and municipal offices shall be suppressed forthwith. Justice shall be dispensed gratis. Nevertheless, the magistrates at present holding such offices shall continue to exercise their functions and to receive their emoluments until the Assembly shall have made provision for indemnifying them.”

        -So, no more letting rich people buy public offices in order to profit from them. But people who have already purchased public offices are grandfathered in, and in theory the government will buy them out at some point.

“ARTICLE VIII. The fees of the country priests are abolished, and shall be discontinued as soon as provision shall be made for increasing the minimum salary of the parish priests and the payment to the curates. A regulation shall be drawn up to determine the status of the priests in the towns.”

-This is designed to ensure that parish priests get a higher salary, unlike the way things worked under the Ancien Regime where parish priests were often destitute because their bishops hoarded all the church money. As I said, the Assembly will ultimately make them civil servants, which causes a bunch of other issues.

        “ARTICLE IX. Pecuniary privileges, personal or real, in the payment of taxes are abolished forever. Taxes shall be collected from all the citizens, and from all property, in the same manner and in the same form. Plans shall be considered by which the taxes shall be paid proportionally by all, even for the last six months of the current year.”

        -If you remember from the last episode, different classes of citizens paid different tax rates, and many of the nobles had paid one-time fees to get out of taxes altogether. From now on, everyone will pay the same property and income taxes, once the Assembly agrees on appropriate rates.

        “ARTICLE X. Inasmuch as a national constitution and public liberty are of more advantage to the provinces than the privileges which some of these enjoy, and inasmuch as the surrender of such privileges is essential to the intimate union of all parts of the realm [empire], it is decreed that all the peculiar privileges, pecuniary or otherwise, of the provinces, principalities, districts [pays], cantons, cities, and communes, are once and for all abolished and are absorbed into the law common to all Frenchmen.”

        -This is similar to the last article. Just as different classes had paid different taxes, different regions and cities had had various privileges and exemptions. Once again, all citizens are going to be taxed equally – regardless of where they happen to live.

        “ARTICLE XI. All citizens, without distinction of birth, are eligible to any office or dignity, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or military; and no profession shall imply any derogation.”

        -This one is pretty straightforward. All positions in government, the military, and the Church are now open to everybody on the basis of merit.

        “ARTICLE XII. Hereafter no remittances shall be made for annates or for any other purpose to the court of Rome, the vice-legation at Avignon, or to the nunciature at Lucerne. The clergy of the diocese shall apply to their bishops in regard to the filling of benefices and dispensations, which shall be granted gratis without regard to reservations, expectancies, and papal months, all the churches of France enjoying the same freedom.”

        -Traditionally, Catholic churches have sent the first year’s worth of income from donations, land rental, and so on directly to the Pope. The state has previously paid these fees, called “annates,” but no longer.

“ARTICLE XIII. The rights of dèport, of cotte-morte, dèpouilles, vacat, droits, censaux, Peter's pence, and other dues of the same kind, under whatever denomination, established in favor of bishops, archdeacons, archpresbyters, chapters, and regular congregations which formerly exercised priestly functions, are abolished, but appropriate provision shall be made for those benefices of archdeacons and archpresbyters which are not sufficiently endowed.”

-These are fees that go to support high-ranking Catholic officials, and they’re now being banned, although the Assembly promises to support bishops and others who are genuinely insolvent.

        “ARTICLE XIV. Pluralities shall not be permitted hereafter in cases where the revenue from the benefice or benefices held shall exceed the sum of three thousand livres. Nor shall any individual be allowed to enjoy several pensions from benefices, or a pension and a benefice, if the revenue which he already enjoys from such sources exceeds the same sum of three thousand livres.”

        -This article imposes limits on pensions for bishops. Basically, no double-dipping unless your first pension is very small.

“ARTICLE XV. The National Assembly shall consider, in conjunction with the King, the report which is to be submitted to it relating to pensions, favors, and salaries, with a view to suppressing all such as are not deserved and reducing those which shall prove excessive; and the amount shall be fixed which the King may in future disburse for this purpose.”

-The Assembly promises to work with the King to reform the pension system for men of the cloth.

        “ARTICLE XVI. The National Assembly decrees that a medal shall be struck in memory of the recent grave and important deliberations for the welfare of France, and that a Te Deum shall be chanted in gratitude in all the parishes and the churches of France.”

        -This is self-explanatory.

“ARTICLE XVII. The National Assembly solemnly proclaims the King, Louis XVI, the Restorer of French Liberty.”

-This one is important, because the Assembly is not just acknowledging the King, but pre-emptively giving him credit for the August Decrees.

        “ARTICLE XVIII. The National Assembly shall present itself in a body before the King, in order to submit to him the decrees which have just been passed, to tender to him the tokens of its most respectful gratitude, and to pray him to permit the Te Deum to be chanted in his chapel, and to be present himself at this service.”

        -Again, pretty self-explanatory. The Assembly promises to present the Decrees to King Louis for his approval.

        “ARTICLE XIX. The National Assembly shall consider, immediately after the constitution, the drawing up of the laws necessary for the development of the principles which it has laid down in the present decree. The latter shall be transmitted without delay by the deputies to all the provinces, together with the decree of the tenth of this month, in order that it may be printed, published, announced from the parish pulpits, and posted up wherever it shall be deemed necessary.”

        -So, while the Assembly hasn’t figured out how to pay for many of these reforms – or how people are going to buy their way out of feudal obligations – they’re going to work on it. Meanwhile, they’re going to spread the news of the August Decrees far and wide as soon as possible.

        -King Louis refuses to sign the August Decrees, although it seems he does so out of concern for private property rights, since the Decrees don’t specify any way for landlords to get compensation for their lost rent. At the same time, he praises the First and Second Estates for their sacrifices for the good of the people, so it’s tough to say where his head is at. But the fact of the matter is that the Decrees have already been published and sent throughout France to be read in every village. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the people consider the Decrees to be the law of the land. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for either the King or Assembly to actually claw back any of the reforms.

On August 26th, the Constituent Assembly approves another measure; they sign off on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This is Lafayette’s pet project, a basic statement of rights with which he wants to begin the new French constitution. He’d actually proposed it back on July 11th, but debate had run into the next day, July 12th, when the Paris riots upended the normal flow of business, and it’s not until the end of August that the Assembly is once again ready to consider it. Lafayette is actually assisted by a few men, most notably Jean Joseph Mounier, the Constituent Assembly’s secretary and head of the new center-right Monarchien political party that we’ll talk about in a minute. Mounier writes the first three articles of the Declaration, and most of the work is done at the home of Thomas Jefferson, who is the US ambassador to France at this time. As someone with extensive experience writing revolutionary documents – see the Declaration of Independence – Jefferson’s input is invaluable. Then, before the Declaration is presented to the Assembly, Mirabeau subjects it to some pretty heavy editing to make it as punchy as possible.

        -Speaking of the Declaration of Independence, I misspoke last episode when I said I would compare and contrast the American Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The two documents have nothing in common other than Jefferson’s involvement. What I meant to say is that I would compare and contrast the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the American Bill of Rights, which are indeed worth comparing.

        -The main difference is the nature of the documents themselves. The American Bill of Rights was written after the US Constitution, and consists of a series of 10 amendments. When approved by the American Congress, those amendments immediately become the law of the land. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, on the other hand, is written and approved before Revolutionary France has a written constitution. Rather than clarifying rights that are not spelled out in the constitution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man is an aspirational document. It’s a set of guideposts that’s meant to outline the principles on which the French constitution will be founded.

        -Another major difference is their scope. The American Bill of Rights is, well, American. While its principles have certainly inspired other countries, it has no legal standing outside of the United States. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, on the other hand, has been adapted by several Latin American countries, as well as by a number of Francophone countries throughout the world. So in many ways, it’s the more historically significant of the two documents. With that out of the way, let’s dig into the text.

        “The representatives of the French People, formed into a National Assembly, considering ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man to be the only causes of public misfortunes and the corruption of Governments, have resolved to set forth, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man, to the end that this Declaration, constantly present to all members of the body politic, may remind them unceasingly of their rights and their duties; to the end that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power, since they may be continually compared with the aim of every political institution, may thereby be the more respected; to the end that the demands of the citizens, founded henceforth on simple and incontestable principles, may always be directed toward the maintenance of the Constitution and the happiness of all.

“In consequence whereof, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Man and of the Citizen.”

-This is just the preamble, but I want to point something out, because it demonstrates how the French Revolution evolves over time. At the end, much like at the end of the preamble to the American Constitution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man references a “Supreme Being.” While the Revolution will deservedly become known for its attempts to tear down French religiosity, we haven’t gotten there yet. This document explicitly states that mankind’s natural rights are divinely ordained. Far from being anti-religious, they’re making a religious argument as much as a political one.

“Article first – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on considerations of the common good.”

-Here we see the first of a few compromises the French Revolutionaries have made. On the one hand, they’re saying that people have equal rights. However, they’re also upholding “social distinctions” as long as those distinctions contribute to the “common good.” Far from abolishing the nobility, they’re calling on the nobles to behave, well, nobly – to use their stations to benefit society. There’s no parallel to this in the American Bill of Rights, but the US Constitution explicitly forbids the granting of titles of nobility of any kind.

“Article 2 – The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of Man. These rights are Liberty, Property, Safety and Resistance to Oppression.”

