Encyclopedia of The Age of Revolutions, Vol.1

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
THE AGE OF POLITICAL

REVOLUTIONS AND NEW
IDEOLOGIES, 17601815
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
REVOLUTIONS AND NEW
Volume 1 AL
Edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes
Greenwood Press
Westport, Connecticut London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of the age of political revolutions and new
ideologies, 17601815 / edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 9780313334450 (set : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 9780313334467 (v.1 : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0313334463 (v.1 : alk. paper)
[etc.]
1. World politicsTo 1900Encyclopedias. 2. EuropePolitics and
government18th centuryEncyclopedias. 3. EuropePolitics and
government17891815Encyclopedias. 4. RevolutionsHistory
Encyclopedias. 5. Antislavery movementsHistoryEncyclopedias.
I. Fremont-Barnes, Gregory.
D295.E53 2007
909.703dc22 2007018269
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 2007 by Gregory Fremont-Barnes
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007018269
ISBN-13: 9780313334450 (set)
ISBN-10: 0313334455
ISBN-13: 9780313334467 (vol. 1)
ISBN-10: 0313334463
ISBN-13: 9780313334474 (vol. 2)
ISBN-10: 0313334471
First published in 2007
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to my father, who, having spent four years in
occupied Belgium during the Second World War, appreciates rsthand
the concepts of liberty and freedom
CONTENTS
Volume 1
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
List of Entries xxi
List of Primary Documents xxvii
Guide to Related Topics xxix
Chronology for the Age of Political Revolutions
and New Ideologies, 17601815 xxxvii
Maps xliii
The Encyclopedia, AL 1438
Volume 2
List of Entries vii
List of Primary Documents xiii
Guide to Related Topics xv
Maps xxiii
The Encyclopedia, MZ 439784
viii Contents
Primary Documents 785
Bibliography 815
About the Editor and Contributors 835
Index 839
FOREWORD
The end of the eighteenth century witnessed the birth of modernity in the Western
world and provided the historical context for the personalities, events, and ideolo-
gies that are explored in this Encyclopedia of the Age of Political Revolutions and New
Ideologies. Indeed, the very idea of an encyclopdie was conceived during this period
in Denis Diderots great enterprise of the 1750s and 1760s, which was published
in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates. Its purpose was to bring together
the knowledge that had been accumulated in recent decades so that it could be
communicated to his contemporaries in an accessible form. This Enlightenment
project sought to overcome the explosion of print in so many domains and set it
before the lay reader, in the same way that these volumes seek to distill and dis-
seminate the even vaster quantities of information that have been gathered on
manifold aspects of the years 1760 to 1815. In both cases, the material is presented
in a succinct manner. Moreover, just as Diderot summoned his colleagues to assist
him in his huge and ambitious task, so numerous experts have been invited to con-
tribute their knowledge in a readable fashion as part of a signicant team effort
for this project.
The object of their collective endeavor is to comprehend the great age of Atlantic
or Western revolution from the period 17601815, a concept that achieved con-
siderable currency in the 1960s, precisely 200 years after the events, following the
publication of Robert Palmers inuential two-volume work, The Age of the Democratic
Revolution. Having attracted great interest around the time of its publication, the
thesis that the various upheavals of the late eighteenth century in western Europe
and America were in fact part of a single movement subsequently disappeared from
view. Some historians retreated into their national ghettoes as the explosion of his-
torical studies seemed to fragment the bigger picture and apparently rendered the
task of synthesis impossible. Others instead disputed the specic merits of a bour-
geois revolution in France, which celebrated its bicentenary in 1989 and seemed
to bear little resemblance to events on the other side of the Atlantic or even across
the English Channel. Yet recent developments in historiography suggest that this is
an idea whose time has come again. With the demise of Marxism and the renewed
value accorded to political and cultural dimensions of the historical process, there
x Foreword
is a fresh emphasis on broader movements and themes that embrace the wider
Western world.
Current studies emanating from the Napoleonic bicentenary certainly focus on
the empire rather than solely on France. Historians of the Revolution have been fol-
lowing suit, and no conference is now complete without its British, Spanish, Italian,
Dutch, and German contributors. This might simply seem to reect the develop-
ment of a European Union, the establishment of which Napoleon once fraudulently
claimed to be seeking in the early nineteenth century. Yet the same historians have
also been reaching across the Atlantic to restore a colonial dimension to the French
Revolution. The Rights of Man appealed to black as well as white inhabitants of the
West Indies, in particular Saint-Domingue, the jewel in the French colonial crown.
Severe upheaval there eventuated in the abolition of slavery, at least for a time, and
then, in 1804, in the colonys denitive independence as Haiti. The United States,
where a good number of French plantation owners sought refuge, has inevitably
been brought into this emerging narrative. Slavery and the slave trade, for which the
old imperial powers are belatedly apologizing, actually bound together the transat-
lantic destinies of the great maritime powers. They have found their rightful place
in this encyclopedia.
It has often been forgotten that before independence, and still to an extent
thereafter, the American colonies were regarded as part of the European world, and
there was frequent trafc, both cultural and commercial, between them. The British
connection requires little emphasis, while the relationship between France and the
United States has been characterized by amity as well as enmity. Yet the country that
supplied the Statue of Liberty to its transatlantic sister republic in the 1880s has long
acknowledged an intellectual afnity. It in no way detracts from the achievement
of the French revolutionaries, whose efforts are most extensively examined in this
volume, to suggest that the American Declaration of Independence sprang from
the same ideological roots as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen. The fact that France joined the War of Independence on the side of the
Americans permitted the circulation in France of liberal ideas that would otherwise
have been censored. Contacts across the Channel were likewise enduring, although
a long and bitter war soon divided British and French in the 1790s. A member of
Parliament actually proposed commemorating the storming of the Bastille in 1790.
Meanwhile, many of the corresponding societies, whose members were referred to
as Jacobins, continued to be inspired by the French Republic, even after the out-
break of hostilities in 1793.
What we might loosely call democratic ideology, which aimed at more open
societies and greater participation in politics, undoubtedly spanned continents, and
America is rightly given its due here. Contemporaries were often more aware of
these links than historians have been, and many of the individuals to whom entries
are devoted in this encyclopedia were cosmopolitan gures. Thomas Paine offers
an especially good example. An Englishman who rst played a revolutionary role in
America, he returned to Britain, where he published his celebrated Rights of Man
in 1792. This work served to increase his renown in France, and he was elected that
year to the National Convention, where he enjoyed a somewhat checkered career,
which was perhaps not helped by his inability to speak French. Yet his radicalism
was undimmed by a spell in prison during the Reign of Terror, and his commitment
to the cause of change continued. Thomas Jefferson traveled in the opposite
Foreword xi
direction and enjoyed a spell as American ambassador to France at the time of
the Revolution, while Lafayette went to America as an aristocratic leader of the
French army and returned to France to play a signicant role in supporting the
Revolution of 1789.
Nationalism may have been a product of the age of revolution, but boundaries be-
tween states were much more uid than they are today and individuals crossed them
with relative ease. Paine, for instance, regarded himself as a citizen of the world.
Women did so as well as men, and several of them have justiably been awarded
space here. Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, spent some time in France and wrote
a history of the French Revolution as well as her celebrated Vindication of the Rights
of Women. It is true that the cause of female emancipation made little progress in
terms of political rights, but greater legal equality was certainly secured in France,
at least until the Napoleonic Code reversed many of the advances recorded dur-
ing the revolutionary decade. The recent discovery and development of a gender
dimension to the age of revolutions is a reminder that feminism should be added to
the long list of ideologies that emerged in the course of a crucial period.
These ideologies still inform our thinking at the outset of the twenty-rst century,
while the history of the period 17601815 can be equally instructive. Contemporary
events have demonstrated that democracy is denitely not the default option when
tyranny is overthrown. To that extent, the French Revolution may appall as well as
inspire. The origins of terrorism have been located during the 1790s and should
serve as a warning that good intentions alone do not sufce to produce the desired
outcome to movements that aim at greater freedom and equality. This is not to say
that revolutions inevitably descend into awful internecine violence, for the Ameri-
can example may suggest otherwise. What events in France suggest, perhaps, is that
the combination of protracted international war and revolutionary conict makes a
satisfactory outcome much harder to achieve. Historians are divided over whether
or not lessons may be derived from the study of the past, although the present cer-
tainly inuences the way they regard history. Out of this dialogue has emerged a
tremendous amount of information and interpretation relating to one of the most
exciting and critical periods in the development of the Western world. The result-
ing complexity has rendered these years as challenging to comprehend as they are
rewarding to study. This encyclopedia will have served its purpose if it both assists
in understanding and prompts further fruitful reection on the great age of revolu-
tion and ideology from the beginnings of American independence to the battle of
Waterloo.
Malcolm Crook
PREFACE
All serious studies of the modern world ultimately oblige us to examine the period of
revolutions of the late eighteenth century, which marked out that era as a distinctive
one in the political and social history of the Western world. The American and French
revolutions, in particular, encompassed fewer than 20 years between them, but as
they so dramatically shaped modern civilization, we cannot but acknowledge them
as pivotal events. This encyclopedia does not presume to offer new interpretations
of the events and people connected with the age of revolutions but rather seeks to
serve as a guide to students, teachers, and scholars who wish to understand the basic
concepts associated with the subject, the principal events, and the individuals who
by their actions and words gave this period its compelling character. If, by delving
into this work in search of a brief explanation of a subject, the reader is encouraged
to pursue further study on the subject, then the purpose this encyclopedia intends to
serve will have been fullled.
Readers will nd subjects arranged alphabetically, complimented by a chronol-
ogy, bibliography, maps, guide to related topics, and primary source documents.
Most of the leading, and many of the minor, gures connected with the political
history of the period between 1760 and 1815 are included here, predominantly
but not exclusively those connected with America or France. The broad chron-
ological approach of this work is deliberate, for the origins of the two major
revolutions of the eighteenth century and their effects on the nations affected
by them in the decades prior to and following these great upheavals must be con-
sidered if we are to see them in their proper context. The American Revolution
may have begun in 1775, but its origins may be traced back a decade and more.
So, too, with the French Revolution, which, while moved in ts and starts for
about 10 years, could trace its origins to the early years of the eighteenth century.
Hence, readers will nd entries on the principal political thinkers of that period,
as well as on the revolutionaries themselves and the events and places connected
with revolution. Cross-referencing directing the reader to related entries may
be found throughout, and each entry provides a list of sources for further study.
These lists are, in turn, supplemented by an extensive bibliographical section
xiv Preface
that readers may consult in search of the very wide range of secondary sources in
English on the subject of this encyclopedia. Readers can also consult the guide to
related topics to identify entries that share a common theme but whose connec-
tion is not necessarily close enough to justify inclusion in the See also section
of an entry.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to extend many thanks to Michael Hermann at Greenwood Publishing for
asking me to take on this project, and to John Wagner, who provided considerable
administrative support and advice during its preparation. I am also very grateful
to Alexander Mikaberidze for his generosity in supplying most of the images that
appear in this work. Immense thanks are reserved for my father for the help he
provided in translating material from French into English.
INTRODUCTION
In the course of a single generation in the last quarter of the eighteenth century,
two events had a profound impact on Western society: the American and French
revolutions. A full understanding of the political culture of the West, whether of
the late eighteenth century or of today, cannot be complete without some knowl-
edge of the radical changes made to the social and political structures of Britains
North American colonies as they would affect the future of the United States, and
to France with respect to herself in particular, but, more broadly, to western and
central Europe. The basic political and social institutions of the Western world were
fundamentally shaped by these two revolutions, and the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury has not unnaturally been regarded as a turning point of historya dividing line
between the early modern and late modern periods.
Despite the impact that the United States has made on the world since the Sec-
ond World War, the revolution that laid its foundation had relatively little immedi-
ate impact on the wider world. Yet for the American colonists themselves and for
the subsequent development of a nation that would in less than a century span
a continent and eventually emerge as the worlds leading military and economic
power, the American Revolution had nothing less than extraordinarily profound
implications for the future. Revolutions had occurred periodically throughout his-
tory, of course, but this one was fundamentally different, for the Americans boldly
asserted their natural rights and pursued the principles espoused by the philos-
ophes of the eighteenth centuryan unprecedented step in political history. While
independence from Britain did not, in fact, number among the objectives of most
revolutionaries at the outbreak of hostilities in June 1775, little more than a year
later they would proclaim a republic based on political principles that the mother
countryin which the power of the monarchy was not absolute but restricted by
constitutional constraintshad never come to embrace despite the growing shift in
power from king to Parliament.
The republic permanently established in the United States after independence
in 1783 had no modern historical precedent, for it bore little relation to the British
political system, with its unreformed Parliament and extremely limited franchise.
The adoption of a written constitutionin which the powers and responsibilities of
xviii Introduction
the government were explicitly laid downestablished a fundamental break from
British political tradition, not least in its opening of the franchise to a large section
of the population, and in clearly separating and dening the powers of the execu-
tive, legislature, and judiciary branches of government, complete with a system of
checks and balances.
Above all, the rst 10 amendments to the Constitution, which soon formed the
Bill of Rights, created a nation distinct from all others and have served as a model
for other nations since. The protections offered by the Bill of Rights form the bed-
rock of democratic systems throughout the world, almost without notice from citi-
zens, who go about their daily lives oblivious to the rights and freedoms that were
practically sacred to their eighteenth-century forebears who fought and died for
them. The source of this devotion is easily explained. In the eighteenth century,
most of these principles had no practical expression and remained merely lofty
ideas espoused by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and others,
completely remote from the lives of ordinary colonists. Notions that are now ac-
cepted as standard features of democratic society were nothing of the kind in the
late eighteenth century. Specically, Americans could enjoy freedom of religion,
speech, and the press. They had the right to peaceful assembly and to petition to
rectify grievances. They had the right to bear arms, to freedom from unreasonable
search and seizure, and to protection from a second trial in cases involving a capital
offense. Citizens could not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without having
been subject to proper judicial proceedings. Citizens could also not be deprived
of their property without reasonable compensation, nor be obliged to incriminate
themselves in court. Accused individuals were guaranteed a speedy trial, conducted
in the full public gaze and before an impartial jury of their peers, and could not
be subjected to excessive punishment if convicted. In addition to these and other
rights, all powers not explicitly given to the federal government by the Constitution
were to fall to the states. These rights now form the bread and butter of contempo-
rary American life, whereas to liberal minds of the eighteenth century, these repre-
sented progress on a remarkable scale.
Yet it was not the revolution in America that was to have the most far-reaching
impact on Western society, but rather the revolution in France. The new era inaugu-
rated by the French Revolution swept aside not simply the long-established political
system of the ancien rgime in France, but the social, legal, and economic system
of western Europe. Old loyalties were discarded, and a focus was placed on indi-
vidual rights, representative government, and loyalty to nation rather than to king.
To be sure, the events of 1789 did not introduce all such concepts with immediate
effect, nor may it be said that the ideas put into practice by the revolutionaries were
entirely new. Challenges to divine rule had already been underwaynot so much
through direct action, but in the more subtle form of the spread of ideas and grow-
ing resentment toward privilege and excesssince the middle of the eighteenth
century. The pressure for reform and change had therefore been gaining pace for
decades before Parisians stormed the Bastille in July 1789.
Revolution in France meant, for the most part, a clean sweep of old institutions,
especially those connected with the administration of the kingdom as it had existed
for centuries under the Bourbon kings. In its place, the revolutionaries sought to
introduce a new, more efcient apparatus for the function of representative gov-
ernment, and in a form that could best serve the nation as a whole rather than
Introduction xix
merely a privileged elite. This apparently noble enterprise was not, of course, entirely
achieved, even after a decade of trial and turmoil, not least because what appeared
sound in theory could not always be applied in practice. Opposing political factions
naturally disagreed with one another about the sort of new, enlightened society
they wished to establish, the pressure of defending the nation against foreign inva-
sion led more than one revolutionary government to suspend many of the rights
guaranteed by the constitution then in force, and social upheavalnot least civil
warconspired to steer the Revolution on an uncertain path.
Nevertheless, a great deal of the achievements of the French Revolution have sur-
vived until today, notwithstanding the force of events that might easily have altered
or even undone the democratic progress of the 1790s, such as virtual dictatorship
under Napoleon, the Bourbon restoration of 18151830, new revolutions in 1830
and 1848, the Second Empire, and two world wars. Representative democracy has
survived in western Europe since the Revolution, not least because the social struc-
ture of society was altered so profoundly, with the emergence of the middle class as
the principal beneciaries of the upheaval. To be fair, the franchise was by no means
extended to all ranks or even to both genders, but the traditional privileges of the
aristocracyindeed the very institution of aristocracy itselfwere eliminated, and
even when new ranks and titles were created during the Napoleonic era and old
ranks restored during the Restoration, these proved to be merely passing phases. By
1815, the imprint left by revolution could not be erased, and even the most deter-
mined reactionaries could not restore society to its pre-revolutionary state.
It was not merely the Revolution itself, within France, that would alter the West
forever, but the series of wars that it spawned, which ultimately engulfed the whole
of Europe. Without the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars spreading the prin-
ciples of the Revolutionfor good or illthe history of the Continent would have
been profoundly different. The war caused some states to vanish, with new ones
erected to replace them, such as the satellite states that emerged on the borders of
France, which were ruled by governments that applied, to a greater or lesser extent,
the principles expounded by the French Revolution. Those areas conquered and
occupied by the French naturally were affected most, but even conservative Prussia
was obliged to institute sweeping social changes as a result of its catastrophic defeat
and occupation at the hands of French forces in 1806. In short, not all societies
welcomed the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but many did, and
features of the Revolution, whether in the form of actual constitutions or principles
drawn from the successive constitutions that appeared throughout the 1790s, were
introduced in the Low Countries, in the German states, in most of the Italian states,
in Switzerland, and in the Polish territories taken from Austria and Prussia.
Whatever the degree of impact the Revolution had on individual states, it was clear
that monarchy would no longer go unchallenged, and that a peoples exposure to
democratic principles could not be reversed even after the defeat of France in 1815.
Revolution, both in North America and in Europe, spawned modern nationalism,
and France above all provided the model for those who wished to introduce political
and social reform in their own countries, even if merely to create constitutional
monarchy, with little tampering of the existing social structure. Revolution was by no
means synonymous with universal suffrage, but when one considers how little Europe
had changed over the preceding centuries, the absence of full democracy after 1789
is hardly surprising. The mere fact that a major European state replaced monarchical
xx Introduction
rule with a limited form of democracy already constituted a monumental break with
the past; no one but the most radical of contemporary thinkers would have conceived
of a society quite as open and free as exists today, much less desired to create one.
It is easy to forget that principles that today seem natural and that therefore are
sometimes taken for granted were indeed revolutionary in the eighteenth century,
if only because notions such as equality were alien to the highly stratied structure
of European society, including the only semi-democratic state among the major
nationsBritain. Specically, the Revolution in France eliminated the dispropor-
tionate power of the aristocracy and clergy, giving much greater authorityand
political supremacyto the middle and upper bourgeoisie and eliminating discrim-
ination based on birth. Monopolies on access to high ofce, whether in the army,
church, or government, were eliminated. Social status was dealt almost a mortal
blow, and the notion of natural rights came to the fore, with equality before the
law guring prominently in the new order. Serfdom was abolished, and although
the majority of peasants remained poor and disenfranchised, they would benet
from the elimination of nancial obligations to the local landlords and clergy as a
result of the abolition of many feudal and manorial duties, the tithe, and levies on
grain. Above all, vast tracts of land were transferred from the aristocracy and the
church to peasant ownership. Royal taxation was also scrapped, although republi-
can governments obviously did not lift the burden of taxation entirely. The French
Revolution brought constitutionalism, and thus its citizens, rather than subjects,
understood their political rights and the powers, responsibilities, and limitations
of government. It was therefore quite natural that European liberals throughout
the nineteenth century would repeatedly turn to the constitutions of the 1790s for
inspiration and guidance.
The French Revolution also enshrined the principle that natural rights, to be en-
joyed equally by all citizens, should be considered inalienable. The concepts of pro-
tection from repression, security, the right to hold property, and liberty all reected
ideas already established in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, and both
the French and American revolutions were heavily indebted to various Enlighten-
ment thinkers. Freedom from arbitrary arrest and trial by laws established by some
form of representative legislature were also enormous innovations, as was equality
before the law, the presumption of innocence until guilt could be proven, freedom
of speech and of the press, and a host of other rights. In addition to natural rights,
the French Revolution championed the notion of popular sovereignty, whereby the
source of political power was declared to rest with the people. No individual, and no
group, could exercise authority without the consent of the peoplewhich in prac-
tice meant through bodies elected by a limited franchise. Laws were to be framed
by the general will, although in France this was limited by property qualications,
and women were absent from most forms of political expression, while in America
such rights, although widely enjoyed, did not extend to women and slaves. In light
of this, the notion that All men are created equal reminds us that, as in France,
the American revolutionaries had no intention of creating the form of democracy
that now exists in the West.
If neither the French nor the American revolutions introduced the full array of
democratic rights that so many countries offer their citizens today, the principles
underlying modern representative government and human rights can nevertheless
trace their origins to these movements.
LIST OF ENTRIES
Abolitionists
Abolition of the Catholic Cult
Abolition of the Monarchy (France)
LAccusateur Public
Adams, Abigail (1744 1818)
Adams, John (1735 1826)
Adams, Samuel (17221803)
Administration of Justice Act (1774)
Africa, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Albany Plan of Union (1754)
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia (17771825)
American Revolution (1775 1783)
American Revolutionary War
(1775 1781)
Amis de la Constitution, Socit des
(1789 1792)
Anarchists
Ancien Rgime
Anti-Clericalism
Anti-Jacobin
Les Arbres de la Libert
Articles of Confederation (17811789)
Artois, Charles Philippe de Bourbon,
Comte d (17571836)
Assembly of Notables
Assembly of the Known and Veriable
Representatives of the French Nation
Association of the Friends of the People
(17921795)
Austria
LAutel de la Patrie
Babeuf, Franois-Noel (1760 1797)
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand (1755 1841)
Barnave, Antoine (17611793)
Barras, Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de
(1755 1829)
Barr, Isaac (1726 1802)
Bastille, Fall of the (1789)
Batavian Republic (1795 1806)
Belgium
Bertier de Sauvigny, Louis-Benige-Franois
(17371789)
Bertrand de Moleville, Antoine Franois,
Marquis de (1744 1818)
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicholas
(1756 1819)
Bill of Rights (United States)
Blackstone, Sir William (1723 1780)
Bland, Richard (1710 1776)
Boissy dAnglas, Franois Antoine de,
Comte (1756 1826)
Bolvar, Simn (17831830)
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise,
Vicomte de (1754 1840)
Boston Massacre (1770)
Boston Port Act (1774)
Boston Tea Party (1773)
Brissot de Warville, Jean-Pierre (1754 1793)
Brissotins
Britain
Brumaire, Coup dEtat de (1799)
Bull, William (1710 1791)
Burke, Edmund (1729 1797)
Butler, John (1728 1796)
Buzot, Franois Nicolas Lonard
(1760 1794)
Cachet, Lettres de
Cadoudal, Georges (17711804)
xxii List of Entries
Cahiers de Dolances
Calendar, French Revolutionary
Cambacrs, Jean-Jacques-Rgis de
(1753 1824)
Cambon, Pierre-Joseph (1756 1820)
Campbell, Lord William (d. 1778)
Camp de Jals, Conspiracy of the
Camus, Armand Gaston (1740 1804)
Canada
Carnot, Lazare (1753 1823)
Carrier, Jean-Baptiste (1756 1794)
Carroll, Charles (17371832)
Cartwright, John (1740 1824)
Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Russia
(1729 1796)
Chapeliers Law (1791)
Chase, Samuel (17411811)
Chatham, Pitt, William (the Elder), Earl of
(1708 1778)
Chaumette, Pierre Gaspard (1763 1794)
Chnier, Marie-Joseph-Blaise (1764 1811)
La Chouannerie (1793 1796)
Chouans
Church, Benjamin (1734 1776)
Cisalpine Republic (17971802)
Citizen
Citizenship
Civic Oaths
Civil Code
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Cobbett, William (1763 1835)
Cockades
Coercive Acts (1774)
Collot dHerbois, Jean Marie (1749 1796)
Combination Acts (1799 and 1800)
Committee of Public Safety (1793 1795)
Committee of Secret Correspondence (1775)
Committees of Correspondence
Common Sense (Paine, 1776)
Compagnie de Jsus ou du Soleil
Concordat (1801)
Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas
Caritat, Marquis de (1743 1794)
Congress (United States)
Connecticut
Connolly, John (1750c. 1798)
Constituent Assembly
Constitutional Convention
(United States, 1787)
Constitutions, American State
Constitutions, French Revolutionary
Consulate (17991804)
Continental Army
Continental Association (1774)
Continental Congress, First (1774)
Continental Congress, Second (1775 1789)
Corday dArmont, Marie Anne Charlotte
(1768 1793)
Cordeliers Club
Council of Five Hundred
Couthon, Georges Auguste (1755 1794)
Crvecur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de
(1735 1813)
Currency Act (1764)
Danton, Georges-Jacques (1759 1794)
David, Jacques-Louis (1748 1825)
Declaration of Independence (1776)
Declaration of the Causes and Necessities
of Taking Up Arms (1775)
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen (1789)
Declaratory Act (1766)
Le Dfenseur de la Constitution (1792)
Desmoulins, Camille (1760 1794)
Dickinson, John (17321808)
Diderot, Denis (1713 1784)
The Directory (1795 1799)
Drayton, William Henry (17421779)
Duane, James (1733 1797)
Ducos, Pierre-Roger (17471816)
Duer, William (1743 1799)
Dulany, Daniel, Jr. (17221797)
Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel
(1739 1817)
Duport, Adrien (1759 1798)
Dutch Revolutions (17801848)
Dyer, Eliphalet (17211807)
Eden, Sir Robert (17411784)
Edict of Versailles (1787)
Ellery, William (17271820)
Emigrs
LEncyclopdie (Diderot and dAlembert,
17511765)
Enghien, Louis-Antoine-Henri de
Bourbon-Cond, Duc d (17721804)
English Militia Act (1757)
Enlightenment
Equality
Estates-General
Etranger, Conspiration de l (1793 1794)
The Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison,
and Jay; 17871788)
Fte de lEtre Suprme (1794)
Feuillants
List of Entries xxiii
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (17621814)
Fiefs
First Consul
First Estate
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward (1763 1798)
Flood, Henry (17321791)
Fouch, Joseph (1763 1820)
Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine Quentin
(1746 1795)
Fox, Charles James (1749 1806)
France
Francis II, Emperor of Austria (1768 1835)
Franco-American Alliance (1778)
Franklin, Benjamin (1706 1790)
Franklin, William (17311813)
Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia
(17121786)
French Revolution (17871799)
French Revolutionary Wars (17921802)
Frron, Louis-Stanislas (1754 1802)
Gage, Thomas (1720 1787)
Gallicanism
Galloway, Joseph (c. 17311803)
Genet, Edmond Charles Edouard
(1763 1834)
Gens de Couleur
Gensonn, Armand (1758 1793)
George III, King of Great Britain
(1738 1820)
Georgia
Germain, Lord George (1716 1785)
Girondins
Goddard, Mary Katherine (1738 1816)
Godwin, William (1756 1836)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749 1832)
Golden Hill, Riot at (1770)
La Grande Chambre
Grattan, Henry (1746 1820)
Grgoire, Henri (1750 1831)
Guadeloupe
Guadet, Marguerite-Elie (1755 1794)
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace (1738 1814)
Guillotine
Haitian Revolution (17911804)
Hamilton, Alexander (1755 1804)
Hancock, John (17371793)
Hanriot, Franois (17611794)
Hbert, Jacques (17571794)
Hbertistes
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
(1770 1831)
Henry, Patrick (1736 1799)
Hrault de Schelles, Marie Jean
(1759 1794)
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel (1753 1811)
Hispaniola
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d
(1723 1789)
Hopkins, Stephen (17071785)
Hopkinson, Francis (1739 1791)
Htel des Invalides
Htel de Ville de Paris
House of Representatives (United States)
Hume, David (17111776)
Huntington, Samuel (17311796)
Hutchinson, Thomas (17111780)
Idologues
Impartiaux, Club des
India
Ireland
Isnard, Henri Maximin (1758 1825)
Italy
Jacobins
Jamaica
Jansenism
Jay, John (1745 1829)
Jeanbon Saint-Andr, Andr (1749 1813)
Jefferson, Thomas (17431826)
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
(17411790)
Josephine, Empress of France (1763 1814)
Journes
Juries
Kant, Immanuel (1724 1804)
Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich
(1766 1826)
Kentucky
King, Rufus (1755 1827)
Lacombe, Claire, (1765c. 1798)
Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Gilbert du
Motier, Marquis de (17571834)
La Lanterne
Lally-Tollendal, Trophime-Grard, Marquis
de (17511830)
Lameth, Alexandre-Thodore-Victor,
Comte de (1760 1829)
Lanjuinais, Jean Denis, Comte de
(1753 1827)
La Rochejaquelein, Henri Du Vergier,
Comte de (17721794)
Latin American Revolutions
Law of Hostages (1799)
Law of Suspects (1793)
Law of 22 Prairial (1794)
xxiv List of Entries
Lebrun, Charles-Franois, Duc de Plaisance
(1739 1824)
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Gui (1754 1794)
Lee, Arthur (17401792)
Lee, Richard Henry (17321794)
Legislative Assembly (17911792)
Lon, Pauline (. 1793 1794)
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
(17471792)
Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis Michel
(1760 1793)
Lse-Nation, Crime de
Lessart, Claude Antoine de Valdec de
(17421792)
Leve en Masse
Lexington and Concord, Actions at (1775)
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert (1746 1825)
Lindet, Robert-Thomas (1743 1823)
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri (1736 1794)
Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of
(1770 1828)
Livingston, Philip (1716 1778)
Livingston, William (17231790)
Locke, John (16321704)
Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles
(17271794)
London Corresponding Society (LCS)
(17921799)
London Revolution Society
Louis XVI, King of France (1754 1793)
Louis XVII, King of France (1785 1795)
Louis XVIII, King of France (1755 1824)
Louvet de Couvray, Jean-Baptiste
(1760 1797)
Lovell, James (17371814)
Lowndes, Rawlins (17211800)
Loyalists
Mackintosh, Sir James (1765 1832)
Madison, James (17511836)
Maillard, Stanislas Marie (1763 1794)
Mainmorte
Malesherbes, Chrtien Guillaume de
Lamoignon de (17211794)
Mallet du Pan, Jacques (1749 1800)
Malouet, Pierre Victor (1740 1814)
Marat, Jean-Paul (17421793)
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
(1755 1793)
Martin, Josiah (17371786)
Maryland
Mason, George (1725 1792)
Massachusetts
Massachusetts Government Act (1774)
Maury, Jean-Sifrin (1746 1817)
Maximum
McKean, Thomas (1734 1817)
McKinly, John (17211796)
Mecklenburg Declaration (1775)
Mricourt, Anne-Josphe Throigne de
(17621817)
Merlin, Philippe-Antoine, Comte
(1754 1838)
Merlin de Thionville, Antoine Christophe
(17621833)
Metternich, Klemens von (17731859)
Mexican Revolution (1810)
Michaud, Joseph Franois (17671839)
Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti,
Comte de (1749 1791)
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat,
Baron de le Brede et de (1689 1755)
Montmorin de Saint Hrem, Armand
Marc, Comte de (1745 1792)
Morris, Gouverneur (17521816)
Mounier, Jean Joseph (1758 1806)
The Mountain
Muir, Thomas (1765 1799)
Murray, David, Earl of Manseld
(17271796)
Murray, John, Earl of Dunmore
(17321809)
Murray, Judith Sargent (17811820)
Naples, Kingdom of
Napoleon I (1769 1821)
Napoleonic Wars (1803 1815)
National Assembly
National Convention (17921795)
National Guard
Nationalism
Navigation Acts
Necker, Jacques (17321804)
Nelson, Thomas, Jr. (17381789)
Netherlands, United Kingdom of the
New England Restraining Act (1775)
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Newspapers (American)
Newspapers (French)
Nobility
Non-Importation Acts
North, Frederick North, Lord (17321792)
North Carolina
List of Entries xxv
The Northwest
Notables
October Days (1789)
Ogden, James (17181802)
Olive Branch Petition (1775)
Orange, Commission of (1794)
Orlans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d
(17471793)
Ottoman Empire, Impact of Revolutionary
Thought on
Owen, Robert (17711858)
Paca, William (17401799)
Paine, Robert Treat (17311814)
Paine, Thomas (17371809)
Pamphlets (American)
Pamphlets (French)
Paoli, Pasquale (1725 1807)
Papacy
Parlements
Parliament
Parthenopean Republic (1799)
Paterson, William (1745 1806)
Patrie en Danger
Patriotism
Peltier, Jean-Gabriel (1765 1825)
Pennsylvania
Ption de Villeneuve, Jrme (1756 1793)
Philosophes
Physiocrats
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth (1746 1825)
Pinckney, Thomas (17501828)
Pitt, William (the Younger) (17591806)
Pius VI, Pope (17171799)
Pius VII, Pope (17421823)
The Plain
Poland, Impact of Revolutionary
Thought on
Poland, Partitions of (1772, 1793, 1795)
Polish Constitution (1791)
Polish Revolts (17681772, 1794)
Political Clubs (French)
Pownall, Thomas (17721805)
Prairial Insurrection (1795)
Price, Richard (17231791)
Priestley, Joseph (1733 1804)
Prieur de la Marne (1756 1827)
Primary Assemblies
Privileges
Proclamation of 1763
Prohibitory Act (1775)
Prussia and Germany, Impact of
Revolutionary Thought on
Pugachev Rebellion (17731775)
Quartering Act (1765)
Quebec Act (1774)
Quincy, Josiah (1744 1775)
Rabaut de Saint Etienne, Jean Paul
(1743 1793)
Randolph, Edmund (1753 1813)
Randolph, Peyton (17211775)
Rankin, William (1745 1830)
Reign of Terror (17931794)
Religion
Representatives on Mission
Republicanism
Revenue Act (1766)
Revere, Paul (1735 1818)
Revolutionary Committees of the French
Revolution
Revolutionary Tribunals
Rhode Island
Rivington, James (1724 1802)
Robespierre, Maximilien Franois Marie
Isidore (1758 1794)
Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth, Charles,
Marquess of (17301782)
Roland, Marie-Jeanne Philipon
(1754 1793)
Roland de la Platire, Jean Marie
(1734 1793)
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (17121778)
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul (1763 1845)
Rule of Law
Rush, Benjamin (1746 1813)
Russia, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Rutledge, Edward (17491800)
Rutledge, John (17391800)
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Lon Florelle de
(17671794)
Saint-Simonism
Salons
San Martn, Jos de (1778 1850)
Sans-Culottes
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von
(17591805)
Seabury, Samuel (17291796)
Second Estate
Senate
September Massacres (1792)
Sherman, Roger (17211793)
Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb
(17481833)
Signers of the Declaration of Independence
Slavery and the Slave Trade
xxvi List of Entries
Smith, Adam (1723 1790)
Smith, William (17271803)
Smith, William (1728 1793)
Society of United Irishmen
Solemn League and Covenant (1774)
Sons of Liberty
South Carolina
Spain
Spence, Thomas (17501814)
Stal, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker,
Madame de (1766 1817)
Stamp Act (1765)
Stamp Act Congress (1765)
Stockton, Richard (1730 1781)
Suffolk Resolves (1774)
Suffrage (American)
Suffrage (French)
Sugar Act (1764)
Supreme Court (United States)
Symbols (American Revolutionary)
Symbols (French Revolutionary)
Talleyrand-Prigord, Charles Maurice de
(1745 1838)
Tallien, Jean Lambert (17671820)
Tea Act (1773)
Tennis Court Oath (1789)
Thermidorian Reaction (1794)
Thermidorians
Third Estate
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805 1859)
Tone, Theobald Wolfe (1763 1798)
Tories
Toussaint lOuverture (1743 1803)
Townshend, Charles (17251767)
Townshend Acts (1767)
Trumbull, Jonathan (1710 1785)
Tryon, William (17291788)
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, Baron de
LAulne (17271781)
Ultramontanism
Ultras
United States Constitution
Valmy, Battle of (1792)
Varennes, Flight to (1791)
Vendan Rebellion (17931796)
Vendmiaire, Rising of (1795)
Vergennes, Gravier, Charles, Comte de
(1719 1787)
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien (17531793)
Vienna, Congress of (1814 1815)
Virginia
Virginia Resolves (1765)
Voltaire, Franois Marie (1694 1778)
Washington, George (17321799)
Waterloo, Battle of (1815)
Whigs
White Terror (18151816)
Wilberforce, William (17591833)
Wilkes, John (17251797)
Wilson, James (17421798)
Wollstonecraft, Mary (17591797)
Women (American)
Women (French)
Wright, James (1716 1785)
Wyvill, Christopher (17381822)
Yates, Abraham (1724 1796)
Yorktown, Siege of (1781)
Young, Thomas (17311777)
LIST OF PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
1. Currency Act (April 19, 1764)
2. Declaratory Act (March 18, 1766)
3. Association of the Sons of Liberty (New York, December 15, 1773)
4. Circular Letter of the Boston Committee of Correspondence (May 13, 1774)
5. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress (October 14, 1774)
6. Articles of Confederation (March 1, 1781)
7. Tennis Court Oath ( June 20, 1789)
8. Fourth of August Decrees (August 45, 1789)
9. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (August 26, 1789)
10. Decree on the Church (November 2, 1789)
11. Decree Abolishing Hereditary Nobility and Titles ( June 19, 1790)
12. Decree for Reorganizing the Judicial System (August 16, 1790)
13. Decree for the Maintenance of Public Order ( June 21, 1791)
14. Decree Upon the Oath of Allegiance ( June 22, 1791)
15. The Kings Acceptance of the Constitution (September 13, 1791)
16. Brunswick Manifesto ( July 25, 1792)
17. Decree for Suspending the King (August 10, 1792)
18. Decree for the Leve en Masse (August 23, 1793)
19. Law of Suspects (September 17, 1793)
20. Decree upon Religious Toleration (December 8, 1793; 18 Frimaire, Year II)
GUIDE TO RELATED TOPICS
Austria
Austria
Francis II
Joseph II
Leopold II
Metternich, Clemens Lothar Wenzel, Count
Battles
Lexington and Concord, Actions at
Valmy, Battle of
Waterloo, Battle of
Yorktown, Capitulation at
Britain and Ireland
Barr, Isaac
Blackstone, Sir William
Britain
Burke, Edmund
Cobbett, William
Eden, Sir Robert
Emmet, Robert
Enlightenment
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward
Flood, Henry
Fox, Charles James
Gage, Thomas
Germain, Lord George
Grattan, Henry
Hume, David
India
Juries
Locke, John
London Corresponding Society
Lowndes, Rawlins
Mackintosh, Sir James
Muir, Thomas
Navigation Acts
North, Frederick North, Lord
Owen, Robert
Paine, Thomas
Parliament
Pitt, William (the Younger)
Marquess of
Smith, Adam
Tone, Theobald Wolfe
Tories
Whigs
Wilberforce, William
Wilkes, John
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Colonial America/United States
Adams, Abigail
Adams, John
Adams, Samuel
Administration of Justice Act
Albany Plan of Union
American Revolution
Bland, Richard
Boston Massacre
xxx Guide to Related Topics
Boston Port Act
Boston Tea Party
Bull, William
Butler, John
Campbell, Lord William
Carroll, Charles
Cartwright, John
Chase, Samuel
Church, Benjamin
Coercive Acts
Combination Acts
Committee of Secret Correspondence
Common Sense (Paine)
Connolly, John
Continental Army
Continental Association
Continental Congress, First
Continental Congress, Second
Currency Act
Declaration of Independence
of Taking Up Arms
Declaratory Act
Dickinson, John
Drayton, William Henry
Duane, James
Duer, William
Dulany, Daniel, Jr.
Dyer, Eliphalet
Eden, Robert
Ellery, William
English Militia Act
The Federalist Papers
Franco-American Alliance
Franklin, Benjamin
Franklin, William
Gage, Thomas
Galloway, Joseph
George III
Georgia
Goddard, Mary Katherine
Godwin, William
Golden Hill, Riot at
Hamilton, Alexander
Hancock, John
Henry, Patrick
Hopkins, Stephen
Hopkinson, Francis
Huntington, Samuel
Hutchinson, Thomas
Jay, John
Jefferson, Thomas
Juries
King, Rufus
Lee, Arthur
Lee, Richard Henry
Livingston, Philip
Livingston, William
Lovell, James
Lowndes, Rawlins
Loyalists
Madison, James
Martin, Josiah
Maryland
Mason, George
Massachusetts
Massachusetts Government Act
McKean, Thomas
McKinly, John
Mecklenburg Declaration
Morris, Gouverneur
Murray, Judith Sargent
Nelson, Thomas
New England Restraining Act
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
The Northwest
Ogden, James
Olive Branch Petition
Paca, William
Paine, Robert Treat
Paine, Thomas
Parliament
Paterson, William
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney, Thomas
Pownall, Thomas
Price, Richard
Priestley, Joseph
Prohibitory Act
Quartering Act
Quebec Act
Quincy, Josiah
Guide to Related Topics xxxi
Randolph, Edmund
Randolph, Peyton
Rankin, William
Revenue Act
Revere, Paul
Rivington, James
Rush, Benjamin
Rutledge, Edward
Rutledge, John
Seabury, Samuel
Sherman, Roger
Solemn League and Covenant
Sons of Liberty
South Carolina
Spence, Thomas
Stamp Act
Stamp Act Congress
Stockton, Richard
Suffolk Resolves
Suffrage (American)
Sugar Act
Tea Act
Townshend, Charles
Townshend Acts
Trumbull, Jonathan
Tryon, William
Virginia
Virginia Resolves
Washington, George
Wilson, James
Women (American)
Wright, James
Wyvill, Christopher
Yates, Abraham
Young, Thomas
France
Abolition of the Monarchy
LAccusateur Public
Anarchists
Ancien Rgime
Anti-Clericalism
Anti-Jacobin
Comte d
LAutel de la Patrie
Babeuf, Franois-Noel
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand
Barnave, Antoine
Bastille, Fall of the
Bertier de Sauvigny Louis-Benige-Franois
Marquis de
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicolas
Boissy dAnglas, Franois Antoine de, Comte
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de
Brissot de Warville, Jean-Pierre
Brissotins
Brumaire, Coup dEtat de
Cachet, Lettres de
Cadoudal, Georges
Cahiers de Dolances
Cambon, Pierre-Joseph
Camus, Armand Gaston
Carnot, Lazare
Carrier, Jean-Baptiste
Chapeliers Law
Chaumette, Pierre Gaspard
Chnier, Marie-Joseph-Blaise
La Chouannerie
Chouans
Citizen
Civic Oaths
Civil Code
Clubs (French)
Cockades
Collot dHerbois, Jean Marie
Concordat
Caritat, Marquis de
Committee of Public Safety
Consulate
Cordeliers Club
xxxii Guide to Related Topics
Couthon, Georges Auguste
Danton, Georges-Jacques
David, Jacques-Louis
Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen
Le Dfenseur de la Constitution
Desmoulins, Camille
The Directory
Ducos, Pierre-Roger
Duport, Adrien
Edict of Versailles
Emigrs
LEncyclopdie
Bourbon-Cond, Duc d
Enlightenment
Estates-General
Etranger, Conspiration de l
Fte de lEtre Suprme
Feuillants
Fiefs
First Consul
First Estate
Fouch, Joseph
French Revolution
Frron, Louis-Stanislas
Gens de Couleur
Gensonn, Armand
Girondins
La Grande Chambre
Grgoire, Henri
Guadet, Marguerite-Elie
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace
Guillotine
Hanriot, Franois
Hbert, Jacques
Hbertistes
Hostages, Law of
Htel des Invalides
Idologues
Isnard, Henri Maximin
Jacobins
Jeanbon, Saint-Andr, Andr
Journes
Lacombe, Claire
Motier, Marquis de
La Lanterne
Lally-Tollendal, Tromphime-Grard,
Marquis de
Lameth, Alexandre-Theodor-Victor,
Comte de
Comte de
Law of Suspects
Law of 22 Prairial
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Gui
Legislative Assembly
Lon, Pauline
Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, Louis Michel
Leve en Masse
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert
Lindet, Robert-Thomas
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri
Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles de
Louis XVI
Louis XVII
Louis XVIII
Maillard, Stanislas Marie
Mainmorte
Malesherbes, Chrtien-Guillaume de
Lamoignon de
Mallet du Pan, Jacques
Malouet, Pierre Victor
Marat, Jean-Paul
Marie Antoinette
Maury, Jean-Sifrin
Maximum
Mricourt, Ann Josphe Throigne de
Michaud, Joseph Franois
Comte de
Baron de le Brede et de
Marc, Comte de
Mounier, Jean Joseph
The Mountain
Napoleon I
Guide to Related Topics xxxiii
National Assembly
National Convention
National Guard
Necker, Jacques
Newspapers (French)
Nobility
Notables
October Days
Orange, Commission of
Orlans, Louis Philippe, Joseph, Duc d
Pamphlets (French)
Parlements
Patrie en Danger
Peltier, Jean-Gabriel
Ption de Villeneuve, Jrme
Philosophes
Physiocrats
The Plain
Prairial Insurrection
Prieur de la Marne
Primary Assemblies
Privileges
Reign of Terror
Republicanism
Revolution
Isidore de
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul
Saint-Simonism
Salons
Sans-Culottes
Second Estate
September Massacres
Stal, Anne-Louis Germaine Necker,
Madame de
Suffrage (French)
Tallien, Jean Lambert
Tennis Court Oath
Thermidorian Reaction
Thermidorians
Third Estate
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Toussaint lOuverture
LAulne
Ultramontanism
Ultras
Valmy, Battle of
Varennes, Flight to
Vendan Rebellion
Vendmiaire, Rising of
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien
White Terror
Women (French)
Legislation: Colonial America
Coercive Acts
Combination Acts
Currency Act
Declaratory Act
English Militia Act
Navigation Acts
Prohibitory Act
Quartering Act
Quebec Act
Revenue Act
Stamp Act
Townshend Acts
National Leaders
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia
Bolvar, Simn
Catherine II (the Great), Empress
of Russia
Francis II
George III
Joseph II, Emperor
Josephine, Empress
Leopold II, Emperor
Louis XVI
Louis XVIII
Marie Antoinette
Napoleon I
Marquess of
Washington, George
xxxiv Guide to Related Topics
Nations and Regions
Austria
Batavian Republic
Belgium
Britain
Canada
Cisalpine Republic
France
Guadeloupe
Hispaniola
India
Ireland
Italy, Impact of Revolutionary Ideas on
Jamaica
Naples, Kingdom of
Thought on
Parthenopean Republic
Thought on
Poland, Partitions of
Polish Constitution
Polish Revolts
Russia, Impact of Revolutionary
Thought on
Spain, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Poland
Thought on
Polish Constitution
Polish Revolts
Political Institutions, Parties,
Clubs, and Factions
Articles of Confederation
Brissotins
Clubs (French)
Congress, United States
Consulate
The Directory
Estates-General
Feuillants
First Estate
Girondins
House of Representatives
Idologues
Jacobins
The Mountain
National Assembly
National Convention
Parlements
Parliament
The Plain
Primary Assemblies
Revolution
Sans-Culottes
Second Estate
Senate
Thermidorians
Third Estate
Tories
Ultras
Whigs
Political Thought, Concepts,
and Thinkers
Anarchists
Anti-Clericalism
Burke, Edmund
Citizen
Citizenship
Diderot, Denis
LEncyclopdie
Enlightenment
Equality
Gallicanism
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich,
Baron d
Hume, David
Idologues
Guide to Related Topics xxxv
Jansenism
Kant, Immanuel
Locke, John
Nationalism
Patriotism
Philosophes
Physiocrats
Republicanism
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Rule of Law
Saint-Simonism
Suffrage (American)
Suffrage (French)
Ultramontanism
Voltaire, Franois Marie
Prussia and Germany
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
Frederick II (the Great)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich,
Baron d
Kant, Immanuel
Religion and Religious Affairs
Anti-Clericalism
Concordat
Fte de lEtre Suprme
Papacy
Pius VI, Pope
Pius VII, Pope
Religion
Revolutions and Revolutionaries
(Other than France and America)
Bolvar, Simn
Dutch Revolution
Haitian Revolution
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel
Mexican Revolution
Paoli, Pasquale
Pugachev Rebellion
San Martn, Jos de
Russia
Catherine II, Empress
Pugachev Rebellion
Slavery
Abolitionists
Haitian Revolution
Hispaniola
States of the United States
Connecticut
Georgia
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Virginia
CHRONOLOGY FOR THE AGE OF
POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS AND
NEW IDEOLOGIES, 17601815
1760 October 25: George III succeeds his grandfather, George II, to the British throne.
1763 February 10: Treaty of Paris ends the Anglo-French Seven Years War.
October 7: Proclamation of 1763 closes off westward expansion by the British
North American colonies.
1764 April 5: British Parliament passes the Sugar Act in an effort to create more effec-
tive collection of parliamentary taxation in the American colonies.
April 19: British Parliament passes the Currency Act, thereby effectively assuming
control of the currency system in the American colonies.
1765 March 22: To defray the cost of maintaining a military presence in North America,
the British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, which requires all legal documents,
newspapers, and commercial contracts to carry a tax stamp.
October 724: Delegates from Britains North American colonies convene the
Stamp Act Congress in New York to protest taxes recently imposed by Parliament
through the Stamp Act.
1766 March 17: Parliament repeals the Stamp Act and passes the Declaratory Act, which
asserts Parliaments right to legislate for and tax Britains American colonies.
1767 June 29: Parliament passes the Townshend Acts, named for their author, chancellor
of the exchequer Charles Townshend; the acts place duties on such commodities
as lead, paint, glass, paper, and tea; the acts also create three new admiralty courts
in the American colonies to try those accused of violating the customs laws.
November 20: Townshend Revenue Act becomes effective.
1768 October 1: British troops arrive in Boston.
1769 May 16: The Virginia General Assembly, the House of Burgesses, passes the Vir-
ginia Resolves, a series of resolutions declaring Virginia an independent realm
under the British Crown and subject only to taxation imposed by its own assembly
and not by Parliament.
1770 March 5: British troops kill ve civilians in the so-called Boston Massacre, which is
part of a series of disturbances caused by colonial resentment of the British mili-
tary presence in the town.
April 12: Parliament repeals the Townshend Revenue Act.
