Sketches of the French Revolution: A Short History of the French Revolution for Socialists

Sketches of the French Revolution: A Short History of the French Revolution for Socialists

Part I

The Literary Prologue

The cardinal idea of the French Revolution was the political emancipation of the middle-class. The feudal hierarchy of the Middle Ages consisted in France, as in other countries, of three main social divisions, or estates, as they were termed, (1) The superior territorial clergy, (2) the nobles, and (3) the smaller landholders, the free tenants, and the citizens of the independent townships. The mere serf, villein (holding by servile tenure), or common labourer, was like the slave of antiquity, unclassified. The possession or (non-servile) tenure of land was the condition of freedom. This third estate was the germ of our middle-class. The great problem of the French Revolution, then, was to obtain the independence and domination of the third estate. It is expressed in the words of its representative, the Abbé Sièyes What are we of the third estate? Nothing. What would we be? Everything. But, although the political supremacy of the middle-class was the central idea, and the one which it realised (thereby effectually refuting a certain order of politicians that declares violent revolutions to be necessarily abortive), there were issues raised – and not merely raised, but carried for the time being -which went far beyond this. But the flood-tide of the Revolution did not represent the permanent gain of progress. The waters receded from the ground touched at the height of the crisis; leaving the enfranchisement of the bourgeoisie as the one achievement permanently effected.

Foremost among the precursors of this mighty change was the Genevese thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). This remarkable personality may aptly be termed the Messiah of the Revolutionary Crisis. His writings were quoted and read as a new gospel by wellnigh all the prominent leaders of the time. Rousseau’s doctrines were contained in an early essay on civilisation, in his Emile, a treatise on Education, and in the Contrat Social, his chief work.

In his first essay, Rousseau maintained the superiority of the savage over the civilised, state, and the whole of his subsequent teaching centred in deprecation of the hollowness and artificiality of society, and in an inculcation of the imperative need of a return, as far as might be, to a state of nature in all our relations. This he especially applies to education in his Emile, in which he sketches the training of a hypothetical child.

The Social Contract, his, greatest work contains a discussion of the first principles of social and political order. It is to this work the magic formulas which served as watchwords during the Revolution, formulas such as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, Divine Right of Insurrection, the term Citizen, employed as a style of address, and many other things are traceable. The title of the work was suggested by Locke’s (or perhaps Hobbes’) supposition of a primitive contract having been entered into between governor and governed. This idea Rousseau denies, in so far as any unconditionally binding agreement is concerned. No original distinction existed between, rulers and ruled. ‘Any contract of the kind that obtained was merely a political convenience strictly subject to conditions. Governors were merely the delegates or mandatories of the people. The form of government was to Rousseau more or less a minor matter, though a democracy had the most advantages, Yet it was quite possible for the mandates of the people to be adequately carried out by a special body of men (an aristocracy), or even by one man (a king. But every form of government was bound to recognize the will of the people as sovereign in all things.

The classification of the French Revolution is also largely traceable to Rousseau. The Roman constitution is invariably the source of his illustrations and the model to be copied or amended.. As regards toleration, Rousseau would allow the civil power the .right of suppressing views which were deemed contrary to good citizenship Like the Romans, he would tolerate all religions equally that did not menace the State. There is probably no single book that has produced such stupendous results within a few years, if at all, as Rousseau’s Social Contract. It is the text-book of the French Revolution. Every ordinance, every law, every draft of constitution bears the mark of its influence. Although unquestionably right in his repudiation of Locke’s crude theory, it is needless to say that Rousseau’s own views are singularly barren and unhistorical as every theory must be that deals only with the political side of things. One may admire his loathing at the artificiality of the world around him; at the organised hypocrisy called religion and morality; but in his day it was impossible to uncover its historical roots, and hence, to modern ears, his diatribes lose much of their effect.

The influence of the second important precursor of the French Revolution, Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) was much more. indirect than that of Rousseau. Voltaire’s influence was almost purely negative. By his wit he scorched the reverence remaining in the minds of men for the forms of the old outworn feudal-Catholic organisation. Though there was a great amount of adroit self-seeking in Voltaire’s character, it is as impossible to deny that there was much that was genuine and truly noble in his indignation at cruelty, an his detestation of Christian hypocrisy, as that it produced a far-reaching effect on the events that followed. Voltaire, although personally a Frenchman of Frenchmen, breathes the spirit of conscious cosmopolitan and contempt for nationality in his writings in which for the first time in history became a popular creed during the Revolution, and was expressed in the famous appeal of 1793.

But in this, as in other respects, Voltaire was not alone. He partly created and partly reflected the prevalent tone of the French salon (drawing-room) culture of the eighteenth century. This, if we cared to do so, we might trace back in its main features to the revival of learning – to the courts of the Medicis. And here it may be well to remind our readers, in passing, of the truth that individual genius merely means the special faculty of expressing the spirit of the age to which that of preceding ages has led up and that Voltaire and Rousseau merely achieved the results they did by reason of their capacity for reproducing in words the shapeless thoughts of millions. To this, in the case of Voltaire, must be added a special width of intellectual sympathy which took in an unusually large number of different subjects.

Besides Rousseau and Voltaire, we must not omit to mention the brilliant group of contemporary workers and thinkers, headed by Diderot and D’Alembert, who built up that monument of laborious industry, the great French Encyclopaedia. Immense difficulties attended the publication of this important work, notwithstanding that care was taken to exclude any expressions of overt contempt or hostility towards current prejudices. Again, we must not forget the Materialist-Atheists, central among whom was Baron Holbach, the anonymous author of the celebrated System of Nature, a book which, though crude according to modern notions, did good work in its day – work, which a treatise of more intrinsic philosophical value probably would not have achieved. It is noteworthy that most of the other prominent names among the pre-revolutionary writers, including Rousseau and Voltaire, are those of ardent deists.

All these men contributed their share in preparing the mental foundation for the great upheaval which followed. It is strange, however, that not one of them lived to see the practical issue of their labours. Rousseau, the most directly powerful of them died eleven years before the taking of the Bastille, and Voltaire the same year. Diderot lived till 1784; D’Alembert died the previous year. Mirabeau, alone of all who had prepared the great crisis, lived to see its beginning. But even he succumbed in 1791, a year and a-half before the actual fall of the monarchy. These men saw only a free thinking, aristocracy and literary class. Of the movement below they recked little, scarcely, perhaps that there was such a movement. The throne seemed secure; religion as popular as ever, the same throne which in a few years was destined to be involved in so mighty an overthrow.

Ten years of bad harvests aggravated by an effete industrial, fiscal, and political system, culminated with the summer of 1788. A great drought was succeeded by a violent hailstorm, which dealt destruction all round. The harvest was worse than ever before. All kinds of agricultural crops failed miserably all over France, not alone wheat and grain generally, but vines, chestnuts, olives; in short; all the natural products of consumption and exportation. Even what was gathered in was so spoiled as to be almost unfit for use. From every province of France came the monotonous tale of ruin, famine, starvation. Even the comparatively well-to-do peasant-farmer could obtain nothing but barley bread of a bad quality, and water, while the less well-off had to put up with bread made from dried hay or moistened chaff, which we are told caused the death of many children. The Englishman, Arthur Young, who was travelling through France this year, wherever he went heard nothing but the story of the distress of the people and the dearness of bread. Such bread as is to be obtained tastes of mould, and often produces dysentery and other diseases. The larger towns present the same condition, as though they had undergone the extremities of a long siege, in some places the whole store of corn and barley has the stench of putrefaction, and is full of maggots. To add to the horrors of the situation, upon the hot and dry summer follows a winter