-The rights to liberty and property are taken for granted in the US Constitution because they’re seminal parts of the American founding, and part of the Declaration of Independence. Conversely, nowhere in America’s founding documents will you find a right to safety.

        “Article 3 – The principle of any Sovereignty lies primarily in the Nation. No corporate body, no individual may exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from it.”

        -This clause is a fundamental reframing of the entire theory of French governance. Since the time of Louis XIV, the French monarchy has staked its legitimacy on the idea of the divine right of kings. The King is the King because God wills it, and therefore anything the King does is mandated by God. Here, the Revolutionaries are saying that political sovereignty emanates not from divine mandate but from the people – and not just any people, but the “Nation,” – in this case, the French nation. Of all the clauses in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, this is by far the most revolutionary.

“Article 4 – Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man has no bounds other than those that ensure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights. These bounds may be determined only by Law.”

-This is an ethical principle that classical liberals still hold today – the idea that my right to swing my arm only ends where your face begins. Furthermore, rights are both universal and bounded by law. The Ninth Amendment of the American Bill of Rights comes close to this when it says: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

        “Article 5 – The Law has the right to forbid only those actions that are injurious to society. Nothing that is not forbidden by Law may be hindered, and no one may be compelled to do what the Law does not ordain.”

        -This is similar to Article 4, but it hammers home the idea that the law is the only proper bound on people’s rights. However, actions that are “injurious to society” and thus subject to the law are left intentionally vague. Contrast this with the American Tenth Amendment that says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

        “Article 6 – The Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part, personally or through their representatives, in its making. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.”

        -There’s nothing like this in the American Bill of Rights because the US Constitution already defines citizenship, voting rights, and a mechanism for making laws. It’s worth noting, though, that the Constituent Assembly will soon draw a distinction between active and passive citizens – those who can vote and those who cannot. So much for all citizens having the right to take part. This will become a major problem for the revolutionaries going forward.

        “Article 7 – No man may be accused, arrested or detained except in the cases determined by the Law, and following the procedure that it has prescribed. Those who solicit, expedite, carry out, or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders must be punished; but any citizen summoned or apprehended by virtue of the Law, must give instant obedience; resistance makes him guilty.”

        -The Bill of Rights says something similar to this when it says that no person shall: “…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

        “Article 8 – The Law must prescribe only the punishments that are strictly and evidently necessary; and no one may be punished except by virtue of a Law drawn up and promulgated before the offense is committed, and legally applied.”

        -Again, this isn’t all that different from the Bill of Rights, which states that: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

        “Article 9 – As every man is presumed innocent until he has been declared guilty, if it should be considered necessary to arrest him, any undue harshness that is not required to secure his person must be severely curbed by Law.”

        -Here, the Bill of Rights is a little bit different. It says: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury… and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” You may have noticed that the American Bill of Rights doesn’t actually state that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, while the Declaration of the Rights of Man makes this explicit. That’s because the presumption of innocence is an existing principle of British Common Law, while it’s a new principle for France.

        “Article 10 – No one may be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, as long as the manifestation of such opinions does not interfere with the established Law and Order.

        “Article 11 – The free communication of ideas and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Any citizen may therefore speak, write and publish freely, except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by Law.”

        -I lumped these two articles together because the American Bill of Rights includes freedom of speech and freedom of religion together in the First Amendment. But note that the Declaration of the Rights of Man makes exceptions for any ideas that interfere with law and order or an “abuse of this liberty.” This is mostly done to mollify the clergy, who are worried that total freedom of speech and religion will lead to a breakdown of public order. In fact, this is still the case in France and indeed in most European countries. The US is the only country I’m aware of with near-total protection for free speech, and I’m proud of that.

        “Article 12 – To guarantee the Rights of Man and of the Citizen a public force is necessary; this force is therefore established for the benefit of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.”

        -This article explains the necessity of maintaining an army, as long as that army is used for the benefit of the entire nation and not just particular individuals. By contrast, the American Bill of Rights says nothing about an army, although the Second Amendment is based in part on the assumption that there will be a militia to secure the common defense.

        “Article 13 – For the maintenance of the public force, and for administrative expenses, a general tax is indispensable; it must be equally distributed among all citizens, in proportion to their ability to pay.”

        -This principle does not exist in the Bill of Rights. In fact, one of the first federal taxes in the United States falls on poor whiskey producers in Appalachia, to the benefit of larger manufacturers on the Atlantic Coast. If the right to equal taxation had existed in the US, the Whiskey Rebellion would never have happened.

        “Article 14 – All citizens have the right to ascertain, by themselves, or through their representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to watch over its use, and to determine its proportion, basis, collection and duration.”

        -So, taxes are only valid if approved by the people’s representatives. This isn’t in the American Bill of Rights, but once again, it’s already an established part of British Common Law, upon which American law is based.

        “Article 15 – Society has the right to ask a public official for an accounting of his administration.”

        -This ties in with the last article. Basically, public officials must keep open books and spend their funds as intended by the Assembly.

        “Article 16 – Any society in which no provision is made for guaranteeing rights or for the separation of powers, has no Constitution.”

        -This isn’t so much a right as it is a guiding principle for the Constituent Assembly. Previously, France has had no written Constitution, and the rights of the King, provincial estates, and individuals have been based solely on tradition and legal precedent.

        “Article 17 – Since the right to Property is inviolable and sacred, no one may be deprived thereof, unless public necessity, legally ascertained, obviously requires it, and just and prior indemnity has been paid.”

        - Here, the Constituent Assembly is pushing back against the events of the Great Fear and the destruction of property and rent records. It’s also laying more groundwork for establishing a buyout system for feudal obligations. The last article has no direct parallel in the American Bill of Rights, although this principle should be taken for granted in any society that believes in the right to private property.

        -Much like the August Decrees, King Louis withholds his signature from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. He bases this on his strong belief in the old order, where members of the three Estates have separate but complimentary rights and obligations. For now, the idea of becoming a citizen king, rather than God’s representative in France, is simply too much for him to bear. But by putting on the tricolor cockade, he’s already symbolically endorsed the Revolution. Now he’s backed into a corner, unable to credibly take a position either as a citizen king or one who rules by divine right. This is another example of his inconsistency, at a time when consistency is all-important.

While all this is going on, France has what we today would call a divided government. And while as I said there are no formal political parties (yet), the political clubs are starting to function more and more like what we would call parties. On the left is the smallest coalition, led by the members of the Breton Club. This party favors a truly republican system of government. Not capital-R “Republican” as in the American political party, but small-R “republican,” meaning a system run by elected representatives where the King, if he is to have any role at all, is just a symbolic figure who shows up for ribbon-cutting ceremonies and things of that nature. On the right is a larger faction, consisting of a number of full-blown reactionary monarchists, but dominated by Jean Joseph Mounier’s Monarchiens. The Monarchiens are a center-right party that favors a constitutional monarchy with prescribed limits to protect the rights of the people. It’s notable that Mounier himself took the Tennis Court Oath and favored the abolition of the Estates General and the establishment of a National Assembly that represents everybody. But following the Storming of the Bastille, many members of the Constituent Assembly have decided that the greatest danger to French stability is not the monarchy, but the mob. After all, people are being lynched and having their heads paraded around Paris because they supposedly took part in a crackpot conspiracy to starve the French people into submission. So even many liberals are now calling for moderation. This center-right coalition also includes a number of clergymen – bishops and parish priests alike – who object to the abolition of the Tithe because how else are they going to get paid? All of that being said, the real power in the Constituent Assembly lies with the undecided, unaligned middle, which includes more delegates than either the left or the right. So while the Monarchiens are the largest faction, they still need to convince the delegates of the center if they want to get anything done.

        -This explains how, despite being the largest faction in the government, the right manages to lose two important votes in two days. The first of these votes, taken on September 10th 1789, is on whether the new constitutional government is going to have a single-chamber legislature or a dual-chamber legislature. The Monarchiens are pushing for a dual-chamber legislature with a new, upper chamber made up from the nobility. The idea here is for the upper chamber to act as a cooling off mechanism for any radical laws that the general assembly might decide to pass. Now, there’s a good reason why most modern democracies have a single-chamber legislature, and that’s because a dual chamber is an anti-democratic mechanism. Much like the idea of voting by class in the old Estates General, the hypothetical upper chamber would simply provide a veto mechanism for the elites while maintaining the illusion of a democratic system. This may be confusing for my American listeners, but remember that our upper chamber – the US Senate – is a reflection of the federative nature of the American government. The Senators don’t represent the elites – at least not in theory. They represent the states, while the Congress represents the people. So the US Senate isn’t a good reflection of how most upper chambers have historically operated. A better example would be the British House of Lords, which in modern Britain has been severely limited in its powers precisely because it’s an anti-democratic mechanism. Here, the French right has overplayed its hand, and the Constituent Assembly votes overwhelmingly in favor of a single-chamber legislature – by a tally of 849 to 89. So the new French constitution, whenever it’s completed, is going to provide for a single, united national assembly.

        -The next vote is taken on September 11th, and it’s even more impactful. While the September 10th vote was about the nature of the legislature under the new constitution, the September 11th vote is about the nature of the executive, meaning the powers of the King. Like I said, the Bretons and others on the left support a purely ceremonial role for the King, with all real power being vested in the legislature. On the right, the Monarchiens and their reactionary allies want the King to have the power to veto any laws – full stop. This would mean that nothing can become law without the King and the assembly coming to an agreement. But on this issue, there’s a third alternative, pushed by some of the more moderate delegates – a so-called suspensive veto. This option gives the King the right to delay legislation but not prevent it entirely. Basically, if a law is vetoed by the King, the assembly will have to go through a cooling-off period before they can vote on it again. If the law passes on a second vote, it will nonetheless become law.

