Precursors to the French Revolution

[mick063]

Pre-revolution
Financial crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back.Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a financial crisis; the state was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income.<7> This was because of France’s financial obligations stemming from involvement in the Seven Years War and its participation in the American Revolutionary War.<8> In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after he failed to enact reforms. The next year, Jacques Necker, a foreigner, was appointed Comptroller-General of Finance. He could not be made an official minister because he was a Protestant.<9>

Necker realized that the country's extremely regressive tax system subjected the lower classes to a heavy burden,<9> while numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy.<10> He argued that the country could not be taxed higher; that tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy must be reduced; and proposed that borrowing more money would solve the country's fiscal shortages. Necker published a report to support this claim that underestimated the deficit by roughly 36 million livres, and proposed restricting the power of the parlements.<9>

This was not received well by the King's ministers and Necker, hoping to bolster his position, argued to be made a minister. The King refused, Necker was fired, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed to the Comptrollership.<9> Calonne initially spent liberally, but he quickly realized the critical financial situation and proposed a new tax code.<11>

The proposal included a consistent land tax, which would include taxation of the nobility and clergy. Faced with opposition from the parlements, Calonne organised the summoning of the Assembly of Notables. But the Assembly failed to endorse Calonne's proposals and instead weakened his position through its criticism. In response, the King announced the calling of the Estates-General for May 1789, the first time the body had been summoned since 1614. This was a signal that the Bourbon monarchy was in a weakened state and subject to the demands of its people.<12>

[mick063]

1. So what happened after that?

The peasants rose up to seek justice.

Their form of Justice?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine

Reign of Terror

Francisco de Goya – The French Penalty.The period from June 1793 to July 1794 in France is known as the Reign of Terror or simply "the Terror". The upheaval following the overthrow of the monarchy, invasion by foreign monarchist powers and the Revolt in the Vendée combined to throw the nation into chaos and the government into frenzied paranoia. Most of the democratic reforms of the revolution were suspended and large-scale executions by guillotine began. The first political prisoner to be executed was Collenot d'Angremont of the National Guard, followed soon after by the King's trusted collaborator in his ill-fated attempt to moderate the Revolution, Arnaud de Laporte, both in 1792. Former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793. Maximilien Robespierre became one of the most powerful men in the government, and the figure most associated with the Terror. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced thousands to the guillotine. Nobility and commoners, intellectuals, politicians and prostitutes, all were liable to be executed on little or no grounds; suspicion of "crimes against liberty" was enough to earn one an appointment with "Madame Guillotine" or "The National Razor". Estimates of the death toll range between 16,000 and 40,000.<14>

At this time, Paris executions were carried out in the Place de la Revolution (former Place Louis XV and current Place de la Concorde); the guillotine stood in the corner near the Hôtel Crillon where the statue of Brest can be found today.


Public guillotining in Lons-le-Saunier, 1897. Picture taken on 20 April 1897, in front of the jailhouse of Lons-le-Saunier, Jura. The man who was going to be beheaded was Pierre Vaillat, who killed two elder siblings on Christmas Day, 1896, in order to rob them and was condemned for his crimes on 9 March 1897.For a time, executions by guillotine were a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors would sell programs listing the names of those scheduled to die. Many people would come day after day and vie for the best locations from which to observe the proceedings; knitting female citizens (tricoteuses) formed a cadre of hardcore regulars, inciting the crowd as a kind of anachronistic cheerleaders. Parents would bring their children. By the end of the Terror, the crowds had thinned drastically. Excessive repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.

Eventually, the National Convention had enough of the Terror, partially fearing for their own lives, and turned against Maximilien Robespierre. In July 1794, he was arrested and executed in the same fashion as those whom he had condemned. This arguably ended the Terror, as the French expressed their discontent with Robespierre's policy by guillotining him.<15>

[mick063]

2. Send these two links to any 1%er or crazy idealogue

There is a reason Glenn Beck said "They will drag you out of your house and kill you".