1773 May 10: In an effort to provide nancial relief to the East India Company, Parlia-
ment passes the Tea Act, which allows the company to sell tea in the American colo-
nies without paying the customs duty, thus undercutting colonial merchants and
smugglers and giving the company a virtual monopoly in the colonial tea trade.
xxxviii Chronology
December 16: In response to the Tea Act, colonists in Boston dress as Indians and
board ships in Boston Harbor to dump their cargo of tea overboard in an act of
protest known as the Boston Tea Party.
1774 March 25: In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passes the Boston Port
Act (one of a series of measures known also as the Intolerable Acts or Coercive
Acts), thereby closing the port of Boston.
May 10: Louis XVI succeeds his grandfather, Louis XV, as king of France.
May 20: Parliament passes the Administration of Justice Act, the Massachusetts
Government Act, and the Quebec Act (all part of the series of measures known
as the Intolerable Acts or Coercive Acts) to strengthen British control over the
American colonies.
June 1: Boston Port Act becomes effective.
June 2: Parliament passes the Quartering Act to allow the billeting of British sol-
diers in the homes of American colonists.
September 5: Delegations from the American colonies convene the First Continen-
tal Congress in Philadelphia.
September 9: Suffolk County, Massachusetts, passes the Suffolk Resolves, which
condemn Parliaments recent enactment of a series of statutes known in America
as the Intolerable Acts.
October 20: Continental Congress approves the Continental Association, which
establishes a boycott of the importation of British goods into the American
colonies.
1775 April 19: Hostilities begin between the American colonies and Britain with clashes
at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.
May 10: Delegates from the American colonies convene the Second Continental
Congress in Philadelphia.
June 14: Continental Congress establishes the Continental Army.
November 29: Continental Congress establishes the Committee of Secret Corre-
spondence.
1776 January 10: Thomas Paine publishes his inuential pamphlet Common Sense, which
denounces British rule over the American colonies.
February 12: Louis XVI of France dismisses his nance minister, Turgot, for at-
tempting to introduce nancial reforms; Jacques Necker replaces him at the -
nance ministry.
July 4: The American colonies declare their independence from Britain.
1778 February 6: Franco-American alliance is concluded.
1781 March 1: The Articles of Confederation, the rst governing document of the
United States, is ratied.
March 3: Second Continental Congress becomes the United States in Congress
Assembled.
October 19: Under Lord Cornwallis, the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia,
to the Americans under George Washington and their French allies under Gen-
eral Rochambeau, thus effectively ending the American Revolutionary War.
1782 April 19: Netherlands recognizes the independence of the United States.
1783 September 3: The Treaty of Paris, which formally ends the American Revolution-
ary War, is concluded between the United States, Britain, France, Holland, and
Spain; in the agreement, Britain recognizes American independence.
1787 February 22: Convened by French nance minister Charles Alexandre de Calo-
nne, an Assembly of Notables consisting of prominent citizens of Paris and the
surrounding regions meets at Versailles.
May 25: French Assembly of Notables is dissolved when it refuses to agree to a
land tax.
Chronology xxxix
November 20: Louis XVI announces that the Estates-General, an assembly of the
three traditional estatesclergy, nobility, commonerswill be summoned in 1792.
1788 August 8: Louis XVI summons the Estates-General for May 1789.
August 27: Jacques Necker is recalled as French minister of nance.
1789 January 24: Estates-General is formally summoned by Louis XVI.
May 5: Estates-General convenes in Versailles.
June 17: Third Estate constitutes itself the National Convention of France.
June 20: Third Estate takes Tennis Court Oath, declaring its intention not to dis-
solve until a constitution is adopted for France.
June 23: Louis XVI rejects resolutions made by the Third Estate.
June 27: Louis XVI orders the First Estate (clergy) and Second Estate (nobility) to
assemble with the Third Estate.
July 9: French National Assembly declares itself a constituent assembly.
July 14: In an act that is considered the start of the French Revolution, Parisian
rioters storm and destroy the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison.
July 17: The marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution, becomes
commander of the National Guard in Paris.
August 4: National Assembly decrees equality of taxation and the abolition of the
sale of ofces and feudal rights and privileges.
August 23: National Assembly decrees freedom of religion.
August 24: National Assembly declares freedom of the press.
August 27: National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen.
October 56: A Parisian mob, mostly composed of women, marches on Versailles,
thus forcibly returning King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette to Paris.
November 2: National Assembly nationalizes French church property.
1790 January 15: French Revolutionary government establishes 83 dpartements.
February 13: National Assembly decrees the abolition of monastic vows.
February 15: National Assembly abolishes all feudal rights in France.
June 9: National Assembly abolishes the civil list of the king and queen and abol-
ishes use of titles, badges, seals, and other aristocratic trappings.
July 12: Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which subordinates the Catholic clergy to
the French government, is issued.
July 14: Louis XVI accepts the new French constitution.
November: Edmund Burkes Reections on the Revolution in France, one of the best-
known attacks on the French Revolution, is published.
December 26: Louis XVI consents to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
1791 January 30: The comte de Mirabeau is elected president of the French Assembly.
April 4: Mirabeau dies.
April 13: Pope Pius VI condemns the French Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
May 31: Guillotine is introduced as a method of execution in France.
June 2025: Louis XVI and his family ee to Varennes, but they are intercepted
and returned to Paris.
July 6: Leopold II of Austria calls on other royal powers to support Louis XVI.
July 9: National Assembly orders the return of all migrs to France within two
months.
September 3: France becomes a constitutional monarchy.
September 13: Louis XVI accepts the new constitution.
September 30: National Assembly dissolves in favor of the Legislative Assembly,
which assembles on October 1.
1792 April 20: France declares war on Austria, thus starting the War of the First Coalition,
for Austria is soon joined by Prussia and Spain.
xl Chronology
April 24: La Marseillaise is introduced as the French revolutionary anthem.
July 25: The Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Prussian forces, issues the
Brunswick Manifesto, which threatens the people of Paris and of France with se-
vere punishment if they harm the royal family or resist the restoration of the mon-
archy; the manifesto turns public opinion against Louis XVI, who is seen as being
in league with Frances enemies.
August 10: Mob attacks the Tuileries in Paris, resulting in the massacre of the Swiss
Guard.
August 10: National Assembly calls for a national convention.
August 1012: The king, queen, and their infant son are imprisoned in the
Temple.
September 26: During the September Massacres, a Paris mob murders 1,200 peo-
ple, including common criminals and political prisoners.
September 21: First session of the Convention abolishes the monarchy and pro-
claims France a republic.
September 22: Revolutionary calendar comes into force, and Year I is pro-
claimed.
October 10: Jean-Pierre Brissot is expelled from the Jacobin Club; the titles citoyen
and citoyenne ofcially replace monsieur and madame.
November 19: Convention offers assistance to all people seeking liberty from roy-
alist rule.
December 5: Trial of Louis XVI begins.
December 11: Convention interrogates the king.
1793 January 17: Louis XVI is condemned to death.
January 21: Louis XVI is executed on the guillotine in Pariss Place de la Rvolu-
tion (now the Place de la Concorde).
January 23: Austria, Prussia, and Russia complete the second partition of Poland.
February 1: French Convention declares war on Britain and Holland; the First Co-
alition expands to include Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain, Holland, and Sardinia.
March 16: Revolt in the Vende region of France begins.
April 6: French Committee of Public Safety is established with dictatorial power.
April 13: Impeachment trial of Jean-Paul Marat begins.
April 24: Marat is acquitted.
June 2: Overthrow of the Girondins and arrest of Brissot inaugurates beginning of
a new phase of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror.
June 24: French Convention accepts the Constitution of 1793.
July 10: Georges-Jacques Danton leaves the Committee of Public Safety.
July 13: Marat is murdered by Charlotte Corday.
July 27: Maximilien Robespierre joins the Committee of Public Safety.
August 23: Leve en masse, that is, mass conscription into the French revolutionary
army, is decreed.
September 5: Rising of the Hbertistes occurs in Paris; the French Convention
begins government by terror.
September 17: The Law of Suspects, which permits the establishment of revolu-
tionary tribunals to try those accused of treason, is decreed.
29 September: Law of the Maximum, which sets a maximum price on wages and
goods in France, takes effect.
October 3: Impeachment of Brissot and 44 other deputies.
October 5: Revolutionary calendar is introduced into France.
October 16: Marie Antoinette is condemned to death and guillotined.
October 2430: Trial of Brissot and 20 other deputies.
October 31: Execution of the Girondins.
Chronology xli
1794 February 4: Convention abolishes slavery in the French colonies.
15 February: Red, white, and blue tricolor is adopted as French national ag.
13 March: The Hbertistes, the radical political faction led by Jacques Hbert, who
had clashed with Robespierre, are arrested.
March 24: The Hbertistes, including Jacques Hbert himself, are executed.
March 30: Georges-Jacques Danton is arrested.
April 5: Danton and Camille Desmoulins are executed.
May 7: Robespierre introduces worship of the Supreme Being.
June 8: Festival of the Supreme Being is presided over by Robespierre.
June 10: Law of 22 Prairial grants increased power to the Revolutionary Tribunal.
July 2728: Fall of Robespierre, who is executed, and the Mountain; 9 Thermidor
(July 27 in the new calendar) marks the end of the Reign of Terror.
July 3031: The Committee of Public Safety is reorganized.
12 November: The Jacobin Club in Paris is closed.
24 December: The Law of the Maximum is abolished.
1795 February 15: Treaty of peace between Vendans and the French government is
concluded.
February 21: Freedom of worship is guaranteed in France.
March 2: Bertrand Barre, Jacques Billaud-Varenne, and Jean Marie Collot dHerbois
are arrested.
May 31: Revolutionary Tribunal is abolished.
August 22: New constitution in France establishes the Directory and comes into
effect beginning November 2.
October 26: Dissolution of the Convention.
November 1: Directory is established.
1796 March 19: Freedom of the press is guaranteed in France.
March 29: The rebellion in the French Vende ends.
1797 April 18: Preliminary peace between France and Austria is signed at Leoben.
May 27: Franois-Noel Babeuf is executed.
July 9: Cisalpine Republic, a French client republic in northern Italy, is estab-
lished.
July 25: Political clubs are closed in France.
August 24: Repeal of laws against the clergy.
September 3: In the coup dtat of 18 Fructidor, Napoleon Bonaparte, at the be-
hest of the Directory, purges conservatives from the Legislative Assembly.
October 17: Treaty of Campo Formio is concluded between France and Austria.
1798 February 15: Roman republic is proclaimed; Pope Pius VI leaves Rome.
1799 July 12: Law of Hostages is introduced; the law allows local authorities to draw of
lists of hostages suspected of certain crimes, specically those people suspected
of opposition to the Directory.
November 910: During the coup dtat of Brumaire, Napoleon Bonaparte over-
throws Directory and becomes First Consul.
November 13: Law of Hostages is repealed.
December 24: Constitution of the Year III is proclaimed.
1801 January 5: Proscription of Jacobins.
July 15: Concordat between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII fully restores
the Catholic Church in France.
1802 March 27: Peace of Amiens between France and Britain brings the French Revolu-
tionary Wars to a close.
April 26: General amnesty is proclaimed in France for all migrs.
August 2: Napoleon Bonaparte is made First Consul of France for life.
August 4: Fifth constitution is adopted in France.
xlii Chronology
1803 May 18: Renewal of hostilities between Britain and France inaugurates the Napo-
leonic Wars.
1804 January 1: Saint-Domingue declares its independence from France and hereafter
is known as Haiti.
March 21: Civil Code (later known as the Napoleonic Code) is published; the
duc dEnghien is implicated in a plot to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte and is
executed.
May 7: Civil Code is promulgated.
May 18: Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor Napoleon I by the Senate
and Tribunate.
December 2: Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine in Paris.
1805 December 2: Napoleon decisively defeats the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz.
December 26: France and Austria conclude the Treaty of Pressburg.
1806 July 25: Napoleon creates the Confederation of the Rhine, a grouping of German
satellite states.
August 6: Holy Roman Empire is dissolved.
October 14: The French decisively defeat the Prussians at the battles of Jena and
Auerstdt.
1807 July 7: France and Russia conclude the Treaty of Tilsit.
1808 May 2: An uprising in Madrid against French occupation begins the Peninsular
War in Spain.
1809 July 5 6: The Austrians are defeated at the Battle of Wagram.
October 14: The Treaty of Schnbrunn is concluded between France and
Austria.
1812 June 22: Napoleon invades Russia.
1813 October 1619: The Allies decisively defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig and
force the departure of his forces from Germany.
1814 March 31: Paris surrenders to the Allies.
April 6: Napoleon abdicates unconditionally.
April 30: (First) Treaty of Paris is concluded between France and the Allies.
1815 June 18: Napoleon is decisively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
November 20: (Second) Treaty of Paris is concluded between France and the
Allies.
MAPS
A
Abb Sieys
See Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb
Abolitionists
Abolitionists, those individuals who opposed the institution of slavery and called
for its abolition, derived their logical core from the philosophy that came out of
the Age of Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe, which asserted that all
human beings have natural rights. The American Revolution (1775 1783) and the
French Revolution (1789 1799), which are widely seen as revolutions conducted by
citizens against oppressive rulers, transformed this Enlightenment assertion into a
wider call for universal liberty and freedom. The successful slave revolt that began
in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791 was part of this revolutionary new
thinking.
In Europe, Britain had the strongest abolitionist movement. The major turning
point in this movement came in 1787, when evangelical Christians joined Quak-
ers in establishing the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Led by William
Wilberforce (1759 1833) and Thomas Clarkson (1760 1846), Quakers initiated
petition drives, mass propaganda efforts, and lobbying in an attempt to end British
involvement in the inhumane practice of slave trafcking. Abolitionism fared less
well in continental Europe. Antislavery societies in continental Europe were nar-
row, ineffective, elitist organizations. In France, Jacques-Pierre Brissot (1754 1793),
a supporter of the French Revolution, established the Society of the Friends of
Blacks in 1788, but this group failed in its efforts against the slave trade. Despite its
weaknesses, however, the French antislavery effort was the strongest in continental
Europe.
In the United States, after the Missouri Compromise (1820), gradualist abolition-
ist sentiments ourished freely. In 1827 there were about 140 antislavery groups
meeting every other year in the American Convention of Abolition societies. The
most important of the early abolitionists was Benjamin Lundy, who around 1815
2 Abolitionists
began numerous efforts to persuade slaveholders to abandon slavery. He organized
the Union Humane Society in St. Clarisville, Ohio, and cooperated with Charles
Osborn (1776 1850), who published The Philanthropist in September 1817. In 1821,
Lundy began publication of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, which promoted
a moderate approach to abolitionism. He inuenced various people who became
antislavery advocates, most notably William Lloyd Garrison (1805 1879), who pro-
posed an immediatist approach to abolition and took the position that although
slavery could not be ended immediately, it was the moral duty of good people to act.
By January 1, 1831, Garrison had started publishing the Liberator, which advocated
his famous immediatist approach. Garrison organized the New England Anti-Slavery
Society, the rst organization in America dedicated to immediatism.
Garrison brought together a remarkable group of followers that eventually in-
cluded the orator Wendell Philips, the agitator Parker Pillsbury, and such others as
Henry C. Wright, Maria Weston Chapman, Rev. Samuel J. Marry, Lydia Maria Child,
Stephan S. Foster, Dr. Karl Follen, Oliver Johnson, and Charles C. Burleigh. William
Jay, son of the rst chief justice of the United States, John Jay, lent his pen and pres-
tige to the cause with his famous Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of the American
Anti-Slavery Societies (1835). The New York merchants Arthur and Lewis Tappan gave
money and were active in numerous antislavery causes. Theodore D. Weld, Rev.
Charles Grandison Finney, and John Greenleaf Whittier contributed earnestly to
the abolitionist movement. In 1833 these men and others founded the American
Anti-Slavery Society, which became the center for propaganda and organization.
Meanwhile, the abolitionist movement in America headed toward dissension.
Conservative abolitionists like the Tappans, William Jay, and Rev. William Goodell
disapproved of the Garrisonians bitter attacks on the clergy for being pro-slavery.
Alvan Stewart, Alizur Wright Jr., and Henry B. Stanton believed that Garrison was
offending the sentiments of the general public. The breach in the abolitionist move-
ment was opened by the so-called woman question when Garrison pressed for the
employment of female abolitionists in more active roles than they had had before.
Controversy surrounding the nomination of Abby Kelley prompted a portion of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, under the leadership of Lewis Tappan, to secede and
set up the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.
As the antislavery issue had become a major factor in national politics, northerners
found themselves increasingly alarmed by what seemed to them the determination
of southerners to nationalize slavery. Thus, regarding Garrison as intolerable, north-
erners united on antislavery and Free Soil and closed ranks behind the moderate
candidacy of Abraham Lincoln, who on December 18, 1865, with the ratication of
the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, brought an end to slavery in the
United States. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Aptheker, Herbert. Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1989; Bender, Thomas. The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism
as a Problem in Historical Interpretation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1992; Drescher, Seymour. Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative
Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987; Fogel, Robert W. Without Consent or
Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989; Jeffrey, Julie Roy.
The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1998; Northrup, David. The Atlantic Slave Trade: Problems
in World History. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1994; Rice, C. Duncan. The Rise and Fall of
Abolition of the Monarchy (France) 3
Black Slavery. New York: Harper & Row, 1975; Turley, David. The Culture of English Antislavery,
1780 1860. London: Routledge, 1991.
JITENDRA UTTAM
Abolition of the Catholic Cult is the name given to the systematic attempt to
eliminate Roman Catholic inuence in the government of revolutionary France.
The rst blow against the church came with an expropriation of church properties
in 1789 (under the guise of paying off national debts). The most systematic eradica-
tion of clerical inuence, however, occurred on July 12, 1790, with the legislation
known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. With this measure, the National As-
sembly placed Frances Catholic Church under state control and as of November
27, 1790, required an oath of allegiance from the clergy to the constitution.
During the years of the Reign of Terror, the antireligious persecutions included
monastery closures, the forced abandonment by priests and nuns of their orders,
sanctuary desecration, and the imprisonment and execution of many clerics, effec-
tively eliminating Catholic inuence until Napoleons peace treaty with the papacy
in 1801, the Concordat. See also French Revolution; Religion.
FURTHER READING: Aston, Nigel. Religion and Revolution in France 1780 1804. Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000; Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle
of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989.
PETER R. MCGUIRE
The abolition of the monarchy in France came as a surprise to many of the prom-
inent thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. The monarchy had been a constant fea-
ture of the political landscape of France since the baptism of Clovis the Frank over
1,000 years before. Advocates of change in France in the later eighteenth century
for the most part looked to the British monarchy, a hereditary executive limited by
an elected legislature, as an example. The events of the French Revolution between
1789 and 1792, however, determined an altogether more radical change.
From the creation of the National Assembly in June 1789, Louis XVI had already
lost much of his legislative powers. These were further reduced with the introduc-
tion of a constitution in September 1791 (in part a reaction to the failed escape of
the royal family from France in June of that year). This limited the kings powers,
leaving him only the right to appoint ministers and to veto legislation. He was pri-
marily a gurehead and was required to swear an oath of delity to the constitution
(and was no longer referred to as the king of France, but king of the French). It
was this veto, however, that led to further conict with government reforms, and
when he dissolved a ministry of reformers for a new ministry of moderates in June 1792,
he alienated the people of Paris and the radical members of the Assembly. On the
night of August 10, a mob backed by the civic government of Paris attacked the
palace of the Tuileries, forcing the king and his family to take refuge with the Na-
tional Assembly. This marked the functional end of the monarchy; his powers were
suspended, and formally revoked six weeks later on September 22, a day that became
known as Day 1 of Year I, the birth of the First Republic. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. 2nd ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Matthews, Andrew. Revolution and Reaction: Europe,
1789 1849. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions
of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1589 1789. Vol. 2. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
LAccusateur Public
The ofce of accusateur public, a prosecuting magistrate of France during the
revolutionary era, was created by the National Assembly in 1789 and abolished after
Napoleon was declared emperor in May 1804.
In December of 1789, the National Assembly reorganized the national govern-
ment and replaced Frances historic provinces with dpartements. The powerful ofce
of public prosecutor was abolished, and its powers were divided among departmen-
tal police chiefs, the presidents of district tribunals, the prosecuting magistrate or
accusateur public, and the kings commissioners. The tribunal presidents and accusa-
teurs were elected.
The dpartements were given an enormous amount of responsibility, and the en-
forcement of justice was largely up to them; they had little guidance or help from
Paris. The dpartements also faced chronic difculties in paying their expenses. De-
spite the challenges of chaos, war, and poverty, many departmental governments
were able to establish their authority rapidly and effectively.
Under the Directory, the accusateur public was made an integral part of the crimi-
nal courts, along with the tribunal president, a clerk, and four judges. In addition,
the ofce of kings commissioner was suspended after the execution of Louis XVI
in January 1793 and the declaration of the Republic. In Paris, the criminal court
added more judges and support ofcials in order to function more effectively.
As the French Republic began to conquer its neighbors, it exported its constitu-
tion. In Switzerland and Italy, accusateurs publics enforced French wishes. The for-
eign accusateurs were not elected, but appointed by Paris. In the Batavian (Swiss)
and Roman (northern Italian) republics, the accusateurs doubled as government
commissioners.
The recentralization of power under Napoleon placed the dpartements back
under a strict hierarchy. With Napoleons declaration of the Empire in 1804, the
criminal courts were reorganized again. The election of judges was ended. Instead,
Napoleon appointed all judges to life terms. The ofce of accusateur was replaced
by that of the procureur imperial, who also had assistants and clerks in larger jurisdic-
tions. In many dpartements, however, the same personnel remained in the criminal
courts under a different title. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989; Godechot, Jacques. Les institutions de la France sous la Rvolution et
lEmpire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968; Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution
from Its Origins to 1793. Translated by Elizabeth Moss Evanson. New York: Columbia University
4 LAccusateur Public
Adams, John 5
Press, 1962; Madelin, Louis. The Consulate and the Empire, 1789 1809. Translated by E. F. Buckley.
Vol. 1. New York: AMS Press, 1967.
JAMES L. ERWIN
Abigail Adams, wife of American revolutionary leader and second U.S. president
John Adams, was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in November 1744. The Adamses
married in 1764 and had four children. Rather than attending school, Adams spent
most of her childhood with her maternal grandmother. Though she lacked a formal
education, Adams was well read in poetry, history, and theology.
During the Revolution, Adams spent the majority of her time caring for her fam-
ily at their home in Boston, Massachusetts, while her husband was in Philadelphia.
Always an avid writer of letters, Adams wrote to her husband constantly throughout
the war. Adamss letters reveal much about her life while the country was at war. In
many letters, Adams detailed her daily struggles to tend to her children and the
farm and how she dealt with various effects of the Revolution.
Adamss husband valued her opinion on a number of subjects, including the
status of women. One of her letters cautioned her husband to pay close attention
to women or endure the consequences. In short, she believed that women should
receive the same education as men. Adams felt that women should have the same
rights as their husbands and should play a more substantial role in government and
society. She was determined that women would not hold themselves accountable to
a government that gave them no representation.
After her husbands defeat for reelection as president, Adams spent the last 17
years of her life at home with him. Patriot and former First Lady Abigail Adams died
of typhoid fever at her home in October 1818. Adamss rich letters leave an extraor-
dinary account of American life during the Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 11. New
York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1933; Withey, Lynne. Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams. New
York: Free Press, 1981.
NICOLE MITCHELL
Adams, John (1735 1826)
Lawyer, revolutionary leader, constitutional theorist, diplomat, and Federalist
second president of the United States, Adams was born in 1735 in Braintree, Mas-
sachusetts, the eldest of three sons of John Adams and Samantha Boylston. Adams
entered Harvard at 15 on a partial scholarship and studied Greek and Latin, logic,
rhetoric, mathematics, and science. Adams graduated in 1755. Not yet able to af-
ford an education in law, he taught grammar school in Worcester but was increas-
ingly drawn to the study of history and politics just as the French and Indian War
(1756 1763) was breaking out.
In 1756 Adams began a legal apprenticeship with a young Worcester attorney,
James Putnam, and was admitted to the bar in Boston in November 1759. He met
Abigail Smith the same year and married her after a ve-year courtship, beginning
a durable marriage based on extraordinary romantic and intellectual attachment.
6 Adams, John
With the enactment of the Stamp Act in 1765, Adams became attracted to the
Sons of Liberty, the political circle of his second cousin, Samuel Adams, whose
law-aunting activities he regarded as hot headed but just. Adams was prominent
among the proto-republicans of Boston who referred to themselves as Whigs in
identication with British parliamentary critics of the government in London such
as Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox. His Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal
Law challenged authority in the name of freedom, and obedience in the name of
just resistance, and argued that British repression would only provoke more deter-
mined resistance. When the Stamp Act was repealed and replaced by the Towns-
hend Acts, Adams was again at the forefront of the protests against taxation without
representation. In 1770 Adamss controversial decision to defend the British ofcer
and soldiers accused of perpetrating the Boston Massacre led some to doubt his
commitment to the cause of American liberty. Adams, however, was scrupulous on
the principle that in any quarrel force should not be used so long as rational argu-
ment was respected. The defense did some damage to his law practice, but the integ-
rity and skill he brought to the case ultimately enhanced his public standing.
The key turning point for Adams came with the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Its
dramatic demonstration of the constitutional point through an act of vandalism
carried out with panache and no loss of life met for Adams the crucial qualication
that the people should never rise without doing something to be remembered.
The Tea Party was for him an act so rm, intrepid and inexible as to make it an
epoch of history. In 1774 Adams was selected by the Massachusetts legislature as
one of ve delegates to the First Continental Congress and quickly became the lead-
ing voice for American independence. When Congress made the fateful decision in
favor of independence, Adams was appointed to the ve-man committee authorized
to defend the revolutionary cause to the world. The eloquence of the Declaration of
Independence testies to the skill of Thomas Jefferson as a writer, but its logic put
forward the political philosophy that Adams, more than anyone, had expounded
for more than a decade. In Jeffersons words, Adams spoke with a power of thought
that moved us from our seats.
In 1778, Adams was dispatched to Paris to join Benjamin Franklin and Arthur
Lee on a diplomatic mission seeking alliance with France. In 1780 he was also given
a mandate to negotiate a treaty of friendship and commerce with the Netherlands.
After the British defeat at Yorktown, he nally secured Dutch diplomatic recogni-
tion of the United States as well as a commercial treaty and a nancial loan and
returned to Paris. By this time France was eager to end hostilities with Britain and
willing to compromise on the issue of American independence to facilitate peace.
Adams, however, was not prepared to have Americas hard-won independence bar-
tered away. Joined by John Jay and Franklin, he concluded a peace treaty with Britain
separate from the French, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which formally acknowledged
the independence of the United States.
Adamss next diplomatic posting was to the Court of St. James, where he tried
and failed to secure British agreement to open their ports to American commerce,
guarantees respecting American navigation and shing rights, and the withdrawal
of British troops from American soil. Meanwhile, the movement toward strength-
ening the national government culminated in the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia, which in 1787 drafted and adopted the new United States Constitu-
tion. In London, Adams began A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United
Adams, John 7
States of America, a treatise written partly as a response to events in America but also
as a counterpoint to the criticisms of radical philosophes regarding American state
constitutions and the new federal constitution. Adams made the case for a balanced
government with a strong executive, a bicameral legislature, an independent judi-
ciary, and the separation of the branches of government. The Defence is extraordinary
for its intellectual condence, its appreciation of the enormity of events unfold-
ing in France, and its utter lack of deference toward the political acumen of the
philosophesespecially the desire to enshrine reason as a religion. In much the same
spirit as Burke, Adams confessed that I know not what to think of a republic of thirty
million atheists. By the time Adams returned to America, the Constitution had been
ratied and the states were selecting members of an electoral college who would then
choose the president and vice president. There was little doubt that George Wash-
ington would be chosen as the rst president of the United States. Adams considered
any position lower than the vice presidency to be beneath his stature.
When the Electoral College met in February 1789, Washington was chosen presi-
dent unanimously with 69 votes, and Adams was elected to the vice presidency with
34 votes. He had little contact with Washington or the cabinet and virtually no in-
uence and was thus the rst to experience the most insignicant ofce that ever
the Imagination of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived. In September
1789, news started to reach America of the storming of the Bastille and the French
Revolution. Whereas the majority of Americans greeted the French Revolution
with enthusiasm, Adams viewed it with alarm and began a series of articles, eventu-
ally published as Discourses on Davila, in which he denied any similarities between
the American and French causes and warned that the struggle in France was
headed for tragedy and terror. Adamss critics, Jefferson prominent among them,
thought him reactionary. By 1795, two terms in the presidency decided Washing-
ton against seeking a third. The election of 1796 between Adams and Jefferson
was the rst between two opposing political parties. It featured strident and often
scurrilous political rhetoric, chicanery, and foreign interference. Neither Adams
nor Jefferson campaigned actively for the ofce, but their supporters took to the
spirit of party with a vengeance and engaged in electoral war on a personal level.
The Republicans called Adams a monarchist, more British than American, and
ridiculed him as old, addled, and toothless. Federalists called Jefferson an atheist,
more French than American, a weakling, and a libertine. The result was very close,
with Adams taking the presidency just three Electoral College votes ahead of Jef-
ferson, who became vice president.
In his inaugural address Adams expressed a desire to maintain friendly relations
with France. This proved to be difcult. In 1793 when war broke out between France
and Britain, Washington had insisted that the United States maintain a policy of
neutralitya position at odds with the Treaty of Alliance and Treaty of Commerce of
1778. The situation had been complicated further by the rapprochement achieved
with Britain in the Jay Treaty of 1794. The incoming administration was therefore
faced immediately with a decision about how to cope with this situation. Adamss
policy outlook was virtually identical to Washingtons. War of any kind would be in-
convenient, but open hostilities with either great power could be a calamity for the
whole American experiment.
Adams attempted to steer a middle course between the pro-British and pro-
French factions at home, and to forge a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, but
8 Adams, John
French attacks on American shipping were starting to take a toll on the economy.
The task became one of avoiding war with France without sacricing American
honor. The cabinet advised Adams to arm American merchantmen while strength-
ening the navy. In the event that diplomacy proved ineffective, the country would be
prepared for hostilities. Adams assumed that the cabinet supported his goal of a ne-
gotiated outcome with France, when in fact many in the cabinet were inuenced by
Alexander Hamilton, a man Abigail Adams likened to spare Cassius and cautioned
her husband never to trust. Adams decided to send a peace mission to France with
authority to negotiate a new treaty that accorded France the same commercial privi-
leges that had been extended to Britain by the Jay Treaty. Yet even as the mission
departed, the coup of 18 Fructidor removed two directors who were sympathetic to
America from the French government and replaced them with hardliners. Mean-
while, with the Habsburg monarchy forced out of the war against France, and Napo-
leons Arme dAngleterre camped along the coast of the Channel, it appeared that
even Britain might be prepared to come to terms with the Directory. Freed from war
on the continent, France might well turn its wrath on the United States.
Adams tried to persuade Congress to prepare the nations naval and military
defenses for the worst and turned to his cabinet for advice on what to do if peace
negotiations failed. This yielded no unied position. When he nally received word
from his envoys, they reported that the Directory had refused to meet with them,
had ordered that French ports be closed to neutral shipping, and had authorized
the capture of any ship carrying any British cargo. Moreover, three secret agents
referred to as X, Y, and Z had told the envoys that Prince Talleyrand, the French
foreign minister, would initiate negotiations for the price of a cash bribe of $250,000
to him personally, along with a loan of $100 million to France as compensation
for Adamss insults. The Americans ended discussions. Adams forwarded news to
Congress but withheld information of the XYZ Affair. Unsure of his next move, he
turned to his cabinet to nd it was divided between a congressional declaration of
war, advocated by attorney general Charles Lee and Secretary of State Timothy Pick-
ering, and restraint, which was advised by Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott Jr.
and Secretary of War James McHenry. Adams then drafted a bellicose message for
Congress but upon reconsideration submitted a much milder address. Although
he informed Congress that he was recalling his peace mission, he still made no
mention of the XYZ Affair. The Republican minority, rightly suspecting that Adams
was concealing information, demanded the release of all relevant documents and
succeeded with the help of the Federalists in passing a resolution demanding the
envoys uncensored dispatches.
The release of the dispatches unleashed the storm that Adams had feared. Public
opinion was now aroused against France, and the Federalists were only too glad to
exploit the situation. Hamilton advised the creation of an army of 50,000 under the
command of Washington, a measure Adams opposed but was unable to resist due
to pressure from within his own party. In July, Congress authorized the creation of a
provisional army under the command of Washington with Hamilton as his deputy,
to muster when the president determined that national security required it. Beyond
the fact that a large army with Hamilton near its apex made Adams nervous, he con-
sidered it militarily beside the point. The Quasi-War, as it became known, was being
waged at sea. On April 30, 1798, Adams signed the bill authorizing the creation of
a Department of the Navy. Congress also authorized increases in naval power and
Adams, John 9
the use of the navy against French warships and privateers. By September 1799,
the United States had deployed three naval squadrons to the Caribbean, and the
United States was taking its rst steps toward becoming a naval power.
In an atmosphere of nationalist hysteria, Federalists seized the moment to revive
the theme of the election campaign by vilifying the Republicans as a Jacobin fth
column ready to destroy the Republic, overthrow the Constitution, and create a
radical, egalitarian, democratic society modeled on revolutionary France. The fear,
in fact, was genuine enough to nd its way into the administrations policy in the
form of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 pushed by the Federalist majority in
Congress. The Alien Friends Act gave the president power to arrest and deport
aliens whom he considered a threat to national security, and the Alien Enemies Act
allowed the president to arrest and deport aliens from a country at war with the
United States. The Sedition Act was a violation of the First Amendment, and the Re-
publicans correctly called it a gag law, as it targeted only Republican journalists and
presses. Both were inuenced by Federalist alarm at the inux of French fugitives
from the Reign of Terror, as well as from the slave uprisings in the Caribbean, and
Irish refugees from the rebellion of 1798. The legislation was also a product of weak
leadership. From the start of the XYZ Affair, Adams had failed to master events and
was then swept along with them.
In a message to Congress on December 8, 1798, Adams professed a willingness
to make a new start with France, in large part due to the domestic stress caused by
the conict. War measures fattened the budget and caused domestic unrest over
increased taxation. The Alien and Sedition Acts were declared unconstitutional by
the Kentucky and Virginia state legislatures. The resolutions did not speak to the war
crisis directly but rather warned that the Union would not endure long if repressive
war measures remained in place and rights were abused. In the new year, Adams
submitted the name of William Van Murray to Congress as minister plenipotentiary
to France, who would be empowered to negotiate a settlement ending the Quasi-War.
The reaction from the Federalist newspapers was fury. The party had no other issue of
national appeal to replace the war crisis, so the peace initiative threatened to under-
mine their majority. Talk of assassination circulated. But Adams accepted Federalist
demands that two other envoys accompany Murrays, and he gave them tough terms
for France. After conrming the three envoys, Congress adjourned, and Adams left
Philadelphia to be with an ailing Abigail. He did not return for seven months.
To his critics, his absence in the midst of a national crisis was tantamount to
a dereliction of his presidential responsibilities. Friends warned that some of his
cabinet members would take advantage of his absence to scuttle his peace initia-
tive. Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry, after all, were still under the inuence of
Hamilton. On August 6, Adams received word from Murray that the French were
receptive to peace. However, it soon appeared that the Directorys days were num-
bered and that a Bourbon restoration was possibly imminent. With an allied victory
apparently close, it might be better to see how matters turned out. Pickering told
Adams that the cabinet favored an indenite suspension of the mission, which was
untrue in so far as there was no cabinet unity on the matter at all. Adams nonethe-
less accepted Pickerings advice and postponed a nal decision of the mission until
his return to Philadelphiain November.
Adams might well have remained in Massachusetts that long were it not for the
urgent pleas of his navy secretary, Benjamin Stoddert, that he return to the capital
10 Adams, Samuel
and end the cabals against his peace efforts. When Adams arrived in Trenton on
October 10Philadelphia had been evacuated due to an outbreak of yellow fever
Lee and Stoddert argued in cabinet that delay in the mission to France would cast
doubt on American sincerity about peace. In support of the opposing view, Ham-
ilton himself, now inspector general of the army, had made the trip to Trenton to
engage Adams on the issue. After several hours of argument, Hamilton left, having
failed to change Adamss mind. The next day Adams had instructions delivered to
his envoys to embark for France by the end of the month. Before they could make
contact with the Directory, it was toppled by the coup of 18 19 Brumaire (Novem-
ber 9 10, 1799), and Napoleon Bonaparte was suddenly dictator of France. The
American mission eventually received a cordial welcome and negotiations began.
They proceeded in ts and starts until October 3, when an accord, the Convention
of Peace, Commerce, and Navigation, was signed, ending the Quasi-War and restor-
ing peace between France and the United States.
Peace arrived too late to save Adamss political fortunes. He lost his bid for re-
election to Jefferson. Before leaving ofce, he submitted the treaty for ratication
by the Senate, where opposing Federalists nally agreed to vote for it in exchange
for the termination of the Franco-American alliance of 1778 and the indemnica-
tion of American property lost during the Quasi-War. Grudgingly, Adams accepted.
His entire presidency had been absorbed by the Quasi-War, Washingtons legacy
to him. This was in part a product of the unique circumstances and the conict-
ing pressures of the time itself. The American republic was as yet so fragile that all
choices of policy toward the great powers of Europe were fraught with peril. That
sense of peril was reected by the very division within the American body politic,
in Adamss cabinet, and in his own indecision. Adams sincerely believed that the
national interest lay in peace through neutrality. But neutrality could not be pur-
chased through diplomatic niceties alone. Adams rightly concluded that it would
require a powerful American eet to defend it. His better judgment failed him in
the Alien and Sedition Acts, signed into law amid an atmosphere of fear by a man
whose words and actions had otherwise championed liberty. But even if the revo-
lution in France was not a threat to the American republic, Adams was under no
illusions as to what it meant for Europe.
FURTHER READING: DeConde, Alexander. The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of
the Undeclared War With France, 1797 1801. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1966; Ellis,
Joseph J. Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001;
Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: HarperCollins, 1997; McCullough,
David. John Adams. New York: Touchstone, 2001; Smith, Page. John Adams. 2 vols. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1962; Stinchcombe, William. The XYZ Affair. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1980.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Adams, Samuel (1722 1803)
Known by his foes as the Grand Incendiary, Boston revolutionary Samuel
Adams was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, on September 22, 1722. He was one of
12 children of Samuel and Mary Field Adams. Little is known about Adamss child-
hood until he entered Harvard College in 1736. He obtained his masters degree in
1743 with a thesis on whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the
Adams, Samuel 11
commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved. Adams concluded that resistance
was indeed lawful, a clear presentiment of his later political career. After graduating
from college, Adams began practicing law, a career his father wanted him to pur-
sue, though he did this for only a few years, giving up a career in law to please his
mother. He then became a counting clerk for a local merchant. When this career
also failed, he returned home to work in his fathers brewery.
Though he had little aptitude for business, Adams had a natural interest in the
politics of the day. Even as a young man, he had exhibited a curiosity for politics,
opposing the arbitrary acts of the British. In 1747, Adams was one of the principal
gures who helped to form a political club in Boston known by its opponents as
the Whipping Post Club. Adams was also a member of the Caucus Club, a club that
met regularly to choose selectmen, assessors, and other elected ofcials. The group
began publishing a weekly newspaper, the Independent Advisor, in 1748. One of Adamss
favorite newspaper discussion topics was the protection of individual rights.
Despite his inheritance of one-third of the family estate after his father died in
1748, Adams proved to be an unsuccessful businessman. While serving as tax collec-
tor from 1756 to 1764, Adams fell into tremendous debt resulting from his failure
to collect any taxes. Because of this, he eventually owed the town of Boston 8,000
in back taxes.
By 1764, Adams began an earnest career in politics. As tax collector, he had wit-
nessed rsthand the devastating effects that the French and Indian War (1756 1763)
had on the colonists. Adams was vehemently opposed to both the Sugar and Stamp
acts, two acts that Parliament issued to collect taxes on a number of items. When
news of these acts reached the colonies, Adams claimed that these acts, particularly
the Stamp Act, directly threatened colonial rights since the colonists had no repre-
sentation in Parliament. With his 1764 and 1765 Instructions of the Town of Boston
to Its Representatives in the General Court, Adams marked the rst formal public
protest of parliamentary acts. Though the Stamp Act was eventually repealed the
next year, Adams became determined that American independence from Britain
was the only viable option. Though he never openly advocated violence, he never-
theless sought to break any ties with the British.
In 1765, Adams was elected to represent the town of Boston in the Massachu-
setts General Court. He was soon appointed clerk of the house. Adams served in
the General Court for the next 10 years. During his tenure in the court, he was
a member of almost every committee and assisted in composing the majority of
resolutions the body prepared. Adams was a leading gure in establishing the Non-
Importation Association of 1768 and was the rst to oppose the Townshend Acts.
When the Townshend Acts were imposed in 1767, Adams immediately sought to
condemn them. One of the rst actions he took was to institute a boycott on im-
ported British goods. By the fall of the following year, two regiments of British
troops had arrived to garrison Boston. Adams began recording British treacheries
in his Journal of Events, a publication that was circulated throughout the colonies. In
this magazine, he accused British troops of beating people, violating the Sabbath,
and even raping women.
Tensions continued to escalate until March 1770, when a group of soldiers nally
red on a mob of over four hundred people. This was the rst occasion of blood-
shed between the British and the colonists. In what was known as the Boston Massa-
cre, six men were wounded and ve were killed. The day after the massacre, Adams
12 Administration of Justice Act
addressed the largest town meeting to date. As a result of Adamss impassioned
speeches, a committee was formed to ask the governor to remove the British gar-
rison from Boston. Governor Thomas Hutchinson replied that he had no inuence
over the troops. When the meeting had still not disbanded that night, however,
the governor nally gave his consent to arrest the soldiers involved in the events
of the previous day. British soldiers were duly arrested and charged with murder.
Though only a few of the men were ultimately found guilty, the remainder of the
troops were removed from Boston. Adams, however, was furious at the light punish-
ment the British received. During the next two years, he wrote more than 40 articles
for the Boston Gazette, still trying to prove the soldiers guilty.
Adams also worked during this time to establish a Committee of Correspondence
for Boston so that all colonists would be informed of British attacks. Events reached
a climax in December 1773 with the Boston Tea Party. Dressed as Mohawk Indians,
a group of Bostonians boarded British ships, dumping over three hundred chests of
tea into the harbor. Consequently, Parliament closed the port of Boston.
Adams and other colonists immediately began planning the establishment of a
Continental Congress. Adams was chosen as one of Massachusettss ve delegates to
meet in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. While a member of both the First and
Second Continental Congresses, Adams was adamant in his ght for American inde-
pendence from Britain. He signed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776,
and was a member of the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation.
He resigned from Congress in 1781, and despite his declining health, the father of
the American Revolution continued his political career. He served as Massachusettss
secretary of state and state senator and was a member of the convention to ratify the
United States Constitution. Elected governor of the state in 1794, Adams remained
in this role until his retirement three years later. Adams died on October 2, 1803,
at the age of 81. See also Adams, Abigail; Adams, John; Committees of Correspon-
dence; Continental Congress, First; Continental Congress, Second; Tea Act.
FURTHER READING: Alexander, Jon K. Samuel Adams: Americas Revolutionary Politician. New
York: Rowman & Littleeld, 2002; Lewis, Paul. The Grand Incendiary: A Biography of Samuel
Adams. New York: Dial Press, 1973; Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 11.
New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1933.
NICOLE MITCHELL
The Administration of Justice Act was one of a group of acts passed by Parliament
early in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party and other acts of resistance in
Massachusetts. These acts were known collectively as the Intolerable Acts, or the Co-
ercive Acts. The act for the Impartial Administration of Justice applied specically
to the province of Massachusetts Bay. It protected persons charged with murder or
other capital crimes for actions committed in the suppression of riots or the en-
forcement of British revenue laws. Such persons could face juries in Massachusetts
that opposed such laws and sympathized with violators and rioters. The act gave the
governor of the province (or the lieutenant governor, in his absence) the right to
transfer the trials of such persons to Britain or to another colony. The governor also
had the right to bind witnesses in these trials to journey to Britain or wherever the
trial was scheduled to take place. Many Americans, who referred to the act as the
Africa, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on 13
Murder Act, feared that trials in Britain, under the control of the British govern-
ment, would be rubber stamps for acquittal. They also feared that the act, along with
another Intolerable Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, was part of a general
British program to remodel the Massachusetts government to strengthen the power
of the royal governor. They also viewed it as an illegitimate extension of the power of
Parliament into a sphere of authority belonging to the colonies themselves. The act
took effect on June 1, 1774. Along with the other Coercive Acts, it spurred American
resistance and contributed to the calling of the First Continental Congress.
FURTHER READING: Ammerman, David. In Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive
Acts of 1774. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
The age of revolutionary thought in Europe brought about the slow decline of
the slave trade and the rise of the large-scale colonization of Africa. The basic te-
nets of European Enlightenment thoughtequality and libertywere untenable in
the context of Europes relationship with the conquered and oppressed lands and
peoples outside Europe. Among the vast expanses of land and peoples ofcially
ruled by European powers during the high period of colonialism in the nineteenth
century, Africa represented the lions share. It would be well into the twentieth
century before the enslaved and colonized peoples of Africa would mobilize and re-
volt against European oppression. The impact and importance of the revolutionary
thought and ideas of Enlightenment Europe would thus be adopted by Africans in
their twentieth-century struggles to create independent nation-states.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were bleak periods for Africa, as it
passed slowly through a period of stray violence, the disappearance of large seg-
ments of the able-bodied population, and the breakdown of its economic infra-
structure by systematic and organized colonial exploitation. Most African peoples
succeeded in forming themselves into postcolonial independent nation-states after
the Second World War, but the slow poisoning effect of the two long and distinct
eras of European exploitation left an indelible mark on every aspect of life on the
African continent.
Revolutionary Antislavery Movements in Europe
From the late fteenth century onward, Europes relationship with Africa was
dened by the slave trade, the absentee ownership of plantations, and a few coastal
establishments. Plantations in the West Indies needed slave labor to function, and
in 1797, British investment there reached 70 million, with the annual income from
sugar alone standing at approximately 6 million. Besides the British colonies, there
were French, Dutch, and Spanish possessions in Africa and the Americas, which were
even more valuable. The French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), which was
the single most important producer of sugar; the Dutch colony of Guiana (now Su-
rinam); and the Spanish islands of Trinidad and Cuba were richer than any part of
the British West Indies.
Successive British governments, whether under Whig or Tory control, were too
burdened with the long war with revolutionary France to legislate against the slave
14 Africa, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
trade, in spite of a continued campaign of opposition by prominent men such as
William Wilberforce. European monarchs and the aristocracy cooperated with those
in society with an economic stake in the West Indian plantations, thus ensuring the
continuance of the slave trade. Similarly, in North America, on the basis of the im-
mense prots connected with cotton production, the slave trade thrived illegally. It
was outlawed in Massachusetts as early as in 1641, and Georgia prohibited the entry
of foreign negroes in 1798.
The antislavery movements in Europe grew out of two distinct schools of thought.
One school consisted of the evangelicals, who opposed slavery and the slave trade
because of the inhumanity of the practices and their incompatibility with the laws
of God. Adherents of the other school based their defense of the enslaved or colo-
nized African on the utopian idea of the natural man derived from the writings
of Daniel Defoe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others.
Granville Sharp, a biblical scholar and a staunch evangelical, fought a series of
long legal battles on behalf of the antislavery struggle. In a landmark case that Sharp
brought before the court in 1772, Lord Chief Justice Manseld delivered a memo-
rable judgment that slavery was repugnant to English common law and that as soon
as any slave sets foot on English ground he becomes free. As a result, an estimated
14,000 slaves worth 500,000 gained their freedom. This was only a rst step toward
total abolition, and for the next three decades, indecision and fear of anarchy kept
parliamentarians vacillating between the abolition and the continuation the slave
trade. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Edgewood, and others created the Soci-
ety for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In 1807, after a long campaign by these
abolitionists and their politically powerful friends, including Wilberforce, an act of
Parliament prohibiting commerce in slaves was passed.
In France, the political chaos that followed the French Revolution in 1789 ham-
pered the steady progress of antislavery movements. While French revolutionary
thinkers like the comte de Mirabeau and the marquis de Lafayette favored the
abolition of the trade, slave rebellions in Saint-Domingue and the subsequent revo-
lution there postponed any denitive legislative action by the French for ve years.
Legislation nally came in 1794 in the form of a decree of the National Conven-
tion, which abolished slavery in all French colonies. However, in 1802less than a
decade laterNapoleon reinstituted the institution of slavery, thus conrming the
continuation of the slave trade. In the United States, President Thomas Jefferson
emerged victorious after a long battle against pro-slavery conservatives when Con-
gress passed a bill that made the slave trade illegal beginning on January 1, 1808.
Africa and Colonialism
The success of the abolition movements led to a process of rehabilitation for the
emancipated slaves. The main European and American plan was to resettle slaves
in Africa, a plan that carried the promise of solving the problem of the growing
black population in Europe. The abolitionists, including the evangelicals, received
support from the British government to send ex-slaves to establish settler colonies
in Africa. Present-day Sierra Leone was chosen as the site for one of the earliest colo-
nies. In 1787, 411 former slaves arrived there from Britain, purchased land from a
local Temne chief, and formed the rst town, which they named Granville (after
Granville Sharp). They were, however, obliged to leave after making unsuccessful
attempts at cultivation and settlement. A second wave of migration, sponsored again
Albany Plan of Union 15
by British abolitionists and led by Thomas Peters, an American ex-slave who had
fought for the British in the American Revolution, succeeded in settling about 1,100
new people in 1792, in a town named Freetown, situated near the destroyed site of
Granville. After initial success, the settlers of Freetown rst became embroiled with
the native Temne people and later in the colonial conicts waged by Britain and
France. Thus, in 1794, Freetown was burned down by French naval forces, while in
1808, after a series of conicts with British mercantile interests, Freetown became a
British Crown colony. The colonization of Freetown signaled the beginning of the
great era of African colonization by Britain, France, Holland, and Portugal. Euro-
pean colonial expansion would reach its peak in the last two decades of the nine-
teenth century, when in 1880 the existing European colonial powers in Africa would
be joined by new competitorsBelgium and Germanyin what became known as
the Scramble for Africa.