        -The issue of executive power goes through more than one round of voting. In the first round, no single option receives a clear majority of votes, and this is when the Breton Club makes their move. The Bretons are more organized than the other political clubs, and even distribute “voting guides” before each legislative session instructing their members on how to vote. With the real danger that the King could receive full veto powers, the Bretons change their position to the center and favor a suspensive veto, which passes by a vote of 673 to 352. But the devil is in the details, and the suspensive veto is valid until two legislative elections have occurred. Since the new legislature is supposed to be elected every two years, a delay of two elections means that a royal veto can delay any law, no matter how popular, for at least four years – and potentially as long as six years. In a sense, this is a big win for the Monarchiens. By staking out a hard right position, Jean Joseph Mounier has forced the Bretons to the center and laid the groundwork for a constitutional monarchy. He will be rewarded for his efforts by being elected President of the Constituent Assembly on September 28th, but his tenure will be short-lived. The Assembly has had their say, but once again the mob is going to weigh in on French politics, and when the dust settles, a disgusted Munier will resign his position and go into exile.

This mob action takes place on October 5th, a week after Munier’s election and near the end of the French harvest season. The country is still suffering from food shortages, and while the 1789 harvest is actually quite good, the grain has yet to get to market, so prices are continuing to skyrocket. Nobody knows this better than the housewives of Paris, who more often than not are the ones actually buying the food for their households. Throughout August and September, there have already been a series of smaller riots in Paris, all of which have petered out or been suppressed by Lafayette’s National Guard. But prices are still going up, and the old “nobles are hoarding our food” conspiracy theory rears its head again, this time spurred on by a radical newspaper called L’Ami du Peuple, or “The people’s friend.” This newspaper is a one-man operation run by a radical writer named Jean-Paul Marat. Marat is a key player in the Revolution, and we’ll talk about him in more detail in the next episode. For now, he’s playing the role of radical gadfly, using the power of the pen to push the Revolution further and further to the left. In one passage, he calls for the people of Paris to rise up and march on the Assembly itself:

        “When public safety is in peril the people must take power out of the hands of those to whom it is entrusted…. Put that Austrian woman [the Queen] and her brother-in-law [Artois] in prison…. Seize the ministers and their clerks and put them in irons…. Make sure of the mayor and his lieutenants; keep the general [Lafayette] in sight, and arrest his staff…. The heir to the throne has no right to a dinner while you want bread. Organize bodies of armed men. March to the National Assembly and demand food at once…. Demand that the nation’s poor have a future secured to them out of the national contribution. If you are refused join the army, take the land, as well as the gold, which the rascals who want to force you to come to terms by hunger have buried, and share it among you. Off with the heads of the ministers and their underlings. Now is the time.”

        -If Marat’s incendiary writings aren’t enough, King Louis helps things along by adding more fuel to the fire. Not only does he withhold his consent from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, but on September 23rd, the elite Flanders Regiment arrives at Versailles. This is a small unit, less than a thousand men, but while it’s no threat to Paris, the people become nervous that Louis is going to use the army to disband the Constituent Assembly. To make things worse, on October 1st, the royal bodyguard and the Flanders Regiment hold a banquet in the King’s honor. Holding a banquet at a time of high food prices is bad enough, but word soon gets out that the soldiers had raised a series of toasts to the royal family without a single toast to the French nation or the assembly. Worst of all, there’s a rumor that some of the men had gotten hold of one of those red, white, and blue Revolutionary cockades and deliberately stomped on it. Surely, this is proof that they intend to put down the Revolution!

        -It’s against this backdrop that the people of Paris awaken on the morning of October 5th to the sounding of church bells. These bells are being rung at the instigation of the aforementioned mob of housewives, who are answering Marat’s call to march on Versailles. But much like the mob that stormed the Bastille, they don’t intend on going unarmed. Instead, they begin by attacking the Hotel de Ville and seizing some muskets and even cannons. The National Guard troops who are supposed to be guarding these guns are completely paralyzed. When their commanding officer orders them to disperse the mob, they tell him there’s no way they’re going to open fire on a bunch of women. Now that these women – about 8,000 of them – are armed, they march off to Versailles to tell the King and the Constituent Assembly exactly what they think of the bread situation.

        -As word of the Women’s March spreads throughout Paris, National Guardsmen by the thousands begin gathering in front of the Hotel de Ville. Lafayette does his best to restore order and tells the men to go home, but agitators in the crowd start calling for mutiny. Lafayette now has two alternatives. Either he can get lynched and the National Guard can march to Versailles as an unruly mob, or he can organize the march himself and try to keep things civilized. He chooses the latter, and while the men are getting formed up for a proper march, he sends a messenger to Versailles to warn the King and the Assembly that the National Guard is coming and that he’s no longer in full control of the situation. Meanwhile, he tries to take as long as he can to organize the guardsmen and get them in formation, to give the King some time to prepare. What this means, though, is that the mob of housewives will arrive at Versailles several hours before the National Guard.

        -When the women do arrive after a muddy ten-mile march through pouring rain, they’re greeted with unexpected courtesy. Men of the Flanders Regiment welcome them into their temporary barracks and feed them. But the gates to the palace grounds remain locked, so the women turn their attention instead to the poorly-guarded National Assembly and break into their meeting hall in the middle of a parliamentary debate. Returning to Simon Schama’s account:

        “Wet broadcloth, smelling of mud and rain, planted itself beside fastidious coats and breeches. Knives and clubs were set down on empty chairs, dripping onto papers printed with items of legislative debate. Some of the women, seeing the Archbishop of Paris, shouted the anticlerical slogans that had become popular in Paris and accused him of being a prime instigator of the ‘famine plot.’ In a misguided attempt to calm them, another deputy from the clergy made the mistake of trying to kiss the hand of one of the women accusers. Shaking him off she replied, ‘I am not made to kiss the paw of a dog.’”

        -Jean Joseph Mounier, who you’ll remember is acting as the head of the Assembly, tries to sooth tensions by telling the women that the Assembly and the King are doing everything they can, and that more grain is even now on its way to Paris, but the mob’s leaders still insist on speaking with the King. It’s around this time that Louis returns from a hunting trip and agrees to meet with a small deputation. The crowd chooses a young flower girl to act as their representative, and she’s let into the palace, and according to most accounts she actually faints at the sight of the King. Louis has some smelling salts brought in to revive her, and promises that the royal ministry is doing everything they can to feed the people, and repeats Mounier’s assurances that there’s literally a bunch of grain on its way to Paris right this second. When the girl is ready to leave, she tries to kiss Louis’ hand as is traditional, but he instead hugs her “like a father” and sends her on her way. With reassurance from the King himself that they’re about to be fed, the crowd’s tempers are soothed. But it’s four in the afternoon now, and it’s a little late to march all the way back to Paris, so they hunker down as best they can in the vicinity of the palace to wait out the night.

        -Things may have ended there, but two hours later Lafayette’s messenger arrives with word that the National Guard is on its way. This leads to more chants of Revolutionary slogans, and Louis hastily arranges a meeting with Mounier where he changes course completely and signs both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the August Decrees, lending both of them legal legitimacy.

        -The National Guard arrives around 11 o’clock that night, and Lafayette meets with Mounier and tells him that he’s not in control of the situation. If bloodshed is to be avoided, he says, the King must dismiss the Flanders Regiment and make some sort of positive gesture to the Revolutionary cockade. Then, since the National Guard’s loyalties are still uncertain, Lafayette stays up all night to keep an eye on things. But he’s exhausted, and at 5:30 the next morning he falls asleep. This is unfortunate, since it’s around that time that all hell breaks loose. Someone inside the palace – it’s not entirely clear who – is sympathetic to the protestors, and opens one of the gates. A mixed crowd of Parisian housewives and unruly National Guardsmen break inside, and there’s a melee with the palace guard in which two guardsmen are killed, beheaded, and have their heads stuck on pikes. Crowds of angry women break into the palace itself and start searching for the royal family.

        -Marie Antoinette is first on their list. The Paris women are screaming for the head of the women they call “the Austrian whore,” and the Queen is forced to escape through a secret passage that leads directly to Louis’ chambers. But the door is locked from the other side, and Louis is not in his chambers since he’s elsewhere in the palace trying to round up their children. So Marie Antoinette spends about ten minutes pounding on the door before someone lets her out, and it’s only by luck that none of the Paris women finds the secret passage. Had the passage been discovered, it’s likely that Marie Antoinette would have been lynched.

        -Fortunately for the royal family, a group of loyal National Guardsmen, led by a commander named Lazare Hoche, follows the mob into the palace and restores order. Hoche will eventually go on to become one of the Revolution’s most renowned generals, but that’s later. For now, he’s managed to achieve an uneasy ceasefire in Versailles.

        -Lafayette, meanwhile, has been rudely awakened by the unexpected violence, and rushes to the palace himself, where he’s almost killed by disloyal guardsmen before finally meeting up with Louis. He convinces the King to come out on a balcony and give a speech, where Louis personally assures the crowd that bread is on the way. Lafayette then calls up a sergeant of the Flanders Regiment, and in the sight of thousands of people he pins a cockade on the man’s uniform, symbolically rehabilitating the Revolutionary symbol. Then the Queen also comes out on the balcony, and when Louis spontaneously kisses her hand, the crowd cheers “Long live the Queen!” which is a quick change of attitude, but that’s just how the French Revolution goes sometimes.