I sent him the links. ;)

[Brigid]

21. Let us know what kind of response you get.

;)

[JackRiddler]

3. That is not what happened next. That is what happened four years later...

after the king attempted to dissolve the Estates, the Assembly convened in response, the people of Paris rose up and empowered the Assembly, a constitutional monarchy was established, enormous reforms were enacted to secure the rights of the people, a large part of the nobles and the church joined the military attack on France by a coalition of reactionary powers led by Austria, and the king was found to be collaborating with this attack and its agenda of restoring absolutism and massacring the revolutionaries. The Terror (which note: I do not support) came to power in the midst of France being invaded by foreign armies, and succeeded in mobilizing sufficient force to defend against the invasion. It didn't really come down from the peasants, as you say, but from radical lawyers in Paris. Its fall was followed by an even greater terror the next year, but no longer directed against the nobility. I find it interesting how much staying power this atrocity among the many committed by multiple sides still has in historical memory, because so many of the necks being chopped belonged to aristocrats.

[malthaussen]

4. I was just making the same points...

... but for some reason, the post didn't take.

I suggest that for a better understanding of the French Revolution, one should read Lefebvre and Schama, which is probably too much work for the average citizen. But really, so much water went under so many bridges between the calling of the Estates and the chopping off of heads. It is always the extreme violence that catches the limelight.

-- Mal

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Well you know how it goes

if it bleeds it leads

:-)

[mick063]

6. perhaps it didn't happen next.

but it was the ultimate outcome and describes how periously fragile the state was for such a result to happen.

[malthaussen]

7. How is the Terror the "ultimate outcome?"

One might just as well argue that the First Empire was the "ultimate" outcome. One might just as well argue that we do not yet know the "ultimate" outcome of the Revolution -- as Chairman Mao argued. To call the Terror the "ultimate outcome" is to draw an arbitrary line because it suits your narrative.

-- Mal

[mick063]

13. it indeed suits my narrative.

The chronolgy cannot be ignored. History cannot be revised.

A strong democratic state with a healthy "middle class" would not fall into a "regin of terror". Enlighten me of a precedent.

This isn't a focus upon a downward spiral of violence. This is a focus upon a fragile, weakend state where aggressive neighbors see opportunity and extreme political groups rise to power. This is a warning of what could happen if the morally correct are not vigilant. Far from a "call to arms", it is a call for taking the moral "high ground" at all costs. The "Reign of Terror" is a warning and meant to shock your senses. It displays a possible path if the inital "vision" is not properly maintained. Freedom requires constant vigilance. Especially when the state is crippled.

[malthaussen]

16. History cannot be revised?

It happens all the time. "History" is not primarily concerned with facts, it is concerned with interpretation. Interpretations change about as often as one set of long-hairs changes coats with another. Facts are the groundwork upon which interpretation is based. They have no interpretive value in and of themselves.

As it happens, we do not disagree that "a strong democratic state with a healthy 'middle class' would not fall into a 'reign of terror.'" I don't see where I made that assertion.

I am calling you out on the juxtaposition of the financial and constitutional crisis with the Terror, which by ignoring intervening events creates the impression that the latter is a necessary consequence of the former. I suggest that your statement that the juxtaposition is "meant to shock your senses" says all that is necessary about your motives.

-- Mal

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. (a) that quote is attributed to Zhou Enlai, not Mao

and (b), while checking that, I find out it's now said to have been a misunderstanding of his opinion of the 1968 Paris riots, not the 1789 French Revolution - which turns it from a witty, perhaps wise, saying, to an un-notable aside. :(

The trouble is that Zhou was not referring to the 1789 storming of the Bastille in a discussion with Richard Nixon during the late US president’s pioneering China visit. Zhou’s answer related to events only three years earlier – the 1968 students’ riots in Paris, according to Nixon’s interpreter at the time.

At a seminar in Washington to mark the publication of Henry Kissinger’s book, On China, Chas Freeman, a retired foreign service officer, sought to correct the long-standing error.

“I distinctly remember the exchange. There was a mis­understanding that was too delicious to invite correction,” said Mr Freeman.

He said Zhou had been confused when asked about the French Revolution and the Paris Commune. “But these were exactly the kinds of terms used by the students to describe what they were up to in 1968 and that is how Zhou understood them.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74916db6-938d-11e0-922e-00144feab49a.html

And, to cap it all, that article ends:

The oft-quoted Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, does not exist in China itself, scholars say.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. There were so many points on the way to the Terror

where it could have not happened it is not even funny.