Africa and Eurocentric Historiography
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1830), Georg Hegel described Africa as
Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature,
that is, beyond the historical movements of the world. Hegels characterization,
coming in the wake of the French and American revolutions, was representative
of the dominant discourse of Europeans. The age of colonial empires that would
succeed the age of political revolutions would derive its moral justication from
classications like Hegels. The presumed universality of European Enlightenment
ideals met its rst hurdle in Europes problematic relationship with Africa as a result
of the slave trade. In Voltaires Candide (1759), the eponymous hero meets, in the
course of his travels, a baptized African slave whose limbs have been amputated as
punishment for an attempted escape. Voltaires scathing critique of the Enlighten-
ments revolutionary rhetoric surfaces in the mutilated slaves questioning of the
supposedly universal brotherhood propagated by both Christians and eighteenth-
century philosophers. European Enlightenment thought countered such critiques
by introducing new ideas on the varying nature of different civilizationsideas
meant to justify the colonization of entire societies, peoples, and lands. Whatever
the justications offered by Europeans, African lands would rst be devastated by
the slave trade and then pass into European colonial possession. Ironically, many
of the British evangelicals who would ght so assiduously for the emancipation of
slaves would also number among the most strident voices in favor of colonization
by the middle of the nineteenth century. See also Abolitionists; Haitian Revolution;
Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Falola, Toyin, ed. Africa. Vol. 1: African History Before 1885. Durham,
NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2000; Gailey, Harry A., Jr. History of Africa. Vol. 1: From Earliest
Times to 1800. Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1970; Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974; Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: Britain,
Slaves, and the American Revolution. London: BBC, 2005.
RINI BHATTACHARYA MEHTA
The Albany Plan of Union was an important early attempt to unify the American
colonies for a common cause. Hostilities leading to the outbreak of the Seven Years
16 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia
War (1756 1763) moved the British Board of Trade to call a conference to rehabili-
tate relations with the Iroquois Confederacy. All the British colonial governors were
invited to attend, in hopes that the colonies could forge a joint policy for frontier
defense against Native Americans. In June 1754, representatives from seven colo-
nies attended the Albany Congress and drafted the Albany Plan.
Several models for intercolonial cooperation were proposed at the confer-
ence. Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Thomas Hutchinson of Massachu-
setts worked together on the proposal, based on Franklins Short Hints toward
a Scheme for Uniting the Northern Colonies, that ultimately won approval. The
Albany Plan proposed that Parliament create an American governing body that
could provide for a common defense without superseding existing colonial consti-
tutions. The organization would be comprised of a president general who would be
appointed by the Crown, and a Grand Council that would be elected by the colo-
nies; nancial contributions would determine the number representatives from
each colony. This body would provide frontier defense by exercising its powers to
negotiate and make war with Native Americans, purchase and settle Native Ameri-
can land for the Crown, and regulate Native American trade and treaties. In order
to generate the revenue needed to fulll these duties, the council would also be
empowered to levy taxes.
The delegates in Albany approved the plan, but it was never enacted. None of
the colonial assemblies ratied the proposal, preferring greater local autonomy in
managing their defenses. Despite its failure, the Albany Plan remains signicant as
the most ambitious effort to bind the American colonies together for a common
interest prior to the formation of the Stamp Act Congress.
FURTHER READING: Shannon, Timothy J. Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire:
The Albany Congress of 1754. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.
ROBERT LEE
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia (1777 1825)
Alexander I, tsar of Russia, helped defeat Napoleon I of France and thus enabled
Russia to emerge as the dominant power on the European continent after the Na-
poleonic Wars.
Alexander was born the son of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I,
and Maria Fyodorovna, formerly Sophie Maria Dorothea of Wrttemberg, in St. Pe-
tersburg on December 23, 1777. He was the couples rst born of 11 children. His
education was organized by his grandmother, Empress Catherine II, who adored
him. Alexanders military education was entrusted to General Saltykov. Catherine
hired an Enlightenment-inspired tutor, Frdric de La Harpe, a 25-year-old Swiss
republican who imbued Alexander with liberal concepts and taught him the harm
absolutism brought to countries governed under that system. This led Alexander to
sympathize with the ideals of the French Revolution. He was shortsighted, walked
with a limp, and was partially deaf, but he had handsome facial features and a splen-
did physique. He grew up to be emotionally restless, stubborn, and contradictory
so complex that he never found peace within himself.
Catherine instigated the marriage of 16-year-old Alexander on October 4, 1793,
to 14-year-old Princess Louise Maria Auguste of Baden. Louise converted to the
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia 17
Russian Orthodox Church and was baptized Elisabeth Alexeievna. The young,
inexperienced couple failed to have an intimate relationship early in the marriage.
Alexander simply could not provide Elisabeth with the emotional sustenance she
needed from a husband. Both found solace with other partners, yet the complex
marriage lasted until their deaths. Elisabeth eventually had two daughters, Maria
and Elisabeth, in 1799 and 1806 respectively, but both died in infancy. These deaths
brought some emotional unity to the marriage. Despite his indifference to Elisa-
beth, Alexander never insulted her in public and ate all his meals with her. She sup-
ported him in all his endeavors throughout their marriage. Alexander had a 15-year
affair with the married Princess Maria Czetwertynska, who aunted her hold over him
at court. They had two daughters and one son. Alexander also had six other illegiti-
mate children. Once he became deeply involved with religious mysticism, he ended
his affair with the princess and he turned to Elisabeth, who continued to support
him in all his pursuits.
Alexanders father became Tsar Paul I upon the death of Catherine the Great.
He exhibited an eccentric, arbitrary, unreasonable style of governance. He was para-
noid to the extreme and suspicious of everyone. Paul had become an important
gure in the lives of his sons Alexander and Constantine in the waning years of
Catherines life. Paul strongly favored Constantine, who, like his father, had military
Tsar Alexander I of Russia, ruler of Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.
Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
18 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia
interests. Paul continually berated Alexander for his liberal viewpoints and punished
him for minor infractions.
Paul saw himself as the savior of Europe, together with Napoleon, who had re-
turned Russian prisoners of war, ceded territories to Russia, compensated the King
of Sardinia, and even made Paul Grand Master of the Order of Malta. The League
of Armed Neutrality against British naval superiority was renewed in 1800, and the
French Bourbons were expelled from Russia. Paul established a consulate. However,
domestically the gentry were becoming increasingly estranged from their tsar.
They believed Paul suffered from mental illness, and his cruelty and ts of folly
gradually led them to hate him and fear for Russias future. Some 60 men, headed
by the daring and cunning Count Peter von Pahlen, a Livionian magnate and hero
of the campaign of 1759 against Frederick II of Prussia, murdered the tsar on
March 12, 1801. Alexander, who knew about the plot, was with Elisabeth just below
his fathers suite of rooms and had expected his father would abdicate.
Alexander ascended the throne on March 24, 1801. He faced overwhelming prob-
lems and, unlike other tsars, was aware of his inexperience and ruled with a commit-
tee. He made peace with Britain on June 15 and with France and Spain on October 8.
Alexander understood some aspects of foreign affairs and believed Russias leader-
ship would lead to European peace. While Paul was on the throne, Alexander had
conceived of creating a constitution for Russia that provided for some form of repre-
sentative government, though he abandoned this idea in later years. He instead ad-
opted a policy as advised by Prince Clement von Metternich, the Austrian statesman.
He kept busy trying to improve domestic affairs, diminish taxes, emancipate priests
and deacons, liberate debtors, abolish corporal punishment, and end serfdom.
Alexanders ukase, or decree, of September 8, 1802, laid down the duties and
responsibilities of the senate and created the ministries of war, navy, foreign affairs,
commerce, interior affairs, justice, and public education. He established the Acad-
emy of Science in St. Petersburg in 1802 and two years later founded the universities
of Kazan and Kharkowv.
In 1804 France was again seen as a threat to Russian interests, as a result of which
Alexander developed closer ties with Austria and Prussia. He was deeply upset by
the duc dEnghiens execution at Vincennes after the his kidnapping from neutral
Baden, and he was appalled by Napoleons coronation as emperor. Alexander real-
ized that France was, as Paul had believed in 1799, a threat to the balance of power
in Europe. He signed a defensive alliance with Austria in November 1804 and with
Britain in April 1805. An Austrian army was encircled and forced to surrender at
Ulm on October 20, 1805, and Russia had to send military aid to Austria. Against
the advice of his commander-in-chief, Alexander led the Russian army at the Battle
of Austerlitz on December 2 and was soundly defeated by Napoleon after having lost
nearly 30,000 men. Alexander was forced to retreat. Prussia became increasingly
hostile to Russia. Austria capitulated to Napoleon on December 27, 1805, and the
humiliating Treaty of Schnbrunn between Austria and France was signed.
After Russia lost the Battle of Eylau on February 8, 1807, and the Battle of Fried-
land on June 14, Alexander and Napoleon met on a raft on the Niemen River. Each
tried to outdo the other with supercialities. Alexander, raised with La Harpes lib-
eral idealism, mentioned his appreciation of republicanism as well as the idea of
nonhereditary succession. Napoleon, for his part, put on a magnicent military
parade for Alexander that greatly impressed the tsar. The meeting led to the Treaty
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia 19
of Tilsit on July 7, 1807, among Prussia, Russia, and France, which was conrmed
by the convention of Erfurt on October 12, 1808. In essence, it led to territorial
losses for Prussia and Napoleons goal to involve Russia in the Continental System.
Alexander recognized the Confederation of the Rhine, which consisted of former
Prussian and other German territories. Russia had to agree to the establishment of
the Duchy of Warsaw, which was constructed largely out of Polish territory formerly
under Prussian control. Alexander was promised a huge share in partitioning Tur-
key and believed Napoleons promises that France and Russia would share in domi-
nating the European continent.
Ultimately, the Treaty of Tilsit was a asco for Alexander, for it conrmed French
dominance over central Europe and the Mediterranean. Russia lost relatively little
by the treaty but was humiliated militarily and economically. Tilsit left Alexander
unpopular at home, though Napoleon agreed to Russias annexation of Moldavia
and Wallachia. Within a few years, Tilsit denied the upper classes their luxury goods,
for Alexander had joined Napoleons Continental System, which banned Russian
trade with Britain.
In 1810, Alexander withdrew from the Continental System and imposed duties
on French imports. By the following year he realized that diplomacy had failed,
that Napoleonic policies were becoming increasingly oppressive, and that Napo-
leon was planning to invade Russia; consequently, he withdrew his support of the
French emperor. The French invaded Russia in 1812 and on the way to Moscow
defeated the Russians at Smolensk and Borodino. Alexander withdrew his army
farther east, abandoning the capital. Napoleon entered Moscow on September 15
but the city was soon engulfed in ames. Alexander by now had a strong personal
hatred for Napoleon and refused to meet with him. The disastrous retreat of the
Grande Arme is well known: Napoleon lost at least 400,000 troops, along with his
aura of invincibility.
Napoleons folly improved Alexanders image, even though the tsar was still un-
popular for the earlier Russian failures during the campaign. By this time Alexan-
der had become disillusioned with liberalism and vigorously prosecuted the new
campaigns in Germany and France in 1813 and 1814, respectively.
Alexander led the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon. His troops contributed to
the Allied victory at Leipzig in October 1813 and the tsar, together with the Prussian
and Austrian monarchs, entered Paris in triumph on March 31, 1814. Russias new
strength greatly strengthened Alexanders diplomatic position at the Congress of
Vienna. Alexanders long-term wish was to create a Polish state under the aegis of
his rule. He had always hated the three partitions Catherine had implemented and
wanted a Poland on his own terms with Russian control over the state. Thus, at
Vienna, the Polish-Saxon Question (Alexanders desire to control former Polish ter-
ritories) became one of the key questions facing the congress. Ultimately the issue
was settled to Russias advantage, largely because of the decisive part Russia had
played in Napoleons downfall. The Kingdom of Poland was created with limited
sovereignty, though it was tied to Russia, which had also received Finland from the
Swedes in 1809 and Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire in 1812.
The rest of Alexanders reign was taken up with internal reform. He improved
opportunities for education and worked on abolishing serfdom. He advanced com-
merce, agriculture, and manufacturing. Seaborne commerce became a thriving in-
dustry in Russia under Alexander. Alexander died of fever on December 1, 1825.
He had begun his reign as a liberal and ended it as an autocrat, having increased
Russias already impressive position in Europe in the course of his reign.
FURTHER READING: Dziewanowski, M. K. Alexander I: Russias Mysterious Tsar. New York:
Hippocrene Books, 1990; Hartley, Janet M. Alexander I. London: Longman, 1994; Palmer,
Alan. Alexander: Tsar of War and Peace. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974; Troyat, Henri.
Alexander of Russia: Napoleons Conqueror. New York: Dutton, 1982.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
The American Revolution is often considered to be synonymous with the armed
conict of the American Revolutionary War, a conict bracketed on one side by the
rst shots red at Lexington and Concord in 1775 and, on the other, by the signing
of the Peace of Paris in 1783. Considering the American Revolution from the per-
spective of politics and ideology, however, encourages us to expand our denition.
That expanded denition includes more than military and diplomatic events, and it
also takes in a longer period of time, persuading us to look to the historical context
before 1775 as well as to circumstances after 1783. When we approach the American
Revolution from this broader perspective, it is easier to discern that Americans who
lived through the American revolutionary era disagreed about the origins, nature,
and consequences of their revolution.
Americans of the revolutionary era even debated the relationship of the Ameri-
can Revolution with the War for Independence. They did so in ways that are useful
General John Burgoyne surrenders to American forces following defeat at the Battle of Saratoga in New
York in September 1777. Library of Congress.
20 American Revolution
American Revolution 21
to modern scholars. John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote
from retirement in 1815 to his fellow revolutionary and another past president,
Thomas Jefferson, asking:
What do We Mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution.
It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the
People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fteen Years be-
fore a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The Records of thirteen Legislatures,
the Pamp[h]lets, Newspapers in all the Colonies, ought [to] be consulted, during
that Period, to ascertain the Steps by which the public Opinion was enlightened and
informed concerning the Authority of Parliament over the Colonies.
For Adams, the real American Revolution had been effected before the War for
Independence began. But others of the revolutionary generation saw things very
differently. Benjamin Rush, a renowned physician and statesman, thought that the
War for Independence was not the last act of the American Revolution, as Adams
did, but only its opening act. Rush wrote in 1786:
There is nothing more common, than to confound the terms of the American Revolu-
tion with those of the late American war. The American war is over; but this is far from
being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the rst act
of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of
government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens, for
these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection.
Any modern attempt to dene the American Revolution in a satisfactory way
must be expansive enough to encompass the considered understandings of Adams
and Rush, despite their disparity.
If we want to understand the political and ideological origins of the American
Revolution more fully, it is helpful to look back at least as far as the conclusion to
the Seven Years War (1754 1763), a conict also known as the French and Indian
War. The Seven Years War and its settlement, the Treaty of Paris (1763), changed
forever the relationship between the European colonizing powers with respect to
America. Britains holdings in North America were considerably enlarged, largely at
the expense of Frances diminished holdings. But even more important for under-
standing the American Revolution, the Treaty of Paris also changed the relationship
between the British government back in London and the British colonists living in
North America. The Seven Years War had demonstrated all too clearly to the Brit-
ish administration the great expenses of maintaining an overseas empire that was
growing larger and more complex. At the same time, British colonists in America
were coming to see themselves, if not as distinctly American, in some important
respects at least as British Americans who had identiable and distinct interests and
concerns. In short, the political and ideological ropes that had bound the British
Empire together were beginning to let go. The British and their colonists were be-
ginning to drift apart.
That can be illustrated by the Proclamation of 1763. The peace settlement of
the Seven Years War established a Proclamation Line, according to which British
Americans were not permitted to settle to the west of the Appalachian Mountains
in a territory that included the Ohio Valley and would now become known as Indian
Country. To the British government back in London, a Proclamation Line separating
the British colonists from Native Americans of the interior looked to be a good solu-
tion with which to avoid further military costs and entanglements in North America.
However, to the British colonists living in the area, a Proclamation Line seemed a
long way from a solution. Had the Seven Years War not been fought to gain access
to this territory? Had they not been victorious in the war? Then why was the Ohio
Valley to be taken away? The British American colonists began to wonder: Does the
British government really have our interests at heart? These and similar questions
were in the foreground as Americans of the 1760s read works of political theory.
When approached from this broader perspective, the American Revolution can
be seen, in part, as a crisis within the British Empire. The Proclamation of 1763,
and the various revenue acts passed in the 1760sthe Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp
Act of 1765, and the Townshend Acts of 1767all helped to drive a wedge between
the British colonists and the British government. Clearly, as well, it is unwise to ap-
proach the American Revolution without paying heed to other discernable trends
and events. Growth in colonial population, territorial expansion, and an escalation
in trade that had led to a commercial revolution in the British colonies of North
America by the 1750s arguably set the stage for an emerging desire for political in-
dependence, forming what historians have identied as the preconditions for the
American Revolution. As early as the 1740s, the events of the Great Awakening and
the spread of ideas associated with the American Enlightenment had begun to fash-
ion the settlers who inhabited the 13 disparate colonies into an embryonic Ameri-
can peopleeven if those involved did not know it to be the case themselves. It
is no coincidence that by the mid-1750s, Benjamin Franklin, the great American
printer, scientist, and statesmen, could propose his Albany Plan of Uniona plan
to unite the British colonies so that they might better deal collectively with their
common colonial problems.
On what traditions and ideas did the colonists draw to dene themselves and
their rights? Historians of ideas have debated the political and ideological mean-
ings of the American Revolution since the eighteenth century. Broadsides, newspa-
pers, magazines, pamphlets, and books published in colonial America and the early
American republic were littered with references to political thinkers, ancient and
modern. Even a simple listing of those inuences would be an involved task, and
one beyond the connes of this short essay. But any such list would include writ-
ers of classical antiquity, such as Cicero, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus, among others
whose names colonial spokesmen even chose as pseudonyms with which to express
their own ideas. New England Puritanism was a part of the colonial make-up, too,
and contained within it notions of freedom that helped set the stage for Lockean
liberalism.
John Locke, an English philosopher and political theorist, was one of the found-
ing fathers of the Enlightenment and an ideological wellspring for Americans of the
revolutionary era. Lockes writings were popular in revolutionary America, and his
ideas were referred to directly, especially in colonial attempts in the 1770s to justify
revolution and independence. Lockes Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690) was
rst published in America in 1773, but it had been available to American readers
long before then, as is evidenced by its presence in surviving book catalogs and
printed references. James Otis famously quoted from Locke in The Rights of the Brit-
ish Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764), as did Nathaniel Ames in 1765. In the wake
of the Stamp Act (1765), in particular, Lockes ideas were appropriated in other
ways. Newspapers of revolutionary America referred to Lockes political writings
and portrayed him as a Whig hero in the tradition of John Milton, James Har-
rington, and Algernon Sidney. Locke was cited in some of the most important
political pamphlets of the day, such as Richard Blands An Inquiry into the Rights of
the British Colonies (1766), Jonathan Mayhews The Snare Broken (1766), and Samuel
Adamss A State of the Rights of the Colonists (1772). But an even better measure of
his inuence may be the scores of lesser-known pamphleteersSimeon Howard,
Daniel Leonard, John Perkins, John Tucker, and Samuel West, among otherswho
popularized Lockes ideas.
As numerous scholars have shown, when in 1776 Thomas Jefferson spoke of cer-
tain inalienable rights in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, he
owed considerable debt to Locke, as he did on another topic for which he wished to
be remembered: religious freedom. In his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke
argued that religion was a matter to be decided by individuals and that churches
ought to be voluntary associations, thereby setting part of the stage for the doctrine
of separation of church and state championed by Jefferson and enshrined in the
United States Constitution. While references to Locke disappear in late revolu-
tionary America, his continuing inuence might be traced through the writings of
British Enlightenment radicals such as James Burgh, Richard Price, and Joseph
Priestley, and others who in the 1790s based their conceptions of civil and religious
liberty on a Lockean foundation. Lockes case shows the intricate and twisted nature
of the transatlantic social history of ideas.
The writings of the French Enlightenment philosophes such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Voltaire, and especially Charles-Louis de Secondat (Baron de la Brede
et de Montesquieu) were important to revolutionary Americans as well. As early as
the 1750s, references to Montesquieus The Spirit of the Laws (1748) are found in
American newspapers such as the Maryland Gazette. The catalogs of booksellers and
libraries in America show that Thomas Nugents English translation of The Spirit of
the Laws was especially popular with American readers. In 1771 there was even an
attempt to publish an American edition of Montesquieus work, although nothing
came of it, likely because of the ready availability of imported copies. By the late
1770s and 1780s, American references to Montesquieus The Spirit of the Laws were
frequent, of which book XI, Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty in Rela-
tion to the Subject, was especially popular. For many in revolutionary America,
Montesquieu was seen as a champion of liberty, especially as it was manifest in
the British system of balanced government. John and Samuel Adams, Charles Car-
roll, John Dickinson, and James Otis all looked to Montesquieu for his measured
thoughts on constitutional design, including his doctrine that the separation of
powers was a means with which to secure political liberty. As James Madison put it
in Federalist no. 47, if Montesquieu be not the author of this invaluable precept
in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it
most effectually to the attention of mankind. Benjamin Rush believed that while
Mr. Locke is an oracle as to the principles of government, Montesquieu was an
oracle as to the forms of government. In the late 1780s, Anti-Federalist writers in
particular looked to Montesquieu as an authority with whom to argue for the im-
possibility of maintaining republican government in an extended sphere. In the
1790s Montesquieu continued to be celebrated, and he was most often seen as an
authority on the importance of virtue in a republic. Aspects of Montesquieus
thought sat comfortably with a civic humanist tradition of republicanism, which
J.G.A. Pocock and others have illuminated and traced through to the 1790s. In
short, several overlapping philosophical traditions informed the political and ideo-
logical dimensions of the revolutionary era.
Although scholars do not always give them sufcient attention, historical writings
did. In a world in which history was seen as an instructor in morals and politics,
historical writings were mined for the raw materials they could contribute to politi-
cal thought. Indeed, from the beginning of British settlement in America, British
colonists were interested in historical denitions of the traditional rights and liber-
ties they had inherited, especially as Englishmen. As David Ramsay, an American
physician and important early American historian, put it in his history of the Revo-
lution, The English Colonists were from the rst settlement in America, devoted
to liberty, on English ideas, and English principles. They not only conceived them-
selves to inherit the privileges of Englishmen, but though in a colonial situation,
actually possessed them. Those historical rights were often combined seamlessly
with philosophical justications in political pamphlets of the mid-1760s, such as
Otiss The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764) and Daniel Dulanys
Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes (1765). Others expressed these histori-
cal denitions of rights in letters and resolutions printed in the expanding colonial
newspaper press. This was the case with the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, which
circulated throughout the colonies in 1765.
One of the most important historical sources was Sir William Blackstones Com-
mentaries on the Laws of England (1765 1769), a book that was frequently imported to
America and which was also reprinted there before the Revolution. Blackstone was
read by almost all jurists in eighteenth-century America and, perhaps more impor-
tant, he was known to a wider politically active audience. The Commentaries, a book
divided into four parts, was more than a legal text; it provided a systematic account
of the history of the English government, or constitution. Blackstone traced the
English constitution to its eighteenth-century terminus in which sovereignty resided
with the king-in-Parliament. American writers, such as a youthful Alexander Hamil-
ton, referred to Blackstone often, in part because Blackstones text was straightfor-
ward, lending itself to easy reference. Blackstone remarked that he wished to give a
general map of the law, marking out the shape of the country, its [sic] connexions
and boundaries, its [sic] greater divisions and principal cities. Most frequently
quoted by Americans during the revolutionary era were passages from book I,
Rights of Persons (especially its rst chapter, Of the Absolute Rights of Individu-
als), and book II, Rights of Things. The rst American edition of the Commentar-
ies was a celebrated one, published by Robert Bell in Philadelphia in 17711772.
Many other American editions followed. It was not until 1795 1796, with the publi-
cation of Zephaniah Swifts A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut, that Ameri-
cans had a native statement of a common law tradition, an interesting fact when
one considers the time line of the revolutionary era. Some aspects of Blackstones
thought received a mixed reception in revolutionary America. Blackstone, like the
Scottish Enlightenment historian and philosopher David Hume, thought that the
power of the Crown to confer honors and privileges was a necessary check with
which to control the people. Many Americans, such as Thomas Jefferson, disagreed
with that position. Others, such as James Wilson, came to question what they saw as
Blackstones conception of the law as an authority independent from, and superior
to, its citizens.
Historians have also come to see that colonial claims to the rights of Englishmen
were more complicated in other ways than might at rst appear to be the case. For
instance, when revolutionaries such as Adams or Jefferson referred to the principles
of the English constitution, as they often did, they were not referring to a single,
unied constitutional heritage. Rather, they had available to them two competing
conceptions of the English constitution. One version had a historical essence and
looked to the revolutionary settlement of 1688 and the establishment of parliamen-
tary supremacy as the event that consolidated English liberties. The glory of the
Glorious Revolution, these court Whigs argued, was that it guaranteed Parliaments
supremacy over the Crown. From 1689, Parliament effectively could dene a ex-
ible English constitution. It was this new version of the English constitution that
historians of early America have argued was most often championed by Whigs in
England (Britain from 1707) but was challenged by Whigs in America. That was
increasingly so as the imperial crisis worsened in the 1760s.
Existing concurrently with this court view was a second, older Whig version of the
English constitution. It looked back to the writings of John Trenchard and Thomas
Gordon and other British radicals who themselves drew upon the ancient English
constitution found in Edward Cokes works, which helped dene the inherent lib-
erties of Englishmen. For these so-called Country Whigs, the Glorious Revolution
was glorious for its recovery of temporarily lost, but nevertheless ancient, liberties
that had existed since the beginning of recorded time. Their language was one of
a timeless battle pitting virtue against corruption. This ahistorical version of the
Whig constitution only received slight lip service in Britain in the eighteenth cen-
tury, but its classical republican tenets were frequently absorbed and championed
in revolutionary America. The ideological divide separating American and British
conceptions of liberty was widened with events such as the Boston Massacre of 1770,
the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the so-called Coercive Acts of 1774, and the meeting
of the Continental Congress. American revolutionaries were reading the works of
their British heritage in distinctive ways.
In the 1760s and 1770s, David Hume was often depicted as a friend of liberty in
America. Humes celebrated essay On the Freedom of the Press, for instance, was
printed in colonial newspapers to help bolster resistance to the Stamp Act. Promi-
nent American writers, such as John Adams, Jonathan Dickinson, and Charles Car-
roll, turned to the six volumes of Humes History of England (1754 1762) for its
account of liberty and, interestingly, for a context-laden reading of liberty within an
English constitution that changed over time. Americans were also keenly interested
in Humes life and character, which, after Humes death in 1776, they read about in
his autobiographical My Own Life, a short essay that was usually accompanied in
print by Adam Smiths account of Humes character. My Own Life was published
in Philadelphia by Robert Bell in 1777, and Humes character was a frequent topic
in early American periodicals, where his renown as an atheist who lived virtuously
was the focus of furious debate. All this helps remind us that in our search for intel-
lectual origins, we need to remember that for eighteenth-century Americans, ideas
were not lifeless lines of text in books but were often closely associated with the
personalities of political thinkers, and that too was another factor inuencing re-
ception. In Humes case, his most celebrated impact on revolutionary America was
through James Madison. In Federalist no. 10, rst published in 1787, Madison relied
on his reading of Humes moral and political Essays and History of England to help
build support for a United States Constitution linked to the American Revolution.
Filtering his experiences in America through his reading of Hume, Madison argued
that in a country like the United States, which had an extended territory, multiple
factions had their role to play in limiting sectional conict and maintaining repub-
lican government.
Other Scottish Enlightenment gures were also inuential in America. One of
these was Adam Smith, whose earliest book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759),
circulated in America. John Witherspoon, for instance, included Smiths Theory of
Moral Sentiments in his moral philosophy course at the College of New Jersey, where
students were directed toward Smiths account of sympathys role in moral judg-
ment. Smiths An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
was also well known in America, in part, one suspects, because therein Smith wrote
much about America, including his judgment that unless a way could be found of
preserving the importance and of gratifying the ambition of the leading men of
America, it is not very probable that they will ever voluntarily submit to us; and we
ought to consider that the blood which must be shed in forcing them to do so, is,
every drop of it, the blood either of those who are, or of those whom we wish to have
for our fellow-citizens. They are very weak who atter themselves that, in the state
to which things have come, our colonies will be easily conquered by force alone.
Smiths friend and fellow Scot Hugh Blair maintained that Smith had said so much
about American affairs that his book was really a statement about current affairs.
Many prominent Americans, including John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, and James Wilson, were familiar with the Wealth of Na-
tions. After 1789 they and others could read Wealth of Nations in an American edi-
tion published by Thomas Dobson in Philadelphia. Smiths American readers knew
Wealth of Nations for more than what it said about America, reading it on topics as
diverse as benevolence, the theory of banking, relations between church and state,
and the regulation of commercial life. Smiths central tenet, that wealth was depen-
dent on the division of labor, was known in revolutionary America and became even
more inuential in the early years of the republic.
As our knowledge of the reading habits of Americans in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries becomes more detailed and nuanced, sorting out the origins,
nature, and consequences of the American Revolution becomes more complicated.
The more we know about the wide availability of literature and the wide-ranging
reading habits of early Americans, the more difcult it is to explain the intellectual
origins and nature of the American Revolution with reference to only a handful
of seminal texts, a dened school of thought, or even particular genres of writ-
ing. Instead, we need to see that revolutionary Americans drew upon a wide assort-
ment of publications and scholarly traditions. No longer can we accept that either
John Locke, classical republicanism, or the Scottish Enlightenment holds the mas-
ter key to unlocking the mind of American revolutionary thought. And of course,
the world of books cannot be separated from the real world in which Americans
lived. That context sparked other debates, for instance those about the place of
African Americans, Native Americans, and American women in the United States,
which would long outlive eighteenth-century America. Eighteenth-century Ameri-
cans read widely and attentively at the very time that they experienced a myriad of
American Revolutionary War 27
political, social, and economic changes in their daily lives. There is little wonder
that eighteenth-century Americans differed so greatly in their own denitions of the
American Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Rev.
ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992; Blackstone, William. Commentaries on
the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765 1769, with an introduction by
Stanley N. Katz. 4 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979; Bonwick, Colin. The
American Revolution. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991; Brunhouse, Robert L.
The Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1776 1790. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical
Commission, 1942; Cappon, Lester J., ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence
between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1959; Gibson, Alan. Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates
over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press,
2006. Greene, Jack P., and J. R. Pole, eds. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1991; Jensen, Merrill. The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American
Revolution, 1763 1776. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968; Kerber, Linda. Women of
the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1980; Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and
the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765 1776. New York: Knopf, 1972; May,
Henry F. The Enlightenment in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976; Norton,
Mary Beth. Libertys Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750 1800.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1980; Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political
Thought and the Atlantic Republic Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975;
Ramsay, David. The History of the American Revolution. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,
1990; Reid, John Phillip. Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority of
Law. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993; Rush, Benjamin. On the Defects of the
Confederation (1786). In The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush, ed. Dagobert D. Runes.
New York: Philosophical Library, 1947; Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics, 1981; Spencer, Mark G. David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America. Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press, 2005; Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History.
New York: Modern Library, 2002; Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution.
New York: Knopf, 1992.
MARK G. SPENCER
American Revolutionary War (1775 1781)
Open rebellion occurred in the American colonies when the governor of Mas-
sachusetts, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, sent troops to Concord to seize a
stockpile of arms. Paul Revere gave warning of the British advance, while militia
under Samuel Prescott and William Dawes began to concentrate. Brushing aside
the militia assembled at Lexington Common under Captain John Parker (April 19,
1775) and destroying what was left of the supplies at Concord, the British were ha-
rassed all the way back to Boston, where the patriots under Major General Artemas
Ward then laid siege. Gage, reinforced by troops from overseas, attempted to break
out, and although he drove off the Americans under Colonel William Prescott at
Bunker Hill ( June 17), he suffered very serious losses of his own and failed to ease
the situation. Such staunch American resistance lent encouragement to the rebel
cause. Shortly thereafter ( July 3), the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia
gave command of the Continental Army to General George Washington.
28 American Revolutionary War
Invasion of Canada
In August the Americans under General Philip Schuyler (later replaced by Gen-
eral Richard Montgomery) invaded Canada, taking St. Johns (November 2) and oc-
cupying Montreal (November 13). Sir Guy Carleton, governor-general of Canada,
withdrew to Quebec, from which he repulsed with great loss the American assault
(December 31) under Montgomery and Benedict Arnold. Upon the arrival of rein-
forcements for Carleton (May 6, 1776) under Major General John Burgoyne, the re-
maining rebels withdrew from the outskirts of the city. Finding, however, that British
forces well outnumbered them at Trois Rivires ( June 8), they abandoned Montreal
and retreated to Fort Ticonderoga ( JuneJuly). Carletons advance into New York
was made possible by the British naval victory at Valcour Island (October 11) on Lake
Champlain, but the consequent delay led him to postpone landing on American
soil and he remained in Canada.
Operations in New York and New Jersey
Concerned by the rising number of American forces around Boston, Major Gen-
eral William Howe, now in command, withdrew the garrison by sea to Halifax, Nova
Scotia (March 17, 1776). Taking the offensive, he landed 32,000 men on Staten
Island, New York ( July 2), there confronting with 20,000 of his force 13,000 Ameri-
cans at the Battle of Long Island (August 27). By inicting heavy casualties on the
rebels, he forced Washington to evacuate Long Island (August 30) before per-
suading the rebel commander to begin a full-scale withdrawal from all of New
York (September 12). After being halted temporarily by action at Harlem Heights
(September 16), Howe continued his advance up the East River and won a clear
victory at White Plains (October 28). From there he continued his pursuit of Wash-
ingtons army, taking Forts Washington and Lee on the Hudson (November 16 20),
The Battle of Bunker Hill fought near Boston in June 1775. Library of Congress.
together with numerous prisoners and supplies, and driving the rebels southward
through New Jersey, where nearly 4,000 were captured near Morristown.
Washington and his 3,000 remaining men retreated into Pennsylvania while Con-
gress withdrew from Philadelphia to Baltimore (December 12). Howe established
winter quarters in New York and New Jersey. The Americans were not idle; Washing-
ton won a resounding victory by surprising the Hessians under Colonel Johann Rall
at Trenton (December 26), obliging Major General Charles Cornwallis, with 8,000
men, to try to block his line of retreat and destroy him. Washington, however, with
inferior numbers, managed to retreat under cover of darkness ( January 2, 1777)
and defeat a force of reinforcements for Cornwallis near Princeton ( January 3).
There he captured a signicant amount of materiel and by thus exposing the enemy
line of communications forced the withdrawal of all British garrisons in central and
western New Jersey.
Operations in the North, 1777
British objectives induced the seizure of the Hudson River Valley, by which the
colonies would be divided. Major General John Burgoyne would advance south from
Canada via Lake Champlain, while Howe would proceed north from New York, link-
ing up with Burgoyne at Albany. A third force under Colonel Barry St. Leger, sailing
up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, would join with Indian allies and Loyalists
under Sir John Johnson and together clear the Mohawk Valley and join the others
at Albany.
Burgoynes advance with 10,000 mixed British and German mercenaries began
well with the capture of Ticonderoga ( July 5) and the Americans retreat, led by
General Arthur St. Clair, into Vermont. Burgoyne pursued, overtaking and defeat-
ing the rearguard at Hubbardton ( July 7). He continued his advance toward Fort
Edward, but the Americans, having destroyed the primitive roads, forced the British
to cut their way through rough country, thus delaying them three weeks and giving
time for the Patriots to be reinforced to reach a strength of 4,500. Burgoyne, learn-
ing of Howes decision not to move north from New York (August 3) but instead to
go south in search of Washington, chose to advance on Albany in any event, where
he still expected to meet St. Leger.
Meanwhile, St. Leger, with about 900 British, Hessians, and Loyalists, and 1,000
Iroquois under Joseph Brant, landed at Oswego and invested Fort Stanwix (August).
Local American militia under General Nicholas Herkimer marched to its relief but
were ambushed at Oriskany (August 6) and forced to retreat. Another American
relief column, this time of 1,000 men under Benedict Arnold, advanced from Still-
water. In the meantime, Burgoyne had dispatched a force of Brunswickers under
Colonel Friedrich Baum to seize military supplies at Bennington, but this contin-
gent was surrounded and destroyed (August 16) by Colonel John Stark, resulting
in the loss of much materiel. Misfortune continued when St. Legers Indians aban-
doned him, obliging him to raise the siege before the arrival of troops under Bene-
dict Arnold (August 23).
Burgoyne crossed the Hudson near Saratoga (September 13) to confront the
Americans under General Horatio Gates, while calling for reinforcements from
Clinton in New York. He then attacked at Freemans Farm (September 19) but
suffered heavy casualties. In a vague effort to create a diversion in favor of Bur-
goyne, Clinton moved up the Hudson with 4,000 men, taking Forts Clinton and
Montgomery (October 6) before returning to New York. In another attempt to turn
the American left ank, Burgoyne launched a powerful attack at Bemis Heights
(October 7), which was driven back by Arnold. Burgoyne withdrew toward Saratoga,
where his now badly reduced force of under 6,000 was surrounded by three times
its number and forced to surrender (October 17). This marked the turning point
in the war: American morale was strengthened and the British then held only New
York City and small parts of the surrounding states. Most signicant of all, France
soon gave its recognition to an independent United States as a prelude to military
intervention in the conict.
Operations in the Central States, 1777 1779
Howe, with 18,000 men, sailed from New York ( July 23) up Chesapeake Bay and
disembarked at Head of Elk (August 25). Washington, with 10,500 men, blocked
the route to Philadelphia by deploying along Brandywine Creek, where Howe de-
feated him (September 11) and obliged him to retreat on Philadelphia. Congress
withdrew for a second time, leaving the capital to Howe (September 26), who, to-
gether with the eet of his brother Richard, swept American supply boats from
the Delaware River and took Forts Mifin and Mercer (OctoberNovember). At
Germantown, Washington attacked Howes main body (October 4) but was badly
defeated, losing 700 killed and injured and 400 prisoners. Both sides went into win-
ter quarters, the Americans suffering from the harsh winter at Valley Forge while
the British remained comfortable at Philadelphia.
Replacing Howe, Clinton marched his 13,000 men from New York toward Phila-
delphia ( June 18, 1778), while Washingtons force, now about equal in strength,
made for the same destination. At Monmouth ( June 28) General Charles Lee
caught up with the British rearguard, and a general engagement, with Washington
again in command of the main Patriot force, ensued when Clinton faced round and
launched a series of counterattacks that ended in exhaustion for both sides and a
drawn outcome. Clinton returned to New York, where Washington besieged him.
To the south, in the lower Hudson Valley, British troops took Stony Point (May 31,
1779), though the Americans soon retook it ( July 15 16), thus averting the loss of
the strategically important post of West Point. The rebels also captured Paulus Hook
in New York harbor. By this time the war had widened to include France ( June 17,
1778) and Spain ( June 21, 1779) in support of the Americans, though Spain refused
to recognize American independence.
Operations in the South, 1776 1779
Major General Sir Henry Clinton arrived by sea before Charleston, South Carolina
( June 4, 1776), and landed his troops outside the city, whose harbor defenses were
controlled by the Patriot-held Fort Sullivan under Colonel William Moultrie. When
a naval squadron under Sir Peter Parker failed to reduce it, Clinton was obliged to
reembark his troops and proceed to New York to join forces with Howe.
Beyond Clintons failed effort in 1776, the rst two years of the war in the South
were marked by guerrilla warfare between Loyalist and Patriot militias. After evacu-
ating Philadelphia, however, Clinton brought an expedition to the Carolinas, the rst
major action being the capture of Savannah (December 29, 1778). General Augus-
tine Prevosts attack on Port Royal, South Carolina, was driven off (February 3, 1779)
while the British foiled American attempts to retake Augusta in an action at Briar
Creek (March 3). Prevost proved unable to capture Charleston and while returning
to Savannah engaged and defeated a Patriot force at Stono Ferry ( June 19). The
French, having meanwhile dispatched considerable military and naval forces to
North America, now cooperated with the Americans to lay siege to Savannah. Admi-
ral Jean-Baptiste dEstaings eet disembarked 4,000 infantry, which were joined by
over 1,300 rebels (September). Prevosts garrison of 3,500 had, however, strength-
ened the citys defenses well and repulsed the Franco-American assault (October 9)
with massive Allied casualties. DEstaing reembarked his men and withdrew, leaving
the Americans dispirited and angry with their allies. December saw further activity
in the South when Clinton sailed from New York (December 26) with 8,000 men to
seize Charleston in an operation that marked the shifting direction of Britains war
effort toward the southern colonies.
Overseas Operations and Spanish Operations, 1779 1781
British forces captured St. Lucia (November 13, 1778) but lost St. Vincent ( June
16, 1779) and Grenada ( July 4, 1779). From June 1779, Franco-Spanish forces had
laid siege to Gibraltar, where General George Eliott led a magnicent defense, with
essential help from the Royal Navy.
Having declared war on Britain in June 1779, Spain sent troops based at New
Orleans to clear British garrisons up the Mississippi, taking Manchac (September 7),
Baton Rouge (September 20), and Natchez (September 30). Mobile, British West
Florida, fell on March 14, 1780, causing General Archibald Campbell, with rein-
forcements marching from Pensacola, to turn around. Further north, the Spanish
captured Fort St. Joseph on Lake Michigan ( January 1781). Spanish forces, rein-
forced with men from Havana and Mobile, laid siege to Fort St. George near Pen-
sacola. After the forts magazine exploded, the commander surrendered.
Campaigns in the South, 1780 1781
While Washington hemmed in the British in New York, further south, Clinton
arrived by sea off Charleston, where he disembarked his men and besieged the city.
After three months of operations and a naval bombardment, he accepted the citys
capitulation, which included 5,400 prisoners and a large quantity of artillery and
stores (May 12, 1780). Cornwallis remained in command in South Carolina, while
Clinton returned to New York. Throughout the remainder of the year a brutal civil
war raged in the Carolinas between Loyalist and Patriot militias. Lieutenant Colo-
nel Banastre Tarleton, commanding Loyalist cavalry, contributed to the bloodshed,
particularly in the massacre of rebels at Waxhaw Creek (May 29). At the Battle of
Camden (August 6) Cornwallis decisively defeated 3,000 men, largely militia, under
Horatio Gates, with a slightly smaller force, inicting enormous losses, including
900 killed and 1,000 captured. Nevertheless, the tide against the Loyalist cause
was turned at Kings Mountain (October 7) when Carolinian and Virginian militia
under colonels Isaac Shelby and Richard Campbell destroyed a Loyalist force under
Colonel Patrick Ferguson.
At years end American forces in South Carolina under General Nathanael
Greene had been reinforced by nearly 3,000, half of whom were regulars, while
Cornwallis, also recently reinforced, boasted a command of 4,000 men, all better
equipped and clothed than his opponents. Cornwallis divided his forces into two,
sending Tarleton in pursuit of one section of Greenes army, while the rest, under
General Alexander Leslie, was to monitor a Patriot force at Cheraw Hill. Cornwallis,
with the bulk of his force, proceeded in the path of Tarleton, who, having caught
the American force under Daniel Morgan, was disastrously defeated at the Cowpens
( January 17, 1781), where the Patriots executed a masterful double envelopment.
Cornwallis pursued the Americans into southern Virginia but later returned to
Hillsboro, North Carolina, followed by Greene with 4,400 troops, mostly militia and
green regulars. Cornwallis, taking the initiative, attacked at Guilford Courthouse
(March 15). He forced the Americans from the eld, but the cost was substantial to
the British: 100 killed and over 400 wounded, to fewer than 100 Americans killed
and 200 wounded. Recognizing that he was no longer able to control Georgia and
the Carolinas, Cornwallis moved his army of 1,500 men to Wilmington, North Caro-
lina, and later to Virginia.
British forces nevertheless remained in the Carolinas, including those under
Colonel Francis Rawdon, who defeated Greene at Hobkirks Hill (April 19) and
proceeded toward Charleston. Greene next laid siege to Fort Ninety-six (May 22
June 19) but failed when a relief force appeared, marched away with the defenders,
and returned to Charleston. Apart from its capital city and Savannah, South Caro-
lina was now largely free of British garrisons. Seeking to liberate the former, Greene
fought Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewarts force at Eutaw Springs (Septem-
ber 8). After initial success Greene was ultimately repulsed, though with heavy loss
to the British. The following day Stewart withdrew to the safety of Charleston. Thus,
despite winning every action of the campaign, Britains position was poor, with all
forces now concentrated in the two major cities.
The Yorktown Campaign, 1781
The campaign in Virginia began with a raid on Richmond ( January 5) by the
American turncoat, Benedict Arnold, who laid waste the city before returning to
Portsmouth. Between March and May, Major General William Phipps, sent to Vir-
ginia with reinforcements, destroyed American supplies and stores before proceed-
ing south to link up with Cornwallis, who was moving up from North Carolina.
Meanwhile, the marquis de Lafayette arrived at Richmond (April 29) from New
York with 3,500 American troops, soon to be joined by a further 1,000 ( June). Dur-
ing the same period, Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg, bringing the total force in
Virginia up to 8,000. Both sides maneuvered around Virginia, Cornwallis being un-
able to force Lafayette into action, apart from an ambush at Jamestown Ford ( July 6),
where Cornwallis inicted serious losses on an American brigade, which neverthe-
less withdrew in good order. Cornwallis then marched his 7,000 men to Yorktown
(August 4), which allowed communication by sea with Clinton in New York.
Recognizing the strategic advantage offered him by the French eet, Washington
sought to isolate Cornwallis from the main British forces in New York and Chesa-
peake Bay. Reinforced by Admiral de Grasses eet, Washington left troops to observe
Clintons force at New York while he and Rochambeau moved south toward Virginia
(August 21). De Grasse brought more French troops to Lafayette (August 30) and,
after a naval victory at the Virginia Capes (September 59) against the eets under
admirals Graves and Hood, was able to reinforce the Franco-American army around
Yorktown with siege artillery. With the French in command of the sea, Washington
was now able to transport his troops from Maryland to Williamsburg, Virginia. With
9,500 Americans and 7,800 French, Washington proceeded to besiege Yorktown
Amis de la Constitution, Socit des 33
(September), where Cornwallis had 8,000 troops. After slowly extending siege lines
toward the city, the Allies opened their bombardment (October 9). Following an
assault on two redoubts (October 14), and a British counterattack (October 16),
Cornwallis recognized the futility of further resistance and surrendered his army
(October 19), effectively ending the war.
The arrival of Clinton with 7,000 men in Chesapeake Bay (October 24) proved
useless because of the French naval presence, and he returned to New York. Wash-
ington returned north to invest New York (November), while Greene did the same
around Charleston. Negotiations for peace began in April 1782, and by the end of
the year British forces had been evacuated from all points to concentrate in New
York. The Treaty of Paris, which was signed on September 3, 1783, brought the war
to a formal conclusion and established the independence of the United States. See
Lexington and Concord, Actions at.
FURTHER READING: Barnes, Ian. The Historical Atlas of the American Revolution. New York:
Routledge, 2000; Bicheno, Hugh. Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War. London:
HarperCollins, 2003; Black, Jeremy. War for America: The Fight for Independence, 1775 1783.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994; Carrington, Henry B. Battles of the American
Revolution, 1775 1781. 1876. Reprint, New York: Promontory, 1974; Chadwick, Bruce. George
Washingtons War: The Forging of a Man, a Presidency and a Nation. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks,
2004; Coakley, Robert W. The War of the American Revolution: Narrative, Chronology, and
Bibliography. Washington, DC: Center for Military History, U.S. Army, 2004; Conway, Stephen.
The War of American Independence, 1775 1783. London: Arnold, 1995; Countryman, Edward.
The American Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003; Lancaster, Bruce. The American
Revolution. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 2001; Marston, Daniel. The American Revolution, 1774
1783. Oxford: Osprey, 2002; Middlekauf, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution,
1763 1789. 1981. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; Morrissey, Brendan. The
American Revolution: The Global Struggle for National Independence. San Diego, CA: Thunder
Bay, 2001; Morton, Joseph C. The American Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003;
Seymour, William. The Price of Folly: British Blunders in the War of American Independence. London:
Brasseys, 1995; Symonds, Craig L. A Battleeld Atlas of the American Revolution. Mount Pleasant,
SC: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1986; Ward, Christopher. War
of the Revolution. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1952; Ward, Harry M. The War of Independence
and the Transformation of American Society. London: University College London Press, 1999;
Weintraub, Stanley. Iron Tears: Americas Battle for Freedom, Britains Quagmire, 1775 1783. New
York: Free Press, 2005; Wood, W. J. Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775 1781. Chapel Hill,
NC: Algonquin, 1990.
GREGORY FREMONT-BARNES
Amis de la Constitution, Socit des (1789 1792)
The leading political club during the French Revolution, the Amis de la Con-
stitution originated from the Breton Club in 1789. The Breton Club was an in-
formal groupingit never kept minutes or maintained the rigid structure of the
Jacobinscomposed of provincial deputies primarily from Brittany. It was led by
men such as Isaac Le Chapelier and Antoine Barnave, and it was a kind of philo-
sophical society or socit de pense, which discussed the ideas of the philosophes. It
rst met in Versailles on April 30, 1789, just prior to the rst meeting of the Estates-
General on May 4. The Bretons formed the nucleus of a group of approximately 15
to 20 deputies called the Socit de la Rvolution. Apparently the London Revolution
34 Amis de la Constitution, Socit des
Society provided the model for this new society while the old Breton group pro-
vided the members. The Socit de la Rvolution changed its name to the Socit
des Amis de la Constitution in January 1790. The organization rented a room at
the former Jacobin convent (Dominican) on the rue St. Honor, where it held its
meetings. Royalist writers coined the name Jacobin, which remained with the club
throughout the Revolution. On September 21, 1792, with the declaration of the
French Republic, the group changed its name to the Socit des Jacobins, Amis de
la Libert et LEgalit.
The Amis de la Constitution evolved into the most important political club dur-
ing the French Revolution. It was certainly the most respectable and prestigious so-
ciety. Initially, membership to the Amis was restrictive, limited only to deputies, and
rather expensive with fees, which excluded the ordinary working man. However,
by July 1790, membership had grown to about 1,200 and included non-deputies.
The Amis viewed themselves as the most important clubfor example, they refused
to participate in the central committee of the more popular societiesand they
had contacts with local Jacobin Clubs all over France. Provincial societies began
to spring up in major cities such as Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Bordeaux
throughout 1790, bringing the total to 152 in that year. These societies were mod-
eled on the Paris society. They were often founded by members of the local elite
who were elected members of the new municipal or departmental governments
as well as, in some cases, National Guardsmen. Their leaders were men who would
later become prominent national politicians. In this respect, the provincial Amis de
la Constitution constituted an important training ground for national politicians
such as the Girondins. During its early sessions, the Amis de la Constitution func-
tioned as a kind of extra-parliamentary debating society. Its agendas followed that
of the Constituent Assembly, with members discussing the same issues, primarily
constitutional ones, and organizing itself along similar lines with committees, while
rotating ofcers of secretaries, vice presidents, and presidents. Its principal objec-
tive was the establishment and promotion of a constitutional monarchy.