        -But then there’s another cry from the crowd “To Paris!” This cry begins with the National Guardsmen, many of whom have decided that as long as the royal family is at Versailles, the King will always be closer to reactionary nobles than he is to his people. Lafayette advises Louis that if he does not go to Paris, there’s no telling what the mob will do. So Louis agrees, famously announcing: “My friends, I shall go to Paris with my wife and my children. It is to the love of my good and faithful subjects that I entrust all that is most precious to me.” This trust will ultimately be betrayed.

        -In his book The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny, British historian Ian Davidson writes:

        “At 1 p.m. a cannon was fired to indicate that the King was leaving Versailles. A vast procession set out, some 60,000 strong, headed by contingents of the Gardes nationales, followed by carts of wheat and flour and surrounded by women and market porters. Then came the King’s bodyguards, the Regiment of Flanders, the Swiss Guards and the King’s carriage, with the royal family in it. La Fayette rode behind, followed by some carriages containing a number of Deputies. A large crowd came on behind, chanting, ‘We are bringing back the baker, the baker’s wife and the little baker’s boy’, meaning that they hoped the King would keep them supplied with bread.

“At 8 p.m. the vast cortège arrived in Paris, and at the Hôtel de ville, the King was welcomed by Sylvain Bailly, the Mayor; and after much ceremony of civic goodwill, Louis and his family finally, at ten o’clock that night, reached the royal Tuileries Palace, which had been allocated to them as their new home.”

-The same day, the National Assembly votes to change Louis’ title from “King of France and Navarre” to “King of the French.” This is a nationalistic move, since it means that Louis is not king of some ancestral lands – he’s king of a people, the French people.

-In fact, Louis is becoming less and less of a king of anything. While the royal family is treated respectfully at the Tuileries Palace and Louis continues to behave as King, it’s all kabuki theater. The royal family is now under house arrest in all but name, and will remain so for as long as Louis and Marie Antoinette survive.

-At this point, I need to mention another conspiracy theory. To many at the time – and also to many historians – the Women’s March on Versailles seems too organized to be spontaneous. Instead, people point to a potential organizer: Louis’ cousin Louis Philippe II, the Comte d’Orleans, who you may remember from last episode as a liberal member of the Constituent Assembly. This conspiracy theory is not without merit. To begin with, the Comte d’Orleans, who will later take on the Revolutionary title “Philippe Egalite,” is the First Prince of the Blood. This means he’s the closest male relative who isn’t directly descended from Louis’ father, and he stands to become King if something happens to the royal family. Adding more credibility to this theory, the Comte d’Orleans actually goes into self-imposed exile in England for a few weeks after the Women’s March, almost as if he’s failed to execute a coup. Later on, when Louis is condemned to death, the Comte will be one of the deputies voting in favor of the death penalty. So keep in mind that throughout this part of the French Revolution, there’s very likely a dynastic struggle happening under the surface, with the First Prince of the Blood pulling strings in the background like Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, actively trying to subvert King Louis at every turn and set himself up as a Revolutionary monarch. Like I said, this is just a conspiracy theory, and nobody has ever been able to find definitive proof. But I love theories like this because they make history more spicy.

While all of this is going on, the Constituent Assembly is still hard at work on its primary task: writing a new French Constitution. In their book The Age of Napoleon: The Story of Civilization Volume XI, American historians Will and Ariel Durant do a good job of summarizing this Constitution:

        “Freed from royal resistance, but uncomfortably aware of the surveillant city, the Assembly proceeded to write the constitution that would specify and legalize the achievements of the Revolution.

“First, should it retain the kingship? It did, and allowed it to be hereditary, for it feared that until the sentiments of legitimacy and loyalty could be transferred from the monarch to the nation, the mesmerizing aura of royalty would be necessary to social order; and the right of transmission would be a guard against wars of succession and such schemes as were then brewing in the Palais-Royal. But the powers of the king were to be strictly limited. The Assembly would vote him annually a ‘civil list’ for his expenses; any further outlay would require application to the legislature. If he left the kingdom without the Assembly’s permission he could be deposed, as he would shortly see. He could choose and dismiss his ministers, but each minister would be required to submit a monthly statement of his disposal of the funds allotted to him, and he could at any time be arraigned before a high court. The king was to command the Army and the Navy, but he could not declare war, or sign a treaty, without the legislature’s prior consent.

“…The legislature was to be elected by ‘active citizens’ only—male adult property holders paying in direct taxes an amount equal to the value of three days’ work; this included prosperous peasants but excluded hired labor, actors, and proletaires; these were classed as ‘passive citizens,’ for they could easily be manipulated by their masters or their journalists to become tools of reaction or violence. On this arrangement 4,298,360 men (in a population of 25 million souls) enjoyed the franchise in the France of 1791; 3 million adult males were voteless. The bourgeois Assembly, fearful of the city populace, was certifying the bourgeois Revolution.

“For electoral and administrative purposes the constitution divided France into eighty-three départements, each of these into communes (43,360). For the first time France was to become a unified nation, without privileged provinces or internal tolls, and all with one system of measurements and laws. Penalties were fixed by law, and were no longer at the discretion of a judge. Torture, the pillory, and branding were abolished, but the death penalty was retained, to Robespierre’s present discontent and future convenience. Persons accused of crime could choose to be tried by a jury of ‘active citizens’ chosen by lot; a minority of three votes out of twelve would suffice for acquittal. Civil cases were decided by judges. The old parlements, which had begotten a second aristocracy, were replaced by a new judiciary appointed by the electoral assemblies. A high court was chosen by lot from lower-court justices, two to a département.”

-This quote covers a lot of ground, and we’ll circle back later on some of the more important points, such as the distinction between “active” and “passive” citizens. But for now, I’ll focus on what the Assembly is focused on, which is the disastrous state of French finances. Remember, all of this started with a financial crisis, and if the Revolutionary government is going to be any more credible than the monarchy, they’re going to have to find some way to fund themselves.

-The solution is provided by two people: the finance minister Jacques Necker and Talleyrand. Talleyrand is one of those members of the Society of Thirty I touched on last episode. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord comes from a noble family and became a Catholic bishop thanks to family connections, but is far more interested in war and government than he is in religion. Necker and Talleyrand know that France is short on precious metal, which is the traditional currency through most of human history. They also know their own national history, and they know that a couple of generations ago France flirted with the idea of paper money, which caused inflation that nearly wrecked the economy. So, traditional gold and silver currency is out, and so is paper fiat currency. What’s left?

-Talleyrand and Necker come up with a new kind of currency called the assignat. The assignat is paper money, but it’s not fiat currency. Instead, it’s going to be backed by the value of French land. And where is that land going to come from? How about the Catholic Church, which owns about 10% of French land? On November 2nd 1789, Talleyrand puts that question to the Constituent Assembly, which votes 568 to 346 to nationalize all Church property. Then, on December 19th, the Assembly votes to issue 400 million livres worth of assignats, offered for sale in 1,000-livre bonds that pay a 5% interest rate. This is enough to stave off bankruptcy, but the measure is not without its detractors. The Abbe Sieyes, who wrote the famous Revolutionary pamphlet What is the Third Estate?, gives a speech in the Assembly opposing the seizure of Church property. He says:

“You have declared that property said to belong to the church now belongs to the nation but I only know that this is to declare something to be fact which is untrue… I don’t see how a simple declaration can change the nature of rights… Why do you allow these petty hateful passions to lay siege to your soul and succeed in tainting with immorality and injustice the finest of all Revolutions? Why do you want to depart from the role of legislators and for what, to become anti-clerics?”

-Sieyes isn’t alone. The nationalization of Church property causes a shift in opinion amongst parish priests and bishops alike. Remember how many early supporters of the Revolution were priests? Well, now that Church property is being seized, many previously liberal clerical delegates suddenly transform into arch-conservatives. Fearing that the clergy will use the power of the pulpit to turn the people against the Revolution, Talleyrand comes up with a solution. He pushes through an ordinance ordering priests, bishops, and abbots to read a statement directly from the pulpit in support of nationalization. If they don’t, they’ll be stripped of their active citizenship and risk losing their positions. As a carrot, the government promises to pay priests’ salaries out of the national treasury, but priests will lose their stipends if they fail to speak in favor of nationalization. To enforce this measure, tricolor-wearing officials are sent throughout France to supervise the reading of this statement. To make things harder on the Church, it can’t even credibly push back on this measure. French Kings, including most notably Louis XIV, had routinely ordered priests to read official government statements, so it’s not as if this is without legal precedent.

-From December 1789 through May 1790, 400 million livres of Church property are sold off to back the issuance of assignats, but in September of 1790, the Assembly orders a much larger sell-off to pay off the French national debt. This sale is supposed to raise an astounding 2 billion livres, but it doesn’t go as intended. The original sell-off had been spread out over the course of several months to avoid causing a crash in property prices. This had caused tension among poorer farmers, who had hoped to buy land to support their families, but were routinely outbid by professional real estate speculators. The new sell-off is slated to happen all at once, which floods the real estate market and causes a price crash, meaning that the new assignats aren’t worth as much on the international market and causing a bout of inflation that increases the cost of goods. Because of this inflation and France’s continued inability to pay off its national debt, Jacques Necker resigns, exiting the historical stage and quietly resuming life as a private banker. In retrospect, this fall from grace is to his benefit. When the Revolution starts to eat its own and Revolutionary leaders themselves begin getting guillotined, Necker is among the survivors.