The American Revolution did NOT lead to a terror, neither did the far more recent Mexican Revolution...

There was some terror during the Central American Wars but that came from the state.

A revolution does not automatically mean guillotines.

[mick063]

15. I like your argument.

I agree with your premise.

I think two thing are important.

1) The greedy perpetrators understand the potential for a "Reign of Terror"
2) The pacifist revolutionarys, within the confines of democracy, understand the potential for a "Reign of Terror"

For one group, I want them to understand their vulnerability for reprisal. For the other group, I want them to understand the potential for emotion leading to moral corruption.

You are right. The outcome is not inevitable, but there is a path for it to happen.

Not everyone in the country has the intellectual curiosity to understand cause and effect. More than ever, we are a society of instant gratification. Combined with anger, a dangerous combination. The leaders of the movement must focus upon their ranks with as much vigor as they focus upon the perpetrators. We must police ourselves with consensus, educate those that do not understand, and publically admonish those that subvert from within.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. The path is set usually by those who try to

destroy the revolution.

By the way, India did not lead to one either, though it did lead to a few horrors, (with the minority Muslim) that up to today are a flashpoint and a second country Pakistan.

By the way MOST revolutions are NOT violent... but usually happen at far less levels of threats of violence or violent overthrow.

The US right now MEETS all conditions for a revolution, so in some ways the ball in the court of those who hold the tools of state power as to how it ultimately develops.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

31. I don't have a degree in history

Maybe you could educate me on a few points but it seems to me that the comparison between the French revolution and the American one is not easy.

The noble class in France was endemic to the society and culture and had been over centuries. In America, there was no class of American dukes and counts demanding fealty to their local rights based on centuries of usage. Americans in fact fled the tyranny of the crown to seek religious and economic freedom. Of course the Yankees were subjected to onerous taxes and press censorship but they had come seeking land and a certain amount of independence away from a power structure whereby the local noble carefully managed his lands being cultivated by his peasants over whom he often had the power of life and death. If the colonists could defeat King George's armies, the danger of a class of local American nobles ordering their subjects to quell the rebellion was non-existent. Most Yankees were content tilling their fields and living the lives of petty bourgeois or self-reliant farmers.

France had a national church that had for centuries acted against any heresy challenging the doctrine of the church or the crown by the power of excommunication and the declaration of extremely bloody crusades aginst the infringers. The divine right of the King to govern had been drilled into the heads of the faithful for centuries as well as the bloody reprisals that would follow any disobedience. America had no unified national church backing every act of King George and keeping a close watch on the people.

The Russian and French revolutions faced a situation that the American, Indian, or Mexican revolts didn't face. They had to drive out of the cultural and social memory the sense of natural order whereby only the aristocrats were true citizens and could fully enjoy freedom to conduct their lives without complete domination by church and state.

Maybe I'm wrong in this, but I think we're today facing a more difficult situation than the founding fathers faced against the British. The single greatest obstacle the colonists faced was defeating the British army. The American spirit already was very independent and convincing the people to reject foreign domination and the rule by certain privileged families based on centuries of tradition wasn't that hard a sell. Today, however, we are facing ideas that have become endemic to many in this country, that the capitalist system with winners and losers and the law of the jungle is American and the natural order of things, much like the divinely determined right of the local noble to exeret 100% control over every aspect of his subjects' lives. I think we need to be a little more understanding about why the French and Russian revolutions ended up involving mass executions of the aristocrats and those who supported them because they were fighting cultural imperitives that had dominated thinking for centuries and were not going to give way until the blood lines on which they were based were eliminated to the point where they couldn't return. That situation doesn't strictly apply to India or America.

[mick063]

32. The single reason the comparison is easy.

Read the original, top most post again.

The financial crisis that lead to the French Revolution has similarity that is uncanny. Indeed, one could substitute a hand full of words (ie. capital gains for property tax, Iraq war for American Revolutionary war, Aristocrat/Clergy for CEO/Banker, monarchists for elected representatives) and it would read like current events in the proper chronological order. In that context, the precursor story is very, very comparable.