Up until the period preceding the kings ight to Varennes, the actual debates
in the Jacobin Club tended to be dominated by moderate deputies, with the radical
non-deputies following the clubs debates, but not always participating in them. Al-
though a good number of the more progressive revolutionaries were membersthe
names of Carra, Gorsas, Fabre, Collot, Louvet, Billaud, Robert, and Desmoulins ap-
pear on the incomplete membership list of December 21, 1790most were not ac-
tively engaged in the debates and committees until the kings ight, which resulted
in the Feuillant-Jacobin schism.
The Jacobin Club, which had become increasingly democratic and radical with
the inux of non-deputy radical members, many of whom were members of the
Cordeliers Club and the Cercle Social, was very divided over the kings ight to
Varennes. The radical deputies from the Assembly sympathized with the Cordelier
Cercle Social alliance, while the more conservative members, such as Barnave, fa-
vored a reinstatement of the king as soon as the constitution was completed. The
Jacobins did agree to designate a committee to draft a petition for an intended dem-
onstration the next day. Due to the disagreements over what to do with Louis XVI,
with the more radical members proposing a republic, the Jacobin Club divided into
two separate factions, with the minority of members remaining in the original club.
The Feuillant secession took place on July 16, 1791, when the moderate deputies
Anarchists 35
learned of the petitioning then underway in the Jacobin Club. Apparently a radical
petition falsely attributed to the Jacobins was intentionally circulated to mislead
deputies. This led the triumvir of Barnave and the two Lameth brothers, along with
approximately three hundred others, all deputies, to depart to a Feuillant monastery
located close to the Assembly and to form La Socit des Amis de la Constitution,
sante aux Feuillants. There were three sorts of deputies who became Feuillants:
those who believed the Jacobins had become too radical and did not like the clubs
growing afliation with more democratic societies such as the Cercle Social and the
Cordeliers; conservatives who wanted to reinstate the king, who had been temporar-
ily suspended from his functions, and ensure the new regime; and nally, deputies
who had been misled by rumors perpetrated by radicals that the club was planning
to exert insurrectionary pressure on the Assembly. The third group consisted of
fewer than one hundred men. Maximilien Robespierre and Jrme Ption de Ville-
neuve, both deputies on the Left in the Assembly, played the most signicant roles in
keeping the original club from disappearing. Ption took the lead at this crucial mo-
ment in the clubs history. He regretted the schism in the club on July 17; however,
he asserted that one of the reasons many had ed to a new organization, called the
Feuillant Club, was that those deputies had lost their inuence among the Jacobins
and thus the formation of a new club was their method of recovering lost power.
Apparently even before Varennes, some members of the Constituent Assembly
had demanded the reform of the society and the expulsion of the more radical
members. They threatened to leave the society if they did not obtain their reform.
Their intention was to replace the Jacobins as the most powerful club, and to this
end, they prepared an address to be sent to all afliated societies. By September
1791 the Amis were united and stronger than before the schism. Approximately one
thousand provincial clubs had remained loyal to the mother society in Paris. See also
Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Political Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Aulard, F.V.A. La socit des Jacobins: Recueil des documents. 6 vols. Paris:
Jouast, 18891897; Kennedy, Michael L. The Foundation of the Jacobin Development of the
Jacobin Club Network, 17891791. Journal of Modern History 51 (1979): 70133; Kennedy,
Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The First Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1982; Vovelle, Michel. Les Jacobins: De Robespierre Chevnement. Paris: Editions
de la Dcouverte, 1999.
LEIGH WHALEY
Anarchists
The term anarchy derives from the Greek an-archos, meaning without order.
Anarchists believe that humanity should free itself of the corrupting inuence of
government. Crime, ignorance, poverty, oppression, and other social ills ultimately
derive from the existence of remote authorities distinct from the people they gov-
ern. Although anarchy has existed as a strain of thought throughout human history,
the chief proponent of anarchist principles (although he never used this phrase
himself) in the eighteenth century was William Godwin. Godwins An Enquiry Con-
cerning Political Justice (1793) articulated many anarchist values and ideas. Anarchists
necessarily believe in humanitys benevolence and wisdom, which is corrupted by
the state. Individuals would voluntarily band together due to temporary needs.
People could pursue their own conscience and reason rather than rely on law and
36 Ancien Rgime
custom. The only political units envisioned under this system were small local units,
such as villages. This last tenet led to a certain degree of philosophical tension be-
tween individualism and the ideal of the small collective.
For most of history, the term anarchy has had negative connotations. Critics of
anarchy charged that an anarchy would produce chaos and cultural decline. The
state was a bulwark against barbarism, oppression, and disorder. During the French
Revolution, the Enrags were accused of being anarchists. It was not until the mid-
nineteenth century that individuals and a movement explicitly identifying with an-
archism emerged. This anarchist movement rested on the work of such gures as
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (author of What Is Property?) and Mikhail Bakunin. Under
Bakunins ideological inuence, the anarchist movement became progressively more
violent. During the 1890s and 1900s, anarchists assassinated several world leaders.
The movement faded during the twentieth century, probably owing to anarchists
inherent lack of organization as well as the growing inuence of communism.
FURTHER READING: Godwin, William. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Harmondsworth,
UK: Penguin, 1985.
CHARLES ALLAN
Ancien Rgime
The ancien rgime was a name given during the revolutionary period to refer to
the former system of governance: the old way of doing things. In its widest sense,
the ancien rgime (the old, or former, regime) referred to government, society, and
religioneverything the enlightened reformers wished to do away with in order to
create a modern world based on reason.
Primarily this term today applies to France in its prerevolutionary days, but it
can equally apply to the whole of Europe. Philosophes like Voltaire and Rousseau
were interested not merely in reforming France, but all of contemporary European
society. One of the goals of the revolutionary government in France was to spread
the gospel of its achievements to its neighbors in the Low Countries, Germany,
Switzerland, and beyond. Radical makeovers were required: the removal of cen-
turies of layered practices and traditions. Often the French reforms were imposed
by force, sometimes in a bloody fashion. But long after the revolutionary armies
had departed, many of their reforms, such as the legal Code Napolon, did indeed
remain throughout much of Europe. The old order of divinely sanctioned princes
and a divinely sanctioned church supported by an elite, privileged aristocracy and a
conservative and restricted oligarchy was almost entirely wiped away.
Government and Justice
In general, government and justice were built on centuries of accumulated tra-
dition rather than uniform written law. Even in areas where Roman law remained
the basis of local law (the south of France, for example), the application of these
varied from region to region. The world of ancien rgime princes was, in theory
at least, one of unquestioned authority. The lord-vassal relationship of the Middle
Ages was never eradicated entirely, and aspects of feudalism persisted well into the
eighteenth century, particularly in landownership. But the way the monarch viewed
his subjects had changed. Rather than the rst noble among equals, since the late
sixteenth century, monarchs across Europe had represented themselves as Gods
Ancien Rgime 37
anointed on Earth, and thus the only source of laws and social honors. This was in
part propaganda, a means of continuing the centralization processes initiated by
their predecessors, summed up by the dictum One king, one law, one faith. By the
middle of the seventeenth century, most of their subjects had come to see the value
of this system as a powerful counterweight to the chaos of a multipolar political
system that had produced such violence and economic disruption in the preceding
two centuries. It seemed preferable to have one known, absolute monarch rather
than numerous political elites with unpredictable behavior. Moreover, the reality of
absolutism was more inclined toward a gurehead who was kept under tight control
by the most powerful political, social, and economic forces of the state. Both Louis
XIV in France and Charles II in Britain can be seen as the embodiment in different
forms of this principle. Both were presented as an unquestioned authority within
society, and both were adept at staying within their prescribed parameters of pow-
ers, primarily in regulating the honors and privileges of the elite bodies surround-
ing them at court and in government. Louis XIV excelled at this more than his
cousin, however, and his strict regimen of daily routineclocks could be set by it
reassured people of the benets of a well-ordered, centralized absolute monarchy.
One of the key features of the ancien rgime in almost any part of Europe was a
persistent reluctance to remove the old ways of doing things: new structures were
merely added on top of the old. In France, successive ministers of the crown were
unable to abolish the traditional practice of ruling the provinces through royal gov-
ernorsusually powerful nobles whose primary loyalties were to their family and
local clienteles, rather than to the king and his government. Instead, the kings
government added a new layer, the intendants, men who were reliant on the king
alone for their livelihood, and who slowly whittled away the power of the royal gov-
ernors while leaving the facade intact. In a similar fashion, some of the ancient me-
dieval courts, which were too closely connected to local politics, were not abolished
but superseded by new courts responsible to the center. In Germany, when the em-
peror was unable to reform the diet of princes or ally the old princes to his policies,
he created new princes to populate the diet and vote in his favor, a practice not dis-
similar to that done in the House of Lords in Britain in the twentieth century.
Government in ancien rgime Europe was primarily conducted by nonelected
councils whose members were appointed by hereditary sovereigns. Some demo-
cratic institutions did exist, for example in Europes republics (the Netherlands,
Venice, parts of Switzerland), as well as in monarchies like France and Spain,
though thesethe Estates-General in France, the Cortes in Spain, the Sejm in
Polandwere mostly consultative bodies without power to create legislation and
were called to meet less and less often in the early modern period. The Estates-
General in France did not meet at all after 1614 until the monarchy was forced to
recall it in the nancial crisis of the 1780s. The British parliament was one of the
few institutions to truly represent the interests of a wider public in governance.
Aside from appointed councils and semi-representative popular assemblies, gov-
ernment in Old Regime Europe was responsible for administering justice. Here
too judicial bodies that were set up in the Middle Ages continued to ourish, often
mostly unchanged since then and hardly practical in the world of the Enlighten-
ment. Seigneurial courts, for example, were local courts that continued to be staffed
and paid for by local nobles and landlords, against whom, therefore, no claims
could be made (in practice if not in theory). It is estimated that seigneurial justices
38 Ancien Rgime
continued to exist in about 20,000 locales in France in the eighteenth century. Royal
justice was obtainable in most localities, however, and was used for all but the most
banal lawsuits, which were left to the seigneurial courts. But royal justice was ex-
pensive, and landowners who owned property in more than one jurisdiction could
usually arrange to have a case transferred into a different jurisdiction, one far away
from their opponent, and one often staffed by their own kin or political allies. At
the highest levels, the great court aristocrats could literally get away with murder by
requesting their cases be heard directly in the kings council, where royal favor or
outright bribery could ensure them a victory. Immediately below the kings council
in France was the Parlement of Paris. Unlike the parliament in London, this was not
a legislative body, but simply a law court. Its partners across France were the 10 other
parlements, plus other courts called conseils souverains in newly annexed provinces
like Flanders and Alsace. Similar to the old landowning aristocracy, the judicial elites
who staffed these law courts were tightly intermarried and thus highly susceptible to
family inuence, despite specic regulations to control this. A similar situation ex-
isted in the Holy Roman Empire, where regional courts were linked though political
and kinship afnities all the way up to the supreme imperial court, the Reichskam-
mergericht, in Wetzlar, and the emperors personal council in Vienna.
But it was not only royal and seigneurial justice systems that overlapped and made
justice in ancien rgime Europe complex and confusing. Another entirely separate
legal system operated across most of the continent: the Roman Catholic Church. Ec-
clesiastical courts were responsible for hearing lawsuits involving priests or church
property. These ranged from the local courts of abbots and priors, and regional
courts of bishops, to the papal appellate courts in Rome (the Rota and the Signa-
tura). What made this system especially complicated was that ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tional boundaries did not necessarily coincide with contemporary political borders.
French Burgundy, for example, was under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Be-
sanon, in the Franche-Comt, which, until 1678, was governed by Spain. Residents
of Burgundy, if they could afford it, could therefore appeal a decision of a French
court, sometimes even a secular one, to a court run by the Spanish authorities. As the
one body whose authority was not contained within state boundaries and was there-
fore in a position to arbitrate if necessary between states, the church thus continued
to play a role in the secular governing of much of Europe.
Administration and justice were therefore partially arbitrary and always subject
to the forces of monetary and familial connections. Although they functioned fairly
well on a day-to-day basis for the average person, higher access to either was out of
reach to the majority of the population. On the other hand, because these institu-
tions were so ancient and proceeded so slowly, rapid manipulation of power or cor-
ruption by individuals was difcult, and the needs of the community as a whole were
generally protected. The French Revolution has been criticized by some as fuelling
the ambitions of individualsthe backbone of capitalismto the detriment of local
society in general.
The Clergy, Nobles, and Other Elites
The other two pillars of the ancien rgime were the clergy and the nobility. Even
in countries that were no longer loyal to Rome, the established church continued to
be a major supporter of the state, and vice versa. Monarchs were anointed by senior
churchmen, who were in turn nominated by the sovereign. Although France did
Ancien Rgime 39
remain loyal to the pope, royal rights of episcopal nomination had created a semi-
autonomous church, known as the Gallican Church. The French assembly of the
clergy was one of the few legally constituted bodies that met regularly, and the crown
frequently made use of the churchs efcient and wide-reaching parish structure
both to gather information about its subjects and to disseminate ofcial government
policy throughout the kingdom. The government was so linked to the church hier-
archy that several reigns were dominated by clergymen as premier ministers, notably
cardinals Richelieu, Mazarin, and Fleury. In theory, a cardinal-minister was to be loyal
to his royal master alone, unencumbered by a wife or children (and curiously, un-
beholden to his papal superior in Rome). Nevertheless, these men remained part of
wider kinship networks, which beneted tremendously from the immense power and
patronage resources of their rst minister. The dukes of Richelieu, for example, were
one of the richest families in France, thanks to their famous ancestor. The clergy and
the nobility were therefore inextricably linked. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, nearly every senior church postarchbishops, bishops, and major abbots
and abbesseswas held by members of the senior court nobility. Some were even
seemingly hereditary, like the bishopric of Vienne, held by a Villars from 1577 to
1693, or the bishopric of Strasbourg, held by a Rohan from 1704 to 1803. In the Holy
Roman Empire, a Wittelsbach was archbishop of Cologne from 1583 to 1761.
The court nobility held a near monopoly on positions in the church, but they
also dominated the more traditional spheres of their inuencelandownership
and the military. Despite the fact that most feudal relationships had vanished in
previous centuries, a number of feudal duties remained and continued to provide a
portion of noble incomes. These included the collection of fees for land sales or for
use of common facilities such as the wine press or the water mill. In addition, most
noble landlords were exempt from paying taxes on the lands they held. For this
reason, as well as the social prestige attached, there was a strong desire for families
building their fortunes through trade, nance, or the law to invest their funds in
land and work toward obtaining noble status themselves. One of the best means for
doing this was putting their sons into the military. But this door became harder and
harder to open by the mid-eighteenth century.
For centuries, European armies had been commanded by nobles. Their inde-
pendent landed wealth and the specicity of their military knowledge and training
meant that they were the natural choice to lead, supply, and staff a kings armies.
But their careers were not necessarily restricted to serving their own sovereign; many
served the monarch who would pay the most. Border families in particular found
it both nancially lucrative and politically pragmatic to place sons on both sides of
any conict. In most conicts of the eighteenth century, it was quite normal to see
a German commander leading a French force while facing a German force with a
French commander. But the independent noble armies of the past had vanished.
Since the middle of the seventeenth century, most of the grand landed magnates in
France had been brought under the rm control of a centralized governmentin
England this had already occurred under the Tudors, while in the Holy Roman (or
Germanic) Empire the opposite had occurred, resulting in the rise of virtual sover-
eigns by the end of the sixteenth century. Links between the high aristocracy, the
rest of the nobility, and the rest of the countryside thus were varied: in France they
were nearly nonexistent, whereas in Germany and England, local ties remained
far stronger.
40 Anti-Clericalism
This points to one of the major reasons for the ultimate breakdown of the ancien
rgime system, and why it occurred in France rather than somewhere else. In many
ways, France was one of the most advanced societies in Europe, with great wealth
and a relatively large literate public. Such a society supported writers with new ideas,
many of whom aimed their attacks on the very nobility who paid their bills and
bought their books. But the biggest grievances of eighteenth-century reformers
were aimed not at nobility itself, but at the monopolies of power maintained by the
privileged orders, particularly those who lived at court in the presence of the sover-
eign, and those who held hereditary posts in the kingdoms highest courts. By the
middle of the eighteenth century in France, all posts at court and the highest ranks
in the military and the judiciary were controlled by a relatively small set of intermar-
ried noble families. Only the wealthiest of nanciers or merchants could buy their
way in to this golden set. In the end, it was these groups, the nobles in Parlement
and at court, who refused to adapt to the needs of the wider public and caused the
collapse of the ancien rgime. See also Papacy.
FURTHER READING: Black, Jeremy. Eighteenth Century Europe, 1700 1789. Basingstoke, UK:
Macmillan, 1999; Chaussinand-Nogaret, Guy. The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From
Feudalism to Enlightenment. Translated by William Doyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985; Doyle, William, ed. Old Regime France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001;
Hufton, Olwen. Europe: Privilege and Protest, 1730 1789. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000; Jones, Colin.
The Great Nation. London: Penguin, 2002; Wilson, Peter. From Reich to Revolution. German
History, 1558 1806. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2004.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
Anti-Clericalism
A policy or political predisposition to destroy the political power of the church as
well as to subordinate its nonspiritual functions to the state. The anti-clericalism of
nineteenth-century Europe traced its origins to the French Revolution and focused
principally on the churchs vast property and its close identication with the monar-
chy. In 1789, the Gallican Church was the premier church of Roman Catholicism
by virtue of Frances power, its Catholic population, and the administrative sophis-
tication and wealth of its church establishment. It comprised 140 dioceses, some
4,000 parishes, and 1,000 monasteries and nunneries in addition to hundreds of
institutions of welfare and education. Frances throne was Christian and Catholic.
Its occupant, Louis XVI, ruled by the Grace of God and came to the throne in the
millennial ceremony of the sacre in the cathedral of Rheims, which renewed the
unity of altar and throne.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen alone represented a
defeat for the church in so far as it included religious freedom for non-Catholics
among the civil rights and liberties of the republic. But the reforms proposed by Tal-
leyrand and Mirabeau and passed by the National Assembly aimed at asserting the
nations sovereignty over every institution and at reestablishing its nances. To
this purpose it conscated church property and reduced the status of the clergy to
that of salaried ofcers of the state. Church lands were often so wastefully sold that the
nancial benets of the conscation were diminished, although the sales did increase
the number of peasant proprietors. The subjection of the church was completed
by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in June 1790. The resulting rift between
Anti-Jacobin 41
France and the papacy was not repaired until the Concordat of 1801. The political
aftershocks of revolutionary anti-clericalism lasted much longer, profoundly inu-
encing the public life of the Third Republic in particular, and coloring public
perceptions of the Dreyfus Affair and the law of 1905 separating church and state.
Orthodox Roman Catholics simply could not recognize the Revolutions forth-
right declaration of the supremacy of state over the pope. The ubiquity of the church
in all spheres of life not necessarily religious, especially in rural France, meant that
the reforms lacerated honored traditions and deeply held sensibilities. These sensi-
bilities were aroused further by an anti-religious fanaticism and hatred of the clergy
on the part of republicansdemonstrated in particular by the vengeance brought
against the pious peasantry of the repression of the Vendan rebellion in 1793.
Over the remainder of the nineteenth century the principle of the separation of
church and state and of the neutrality of government in religious issues was a polar-
izing factor in French politics. The Syllabus Errorum issued by Pope Pius IX in 1864
condemned both nationalism and liberalism, thereby making anti-clericalism a
principal political calling card of French radicals. The republican and socialist Left
tended thereafter to identify the clergysometimes mischievously, sometimes accu-
ratelywith royalist reaction, anti-Semitism, and fascism. Anti-clericalism played a
similar role in Spain in 1873 and 1909 1913 and in Latin America and the German
Kulturkampf in 1872 1887.
FURTHER READING: Aston, Nigel. The End of an Elite: The French Bishops and the Coming of the
Revolution, 1786 1790. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992; Jones, P. M. The Peasantry in the French
Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; Mayer, Arno. The Furies: Violence and
Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Anti-Jacobin
Anti-Jacobin is a term attached to a general political stance and also a title given
to two specic publications. The French Revolution created an intense and prolonged
ideological debate, initiated by the writings of Richard Price, Edmund Burke, and
Thomas Paine, which sharply polarized Britain into two mutually antagonistic camps
of reformers and conservatives by the early 1790s. The execution of Louis XVI, the
outbreak of war and the Reign of Terror in France widened and deepened these
divisions. The more militant members of the conservative camp insisted on smearing
their radical opponents as the tools and dupes of the French Revolution. They seized
upon the label Jacobin as a descriptor not only of all the most radical of the French
revolutionaries, but as a means of stigmatizing moderate Whigs and popular radicals
at home in Britain. Jacobins, whether French or British, were accused of wishing to
undermine all the political and religious institutions within Britain, of renouncing
Christian morality and even the Christian religion, and of encouraging the poor to
seize the property of their superiors. Robert Bisset declared in 1798: Whoever is the
enemy of Christianity, and natural religion, of monarchy, of order, subordination,
property, and justice, I call a Jacobin. French Jacobins were prepared to achieve
their objectives by force of arms, while British Jacobins were accused of being ready
to welcome a French invasion and of opposing the war against France.
Those writers who blackened the principles, morals and conduct of both French
revolutionaries and British reformers in this way can be described as anti-Jacobins.
The label therefore can be afxed to Burkes Letters on a Regicide Peace; the pamphlets
and tracts of John Bowles, William Jones, and Robert Nares; the Cheap Repository
Tracts of Hannah More and others; the publications of John Reevess Association
for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers; and
even many novels of the period.
In November 1797 George Canning, assisted by a small coterie of writers and
politicians and with prime minister William Pitts approval, established the Anti-
Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner to attack the writings of those deemed sympathetic to
reform and to France. Edited by William Gifford, it was published each Monday
from November 20, 1797, until July 9, 1798. It provided political news of events at
home and abroad, and reviews of current publications, interspersed with poems
and even caricatures. It made no effort to be impartial, but set out to expose the lies,
errors and misrepresentations of its opponentsthe French, the Whigs, the United
Irishmen, and all British radicals. It sold about 2,500 copies per week and it was
subsequently published four times as a collected edition. When it ceased appear-
ing, it was promptly replaced in July 1798 by the Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine.
A monthly magazine that ran from July 1798 until December 1821, this publication
was edited by John Gifford (no relation to William) until his death in 1818. Though
less witty and more solemn and ponderous than its forerunner, it adopted the same
deeply conservative and militantly loyalist stance. It continued to attack the French
abroad, and reformers and radicals at home, and it urged a patriotic response to
these perceived threats and unquestioning support for the war. Some of its early
prolic contributors were John Reeves, Robert Bisset, William Jones of Nayland,
and Gifford himself. Their reviews attacked Napoleon and Voltaire, all major radi-
cal writers (including John Locke, Paine, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, William
Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft), and such literary gures as Robert Southey,
Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. Many contributors were Anglican clergymen who
attacked Catholics, Dissenters, Methodists, Deists, and especially atheists. Contribu-
tors were even prepared to defend slavery as sanctioned by the Bible, and they were
not averse to criticizing members of the British royal family for corruption and im-
morality and opposing the cult of Nelson because of his association with Emma
Hamilton. See also Religion.
FURTHER READING: De Montluzin, Emily, ed. The Anti-Jacobins, 1789 1800: The Early
Contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988; Dickinson,
H. T. Popular Loyalism in Britain in the 1790s. In The Transformation of Political Culture in
England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century, ed. Eckhart Hellmuth. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1790; Dinwiddy, John R. Interpretations of Anti-Jacobinism. In The French
Revolution and Popular Politic, ed. Mark Philip. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991;
Grenby, M. O. The Anti-Jacobin Novel: British Conservatism and the French Revolution. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001; Macleod, Emma Vincent. The War of Ideas: British Attitudes
to the Wars against Revolutionary France, 1792 1802. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
H. T. DICKINSON
Known as arbres de la libert by the French, and liberty trees by the British and
Americans, these arboreal symbols of liberty played an important role in eighteenth-
century revolutionary politics.
42 Les Arbres de la Libert
Articles of Confederation 43
Akin to maypoles, traditional symbols of rural solidarity, liberty trees had deep
cultural roots. They also harkened back to the Roman pileus, a pole topped by a cap,
which symbolized liberty. Early in both the French and American revolutions, the
former inuence was dominant: liberty trees served as rallying points for popular
protests. The Boston Liberty Elm, one of many American liberty trees in the 1760s
and 1770s, symbolized deance of the British government, as well as serving as a sig-
nal post for the Sons of Liberty. In France, mais or maypoles were erected by French
peasants during the anti-feudal rebellions of 1790 to rally popular resistance against
the seigneurial (feudal) aristocracy; indeed, liberty poles were often decorated with
symbols of seigneurial power, like chteau weathervanes. Later on in both revolu-
tions, liberty trees and arbres de la libert were used more like the Roman pileus, serv-
ing as abstract symbols of achieved liberty. Still, they could revert to their former
radical role in times of crisis, such as during the Whiskey Rebellion in America. See
also Symbols (American Revolutionary); Symbols (French Revolutionary).
FURTHER READING: Hardin, David J. Liberty Caps and Liberty Trees. Past and Present 146
(1995): 66 102.
BENJAMIN REILLY
The rst charter of government for the United States of America, the Articles of
Confederation, united the 13 former colonies under a weak central government.
On March 1, 1781, the Congress of the Confederation became the national govern-
ment of the states. The states retained powers not expressly delegated to the Con-
gress, thus ensuring their supremacy. A voluntary association of independent states,
referred to as a rm league of friendship, this arrangement continued up until
March 4, 1789, at which time the confederation was replaced by the federal system
under the United States Constitution.
In January 1776, in his pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine called for a con-
tinental conference to draft a national charter in order to set forth the duties and
jurisdiction of the continental body and the colonial assemblies. Paines vision was
given form on June 7, 1776, during the Second Continental Congress, when Rich-
ard Henry Lee made the motion for the colonies to declare their independence
from Britain. The second clause of his motion set in motion the process of drawing
a plan of confederation to be submitted to the colonies for their consideration and
ratication. On June 12, John Dickinson and 12 other delegates were given the task
of drafting the document, which the committee presented to the whole assembly
on July 12. The debate on the content of the document continued intermittently
for about two months, was tabled due to the pressing concerns related to the war,
and then taken back up the following April. Finally, on November 17, 1777, the ap-
proved draft of the articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was sent to
the states for ratication. Nearly four years later, after an intensive debate among
the state legislatures, in which some one hundred amendments were proposed to the
Congress and in the end rejected, the Articles went into effect.
The Articles of Confederation, a charter consisting of a preamble and 13 articles,
established a national legislature, a single-body Congress with the power to form an
army and navy, declare war, make peace, negotiate treaties, handle relations with
44 Articles of Confederation
the Native Americans, borrow and coin money, and operate a postal system. Each
of the 13 states, whether large or small, had an equal voice in the Congress. Del-
egates to the Congresseach state could have no fewer than two and no more than
sevenserved one-year terms and were limited to three terms in a six-year period.
Any decision by the Congress required a nine-state majority, but a unanimous deci-
sion was needed to amend the Articles. There was no provision for an executive
department or a general judiciary; however, a Committee of States carried out the
decisions made by the full Congress. The president of the Congress, elected and
limited to a one-year term, merely served as the presiding ofcer of the assembly, a
perfunctory chore that during his absence was handled by the clerk.
Devised during a time of war against monarchial rule, the Articles of Confedera-
tion exemplies what was a general distrust of strong central authority. The con-
sensus of the revolutionaries was to not replace the king with a unitary form of
government. They wanted the predominance of political power to be exercised at
the state level, which they believed was the best safeguard against tyranny. Thus, the
Articles of Confederation was purposely designed to keep the national government
subservient to the states. Although certain powers of a general or national con-
cern were conferred on Congress, it lacked the power of enforcement. Occasionally,
there was philosophical disagreement over what differentiated a national matter
from a local one. Furthermore, national decisions, such as in the case of monetary
policy when states continued to issue their own currency, were undermined by the
separate actions of state legislatures. Eventually, numerous ofcials came to regard
the confederacy as a drift away from the social contract and toward a state of na-
ture, a situation of lawlessness and political anarchy.
Until the Articles of Confederation was ratied, the Declaration of Independence
served as the only written connection of the sovereign states. The ideology found
in the declaration is also apparent in the Articles. The opening lines proclaimed
the existence of the the United States of America and referred to a General Con-
gress. In the concluding paragraph, the representatives of the United States, del-
egates to the General Congress, stated that they were acting on behalf of the good
People of these United Colonies and Free and Independent States. As free
states, they possessed full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,
establish Commerce, and do all other Acts and Things which Independent States
may of right do. The delegates, who in the nal sentence mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor, were free inhabitants as well
as representatives of free states that agreed to form a national bond. Firmly commit-
ted to the harmony of individual, state, and nation, they determined a confederacy
to be the most practical way of achieving that aim.
The ideology of decentralization infused in the Articles of Confederation had
been manifested earlier in various public statements and proposals. In 1774, during
the First Continental Congress, the delegates issued the Declaration of American
Rights, a statement proclaiming Parliaments power to be restricted to the regu-
lation of commerce and matters specically pertaining to imperial affairs. Each
colony, it was also declared, had the right to form a militia and regulate its own
internal affairs. This statement was issued following the defeat of a motion by Jo-
seph Galloway, who offered a plan in which the general affairs of the colonies as a
whole would be carried out by a governor-general appointed by the Crown, and a
grand council comprised of delegates chosen by the colonial assemblies. Galloways
Articles of Confederation 45
proposal, which was defeated by a 6 5 vote, was patterned on the Albany Plan of
Union (1754).
The Albany Plan was one of many antecedents for the confederacy. The earliest
model was the short-lived New England Confederation (1643), which established
on behalf of the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven
a board of commissioners with the authority to declare war, supervise Indian affairs,
and rule on intercolonial disputes. In 1697, William Penn proposed an annual con-
gress of delegates from all the colonies to provide a common defense and regulate
commerce, an idea that was before its time. The Albany Plan, put forth by Benjamin
Franklin, called for a triennial assembly of colonial representatives with a governor-
general appointed by the Crown for the purpose of organizing a common defense,
recruiting soldiers, building forts, regulating westward expansion, and negotiating
treaties with the Indians. Like the Galloway Plan, Franklins proposal did not come
to fruition.
The League of Iroquois, a political union of Indian tribes in the upper New
York region, was the source of inspiration for the Albany Plan. Also known as the
Iroquois Confederacy, the league dated back to about the late fteenth century and
originally united the ve Indian nations of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga,
and Seneca. (Later, a sixth tribe, the Tuscarora, was added.) Founded on the belief
that reason should overcome violence, the league offered its member nations both
a loose political afliation and local sovereignty. Once a year, delegates (sachems)
from the tribes held a council to declare war, make peace, establish treaties, send
and receive envoys, regulate the affairs of subjugated tribes, and settle disputes be-
tween its members. During a meeting between the Indians and British in July 1744,
the chief of the Iroquois, Annassatego, complained of the difculty in dealing
with the different colonies, each of which possessed its own leaders and laws. He
urged the colonies to form a union like the League of the Iroquois in order to
adopt consistent policies. The following year Franklin submitted such a plan to the
Albany Congress.
Three decades later, during the summer of 1775, Franklin offered a new pro-
posal that borrowed lightly from the Albany Plan, some of which was incorporated
into the Articles of Confederation. Entitled Articles of Confederation and perpet-
ual Union, entered into by the Delegates of the Several States, this plan called for
a rm league of friendship rather than an executive form of government. The
Dickinson draft of the Articles was more conservative, outlining the structure of an
executive organization. Although in the draft every state retains its sovereignty
(wording that made it into the nal document), the rights and powers of states were
not to interfere with the expressed and implied powers of the Articles of Confed-
eration. Dickinson envisioned a Council of State with broad powers for managing
the affairs of the United States. However, in the nal version, under Article 2, the
sovereignty of the states was strengthened to include every power, jurisdiction, and
right, which is not by this confederacy expressly delegated to the United States.
Also, in the nal version, under Articles 9 and 10, a Committee of States with limited
power was established.
Both Franklin and Dickinson called for Congress to have control of the western
lands, the proceeds of the sales of which would be utilized for the common treasury.
In the nal draft of the Articles of Confederation, under Article 9, Congress was
given authority over border disputes, but no State shall be deprived of territory for
46 Artois, Charles Philippe de Bourbon, Comte d
the benet of the United States. Ratication of the Articles was delayed in part on
account of the disposition of western lands. The landless states (those having no
charter claims to the western lands and no potential income source from the sale of
property) feared having higher levels of taxation, which might prompt a decline in
population. States with land claims feared Congress might curtail the extent of their
western holdings. Also, since Congress, under Article 9, was given the exclusive right
to handle indigenous affairs, future land treaty negotiations with Indians could con-
ceivably revoke land claims.
Linked with the land issue was the matter of state representation: states with large
populations did not want states with fewer inhabitants to have an equal voice in
Congress. Under Article 5, each state was granted one vote. In regard to the revenue
source for the confederacy, states with valuable property wanted taxation based on
population, whereas poorer states wanted the assessed value of improved land to be
the basis for taxation. Under Article 8, the value of all land (including buildings
and improvements) was the formula for deciding taxes, although it was left up to
the states to collect the revenue.
The Articles of Confederation gave Congress certain powers, but not an ample
amount of authority. Congress had the power to declare war as well as to establish
and control armed forces, but it did not have the authority to directly draft soldiers
or to force states to meet military quotas. Congress had the power to requisition
men and money from states, but it did not have the authority to force states to ap-
propriate their share of revenue for the nations operating expenses. The Articles
did not grant Congress the power to levy taxes or collect tariffs on foreign trade,
even though the ght for independence incurred a national debt of $42 million.
At a time when British soldiers, in deance of the Treaty of Paris (1783), lingered
on American soil and instigated Indian attacks in the western lands, it was difcult
for Congress to maintain a standing army. Finally, Shayss Rebellion (1786 1787)
convinced many of the necessity to replace the Articles of Confederation.
FURTHER READING: Durland, William. William Penn, James Madison and the Historical
Crisis in American Federalism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000; Hendrickson,
David C. Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 2003; Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1940; Kasson, John A. The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1904; Steubben, Jerry D. The Indigenous Inuence Theory of
American Democracy. Social Sciences Quarterly 81 (2000): 71631.
ROGER CHAPMAN
Artois, Charles Philippe de Bourbon, Comte d (17571836)
Charles Philippe de Bourbon, the comte dArtois, who became king of France as
Charles X in 1824, was the youngest brother of two former French kings, Louis XVI
and Louis XVIII. During the French Revolution, the comte dArtois was the leader
of the reactionary opposition to the Revolution. He ruled France and Navarre from
1824 until he was overthrown in 1830.
Charles was born at Versailles on October 9, 1757, to the dauphin, Louis, son of
Louis XV, and Marie Josphe (Maria Josepha) of Saxony. During his youth, Charles
was a womanizer and lived a decadent life at the French court. He befriended
Marie Antoinette and was part of her social clique. The pair frequently acted in
Artois, Charles Philippe de Bourbon, Comte d 47
dramatizations of plays at the Petit Trianon, and Charles embarked on a lifelong
love affair with the sister of Marie Antoinettes favorite lady-in-waiting, despite
his marriage to Marie Thrse of Savoy, the daughter of Victor Amadeus III, on
November 16, 1773.
Charles became the leader of the reactionaries at the court of Louis XVI. He fa-
vored the removal of the aristocracys nancial privileges but vehemently opposed
the elimination of the social privileges bestowed on the nobility and the clergy. He
believed that Frances desperate nancial situation could be amended through the
existing system of absolute monarchy. Charles angered the Third Estate by object-
ing to every initiative to restructure the voting system among the estates in 1789.
Such actions prompted Louis XVI to remark that his brother was plus royaliste que
le roi (more royalist than the king).
Charles worked with the Baron de Breteuil to orchestrate the deposition of lib-
eral minister Jacques Necker. Their plans backred when Charles attempted to
have Necker dismissed on July 11, much earlier than had been agreed upon, with-
out consulting Breteuil. The scheme initiated the disintegration of the political alli-
ance between Charles and Breteuil and the emergence of their contempt for each
other. Necker was replaced briey by a reactionary, which outraged the common
people, who viewed the minister as the symbol of government reform. This dismissal
was a catalyst for the fall of the Bastille on July 14 and the outbreak of the French
Revolution.
Following rumors of an assassination plot, Charles went into exile during the
rst wave of emigration upon the request of Louis XVI. The king intended for his
younger brother to further the royalist cause abroad and continue the Bourbon
dynasty if needed. Charles became the leader of the aristocratic migrs, rst in Ger-
many and then in Italy, although Breteuil challenged his position. While in exile,
Charles feared that his brother would make concessions with the revolutionaries
that would compromise the institution of the monarchy. Charless major foreign ally
at this time was Catherine II of Russia.
George III granted Charles asylum in Britain. He initially lived in London and
then at Holyrood House in Edinburgh before taking up residence at Hartwell.
While in exile, Charles undertook several diplomatic missions for the royalist cause.
Communication between Charles and his brother, the comte de Provence (later
Louis XVIII), deteriorated after Charles made it apparent that he would not as-
sist his brother with his nancial difculties. Charles increasingly came to view his
brother as treacherous and irreligious. Following the death of his mistress in 1803,
Charles took a vow of celibacy and reformed his lifestyle by becoming a devout
Roman Catholic. His wife died two years later.
Charles returned to France in February 1814 following the deposition of Napo-
leon and the restoration of the monarchy under Louis XVIII. His eldest son, the
duc dAngoulme, played a crucial role in the White Terror. Charles emerged as
the leader of the ultras, or ultraroyalists, during the Bourbon restoration. The ultras
gained political power following the assassination of the Charless youngest son, the
duc de Berry, in 1820, which prompted the fall of the moderate ministry of Elie De-
cazes and the rise of the comte de Villle, who continued to serve under Charles X
after the death of Louis XVIII. The ultras would dominate the French government
for much of the 1820s. The death of his favorite son devastated Charles, and he
never recovered emotionally.
48 Assembly of Notables
Charles Xs coronation ceremony was held in 1824 at Rheims Cathedral with all
the pomp and pageantry of the ancien rgime. Charles X lost popularity as his reign
became increasingly reactionary. He symbolized the Bourbons inability to recon-
cile monarchist traditions of divine right with the more liberal and democratic cli-
mate produced by the French Revolution. He continued to oppose the notion of
constitutional monarchy and the idea that the kings right to rule derived from the
French people rather than providence. While retaining the support of the Catholic
Church and much of the aristocracy and peasantry, Charles X lost the favor of many
industrial workers and much of the bourgeoisie.
The comte de Villle resigned in 1827. In 1829, Charles appointed Prince Jules
Armand de Polignac as his chief minister. Polignacs ultra-reactionary policies,
which included the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies, the July Ordinances,
which strengthened controls on the press, and his restriction of suffrage prompted
the July Revolution in 1830. Charles abdicated in favor of his grandson, Henri de
Bourbon, the comte de Chambord, and ed to England. The liberal, bourgeois
Chamber of Deputies refused to acknowledge Henri as king. In a vote opposed
by conservative deputies, the Chamber declared the French throne vacant and
transferred the monarchy to Louis Philippe, head of the house of Orlans, a cadet
branch of the Bourbons. Charles later settled in present-day Slovenia, where he died
of cholera on November 6, 1836. He was buried in the Church of Saint Mary of the
Annunciation.
FURTHER READING: Beach, Vincent W. Charles X of France: His Life and Times. Boulder,
CO: Pruett, 1971; Bertier de Sauvigny, Guillaume de. The Bourbon Restoration. Translated by
Lynn M. Case. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966; Higgs, David. Nobles in
Nineteenth-Century France: The Practice of Inegalitarianism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1987; Jardin, Andr, and Andr-Jean Tudesq. Restoration and Reaction, 18151848.
Translated by Elborg Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983; Mansel, Philip.
The Court of France, 1789 1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
ERIC MARTONE
The Assembly of Notables was convened by the French king Louis XVI (reigned
1774 1792) to solve the nancial crisis arising out of earlier wars and support to
the American Revolutionary War. The country was almost bankrupt with a debt of
ve billion livres by 1787. The exorbitant price of wheat, the low price of wine, and
a bad harvest aggravated the problem. Louis thought that a hand-picked body like
the Assembly of Notables, rather than the Estates-General, would facilitate his plans
of reform. It was a nominated body consisting of noblemen, clergy, mayors, and bu-
reaucrats. The Assembly was convened on February 22, 1787, in Versailles.
The nance minister, Charles Alexander de Calonne (1734 1802), believed that
support from the Assembly would restore condence, and he proposed borrowing
further from the Amsterdam exchange. The Paris Parlement (law courts of appeal
that performed administrative functions) might oppose his plan, hence the ruse of
calling the Assembly, which had not met since 1626. It was called in secrecy, and the
public had no knowledge of it. Calonne was vociferously opposed by the Notables.
Lampooned by Parisian pamphleteers, the members neither authorized any new
taxes nor were prepared to relinquish any privileges. Some liberal members, like
Assembly of the Known and Veriable Representatives of the French Nation 49
the marquis de Lafayette, were not opposed to the stamp duty and land tax, but
they opposed what they termed ministerial despotism and the fact that details
of the new taxes were not properly explained. The proposal for the establishment
of elected assemblies for some provinces was not considered, and the Assembly de-
clared that the Estates-General was the appropriate body to discuss taxation. Ca-
lonne not only appealed to the patriotic sentiments of the Notables but also made
his feelings known publicly. The king dismissed him on April 30 on the grounds
that his actions constituted a breach of decorum, whereupon Calonne immigrated
to Britain.
Etienne Charles de Lomnie de Brienne (17271794), the archbishop of Tou-
louse, succeeded Calonne. He was a liberal, was popular, and enjoyed the condence
of both the clergy and the nobility. Although a virulent critic of Calonne, Brienne
had to propose measures that were almost similar to those of his predecessor in
broad outline. The stamp duty was revised and an upper limit was xed for the
tax on land. The Assembly was recalcitrant, and members like Lafayette held that
the Estates-General possessed authority over it. The Notables were attacked by a
plethora of pamphlets criticizing it. It was dissolved on May 25, and Brienne had to
go to Parlement, which later raised the aristocratic revolt.
In November 1788, the second Assembly of Notables was called by the nance
minister, Jacques Necker (17321804). Six committees were formed and only one
supported the proposal of doubling the representation of the Third Estate (all
those not constituting the clergy or nobility). This sixth one, chaired by the kings
younger brother, the comte de Provence (17551824), accepted the proposal by a
majority of a single vote. This was the nal act of the assembly; the nation was shortly
to be engulfed by revolution. Although the Assembly of Notables did not perform
any spectacular work, it highlighted for the king some of the serious problems fac-
ing France. See also Parlements.
FURTHER READING: Blanning, T.C.W. The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989; Sydenham, M. J. The French Revolution. London: William
Clowes, 1965.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Assembly of the Known and Veriable Representatives
of the French Nation
Suggested in June 1789 by the abb Emmanuel Sieys, the Assembly of the
Known and Veriable Representatives of the French Nation was an early name for
the National Assembly.
Following the opening of the Estates-General in May 1789, the proceedings of
the body were deadlocked over the issue of the verication of credentials. The Third
Estate refused to budge on its demand that all three orders of the Estates be veried
at the same time. The demand meant a recognition of the Third Estate as equals by
the nobility and the Catholic Church. Radicals in the Third Estate sabotaged and
dismissed all attempts at compromise. At the same time, a majority of nobles in the
First Estate refused to accept this symbolic equality. The deadlock nally broke in
mid-June, when priests from the Second Estate began attending roll calls of the
50 Association of the Friends of the People
Third Estate. As more priests began attending every day, the Third Estate asserted
that it was the only truly representative body in France.
On June 15, the Third Estate began debate on the issue of a new name. Sieys,
who had called the roll, suggested the name The Assembly of Known and Veriable
Representatives of the French Nation, a dig at those nobles and churchmen who
refused to attend and present their credentials. By the end of debate on June 17,
however, the name National Assembly won a large majority. With this symbolic act,
the Third Estate declared itself the true source of sovereignty in France and set the
stage for a conict with the king.
The phrase known and veried appeared in the resolution adopting the name
National Assembly; the Third Estate was still careful to note that it had invited all
members of the Estates-General to participate in its deliberations.
FURTHER READING: Furet, Franois, and Denis Richet. French Revolution. Translated by
Stephen Hardman. New York: Macmillan, 1970; Keitner, Chimne. National Self-Determination:
The Legacy of the French Revolution. Paper presented at the International Studies Association
annual meeting, Oxford University, March 2000; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the
French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989.
JAMES L. ERWIN
Association of the Friends of the People (17921795)
In the early 1790s, some liberal Whigs believed that moderate parliamentary re-
form might save Britain from revolution more effectively than complete hostility to
change. As early as March 1790, Henry Flood moved in the House of Commons to re-
distribute seats from the rotten boroughs to the counties, and to extend the franchise
to resident householders. He failed to gain much support, but on April 11, 1792,
liberal Whigs, encouraged by the Earl of Lauderdale, established the Association
of the Friends of the People to give a lead to proposals for moderate parliamentary
reform. The association included Charles Grey, Lord John Russell, Philip Francis,
Samuel Whitbread, and Christopher Wyvill, but Charles James Fox remained aloof,
though not opposed to its establishment. This was never a large association, and
members were overwhelmingly drawn from the propertied elite. The fees were two-
and-a-half guineas per annum, but country members paid only one guinea. Meet-
ings were held on the rst Saturday of every month, though they appear to have
been more frequent at rst. Between meetings, a general committee was entrusted
with the task of encouraging supporters of parliamentary reform to join similar so-
cieties. Grey and Russell were early chairmen.
The associations declared aims, printed in its Address to the Nation (April 26,
1792), were to restore the freedom of election, and a more equal representation
of the people, and to secure more frequent elections. It never adopted a specic
plan of parliamentary reform, and it strove to distance itself from popular radi-
cals at home and French revolutionaries abroad. It failed to give a lead to those
popular societies inuenced by Thomas Paine and the French, and it failed to rally
much support in Parliament. Indeed, its establishment was one cause of the royal
proclamation against seditious writings of May 21, 1791, and it later drove more
conservative Whigs into the arms of the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger.
On February 9, 1793, The Report on the State of Representation, which had been com-
missioned by the association, was delivered by George Tierney. It provided detailed
Austria 51
evidence of the inadequacies of the existing system of representation, much of it
drawn from T.H.B. Oldelds History of the Boroughs (1792), but it did not propose
specic reforms. Nor did the associations petition, which was presented to Parlia-
ment by Charles Grey on May 6, 1793, along with others from the popular societies.
Grey distanced his proposals from those of the more radical popular societies but
could not prevent Pitt from charging the association with holding dangerously sub-
versive views. Greys motion to refer the associations petition to a committee was
heavily defeated by 282 votes to 41 on May 7.
A proposal to debate whether the system of representation was satisfactory se-
cured only 11 votes on May 31. In July the association opposed the summoning of
a convention of reform societies that gathered in Edinburgh in October 1793. This
was supported and organized by the Scottish Association of the Friends of the Peo-
ple, a separate and more radical society. The association still failed to put forward its
own specic proposals. Philip Francis recognized that this exposed the association
to attacks from both committed radicals and militant conservatives. In April 1794
he produced his own ideas for reform, printed in Plan for a Reform of the Election of the
House of Commons, which proposed extending the franchise to resident rate-paying
householders. By now, however, the Whig party was disintegrating. The association
suspended its meetings and abandoned its agitation for reform on May 30, 1795.
FURTHER READING: Cartwright, F. D., ed. The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright.
2 vols. Reprint, New York: A. M. Kelley, 1969; Goodwin, Albert. The Friends of Liberty: The
English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. London: Hutchinson, 1979;
Hamsher-Monk, Iain. Civic Humanism and Parliamentary Reform: The Case of the Society
of the Friends of the People. Journal of British Studies 18 (1979): 7089; Smith, E. A. Lord Grey
1764 1845. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
H. T. DICKINSON
Austria
In the eighteenth century, Austria was a large multinational empire in east-
central Europe; it was a state very unlike the emerging nation-states of western
Europe. Confronted as the Austrians were by the varying customs of their sub-
ject peoples, they faced problems of effective governance. Habsburg rulers imple-
mented Enlightenment ideas in the eighteenth century to improve the running of
their empire. Later revolution and war with France turned Austrias rulers away
from the enlightened absolutism of the eighteenth century and toward the reac-
tionary conservatism of the nineteenth.
It was defeat in the Seven Years War (1756 1763) that prompted reform in the
Austrian Empire. The Habsburg ruler of the period, Maria Theresa, along with her
son, the co-regent Joseph II, instituted reforms in the administration of the state, -
nances, education, agriculture, and religion. Many of these reforms were inuenced
by cameralist ideas designed to improve the efciency of the state, though many of
Maria Theresas advisors subscribed to the ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly in
economics and the law. The empress herself remained wary of reformist ideas, partly
out of religious conviction, and partly due to her sons total embrace of such ideas
and the admiration that he and her advisors held for the Prussia of Frederick II.
Nevertheless, the Theresian reforms were instrumental in helping Austria to re-
cover from the effects of defeat. They also redened social and political relationships
within the Habsburg Empire. This was especially true of the peasantry, at whom
many of the reforms, such as those dealing with feudal dues, were aimed. Reform
continued under the reign of Joseph, who became sole ruler in 1780. Though em-
peror for only 10 years, Joseph attempted to turn the Habsburg Empire into a ratio-
nalized and bureaucratized state. Intemperate with inferiors, Joseph only listened
to those advisors whose views matched his and, as a result, his reforms invited re-
sistance. This came from many quarters: the nobility, who disliked his meddling in
feudal matters; the church, which resented his reforms aimed at religious toleration
and the creation of a state church; and most especially the various nationalities, who
resented his plans at Germanization of the empire. When Joseph died in 1790,
many of his ambitious reforms had been either retracted or scaled back.
Josephs successors, Leopold II and Francis II, guided Austria during the period
of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Leopold, who reigned until
March 1792, did not see the Revolution as a threat and thus retained many of the
most useful reforms. However, Francis II, upon ascending the throne, saw the Revo-
lution as a product of the Enlightenment and an assault upon the natural order.
Constant defeat at the hands of French revolutionary armies hardened that opin-
ion. The effect was that Francis abandoned almost all the reforms of the preceding
decades, placing Austria in opposition to the many ideas that came to dominate the
European world in the nineteenth century. See also France; Prussia and Germany,
Impact of Revolutionary Thought on.