-As the Revolution continues, the government will go on issuing new assignats, but they soon stop paying interest and abandon any pretense that the paper currency is backed by land. As a result, the currency keeps inflating, and by the end of the Revolution it’s basically worthless. The Assembly tries to mandate acceptance of the new currency and set a legally-required exchange rate for precious metals, but these measures are ignored. So rather than help the common man, the Revolution manages to make the economy worse than it was before the Estates General were called, and facilitates the creation of a black market and a corresponding breakdown in the rule of law. So keep in mind as we move forward that the French economy is in tatters, which means that pretty much everybody is on edge.

1790 is a much quieter year for the Revolution than 1789 was, which is a good thing for this show because otherwise we’d be talking about 1790 through the entirety of the next episode. But there are still some important developments, and those developments are mostly related to the Church and its relationship with the new Revolutionary government. By eliminating the tithe and seizing ecclesiastical lands, the Constituent Assembly has put itself in a peculiar position in a country that’s mostly Catholic and, as I keep saying, much more rural and conservative than the Parisian mobs. On the one hand, the government has successfully put a check on the high and mighty bishops of pre-revolutionary times. On the other hand, it’s clear that some kind of provision needs to be made for the Catholic Church. To this end, the Assembly takes a two-pronged approach.

        -It begins by cutting expenses. On December 17th 1789, the Assembly outlaws monastic vows, meaning that no new monks or nuns can be created. Then, on February 13th 1790, the Assembly suppresses religious orders altogether, releases existing monks and nuns from their vows, and tells them to get married and raise French families. The thinking here is that religious orders are relics of a bygone age and that they serve no purpose in the new Revolutionary order. By getting rid of them, the state no longer needs to worry about financially supporting them, and can add the old convents and monasteries to the list of Church properties to be sold. The Assembly can also do this without as much controversy as you might expect. After all, the religious orders are mostly separate from people’s day-to-day lives. If you’re the average French peasant, unless your particular village depends on a local monastery for its economy, you probably won’t even notice the abolition of the religious orders. There’s even some legal precedent; in 1749, Louis XV had suppressed the Jesuits and confiscated all of their property. I should note that there are some exceptions, too – some orders of teaching nuns, for example, are left intact because they provide a valuable public service.

        -Regardless, this still leaves the problem of how to manage parish priests as well as their bishops. With no Church tax and no more Church land to rent out, somebody is going to have to pay for the everyday functions of the Catholic Church. So, on July 12th 1790 the Constituent Assembly passes a sweeping law called the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which turns Catholic priests and bishops into civil servants and puts them on a government salary much like other civil servants.

        -I was going to take a deep dive into this law, but I read it and to be honest it’s incredibly boring. Much of it is dry organizational stuff. For example, the lines between dioceses are redrawn to correspond to France’s new 83 départements. There are also limits on how many churches there can be in smaller towns, which is meant to cut down on redundant parishes and resulting expenses. One particular measure is actually popular with the population – it requires bishops and curés, or priests who oversee a parish, to remain in their respective jurisdictions. For example, if a bishop wants to leave his diocese for more than 15 days, he needs to get special permission. This is meant to eliminate the old practice of handing out ecclesiastical titles to noblemen who oversee their dioceses like absentee landlords. Other parts of the Civil Constitution deal with mundane things like pay rates for active priests and retirement funds for those who have aged out of service.

        -Unfortunately for all involved, the Civil Constitution doesn’t stop there. Because bishops and curés are now to be classified as senior civil servants, those posts are now going to be filled by election, albeit with a grandfather clause for those who have been in position for many years. Not only that, but since these are civil posts belonging to all the French people, it’s not only Catholics who will be voting for high-ranking clergy. Protestants, Jews, and even atheists will also be able to vote, which means that adherence to Church doctrine is now less important than a priest or bishop’s overall popularity. As you can imagine, this doesn’t sit well with many French Catholics.

        -Another major problem is that the Civil Constitution forbids newly-elected bishops from requesting the Pope’s permission to assume their office. Instead, new bishops are required only to “inform” the Pope that they have taken office. This effectively creates a separate, parallel French church that’s independent from Rome in all but name. Then, on November 27th 1790, the Constituent Assembly requires all priests and bishops to take an oath of loyalty to the new government.

        -This is in line with Revolutionary practice, which requires all kinds of oaths for all kinds of positions. Talking about these oaths, Ian Davidson writes:

        “With the reform of the Church, the Revolutionaries went even further, in what was a serious political miscalculation. For they resolved that the clergy must be distinguished from all the civilian officials of the state by being required to take a specific oath of loyalty to the new regime. Both the bishops and the curés would now be called on to swear that they would ‘take care of the faithful of the diocese, and be faithful to the nation, to the law and to the King, and support with all their power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the King’. This specifically clerical oath created a tidal wave of problems, first for the Church and then even more, over the years ahead, for the Revolutionaries. It was the final blow to any hope of consensus among believers in France and led to a schism first in the Church and then, indirectly, in the rest of French society. For whereas civilian officials were required only to declare loyalty to the newly configured institutions of the civil state, the clergy were in effect being asked to renounce their long-standing commitment to the hierarchy, the principles and therefore the legitimacy of the Church.

“It is not at all clear how far the Revolutionaries appreciated, if at all, the risks of the step they were about to take. The explicit and practical penalty of not taking the oath of allegiance was that a curé or bishop would cease to be paid by the state, would no longer be authorised to conduct services or to lead a congregation and would therefore be unemployed. But the implicit and political consequences were much more serious. Any clergy who chose their loyalty to the Church and to their congregation over their loyalty to the Revolution would be judged to have chosen to oppose the Revolution and to be in revolt against the law. In the event, many of the curés and many of the congregations would remain faithful to each other, with or without an oath. The danger inherent in the compulsory oath of allegiance was that it had the capacity to alienate not just some part of the clergy but a substantial if unpredictable part of the churchgoing population of France, which was almost everybody.”

-Around half of French priests take the oath, but only seven out of 83 bishops, including Talleyrand, follow suit. These clergy come to be known as “juring” clergy, while those who refuse to take the oath are referred to as “non-juring” or “refractory” clergy. Then, on February 5th 1791, the Assembly bans all refractory priests from preaching in public.

-This is too much for Pope Pius VI, who until now has remained silent on the issue of the French Revolution. On April 13th 1791, he writes a letter called “On the Civil Oath in France.” In it, he condemns the election of senior Church leaders, along with the oath of office, and writes to non-juring priests in particular:

“We also address you, beloved sons, parish priests and curates, who in great numbers and firm virtue have performed your duty far differently from your colleagues who, overcome by weakness or swept away by the tide of ambition, have gone over to the service of error. We hope that these men will soon return to their duty on receiving Our admonition. Press on bravely with the work you have begun, and bear in mind that the appointment you received from your lawful bishops can be taken from you only by them. Consequently, even if you are removed from your place by the civil power, you will still always be the lawful pastors, in duty bound as far as you are able to keep off the thieves who try to sneak into your place with the sole aim of destroying the souls entrusted to your care, whose salvation you will have to account for.”

-By early 1791, French society is split down the middle. Even in small towns and villages, supporters of juring and non-juring priests throw rocks at each other. In many places, people attend masses held by non-juring priests in barns and other out-of-the-way locations, while churches run by the new juring priests are nearly empty. In other places, the new juring priests are accepted by the population, and the old non-juring priests go into exile, but this is the exception rather than the rule. In Paris, the Pope’s letter provokes a decidedly less conservative reaction; anti-clerical riots. Priests and nuns are dragged from their homes, and a severed head is thrown into the carriage of the Papal Ambassador as he drives down the street.

-For once, the Revolutionary government defers to the rural populace over the Paris mob. Faced with increasing public backlash, the Revolutionary government reverses itself a few weeks later, on May 7th 1791. It allows non-juring priests to resume preaching and saying Mass, provided they don’t preach against the Revolution or the Assembly. This won’t be the end of the struggle between the Church and the Revolution, but it will be the last we talk about it in this episode. For now, I want to go back and discuss the other events of 1790 and the first half of 1791, because while as I said the Revolution is no longer proceeding at the breakneck pace of 1789, the Constituent Assembly is still hard at work producing a new French Constitution, and the King is still a prisoner in all but name.

July 14th 1790 marks the one-year anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille, and a nationwide celebration is planned. Called the Fete de la Federation, or Festival of the Federation, this isn’t some far-left pro-Revolutionary festival. On the contrary, the main planning is done by the center-right Monarchiens, and the celebration is designed to emphasize national unity. While there are small events in towns and cities throughout France, the main event is held in Paris, with a central role for Louis XVI to emphasize the “monarchial” side of the new constitutional monarchy. The location is a huge open area called the Champ de Mars, meaning “Field of Mars.” This name is a reference to the Roman God of War, and for good reason. The Champ de Mars is located just in front of the French Military Academy, and is used as a training and drilling ground. It just so happens that it’s a big enough area for tens of thousands of people to gather.