Just read it again in that context. Focus on the precursors and how eerily similar they are as opposed to jumping to the revolutionary conclusion.

America's comparative story has not played out yet, but the precursor events are very comparable.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

33. I agree with that

My post questioned strict comparisons between the American revolution and the French and why I think the bloodshed in the latter is a bit more understandable, as it was in the Russian revolution. Although I didn't make it very clear, I agree with your original post in mine when I discuss the fact that the situation in the U.S. today is maybe more difficult than the situation in the American revolution because we face certain endemic cultural beliefs that the French also had to contend with that were not as strong in the original American revolution. I could be wrong (I'm just a guy on a message board and not an historian) but I think that going from British rule to self rule was not quite as great a cultural shock to the colonists as it would be for SOME in this country to go to a socialist and more egalitarian society.

I think your comparison between the economic crisis faced by the French and the current conditions in the U.S. makes sense to me, but that wasn't the point of my post.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. I am going to make a non popular statement

1.- The degree only helps in learning how do an analysis in a systematic manner... that's all. Yes, some in the AHA will not like this. Hell, there is this famous historian by the name of Tuchmann that really had them have their knickers in a knott for many decades. She had far more people reading her works... and doing a good job about it.

Now to the details... you already did quite a bit of the work... so let me go deeper into this.

Both the French and American Revolutions are part of the Enlightenment ideology. In fact, I'll contend that they would not have happened in the way they did if that institution of the lodge did not develop. The Lodge allowed for something revolutionary for the time, a single man (one in Paris a woman as well) meant one vote. This idea was new. It was a game changer. In France you had an entrenched nobility, some of whom did play in the lodges as equals to their fellow citizens, mostly trades and middle classes. Some resisted what was coming. The American Revolution can in some ways be considered a non complete revolution since it was led by the elite... which replaced an established elites for a new elite from the same social class.

If you are going to compare to the present... the OWS general assemblies do share that revolutionary idea with the Lodges, even if they have no obvious hierarchy This is why they are going after them so hard. The OWS is actually doing that revolutionary work of undermining the idea of consumption and even capitalism as it exists today. No, it is not easy... revolutions never are. And why you see the effort to undermine them at every step of the way and twice on Sunday.

There is more, each revolution has unique elements to it's own locales. For Mexico it was more the throwing off the ownership class that was based in the country side. Mexico was far from industrialized when things went off in 1910. It was also led from the North... which is also closer to the US... just like this country the South was (and still is) quite de-industrialized.

Now what is unique today is that the Enlightenment was a European phenomena and it led to oh a few revolutions, ranging from the US, to the Americas, to France, some might argue all the way to 1848. This is global... and it is a direct challenge to the globalization system that has been created by powerful corporations that have no loyalty to a nation state. In fact. we might be seeing the end of the nation state... in the sense that Metternich described it. If that is the case, our challenges are greater than we can imagine.

[mick063]

36. I'll agree there is difference

but it comes from technology.

The vast time lag in communication and transportation is the reason the French financial crisis is marginally different. The current interlocked world economy and resulting political connectivity creates a naturally occurring worldwide phenomena.

The chronological list of events are similar whether on a global or regional scale. Regardless of scope, the conditions were still very similar.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. You are ignoring the enlightenment

It's not just the financial crisis, which overtly shares a lot of elements with the US of 2011, including non taxation of the rich. but ideology matters. If it did not the Jackerie in the 1300 would have resulted in the overthrow of the system. It did not.

Currently you are seeing a reaction to Globalization and a new definition of liberalism emerging. One that I will argue is NOT tied to capitalism.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. We're not quite there yet but

who knows what the future will bring? The French were facing an internal civil war and a war against invading foreign tyrants trying to suppress the revolution. They were fighting peasants who were following the church in opposition to the revolution.

Our own aristocrats are trying to develop the argument that they should be permanently in charge and the trickle down job creationism theory is promoted as an almost religious doctrine whereby we must not tax the elite class lest society fall. Fundieland has incorporated capitalism into its doctrine whereby wealth goes hand-in-hand with righteousness and has cultivated the notion of wealth attainment as a manifestation of divine approbation. If we had another civil war on our hands in which Americans were fighting each other over the right of the common man to rise against the monied elite and its brainwashed supporters, and if at the same time a nation like China invaded us to attempt to restore their consumer markets and the old capitalist order, we might approach the type of chaos and paranoia that brought forth the Terror.