FURTHER READING: Ingrao, Charles W. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618 1815. 2nd ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
ROY KOEPP
LAutel de la Patrie
The Autel de la Patrie (altar of the fatherland) was a ritual structure built for the
swearing of patriotic oaths during the French Revolution, primarily in the context of
revolutionary festivals. The altar was introduced most spectacularly during the 1790
Festival of Federation, held in Paris on the rst anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,
although it had been preceded by several smaller regional variants. At the Festival
of Federation, the altar was built in the center of the Champ de Mars, an arena be-
tween the Military Academy and the Seine that had been constructed especially for
the festival. This space and its decorations had been largely built by the people of
Paris after work had fallen well behind schedule. Designed by the architect Joseph
Rame, the altar provided the focus for the swearing of the oaths of allegiance to
the nation, the law and the king taken by the members of the newly constituted
National Guard. The altar took the form of a large earth mound on which was
positioned a large canvas-covered wooden framework decorated with patriotic and
classical images and slogans and painted in trompe-lil to represent a more perma-
nent marble structure. Set on a circular base, the 25-foot-high square altar had steps
leading up four sides, where several hundred ofciating priests stood, led in the
oath by Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, and Lafayette, head of the National Guard.
Despite its ephemeral construction, the altar survived for some time, appearing
shortly afterward at the festival in honor of the victims of Nancy in September 1790.
It was reused, in modied forms, at several subsequent revolutionary festivals, most
52 LAutel de la Patrie
notably at the Fte de lEtre Supreme (Festival of the Supreme Being), held in Paris
in 1794. At this festival the site of Rames original geometric structure was land-
scaped into an elaborate mountain, which accommodated members of the National
Convention, while a platform housed robed musicians playing patriotic hymns. At
the top of this altar was a podium where Maximilien Robespierre took his oath,
next to a Doric column topped by a statue representing the French people that had
stood on the altar since the festival of August 10, 1793. The entire structure appears
to have disappeared at some point in Year IV (1795 1796).
FURTHER READING: Etlin, Richard A. Architecture and the Festival of Federation, Paris,
1790. Architectural History 18 (1975): 23 42; Ozouf, Mona. Festivals and the French Revolution.
Translated by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
RICHARD TAWS
LAutel de la Patrie 53
B
Babeuf, Franois-Noel (17601797)
Journalist, revolutionary, political theorist, and social critic, Franois-Noel Babeuf
(later known as Gracchus Babeuf) won renown during the French Revolution for
conspiring to overthrow the government of the Directory (17951797). Tried and
executed in 1797, his memory might have faded had not Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels taken an interest in his work two generations later. Inspired by Babeufs pas-
sionate defense of the rights of peasants and sans-culottes, Marx and Engels recast his
revolutionary experience in terms meaningful to the nineteenth century, naming
Babeuf an early spokesman of the proletariat and forefather of modern commu-
nism. In so doing, they ensured his place in the history of social thought.
The eldest son of a desperately poor family, Babeuf was born in the French prov-
ince of Picardy in 1760. As a young man, Babeuf established himself as a feudal no-
tary, helping members of the nobility recover feudal dues as he witnessed rsthand
the profound poverty of their tenants. A keen observer and thoughtful reader, he
integrated philosophical reection with his widening experience of the world as
he embarked on a lifelong project rst to attenuate and then to eliminate social
inequality.
Babeuf welcomed the French Revolution enthusiastically in 1789. He partici-
pated in local struggles against feudal privilege and ancien rgime taxes then moved
to Paris in 1793 shortly after the overthrow of the monarchy. Having taken the name
Gracchus to honor ancient advocates of land redistribution, Babeuf shared in the
political activism of the capital as he observed the sans-culottes movement at its
height and worked closely with their most radical allies, the Enrags. However, he
was imprisoned for falsifying notarial records and so missed much of the Reign of
Terror, returning to Paris only after Maximilien Robespierres fall in 1794. As the
Thermidorian Reaction gained momentum, Babeuf urged the sans-culottes to re-
cover the political rights and price controls they enjoyed during the Terror. To that
end, he founded a newspaper, Le tribun du peuple (The Peoples Tribune), which
counseled a journe, or popular insurrection, for bread and implementation of the
democratic Constitution of 1793.
56 Babeuf, Franois-Noel
Imprisoned for attempting to provoke a riot, Babeuf debated strategy with other
outlawed radicals. By the time he was released eight months later, his thinking had
crystallized into a plan to eradicate poverty by abolishing private property. He resur-
rected Le tribun du people to condemn the new government of the Directory as an
instrument of the rich that plundered and oppressed the poor. France, he asserted,
ought to commit itself to le bonheur commun, the common welfare of all. Angered by
growing government repression, Babeuf added violent resistance to vocal opposition
by joining the Conspiracy of Equals, a small group of democrats plotting to over-
throw the Directory. But the Equals were arrested before they could act. Although
Babeuf pleaded innocent to the charge of conspiracy, he used the Equals widely
publicized trial to advocate democracy and the extirpation of private property. When
the jury declared him guilty, he stabbed himself with a makeshift knife. Bloodied and
dying, he was guillotined the following morning.
Babeufs thought evolved steadily over the course of his short life, becoming
increasingly radical as his reading and revolutionary experience widened. Whereas
he penned essays as a young man that recommended ameliorating poverty with
progressive taxation and more generous government spending, he became com-
mitted in the nal years of his life to establishing complete social equality. Inspired
by his reading of utopian theorists, eighteenth-century economists, and classical
republican philosophers, Babeuf argued that all humans have a natural right to
survival. The best means by which a society may guarantee this right is to ensure
that each member has sufcient resources to live. Because Babeuf believed eco-
nomic growth to be nite, he argued that the only way to ensure sufciency for
all is to prevent any from having too much. Thus, he proposed creating a central
administration to collect agricultural produce and manufactured goods and to re-
distribute them equally. Once social inequality was abolished, he promised, the ills
it brought in its trainjealousy, theft, murder, punishment, and despairwould
disappear as well.
Babeufs commitment to social equality was matched by his devotion to democ-
racy. He feared that men are driven by the will to dominate, and so those who
hold ofce will inevitably attempt to subordinate their fellows. And yet all citizens,
even women, have a fundamental right to share in government. Therefore, the
populace must resist domination with elections, petitioning, and, when necessary,
insurrection. Babeuf departed from his democratic convictions, however, when he
joined the Conspiracy of Equals. Now he argued that a temporary dictatorship
was necessary to lead popular insurrection against the current government and to
supervise the transition to a new political and social order. He naively imagined
this as a short-term arrangement that would quickly give way to genuine popular
government.
In the nineteenth century, Babeufs compatriot Filippo Buonarroti revived his
memory with an account of the Conspiracy of Equals that stressed the socialist
dimensions of Babeufs thought. Marx and Engels elaborated on this tradition,
distinguishing Babeuf from the utopian Socialists without xing his reputation de-
cisively. Historians and philosophers continue to debate whether Babeuf was the
last great Jacobin of the French Revolution, the rst revolutionary communist, or a
precursor of twentieth-century totalitarianism, but all agree that he made a funda-
mental contribution to the development of radical social and economic thought in
the modern world. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Jacobins.
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand 57
FURTHER READING: Birchall, Ian. The Spectre of Babeuf. New York: St. Martins Press,
1997; Rose, R. B. Gracchus Babeuf: The First Revolutionary Communist. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1978; Scott, John Anthony, ed. The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf before the High
Court of Vendme. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967; Thomson, David. The
Babeuf Plot: The Making of a Republican Legend. London: Keegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1947.
LAURA MASON
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand (17551841)
Bertrand Barre de Vieuzac was a key gure in the French Revolution. In early
1793, as the ofcial presiding over the French National Convention, he played a
crucial role in convicting and executing former king Louis XVI. As a member of
the Committee of Public Safety in 17931794, he participated in Frances desperate
defense of her territory against invasion and helped suppress internal opposition.
Barre had been a member of a privileged class prior to the Revolution and had
held moderate views about political change prior to 1789. Thus, he is a prime ex-
ample of those Frenchmen who were radicalized by the course of events.
Barre was born in Tarbes, in southwestern France, on September 10, 1755. Both
his mother and father inherited titles of nobility. Barre received a legal education
Bertrand Barre de Vieuzac. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
58 Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand
at the University of Toulouse, qualifying as an attorney at the age of 19. Possessing
a formidable intellect, he built a successful law practice in his native city.
The young lawyer exhibited only mild signs of discontent with the prerevolution-
ary order. For example, he entered essay contests sponsored by scholarly academies
in his area of France. The subjects, such as a eulogy to a medieval king, provided
the opportunity for oblique criticism of contemporary affairs. Nonetheless, Barre
mainly exhibited a set of moderate political views. Although steeped in the works of
the writers of the Enlightenment, he did not share the admiration for England that
such authors exhibited, and he remained convinced that monarchy was the appro-
priate form of government for France.
A lawsuit took Barre to Paris for the rst time in the spring of 1788 as nancial
crisis gripped the government. He remained in the French capital until early 1789,
and his political views shifted to favor the creation of a representative assembly. But
he remained a cautious reformer. He remarked that France was not America, and a
sharp break with the nations past institutions was not feasible. Upon his return to
Tarbes, he was quickly elected a representative of the Third Estate for the forthcom-
ing meeting of the Estates-General.
Over the next several years, events pushed Barre farther away from his position
as a moderate reformer. In 1789, he stood with those delegates who favored trans-
forming the Estates-General into a national assembly, he deed the kings order to
disperse, and he voluntarily relinquished his title of nobility. Nonetheless, suspi-
cious of mass opinion and afraid of popular violence, Barre backed the countrys
new constitution, with its provisions for an electorate restricted to the well-to-do. As
an energetic and competent member of the Constituent Assembly, which replaced
the Estates-General in 1789, Barre emerged as a national gure by the time the As-
sembly dispersed in September 1791.
After a year back in Tarbes, Barre returned to Paris as a delegate to the newly
elected National Convention, in which he tried to act as a mediator among the
various factions. He showed his willingness to sanction sharp change by voting to
replace the monarchy with a republic, but his conservatism remained in evidence.
For example, he favored a negotiated settlement with the countries against whom
France had gone to war in 1792. His stature as a leading gure in the Convention
was conrmed in January 1793 when the delegates chose him as the organizations
presiding ofcer.
Barres rst great task in his new role was to preside over the trial of the deposed
king. A convinced monarchist as late as 1791, Barre now demonstrated how events
had pushed men like himself to accepting more radical change. He helped con-
vince the Convention to convict Louis Capet, and Barre voted both for a guilty
verdict and for the former monarchs execution. When elements in the Convention
tried to arrange a reprieve for Louis, Barre personally blocked the effort.
In July 1793, Frances revolutionaries faced peril on all sides. Foreign enemies in-
vaded from a number of directions, and internal opposition was reaching dangerous
dimensions. An emergency executive emerged in the form of the 12-man Commit-
tee of Public Safety, and, for the next year, it directed the defense of the Revolution
with vigor and brutality. Barre emerged as an important member of the organiza-
tion. Casting aside his earlier moderation, he now helped formulate policies like the
mobilization of all of Frances resources for war with sweeping government controls
over the economy. His name also became linked with the harsh repression of those
Barnave, Antoine 59
in the French population who seemed to oppose the Revolution. A brilliant orator,
Barre often served as the spokesman and defender of the committees policies in
front of the National Convention. But in July 1794, Barre switched sides, opposing
the most radical members of the committee like Maximilien Robespierre and help-
ing moderate elements in the Convention to depose them.
For the remainder of his long life, Barre stood outside the circles of power. His
role as a revolutionary terrorist had made him lasting enemies. He had to escape
from prison in 1795 to avoid deportation to the penal colony in French Guiana.
After years of hiding in Bordeaux, he reappeared in public to serve Napoleon as a
pamphleteer. But Barre proved unable to negotiate Napoleons declining years in
power and the swift changes of French political fortunes. He accepted the return
of King Louis XVIII in 1814, but he then rallied to Napoleon in 1815. Named a
politically undesirable individual after Napoleons defeat at Waterloo and the nal
return of Louis, Barre ed to exile in Belgium. There he led a nancially precari-
ous existence supported in part by revenues from property his family still held in
France.
In 1830, the French revolution that placed Louis-Philippe on the throne allowed
Barre to return to his native land. After a short stay in Paris, he settled in Tarbes,
where, in a nal episode of political activity, he served in the local government. He
died in Tarbes on January 13, 1841. See also Reign of Terror.
FURTHER READING: Gershoy, Leo. Bertrand Barre: A Reluctant Terrorist. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1962; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Committee of Public Safety
during the Terror. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941.
NEIL M. HEYMAN
Antoine Barnave was a French lawyer from Grenoble and deputy to the Constitu-
ent Assembly during the French Revolution.
In 1790, Barnave was elected to the presidency of the Assembly and became an
inuential participant in debates surrounding the status of gens de couleur in Saint-
Domingue. Concerned about alienating Saint-Domingues white population and
subsequently endangering the commercial prosperity of France and the survival of
the Revolution, Barnave opposed extending rights to gens de couleur. However, Bar-
naves political inuence in the revolutionary government would be short lived. In
1791 Barnave accompanied the royal family to Paris after their failed attempt to ee
France. After this trip, Barnave corresponded with Marie Antoinette in the hopes
of convincing the royal family to cooperate with the revolutionary government and
accept the new constitution. A constitutional monarchy, Barnave felt, would be pref-
erable to a republic, which he feared could leave France vulnerable to foreign inva-
sion. Some considered this to be a counterrevolutionary position and, following the
discovery of his secret correspondence with Marie Antoinette, Barnave was arrested
and later executed on November 29, 1793. See also Constitutions, French Revolu-
tionary; Haitian Revolution; Louis XVI; Reign of Terror; Varennes, Flight to.
FURTHER READING: Bradby, Eliza Dorothy. The Life of Barnave. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1915.
MARGARET COOK ANDERSEN
60 Barras, Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de
Barras, Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de (17551829)
A member of the Directory, Paul-Franois-Nicolas Barras was actively involved in
three coups dtat (9 Thermidor, 13 Vendmiaire, and 18 Fructidor) and is consid-
ered one of the most inuential French leaders after Maximilein Robespierres fall
in 1794 and before Napoleons coup in 1799.
Born into an aristocratic family in southeastern France, Barras joined the
Languedoc cadet regiment at age 16. Attracted by exoticism, in 1776 he left for
India with the Pondicherry regiment. After a 10-month voyage, he nally arrived at
his destination and was soon seduced by his new life. But in 1778, the British began
attacking Pondicherry, and after several battles and a brave defense, the outnum-
bered French were forced to surrender. In 1779, Barras returned to France, but two
years later he was back in India with his regiment. He stayed in the Cape, which was
then a Dutch possession, until 1783. His adventures in India now over, he returned
to France before peace was signed with Britain.
Promoted to the rank of captain, Barras confronted the duc de Castries, the
secretary of war, whom he violently reproached for incompetence and whom he
blamed for many of Frances military failures. Feeling compelled to quit the navy,
Barras started speaking out publicly against the governmentalthough not against
the king. In 1786, he left Paris for a year: he may have accidentally become involved
Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de Barras. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Barras, Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de 61
in one of Cagliostros shams as a result of his popularity with women. Back in Paris,
he befriended the comte de Mirabeau and led an epicurean life. He witnessed rst-
hand the Revolution of July in 1789 and the fall of the Bastille. He strongly opposed
the aristocrats who left the country, displayed a very liberal attitude toward the abo-
lition of privileges, and adopted an active position in favor of liberty. In 1790, he
joined the Freemasons and the Jacobins. In January of the following year, Barras
was back in his native Provence to marry Plagie Templier, a very ardent monarchist
who did not share her new companions political views. She would spend much of
her life in this region far from her husband.
In September 1792, Barras was elected a member of the National Convention.
In January 1793, he voted for the kings execution. In March, fearing an invasion
of foreign troops to restore the ancien rgime, the government sent him, along
with Louis-Stanislas Frron, to the southeastern regions to monitor the republican
armies. In May, he was made commissaire of the southeastern army. However, royal-
ist insurgents gained control of the Toulon region and wanted Barras arrested.
Showing great initiative, he decided to march toward Toulon with the army and
retake it from the insurgents and the British. There he met Napoleon Bonaparte,
who, though only a lieutenant, already displayed great skill at military tactics. He
won Barrass trust and was allowed to organize and direct the attack. On Decem-
ber 17, the city was again under republican control.
Coup of 9 Thermidor
Back in Paris in January 1794, Barras was received with mistrust by Robespierre
and the Committee of Public Safety because he was suspected of having taken for
himself a considerable amount of loot from Toulon. He therefore secretly con-
spired with opponents of Robespierre such as Tallien and Fouch. After the Law of
22 Prairial, which increased the rate at which people were sent to the guillotine, the
opposition between Robespierre and Barras became irreversible. The conspiracy
led to the coup of 9 Thermidor ( July 27, 1794) and Robespierres execution the
following day. Barras was chosen to command the National Guard and to put down
any possible public uprising. On 10 Thermidor, he proceeded to visit Louis XVIs
nine-year-old son, who was detained in a Paris building called the Temple. Ofcially,
Barras went there to inquire after the boys health, but this episode remains a mys-
tery: Barras is suspected by some historians of having replaced the young Louis XVII
with a mentally retarded boy in order to save the former from certain death. He at
times referred to this event in his memoirs.
The situation in France was quite unstable, since no political faction could truly
direct the country. Like the Thermidorians like Frron, Fouch, and Tallien, Bar-
ras himself moved to the Right of the political spectrum for fear of anarchy. They
reduced the role of the Jacobin Club and of the Committee of Public Safety. Barras
devoted much of his time to trying to solve the terrible food shortage the peo-
ple were facing. In May 1795, he traveled in the north, particularly Belgium and
Holland, to collect grain and our, when a popular uprising led by former Mon-
tagnards occurred. Upon his return to Paris, he was made a brigadier general by
the Convention. Like most political leaders, Barras realized that France was in dire
need of a new constitution. He wanted the ideology of 1789 without the inuence
of the comits rvolutionnaires. The Convention, with Boissy dAnglas as its presi-
dent, formed a commission in charge of drafting a new constitution, which was to
62 Barras, Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de
be known as the Constitution de lAn III (Constitution of Year III). It was decided
that the executive power would reside in the hands of a Directory consisting of ve
directors chosen by the Council of Ancients. In this way, the Thermidorians hoped
to eliminate the opposition of the royalists on the Right and of the Montagnards
on the Left.
Before the new system could be enforced, the government was faced with a
new threat. The royalists, using to their advantage the strong discontent reigning
in the country, and intent on taking over the Convention, managed to form an
army of about 8,000 men. Barras was unanimously chosen to organize the defense.
Having only a couple of thousand men with him, he wasted no time in recalling
many former ofcers discredited after the Thermidorian Reaction. Napoleon, who
had become Barrass protg, offered his services. He was reintegrated into the
military and played an essential part in the coming conict. A clash took place on
13 Vendmiaire. Barras, with tremendous energy, motivated his troops and fought
the insurrection. Following many bloody confrontations, the insurgents retreated
and Barras was now considered the savior of the Republic.
The Directory
On 4 Brumaire (October 26, 1795), the Convention held its last session, and
two days later, the Council of Ancients elected ve directors. With the fewest votes
out of the ve, Barras was now a member of the Directory, and his main role was
to oversee the police. He was now 40 years old, and regardless of the small number
of votes he received, he formed part of the new executive power; indeed, he was its
dominant gure. His contacts with shrewd statesmen like Robespierre, Tallien, and
Mirabeau had taught him the art of maneuvering in the political arena. Despite
opposition from the royalists and the Jacobins, he would generally follow a policy
of balance. He tried to keep both groups involved in the French political scene for
fear that the elimination of either one could prove too benecial to the other party
and therefore a challenge to the new government. However, he was preceded by an
unruly reputation. Most of his contemporaries agreed that his interests in women,
good food, money, intrigue, and power were rather excessive. His relationships with
the two most fashionable women of the time, Madame Tallien and Josphine de
Beauharnais (future wife of Napoleon), were notorious.
On November 3, 1795, the directors began to govern and were already faced with
terrible ination resulting from economic and political insecurity. The situation
favored the birth of many strongly anti-Directory, extreme-Left political clubs. One
of the most famous was the Club du Panthon, which chose Franois-Nol Babeuf
(soon after to change his rst name to Gracchus) as its leader. He was violently op-
posed to authority and proposed social changes with strong socialist accents that
would later inuence Marx and Lenin. In April 1796, the Conspiracy of the Egaux,
led by Babeuf, was considered a dangerous threat to the state. After several vain
attempts to convince them to drop their plot, Barras had them arrested and their
leader guillotined.
Meanwhile, on the frontiers, Bonaparte, now in command of the republican army
in northern Italy, was in charge of ghting the Austrians. His nomination had been
regarded as Barrass gift for Bonapartes wedding. The future emperors crushing
victories contributed to some stability but at the same time made him a disturbingly
cumbersome hero for the ve directors.
Barras, Paul-Franois-Nicolas, Vicomte de 63
In the following months, the partisans of the ancien rgime gathered their forces
again. Barras urged the other directors to organize a repression, but they feared it
would only provoke a counterrevolution. In a reorganization of the government,
Barras managed to have Talleyrand put in charge of foreign affairs. However, with
two directors, Carnot and Barthlemy, siding with the monarchists, and mount-
ing resistance from former Girondins, Barras decided to request Bonapartes help
to prepare a coup. The latter sent General Augereau and his troops to support
the repression. On 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797), Barras ordered the arrest
of Carnot and Barthlemy, as well as many other deputies. The Bourbons threat
was suppressed without bloodshed and the royalists would have to wait until 1815
and Napoleons fall to rule again. The immediate consequence of 18 Fructidor was
that Barras could now be considered the real leader of the French nation. The
entourage of the future Louis XVIII, living in Mitau and aware of Barrass prestige
and inuence, was persuaded through nancial compensation and offers of protec-
tion to assist Louis in bringing royalty back to Parisbut it would be to no avail. In
December 1797, Bonaparte returned from his military triumphs in Italy a national
hero. His expectations of becoming a member of the Directory were short lived and
he, therefore, turned his attention to the conquest of Egypt, much to the relief of
the directors, who considered him a threat.
After the menace from the Right, the government faced a challenge from the
Left. The chronic and general dissatisfaction across the country was now being used
by the Jacobins to help them win the approaching legislative elections. On 22 Flo-
ral (May 11, 1798), the Directory managed to pass a law that permitted the cancel-
lation of elections of deputies unfavorable to Thermidorian views.
Later Career
In October 1799, Bonaparte returned from Egypt, intending to overthrow the
Directory and seeking Barrass support. But tired and worn out from diplomacy,
the director did not seize this opportunity. Bonaparte turned to Sieys to join him
in his coup. On 18 Brumaire (November 9), Bonaparte took over and had Barras
detained. The latter found himself betrayed and abandoned by many of his former
protgs, including Talleyrand and Fouch. After several attempts by Fouch and
the future empress, Josphine, to persuade Barras to reconsider and become min-
ister in the new regime, the former director declared a lack of interest in public of-
ce. In the spring of 1800, he was offered ambassadorial posts throughout Europe
and in the United States, which he also rejected.
Even though Barras was not now actively involved in the French political scene,
Barras was still regarded as a possible danger by the Consulate. In July 1800, he was
ordered to leave Paris and to reside no closer than about 70 miles from the capital.
He went to Brussels, where he stayed for four years, and then moved to the south
of France. In 1813, falsely suspected of conspiracy, Barras was sent into exile in
Rome. In 1814, he returned to France to witness Napoleons fall, but ironically he
was contacted by Fouch, and later by Jrme Bonaparte, who sought his support
for the emperors return from Elba, as well as by the monarchists for his help in
restoring the Bourbons. At age 59, 15 years after his eviction from power, Barras was
still sought after by the principal political actors in France. Nevertheless, he refused
both offers and after Napoleons exile to St. Helena returned to Paris, where he
died on January 29, 1829.
64 Barr, Isaac
FURTHER READING: Le Nabour, Eric. Barras: Le vicomte rouge. Paris: Jean-Claude Latts,
1982.
GUY-DAVID TOUBIANA
Barr, Isaac (17261802)
Isaac Barr, the only son of two Huguenot refugees, was born in Dublin and edu-
cated at Trinity College from 1740 to 1744. He was commissioned into the army in
1746, rising to the rank of captain in 1758. He served under General James Wolfe on
the Rochefort expedition of 1757 and fought at Louisburg in 1758 and at Quebec
in 1759. He lost an eye at Quebec, where his patron, Wolfe, who had made him his
adjutant general, despite his lowly rank, was killed. On his return to Britain, Barr
found a new patron in Lord Shelburne, whose inuence brought him into politics.
He was a member of Parliament for Chipping Wycombe from 1761 to 1774 and
then for Calne from 1774 to 1790. Shelburne carried very considerable inuence
in both boroughs. Barr spent most of his political career in opposition, and dur-
ing these years he earned a formidable reputation as a brave and powerful speaker
whose speeches were well delivered, held the attention of his fellow members, and
embarrassed those he was attacking.
In 1763, Barr followed Shelburne into opposition to George Grenvilles ministry.
He made a powerful speech, marked with great bitterness, against general warrants
on January 29, 1765. As the American crisis developed, Barr won renown as a cham-
pion of the colonists and as a powerful critic of government policies. He opposed the
proposed Stamp Act on February 6, 1765, though on grounds of expediency rather
than principle. On this occasion he famously referred to the colonists as the sons of
liberty. In 1766 he not only supported the repeal of the Stamp Act but also opposed
the Declaratory Act, on grounds of principle. He now argued that Parliament did not
possess the right to tax the colonies. In 1769 the colonists recognized him as a friend
of America, naming a town in Pennsylvania Wilkes-Barr. In 1774 Barr supported
the Boston Port Act, believing that Parliament had to be prepared to use coercion
in response to the Boston Tea Party. Barr believed that Parliament should show
unanimity in the face of the American crisis, but he urged conciliation more than
coercion. He opposed all the other so-called Intolerable Acts of 1774, and he pressed
for the repeal of the offending tea duty. When war was threatened, his military expe-
rience convinced him that the colonies could not be easily conquered. Throughout
the American Revolutionary War, he frequently attacked the government, taunting
Frederick North, Lord North, and even accusing ministers of being traitors.
Barr served as vice-treasurer of Ireland during the administration of William
Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, from 1766 to 1768, and after the fall of Lord North
in 1782, he held the well-paid post of treasurer of the navy under Charles Watson-
Wentworth, Lord Rockingham, and then the even more lucrative post of paymas-
ter general under Lord Shelburne. When William Pitt the Younger became prime
minister at the end of 1783, he gave Barr a lifetime sinecure as a clerk of the pells.
Around this time Barr became totally blind, and he played little further part in pol-
itics. He left Parliament in 1790 because he opposed Lord Shelburnes sympathetic
position on the French Revolution. He died unmarried on July 20, 1802.
H. T. DICKINSON
Bastille, Fall of the 65
The storming and fall of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, a popular insurrec-
tion that triggered the spread of revolution across France and marked the entry
of the people into the political sphere, was the central act of the outbreak of the
French Revolution. Although the prison contained very few prisoners at the time of
its fall, none of them incarcerated for political reasons, and most locked up again
shortly afterward, the Bastille had a legendary reputation as a sign of ancien r-
gime oppression, and its capture by the artisans and workers of Paris was viewed as
a massive symbolic victory. Destroyed soon after its fall, the Bastille consequently
functioned simultaneously as a symbol of both absolutist subjugation and the liberty
brought about by the Revolution.
Built between 1356 and 1382, the Bastille was a royal fortress turned state prison,
which during the eighteenth century came to stand for the arbitrary nature of jus-
tice under an absolutist monarchy. Situated in the east of Paris, at the entrance to
what later became the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Bastille was an instantly recog-
nizable structure, with its eight prominent towers and low, stocky form. Accounts of
the sufferings of those incarcerated in the Bastille, particularly those held by lettres
de cachet, were scandalous and horric and increased in number toward the end
of the century with the publication of the writings of notorious ex-prisoners such
as Latude and Linguet. The incarceration of writers such as Voltaire, and tales of
mythic or semi-mythic gures such as the comte de Lorges and the so-called Man
in the Iron Mask, further developed the legend of the Bastille as a place of unparal-
leled horrors and the capricious curtailment of personal and intellectual freedom.
The reality was somewhat more benign: the majority of prisoners were impounded
for obscene or scandalous writings, while the notorious torture chambers were a g-
ment of the collective imagination, and conditions were on the whole comparatively
good. Prisoners such as the Marquis de Sade were detained in considerable luxury,
although the regime of silence surrounding the prison meant that Sades invented
claims of outrage and torture in the Bastille found a receptive audience.
A combustible and anxious atmosphere prevailed in Paris in July 1789. Follow-
ing the Third Estates declaration of independence in the Tennis Court Oath at
Versailles the previous month, the subsequent acquiescence of King Louis XVI was
viewed with some suspicion, as troops began to surround Paris and take up strategic
positions within the city. The kings dismissal of Jacques Necker, the popular prime
minister, further exacerbated collective agitation and paranoia about monarchical
plots, fuelled by rumor and the theatrical speeches of the journalist Camille Des-
moulins, who warned the crowds massed in the gardens of the Palais Royal that
Bernard-Ren de Launay, governor of the Bastille, was preparing to re cannon
on the inhabitants of the districts surrounding the prison, and that the kings Swiss
Guards, massed on the Champ de Mars, were preparing to violently suppress the
nascent revolution.
On July 12, 5,000 Parisians took the busts of Necker and the duc dOrlans, the
kings liberal nephew, from Curtiuss waxworks and paraded them through the Tu-
ileries Gardens, where the demonstrators were attacked and scattered by nervous
troops led by the Prince de Lambesc. That night the majority of the hated customs
gates surrounding the periphery of Paris, where merchants had to pay taxes on
goods entering the city, were burned down as symbols of absolutist oppression of
66 Bastille, Fall of the
the people. The next day, prisoners at the prisons of La Force and the Concirgerie
were forcibly released, while crowds ransacked shops and monasteries in a search
for arms and gunpowder with which to defend themselves against the perceived
threat. On July 14, after petitioning for weaponry at the Htel de Ville on the Place
de la Grve, and after breaking into the weapons store at the Invalides barracks, the
crowd learned that much of the citys store of gunpowder had been transferred to
the Bastille. A committee of electors of Paris, recently chosen in the elections to the
Estates-General, and headed by Jacques de Flesselles, a leading merchant, urged
de Launay to surrender. The governor refused to give up either the prison or the
gunpowder stored there, a decision that turned out to be fatal.
Meanwhile, crowds were beginning to gather in increasingly large numbers at the
outer walls of the Bastille, angrily demanding entry. Soon, the drawbridge had been
breached and the crowd surged into the courtyard, surrounding the prison itself, at
which point de Launay ordered his troops to re on the invaders, inaming the crowd
and rapidly escalating the level of aggression. As news of de Launays response spread,
at roughly two oclock in the afternoon, citizens began to converge on the prison
from all over Paris, armed with makeshift weapons and galvanized by the infamous cry
A la Bastille! The long-acknowledged symbolic importance of the Bastille as a site of
tyranny now outweighed the practical demands for arms in the minds of the crowd.
Joined by mutinous royal soldiers who refused to ght against fellow Frenchmen, the
crowd bombarded the prison and its defending garrison of one hundred soldiers and
Swiss Guards, nally forcing de Launay to surrender at ve oclock.
De Launay, who as the son of a former governor had himself been born in the
Bastille, was immediately captured. The seven prisoners remaining in the prison
were also released, for a while at least, although none had been found in the in-
famous cachots, or underground cells. Initially protected from the lynch mob by
the soldiers who had fought on the side of the people, de Launay was eventually
seized by the crowd, who identied him with the treachery committed at the Bas-
tille. Panicking, he kicked out, striking an unemployed pastry cook named Dnot,
whereupon he was repeatedly stabbed and shot by the crowd. With apparent rel-
ish Dnot swiftly decapitated de Launay with his kitchen knife, and his head was
paraded through the streets on a pike in a scene of popular violence that was later
to become familiar. Similarly brutal fates awaited de Flesselles, as well as Foulon, a
minister due to have played a role in the government appointed to replace that led
by Necker, and his son-in-law Bertier de Sauvigny, the intendant of Paris. Accused of
having tried to starve the people of Paris and of saying that the people could always
eat grass, Foulons mouth was stuffed with straw after his decapitation.
Almost immediately after the fall of the Bastille, Pierre-Franois Palloy, a local
building contractor present on July 14, took for himself the commission to demol-
ish the prison. Palloy subsequently carved the stones of the Bastille into miniature
replicas, which he distributed to each of the 83 departments in France and gured
prominently as quasi-religious objectsex-votos, as he called themin revolution-
ary festivals. Alongside former prisoners such as Henri Masers de Latude, who had
famously escaped from the Bastille, Palloy organized paid nocturnal visits to the
prison cells for thrill-seeking tourists. Palloy also played an important role in the
production of memorabilia and ceremonial uniforms for the recognized vainqueurs,
or conquerors, of the Bastille, and organized the unofcial celebrations on the site
of the Bastille following the anniversary of its destruction on July 14, 1790, after
Batavian Republic 67
the ofcial Festival of Federation. At this event a garlanded scaffold was built to
mark the outline of the prison, already attened, while a agpole marked its former
height. The Place de la Bastille was used as a ritual space throughout the Revolution
and in subsequent revolutions in the nineteenth century. The fall of the prison re-
tains to this day a powerful symbolic resonance and is commemorated by the annual
July 14 celebrations across France.
FURTHER READING: Lsebrink, Hans-Jrgen, and Rolf Reichardt. The Bastille: A History of a
Symbol of Despotism and Freedom. Translated by Norbert Shrer. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1997.
RICHARD TAWS
Batavian Republic (17951806)
The Batavian Republic (Bataafse Republiek in Dutch) was a French-controlled re-
public that approximately covered the modern-day Netherlands between 1795 and
1806. During the French Revolutionary Wars, the Dutch republic initially became
a member of the First Coalition and fought French troops in the Austrian Nether-
lands (now Belgium). However, in 1795, the French army defeated the Austrians
and their Dutch allies and invaded the Dutch republic, forcing stadtholder Wil-
liam V of Orange to ee to Britain. The Batavian Republic was then proclaimed on
January 19, 1795; the republic was named after the Batavians, a Germanic tribe that
had lived in the area of the Netherlands in Roman times and was regarded as the
ancestors of the Dutch nation.
France treated the new sister republic as a vassal state. In the Treaty of The
Hague (1795), the Batavian Republic was forced to surrender strategically valuable
territory and pay a heavy war contribution of one million guilders. Moreover, in
later years, the republic was compelled to issue loans at a low rate of interest. Po-
litically, the republic witnessed the struggle between those loyal to their federalist
tradition and supporters of a centralized state based on a French model. The de-
bates on the constitution continued for six years until 1801. The new administration
reorganized the existing government structure and marked the establishment for a
centralized government and unitary state. In 1805 Napoleon appointed Rutger Jan
Schimmelpenninck as raadspensionaris (grand pensionary) to govern the republic
and strengthen the executive branch. Schimmelpenninck instituted a number of
major reforms, including a new tax system, expansive health and agricultural re-
forms, and new sea reclamation regulations. Under the new Education Act, Protes-
tant, Catholic, and Jewish schools received equal recognition.
As a French vassal state, the Batavian Republic had to participate in the struggles
waged by French Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as a result of which the
Dutch lost most of their colonial empire and Dutch trade collapsed, causing a se-
ries of economic crises for the republic. In 1806, Napoleon abolished the Batavian
Republic and declared his brother Louis Bonaparte king of the new Kingdom of
Holland. See also Netherlands, United Kingdom of the.
FURTHER READING: Israel, Jonathan. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477
1806. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Schama, Simon. Patriots and Liberators: Revolution
in the Netherlands, 17801813. New York: Knopf, 1977.
ALEXANDER MIKABERIDZE
68 Belgium
Beauharnais, Josphine Tascher de la Pagerie, Vicomtesse de
See Josephine, Empress of France
Belgium
The country of Belgium came into existence following a revolution in 1830, dur-
ing which the people of the southern Low Countries declared their independence
from the United Provinces of the Low Countries (consisting of Holland and Bel-
gium joined together), created at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
The Treaty of Mnster (1648) formally recognized the division of the Low Coun-
tries into northern and southern states. The southern portion fell under the strict
control of an occupying Spanish government. During the War of the Spanish Succes-
sion (17021714), the Spanish lost control over the territory and rule was transferred
to the Austrian Habsburgs. Up to 1748, the Austrians changed very little, but the en-
lightened despots, Maria Theresa and Joseph II, instituted a series of liberal reforms.
The primary cultural and political unier in the territory was the Catholic
Church. The church saw its role as more than just a spiritual provider; it took over
many aspects of life, especially in education, and came to function as a powerful
political bloc. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, saw the church as an obstacle to
progress and promoted the secularization of the state and the economy. The Catho-
lic Party would come to strongly oppose unication with the north, while the Liber-
als supported it.
In 1814, delegates at the Congress of Vienna decided that the northern and
southern Low Countries should be reunited to form the United Provinces of the
Netherlands under the leadership of King William I. Williams grand plan was to
reinvigorate the northern economy by merging it with the south. The southern
Netherlands were the rst continental region to successfully follow in Britains foot-
steps and industrialize, which gave them the potential for rapid growth. His rst acts
in ofce included heavy investment in infrastructure and the creation of an invest-
ment bank to lend money for economic development.
William had not counted on the formidable opposition from the southern prov-
inces. In addition to conicts over religious and linguistic differences, ordinary
taxpayers and even the Liberals did not want to share the burden of higher debt
and tax rates from the north. The July Revolution (1830) in France seemed to
provide a potential model for overthrowing an unpopular king. That summer, a
riot broke out in an opera house in Brussels. Initially, the riot had more to do with
the grievances of industrial workers, but it came to be led by liberals opposed to
William, whose troops arrived too late to quell the rebellion. Citizens decided to
call their new country Belgium, after the Roman word for their area of the Low
Countries.
The Belgians entered into talks with Britain, which accepted independence in
exchange for perpetual neutrality. The British also chose the new ruler, Leopold
van Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a German Lutheran who converted to Catholicism in order
to become King Leopold I. William rejected the settlement and organized the Ten
Days Campaign against the Belgian rebels. Though initially successful, his troops
withdrew after reports of a French army surfaced. William nally acquiesced to Bel-
gian independence, which was formally granted in April 1839.
Bertier de Sauvigny, Louis-Benige-Franois 69
FURTHER READING: Kossman, E. H. The Low Countries, 17801940. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1978; Newton, Gerald. The Netherlands: An Historical and Cultural Survey, 17951977.
London: Ernest Benn, 1978.
LAURA CRUZ
Bertier de Sauvigny, Louis-Benige-Franois (17371789)
Louis-Benige-Franois Bertier de Sauvigny was a French nobleman and inten-
dant of Paris who was murdered in July 1789. He was born on March 24, 1737, in
Paris, the son of Louis Jean Bertier de Sauvigny, the intendant of Paris. In 1768,
he became adjoint to his father in the post of intendant and assumed full du-
ties in 1771, and the title in 1776. He earned royal favor for his decisive actions
in suppressing the rural unrest during the Flour War in 1775. In 1777, Bertier
de Sauvigny became the suritendant de la maison de la Reine. Over the next two
decades, he earned a reputation at the court as a humanitarian reformer who
was in charge of a network of beggars prisons (dpts de mendicit ), implemented
some tax reform in the gnralit of Paris, and worked on agricultural improvement
and in public health and charitable establishments. Bertier created a network of
88 dpts with 14,000 admissions to ght the widespread problem of mendicity.
He eventually combined the dpts roles as detention centers with rehabilitative
functions, which converted the dpts into beggars prisons, where conditions hor-
ried observers and arrests and internments sometimes were arbitrary. Thomas
Adamss study showed that one-fth of the dpts 230,000 inmates died in the
three decades of its existence, and many among the poor considered Bertier de
Sauvigny a jailer.
Bertier bitterly opposed Jacques Neckers reforms and earned the hatred of
the Parisian populace, who accused him of conspiring to starve the populace. On
July 18, 1789, while traveling to supply royal troops deployed around Paris, Bertier
de Sauvigny was detained by the revolutionary authorities at Compigne. The fact
that papers relating to grain supplies for troops were found in his portfolio only
deepened suspicion of his involvement in grain speculation. On July 22, he was
sent under escort to Paris, where he was met by hostile crowds who accused him
among other things of starving 6,000 inmates to death at the dpt at Saint Denis.
The head of his father-in-law, Joseph-Franois Foulon (Foulon de Dou), the con-
troller of nances, who had been arrested and murdered shortly before, was held
up to him on a pike; a handful of hay was in its mouth as an allusion to Foulons
alleged comment that if the poor were hungry they should eat straw. Unhappy with
the electors decision to move Bertier de Sauvigny to the Abbaye, a seventeenth-
century prison, pending trial, the mob seized him and killed him in front of the
Htel de Ville, mutilating his body and parading his head on a pike throughout
the city.
FURTHER READING: Adams, Thomas M. Bureaucrats and Beggars: French Social Policy in the
Age of the Enlightenment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; Bouton, Cynthia A. The
Flour War: Gender, Class and Community in Late Ancien Rgime French Society. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993; Chassin, Ch.-L. Les lections et les cahiers de Paris en
1789. Vol. 3. Paris: Jouaust et Sigaux, 1889.
70 Bertrand de Moleville, Antoine Franois, Marquis de
Bertrand de Moleville, Antoine Franois, Marquis de (17441818)
Antoine Franois Bertrand de Moleville was a French statesman and royalist
whose memoirs and Annals of the French Revolution were important sources for early
nineteenth-century historians.
Born in Toulouse, he became intendant in Brittany in 1784 and was the object
of popular hostility after dissolving the Parlement of Rennes in 1788. Bertrand de
Moleville accepted Louis XVIs nomination as minister of marine on October 1, 1791,
only after a personal audience with the king: his account of that meeting suggests a
royal strategy of passive resistance to the Constitution of 1791. As minister, Bertrand
de Moleville faced great opposition from the port of Brest, where revolutionaries
accused him of concealing the large number of naval ofcers who had abandoned
their posts. He was sympathetic to the ofcers, who faced indiscipline, mutiny, and
even physical attacks, and was committed to upholding executive authority against
challenges from local administrations. Although a motion calling for his impeach-
ment was narrowly defeated in the Legislative Assembly, Bertrand de Moleville re-
signed on March 9, 1792, to spare the king further embarrassment. He continued to
serve Louis, however, by spying on and seeking to bribe revolutionary leaders.
Bertrand de Moleville tried to arrange the kings escape after the storming of the
Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792, but was forced to ee himself. In October, he
reached England, where he published various works and had contact with Charles
James Fox and Jacques Mallet du Pan. Bertrand de Moleville returned to France in
1814 but found little favor with the restored monarchy of Louis XVIII and died in
Paris in 1818. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Ben-Israel, Hedva. English Historians on the French Revolution. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968; Cormack, William S. Revolution and Political Conict in the
French Navy, 17891794. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
WILLIAM S. CORMACK
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicholas (17561819)
A lawyer and pamphleteer, Jacques Nicholas Billaud-Varenne was a member of
the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of
Terror (17931794) during the French Revolution. Billaud-Varenne, born in La
Rochelle, was the son of a lawyer who had high ambitions for his son. Educated by
the Oratorians of Nioret, he received a classical education before he turned his at-
tention to legal studies. Although he studied law at Poitiers and took the lawyers
oath in 1778, his interests were more literary than legal. While employed as a prefect
of studies at the Oratorian Collge de Juilly from 1783 to 1784, he wrote comedies
such as Une femme comme il y en a peu. Billaud left the Oratorians after just over a year
in their service after writing a comedy called Morgan, which was too libertine for the
fathers. He may have also left at his fathers orders in order a start a sensible legal
career. According to his biographers, Billauds plays were not especially popular in
the provinces. Even after Billaud, desperate to have his Morgan performed, offered
coauthorship to the leading actor, the play was still turned down. Unable to nd a
practice in his native La Rochelle, he went to Paris on his fathers money at the age
of 28. He soon found a job working on a part-time basis for Danton, but other than
that, he seems to have been unemployed most of the time.
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicholas 71
In addition to his plays, Billaud produced two serious works, one radical in terms
of religion, the other about politics, and very conventional. Both were written on
the eve of the French Revolution. The rst, Le dernier coup port aux prjugs et la
superstition, was completed in 1787 and published anonymously in London the same
year, and in France in 1789. It was a critique of the current state of the Catholic
religion, which foreshadowed some of the Revolutions attacks on the established
church. Billaud criticized the laziness of the regular clergy, and he advocated sev-
eral reforms, including a simplication of ritual, the prohibition of clerical vows,
the marriage of priests, and a limitation on their numbers. This does sound similar
to proposals made by various deputies during the Constituent Assembly in 1789.
He did not, however, go nearly as far as the Constituents. The nationalization of
church lands and the clerical oath were not present in Billauds pamphlet. This
was very much an Enlightenment critique of the church, similar in many respects to
Voltaires attacks. What Billaud was advocating was a cleaning up of abuses within
the church and a return to a simpler and purer form of Catholicism. It was the work
of a keen deist.
Billauds second pamphlet, Despotisme des ministres de France, was completed in
1788 and published anonymously in Amsterdam in 1789. This work was far less
radical than his rst. Its major theme was that the natural alliance between king
and people had been destroyed by the rise of ministerial despotism, which threat-
ened revolution. Billaud approved of the proposed reforms of the Baron de Turgot
and Jacques Necker, whom the parlements attacked, and he advocated the aboli-
tion of monastic vows, free trade, and the abandonment of seigneurial dues in
return for compensation. The goal of reform, according to Billaud, was to avert
revolution. He even argued that legislative power belonged to the king and sug-
gested the meeting of a group that was very similar in composition to the Assembly
of Notablesthe princes of the blood, the peers, and representatives of the parle-
ments and provincial assembliesto discuss the budget. Billaud saw no need for
the drafting of a new constitution.
Billaud neglected his legal career beginning in the spring of 1789, when he began
writing pamphlets, such as Le peintre politique ou Tarif des oprations actuelles, published
anonymously in November. In it, he disapproved of the Constituents voting of the
suspensive veto. This pamphlet gained him admission to the Jacobin Club, but he
did not take an active part in the debates until the ight of Louis XVI to Varennes in
June 1791. Instead, he focused his energy on the more radical club, the Cordeliers
Club, led by his former employer Georges Danton.
When Billaud-Varenne proposed a republican government at the Jacobin session
of July 1, 1791, he was expelled from the club. He went immediately to the Corde-
liers, where he was embraced by Danton. This speech was soon published as a pam-
phlet, Lacphocratie. Billaud was later readmitted to the club during the so-called
purication vote, run by the radicals after the Varennes crisis.
During the period of the National Assembly (17911792), Billaud rarely spoke
at the Jacobin Club, but he never missed a session, and it was during the sitting of
the National Assembly that he became known throughout the country. He spoke
of the war, of which he was a partisan, but only in principle, on December 19, 1791.
He was convinced that France should go to war, but only after the revolutionaries
had taken precautions against the court. He was thus opposed to Brissots demand
for immediate aggression against Austria.
72 Bill of Rights (United States)
When the monarchy was overthrown on August 10, 1792, Billaud became a mem-
ber of the revolutionary Paris Commune. There is little doubt that he played a role in
the September Massacres. He was elected a deputy from Paris to the National Con-
vention on September 20. It was during the period of the Convention that Billaud
demonstrated his most radical behavior. He voted in favor of the kings trial, against
the appeal to the people, and for Louis XVIs death. Sent on a mission to Brittany to
recruit men for the army in March 1793, he successfully put down counterrevolution-
ary uprisings. He returned to the Convention in time to participate in the struggle
against the moderate faction known as the Girondins, which was expelled on June 2.
Billaud was elected president of the Convention on September 5, 1793, after
his second mission to the northern departments. The next day, he was appointed
to the Committee of Public Safety under pressure from leaders of the sans-culottes
in Paris such as Jacques Hbert. Billaud was in charge of corresponding to the rep-
resentatives on mission and the popular societies in the countryside. On the same
day, he secured the passage of a law that gave the committee complete control over
provincial authorities on 14 Frimaire, Year II (September 6, 1793). At this time, Bil-
laud published his treatise Elments du rpublicainisme, in which he proposed popular
demands such as the redistribution of wealth and the right to work.
A supporter of Maximilien Robespierre in his struggle with the radical Hber-
tiste faction in Paris, Billaud voted for Robespierres presidency of the Convention
on June 4, 1794. Yet he soon challenged Robespierres leadership and conspired
with Collot dHerbois and other revolutionaries to bring about Robespierres fall
from power on 9 Thermidor, Year II ( July 27, 1794). During the period immediately
following the Terror, known as the Thermidorian Reaction, Billaud was deported in
April 1795 to French Guiana, where he married and worked as a farmer. He refused
an amnesty from Napoleon in 1800 and died in Haiti in 1817. See also Calendar,
French Revolutionary; Civil Constitution of the Clergy; Constitutions; French Revo-
lutionary; Hbertistes; Jacobins; Legislative Assembly; Pamphlets (French).
FURTHER READING: Burney, John M. The Fear of the Executive and the Threat of
Conspiracy: Billaud-Varennes Terrorist Rhetoric in the French Revolution, 17881794.
French History 5, no. 2 (1991): 14363; Brunel, Franoise. The Acculturation of a Rev-
olutionary: The Example of J.-N. Billaud-Varenne (17861791). In Culture and Revolution:
Cultural Ramications of the French Revolution, ed. George Levitine. College Park: University of
Maryland at College Park, 1989; Conte, Arthur. Billaud-Varenne: Gant de la Rvolution. Paris:
O. Orban, 1989; Guilaine, Jacques. Billaud-Varenne: Lasciete de la Rvolution, 17561819. Paris:
Fayard, 1969.
LEIGH WHALEY
The Bill of Rights refers collectively to the rst 10 amendments to the United
States Constitution. Initially drafted by James Madison in June 1789, the Bill of
Rights was part of a compromise worked out between Federalist supporters and
Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution. The condition that these amend-
ments would be passed immediately after ratication was a key point in overcoming
opposition to the Constitution, particularly in divided states like Massachusetts,
Virginia, and New York, which included such conditional language in their rati-
cation instruments. The American bill of rights drew upon diverse European and
Bill of Rights (United States) 73
American precursors, most notably, George Masons 1776 Virginia Declaration of
Rights, the 1689 English bill of rights, and the Magna Carta. From these inuential
expressions of the traditional rights of English subjects, Madison compiled a list of
judicial liberties such as due process and trial by jury, as well as civil rights like free-
dom of expression, petition, assembly, and religion.