-Over 14,000 National Guardsmen are present, gathered from around the country and marching in a grand parade led by Lafayette. Now, remember that the National Guard is made up of members of the bourgeoise, and those from outside Paris tend to be on the conservative side. So while hardcore monarchists are upset that the Fete de la Federation is celebrating the constitutional monarchy, leftist politicians are also upset. They’re worried that Lafayette and the King may use this large body of more conservative soldiers to launch a counter-coup against the Revolution. These fears are unfounded, though. So while the celebration irritates people on both the left and the right wings of French politics, for most people it’s a sign of French unity. This unity even manifests itself during the preparations. When civic workers are unable to get the Champ de Mars ready in time, the area is flooded with volunteers from all classes and all walks of life, who pitch in to get Paris ready for the big day.

-The ceremony begins with a blessing and a Mass said by none other than Talleyrand. As you may or may not remember, this is a guy who barely passed his seminary classes, so he trips up several times on the Latin, but the Champ de Mars is so large that only a few people close to the center stage can even hear what he’s saying. This is followed by an oath of loyalty from all members of the Constituent Assembly:

“We swear to be forever faithful to the Nation, to the Law and to the King, to uphold with all our might the Constitution as decided by the National Assembly and accepted by the King, and to remain united with all French people by the indissoluble bonds of brotherhood.”

-Louis XVI takes a similar oath, and swears it under the title of “King of the French,” once more underlining his status as King of the French people, not of his family’s ancestral dominions. This is followed by a series of delegations from foreign nations who have come to congratulate the French people on their yet-to-be-completed constitution. There’s the parade I talked about, followed by a massive feast where tens of thousands of people participate, mingling without regard to class or social status. To the casual observer, it seems like the Revolution has been a rousing success, and that France is now ready to settle down under the new order. Maybe some members of the Assembly even believe this.

        -But while the Fete de la Federation symbolizes national unity, division is already spreading under the surface. Remember how I said that the old political clubs don’t function like modern-day political parties? Well, that’s starting to change. When delegates from around France had first come to Paris to serve in the Estates General, delegates from the same parts of the country had tended to rent housing together. Now, there are geographical divisions in 18th-century France, much like the red state-blue state divide in modern America. But also like in modern America, it’s easy to read too much into those geographic divides. There are conservative enclaves in liberal areas and vice-versa, so while people have been bunking up with other delegates from their region, they’ve invariably been dining, speaking, and generally rubbing shoulders with delegates who have different political views. This has helped to moderate both the far right and far left and allowed the Assembly to compromise on several constitutional questions.

        -But as the Estates General turned into the National Assembly, which turned into the Constitutent Assembly, and as the calendar has advanced more than a year since all of this got started, the delegates have sought out more permanent housing solutions. All too often, this has meant rooming with other delegates not on a regional basis, but on the basis of their political views. This, in turn, leads to the rise of what we might call political parties. The most famous and enduring of these is the former Breton Club, which has been re-branded as the Jacobin Club. We’ve already discussed them in the last episode, but by the middle of 1790 the Jacobins are not only the largest political party but also the most organized. In addition to their main Paris branch, there are more than 150 affiliate branches located throughout France, which gives them the unique ability to coordinate policies on both the national and provincial level. The most famous members include the Abbe Sieyes, Antoine Barnave, Robespierre, and Georges Danton, a representative of Paris’ radical Cordeliers district who we haven’t met yet, but who we’ll get to in due time.

        -The second-largest political party is the Patriotic Society of 1789, founded in May of 1790 by more moderate members of the Breton Club. Its members include Lafayette, the Comte de Mirabeau, Talleyrand, and Jean Sylvain Bailly, the Mayor of Paris. I should also mention the hard right Augustinian Club, which opposes the Revolution altogether and favors a return to full monarchy. Unfortunately, because these guys are anti-Revolutionary, they don’t keep written records, and because their members are almost all high-ranking nobility, they don’t bother publishing any pamphlets or articles. In other words, I don’t have much to say about them other than that they exist – at least for the time being.

        -At this time, the members of the Constituent Assembly haven’t just sorted themselves into political parties. They’ve physically separated themselves in the hall of the Assembly itself, with the liberals sitting on the left, the moderates in the center, and the conservatives on the right. This symbolic left-right political axis has remained to the present day in our political discourse, with progressive and conservative politicians referred to as “left” and “right” respectively. In fact, I don’t know how it works in other countries, but if you pay attention during the American State of the Union Address, you’ll notice that the Republicans sit on the right side of the Capitol and the Democrats sit on the left.

All of this to say that despite the apparent national unity symbolized by the Fete de la Federation, the French Revolution is far from over. Already, there’s trouble brewing in the countryside, and it doesn’t even have anything directly to do with France’s left-right divide. It has to do with the budgetary crisis that’s been going on all this time, as well as those emigrees I talked about – the nobles and other mostly upper-class folks who have been fleeing France.

        -The Comte D’Artois and others have been lobbying foreign powers to send their armies to restore the French monarchy. The problem is that none of the other European powers have much appetite for war. The British are still in debt from the American Revolution and as far as they’re concerned, any disorder in France can only work to their benefit. The Prussians under Friedrich Wilhelm II and the Austrians under Leopold II have just signed the Treaty of Reichenbach, which has established peace in Eastern Europe. Neither one has any reason to get involved in France, and despite being Marie Antoinette’s brother, Leopold II is actually in favor of a French constitutional monarchy. He’s an Enlightenment kind of guy, and sees most Revolutionary reforms as being good for the French people. Now, Revolutionary France will eventually go to war with most of Europe, but for the time being the emigrees aren’t able to convince anyone to intervene.

        -As is often the case, reality is less important than perception. The mere threat of foreign intervention has many in the Revolutionary government terrified, so it’s imperative to keep strong military units along the frontier to deter any kind of attack. One of these important frontier garrisons is in the city of Nancy in northeastern France, not far from the Prussian frontier. The Nancy garrison consists of three regiments: the Regiment du Roi, or King’s Regiment, a second regiment consisting of French cavalry, and the Régiment de Châteauvieux, one of twelve Swiss mercenary regiments in the French army, who are considered the most reliable since they fight for money and have no dog in the Revolutionary fight.

        -In August of 1790, the Regiment du Roi mutinies due to a lack of pay. They arrest the garrison’s quartermaster and commanding officer, who they suspect of stealing funds, and they seize the pay chest, which as you might expect holds all of the garrison’s salaries. Some members of the Swiss Régiment de Châteauvieux join the mutiny, which is then put down by loyal Swiss soldiers as well as the French cavalry regiment. But then the Swiss officers punish their mutineers by forcing them to run the gauntlet. Basically, the rebellious soldiers have to run between rows of loyal soldiers who beat them and whip them. It’s considered a severe punishment at the time, although it does allow the men to avoid the death penalty.

        -Regardless, the sight of these unpaid men being forced to run the gauntlet sparks a renewed mutiny, which is now joined by the French cavalry, so there are no longer any loyal troops in Nancy. Worse, there’s always the risk that this local mutiny could spread to other garrisons and turn into a full-on revolt. To prevent this, the Constituent Assembly calls on General François Claude de Bouillé, commander of the nearby city of Metz, to put down the revolt. He marches to Nancy at the head of 4,500 army and National Guard troops, and arrives there on August 31st.

        -Rather than put down the mutiny by force, de Bouillé draws up his troops outside the city and demands that the mutineers turn over four men who had led the mutiny and release their captive officers. The mutineers initially accept this offer, but there are a few holdouts who block de Bouillé’s troops by positioning a cannon under a stone arch. A soldier from the Regiment du Roi steps in front of the cannon to convince the other mutineers to stand down, but there’s a miscommunication and somebody shoots him, after which the cannon is fired, killing dozens of de Bouillé’s men who are drawn up just a few yards away. All order breaks down and the two sides start fighting, and after a few hours and more than 500 deaths, de Bouillé’s men are victorious.

        -This incident, known to history as the Nancy Affair, is important for a few reasons. For one thing, it establishes de Bouillé as one of the leading royalist officers, loyal to the King before all others. There’s even a line in La Marseilles condemning him. But it also leads to a breakdown of discipline in the army. The French mutineers go virtually unpunished, while the Swiss officers literally go medieval on their rebellious troops – dozens are sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor, while the mutineers’ leader is broken on the wheel, a punishment that’s banned in France because it’s excessively cruel. This leads to protests from radicals in the Assembly and in the public, and the Swiss mutineers who have been sentenced to hard labor ultimately go free. The end result is that only the guy who was broken on the wheel suffers any real punishment, and mutinies among the underpaid frontier troops become the rule rather than the exception. At the same time, the lack of discipline is demoralizing to officers, and at this time all of the French officer corps is made up of noblemen, and many of them simply decide to leave the country and become emigrees, which further denudes the army’s readiness.

From mid-1790 through mid-1791, France quiets down a bit. Instead of one constant, sweeping wave of change, it’s best to think of the French Revolution as a series of waves with lulls between them, and this is one of those lulls. That’s not to say nothing is happening – the Constituent Assembly is still hard at work writing a new Constitution, and we’ll get to that in the next episode. For now, it’s time for hardworking politicians to design the nuts and bolts of a new French system. For the more ambitious politicians, it’s time to rub shoulders with social elites and jockey for status. And nobody does that better than Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, the Comte de Mirabeau. The smallpox-scarred bear of a man, the great orator of the early revolution, is trying desperately to keep the disparate political parties on task. Maybe he’s the only one who can do it; it certainly seems that way.