[Zorra]

8. “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Sir Winston Churchill

Huge K&R. and a comment -

You'd think the nobles, be they feudal lords or 1% billionaires, to make the proper necessary concessions to the 99%, before the people inevitably rise up, take all their material things, and then "eat" them.
:thumbsup:

[malthaussen]

9. Something I find interesting

... is that the ruling classes in the West did make such concessions in the mid-20th century, in what I believe to have been a desperate attempt to avoid a Russian Revolution in their own homes. It would appear, however, that with the fall of the USSR, the ruling classes of the West have decided that the example of the Romanovs no longer applies.

-- Mal

[Zorra]

23. Not sure what you are referring to specifically.

But I'm very interested in learning.

I'm not sure if I'd call WW II a concession, the 1% got an enormous boost in wealth and power by war profiteering.

But it effectively ended the rise of the growing worldwide populist democratic labor movements of the 30's almost overnight.

Seems the 1% oligarchal dictatorship began to rise very noticeably not long after WW II, Eisenhower warned us 50 yrs. ago.

Not sure if you could exactly call New Deal policies a concession either.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
snip---
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
snip---
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
snip---

http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

[Fantastic Anarchist]

29. Yes, the New Deal to "save capitalism from itself."

[JackRiddler]

14. Sorry Zorra, that quote is George Santayana, not Churchill.

[Zorra]

26. Thanks. My bad. You are correct.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" Santayana

History repeats itself.

Anonymous proverb; popularized since the mid-1800s; already considered clichéd by 1865. "The most solemn humbug which does duty as a profound historical reflection is, that history repeats itself." Harper's, volume 30, p. 124, 1865
Widely attributed to various famous authors, who expressed similar sentiments – see Marx and Hegel quotes above

[JackRiddler]

27. Twain perhaps put it best: History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

[Zorra]

28. He put a lot of things best, IMO.

:hi:

[coalition_unwilling]

19. Actually, that quote comes from the Spanish philosopher George Santayana - n/t

[JackRiddler]

38. Spanish citizen, but US-American intellectual...

George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás in Madrid, December 16, 1863; died September 26, 1952, in Rome) was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently, never to return to the United States. His last will was to be buried in the Spanish Pantheon of the Cimitero Monumentale del Verano in Rome.

(Wikipedia)

[coalition_unwilling]

39. Thanks for that. I had always thought of Santayana as Spanish, even

though i knew something of his pedigree. But i was not aware that he considered himself American.

Learn something new every day. Very cool (and one reason I so appreciate DU).

[Huey P. Long]

10. Women's March on Versailles

Women’s March on Versailles, 5-6 october 1789. Women played a major role in the French Revolution. This picture shows the women's march on Versailles. On October 5, 1789, a rumour that the king had worn the white symbol of the Bourbons rather than the revolutionary tricolour sent Parisian women hurrying to Versailles. Faced with the crowd of angry women, Louis XVI agreed to accompany them back to Paris.

[Brigid]

18. Ah, yes, the women . . .

They were the rough-and-tumble fishewife types. Not to be messed with.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. But..but...they didn't have a clear message or clear goals!

Just a mob of dirty women who weren't even thinking of what might happen or what was to follow.

[Brigid]

24. Yep, you got the idea.

Perhaps that is what makes them so dangerous.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. The "founding fathers" didn't have a clear idea or set of goals in 1776.

Just a rather disorganized bunch of pissed off people who wanted something different. Many of them wanted an American monarchy and thought republican democracy was just a phase until we discovered that we needed a king.

[coalition_unwilling]

22. Chris Hedges (paraphrasing Crane Brinton) had some interesting

points to make here:

~snip

The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

~snip

***********************

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_is_what_revolution_looks_like_20111115/

Awesome op-ed piece. Highly recommend if you are so inclined.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

30. Kicking to read that ...

Thanks for the link.