The notion that a bill of rights was necessary was by no means shared by everyone,
however. Many of the Constitutions most vociferous defenders, including Alexan-
der Hamilton, argued that a bill of rights was not only unnecessary, given the strictly
delimited powers outlined in the Constitutions main articles, but that providing a
bill of rights might at some point in the future be interpreted to mean that these
and only these liberties (and not some others heretofore unspecied) were secured
to the people or the states. Hamilton famously argued in the Federalist no. 84: I go
further, and afrm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they
are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would
even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not
granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more
than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no
power to do? According to Hamilton, bills of rights were agreements extracted by
the people from sovereigns with theoretically unlimited powers, as was the case with
the Magna Carta and King John. The United States Constitution, by way of contrast,
was not an agreement between a people and an otherwise absolute monarch but a
document that created a government with strictly enumerated powers.
On the other side, however, many Anti-Federalists feared the unprecedented
powers that the United States Constitution granted to the federal government. Such
a power distanced from the states and insulated from the will of the people was
liable to become tyrannical if sufcient checks were not put in place. This argu-
ment for the absolute necessity of a bill of rights was made by the Anti-Federalist
Brutus (thought to be Abraham Yates) in his paper On the Lack of a Bill of
Rights, later dubbed Antifederalist Number 84. Directly challenging Hamiltons
claim that a bill of rights was unnecessary because of the Constitutions strictly enu-
merated powers, Brutus argued that the Constitutions own proscriptions against
bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and titles of nobilitypowers that are nowhere
explicitly given to the new federal governmentdemonstrate the dangers of the
Constitutions implied powers. With equal truth it may be said, Brutus noted, that
all the powers which the bills of rights guard against the abuse of, are contained or
implied in the general ones granted by this Constitution.
Anti-Federalists and many undecided delegates were persuaded to support the
Constitution only with the understanding that a bill of rights would be immediately
appended to it. This agreementknown as the Massachusetts Compromisemade
the states ratication of the Constitution conditional on the subsequent passage of
a bill of rights. Similar agreements paved the way for ratication in tightly divided
states like Virginia and New York. Even so, many of the founding generation were
skeptical about this expedient for limiting the power of the new federal govern-
ment. In his 1787 correspondence with Madison, Thomas Jefferson complained
that while he would have preferred an even more extensive set of reserved liberties,
the Bill of Rights as it came into being was better than nothing.
After 17 articles were introduced by Madison in June of 1789, the House of Rep-
resentatives deliberated and passed the articles on August 24, 1789. These 17 were
74 Blackstone, Sir William
reduced to 12 in the nal version approved by the entire Congress and submitted
to the states for ratication on September 25, 1789. Of these original 12 provisions,
only the last 10 (originally numbers 312) were ratied by the requisite three-fourths
of the states and incorporated into the Constitution on December 15, 1791. The orig-
inal second proposed amendment dealing with compensation for senators and rep-
resentatives was ratied only belatedly in 1992 as the Twenty-seventh Amendment.
The Bill of Rights gives expression to the fundamental civil and political rights
that Americans have come to regard as central to their freedom. The First Amend-
ment provides for religious liberty and freedom of expression, prohibiting the es-
tablishment of an ofcial religion and guaranteeing free speech, petition, assembly,
and freedom of the press. The Second Amendment provides for state militias and a
right to keep and bear arms. The Third Amendment prohibits the government from
compelling individuals to quarter soldiers in their homes. The Fourth Amendment
secures their homes and property from unreasonable search, seizure, or inspection
without probable cause or a legal warrant. The Fifth Amendment provides legal rights
of due process, including grand juries, and prohibits double jeopardy, forced confes-
sions, or takings. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants a speedy public trial,
the right to be confronted by witnesses, and legal counsel. The Seventh Amendment
provides for trial by jury. The Eighth Amendment secures the right of bail and forbids
cruel and unusual punishments. The Ninth stipulates clearly that the enumeration of
these specic rights does not imply that there are no other signicant rights retained
by the people. The Tenth species that those powers not specically delegated to the
new federal government are to be retained by the states or the people at large.
Since its ratication in 1791, the United States Bill of Rights has been a reference
point for American constitutional law and for statements of human rights throughout
the world. Some of the most inuential U.S. Supreme Court decisions have hinged
on interpretations of the precise nature and scope of individual rights enumerated in
the Bill of Rights. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
adopted on August 27, 1789, at almost the same time as the U.S. Bill of Rightsand the
1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights are both often compared and con-
trasted to the United States Bill of Rights. Critics have pointed out, however, that while
the U.S. Bill of Rights is historically descriptive of rights that are already in existence
and have traditionally been enjoyed by American citizens, the French Declaration of
the Rights of Man and the 1948 UN Declaration are both normative and aspirational,
describing idealized rights to which all human beings ought to be entitled, even if it is
unclear how these rights might be provided to them. See also The Federalist Papers.
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard, ed. The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and
Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle over Ratication. New York: Library
of America, 1993; Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders Constitution. 5 vols.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, and John
Jay. The Federalist Papers. London: Penguin, 1987.
RICHARD BOYD
Blackstone, Sir William (17231780)
Sir William Blackstone was an English jurist and professor, and the rst person to
lecture on English law at an English university (Oxford). His lectures on common
Bland, Richard 75
law (published in four books as Commentaries on the Laws of England, 17651769) are
considered foundational to American and English jurisprudence, though they have
been translated into French, German, and Russian as well. Book I, the Rights of
Persons, examines the absolute rights of individuals, monarchs, governments, and
corporations. Book II, the Rights of Things, examines real-property law. Book III,
Private Wrongs, examines civil liability, courts, and judicial procedure, and book IV,
Public Wrongs, examines criminal law, including offenses against God and religion.
Blackstone asserted that the Bible was the revealed word of God and that it con-
tained divinely ordained and revealed laws that derived both from Gods nature and
Gods commands to humanity. He also asserted that God ordained the laws of na-
ture, such as the law of gravity, recently elucidated by Isaac Newton (16431727), as
a means of both ordering Gods created universe and enabling humanity to thereby
understand the universe. Blackstone further asserted that these revealed and natu-
ral laws are in complete harmony because of their single divine source. He main-
tained that human laws are subordinate attempts by nite and sinful humanity to
declare or translate the innite and divine law revealed in the Bible and nature into
the human context. Any laws that violate the clear statements of divine or natural
law are injurious to the human condition.
Thus, so Blackstone asserted, the only valid laws are those that conform to the
revealed laws of God and the natural laws reective of them. Any law imposed by any
government, society, or individual that alters or is counter to divine law as revealed
in the Bible and reected in nature is invalid. The commandments of God, the su-
perior, override the codes of humanity, the inferior.
Common law is the codied laws derived by judges from the generally accepted
understanding of divinely revealed and natural law and the generally accepted cus-
toms and uses in Britain that Blackstone believed were reective of Christian tenets.
Judges were to make decisions on which there was no directly applicable revealed
or natural law based on the combined wisdom of prior interpreters and what was
accepted as general rules of conduct in a society guided by the laws of Goda Chris-
tian society, albeit one that protected the rights of non-Christians.
Blackstone restricted voting to property owners, believing that only they had an
interest in public policy, though he asserted that slavery was antithetical to natural
law. Blackstone also published treatises on the Magna Carta and the Charter of the
Forest.
FURTHER READING: Doolittle, Ian. William Blackstone: A Biography. London: Maney, 2001;
Doublas, D. The Biographical History of Sir William Blackstone. Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman,
1971; Stacey, Robert D. Sir William Blackstone and the Common Law: Blackstones Legacy to America.
Ozark, AL: ACW Press, 2003.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Bland, Richard (17101776)
Richard Bland was born on May 6, 1710, on his familys plantation in Prince
George County, Virginia. A gentleman planter, Bland served in a variety of civic and
public ofces. He enjoyed a growing historical reputation because of his authorship
of bills and pamphlets that helped lay the intellectual groundwork for the principles
of the American Revolution.
76 Boissy dAnglas, Franois Antoine de, Comte
Bland graduated from William and Mary College and probably studied at Ed-
inburgh University, although absolute historical proof of the latter is lacking. He
served as a justice of the peace and became an ofcer in the militia in 1739. In 1742,
Bland was elected to the House of Burgesses. In 17531755, Bland opposed the Vir-
ginia governors so-called pistole fee on the grounds of public rights.
Blands rst major pamphlet was published in 1760. A Letter to the Clergy on
the Two-Penny Act criticized increasing the Anglican clergys pay and opposed the
creation of an American bishopric. Also in 1760, Bland wrote and published An
Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies. While this pamphlet did not argue
for American sovereignty, it did suggest that Americans should have some authority
over their affairs, most notably taxation. The inquiry is the rst published articula-
tion of this sentiment. Bland attended the First Continental Congress (1774), where
the inquiry informed the thinking of much of the members and the writing of the
Declaration of Rights.
Even though a break with Britain seemed inevitable, Bland sought rapproche-
ment with Britain. He helped defeat Patrick Henrys call to take up arms in 1775.
Also in 1775, Bland briey served as a member of the Second Continental Congress
but, citing poor health, had to return home to Virginia. Bland remained in Virginia,
helping write the states rst constitution, and was elected to the Virginia House of
Delegates in 1776. He died October 26, 1776, in Williamsburg. Richard Bland was
also a scholar of early Virginia history and preserved many rare documents and re-
cords of the colonys early days.
FURTHER READING: Gutzman, K. R. Constantine. Jeffersons Draft Declaration of Inde-
pendence, Richard Bland, and the Revolutionary Legacy: Giving Credit Where Credit Is
Due. Journal of the Historical Society 1, nos. 23 (2000): 13754.
CHARLES ALLAN
Boissy dAnglas, Franois Antoine de, Comte (17561826)
Comte Franois Antoine de Boissy dAnglas was a French revolutionary politician
and a deputy to the Estates-General, the National Convention, and the Council of
Five Hundred.
The son of a doctor, Boissy was a Protestant from Grimaudier in the Ardche depart-
ment. Trained as a lawyer, he was also a poet, historian, and writer who held moderate
political beliefs: equality before the law, constitutional government, and religious tol-
erance. He was a member of the academies of La Rochelle, Lyon, and Nmes. A lawyer
to the Parlement of Paris from 1783, Boissy purchased the ofce of matre dhtel de
Monsieur, the future Louis XVIII. He resigned from this ofce in 1791.
Boissy was elected a deputy to the Estates-General from the Ardche. He did not
play a major role in the debates of the Constituent Assembly. During the interval
between the Constituent Assembly and Convention, he served as a procureur-gnral-
syndic for his department from 1791 to 1792.
He was elected a deputy to the Convention, where he represented the Ardche.
A moderate, he sat with the Plain. He was sent on a mission to Lyon to quash bread
riots due to subsistence problems. During the trial of Louis XVI, he voted for the
referendum, against death, and in favor of imprisonment. He voted for the im-
peachment of Jean-Paul Marat.
Bolvar, Simn 77
Boissys political career blossomed after the Thermidorian Reaction. He joined
the Committee of Public Safety on December 5, 1794, and was in charge of food
distribution, a task at which he was very successful and for which he received the
name Boissy-Famine. He accidentally became president of the Convention on
1 Prairial (May 20, 1795) during the Prairial Rising, an invasion of the Convention
by Parisian sans-culottes demanding, Bread and the Constitution of 1793. At the
risk of his life, he defended the Convention from the invading mob, who murdered
the deputy Fraud, put his head on a pike, and presented it to Boissy. Throughout
this event, Boissy remained composed. The next day, the Convention applauded his
behavior. He was charged with drafting the Constitution of the Year III (1795) with
Creuz-Latouche, Lanjuinais, and La Revellire-Lpeaux. This constitution repre-
sented a triumph for republican conservatives such as Boissy. These men created
a bicameral legislature with a franchise based on tax qualication. Elected to the
Council of Five Hundred in 1795 by 72 departments, Boissy opted for that of the
Seine. He was proscribed during the Fructidor rising and ed to England.
Boissy returned to France after the coup dtat de Brumaire (November 910)
1799. He was nominated to the Tribunate and Senate. With the Bourbon restora-
tion, Boissy was appointed to the Chamber of Peers, where he sat as a prominent
liberal until his death in 1826. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; French
Revolution; Parlements; Reign of Terror.
FURTHER READING: Ballard, John R. Continuity during the Storm: Boissy dAnglas and the Era
of the French Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000; Saunier-Set, Alice. Le comte
Boissy dAnglas: Conventionnel et pair de France. Clichy-la-Garenne: France Univers, 2001.
LEIGH WHALEY
Bolvar, Simn (17831830)
Simn Bolvar is one of the most powerful and inuential gures in Latin Ameri-
can political history. Known as the Liberator, Bolvar was a South American rev-
olutionary leader as well as a general who fought against Spanish domination in
Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia. He dedicated his life to
the independence of the Spanish New World colonies, and the unication of much
of Latin America.
Bolvar in Brief
A man of great charm and charisma, Bolvar was renowned for his eloquent
speeches and literary skill. Historical records indicate that he spoke so eloquently and
free of error that his speeches did not require editing when they were printed. His
writings are acclaimed and highly regarded for their philosophical and insightful con-
tent. Combined with his military genius and art of governance, his personal qualica-
tions allowed him to rise to the rank of a great statesman. He founded and became
rst president of Bolivia, a country that bears his name, and led a political movement
toward unication across South America. Despite his considerable abilities and inu-
ence, he was humble and prone to lead a simple and ordinary life. He ate the same
food as his common soldiers, despite the fact that he was born into a very wealthy fam-
ily. When he died, he was almost as poor as an ordinary South American of the time,
by virtue of having spent his fortune on the cause of South American unity.
78 Bolvar, Simn
Because of his devotion to the people of South America and his intellectual and
practical contribution to the region, Bolvar is still remembered and admired in
Latin America. His legacy and imprints are so visible in the region that statues of
him adorn the main squares of all major Latin American cities. Even in the cities
Bolvar visited briey, such as London, as well as places he never visited, such as
Washington, New York, and Buenos Aires, there are statues of Bolvar. In Venezu-
ela a city, a mountain, an international airport, its currency, hospitals, schools, and
main squares are named after him; the country also changed its name to the Boli-
varian Republic of Venezuela in 1998. Some contemporary Latin American leaders,
including Hugo Chvez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, assert that they
are following the footsteps of the Liberator and call for adherence to the principles
of Bolvarian revolution to counter the dire effects of neoliberal global nancial
policies.
However, while Bolvar was a great revolutionary gure, a very inuential politi-
cian, and a prolic writer and thinker, it can also be argued that his efforts failed to
bear much fruit due to his failure to achieve his primary goals. Even the emphasis of
leftist Latin American leaders on his ideas and thoughts conrms that he remains
an intellectually controversial person. For instance, Hugo Chvez was recently ac-
cused of distorting the historical facts about him and inventing a populist Bolvar.
While Chvez and other leftist Latin American leaders contend that Bolvar was a
leftist revolutionist, at least some scholars maintain that his system of thought has
nothing to do with leftist rhetoric, which did not exist in his time.
While a purely leftist discourse tends to describe him as an uncompromising anti-
imperialist, the more balanced approach recalls his well-crafted diplomacy when he
convinced the British Empire to back South America against the Spanish. Liberals
view him as a ghter against repression and tyranny, whereas Marxists assert that he
was the leader of a bourgeois revolution. For some who fall in between, Bolvar was
simply a reformist, who, while changing the South American political landscape,
opted to leave its colonial heritage intact.
Bolvars failure to unite South America highlights the complexities associated
with his personality and ideological tendencies. While he was able to free Latin
American nations from Spanish rule, Bolvars lifelong goal went unfullled. Fur-
thermore, during his last years, at least some South Americans wanted him out of
political ofce, so much so that they attempted to assassinate him. Ultimately, realiz-
ing his life was at stake, Bolvar felt he should leave his ofce as well as his country.
Bolvars Life: Revolution and Resistance
During his short yet active life, Simn Bolvar fought in numerous wars, orga-
nizing resistance movements against the Spanish in hopes of expelling them from
Latin America. Sometimes a very brutal soldier, Bolvar was largely successful in
these wars, regardless of his lack of extensive military training. While he possessed
the necessary organizational and leadership skills necessary to mobilize the peo-
ple to peacefully resist Spanish rule, he did not hesitate to resort to violent action;
indeed, the revolutions he inspired essentially relied on military might.
Born to a wealthy Creole family in Caracas in 1783, Bolvar lost his parents at
an early age. His uncle hired a tutor, Simn Rodriguez, to educate him. Rodriguez
acquainted Bolvar with the works of the great thinkers of the European Enlighten-
ment, including Voltaire and Rousseau. Bolvar also became aware of the French
Bolvar, Simn 79
Revolution when he was only a child. After Rodriguez had to ee the country in
1796 due to his opposition to Spanish rule, Bolvar was sent to Europe to complete
his education. He visited Spain in 1799 and France in 1802.
While in Europe, Bolvar married and soon after returned to his native land.
However, his wife died that year, and he left for Paris. As a boy, Bolvar had spent
a considerable amount of time deliberating over the writings of such European
rational thinkers and philosophers as Locke and Hobbes. Later, during his time
in Europe, the idea of freeing South America became crystallized in his mind. His
acquaintance with Alexander von Humboldt in Paris had at least a partial impact
on his determination to end Spanish rule in Latin America. It is believed that Hum-
boldt encouraged Bolvaralbeit indirectlyto begin the process of liberation. In-
uenced by Napoleons striking military and political achievements, Bolvar also
came to the realization that a single man could change the fate of a nation. In Au-
gust 1805, Bolvar, along with Rodriguez, left Paris and traveled to Italy, where the
two visited Romelong associated with freedom from repression. There, Bolvar
reportedly vowed to free his country.
Simultaneously, Bolvar also developed his political philosophy based on the pro-
motion of freedom, liberty and human rights, and opposition to monarchy and
tyranny. In Europe, he became an ardent republican and returned to his homeland
in 1807 via the United States as a man dedicated to the emancipation of Spanish
America. During his stay in the United States, he was able to observe the operation
of its liberal institutions.
In 1808, recognizing that Napoleons invasion of Spain was severely eroding the
mother countries in South America, Bolvar decided to launch a movement to lib-
erate Latin America. To this end, he convened a national congress in Caracas in
March 1811. Bolvar addressed the delegates and urged them to take immediate
action in pursuit of independence, which was formally declared on July 5. Inde-
pendence, however, could not be sustained. Bolvar was forced to ee the country
to Cartagena, where he published his rst great political statement, in which he
urged revolutionaries to throw off Spanish rule. Although he captured Caracas and
established a second Venezuelan republic in 1813, at which time he was proclaimed
Liberator, the Spanish once more defeated him in 1814, and in the following year
he went into voluntary exile to Jamaica. There he authored arguably his most im-
portant intellectual work, La carta de Jamaica (The Letter from Jamaica), in which he
laid out his blueprint for the emancipation of Latin America. In December 1815, he
took refuge in Haiti, where he was welcomed and received extensive support for his
cause. Unique among the governments Bolvar approached for practical help, Haiti
agreed to supply him with funds and military equipment.
Thus prepared, in 1817, Bolvar invaded Venezuela and defeated Spanish forces
there. For the third time, he established a revolutionary republic and was elected
president. Several months later he defeated the Spanish again and entered Bogot
in 1819, where he became president and military dictator of the surrounding re-
gion. There he charged legislators with the responsibility of laying the foundation
of a new state to be known as La Repblica de Colombia. In the same year, its con-
gress adopted a republican constitution for this new federation, which consisted of
three parts, Colombia, Venezuela, and Quito (Ecuador). Even though the latter two
regions remained under Spanish control, Bolvar believed he would eventually suc-
ceed in uniting the whole region under constitutional rule. In this he succeeded,
80 Bolvar, Simn
after defeating Spanish forces in June 1821 at the Battle of Carabobo, which freed
Venezuela of Spanish control. He continued his military campaign against Spanish
domination, resulting in the liberation of Ecuador at the end of 1821.
In 1824, Bolvar also liberated Peru and was elected president of that country in
1825. In his honor, a new country named Bolivia was founded in the southern part of
the country. With Peru liberated, Bolvars objective of emancipating South America
was almost complete. Gran Colombia, a loose federation created by Bolvar, reached
its greatest geographical extent thus far, prompting Bolvar in 1826 to convene a
congress of Central and South American states to achieve his lifelong dream of
Latin American unity. However, problems soon arose: rst, internal disagreements
emerged, and later local dissidents rioted against the central government.
In an effort to end the internal turmoil, Bolvar called for a convention in April
1828. It soon became evident, however, that Bolvar was not as successful in the
political sphere as in the military arena. Although at the beginning he favored a
federal structure with a strong central government, the convention now adopted
a document that provided a loose and decentralized confederation of political enti-
ties. As a result, Bolvar did not endorse the work of the convention and proclaimed
himself dictator in August 1828. On September 25, in Bogot, an assassin attempted
to kill Bolvar. Recognizing the popular dissatisfaction with his political leadership,
Bolvar resigned from the presidency of Colombia in 1830 left for Europe, which he
never reached, dying of tuberculosis on December 17 of that year.
Ideological Foundation of Bolvarian Revolution
While through his martial abilities he secured the emancipation of South Ameri-
can nations from Spanish rule, Bolvar failed to leave a well-dened political and
ideological legacy to serve as the basis for those nations to ourish and build on
their independence. His political thoughts were often so vague and unxedat
times even conictingthat it is difcult to identify a coherent ideology. Bolvar
was certainly eager to support his military achievements with an ideological foun-
dation that would suit conditions in Latin America. Hence, it would be unfair to
characterize him merely in military terms. As already noted, he possessed a bright
intellect and a creative mind and was a prolic writer. However, from his writings
and actions, it may be said that he was a pragmatic ruler rather than an adherent to
a particular ideology or school of political thought.
To achieve this, Bolvar was determined to do whatever was required. According
to his rst political manifesto in 1812, military victories and independence should
be followed by the establishment of a political system in which a strong government
creates a president for life. His rationale was simple: people should not cast blame
for their oppression on the Spaniards but must look to their own disunity. Thus, ac-
cording to Bolvar, the only way to avoid the risk of domination by a foreign power
is by establishing a central government led by a strong leader.
Likewise, in his famous La carta de Jamaica, while proposing the establishment of
constitutional republics, each with a hereditary upper house and an elected lower
house, he once more underlined the importance of creating a president for life. At
the rst available opportunity, Bolvar implemented his plan. After liberating Upper
Peru in April 1825, he drafted a constitution that reected his vacillation between
a purely authoritarian regime and a political system that would allow popular par-
ticipation. The constitution provided for a lifelong president, a legislative body with
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de 81
no signicant power, and a highly restricted form of suffrage. Even as late as 1826,
when a league of Latin American nations was convened in Panama to discuss issues
concerning them, Bolvar remained an authoritarian republican.
While he appeared never to have abandoned his inclination toward authoritarian-
ism, Bolvar was also a keen defender of freedom in the broadest sense. The funda-
mental principles and premises of the Enlightenment strongly inuenced his political
thinking, and British ideas on the art of governance played an important part in this
process. For Bolvar, British constitutionalism could serve as a model for the people
of his continent, though he maintained that liberty did not simply mean freedom
from absolutism, but freedom from an oppressive colonial power, and ought to be se-
cured through genuine independence guaranteed by a liberal constitutional regime.
Nevertheless, his seemingly liberal views never led him to rely on popular support
in his rule of liberated territories. In the end, he failed in his quest to reconcile his
authoritarian ambitions with a political system based on the consent of the majority.
Conversely, Bolvar was quite clear in his approach to nationalism. In view of its use-
fulness to the cause of Latin American independence, he sought to rely heavily on
nationalist sentiments. However, in recognition of the absence of a strong European-
style nationalist base in Latin America, Bolvar sought to foster and encourage a style
of nationalism that suited the region. Nevertheless, in his writings, Bolvar avoided
dening the term nation and employed the terms nation, patria, state, and
republic almost interchangeably, making no distinctions between them.
Bolvarian nationalism is not based on a specic culture, ethnicity, or race. Bolvar
wished the whole of Latin America to share common values. In light of the fact that
the region was very diverse in terms of ethnic, national, and religious attachments and
allegiances, Bolvar was particularly careful to ensure that this diversity did not cre-
ate sharp divisions within this heterogeneous society. To this end, he avoided making
references to particular ethnic, religious, or national identities. Still, he viewed this
diversity as an asset and sought to benet from it. To this end, he tried to underline
the importance of a continental spirit and thus encouraged unity in Latin America.
Signicantly, he also often called himself rst an American, and then a Venezuelan.
As early as 1813, he openly invited immigrants to settle in Venezuela, and promised
citizenship to those who demonstrated their commitment to the country.
FURTHER READING: Angel, Hildegarde. Simn Bolivar: South American Liberator. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1930; Boyd, Bill. Bolivar: Liberator of a Continent. New York: S.P.I. Books, 1998; Del
Rio, Daniel A. Simon Bolivar. New York: Bolivarian Society of the United States, 1965; Frank,
Waldo. Birth of a World: Bolivar in Terms of His Peoples. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1951; Lynch,
John. Simn Bolvar: A Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006; Masur, Gerhard. Simon
Bolivar. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1948; Paine, Lauran. Bolivar the Liberator.
New York: Roy, 1970; Petre, F. Loraine. Simon Bolivar: El Libertador. New York: Best Books,
1924; Rourke, Thomas. Man of Glory: Simn Bolivar. New York: Morrow, 1939; Rourke, Thomas.
Simon Bolivar. London: Michael Joseph, 1940.
CENAP CAKMAK
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de (17541840)
A political and proto-sociological philosopher, Bonald was, with de Maistre, a
leading voice of reactionary opposition to the principles of the French Revolution.
A political absolutist, he based his philosophy on the primacy of revelation. Bonald
82 Boston Massacre
expressed a ercely royalist position, which viewed the Catholic Church and monar-
chical authority as the twin pillars of society in France. In the infamous work On Di-
vorce he argued that divorce, which was legalized in France in 1792, was responsible
for the breakdown of domestic society. Bonalds writings also asserted the divine ori-
gin of language, which in his view was not innate to humans but revealed. From this
he deduced the divine origins of the scriptures and the infallibility of the church.
In 1791, motivated by his opposition to the principles of the Revolution, Bonald
emigrated and joined the army of the Prince of Cond before nally settling at Hei-
delberg. There he wrote his rst major work, the reactionary Thorie du pouvoir poli-
tique et religieux (3 volumes, 1796). Other major works include La lgislation primitive
(3 volumes, 1808) and Recherches philosophiques sur les premiers objets des connaissances
morales (2 volumes, 1818). Upon his return to France in 1797, he found himself
out of favor with the authorities and lived for a period in retirement before being
named councilor of the Imperial University in 1808.
Following the Restoration in 1814, he became a member of the Council of Public
Instruction and between 1815 and 1822 served as a deputy in the chamber. In 1822
he was named minister of state with responsibility for the censorship commission,
a position that suited his outspoken advocacy of literary censorship. Bonald with-
drew from public affairs in 1830 and died a decade later.
FURTHER READING: Alibert, Jacques. Les triangles d or d une socit catholique: Louis de Bonald,
thoricien de la contre-rvolution. Paris: Pierre Tqui tideur, 2002; De Bonald, Louis. On Divorce.
Translated and edited by Nicholas Davidson. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
1992; Klinck, David. The French Counterrevolutionary Theorist, Louis de Bonald. New York: P.
Lang, 1996; Toda, Michel. Louis de Bonald: Thoricien de la contre-rvolution. Etampes: Clovis,
1997.
JEFF SHANTZ
Bonaparte, Napoleon
See Napoleon I
On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers red upon a crowd of civilians
in King Street in Boston. Five men died from their wounds. The incident has been
remembered popularly as the Boston Massacre. While a trial found that the sol-
diers red in self-defense against an angry mob, these shootings fueled Bostonian
resentment of Britains encroachments on colonial self-government. In the conict
between crown and colonies, the Boston Massacre was the rst time that the British
shed the blood of American colonists. As such, it was a major escalation of tensions
that ultimately led to the American Revolution.
In 1767, Parliament asserted the authority to tax America by passing the Towns-
hend Acts. These laws imposed duties on paper, painters colors, glass, and tea im-
ported by the colonies. They established an American Board of Commissioners of
the Customs, a bureaucracy to collect the taxes, as well as a new system of vice-admi-
ralty courts, courts operating without juries under British admiralty law, to adjudi-
cate violations of the acts.
Boston Massacre 83
The new American Board was headquartered in Boston. The elected representa-
tives of the town of Boston and the province of Massachusetts denied Parliaments
right to tax the colonies, and the people did not welcome the customs commissioners
to their city. Only two years before, mobs in Boston had prevented the collection of
taxes resulting from the Stamp Act by pressuring the designated tax collector to resign
his post, while the colonies forced repeal of the act by organizing a boycott of Brit-
ish goods. Whig politicians in Massachusetts recognized that the tactics that brought
them victory over the Stamp Act might also work against the Townshend Acts.
In 1768, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, led by Whig leader Samuel
Adams, called on the other colonial legislatures to petition King George III to repeal
the Townshend Acts. Merchants put economic pressure on Parliament by agreeing
not to import any British goods. Bostonian mobs tried to prevent collection of the
new duties by intimidating the customs commissioners, while gangs of boys ridiculed
and harassed merchants who breached the non-importation agreement. As colo-
nial opposition gained strength, the governor of Massachusetts, Francis Bernard,
claimed to be powerless to protect the commissioners and enforce the hated taxes.
That fall, the British government deployed in Boston two British army regiments,
thus supporting royal authority with the threat of military force. The people of Bos-
ton widely viewed the soldiers as instruments of a conspiracy to destroy their free-
dom to govern and tax themselves. As the citys military occupation wore on, the
people often clashed with the soldiers and customs ofcers. On February 22, 1770,
one customs ofcial killed a 12-year-old boy when the former red a shot into a
crowd of schoolboys throwing rocks at his house.
Public anger toward the occupation rose to fever pitch. Rumors of a British plot to
massacre the town spread. In the rst few days of March, brawls broke out between sol-
diers and civilians in Boston. Gangs of workers armed with sticks and game for a ght
could be seen marching in the streets. On the evening of March 5, a boy insulted a
soldier on sentry duty at the main guardhouse on King Street. When the soldier struck
the boy in the head with the butt of his musket, a furious mob tried to lynch him.
While the sentry hid in the customhouse, Captain Thomas Preston and a squad
of eight soldiers came out of the guardhouse to rescue him. They were themselves
surrounded by the angry townspeople. The mob insulted the soldiers, threatened
to kill them, dared them to re, and struck them with their sts, pieces of ice, and
sticks. After being hit in the head, one of the enlisted men called on his fellow sol-
diers to re, which they did, shooting eight men in the crowd. Four of the civilians
died on the scene, and a fth died from his wounds soon after.
Under extreme political pressure, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson withdrew
the regiments from the city. Samuel Adams called the incident a massacre, and it has
been known as the Boston Massacre ever since. Adams accused Preston of ordering
his men to re on protesters who were peacefully and legally assembled. Paul Revere
depicted this characterization of the incident in a famous broadside engraving that
further prejudiced the already enraged people of Boston against the British garrison.
The Crown government in Massachusetts indicted Thomas Preston and the eight
enlisted men for murder. Considering the public mood, it seemed unlikely that they
could get a fair trial. But Boston Tories managed to pack the jury for Prestons trial,
effectively guaranteeing his acquittal.
After much delay, the captains trial was held in October 1770. Robert Treat
Paine and Samuel Quincy prosecuted Preston, while John Adams, Josiah Quincy,
84 Boston Port Act
and Samuel Auchmuty provided his defense. The defense provedeven to the
satisfaction of many Whigsthat Preston had not given an order for his men to re,
and the Boston jury acquitted him of murder.
In the second trial, held in November, Adams and Quincy argued that the sol-
diers were not guilty of murder because they red only in self-defense. A Cambridge
jury found six of the soldiers not guilty of murder. Two were found guilty only of
manslaughter and were released after their thumbs were branded.
Despite the acquittals of Preston and his men, Samuel Adams continued to argue
in the public press that they were guilty of murder and that the six casualties of
March 5 were the victims of a premeditated massacre. This distorted view of the
incident continued to dominate the thinking of most Bostonians, fuelling further
protests against British authority that nally culminated in war.
FURTHER READING: Shy, John. Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of
the American Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965; Zobel, Hiller B. The
Boston Massacre. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.
J. PATRICK MULLINS
The Boston Port Act was one of ve legislative measures enacted by Parliament
during the spring of 1774 and known collectively as the Coercive Acts. The Boston
Port Act (approved March 31, 1774; effective June 1, 1774) closed the port of Boston
as a measure to coerce the town to compensate the British East India Company for
the destruction of its tea during the Boston Tea Party. Boston depended upon the
carrying trade and its many peripheral industries as the basis of its local economy.
With the port closed, many men lost their jobs, and residents were forced to depend
upon the generosity of other colonies to supply foodstuffs via Boston Neck (the nar-
row strip of land that then connected Bostons peninsula to the mainland).
Whigs from Massachusetts regarded the Port Act as intolerable not only because
its provisions created signicant economic hardship for thousands of residents,
but also because they believed the act violated certain of their rights as subjects of
George III. Because the 1689 Declaration of English Rights provided that no Eng-
lish (from 1707, British) citizen would be taxed without his interests being repre-
sented in Parliament, and because the 1691 Massachusetts charter stipulated that its
General Court was empowered by the Crown to levy whatever taxes were necessary
to satisfy any demand made by Parliament for funds, the citizens of Massachusetts
believed the Tea Act had violated their chartered rights and their rights as English-
men. Massachusettss Whigs believed the Tea Act (as well as the Sugar Act of 1764,
the 1765 Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts of 1768) emanated from the designs
of a corrupt British ministry that manipulated Parliament into enacting measures
that violated the British constitution. Provincial Americans therefore believed it to be
their duty as British subjects loyal to the Crown to resist those measures and to peti-
tion the king for redress of their grievances.
Parliament intended the Port Act to be temporaryit would be revoked when
the town of Boston paid the British East India Company for its loss. Several indi-
viduals, including Benjamin Franklin (who was then in London, engaged by several
colonies as an agent to represent their interests to the British government), offered
Boston Tea Party 85
to pay restitution, but Boston declined their aid, which created a standoff between
the town and Parliament.
When the Port Act became effective, General Thomas Gage replaced Thomas
Hutchinson as governor of Massachusetts. Gage arrived in Boston in May 1774, ac-
companied by four regiments of British regulars to enforce the Tea Act and Coer-
cive Acts (including the Port Act). Following the battles of Lexington and Concord,
the rebels siege of Boston ensued, and approximately 20,000 militiamen from New
England surrounded the British-held town. The Continental Congress appointed
Virginian George Washington commander of the Continental Army in June 1775;
he assumed command of the New England forces two weeks after the Battle of Bun-
ker Hill. In September of 1775, Gage was recalled and replaced by General William
Howe. The siege continued until March 1776, when Henry Knox engineered the
transport to the siege lines of many of the cannon that Nathaniel Greenes expedi-
tion had seized when it captured Fort Ticonderoga. Washington had the cannon
installed upon Dorchester Heights (overlooking Boston) on the night of March 4,
using prefabricated fortications. The Americans command of this strategic posi-
tion forced the British army to evacuate Boston. Departing by sea on March 27,
1776, the troops took many Massachusetts Loyalists with them to Nova Scotia. The
fall of Boston to rebel control brought an end to Port Act. See also Continental Con-
gress, Second.
FURTHER READING: Reid, John Phillip. Constitutional History of the American Revolution.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
The Boston Tea Party refers to the actions of group of Bostonians afliated with
the Sons of Liberty who on the evening of December 16, 1773, disguised themselves
as Mohawk Indians; boarded the Beaver, Eleanor, and Dartmouth, three merchant ships
docked in Boston Harbor; and dumped their cargo of 45 tons of tea overboard.
Their vandalism was a protest not against the imposition of a new duty, as in
the case of the Stamp Act of 1765, but rather more directly against the lifting of
an import duty from the British East India Company. In May 1773 Parliament
removed the duty on tea entering Britain and permitted the company to be its
own exporter of tea to the colonies. Since the passage of the Townshend Acts in
1767, the 13 colonies had paid a tax on sundry manufactures from Britain, includ-
ing tea, yet had also managed to smuggle tea in from other suppliers, mostly from
the Netherlands. Relief from the tea duty now put the company in a position to
undercut the price offered by the smugglers and bring tea to the colonies at a new
low price. Additionally, the company consigned their imported tea to merchants
friendly to the Crowns cause, such as Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of
Massachusetts.
At same time, the Crown stepped up measures against tea smuggling, which, in
combination with the new advantage given to the East India Company and the co-
lonial merchants it favored, imperiled the business of Boston merchants, who had
adapted successfully to the circumstances of 17671773. The Sons of Liberty de-
clared the companys actions to be those of an illegal monopoly, convened a meeting
86 Brissot de Warville, Jean-Pierre
at the Old South Meeting House, and sent a message to Hutchinson demanding
that company tea recently arrived from Britain be sent back. When the governor re-
fused, Samuel Adams declared famously, if somewhat pompously, that This meeting
can do more to save the country, whereupon roughly a thousand men marched to
Grifths Wharf.
The Tea Partys destruction of property had the effect of prodding the Crown
into imprudent reprisals, among them the passage of the so-called Coercive Acts,
which were broadly supported by public opinion in Britain at the time and today
commonly considered to mark the beginning of the American Revolution. It was in
commenting on the Tea Party that the essayist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson
offered his belief that Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Against this
vengeful sentiment Parliament and public Tories such as Edmund Burke counseled
restraint, lest the Americans be exhilarated to further rebellion by further repres-
sion. John Adams, one of the founders of American nationhood, hoped and pre-
dicted that precisely this would happen. Although Adams detested the very mob
action to which his second cousin Samuel Adams was drawn, he noted that neither
injury nor death resulted from the Tea Party, while its drama made it an epoch of
history.
FURTHER READING: Larabee, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1964; Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the
Development of Opposition to Britain, 1766 1776. New York: Vintage, 1972.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Jean-Pierre Brissot was a French author, journalist, and radical politician dur-
ing the French Revolution. Although born to a relatively humble family, Brissot
achieved considerable heights as a man of letters, as the founder of the Patriote
Franais newspaper, as deputy to the Legislative Assembly and the National Con-
vention, and as chief of the Girondin faction in the Convention. Brissots fall was
just as dramatic as his rise: as a result of a series of poor policy choices and inept
political decisions, Brissot became one of the rst victims of the Reign of Terror in
October 1793.
Brissot was born in Chartres on January 15, 1754, the third of seven children to
survive beyond infancy. His father, a moderately successful bourgeois restaurateur,
earned enough money to provide his son with an education, and Brissot originally
pursued a career in law. The philosophical works that Brissot read voraciously, how-
ever, pulled him in a more literary direction, and after failing to ingratiate himself
with the Parisian bar, Brissot decided to become a man of letters, eventually publish-
ing works on religion, law, politics, economics, and foreign affairs. Most were quite
radical in tone, by prerevolutionary standards, and they often bore the clear intel-
lectual ngerprints of Brissots idol, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Although Brissot hoped that literary works would make his fame and fortune, he
was repeatedly disappointed in that hope, perhaps in part because his writings were
generally rather derivative. To make ends meet in the meantime, Brissot turned to
journalism, rst as the editor of the French edition of the Courier de l Europe in 1779,
and later as publisher of two London-based journals. All these ventures proved
Brissot de Warville, Jean-Pierre 87
failures, drowning Brissot in debt. They did afford Brissot the opportunity to visit
Britain and several Swiss cantons, including Geneva, where in 1782 he befriended
Swiss banker Etienne Clavire.
In 1784, however, Brissots prerevolutionary career reached its lowest ebb. Fol-
lowing the collapse of his London publications, Brissot returned to France only to
be held in the Bastille for two months for irritating French governmental ofcials.
The assistance of several people, including Clavire, won Brissot his freedom, but
after his release Brissot was so impoverished that he may have accepted a position
as a police spy to help make ends meet. Brissots fortunes soon turned for the bet-
ter, however, as Clavires sponsorship won Brissot a job ghostwriting for the comte
de Mirabeau, a publicist who sold his pen to various causes. Soon after, Brissot was
recruited to the prestigious position as publicist for the reformist duc dOrlans,
though his controversial work for Orlans was cut short by the threat of another stay
in the Bastille and Brissots subsequent ight to Britain and Holland.
In the meantime, Brissot took advantage of his relative nancial wherewithal to
write more freely and published various works, most notably his Examen critique des
voyages dans l Amrique septentrionale, which praised the virtues of the newly inde-
pendent American republic. Brissots interest in things American lead him to an
enduring interest in abolitionism, and Brissot was a founding member of La Socit
des Amis des Noirs, modeled on British antislave-trade societies. His passion for
the Americas culminated in a 17881789 voyage to the United States, funded by
Clavire, who hoped to attract Brissot to his scheme to speculate on the American
debt. Brissot had his own motives: he wanted to make contacts with American anti-
slavery activists and even considered immigration to the United States.
Brissots plans were interrupted by the outbreak of revolution in France in 1789,
however, and Brissot hurried home to take part. Once back in Paris, Brissot unsuc-
cessfully sought election to the Estates-General and then talked his way into the
Paris municipal government, which found him useful as a publicist. Brissot also
tapped into his experience as a journalist and established the Patriote Franais, which
was to become one of Frances most inuential newspapers, in July 1789. He then
negotiated his way as a journalist into a seat in the Legislative Assembly of 1791
1792, where on the basis of his wide travels and many international contacts he was
appointed to the diplomatic committee.
Brissots position in the diplomatic committee represented the height of his ca-
reer, but also the beginning of his downfall. Convinced that war would unite the
Revolution against despotism and force the vacillating king to proclaim his loyal-
ties, Brissot pushed the country into conict with Austria and Prussia despite the
unreadiness of the French army and the warnings issued by fellow radical Maxim-
ilien Robespierre that no one loves armed missionaries. The disastrous war that
followed, and the climate of fear that it bred in France, lead to a Parisian popular
revolt on August 10, 1792; the abolition of the monarchy; and the establishment of
a new electoral body, the National Convention. It also led to a rift between Brissot
and Robespierre, the two most inuential radical leaders of the day: Robespierre be-
came convinced that Brissot was a crypto-royalist, while Brissot accused Robespierre
of plotting with Parisian militants to achieve a dictatorship.
Although his war plans failed, Brissot was still popular enough to earn a seat in
the National Convention, but the political atmosphere of the Convention soon
became poisoned by the Brissot-Robespierre split. Between September 1792 and
88 Brissotins
June 1793, Convention deputies gravitated into two loose camps, the radical Mon-
tagnard faction of Robespierre and the Girondin camp of Brissot, which was
characterized by a legalist approach to politics and hostility to Parisian insurrec-
tion. Brissot and his allies were particularly upset by the September Massacres of
1792, which they interpreted, with some justication, as a personal threat. Unfor-
tunately, Brissot proved inept as a faction leader, for he alienated possible allies
(such as Georges-Jacques Danton) and repeatedly provoked Parisian radicals.
Brissots failure to conciliate Paris eventually proved fatal. On June 22, 1793, a Pa-
risian insurrection forced the Convention to purge Brissot and 22 other Girondin
deputies. Following a staged trial in October, Brissot was led to the guillotine, sing-
ing La Marseillaise as he went, one of the rst victims of the national bloodletting
of the Terror. See also Abolitionists; Abolition of the Monarchy; Brissotins; Giron-
dins; The Mountain; Newspapers (French); Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: DHuart, Suzanne. Brissot: La Girond au pouvoir. Paris: Editions Robert
Laffort, 1986; Loft, Leonore. Passion, Politics, and Philosophie: Rediscovering J.-P. Brissot. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.
BENJAMIN REILLY
Brissotins
The Brissotins (also known as Girondins or Rolandins) were a loosely knit group
during the French Revolution that included Jean-Pierre Brissot de Warville, the
Marquis de Condorcet, Marie-Jeanne Philipon Roland, Jean Marie Roland de la
Platire, three lawyers from BordeauxArmand Gensonn, Marguerite-Elie Gua-
det, and Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaudtheir friends, and other deputies. Estimated
to include approximately 130 deputies, they advocated war and opposed centraliza-
tion of government in Paris and economic regulation but were divided over the fate
of King Louis XVI. When a mob of 80,000 surrounded the National Convention on
June 2, 1793, and demanded a purge of the Girondins, 29 were expelled and a num-
ber were subsequently executed. See also Jacobins; Political Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Sydenham, M. J. The Girondins. London: Athlone Press, 1961.
LINDA S. FREY AND MARSHA L. FREY
Britain
In the mid-eighteenth century, most politicians and political commentators
maintained that Britain possessed an ancient constitution and that the Glorious
Revolution of 16881689 had placed that constitution on a rmer foundation. The
constitution was widely praised as a mixed form of government, with the king rep-
resenting the monarchical form, the House of Lords the aristocratic form, and the
House of Commons the democratic form of government. By mixing these three
forms and balancing them by ensuring that each had its special function (the king
was the head of the executive, the Lords were the head of the judiciary, and the
Commons voted on taxes) and that all three combined to make up the sovereign
authority in the state as king-in-parliament, Britain was able to enjoy the twin ben-
ets of liberty and stability. The kings authority was limited by the need to seek
Britain 89
the advice and nancial support of Parliament. Both houses of Parliament met in
session every year, and laws required the consent of the Commons, the Lords, and
the king (though the monarch had never vetoed any measure passed by Parliament
since 1706).
Although the House of Commons was regarded as representing the people as a
whole, it was, in fact, an essentially aristocratic chamber. Its membership was largely
composed of substantial country gentlemen and relatives or clients of the aristoc-
racy; even the minority of MPs (members of Parliament), who were nanciers, mer-
chants, lawyers and senior ofcers in the armed forces, were usually wealthy owners
of real estate. MPs were by law required to possess substantial real estate. Parlia-
ment responded more to pressure applied by powerful economic interests than
to the grievances of the ordinary people. The parliamentary franchise was based
in almost all cases on property qualications; these were uniform in the counties
(the 40-shilling freeholder) but varied considerably in the boroughs. No more than
20 percent of adult males in all were qualied to vote in England and Wales; the
proportion was far less in Scotland. Some constituencies (the pocket or rotten bor-
oughs) had very few voters, and these were easily managed by the propertied elite,
especially as votes were given by oral declaration in public. Some large urban centers
such as Manchester and Birmingham had no direct representation in Parliament,
but there were populous counties and large boroughs with a sufcient number of
voters to make them open constituencies in which the electors had some say in who
represented them in Parliament. Once elected, MPs represented the nation as a
whole, not just their constituents.
Although a limited monarch, the king not only had great prestige and was shown
great deference but was constitutionally the head of the executive, and he appointed
all ministers, judges, magistrates, bishops, and senior ofcers in the army and Royal
Navy. His powers, however, were in practice delegated to a prime minister and a
cabinet of leading politicians who required the kings favor before they could hold
such positions. The main political task of the prime minister and his colleagues
was to manage Parliament so that the necessary revenues were raised to fund the
policies of the state and certain laws that were deemed advisable or benecial were
passed. To assist them in managing Parliament, the kings ministers dispensed royal
patronage to their supporters in the legislature and even to some voters in the con-
stituencies. They could also exploit the patronage and inuence of their leading
supporters. It was relatively easy for any administration to secure the majority in
the House of Lords, since it had a relatively small membership and the Crown ap-
pointed bishops and judges and could create or promote peers of the realm. On
very few occasions indeed was an administration outvoted in the House of Lords.
The House of Commons, however, was much more difcult to manage because
it had 558 members until the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800, and a further
100 members thereafter. Those members in receipt of Crown patronage (known at
the time and ever since as the Court and Treasury Party) could usually be counted
upon to support the kings ministers except when the government proved quite in-
capable. There were about 200 such members in 1760, but less than half that num-
ber by 1815. This was never enough to guarantee that a ministry could secure the
majority in the House of Commons, especially when it was in serious trouble over
unpopular taxes or reverses in foreign wars. Many MPs were independent country
gentlemen of substantial wealth who owed their seats in the House of Commons
90 Britain
to the patronage and inuence they possessed in their own constituencies. While
many of these independent members were predisposed to support the kings min-
isters, their votes could not always be relied upon, and their support might be lost
when they were most needed, in a political crisis.
Having been placed in high ofce by the king, not by the people or even by the
peoples representatives, ministers of the Crown had to have the abilities and the pol-
icies to win the consistent support of the majority of MPs present in the House of
Commons. Since by the mid-1760s there were no longer any organized parties that
could be counted upon to secure the majority for the ministers, the cabinet had to
possess enough political talent to win over independent-minded backbenchers. The
essential skills required were the ability to raise loans and taxes (especially in war
time), the debating skills needed to present a good case in the chamber (especially
when challenged by able opponents), and the wise and effective conduct of war and
diplomacy. Effective prime ministers such as Frederick North, Lord North, and Wil-
liam Pitt the Younger were good at raising loans and taxes, even during very expen-
sive wars. While the national debt expanded enormously in wartime, both ensured
that Britains nances were in much better shape than those of her enemies. Both
these long-serving prime ministers were also ne speakers and debaters who could
usually win the backing of independent members. They were both assisted by able
ministerial colleagues. All governments were expected to safeguard the landed inter-
est, boost commercial expansion, increase Britains colonial possessions, and main-
tain the balance of power in Europe. The economy was usually promoted through
noninterference or by allowing particular vested interests to promote legislation
that would increase personal wealth and advance the countrys economic interests.
Ministers never tried to manage the economy and rarely advocated national policies
on social issues; bills on such subjects were usually presented as private or local bills
by independent backbenchers.
The Tory party had completely collapsed at the national level before 1760. The
Whig party also disintegrated in the early 1760s as George III set out to undermine
the Old Corps of Whigs that had dominated the administrations of George I and
George II. He deliberately appointed ministers and exploited Crown patronage in
order to weaken party discipline and unity. Very soon, while almost all MPs would
still have regarded themselves as Whigs, either they belonged to a number of quite
small factions based on personal, family, or geographic connections rather than to
a large party held together by particular principles or a set of policies or they were
independent members with no loyalty to any faction or party. This situation very
slowly changed over several decades in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Members of both houses of Parliament recognized that the American
and the French revolutions posed profound ideological challenges and severe mili-
tary challenges to the British constitution and political system. At the same time, the
gradual but eventually massive transformation of Britain that is usually referred to
as the Industrial Revolution (substantial demographic growth, rapid urbanization,
major commercial and industrial expansion, and the concomitant growth of the
urban middle class and the industrial working classes) presented Parliament with
major social and economic problems and created extra-parliamentary forces no lon-
ger ready to subordinate themselves to the landed elite.