-At heart, Mirabeau is on the center-left. A member of the Patriotic Society of 1789, he believes in the Revolution and in reforming the French nation. At the same time, he fears the far-left Jacobins and what they might do to the country. Although, ever the pragmatist, Mirabeau is also a member of the Jacobin Club and even briefly serves as its president – a testimony to just how influential and complicated a man he is. Returning to Will and Ariel Durant:

        “…he felt that a coalition of King and Assembly was the only alternative to rule by leaders of the mob; and he saw no contradiction in pursuing this policy and replenishing his funds. As far back as September 28, 1789, he had written to his friend La Marck: ‘All is lost. The King and Queen will be swept away, and you will see the populace triumphing over their helpless bodies.’ And to the same friend, on October 7: ‘If you have any influence with the King or the Queen, persuade them that they and France are lost if the royal family does not leave Paris. I am busy with a plan for getting them away.’ Louis rejected the plan, but he consented to finance Mirabeau’s defense of the monarchy. Early in May, 1790, he agreed to pay the great adventurer’s debts, to allow him $1,000 a month, and to reward him with $192,000 if he succeeded in reconciling the Assembly with the King. In August the Queen gave him a private interview in her gardens at St. Cloud. So great was the aura of majesty that the dragon of rebellion trembled with devotion when he kissed her hand. To his intimates he spoke of her ecstatically: ‘You know not the Queen. Her force of mind is prodigious. She is a man for courage.’”

        -In other words, while Mirabeau is helping write the new Constitution and leading the Constituent Assembly, he’s also on the payroll of the royal family. This isn’t some ethical grey area – it’s downright illegal. The Constituent Assembly has already ruled that no-one who serves in the Assembly can serve as part of the executive branch, and vice-versa. But no matter

        -As I said, Mirabeau is a pragmatist. He helps run Necker out of town, and is working on a plan to have the King call for new elections for a new National Assembly, on the condition that new delegates must actually reside in the districts they represent. The idea here is to moderate the Revolution by preventing a bunch of Paris radicals from getting elected as representatives of far-flung districts, which has so far been the case. Mirabeau is also well aware that the Revolutionaries have already bitten off more than they can chew, and that it may be impossible to satisfy all the people. On the issue of taxes, he writes:

        “…the people have been promised more than can be promised; they have been given hopes that it will be impossible to realize; they have been allowed to shake off a yoke which it will be impossible to restore and even if there should be fine retrenchments and economies… the expenses of the new regime will actually be heavier than the old, and in the last analysis the people will judge the revolution by this fact alone – does it take more or less money? Are they better off? Do they have more work? And is that work better paid?”

        -This isn’t to say that Mirabeau is a conservative. He believes in many of the Revolution’s principles, and writes the following in a letter to King Louis:

        “To attack the Revolution would be to overshoot the mark, for the movement that makes a great people give itself better laws deserves support…. Both the spirit of the Revolution and many elements in its constitution must be accepted…. I regard all the effects of the Revolution … as conquests so irrevocable that no upheaval, short of dismembering the realm, could destroy them.”

        -It’s interesting to think of what might have happened, had Mirabeau been able to shepherd France into the era of a new constitution. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. On March 25th 1791, the inveterate philanderer spends the night with not one but two dancers from the Paris opera. Two days later, he experiences violent abdominal cramps, and though he tries to go on with business, he collapses on the floor at his friend La Marck’s house. He’s representing La Marck in a legal case, and manages to recover for a bit by downing a bottle of expensive wine, although the members of the Assembly note that his voice is uncharacteristically soft, his skin is pale, and he’s dripping with sweat. A few days later, on April 2nd 1791, Mirabeau is dead at just 42 years of age.

        -The next day, the Constituent Assembly orders the Church of St. Genevieve to be converted into a new mausoleum, which is to be named the “Pantheon” after the ancient Roman temple to “all the gods” – in this case, meaning all the gods or heroes of France. A few years later, when his backroom dealings with the monarchy come to light, the Revolutionary government will unceremoniously have his remains removed and buried in an unmarked grave.

        -Even after Mirabeau’s death, the Revolution will continue for a while along a more conservative path, culminating with the June 14th 1791 passage of the Le Chapelier Law, named after the bill’s sponsor, Assembly member Isaac René Guy le Chapelier. The Le Chapelier Law represents a marriage of sorts between all businessmen and members of the bourgeoisie, whether they’re of common blood or noble. It outright bans guilds and the right of workers to strike, effectively forcing workers to accept whatever pay they’re offered without the right to unionize. Will and Ariel Durant sum up this bourgeoisie takeover nicely:

        “When, after two years of revolution, the Constituent Assembly had become supreme, it abolished feudalism, confiscated the property of the Church, and legalized the organization of merchants, but forbade all organizations or gatherings of workingmen.”

Whether this is good or bad for the monarchy is an open question – probably neither, although a more conservative government is by nature more likely to favor some kind of King. We’ll never know for sure, though, because it’s at this point that the Revolution takes another unexpected turn. By the middle of 1791, the royal family has effectively been trapped in the Tuileries Palace for a year and a half. There have been rumors of a pending royal escape for some time, but two events convince Louis XVI that it’s time to get out of France.

        -In February of 1791, two of his elderly aunts try to make a pilgrimage to Rome. I say “try” because they’re stopped at the border by Revolutionary officials, who suspect them of trying to join the emigrees in some plot and haul them back to Paris. Things are eventually cleared up and they’re allowed to leave, but this is the first time a member of the royal family has been officially placed in custody.

        -Then, on April 18th, the King and his family try to go to his suburban house in Saint-Cloud to celebrate Easter. But rumors get out that the King is going to make his Confession to a non-juring priest, and because non-juring priests are banned at this time, this means that Louis is breaking the law. It’s worth noting that this rumor is probably true. Whatever else they may be, Louis and Marie Antoinette are both devout Catholics, and both have been avoiding the juring priests that hang around the Tuileries. Anyway, a mob forms up at the palace gates and refuses to let them leave. Lafayette shows up with some members of the National Guard and attempts to clear a path, but once again the National Guard sides with the mob and refuses to follow his orders. The gates remain blocked, and the royal couple spends the Easter holiday in Paris.

        -Historians still debate when Louis and Marie Antoinette decide to leave France for good. After the death of Mirabeau on April 2nd, there’s no-one the King can count on to help establish a stable constitutional monarchy. For this reason, some historians say that the April 18th trip to Saint-Cloud to celebrate Easter was just a smokescreen, and that they were going to make a run for the border as soon as they got out of the city. If you ask me, it’s the events of April 18th themselves that make it clear that Revolutionary France is no longer safe.

        -Regardless, Louis has been in communication with his brother, the Comte d’Artois, who is in exile. Artois is trying to rally other European monarchs to raise an army to restore the French Monarchy, although he’s eased off a bit since Louis has asked him not to provoke the Revolutionaries. At the same time, Marie Antoinette has been in communication with her brother, Leopold II of Austria, trying to get him to rally an army, although as we’ve already discussed Leopold has no desire to get involved in another war in France.

        -Now we run into another conspiracy theory. After the mob stops the royal family from leaving Paris on April 18th, Marie Antoinette writes another letter to Leopold asking for help. In the past, Leopold’s responses have been consistent: “Get safely out of France, and maybe we can talk about it.” But this time, the response is totally different: Leopold’s letter says that he and the Comte d’Artois are raising an army to help, and that the royal family should stay put in Paris where they’ll be safe. But Marie Antoinette believes the letter to be fake, and tells Louis that they need to get out of Paris at once. For a long time, historians believed the letter to be genuine and thought that Marie Antoinette was just being paranoid, but in the late 1800s, it was proven that the letter was indeed a forgery. So, who wrote the letter?

        -Well, we don’t really know, but we have a clue. See, at the time the letter is written, Leopold is in the city of Mantua with none other than the Comte d’Artois, as well as Artois’ advisor Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who had been Finance Minister during the Affair of the Diamond Necklace but had been fired by Louis and has now been in exile for several years. Well, Calonne is still angry at Louis for firing him, and d’Artois is Louis’ younger brother. If Calonne and other emigrees are able to put together an invasion, even an ill-planned and abortive one, and the royal family remains in Paris, it’s likely that the Paris mob will tear Louis and his family to shreds. This could potentially leave d’Artois as the next French King, with Calonne sitting pretty as his chief advisor.

        -Like I said, there’s no way to know for sure. But whatever the reason, Marie Antoinette gets this forged letter telling the royal family to stay put, and tells Louis that they need to leave France right this second. Louis, in turn, lays the groundwork for their escape with a little subterfuge of his own. He sends out a bunch of letters to various European monarchs, publicly telling them that he endorses the Revolution and is proud to stand at its head. Then, he sends secret letters to those same monarchs renouncing the public letters and stating that he opposes the Revolution.

This sets the stage for one of the most famous events of the French Revolution: the Flight to Varennes. The plan is simple. The royal family will leave the Tuileries Palace in the dead of night and travel 200 miles to the border town of Montmedy, near the Austrian Netherlands – modern-day Belgium. There, Louis and his family will be surrounded by six Swiss and German army regiments who can keep them safe from any attempt by the Revolutionaries to recapture them. This will put Louis in a strong position to negotiate his place in the new constitutional order. If necessary, it will also put him within easy reach of Austrian troops. If Marie Antoinette can convince Leopold to intervene, Louis may be able to overthrow the Revolutionary government altogether.