All three revolutions tended to divide the political elite between liberals and con-
servatives (although these specic terms were not applied to political attitudes until
Britain 91
the early nineteenth century). A new Whig party based on the Rockinghamite and
then the Foxite factions began to emerge during the American crisis. Its members
were alarmed at the damaging and then disastrous conict with Britains American
colonies. They advocated economical reform to reduce Crown patronage and became
convinced that Crown inuence needed to be reduced and civil liberties safeguarded
if the traditional balance of the constitution was to be preserved. They sometimes co-
operated with reformers outside Parliament, but they were essentially an aristocratic
party that expected to lead the people, not to serve them. They claimed to be the
true inheritors of Whig principles, and they commandeered that party label as they
improved their party nances, organization, and propaganda in the 1780s. Very badly
split by the French Revolution in the 1790s, the Whigs were a tiny party in the later
1790s. There followed a slow recovery in the early nineteenth century. Aided by many
military disasters during the long war against Napoleon and by some major scandals
that undermined the political reputation of the government, the Whig party had re-
covered sufciently by 1815 to number about 200 MPs in the House of Commons.
The conservative administrations that dominated during the late eighteenth
centuryled by Lord North (17701782) and the younger William Pitt (17831801)
were condemned for being Tory by their political opponents. Both prime ministers,
however, claimed that they were Whigs since they clearly did not uphold such old
Tory doctrines as divine right, indefeasible hereditary succession, or nonresistance,
and they obviously were entirely loyal to the Revolution Settlement of 16881689 and
to their Hanoverian monarch. Nonetheless, under challenge from domestic radicals
and external revolutionaries, they stood by the prescriptive rights of the king and the
established church, placed more emphasis on political stability than on civil liberties,
rmly defended aristocratic inuence, opposed political reform during external rev-
olutions, and were ready to deploy force against foreign revolutionaries and repres-
sive measures against domestic radicals. This being so, they deserved to be labeled
conservative, but their opponents preferred to attach the despised label of Tory to
them and their supporters. Both North and Pitt rejected the label, with some justice.
Neither made much effort to create an organized and unied political party. They
were content to rely on the support of the king and the Court and Treasury party, on
a handful of loyal supporters who were personal admirers, and on their ability to win
over independent members through personal integrity, debating skills, and nancial
expertise. Many independent MPs supported Lord North during the American crisis
until the War of American Independence was clearly lost; then they deserted him.
During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the clear majority of the
propertied elite continued to support conservative governments led by Pitt or his
disciples. By the early 1810s, Pitts disciples in government at last accepted the Tory
label given to them by their Whig opponents. By 1815, the Court and Treasury party
was much reduced, far fewer MPs were true independents, and most MPs could be
identied as being either a Whig or a Tory.
By the mid-eighteenth century the middle-class voters in the larger urban and rural
constituencies had become used to exercising the franchise relatively freely. Some
of them had also learned how to mount extra-parliamentary lobbying or pressure
group campaigns to ensure that Parliament paid some attention to their economic
interests and their religious prejudices. In many of the larger towns, local affairs
were dominated by the middle-class citizens living in them, not by the neighboring
landed elite. In many urban areas the poorer inhabitants had also learned to defend
92 Britain
their interests by taking to the streets in popular demonstrations and violent riots.
With no effective police force and with much of the army overseas, the governing
elite sometimes had to take note of such popular protests. The age of revolution
in the later eighteenth century created problems that not only challenged the gov-
erning elite but presented opportunities that encouraged the middling orders and
even the laboring poor to take a greater interest in national politics. Inuenced by
the ideas propagated by American patriots and French revolutionaries, and subject
to the socioeconomic stresses produced by the Industrial Revolution, the middling
and lower orders began to press for political reforms that would enable their inter-
ests to be taken into greater consideration by the Westminster parliament.
The urban middle classes began to form clubs and societies, to inform them-
selves about public affairs, and to become more conscious of their civil liberties
and resentful at their limited political rights. They became increasingly critical of
the landed elite and were ready to challenge the undue inuence that this wealthy
minority exercised over Parliament. They learned to use the ourishing and ex-
panding press to educate a wider public on political issues and their political rights.
An increasing number of the middling orders became critical of the use of Crown
inuence and patronage, rallied in support of John Wilkes when the rights of the
Middlesex electors seemed threatened, were deeply concerned at the crisis cre-
ated by successive governments American policies, and were inspired by the ideas
and arguments advanced by American patriots and French revolutionaries. The
Americans challenged British ideas about representation and sovereignty; created
a republic without a monarch, aristocracy, or established church; and produced a
written constitution with an extensive bill of rights. The French Revolution inspired
a more profound ideological debate, raised ideas about universal natural rights, and
attempted a greater social revolution at home. The political impact on Britain was
dramatic, and it galvanized thousands of Britons to promote the rights of man and
urge a very radical reform of Parliament.
Many British reformers initially appealed to the ancient constitution and historic
rights of Englishmen (or Britons) to justify their demands for parliamentary reform,
but increasingly the more advanced reformers appealed to universal natural rights.
They argued that Parliament could only serve the interests of the whole nation and
preserve the civil liberties of the people if it were made more representative and
were elected by free, fair, and frequent elections. Many reformers wished to transfer
seats from the small rotten boroughs to London, the more populous counties and
such unrepresented towns as Manchester, Birmingham, and Shefeld. The more
radical reformers advocated a major extension of the franchise, to at least all male
householders, though some such as John Cartwright and Thomas Paine supported
universal manhood suffrage. Advanced radicals also favored annual or at least trien-
nial general elections, the secret ballot, the abolition of property qualications for
MPs, and the payment of MPs. All these reforms had been advocated as early as 1780.
However, most radicalseven the most famous feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft
stopped short of supporting votes for women. Adult females were still mainly re-
garded as mere appendages of men and as dependants of their male relatives.
Very few radicals followed Thomas Paine in supporting the creation of a republic
and advocating the abolition of monarchy and aristocracy. Most radicals believed
that democratizing the House of Commons would be enough to ensure the re-
duction of the tax burden on the people and the elimination of many social and
Brumaire, Coup dEtat de 93
economic grievances. Paine, for example, wanted to slash the costs of government,
to tax the landed elite more heavily, and to use the funds so raised to support a
variety of social welfare payments to the poor. Thomas Spence went even further
and advocated the abolition of private property and, with it, the end of dire poverty.
Although a small revolutionary movement emerged in Britain in the late 1790s (and
was soon destroyed), there was little desire for radical change through violent revo-
lution on the French model.
Radical demands for parliamentary reform were rmly opposed by the vast major-
ity of the powerful ruling elite. The government never lost its nerve, the economy re-
mained strong, and the political system proved robust under pressure from domestic
critics and foreign enemies. The government distributed counterpropaganda, passed
repressive legislation, exploited the judicial processes, and occasionally used force to
defeat the more dangerous radicals. Almost all the leading radicals were arrested, ha-
rassed, or intimidated. The elite also promoted patriotism, encouraged popular loyal-
ism, and blackened the reputation of radicals. Large numbers of Britons, particularly
in the rural areas, remained deferential, and even in urban areas many followed the
political lead of their social superiors. They were prepared to enlist in a loyalist cam-
paign to preserve the existing political system and safeguard the prevailing social order
against domestic radicals, colonial rebels, and French revolutionaries. Popular loyalists
imitated the radicals in using the press, joining clubs and societies, attending crowd
demonstrations, and addressing the Crown and petitioning Parliament. The more mil-
itant loyalists were ready to use force to intimidate domestic radicals and rushed to join
the armed Volunteers from the mid-1790s. It is very likely that more ordinary Britons
were loyalists rather than radicals by the end of the eighteenth century.
Government repression and militant loyalism destroyed the reform movement in
Britain by the later 1790s. The campaign for reform was inhibited as long as French
revolutionary principles posed a potent threat. By 1810, however, a French threat
based on revolutionary principles had largely subsided and a moderate reform mea-
sure was supported by over one hundred MPs in the House of Commons that year.
Veteran reformers were joined by newer converts in campaigning for moderate par-
liamentary reform. Appeals were largely made to the ancient constitution and the
historic rights of the people rather than to universal natural rights. New reform clubs
were formed, such as the Hampden Club in 1811 and the Union Society in 1812. Re-
form was promoted in many newspapers and journals. John Cartwright took reform
to the industrial areas of the country by embarking on a series of missionary tours
to encourage provincial reformers to petition for parliamentary reform. In 1813, he
claimed to have secured 130,000 signatures on petitions requesting reform. It was
not until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the severe postwar distress
that came with peace, however, that radicalism was again as powerful as it had been
in the early 1790s. See also American Revolution; Fox, Charles James; French Revolu-
tionary Wars; Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth, Charles, Marquess of; Tories.
H. T. DICKINSON
The coup dtat de Brumaire of 1799 was the act by which Napoleon became
First Consul, thus overthrowing the Directory and inaugurating the Napoleonic
94 Bull, William
era in France. Upon Napoleons return from Egypt, the popular mood in France
favored any government likely to return security to the state and a measure of order
to society. The executive and legislative powers were in conict, and the Directory
was hated for its tyranny. Ination was beyond control as the value of paper cur-
rency plummeted. There were serious food shortages and charges of open corrup-
tion. The coup was not orchestrated so much as executed by Napoleon, since it was
the abb Joseph Sieys, a venerable gure of the revolutionary generation, who
had had a hand in the downfall of Georges-Jacques Danton, and Maximilien Robes-
pierre who decided to act. Sieys recruited Talleyrand and minister of police Joseph
Fouch to the plot. The three together then chose Napoleon as the sword of their
collective will. For his part, Napoleon hated the Jacobins as much as he despised
the royalists and declared that he would save France from the red and white terrors
alike. He was happy to be orchestrated up to a point. He commanded the armed
forces and the loyalty of most of its generals, so once his co-conspirators set the stage
for a coup they would be in no position to determine its ultimate outcome.
On November 9, 1799 (the eighteenth day of the foggy month, according to the
revolutionary calendar), the two parliamentary chambers of the Directory were sum-
moned to Saint- Cloud, a village north of Paris where Napoleon was, according to the
plan, to enter the chamber in full uniform, awe the deputies with his presence, and
present them with the fait accompli of their fall to a provisional Consulate consisting
of Napoleon, Sieys, and Pierre-Roger Ducos. In the event, not all the directors were
prepared to swoon at the sight of him, and the coup seemed momentarily lost when
Napoleons small bodyguard was overrun and the general himself bloodied. At that
point, the larger body of Napoleons troops poured in and settled the issue with lev-
eled bayonets. The legislators were put under arrest and the three consuls charged
with drafting a new constitution. But the First Consul was almost immediately and
by force of circumstance alone a de facto military dictator, with men and materiel at
his disposal far exceeding anything ever available to Louis XIV.
In Napoleons view, France had had since 1789 only one real government, the
Committee of Public Safety. Contemptuous of the ideologues whose theories had
brought the country to desperate straits, he was resolved to return it to order through
his personal authority alone. But the opportunity now afforded to his ambition went
well beyond the borders of France. If we take as a basis for all operations true
policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances, he
had written to Talleyrand in 1797, we shall long remain la grande nation, the arbiter
of Europe. The coup thus ended the revolution in France while spreading much of
its legacy to every corner of Europe.
FURTHER READING: Buttereld, Herbert. Napoleon. London: Duckworth, 1939; Mayer, Arno.
The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2000; Rose, J. Holland. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, 17891815.
Cambridge: University Press, 1935.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Bull, William (17101791)
William Bull, the lieutenant governor and commander-in-chief of South Caro-
lina, belonged to the distinguished Bull family of Warwickshire that had played an
Burke, Edmund 95
important part in South Carolina as early settlers. Williams grandfather Stephen
Bull (16351706) held important positions in the colony. He shared with his father,
William Bull (16831755), the same name, and both served as lieutenant governors
of the colony. The younger William received his education in South Carolina and
Europe.
Bull became a member of South Carolinas colonial council in 1751, speaker of
the House of Delegates 12 years later, and lieutenant governor from 1763 to 1775.
In January 1773 the rst museum was opened in Charleston, and William acquired
materials for it. For the slaves, the rst black Baptist church was opened, while the
Charlestown chamber of commerce was also established. At the time of the Ameri-
can Revolutionary War, John Rutledge (17391800) was elected governor of South
Carolina on March 26, 1776. After the defeat of a British squadron under Admiral
Sir Peter Parker (17211811) in Charlestown Harbor, Bull returned to Britain in
1782 along with Loyalist troops and civilians. He died in London on July 4, 1791.
FURTHER READING: Bull, Kinloch. The Oligarchs in Colonial and Revolutionary Charleston:
Lieutenant Governor William Bull II and His Family. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1991; Meroney, Geraldine M. Inseparable Loyalty: A Biography of William Bull. Norcross,
GA: Harrison, 1991.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Burke, Edmund (17291797)
Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland, on January 12, 1729. His father,
Richard Burke, was an Anglican, an attorney, and a man with an authoritarian man-
ner. His mother was Roman Catholic. From visits to his maternal grandfather in
County Cork, near the ruins of Kilcolman, he developed a love of Ireland and a gift
for eloquent speech.
Burke was educated at the village school of Glanworth and then at the Ballitore
Academy, where, under Quaker inuences, he learned tolerance for others in mat-
ters both religious and secular. In 1744 he entered Trinity College in Dublin, where
his understanding of philosophy and his knowledge of history were enriched by his
studies. He wrote poetry and developed a dislike of logic.
In 1747, Burke founded the Historical Society of Trinity College. He graduated
from Trinity in 1748 at the age of 19 with a bachelors degree in arts and quickly
engaged in writing and editing a periodical, the Reformer. He also wrote pamphlets
attacking mercantilism and discussing the Idea of a Patriot King by Viscount Boling-
broke. Burke wanted to pursue a literary career. His father, however, wanted him to
become a lawyer. Consequently, in 1750 he traveled to London to study law at the
Middle Temple. Finding law unappealing, he spent his time reading literature. In
1755 Burkes father, angry with his failure to advance in his legal studies, cut off his
allowance. With his legal studies ended, so was the opportunity for admission to the
bar. Uncertain about what to do with his life, Burke considered taking a post in the
colonies, but he abandoned the idea when his father objected.
In 1756, Burke published two books on philosophical themes. The rst was A Vin-
dication of Natural Society, in which he refuted the demand that there be a reason
to support the existence of moral and social institutions. He rejected the criticism
that rationalists would employ against the established order. The second book,
96 Burke, Edmund
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), was
a well-received work in axiology. In 1757 a book entitled An Account of the European Set-
tlement in America was anonymously published. When suspicion about its authorship
pointed toward Burke, he denied its authorship. However, he is believed to have had
a major hand in the drafting of the book. In addition, the rst parts of Burkes The
Abridgement of the History of England were printed at that time. However, the complete
book was not to be issued until after Burke died. The books Burke published gained
him a literary reputation and introductions to Londons literary circles.
In 1757, Burke married Jean Nugent, a Presbyterian and the daughter of a
physician who had treated him for a recent illness. Burke found a quiet rest in his
father-in-laws home that he had never known in his own. From 1759 until 1791,
Burke was an anonymous editor of The Annual Register, earning 100 per year. That
year Burke met William Gerald Single Speech Hamilton, who employed Burke
as his secretary. In 1761 when Hamilton went to Ireland as chief secretary to the
lord lieutenant, Burke accompanied him as a minor secretary. While in Ireland,
he wrote Tracts on the Popery Laws, an attack on the laws restricting Roman Cath-
olics. However, Burke was unhappy highlighting the problems of Irish Roman
Catholics, even though he was himself sympathetic, because it was his mothers
religion.
In 1763, Burke decided not to become an Irish politician. He resigned and re-
turned to England to serve in English politics, notwithstanding the fact that his
Roman Catholic sympathies were a liability and would hurt him in the future. Soon
after returning to England, Burke joined the Literary Club, which had been founded
by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It met once a week for supper at the Turks Head in Soho.
While its members stimulated Burkes intellectual growth, he and Hamilton ended
their relationship at this time over a major disagreement.
In need of an income, Burke accepted the position of private secretary to Charles
Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, the incoming ( July 1765)
prime minister and leader of the Whigs. In December 1765, Burke became a mem-
ber of Parliament for Wendover, a pocket borough belonging to Lord Verney. The
election marked the beginning of Burkes political career, which would be tied to
the Whigs and especially to the Rockingham group.
Burkes rst speeches in Parliament called for the repeal of the Stamp Act, which
had enraged the American colonists. The Rockingham government repealed the
act, but Burkes speeches then and afterward, while deemed wise and practical, usu-
ally put his fortunes on the losing side of issues so that he never became a minister,
nor did he achieve the prosperity he desired. In 1766, Rockingham was forced from
power by George III. Although offered a position in the new government, Burke
followed Rockingham into the opposition faction.
In 1770, Burke published his rst major political work, Thoughts on the Cause of
the Present Discontents, a critique of the kings attempts to turn the Tories into a court
party with which he could dominate Parliament. In 1774 Lord Verey sold his four
parliamentary seats to raise needed funds. In response, Burke ran for Parliament in
the seaport of Bristol, where his views on trade, similar to those of his friend Adam
Smith, were popular. His Bristol Speeches were among his best. In them he dened
the trustee theory of representation, which views a representative as someone who
represents the whole society and votes to promote the good of all, not just that of
the district being represented.
Burke, Edmund 97
In 1774, Burke delivered his Speech on American Taxation, in which, for all
practical purposes, Burke took the side of the American colonies against the British
government. Burke likened the British Empire to a familya group of adults united
as equals in a single harmonious whole. Others would see this image as one in which
Britain was the mother and the colonies were disobedient children. For Burke, the
empire was an aggregation of many states under a single head. Yet at the same time
Burke also believed in parliamentary supremacy. Reconciling these two concepts of
supremacy and autonomy was difcult for Burke and others to do.
On March 22, 1775, Burke made a Speech on Reconciliation with America, in which
he proposed that the Crown and Parliament seek reconciliation with the American
colonies before it was too late. His advice was ignored. In August 1776 Burke found
the idea of American independence and the prospect of a British defeat too terrible
to reconcile. To him victory for either side was disastrous. Victory for the Americans
would separate a great part of the empire from the mother country. Victory for the
Crown would be to see injustice and oppression gain the day.
Burkes support for removing Catholic disabilities achieved mixed success with
the passage of the Savil Act (1778). Disabilities were removed, but his support made
him a target in the resulting anti-Catholic Gordon riots in London (1780), in which
over three hundred people were killed. His sympathies were unpopular in Bristol,
as well, so in 1780 he ran for a seat in the Rockingham family borough at Malton,
Yorkshire, which Burke would represent until his retirement.
In March of 1782 Burke was appointed paymaster general in the short-lived Rock-
ingham government. It seemed that he was about to rise to the political heights he
sought, but the death of Rockingham in July 1782 left Burke without his principal
patron and led him to make intemperate speeches in Parliament. In 1783 Burke,
concerned about abuses in India under the East India Companys rule, initiated a
long series of speeches and proposals for reform, including calls for the impeach-
ment of the governor general of Bengal, Warren Hastings. Matters came to a head
in 1790 when Hastings was impeached and subjected to Burkes condemnation in a
speech lasting four days. At the end of a seven-year trial Hastings was acquitted, but
Burke had laid the foundation for reforms in India.
In November 1790 Burke published his most famous work, his lengthy tract entitled
Reections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings of Certain Societies in London.
It was read throughout Europe and encouraged opposition to the Revolution.
Reections on the Revolution was written to oppose Thomas Paines pamphlet,
The Rights of Man, which had been written in support of the French Revolution.
A revolutionary personality, Paine had ed England shortly before the American
Revolution because of agitation against the Crown. In early 1776 he had published
the pamphlet Common Sense, which made a devastating attack on the institution of
monarchy using extensive anti-monarchial passages from the Bible. Paines work
had a deep impact on the colonists and played a major role in gaining adherents to
the cause of independence. While the attempts of Loyalists (Tories) such as James
Chalmers (Plain Truth, 1776) failed to make an impression against Paines rhetoric,
The Rights of Man would meet a formidable opponent in Burke.
Burkes central reason for rejecting the principles of the French Revolution rested
on his belief that the claim that reason alone was sufcient for proper governance
was arrogant. To Burke the experience of the generations reected in received tra-
dition embodied a higher wisdom than that of a few people in any one generation.
98 Butler, John
In 1791 Burke wrote An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, constituting his ideas
of the people and of natural aristocracy, and written in response to the decision
of the Whigs to follow Charles James Fox in support of the French Revolution in-
stead of Burke in opposition. As the Revolution progressed Burke issued other criti-
cal works, including Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796), in which he dened Jacobinism
as an attack against the rights of property. He developed a conception of the whole of
Europe as a Christian commonwealth and also wrote A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796), a
defense of the pension he was receiving against the attack of the Duke of Bedford.
In his last years Burke was a power in Europe without position, property, or
prosperity, regarded by the Irish Roman Catholics as their champion. He advised
Louis XVI and French royalists, as well as the Polish king, Stanislaus.
As Burke neared death, his rejection of the French Revolution grew, and he ad-
vised war against it. When war was declared in February 1793, his prestige grew even
greater. He died on July 9, 1797, and was buried in the parish church of Beacons-
eld in Buckinghamshire.
Burkes inuence has been lasting. His idea of a political party as a group of peo-
ple sharing a common political philosophy that they are seeking to put into law by
taking control of the government is now a classical denition. His views on natural
aristocracy and other ideas were to greatly inuence European conservatism in the
nineteenth century. See also Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Ayling, Stanley Edward. Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions. New York:
St. Martins Press, 1988; Cobban, Alfred. Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth
Century: A Study of the Political and Social Thinking of Burke, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey.
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962; Fasel, George W. Edmund Burke. Boston: Twayne,
1983; Kirk, Russell. Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered. Peru, IL: Sherwood Sugden, 1988;
Macpherson, Crawford Brough. Burke. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980; Mahoney,
Thomas Henry Donald. Edmund Burke and Ireland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1960; Morley, John. Edmund Burke. Belfast: Athol Books, 1993; Stanlis, Peter J. Edmund Burke
and the Natural Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965.
ANDREW J. WASKEY
Butler, John (17281796)
John Butler, an ofcer in the British Army and one of the founding fathers of
Upper Canada (Ontario), was born at New London, Connecticut, in 1728 to Lieu-
tenant Walter Butler and Deborah Dennis. At the time of French and Indian War
(1756 1763), he took an active part in the capture of Fort Frontenac, Niagara, and
Montreal. He was friendly with the indigenous Indians and rallied many of them to
the British side.
Stationed at Niagara at the time of American Revolutionary War, the Loyalist
colonel and his Indian contingent made an abortive trust toward the Mohawk Valley
during the Saratoga campaign of 1777. His loyalist troops, known as Butlers Rangers
and consisting of 10 companies, made forays into the Wyoming Valley in the follow-
ing year and defeated Colonel Zebulon Butler (17311795). A massacre followed,
to be repeated later in the Cherry Valley, where Butlers son, Major Walter Butler
(17521781), was mainly responsible for the atrocities committed there. From his
headquarters (17791781) at Niagara, Butler, under the command of General Guy
Johnson (17401788), launched attacks against frontier areas.
Buzot, Franois Nicolas Lonard 99
After the war, Butler served as deputy superintendent for the Indian Depart-
ment, becoming one of the prominent leaders on the Niagara peninsula. He died
on May 12, 1796, after a protracted illness.
FURTHER READING: Cruikshank, Ernest. The Story of Butlers Rangers and the Settlement of
Niagara. Owen Sound, ON: Richardson, Bond & Wright, 1975; Smy, William A. John Butler and
His Rangers: Some Odds and Ends. St. Catharines, ON: St. Catherines Public Library Special
Collections Department, 1996.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Buzot, Franois Nicolas Lonard (17601794)
Franois Nicolas Lonard Buzot was a French revolutionary politician who sat as
a deputy to the Estates-General and the National Convention. Buzot was the son of
an attorney at the local bailiwick of Evreux and a noblewoman. He received a solid
classical education at the college of Evreux. By 1786, Buzot had qualied for the bar
and was practicing at the local bailiwick. The next year, he was elected a notable to
the electoral body of Evreux. On April 28, 1784, Buzot married his cousin, who was
13 years his senior. This enhanced his nancial position. She brought to the mar-
riage a substantial dowry of 14,000 livres in cash and 2,800 livres in furniture and
other goods.
In 1789, Buzot not only helped to draft the cahiers de dolances of the Third
Estate of Evreux but was successfully elected as a deputy from the Third Estate
to the Estates-General. He formed part of the democratic Left in the Constituent
(or National) Assembly. The extreme Left, always a tiny minority, composed of
men such as Jrme Ption and Maximilien Robespierre, insisted on the right of
the sovereign people to assert its authority, even against the will of the Assembly.
Buzot spoke in favor of the nationalization of church lands and of the right of all
citizens to bear arms. Buzot and Robespierre concurred that there should be juries
for both criminal and civil trials. Buzot argued that without the establishment of
juries, there could be neither justice nor liberty. He opposed the royal veto and the
marc d argent, or limitations on the franchise.
From September 1789, Buzot was a member of the Breton Club, which became
the Jacobin Club, although he was not a frequent speaker. He kept a regular cor-
respondence with the Jacobins and the municipality of Evreux.
In February 1791, he met Jean Marie Roland and Lanthenas through Ption and
became one of the most assiduous members of the group that assembled four times
a week at Madame Marie-Jeanne Rolands Paris salon.
In June 1791, Buzot was elected vice president of the criminal tribunal of Paris,
while Ption was elected president and Robespierre public prosecutor. All three
refused their posts, but their elections revealed their popularity at this time. In
the same month, after the kings ight to Varennes, Buzot revealed himself to be
one of the most radical revolutionaries, arguing for the trial of King Louis XVI by
an elected National Convention.
After being elected to the Constituent Assembly, Buzot was elected to the crimi-
nal tribunal of the department of Eure. He accepted this position and remained in
Evreux until his election to the National Convention on September 3, 1792. At the
Convention, he allied himself with the faction opposing the Paris Commune and
100 Buzot, Franois Nicolas Lonard
supporting the creation of a National Guard to protect the Convention from the
Commune. He voted for the appeal to the people and the kings death, but with re-
prieve. During the subsistence crisis in the spring of 1793, he opposed in principle
the Maximum, or price controls on necessities.
As a member of the faction known as the Girondins, Buzot was proscribed and
arrested during the uprising of May 31 to June 2, 1793. He escaped from Paris to
Normandy, where he joined others purged from the Convention. After he was out-
lawed on July 8, he and Ption ed to the Gironde, where they committed suicide.
His corpse was found in the woods, partially eaten by wolves, on June 18, 1794, at
Saint-Magne. See also French Revolution; National Assembly.
FURTHER READINGS: Bariller, Jean. Franois Buzot: Un Girondin normand, 17601794.
Evreux: Socit libre de lEure, 1993; Whaley, Leigh. Radicals: Politics and Republicanism in the
French Revolution. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2000.
LEIGH WHALEY
C
Cachet, Lettres de
Lettres de cachet (sealed letters) were writs issued directly by the French king
authorizing the arrest or seizure of specic people or things, as well as other very
specic activities. Their origin lies within the absolutist theory that all law emanates
from the king and that his word is the foundation of law. The lettres were issued out-
side normal judicial channels, and since the lettres were issued by the highest legal
authority (the king), no court could question their application. The monarch could
thus keep people in prison as long as he wished or order various tasks to be carried
out without legal recourse. They were usually addressed to a particular person, who
would be asked to convey someone to a particular prison (often the Bastille) and
to keep them there until further notice. They were used quite early in French his-
tory (perhaps as early as the twelfth century) but were most commonly used begin-
ning with Louis XIV; their peak usage occurred during the reign of Louis XV (an
estimated 100,000 people were detained). They were often issued at the request
of noble families who could no longer control the behavior of delinquent family
members; both the Marquis de Sade and the comte de Mirabeau, for example, were
incarcerated by lettre at the request of their families. Lettres de cachet became a
symbol of the despotic monarchy and were abolished by the National Assembly on
January 15, 1790.
FURTHER READING: Strayer, Brian Eugene. Lettres de Cachet and Social Control in the Ancien
Rgime, 1659 1789. New York: P. Lang, 1992.
LEE BAKER
Cadoudal, Georges (1771 1804)
Georges Cadoudal was a royalist and a prominent counterrevolutionary leader in
western France. Born into a peasant family near Auray, Cadoudal studied at Vannes
and began his career as a clerk. A devout Catholic, he opposed the revolutionary
excesses against the Catholic Church, and in 1793, he joined the Vendean army
at Fougres. He was seized while organizing an uprising at Brest in June 1794 but
escaped after the Thermidor coup and became a leader of the Vendan and
Chouan rebels. A strong and capable leader, he commanded the rebel forces and, in
1800, was offered a generals commission by the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte,
which he declined.
Persecuted, Cadoudal ed to Britain, where he was supported by the comte
dArtois and the British government. Over the next three years, Cadoudal helped
organize a series of plots against Napoleon. In December 1800, Cadoudals agents
were implicated in the infamous Infernal Machine incident when a barrel lled with
gunpowder exploded near Napoleons carriage. In 1803, Cadoudal was involved in
another conspiracy, which allegedly also included generals Jean-Charles Pichegru
and Jean Moreau. The plan was to kidnap and kill Napoleon, open the French
border to the royalist army, and restore the comte de Provence (the future Louis
XVIII) on the throne. Napoleons police, however, inltrated the conspiracy and
arrested its members. Despite his initial success in evading the police, Cadoudal was
captured in March 1804 and was executed on June 25 of that year. See also Therim-
dorian Reaction; Vendan Rebellion.
FURTHER READING: Chiappe, Jean Franois. George Cadoudal ou La libert. Paris: Librarie
Acadmique Perrin, 1971; Croix, Ren de la. La conspiration de Cadoudal. Paris: Del Duca,
1963; Lacouque, Henry. Cadoudal et les Chouans. Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1951.
Cahiers de Dolances
Cahiers de dolances were lists of grievances prepared by the electors in the three
orders prior to the meeting of the Estates-General in May 1789.
The cahiers were lists of grievances drafted by the three orders in each of the 234
constituencies in France during the elections of the Estates-General in 1789. Each
orderthe First, Second, and Third Estatesmet separately to draft their cahiers.
In the Third Estate, every village or parish as well as each urban guild would pro-
duce a cahier.
These lists of recommendations and complaints were intended to guide the dep-
uties in their debates when the Estates-General met in May. They provide a portrait
of the perspectives, concerns, and aspirations of the French people on the eve of
the French Revolution. Common concerns included issues such as equality of taxa-
tion, the creation of a representative government, and an end to royal absolutism,
but not the monarchy. The Third Estate and the nobility desired regular meetings
of the Estates-General and personal liberties. The nobility were in favor of reforms
to the legal system and the abolition of censorship. The clergy were concerned to
retain many of their privileges over education and religion. Parish priests (lower
clergy) were prepared to accept reforms. They denounced abuses in religious
orders, the holding of multiple beneces and the absenteeism that went with it, and
the misdistribution of church wealth. The peasant cahiers reected local concerns
over taxation, particularly the gabelle (salt tax), and bridge repair; a desire for the
abolition of dues and tolls; and a general discontent over the seigneurial system. See
also First Estate; Second Estate.
FURTHER READING: Hyslop, Beatrice Fry. A Guide to the General Cahiers of 1789, with
the Texts of Unedited Cahiers. New York: Octagon Books, 1968; Markoff, John. The Abolition of
102 Cahiers de Dolances
Calendar, French Revolutionary 103
Feudalism: Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University, 1996; Shapiro, Gilbert, et al. Revolutionary Demands: A Content Analysis of the
Cahiers de Dolances of 1789. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.
LEIGH WHALEY
In their revolutionary zeal to change the ancien rgime, eliminate symbols of
the past, and create a new society, members of the National Convention abolished
the Gregorian calendar, introducing a new revolutionary calendar on October 5,
1793. The new calendar inaugurated a new revolutionary era, which began with the
proclamation of the republic on September 22, 1792. A politician and agronomist,
Charles Gilbert Romme, designed the calendar.
Each year was divided into 12 months, each 30 days long. At the end of the year
an additional 5 (or 6 in a leap year) days were added as supplementary days. Every
month constituted three 10-day weeks called dcades, each divided into 10 days bear-
ing numerical names: primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi,
nonidi, and dcadi. Special names were assigned for every month and every day in a
year by a politician and a poet, Philippe Franois Nazarine Fabre dglantine, who
was a member of the committee preparing the changes. He was a member of the
Cordeliers Club as well as of the Jacobins.
The names assigned to each month were based on the features of nature. Since
these names were formed out of a combination of French, Latin, and Greek words,
they are practically impossible to translate. In autumn there was Vendmiarie (from
Latin vindemia, vintage), Brumaire (from French brume, mist), and Frimaire
(from French frimas, frost). Winter was divided into Nivse (from Latin nivosus,
snowy), Pluvise (from Latin pluviosus, rainy), and Ventse (from Latin vento-
sus, windy). Spring was composed of Germinal (from Latin germen, seed), Floral
(from Latin os, ower), and Prairial (from French prairie, meadow). Finally,
Messidor (from Latin messis, harvest), Thermidor (from Greek thermos, hot),
and Fructidor (from Latin fructus, fruits) made up summer.
Each day of the year was given a name connected with animals (days ending with
ve), tools (days ending with zero), or plants and minerals, rather than saints in the
Gregorian calendar. The supplementary ve or six days were originally known as les
Sansculotides. After Year III (i.e., 1795) these days were given special names: la Fte
de la Vertu (Virtue Day), la Fte du Gnie (Talent Day), la Fte du Travail (Labor
Day), la Fte de lOpinion (Opinion Day), la Fte des Rcompenses (Rewards Day),
and la Fte de la Rvolution (Revolution Day).
In 1794, on Maximilien Robespierres suggestion, four national holidays were
proclaimed to commemorate the storming of the Bastille, the storming of the Tu-
ileries, the execution of Louis XVI, and the collapse of the Gironde. Years were
numbered with Roman numerals; the year starting on September 22, 1692, was Year
I; the next, Year II; and so forth. The revolutionary calendar was abolished by Em-
peror Napoleon on January 1, 1806 (10 Nivse, Year XIV). It was reintroduced for
two months during the Paris Commune in 1871. Along with changes to the calen-
dar, a futile attempt was undertaken to reform the clock. Each day was divided into
10 hours, each of 100 minutes, themselves divided into 100 seconds.
104 Cambacrs, Jean-Jacques-Rgis de
FURTHER READING: Dershowitz, Nachum, and Edward Reingold. Calendrical Calculations.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Richards, Edward. Mapping Time: The Calendar
and Its History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
JAKUB BASISTA
Cambacrs, Jean-Jacques-Rgis de (1753 1824)
As a French statesman and archchancellor of the empire, Cambacrs acted as
intimate adviser to Napoleon and exercised extensive powers during the First Em-
pire. The son of Jean-Antoine de Cambacrs, adviser at the Court of Auditors,
Aides and Finances of Montpellier, Cambacrs graduated from the college of Aix-
en-Provence and practiced law in Montpellier. He eventually succeeded his father
at the Court of Auditors, where he served for 15 years before the French Revolution
interrupted his life. In 1789, he was elected as a representative of the nobility of
Montpellier to the Estates-General but could not take his seat because of the reduc-
tion of the number of representatives for Montpellier. Instead, he became one of
the founding members of the Socit des Amis de la Constitution et de lEgalit
in Montpellier and was elected president of the Criminal Court of Montpellier in
1791. A year later, he became the deputy from Hrault to the National Convention
in September 1792. From October 1792, Cambacrs served on the Committee of
Civil and Criminal Legislation, participated in the trial of Louis XVI, and supported
the death penalty. Avoiding factional inghting in the Convention, Cambacrs
mainly concerned himself with judicial and legislative matters and supervised the
preparations of two successive drafts of the Civil Code in 1793 1794.
In July 1794, Cambacrs indirectly participated in the Thermidorian Reaction,
which led to Robespierres downfall, and briey served on the Committee of War,
making his rst acquaintance with General Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1794 1795, he
served on the Committee of Public Safety and played an important role in conclud-
ing peace treaties with Tuscany, Prussia, the Netherlands, and Spain. After the dis-
solution of the Convention, Cambacrs served on the Council of Five Hundred; he
prepared his third draft of the Civil Code in June 1796 and acted as a president
of the Council of Five Hundred in October and November 1796. Failing to secure
reelection in May 1797, Cambacrs returned to his private law practice for two
years and established a reputation as a skillful lawyer. On July 20, 1799, he was ap-
pointed the minister of justice and supported General Bonaparte during the coup
dtat of 18 19 Brumaire (November 9 10, 1799). Cambacrs was proclaimed the
second consul in December 1799 and was actively involved in the political life of the
Consulate, presiding over the Senate, chairing the meeting of the Council of State,
and performing the functions of the First Consul in Napoleons absence. He facili-
tated the signing of the Concordat in 1801, the creation of the Legion of Honor,
and the establishment of the life consulate in 1802.
Between 1800 and 1804, Cambacrs worked on the monumental task of draft-
ing and adopting the famous Civil Code inspired by Napoleon. He was elected to
the French Academy in 1803. The following year, Cambacrs prepared the legal
grounds for the proclamation of the empire. He became archchancellor of the
empire on May 18, 1804, and received the Grand Aigle de la Lgion dHonneur on
February 2, 1805. Presiding over the Senate and the Council of State, he exercised
Cambon, Pierre-Joseph 105
extensive powers during Napoleons absences on campaign between 1805 and 1813
and was conferred the title of Duke of Parma in 1808.
After the rst Bourbon restoration, in 1814, Cambacrs returned to private life.
When, however, Napoleon escaped from Elba, Cambacrs was again appointed
archchancellor of the empire, directed the Ministry of Justice, and presided over
the Chamber of Peers during the Hundred Days. Under the Second Restoration, he
was forced into exile in Brussels, where he lived until 1818, when he was allowed to
return to France. He died in Paris of apoplexy on March 8, 1824, and was buried at
the Pre-Lachaise Cemetery. See also Amis de la Constitution, Socit des.
FURTHER READING: Chatel de Brancion, Laurence. Cambacrs: Matre duvre de Napolon.
Paris: Perrin, 2001; Woloch, Isser. Napoleon and His Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship.
New York: W. W. Norton. 2002.
Cambon, Pierre -Joseph (1756 1820)
Pierre-Joseph Cambon was a nancial administrator and a French revolutionary
politician. The son of a wealthy cloth manufacturer, and the eldest of a family of
Jean-Jacques-Rgis de Cambacrs. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
106 Cambon, Pierre -Joseph
four brothers and two sisters, Cambon assisted his father with the operation of the
family business in Montpellier. On the occasion of his fathers retirement, Cambon
assumed control of the business, Cambon et Compagnie. Cambons nancial expe-
rience and expertise would later serve him well in his revolutionary career.
In 1788, on the eve of the French Revolution in 1788, Cambons interests shifted
from nances to politics. Elected to the municipal council of Montpellier and to
the Estates-General (although this election was voided on July 25, 1789, as too many
deputies from Hrault were elected), Cambon was involved in the drafting of the
cahiers de dolances for the Third Estate. He signed the Tennis Court Oath on June
20, 1789, and was a witness to the early events of the Revolution.
After his election was voided, Cambon returned in January 1790 to Montpellier,
where he served as a member of the municipal council and founded the local Jaco-
bin Club. As a Protestant member of the municipal council, Cambon sent National
Guardsmen to Nmes to assist the Protestants in their struggles with the Catholics.
At this time, Cambon was a constitutional monarchist. As president of the elec-
toral assembly of the department of the Hrault, which met in June 1790 to elect the
administrators of the department, he signed an address praising Louis XVI. A year
later, views concerning the monarchy had changed dramatically. This was evident
at the Montpellier Jacobin meeting of June 22, 1791, when Cambon, as president,
signed an address to the National Assembly, inviting it to proclaim a republic.
Elected to the Legislative Assembly on September 4, 1791, representing the
department of Hrault, Cambon was soon an active contributor to the nancial
debates. With a reputation as an expert on nancial matters, Cambon was made a
member of the Committee of Finances. He reported on the state of French nances
and suggested methods to eliminate the debt throughout the autumn of 1791 into
the spring of 1792. He advocated reducing the number of assignats and was the
rst to suggest the creation of a grand livre, or register of the debt. Allying himself
with the Brissotin faction, he supported going to war and proposed sequestering
migr property on February 9, 1792.
Reelected to the National Convention from Montpellier, Cambon was once again
voted a member of the nance committee. Historians are in agreement that from
September 1792 to April 1795, Cambon was the virtual head of Frances nances.
As a method of lowering the war debt, he advocated introducing assignats into the
occupied territories, such as Belgium, and taxing the wealthier inhabitants.
During the kings trial, he voted for death, but he opposed the creation of revolu-
tionary tribunals. Although a member of the rst Committee of Public Safety from
April 7, 1793, to July 10, 1793, he opposed the events of May 31 through June 2 and
was saddened by the arrest of his former Girondin colleagues.
From July 1793 to July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor), Cambon was Frances chief nan-
cial ofcer. Practically every piece of nancial legislation passed by the Convention
originated with him. His goal was to restructure the national debt, and he did this
by uniting the debts of both those of the ancien rgime and of revolutionary France
with the Grand livre de la dette nationale, an index of the states debtors and creditors.
On 8 Thermidor, Cambon turned against Maximilien Robespierre, arguing in
the Convention that Robespierre was the cause of the Conventions paralysis. He
remained on the nance committee until April 1795, when he was implicated for his
involvement in the uprising of 12 Germinal, Year II. He escaped arrest and returned
to his estate in Montpellier. Although his political career was effectively over, Cambon
Camp de Jals, Conspiracy of the 107
was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on May 15, 1815, during the Hundred Days.
With the Restoration, he was banished from France. He settled in Saint-Josse-ten-
Noode in the Netherlands, where he died on February 15, 1821. See also Brissotins;
Emigrs; Girondins; Jacobins; Reign of Terror; Thermidorian Reaction.
FURTHER READING: Bornarel, F. Cambon et la Rvolution franaise. Paris: Alcan, 1905; Sen,
Clovis. Cambon, le nancier de la Rvolution. Paris: J. C. Latts, 1987; Velde, Franois R., and
David R. Weir. The Financial Market and Government Debt Policy in France, 1746 1793.
Journal of Economic History 52, no. 1 (March 1992): 1 39.
LEIGH WHALEY
Lord William Campbell was a naval ofcer; a member of the House of Commons;
and, most notably, the colonial governor of Nova Scotia and later South Carolina.
He was the fourth and youngest son of the Duke of Argyll. Although we have no
birth date for William Campbell, he achieved the rank of captain in the navy by
1762. During a 1763 voyage to South Carolina, Campbell married Sarah Izard, who
came from a prominent local family. In 1764, he was elected to the House of Com-
mons but only held that position for two years, leaving to take the post of the gov-
ernor of Nova Scotia. Unsatised with his post there, he petitioned for transfer and
became the governor of South Carolina, effective in 1774.
Campbell arrived in South Carolina one year later on June 17, 1775, on the eve
of the American Revolution. The Council of Safety had already met and effectively
exercised power in the colony. Campbells family connections through marriage
proved useless since the majority of the Council of Safety were patriots. Hoping
to become an effective governor, Campbell conspired with the Tory-sympathetic
frontiersman and various Indian nations. When word of the negotiations became
public, Campbells position was further compromised. He boarded a British warship
and left for Jamaica. Campbell subsequently returned to Charleston as part of the
unsuccessful British naval attack on the city, but he was badly injured and returned
to England, where he died soon after on September 5, 1778.
FURTHER READING: Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution
in the Carolinas. New York: Wiley, 1997.
CHARLES ALLAN
The conspiracy of the Camp de Jals is an example of opposition to the French
Revolution. However, Catholic and royalist opposition failed to achieve any potent
synthesis or receive popular support, and the movement withered.
In June 1790, pro-revolutionary forces, many of them Protestant, killed a large
number of Catholic members of the National Guard at Nmes in an episode referred
to as the bagarre. In August 1790, 20,000 members of the National Guard assembled
at the rural setting of Jals. The mood of the National Guard was one more of loy-
alty than that of conspiracy to overthrow the government. However, driven by the
defeat of the bagarre, Catholic leaders, most notably Franois Froment, dominated
the assemblys agenda and attempted to create a fusion of popular Catholic, royalist,
108 Camus, Armand Gaston
and patriotic resistance to the new government. At the end of the rst camp, the
gathering declared itself in opposition to the new regime, vowed to seek aid from
abroad, and set a schedule for future camps. Leaders of the camp made contact with
the comte dArtois (the future Charles X), an exiled Bourbon nobleman in Turin
who was actively pursuing counterrevolutionary aims.
In February 1791, the camp met for a second time at the same location. An
attempt to encourage the mainly Catholic National Guard to march on Nmes
largely failed. The few hundred who participated in the effort were dispersed, and
many were killed by a mostly Protestant pro-revolutionary force. Sixty-nine Na-
tional Guardsmen were drowned in the Rhne in March 1791, an act many be-
lieved to be revenge for their refusal to join the counterrevolutionary activities. In
January 1792, Franois Froment traveled to Coblenz, in the Rhineland, to contact
the exiled royalist faction led by the comte dArtois. Froments objective was to
garner support for a supposed popular insurrection in the Midi. This resulted in
the nal Camp de Jals, held in July of 1792 but only attended by a few hundred
men. National Guard and regular forces subsequently attacked and dispersed the
camp.
Clarendon Press, 1989.
CHARLES ALLAN
Armand Gaston Camus, a lawyer to the Paris Parlement, was a member of the
French National Assembly from 1789 to 1791, and a deputy of the Haute-Loire at
the National Convention in 1792, after which he acted from August 1789 as chief
archivist of the Commission des Archives, later the Archives Nationales.
Camus was, alongside Jean-Sylvain Bailly, the rst to enter the Tennis Court at
Versailles on June 20, 1789, where he was the second signatory to the oath that
declared the Third Estate would not disband until a constitution had been agreed
upon. He was also responsible for gathering together the list of signatories. For a
short period between October 28 and November 11, 1789, Camus was president of
the National Assembly. Respected for his nancial knowledge, Camus was deeply
involved in the debates surrounding the appearance of revolutionary paper money,
the assignat, the initial value of which was based on conscated church properties,
and was responsible in 1790 for the publication of the so-called livre rouge, which
listed the expenses and numerous secret pensions issued by the court.
Camus achieved widespread notoriety for his responses to the papal bulls of 1791
condemning the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, of which he was a principal au-
thor, and for which he had voted. Because of this anti-clerical stance, which con-
tradicted his pre-Revolution role as lawyer to the clergy, and his involvement in the
suppression of the titles of the nobility in July 1791, he became a popular subject for
counterrevolutionary caricatures produced during this period, which also derided
his role in the issuance of assignats. Absent during the vote for the death of the
king, which he supported, he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety
in 1793. As part of the group sent to recapture the treacherous General Dumouriez,
Camus was later imprisoned by the Austrians in April 1793 in the prisons of Maastricht,
Canada 109
Coblenz, and Olmtz. He was nally released in November 1795 in exchange for
Madame Royale, the daughter of Louis XVI.
Prior to the Revolution, Camus had translated several classical works, including
Aristotles History of Animals, and was a member of lAcadmie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres from 1783. As archivist, Camus brought together many important bu-
reaucratic documents issued during the Revolution and developed analytic methods
of classifying them, thus forming the basis of the modern Archives Nationales. In
1802, largely informed by his experience with the assignat, Camus wrote a tract ana-
lyzing the development of stereotype printing, a nationalist project that character-
ized advances in printing technology as a specically French phenomenon.
Camus was elected to the Council of Five Hundred, although he refused the
positions of minister of nance and minister of police. In 1800 he was named garde
des Archives Gnrales under the Consulate. Disagreeing with the policies of the new
government under First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, Camus withdrew from poli-
tics in 1802 and concentrated on his archival and literary work until his death from
a stroke in November 1804. See also Tennis Court Oath.
FURTHER READING: Prteux, Pierre. Armand-Gaston Camus, avocat, premier garde gnral des
Archives Nationales, membre de lInstitut, 1740 1804. Paris, 1933.
RICHARD TAWS
Canada
At the start of tensions and war between 13 North American colonies and Britain,
which commenced in 1775 and concluded with the Peace of Paris of 1783, there was
a good deal of discussion and concern regarding the leanings and views of British
settlements in Canada. While many Canadians were of English stock, there was a
sizable minority who descended from the French and clung tenaciously to their re-
ligion, culture, and language. This ethnic-cultural division worried the British, who
feared ghting a war across the expanse of British North America, and prompted
American colonists to encourage Quebec to join the independence movement that
emerged in 1775. The French Canadians embraced a middle ground and attempted
to maintain neutrality even in the face of efforts by the Continental Army to seize
portions of their territory.
Parliament, as part of a larger strategy to suppress the rebellion in North Amer-
ica, passed the Quebec Act in 1774; the statute provided sanction for the prominent
role that language and faith played in the French-speaking portions of Canada.
In short, this legislation afrmed the French language, French civil law, and the
prerogatives of the Roman Catholic Church. Moreover, the physical boundaries of
Quebec were extended south, allowing French speakers along the Mississippi River
to share a common border with the Quebecois. The Quebec Act is ordinarily con-
sidered one of the Coercive Acts, which were passed at the same time; however this
action was a conscious decision on the part of the British to ensure that Canada did
not fall into rebellion.
The Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia in 1775 identied an alliance
with Canadians as a major objective of foreign policy and diplomatic efforts. The
leaders in the Congress, especially George Washington, understood the psychologi-
cal and logistical benets that would emerge from a large-scale rebellion in British
110 Carnot, Lazare
North America. To this end, the Congress dispatched Benjamin Franklin, Samuel
Chase, Charles Carroll, and John Carroll to negotiate and to seek terms with lead-
ers in Quebec. The prominence and Francophone temperaments of this delegation
reected the importance that the Continental Congress placed on negotiating this
alliance. Nonetheless, the Quebec Act and suspicion of the intentions of the rebel-
lious colonies caused Quebec to maintain neutrality in the conict.
The Continental Congress authorized military operations in Quebec, hoping to
stimulate diplomatic negotiations or, at least, to secure strategic positions to conduct
operations against British regulars, who were arriving in large numbers by 1775.
On December 31, 1775, the Continental Army initiated operations against Quebec
when General Benedict Arnold and Major General Richard Montgomery staged a
coordinated attack. Montgomery conquered Montreal and quickly joined up with
Arnolds forces, which were laying siege to Quebec City. The army was eventually
repulsed and retreated completely from Canada over the summer of 1776.
The proclamation of neutrality and the British victory in Quebec made the region
a logical destination for thousands of Loyalists seeking refuge during the rebellion.