        -Given the situation, it’s impossible for the royal family to travel openly, so they decide to engage in a bit of subterfuge. The royal children’s governess, the Marquise de Tourzel, dresses up as a Russian Baroness, and the royal children pretend to be her children. Marie Antoinette, meanwhile, dresses down and takes on the role of governess, while Louis himself pretends to be a valet. The hope is that the Revolutionaries won’t interfere with a Russian aristocrat, and no-one will look too closely at her “servants.” A Swedish military officer and friend of Marie Antoinette’s named Axel Fersen has arranged a carriage for them, and the loyal General Bouillé – the guy who put down the mutinous troops in the Nancy Affair – stations small groups of cavalry along the planned route. As the carriage travels towards Montmedy, the cavalry will join with it to provide protection.

        -There are two major flaws in this plan. To begin with Axel Ferson had tried to convince the royal family to travel in a pair of light, fast carriages, but the Queen rejected the plan. Marie Antoinette insists on traveling in a large luxury coach so they can all sit together. But this coach is slow and lumbering, with a top speed of about seven miles per hour. And not unlike a modern luxury car, it’s bound to attract attention in rural France. Imagine some rich guy slow-rolling through a blue-collar Appalachian town in a Bentley and you won’t be far off the mark. The other flaw is the cavalry escort. Coordinating several small groups across 200 miles of road is iffy at best in a time where communication travels at the speed of a horse, and the entire plan relies on stealth to begin with. A cavalry escort, much like a luxury coach, is bound to attract attention even if communications go smoothly.

        -The escape begins on the evening of June 20th 1791. With the palace grounds closely watched, the coach has to wait on a nearby street. The children and their governess are able to simply walk out of the grounds, but the King and the Queen have to be sneaky. Louis dresses up in a green jacket to look like a nobleman named the Chevalier de Coigny. De Coigny is in on the plot, had been wearing the jacket on his evening walk for a few weeks now. Since one guy in a powdered wig and green jacket looks much like another, nobody bothers to stop Louis as he walks briskly out of the palace grounds. Marie Antoinette has a harder time, though. As she’s making her escape, she runs into none other than the Marquis de Lafayette, who is making his nightly patrol around the Tuileries. To avoid him, she turns down an alley, and soon becomes lost. She eventually finds her way out, but the half-hour delay puts the coach behind schedule.

        -The royal party changes coaches outside the Paris city limits, and stops periodically along the way to change horses. Everything appears to be going smoothly, so instead of sticking to the plan, the King and Queen start to get careless, no doubt trusting in the good will of their more conservative rural subjects. Along the way, Louis – still posing as a valet – has a friendly chat with some peasants while the horses are being changed, apparently unconcerned that anyone might recognize him. A little further on, Marie Antoinette gifts some silver dishes to a local official, a display of wealth that’s sure to draw as many stares as the luxury coach.

        -They arrive at the city of Châlons, already more than an hour behind schedule, where the local postmaster recognizes Marie Antoinette. Thankfully, he’s a loyalist, so he keeps quiet, but he does have his wife bring a gift of consommé – a fancy local soup – to the King and Queen. Trying to make up lost time, the coach leaves town at excessive speed, or around ten miles an hour. As it rounds a corner onto a bridge, one of the wheels strikes a post, bringing the coach to a sudden stop and causing the horses to snap the straps that attach them to the front. The repairs take about half an hour, so instead of making up time the excessive speed has actually slowed them down.

        -A few miles ahead, at the town of Pont de Somme-Vesle, the first of Bouillé’s cavalry are waiting to form an escort with the royal party. By 4:30 in the afternoon, the King and Queen are already two hours late, and the locals are getting restless. They think the cavalry are in town to collect taxes, and while the commander has assured them that they’re just hanging around to escort some “treasure,” he’s starting to get nervous. Eventually, he sends a rider ahead to the next town to warn the cavalry there that something has gone wrong and that the plan has failed. He waits around in Pont de Somme-Vesle for another hour, but around 5:30 he and his men leave.

        -An hour later, at 6:30, the royal coach rolls into town. It’s June 21st, the longest day of the year, so it’s still broad daylight. By now, word has arrived from Paris that the King and Queen have escaped the Tuileries, and there are National Guard units looking for them, and I can only imagine all the locals staring at the big fancy coach as it lumbers along the main road. I can only imagine how nervous Louis and Marie Antoinette must be, noticing the shift in tone and the absence of their planned cavalry escort.

        -A few miles down the road, at the town of Sainte-Menehould, the local National Guard has already disarmed a party of royal dragoons, and is out in the surrounding country searching for the royal party. They don’t spot the King or Queen, but somebody does – another postmaster, a guy named Drouet, who had once seen Marie Antoinette during his service in the army. Drouet is a quick-thinking guy, and pulls a 50-assignat note from his pocket, which has the picture of King Louis printed on it, and notices that the valet on the coach looks just like the guy whose face is on the money.

        -Like I said, the local National Guard is out of town, so Drouet doesn’t say anything at the moment. Instead, he tails the royal carriage 40 miles to the town of Varennes, stopping along the way to raise the alarm and alert pro-Revolutionary National Guardsmen. At Varennes, the royal party tries to meet up with their planned cavalry escort and change horses, but there’s some confusion. The commander of the escort had received a message that the plan was off, so he’d already dismissed his men, who are now out carousing in the local taverns. Around 10:30, he gets word that Louis and Marie Antoinette are coming after all, and he tries to round up his men, but by the time they arrive around 11 o’clock, he’s barely gathered a handful of soldiers.

        -Simon Schama writes:

        “By the time that Louis arrived at Varennes in search of fresh horses and the elusive escort, he had been overtaken on a back route by the postmaster, who, as an ex-dragoon, could ride hard and fast. A general alert had been raised and, with the mayor absent, the coach was stopped by the local procureur, [Monsieur] Sauce. Papers which seemed to be in order were examined. It was only Drouet’s insistence that they were indeed the King and Queen and that letting them through was tantamount to treason that changed Sauce’s mind. The town was now wide awake, crowds with torches and local guardsmen with rifles at the ready filling the cobbled streets. Sauce had the party wait in his house, from which he sold candles and provisions. They were given an upstairs bedroom, in which the exhausted children were put to bed. At around midnight an elderly juge de paix, [Monsieur] Destez, who had lived at Versailles, was led in. Looking aghast and overwhelmed by the King’s presence, he instinctively fell on his knee. ‘Eh bien,’ responded Louis, ‘I am indeed your King.’”

        -Condemned out of his own mouth, Louis is taken into custody, along with the Queen and the royal children. The royal family is then forced to return to Paris under guard, where they’re met by a silent crowd that says nothing, only stares at them ominously. No calls for anyone’s head. No cheers of “Long live the King.” Just stone-cold silence. Ian Davidson writes:

        “The King was relieved of all his functions while the National Assembly worked out what to do with him. From every point of view, his position was now not just anomalous but untenable; but the Revolutionaries were in a frenzy of uncertainty over the alternatives. There was a wave of demands from different parts of the country for the King to be put on trial but, paradoxically, few demands, at least at first, for him to be deposed or for the establishment of a Republic. For the moment, most of the members of the National Assembly could see no good alternative to the monarchy, and they were deeply anxious not to upset the Constitution, which they were in the last stages of elaborating. So they chose to pretend that the King had been kidnapped by a conspiracy of aristocrats led by the Marquis de Bouillé.

“This was quite difficult to believe, since Louis, on his departure from Paris, had left behind a Déclaration du roi adressée à tous les Français, [that’s a Declaration from the King to all of the French] in which he said that he was ‘revolted to see the anarchy and the despotism of the clubs which dominated the Assembly’ and that he wanted to put himself and his family in safety. But the official line from the Revolutionaries, however implausible, was made easier to swallow by the fact that Bouillé himself, on learning of the failure of the King’s flight, crossed the frontier into Luxembourg and from there wrote a letter to the National Assembly in which he took responsibility for the ‘kidnapping’. The Assembly endorsed this fiction and declared that Louis had been the innocent victim of an abduction; on July 16 it restored him to all his functions as a constitutional monarch, on condition that he accept the Constitution when it was presented to him; and from this moment it became illegal to call for a trial of the King or for his replacement as the head of state.

“The news of this decision triggered angry protests among the working classes, who were suffering poverty and rising unemployment and felt that the King had betrayed them. One factor behind this rising unemployment was the emigration of their employers and customers, many of whom were aristocrats; after the debacle of the King’s flight to Varennes, this emigration accelerated, especially among army officers. By the end of 1791, some 6,000 officers, or about half the entire officer corps, had left the country.”

And so, the kabuki theater continues. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are under house arrest, except they’re totally not under house arrest. The King is sovereign, except he’s totally not sovereign, bound by the rules of a Constitution that has yet to be presented to him. France lives under the rule of law, except it’s totally not the rule of law – it’s whatever the Paris mob wants it to be, a society held together only by the lies agreed to by the Assembly and the King.

Of course, this will never last. Next time, we’ll talk about the mob’s reaction to the Flight to Varennes, a riot that nearly destroys Paris, forces Mayor Bailly to retire, and pushes Lafayette politically further to the right. France will finally get its constitution before launching a pre-emptive war with Austria, and almost fails due to turmoil in the military. The radicals’ power in the government will grow, pushing liberals to the right and forcing many conservatives out of the Revolutionary government altogether. And with the rise of the radicals will come the guillotine, to finally claim the life of Louis XVI. All that and more in the next episode of Relevant History.

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS LINKED FROM: https://www.DanTolerPodcast.com/