In the long term, the decision to remain neutral preserved French hegemony in
Quebec and prevented Canada from being absorbed into the newly created United
States. American aspirations to acquire Canada were enshrined in the Articles of
Confederation, which included a clause allowing Canada to join the confederacy at
will and continued until 1867, when the Dominion of Canada was established. See
also Continental Congress, Second.
FURTHER READING: Bradley, A. G. The United Empire Loyalists: Founders of British Canada.
London: Thornton Butterworth, 1932; Conway, Stephen. The War of American Independence,
1775 1783. London: Arnold, 1995; Lawson, Philip. The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain
in the Age of the American Revolution. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990; Wrong,
George M. Canada and the American Revolution: The Disruption of the British Empire. New York:
Macmillan, 1935.
JAMES T. CARROLL
A French professional army ofcer who rallied to the revolutionary side in 1789,
Lazare Carnot played the leading role in directing his countrys military affairs in
the early 1790s during the French Revolution. As a member of the Committee of
Public Safety, the 12-man executive body appointed to defend the Revolution, Carnot
had the responsibility for raising, training, and employing the vast numbers of men
the government conscripted. His career as a military gure continued for two de-
cades thereafter.
Commissioned in the artillery in 1773, the young ofcers prospects in the pre-
revolutionary army were limited by his middle-class background. With the overthrow
of the Old Regime in 1789, he found new political and military possibilities. He was
elected to Frances Legislative Assembly in 1791 and to the National Convention the
following year. The veteran soldier soon gained a reputation as one of the govern-
ments military experts. His vote in the Convention in January 1793 to execute King
Louis XVI exemplied his loyalty to the revolutionary order.
Carnot, Lazare 111
In August 1793, Carnot joined the Committee of Public Safety. With foreign
armies threatening the survival of the Revolution, Carnots rst military task was to
stabilize and energize Frances armies along the countrys northeastern border. He
personally helped to lead one army in a key victory at Wattignies in October 1793.
The dynamic military organizer then turned his attention to forming and direct-
ing the 800,000 men serving in Frances 12 eld armies. Carnot amalgamated veteran
soldiers with raw conscripts to form disciplined and stable ghting units, replaced
lethargic commanders with enthusiastic young generals, and drew up plans for the
campaigns that defeated Frances principal enemies by the middle of 1794. He urged
the use of aggressive tactics, above all the use of the bayonet whenever possible.
Carnot survived the fall of Maximilian Robespierre and the other radical mem-
bers of the Committee of Public Safety in July 1794. He remained an inuential g-
ure, and, as one of the ve members of the new governing Directory, he continued
to occupy himself with the countrys military efforts. His most important decision
came in early 1796 when he appointed the dynamic young Napoleon Bonaparte
commander of the French army in Italy.
Although he disapproved of Napoleons lust for powerin 1802 as member of
the Tribunate appointed by the French Senate, he voted against making Napoleon
consul for lifeCarnot went on to serve the dictator. In 1814, as foreign armies
moved to invade France, he distinguished himself in leading the defense of Antwerp.
Lazare Carnot. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
112 Carrier, Jean-Baptiste
Carnot was a marked man when the Bourbon monarchy nally returned to
power. In 1815, he went into exile, settling nally in Prussia. He died there in the
city of Magdeburg on August 2, 1823. See also French Revolutionary Wars.
FURTHER READING: Lynn, John A. The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army
of Revolutionary France, 1791 94. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984; Palmer, R. R. Twelve
Who Ruled: The Committee of Public Safety during the Terror. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1941; Watson, S. J. Carnot. London: Bodley Head, 1954.
NEIL M. HEYMAN
Carrier, a radical orator and terrorist during the French Revolution, was born in
1756 in a small village, Yolai, in the Auvergne, to a prosperous farmer and his wife.
He went to Paris to study law and then settled in Aurillac.
In 1792, he became a deputy to the National Convention. A powerful orator,
he joined the Mountain and voted for the death of the king; the arrest of the duc
dOrlans; the coup of May 31, which forced the Girondins from power; and the es-
tablishment of the revolutionary tribunals. Carrier is most notorious for his missions
to western France, especially Nantes, where counterrevolutionary uprisings had bro-
ken out. In the Vende, he ordered mass executions, often by ring squads or more
notoriously by mass drownings (noyades). He euphemistically referred to these as
republican baptisms. Although historians disagree about how many individuals he
executed (some estimate as many as 10,000), they all acknowledge the unspeakable
cruelty of those who hacked off the arms and legs of the victims, including children,
who tried to escape from the sinking boats.
Recalled to Paris, in part because of Maximilien Robespierre, he helped to over-
throw the incorruptible and his allies. Carrier was condemned by the revolution-
ary tribunal. He was, unlike many of his victims, allowed a trial, at which he was
condemned to death. He died on the guillotine, maintaining his innocence. See also
Reign of Terror; Thermidorian Reaction; Vendan Rebellion.
FURTHER READING: Frey, Linda S., and Marsha L. Frey. The French Revolution. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2004; Martin, Gaston. Carrier et sa mission Nantes. Paris: Les Presses
Universitaires de France, 1924; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the
French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Carroll, Charles (1737 1832)
Although Charles Carroll was a member of the Second Continental Congress,
signed the Declaration of Independence, and was part of a mission to draw French
Canada to the American side during the American Revolution, most of his political
work was conducted at the colonial and state level. An important part of his signi-
cance lies in his religion: Carroll was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration.
His participation in politics on the national level served as notice that although they
were excluded from most forms of participation in most colonies, Catholics could
be counted on to serve their own government, not the church.
Cartwright, John 113
Carroll served as a delegate in the Maryland assembly in 1774 and later in the
Continental Congress in 1776 and 1777. From 1777 to 1800, he served as a Mary-
land state senator. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1780, he did not serve
there but remained in his own state. Although he did not participate in the Consti-
tutional Convention in 1787, he campaigned vigorously for Maryland to ratify the
United States Constitution.
After Marylands adoption of the Constitution, Carroll served as a U.S. senator
from 1789 to 1792. Holding ofce as a state senator in Maryland at the same time,
he was forced to choose between serving in the national Senate and his state senate.
He chose to serve his state and resigned from the U.S. Senate. He died in 1832, the
last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. See also Signers of the Declara-
tion of Independence.
FURTHER READING: Hanley, Thomas O. Charles Carroll of Carrollton: The Making of a Revolu-
tionary Gentleman. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1970; Smith, Ellen H.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton. New York: Russell and Russell, 1971.
ROBERT N. STACY
Cartwright was commissioned in the navy in 1758 and served under both Lord
Howe and Sir Edward Hawke during the Seven Years War (1756 1763). Concerned
by the American crisis, in 1774 he produced the rst of over 80 works, American
Independence: The Glory and Interest of Great Britain, in which he maintained that the
Americans had the right to choose their own rulers and tax themselves. He wanted
each colony to have its own separate and independent legislature but to form a con-
federation with Britain based on a community of interests. Refusing to serve against
the Americans, he ended his naval career but did agree to become a major in the
Nottinghamshire militia. He was referred to as Major Cartwright ever thereafter.
The disastrous American war convinced him of the need for radical political
reform. In Take Your Choice! (1776), he advocated universal manhood suffrage. In
The Peoples Barrier against Inuence and Corruption (1780), he supported what be-
came known as the six points of parliamentary reform: universal manhood suffrage,
equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, the secret ballot, abolition of property
qualications for MPs (members of Parliament), and the payment of MPs. Never a
social leveler, Cartwright generally based his program of parliamentary reform on
an appeal to the ancient constitution and to the historic rights of Englishmen, but
he occasionally wrote as if he accepted the doctrine of natural rights. He certainly
believed that the Anglo-Saxons had possessed a democratic legislative assembly and
that this ought to be restored.
Cartwright supported the association movement inspired by Christopher Wyvill,
especially the radical association in Westminster, and in April 1781 he helped to
found the Society for Constitutional Information. Largely composed of radical Dis-
senters, the SCI published political tracts designed to educate the people about
their rights and liberties. In the 1790s he supported reform again and opposed
the war with revolutionary France in The Commonwealth in Danger (1795). Always a
patriot, however, he advocated the creation of an Anglo-Saxon-style militia to meet
the threatened French invasion in the two volumes of Englands Aegis (1804 1805).
114 Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Russia
In 1804 he helped the reformer Sir Francis Burdett gain election for Middlesex
and, with Francis Place, William Cobbett, and Thomas Wooler, he campaigned to
revive radical politics. He was active in setting up the Hampden Club in 1811 and
the Union Society in 1812 to campaign for parliamentary reform, and he did much
to develop such clubs in the provinces.
In 1812 he began missionary tours around the country to encourage support
for reform. He claimed to have gathered 130,000 signatures for a reform petition
in 1813 alone. He supported the popular reformers after 1815. Attending a huge
open-air radical meeting of the Birmingham Union Society in 1819, he was indicted
for sedition. This did not prevent him from attending the more famous radical
meeting at St Peters Fields in Manchester on August 16, 1819, when the yeomanry
charged at the crowd. Cartwright escaped injury at Peterloo, but he was convicted
on the earlier charge of sedition at Warwick on May 29, 1821, and was ned 100.
Despite his advanced age, he was not intimidated, and he completed a massive sum-
mary of his belief in the need to recover lost Anglo-Saxon liberties in The English
Constitution Produced and Illustrated (1823). In it, he praised the American republican
experiment. In his last work, A Problem, he used the United States as an example for
the union of all nations.
FURTHER READING: Cartwright, F. D. The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright. 2 vols.
Reprint, New York: A. M. Kelley, 1969; Osborne, John W. John Cartwright. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1972.
H. T. DICKINSON
Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Russia (1729 1796)
A German-born empress of Russia (1762 1796), originally named Sophie Frederike
Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine the Great conrmed Russias leading position
on the map of eighteenth-century Europe. She undertook considerable efforts
albeit unsuccessfullyto reorganize Russias administration and laws. During her
reign, the Russian Empire extended its territory into the Crimea, in Poland, and
in Central Asia. Feared and admired during her lifetime, Catherine was perceived
very positively both by ofcial historiography and by the Russian people after her
deatheven in the Soviet era.
Sophie Frederike, the daughter of a lesser German prince, was related to the
Holstein family through her mother. At the age of 14, she was engaged to the Duke of
Holstein-Gottorp, an arrangement that changed her position considerably, since her
future husband was the grandson of Peter the Great and heir to the Russian throne.
In 1744 Catherine arrived in Russia, married Peter, and received the title of Grand
Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna. On January 5, 1762, Catherines husband, Peter III,
inherited the Russian throne, though he was not a promising monarch. Six months
later, on July 9, Catherine proclaimed herself the Russian empress in Kazan Cathe-
dral (she was helped by her lover Grigory Orlov, some army units, the court, and
the enlightened aristocracy). Peter III abdicated, only to be assassinated eight days
later. In September, Catherine was crowned in Moscow, beginning her 34-year rule
in Russia as Catherine II.
Catherine was greatly inuenced by French and British Enlightenment ideas. She
had numerous thoughts about how to implement these ideas, yet she soon realized
Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Russia 115
that Russia was too backward to support any real reform. In 1767 Catherine con-
sulted her subjects (apart from the serfs) on potential reforms, but long debates
and the impossibility of introducing liberal solutions left laws and constitutions to
remain in draft form. In 1762 Catherine secularized the property of the Ortho-
dox Church, reduced the clergy to the status of state functionaries, and lled the
state treasury, though most of her other reforms failed. Nevertheless, this activity,
together with her frequent contact with the great thinkers of her age, in particular
Voltaire and Denis Diderot, brought her respect and the good opinion of many
across the Continent.
Catherine was much more successful in foreign policy, above all in her retention
of friendly relations with Prussia. In 1764, she installed her old lover, Stanisaw
August Poniatowski, on the Polish throne. Six years later she took part in the rst
partition of Poland and thereafter sought to control Polish affairs in the Russian
interest. Between 1768 and 1774 she waged a successful war against Turkey, which
brought her fame and the rise of her next lover, Grigory Potemkin, who would
thereafter play an important role in the domestic and foreign policy of Russia until
his death in 1791.
Russias war effort against Turkey was endangered in 1773, when Cossacks under
the leadership of Yemelyan Pugachev rose up and in June 1774 prepared to march
on Moscow. The rebellion was ruthlessly crushed, and Pugachev was beheaded in
1775, but the terror inspired by the uprising was not forgotten. In 1783, during the
next clash with Turkey, Russia seized the Crimea and subdued the Crimean Tartars,
thus gaining control of the north shore of the Black Sea. At the same time, Cath-
erine was extremely careful not to embroil Russia in a European war.
Although inspired by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, Catherine felt seri-
ously threatened by the events of the French Revolution. All Russians were ordered
to leave revolutionary France, and French migrs who settled in Russia (Louis
XVIs brothers, for instance, were welcomed in Russia) were forced to cut all ties
with France. News of the beheading of Louis XVI and the spread of radical revolu-
tion in France saddened her tremendously. Similarly, she felt threatened by the
Polish constitution of 1791, which was intended to introduce a well-ordered state
in the territory of her western neighbor. However, Russian troops entered Poland
and forced the king to suspend the constitution, and in 1793 Russia, together with
Prussia, staged the second partition of Poland, seizing most of Polish Ukraine. Fi-
nally, a national uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko in 1794 convinced Catherine
to wipe Poland off the map altogether, which she did the following year, dividing
among herself and Prussia and Austria the last of Polands independent territory.
The vast majority of Russians did not benet from Catherines rule, for although
she was a good administrator, and her army considerably extended the borders of
her empire, the condition of most social groups remained unaltered, in spite of
her enlightened ideas. If her impact on society as a whole was small, she neverthe-
less contributed to Russian culture: she served as a patron of literature, established
learned societies, founded schools, supported the sciences, and wrote various works
herself. See also Poland, Partitions of; Pugachev Rebellion; Russia, Impact of Revolu-
tionary Thought on.
FURTHER READING: Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989; Erickson, Carolly. Great Catherine: The Life of Catherine the Great, Empress
116 Chapeliers Law
of Russia. New York: St. Martins Grifn, 1995; Whitelaw, Nancy. Catherine the Great and the
Enlightenment in Russia. New York: Morgan Reynolds, 2004.
JAKUB BASISTA
Named after its sponsor to the National Assembly, Isaac-Ren-Guy Le Chapelier,
the loi Le Chapelier was passed on June 14, 1791, and banned any kind of citizens
guild in the same trade or of the same profession. The deputies were concerned
above all to destroy the institutions of privileged corporatism and to substitute law
for privilege as the foundation of a new society.
The law declared it contrary to the principles of liberty and the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and of the Citizen for citizens in a common trade to make agree-
ments among themselves in order to set prices for goods or labor. In a constitutional
order founded on individual equality before the law and the right of each citizen
to develop his talent to the fullest extent and for the maximum prot, guilds were
ideologically anathema. The Assembly was in effect overturning the mercantilist
tradition championed by Louis XIVs minister of nance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, of
vigorous state regulation of the economy and responding to the protest of the mer-
chant class to laissez-nous faire. The laws application of liberal individualism had the
effect of delaying the establishment of trade unions in France until the 1880s.
FURTHER READING: Burstin, Ham. La loi Le Chapelier et la conjuncture rvolutionnaire.
In Naissance des liberts conomiques. Le dcret dAllarde et la loi Le Chapelier, ed. Alain Plessis. Paris:
Institut dhistoire de lindustrie, Ministre de lindustrie, 1993; Fitzsimmons, Michael P. The
National Assembly and the Abolition of Guilds in France. Historical Journal 39, no. 1 (March
1996): 133 54; Manceron, Claude. La Rvolution franaise dictionnaire biographique. Paris: Ren-
audot et Cie, 1989; Soreau, E. La loi Le Chapelier. Annales historiques de la Rvolution fran-
aise 8 (1931): 286 314.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Charles X
See Artois, Charles Philippe de Bourbon, Comte d
Chase, Samuel (1741 1811)
Maryland signer of the Declaration of Independence Samuel Chase was born in
Somerset County, Maryland, on April 17, 1741. By 1759, Chase had decided to be-
come a lawyer, studying at the law ofces of Hammond & Hall in Annapolis. Several
years later, he began practicing law for the county courts. Chase was elected to the
Maryland Assembly in 1764. He remained in this role for 20 years. He took part in
the early opposition to Britains Stamp Act and aligned himself against Marylands
royal governor.
Ten years after entering the Maryland Assembly, Chase was appointed to serve
on the colonys Committee of Correspondence. The Assembly also chose him to rep-
resent the colony at the First Continental Congress. Chase was an early advocate of a
complete trade embargo with Britain. In February 1776, Chase, Benjamin Franklin,
and Charles Carroll were appointed to persuade Canada to forge an alliance with
Chatham, Pitt, William (the Elder), Earl of 117
the colonies. Though the visit to Canada proved fruitless, Chase returned to Mary-
land with a renewed vigor.
In June 1776, Chase succeeded in persuading Maryland delegates to vote for
independence from Britain. He signed the famous document on August 2 of that
year. After the American Revolution, Chase continued to be an active participant
in public services. Having moved to Baltimore, he was appointed chief judge of the
criminal court in 1788. Three years later he was elected chief judge of Marylands
General Court. Though Chase had been a staunch supporter of the colonies inde-
pendence, he later opposed the ratication of the United States Constitution.
President George Washington appointed Chase to the Supreme Court in Janu-
ary 1796, an appointment that proved to be controversial. In 1805, members of
Congress put Chase on trial and attempted to impeach him. Ultimately, Chase was
acquitted. He continued to serve on the Supreme Court until his death in 1811. See
also Committees of Correspondence; Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
FURTHER READING: Goodrich, Charles A. Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence.
New York: William Reed, 1856; Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 11.
New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1933.
NICOLE MITCHELL
Chatham, Pitt, William (the Elder), Earl of (1708 1778)
William Pitt was born in Westminster and educated at Eton College and, for short
periods, at Oxford and Utrecht before becoming a cornet of horse in 1731. A younger
son, he often depended on the patronage of others to bring him into Parliament in
1735 and to keep him there for the next 30 years. Despite this, he always insisted
on his independence, denounced faction, and claimed to support measures, not
men. For a decade he was a bitter critic of the Walpole and then the Pelham min-
istries before being brought into ofce as paymaster general in 1746. He held this
post for a decade, renouncing the nancial perquisites from which other paymasters
had made fortunes. He was never as much a patriot as his many admirers in the City
of London, the merchant community, and the press expected, however, and he was
at various times rightly accused of political inconsistency. In the Commons, Pitt won
a formidable reputation as a powerful and effective, though sometimes overly histri-
onic, orator. His speeches were often bruising, and sometimes inspirational.
Early British disasters in the Seven Years War (1756 1763) undermined other
leading politicians and did much to bring Pitt into high ofce at last, as secretary of
state for the Southern Department. In this post Pitt was arrogant and domineering,
but also determined and condent that he could serve his country better than any-
one else. He won a unique reputation inside and outside Parliament as the architect
of a string of victories against France across the world from 1758 to 1761. Although
not solely responsible for the dramatic reversal of British fortunes, he deserved and
received great credit for these many victories. The accession of George III in 1760
soon destabilized the Newcastle-Pitt administration, and politics in general, and Pitt
resigned in October 1761 when the cabinet rejected his proposal for a preemp-
tive strike against Spain. The rest of his career was anticlimactic and was frequently
marked by prolonged periods of severe ill health (both mental and physical). Pitt
could not work effectively with any other leading politician, could not command a
118 Chaumette, Pierre Gaspard
majority of backbenchers in the House of Commons, and would not lead reformers
and radicals outside Parliament.
He accepted a peerage as Earl of Chatham in 1766 and nominally led a new
administration from the Lords until 1768. He failed to direct policy as effectively
as he had nearly a decade earlier, and he had no satisfactory solutions to domes-
tic or overseas problems in these years or later. He criticized general warrants and
government policy toward John Wilkes but was never himself a real reformer. He
had bitterly attacked the Stamp Act on principle, refusing to support the Declara-
tory Act and any suggestion that Parliament had the right to impose internal taxes
on the American colonies. But it was during his ministry that Charles Townshend
imposed the external duties on American trade that exacerbated the American cri-
sis. He always believed that the American colonies should be subordinate to British
commercial and strategic interests. Bitterly alarmed by the outbreak of war, he had
no solution to offer that would win support in Parliament and also conciliate the
American colonies, and he would never accept complete American independence.
He frequently attacked Lord Norths handling of the American crisis and the Brit-
ish war effort. He died in May 1778 shortly after his last major speech in the Lords
defending his stance on America and lamenting the dismemberment of the British
Empire. See also Pitt, William (the Younger); Townshend Acts.
FURTHER READING: Ayling, Stanley. The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham. London: Collins, 1976;
Black, Jeremy. Pitt the Elder: The Great Commoner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992; Brown, P. D. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: The Great Commoner. London: Allen & Unwin,
1978; Peters, Marie. The Elder Pitt. New York: Longman, 1998; Tunstall, Brian. William Pitt, Earl
of Chatham. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938; Williams, Basil. The Life of William Pitt,
Earl of Chatham. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1913.
H. T. DICKINSON
Chaumette, a French revolutionary famous for his antireligious views, was born in
Nevers and began his career as a cabin boy. By 1789, he had settled in Paris, where
he chose to pursue a career in medicine. He welcomed the Revolution and proved to
be an active participant, becoming one of the orators at the Cordeliers Club, helping
to organize a mass demonstration on the Champ de Mars, and signing a petition de-
manding the abdication of Louis XVI in July 1791. An atheist, he shunned his Chris-
tian name and adopted the name of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras to express
his break with Christianity. He expressed his anti-Christian views in Les Rvolutions de
Paris (which he edited) and Chronique de Paris, which gradually gained in popularity.
Known for his democratic extremism, Chaumette was very popular among the
san-culottes of Paris and was elected to the Commune of Paris in 1792, serving as
its procurator general. In August 1792, he was a principle organizer of the Paris
sections for the insurrection of August 10, which led to the overthrowing of the
monarchy. Elected procureur of the Commune, he was one of the major political
gures of the Revolution and played an important role in preparing an insurrection
against the Girondins on June 2, 1793. Vehemently anti-Catholic, he launched a
program of secularization that led to the closure of churches, the suppression of
religious orders, attacks on religious property, and the removal of clerical control
Chnier, Marie-Joseph-Blaise 119
over education and public welfare. He sought to introduce social reforms in the
capital that forbid corporal punishment in schools, improved conditions in hos-
pitals, set rules for the public burial of the poor, and prohibited prostitution
and gambling. Despite his democratic beliefs, Chaumette opposed womens par-
ticipation in politics, though he fought for the recognition of divorce. He created a
culte de la patrie, which emphasized devotion to the nation and eventually led to the
famous Cult of Reason, which he famously celebrated in the Festival of Reason in
Notre Dame Cathedral, renamed the Temple of Reason, in November 1793. Simi-
lar festivals were later organized in provinces and led to attacks on the churches.
In late 1793, Chaumette was sent on a mission to the provinces, where he fos-
tered dechristianization policies. By 1794, he was widely perceived as one of the
leaders of the sans-culottes and, due to his extremism, as a potential threat to the
Jacobin dictatorship of Maximilien Robespierre. In March 1794, as the Jacobins
suppressed the supporters of Jacques-Ren Hbert, Robespierre denounced Chau-
mette (who was not a Hbertiste) for corrupting French morality through his athe-
istic policies. Chaumette was arrested, tried by the revolutionary tribunals, and
executed on April 13, 1794. See also French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Braesch, Fritz, ed. Papiers de Chaumette. Paris: Socit de lhistoire de
la Rvolution franaise, 1908; Aulard, Franois Alphonse, ed. Memoires de Chaumette sur la
rvolution du 10 aot 1792. Paris: Socit de lhistoire de la Rvolution franaise, 1893.
Marie-Joseph-Blaise Chnier was a French poet, writer, and revolutionary. Ch-
nier was born in Constantinople (Istanbul), where his father served as French con-
sul, and was raised at Carcassonne in France. After graduating from the Collge de
Navarre, he joined the army and served with the regiment of Montmorency for two
years. In the mid-1780s, he produced his rst literary works, including Edgar, which
debuted at the Comdie-Franaise in 1785. A year later, he wrote Azmire, followed
by Charles IX ou la Saint-Barthlemy, which was suppressed by royal censors in 1787.
Over the next two years, Chnier wrote a series of pamphlets, including Dnonciation
des inquisiteurs de la pense and De la libert du thtre en France, which denounced cen-
sorship and called for freedom of expression. This also publicized his play, which
was eventually staged to great success, with famous French actor Franois Joseph
Talma playing the lead role. The plays criticism of monarchy resonated with the
public and, in fact, caused a rift in the Comdie-Franaise. During the Revolution,
Chnier followed it up with Henri VIII (1791), Jean Calas (1792), Gaius Gracchus
(1792), Fnelon (1793), and Timolon (1794). In his plays, Chnier used historical
subjects to cast a critical eye on the current situation in France and promote his
own political ideas. After he disapproved of the violence of the Reign of Terror in
Timolon, his works were censored by the revolutionary authorities.
Besides his literary career, Chnier was actively involved in the Revolution, serving
as a member of the Cordeliers Club and the Paris Commune. He was elected to the
National Convention from the Seine-et-Oise dpartement and voted for the death of
Louis XVI. Chnier also served on the Committee of General Security and the Com-
mittee of Public Safety and, among other things, prepared a draft plan respecting
120 La Chouannerie
primary schools in 1792, which was enacted three years later. Together with the
painter Jacques-Louis David and composer Franois-Joseph Gossec, Chnier orga-
nized several revolutionary ftes and wrote patriotic songs and hymns, including
Chant du depart and Hymne la libert. Nevertheless, during the Terror, he was
suspected of moderate sentiments, as was his elder brother, Andr Marie Chnier, a
well-known poet who was accused of state treason and executed in July 1794, three
days before the end of the Terror. In 1796, Chnier, responding to accusations that
he conspired to bring about his brothers death, wrote an eloquent Eptre sur la cal-
omnie to clear his name.
Under the Directory, Chnier served on the Council of Five Hundred in the
late 1790s and later in the Tribunate during the Consulate. However, he opposed
Napoleons rule and was expelled from the Tribunate in 1802. The following year,
he joined the Acadmie Franaise in 1803 and was appointed inspector general of
the Imperial University. Nevertheless, he never fully reconciled with the imperial
government, writing Cyrus (1804), Promenade (1805), and Eptre Voltaire (1806), all
works critical of the empire. In 1806, he was dismissed from his post as inspector
general. Still, two years later, Napoleon commissioned him to write Tableau historique
de ltat et du progrs de la littrature franaise, a critical history of French literature dur-
ing the French Revolution and the empire. Chnier died on January 10, 1811. See also
Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Scott, Jesse L. Marie-Joseph Blaise Chnier (1764 1811): A Politicized
Playwright. PhD dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1985.
This name was given to an inchoate guerrilla war in the west of France (especially
in Brittany) that erupted during early 1793 and periodically thereafter as late as
1805, although most activity ceased after about 1796. The core of the chouan mem-
bership originated within the salt smugglers who operated in lower Brittany and
Maine before the French Revolution, and their name may come from a signal they
used to identify each other (the hooting of an owl). Their usual illegal activities were
perceived as counterrevolutionary when their civil disobedience began to impede
the enforcement of national legislation designed to improve the war effort. During
the spring of 1793, the National Convention decreed a leve en masse of 300,000
men to ght the war with Austria, Prussia, Britain, and Holland. The response in
many areas across the nation was a series of antidraft riots and demonstrations. Most,
as in Brittany, were quickly quelled. In the area immediately to the southeast of Brit-
tany known as the Vende, these disturbances coalesced into an active and armed
counterrevolutionary movement that, although mostly put down by the end of the
year, lasted for several years in one form or another.
Once it was clear that this kind of open rebellion was impossible in Brittany,
rebellion degenerated into furtive, secret attacks on the representatives and local
institutions of the national government. One of the earliest leaders was a former
salt smuggler named Jean Cottereau (known as Jean Chouan), whose small band
robbed travelers, mugged republicans and supporters of the national and local
La Chouannerie 121
governments, and ambushed army patrols beginning in late 1792. His goals, it
seems, were originally apolitical and centered essentially upon mere brigandage. His
success encouraged emulation, and the spontaneous emergence of several addi-
tional bands followed the draft riots of March 1793. As these bands began con-
ducting petty assaults upon the establishment, several nobles and royalists, both in
Brittany and elsewhere in France, as well as abroad, perceived an opportunity to
convert and mobilize apparent anti-revolutionaries in pursuit of their own goals.
Men such as Joseph de Puisaye led persistent efforts to weld the many disparate
bands into a coherent and unied army with identiable goals (the restoration of
priests, nobles, the king, and the ancien rgime in general). This effort largely failed
despite sporadic help from the British and exiled royalist leaders, and there were
no pitched battles or epic marches to free villages and towns from the government
as occurred in the Vende.
The failure of unabashed royalists to form an active counterrevolutionary army
out of the chouans can perhaps be traced to the origins of the movement itself.
Chouannerie cannot be dened simply as a counterrevolutionary royalist conspir-
acy. It was rather the manifestation of serious divisions within many (but not all)
Breton communities. Much of the problem centered on the distribution of land and
access to adequate acreage for the creation of successful farms. Most farmers either
rented much of their land or leased it for relatively short periods (5 9 year terms)
from owners who, most often, lived in the towns or larger villages. This dependence
of the farmers upon urbanites created divisions within Breton society, which tended
to be reinforced by the proclivity of the revolutionary national government to locate
its organs in towns. These divisions, which had social, economic, and political roots,
were then exacerbated by the interference of town dwellers, who represented both
the power of the national government and landlords, in rural disputes. The clash
between the town dwellers, who largely supported (and beneted from) the Revolu-
tion, and rural notables (who rented much of their farms and had therefore prof-
ited little since 1789) was in essence a rural civil war that became a national problem
when the national government tried to enforce the laws on recruitment.
The enforcement of various additional national legislation, especially the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy of 1791 (which required all priests to take an oath to the
constitution), exacerbated tensions between these groups and drove large num-
bers of rural notables into political opposition to the local representatives of the
government (who were also often their landlords). This dissatisfaction evolved into
chouannerie when these rural notables, under continuing difcult economic and
social pressures, gradually transferred their allegiance from the revolutionary gov-
ernment, which had offered and given them little, to protean royalism, which in
theory promised a return to their previous prosperity. Chouannerie, in other words,
was a protest movement against the encroaching power of urban property owners as
they attempted to enforce the will of the national government upon a countryside
unwilling to bear these burdens. See also Chouans; Vendan Rebellion.
FURTHER READING: Hutt, Maurice. Chouannerie and Counter-Revolution: Puisaye, the Princes
and the British Government in the 1790s. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983;
Sutherland, Donald. The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brit-
tany, 1770 1796. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
LEE BAKER
122 Chouans
Chouans
A name applied to groups of rebels against the French revolutionary government,
this word originally applied only to a guerrilla band organized by Jean Cottereau, a
former smuggler in Brittany who adopted the alias Jean Chouan during 1792. The
name may have originated with smugglers in Brittany who used the sound of the
screech owl, or chat-huant in the local dialect, as a signal or password. As opposition
to the central government in Brittany coalesced into counterrevolutionary activities
when conscription was decreed during 1793, the name was applied generally to the
many counterrevolutionary bands operating in Brittany. See also La Chouannerie;
French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Sutherland, Donald. The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-
Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770 1796. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
LEE BAKER
An inuential patriot leader in Boston before the Revolution, Church was a
talented, articulate, and forceful spokesman for independence who eventually be-
trayed that cause. A Harvard graduate and doctor, Church was a member of the
Sons of Liberty and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
Well known for his pro-patriot writings, he was also writing anonymous articles
supporting the British cause. Most seriously, he was a spy, passing information to
the British governor, General Thomas Gage. In time, Churchs actions aroused sus-
picions. Churchs discovery and trial raised signicant issues. Aside from the shock
that his treason created, there were legal problems associated with his trial. He was
convicted of communicating with the enemy and sentenced to prison because no
specic offense then existed that merited the death penalty. The Continental Con-
gresss Committee of Secret Correspondence eventually corrected that deciency,
but Church was not retroactively condemned to death. He was sentenced to life
imprisonment but eventually paroled. Church left for the West Indies, but his ship
was lost at sea. See also Committees of Correspondence; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: French, Allen. General Gages Informers; New Material upon Lexington
and Concord. Benjamin Thompson as Loyalist and the Treachery of Benjamin Church. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1932.
ROBERT N. STACY
Cisalpine Republic (1797 1802)
The Cisalpine Republic was a French client state created by Napoleon during
the French invasion of Italy in 1796 1797. Located around the city of Milan, the
Republic became one of the rst of a series of revolutionary states.
This state was brought into existence through war, specically Frances invasion
of Italy. To facilitate their advance French forces encouraged Italian Jacobins to rise
up in revolt against their rulers. Though they would not be successful in helping the
French to defeat the Austrians, they were encouraged by Napoleon to create their
own governments modeled on that of France.
Citizenship 123
The result was the Cisalpine Republic, which was brought into existence on June
29, 1797. The constitution was written by Italian Jacobins, though Napoleon main-
tained ultimate control over the state through his ability to control all appointments.
Initially conned to Lombardy, the Cisalpine Republic was later enhanced by the
addition of the territories of Modena, Ferrara, and Bologna and part of the Vene-
tian Republic. The states existence was conrmed with the signing of the Treaty of
Campo Formio on October 17, 1797. The Republic collapsed after France was de-
feated by the forces of the Second Coalition in August 1799 and was occupied by the
Austrians until June 1800, when Napoleon defeated them at the Battle of Marengo.
Reformed after the Treaty of Lunville in February 1801, the Cisalpine Republic
became the Italian Republic in January 1802, and the Kingdom of Italy in 1805. See
also Austria; French Revolutionary Wars.
FURTHER READING: Gregory, Desmond. Napoleons Italy. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2001.
ROY KOEPP
Citizen
A citizen is any person who in principle has a contractual relationship with a
state involving certain legal rights against the state as well as obligations to it. The
origin of the concept is inseparable from the notion of membership in a political
community developed in the Greek polis in the eighth century b.c. The Greek idea
was that certain individuals voluntarily formed an association in which they shared
authority in the creation and enforcement of public policy. With rare exceptions,
the feature that distinguished the Greek polis from all previous political formations
was the essentially republican ideal of freely associated citizens. See also American
Revolution; French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Mayer, Arno. The Furies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2000; Schama, Simon. Citizens. New York: Vintage, 1989; Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of
the American Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1991.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Citizenship
The modern understanding of citizenship is based not only on the Greek im-
perative of individual participation in public affairs but also the Roman practice of
extending citizenship to plebeians and conquered peoples. An increasingly hetero-
geneous body of citizens regarded their Roman status as a right to equal protection
under the law as much as a passport to active involvement in politics. This egalitarian
strain was prominent in American and French revolutionary concepts of citizenship.
The American Revolution changed the status of the colonist fundamentally from
that of a subjectderived from the Latin words sub and jacio and referring to the
status of one who is under the power of anotherto that of a citizen, who is an
individual unit of a mass of free men who collectively hold the sovereignty that a
monarch had hitherto possessed and personied. David Ramsey, a South Carolinian
of the revolutionary generation, argued accordingly that each citizen of a free state
contains, within himself, by nature and the constitution as much of the common
124 Civic Oaths
sovereignty as another. Both the contractual and the egalitarian features of repub-
lican citizenship found formal expression in both the American Declaration of
Independence and the United States Constitution as well as the French Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
In his Reections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke protested that the re-
lationship of citizenship to the state must surely be more than that of stockholders
in a joint stock company. Until the trauma of the American Civil War established a
popular sense of the republics nationhood, the operative American denition of
citizenship was nonetheless comparatively arid and impersonal. However, for leaders
of the Third Estate such as Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Jacques Rousseaus idea
of a sublime reciprocity between the individual citizen and the General Will was suf-
ciently attractive, under the theatrical and histrionic conditions accompanying the
French Revolution, to acquire sinister implications. In the newly egalitarian culture
of Paris, citizens were driven from euphoria to vengeance against real and imagined
enemies of the Revolution through the institution of the Reign of Terror.
FURTHER READING: Mayer, Arno. The Furies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2000; Schama, Simon. Citizens. New York: Vintage, 1989; Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of
the American Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1991.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Civic Oaths
Words were a very important part of the French Revolution, especially those ut-
tered in public. The act of swearing allegiance to the state through a civic oath
became the dening act of patriotism, the acknowledgment of ones total delity
to the people, the nation, and the government, and symbolized individual unity
with the people. In an age when even apparently mundane words acquired new
symbolic meanings, the act of publicly declaring delity erased the line between
private thoughts and public actions; it made transparent the good intentions and
patriotism of the oath taker and, by extension, made clear the malevolent intentions
of the nonjuror.
National Guardsmen, newly elected mayors and city councils, and even average
people swept up by waves of patriotism took oaths throughout the revolutionary
period. The rst, and probably the most important, was the Tennis Court Oath. On
June 20, 1789, about 60 members of the Third Estate and a few individuals from the
privileged orders found the meeting hall of the Estates-General locked. Fearing the
dissolution of the Estates and their personal arrest, they swore, both orally and with
their signatures, never to separate until they had drafted a constitution for France.
This dramatic act of deance against the king became, even at the time, one of the
dening moments of the early Revolution. Not all oaths united the country, however.
In November 1790, the government required all clerics to take an oath to the consti-
tution to ensure their allegiance in the face of the vast reforms aimed at the church
and the resultant conicts with the papacy. The pope forbade the taking of this oath
and thereby placed the clerics in the position of obeying the law and taking the oath,
or obeying the pope and not taking the oath. Eventually nonjuring priests were de-
creed suspects and laws were enacted to expel them from the country. See also Civil
Constitution of the Clergy; Constitutions, French Revolutionary; National Guard.
Civil Code 125
FURTHER READING: McManners, John. The French Revolution and the Church. New York:
Harper & Row, 1970; Starobinski, Jean. 1789: The Emblems of Reason. Translated by Barbara
Bray. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1982.
LEE BAKER
Civil Code
The French civil code was established under Emperor Napoleon I in 1804. The
Civil Code, also known as the Code Napolon (Napoleonic Code), is one of the
most important and lasting achievements of its age. It provided a clear statement of
citizens rights and liberties and dened the legal bounds of family law and property
ownership. Napoleon, looking back from his exile, claimed the Civil Code among
his greatest achievements.
The French legal system under the Bourbon dynasty varied greatly depending on
region. The southern provinces historically employed a version of Roman law, while
those to the north followed laws of custom. Regional differences were particularly
noteworthy in laws of inheritance. In the south, the law followed the principle of
primogeniture and favored the eldest son at the expense of other children, while
in the north, the legal tradition advocated equal treatment of the offspring. Such
differences were not only important from a legal point of view but had profound so-
cioeconomic effects on the population as well. The Revolution produced enormous
changes in French society. The entire political and social order was dramatically al-
tered and the feudal legal system was effectively abolished. In the midst of revolution-
ary strife and foreign threats, almost 15,000 pieces of legislation were adopted, and
many of them were not always consistent with each other, a fact that complicated the
uniform administration of justice throughout the country. To remedy this, the work
on the Civil Code, which would codify and establish a unitary legal system, began
during the Revolution when several attempts were made to codify the multitude of
diverse legal traditions that existed in the French kingdom. Jean-Jacques-Rgis de
Cambacrs was among those who participated in this early work, and he supervised
preparations of three successive drafts of the Civil Code in 1793 1796.
The change in government in November 1799, when Bonaparte overthrew the
Directory, provided a new impetus to the process of codication. In August 1800,
Napoleon assembled a commission of legal experts, which included such bright
minds as Cambacrs, Franois-Denis Tronchet, Felix-Julian-Jean Bigot de Pr-
ameney, Jacques de Malleville, and Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis, to work on the
monumental task of drafting and adopting the Civil Code. In January 1801, the
commission submitted its preliminary report and the draft code was discussed at
the Council of State, where Bonaparte himself attended many meetings and inu-
enced the drafting of certain provisions, especially those concerning marriage and
the legal rights of women. The rst draft was completed in December 1801, but it
faced resistance in the Tribunate, where some portions of the Code were found to
be insufciently revolutionary in spirit. In response, Bonaparte purged the Tribu-
nate in 1802 and had the Civil Code promulgated on March 21, 1804. The Civil
Code was followed by a Code of Civil Procedure in 1806, a Commercial Code in
1807, a Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure in 1808, and a Penal Code
in 1810. A Rural Code was prepared, but never promulgated. The Code Napolon,
126 Civil Code
renamed the Civil Code, was substantially retained after the restoration of the Bour-
bons in 1815. Thus, the Napoleonic Code consisted of seven codes, with the Civil
Code constituting the rst and most important element.
The Civil Code was organized into a preliminary portion and three books that
were divided into titles and chapters, each containing specic articles. The Code rep-
resented a mix of liberalism and conservatism. It dened provisions regulating the
rule of law and guaranteed individual liberty, equality before the law and in taxation,
freedom from arrest without due process, religious freedom, and the right to choose
ones work. Laws could only be applied if they had been duly promulgated and if they
had been published ofcially. The Code prohibited ex post facto laws that applied
to events that occurred before the laws had been enacted. It prohibited judges from
refusing justice on grounds of insufciency of the law and encouraged the judicial
interpretation of the law, but without general judgments of a legislative value.
Its provisions on property, family, and inheritance law consolidated the achieve-
ments of the Revolution and secured the gains enjoyed by the bourgeoisie. The Civil
Code established the modern conception of property ownership. It argued that the
individual had absolute rights of ownership and dened this as the right to enjoy
and to dispose of ones property in the most absolute fashion, provided that it is not
used in a manner prohibited by law. The land was freed of feudal obligations and
servitude, while the Code preached unregulated economic liberalism that clearly
favored employers over their workers.
The Code proved to be more conservative in the eld of family law, and Napo-
leons own conservative views and his emphasis on the value of the family played
an important role in this. Under the Codes provisions, the authority of fathers and
husbands was strengthened. Fathers had the right to imprison their disobedient chil-
dren for a month up to the age of 16, and for six months thereafter. A father could
prevent his sons marriage until he was 26, and his daughters until she reached 21.
Elder children still needed the formal permission of their parents to marry. Matri-
mony was completely secularized, and the marriage service had to be performed
as a civil ceremony in order to be legal. The issue of dowry, which was a prevalent
tradition at the time, was resolved through an arrangement between the couple in
their marriage contract. The Civil Code upheld the patriarchal authority and gave
considerable authority to the husband over his wife. Individual children could not
be disinherited, but illegitimate children could inherit only if they were legitimized.
Unlike the revolutionary legislation that compelled the testator to give equal shares
to every heir, the Civil Code allowed the testator to dispose of a quarter of the estate
as he or she pleased. The right to divorce was preserved but was curtailed in order to
keep the families together. This change was detrimental to womens status and was a
step back from the revolutionary law that set simple and equal grounds for divorce
for both genders. Thus, if a wife caught her husband en agrante delicto and shot him,
she was considered a murderer. Under reversed circumstances, the husbands actions
would be considered justied and no charge could be brought against him. Further-
more, womens right to divorce was seriously curtailed by the provision that allowed
husbands to keep a mistress outside the home to avoid a charge of adultery. Womens
property remained under the management of the husband or a male relative, and
women were treated as if they were minors in legal proceedings. These provisions
had a lasting effect on the status of women in France. Some portions of the Code,
such as those relating to legal equality and divorce, were not revised until the 1960s.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy 127
The Code became an instrument of French rule in Europe and was spread by the
victorious Napoleonic armies to virtually every corner of the Continent. Its liberal
and progressive provisions often helped Napoleon to win the support of the local
middle class for French rule in the conquered territories. In short, the Code was
essential in preserving and spreading the social gains of the Revolution outside
France. By 1812, it had been either in whole or in parts introduced in Belgium,
the Netherlands, the Germanic states of the Confederation of the Rhine, Bavaria,
Switzerland, Spain, and the Italian states. It also inuenced legislation in Austria
and Prussia. In later decades, the Civil Code served as a model for the codes of law
of more than 20 nations throughout the world, including various South American
states, Japan, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Egypt; and the American state of Louisi-
ana has preserved some provisions of the Napoleonic Code to the present day. In
France, the Code underwent various changes over its rst century and a half of life
but continues to operate to the present day. Together with Napoleons administra-
tive and educational systems, it became a cornerstone of French national unity.
FURTHER READING: Arnaud, Andr-Jean. Les origines doctrinales du Code civil des franais.
Paris: Librairie gnrale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1969; Lyons, Martyn. Napoleon Bonaparte
and the Legacy of the French Revolution. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994; Prvault, Jacques.
Le Code Napolon: Ses fondements philosophiques et son rayonnement dans le monde. Saarbrucken:
Europa-Institut der Universitat des Saarlandes, 1985.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which ended the dominant position of the
Roman Catholic Church in revolutionary France, was passed on July 12, 1790, by the
National Assembly. The privileges of the church had been targeted by the French
revolutionaries, who wanted to streamline this institution. The privileges of the
church were withdrawn; tithes were abolished, church property meant for church
revenue was conscated, and monastic vows were prohibited. The 30-member eccle-
siastical committee of February 1790 prepared a constitution after much debate,
and King Louis XVI accepted the constitution on December 26, 1790.
The church had to work like any other department of the nation with an oath of
allegiance by the clergy to France. The number of bishops was reduced to 83 from
135, and they were to be elected and paid by the state. No foreign power was to ex-
ercise supremacy over the church or French bishops. The constitution categorically
stated that bishops and parish priests were to be chosen by election only. Clergymen
would be provided with a house, salary, and pension after retirement. In addition,
salaries of the lower clergy were doubled.
The constitution was condemned by the pope. Only seven bishops and half the
clergy took the oath of allegiance. They came to be known as patriotic priests, and
the rest as nonjurors or refractory priests. Relations with the pope deteriorated, and
the French ambassador to the Vatican was recalled in May 1791. Some refractory
priests indulged in counterrevolutionary activities and were arrested. In time, the
nation was split between the two factions of the clergy, bringing in its wake violence,
civil war, and emigration. The schism thus created between the French church and
the papacy nally ended with the Concordat of 1801, initiated by Napoleon. See also
Constitutions, French Revolutionary; French Revolution; Religion.
128 Cobbett, William
FURTHER READING: Blanning, T.C.W. The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996; Furet, Franois. The French Revolution, 1770 1815. Cam-
bridge: Blackwell, 1996; Jones, P. M. Reform and Revolution in France, 1774 1791. New York:
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Club des Impartiaux
See Impartiaux, Club des
Clubs
See Political Clubs (French)
William Cobbet was a British writer and radical politician known particularly
for his support for the reform of Parliament. Cobbett started his working life as a
ploughboy before joining the army in 1783, serving in Canada, and rising to the
rank of sergeant-major. On leaving the army in 1791, he wrote The Soldiers Friend
(1792), a passionate indictment of the harsh treatment and poor pay of the com-
mon soldier. Fearing retribution, he sailed for the United States, where he stayed
until 1800. In the United States, he wrote various pamphlets and newspaper essays
condemning Thomas Paine and the French Revolution under the name Peter Por-
cupine. Facing a charge of libel, he returned to England. There he started a loyalist
daily newspaper, The Porcupine, but soon gave up this venture. He turned instead
to publishing a weekly, the Political Register, which he published from January 1802
until his death. In the leading article, a feature he introduced, he set forth his po-
litical and social views, and in its pages he serialized most of his 20 books. Between
1804 and 1812 he also collected and published the parliamentary debates since the
origins of Parliament; and from 1809 to 1812 he published a collection of the state
trials. The Political Register started as an anti-Jacobin publication, but by 1804, Cob-
bett was expressing his concern about the size of the national debt, the reliance on
paper money, the award of unmerited sinecures, and the growth of executive power
and corruption. By 1807 he was allied with John Cartwright and Francis Burdett in
promoting parliamentary reform.
From 1810 to 1812, he was imprisoned in Newgate jail for criticizing in print the
ogging of some militiamen. Many issues of the Political Register were devoted to
explaining the economic hardship of farm workers. Following the disastrous har-
vest in 1816, Cobbett launched a mass-circulation broadsheet edition of the Political
Register, priced at two pence. It sold 44,000 copies in its rst month. Fearing pros-
ecution after the passing of repressive legislation, Cobbett again sailed for America
in 1817. While there, he published his Grammar of the English Language, which went
through numerous editions over many years. He returned in October 1819, carry-
ing with him the bones of Thomas Paine, but these subsequently went missing. He
was soon bankrupt and at odds with other radicals such as Henry Hunt. His fortunes
Cockades 129
revived in 1820 when the Queen Caroline affair, to which he devoted numerous
issues of the Political Register, attracted much public attention.
Throughout the 1820s, Cobbett was preoccupied with the distressed state of English
farming. He insisted the only solution was radical parliamentary reform. He em-
barked on his celebrated rural rides, mainly across the southern counties, between
1821 and 1826 and began writing about these in 1830. Cobbett also wrote several
works on agricultural subjects. Many of his later publications, even his best-selling
History of the Protestant Reformation (1824 1827), accused the state of dispossessing
the English poor. From 1828 to 1830 he frequently warned of the dangers of an
agricultural revolt. When such a revolt occurred in 1830 1831, the new Whig gov-
ernment suspected that he had helped to foment it. Charged with incitement, he
defended himself and was acquitted. Cobbett then turned his attention to securing
the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, though the bill did not extend the
franchise as much as he desired. In the following general election at the end of
1832, he was elected to the House of Commons for the new parliamentary borough
of Oldham. In Parliament he supported the prosecuted Dorset agricultural laborers
known as the Tolpuddle martyrs and unsuccessfully opposed the Poor Law Amend-
ment Act of 1834. Despite a life of heroic endeavor and the massive sales of his many
publications, he died bankrupt.
FURTHER READING: Cole, G.D.H. The Life of William Cobbett. 3rd ed. London: Home & Van
Thal, 1947; Green, Daniel. Great Cobbett: The Noblest Agitator. London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1983; Ingrams, Richard. The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett. London: HarperCollins,
2005; Spater, George. William Cobbett: The Poor Mans Friend. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge
H. T. DICKINSON
Cockades
Cockades were colored ribbons that were usually afxed to a hat and denoted the
ideological and/or factional allegiance of the wearer. Their most famous use was in
the American Revolution and the French Revolution. In the American Revolution,
the color black denoted American patriotism. The French troops sent to America
used the white cockadethe color of the monarchy. It became fashionable to wear
black and white cockades intertwined, representing the Franco-American alliance.
Cockades took on great signicance in the French Revolution. Black, white,
green, and tricolor cockades appeared in the course of the conict. Black repre-
sented the aristocracy and counterrevolution, and whitethe color of the Bourbon
dynastyrepresented the royalist forces and army, while green (standing for hope)
initially represented the revolutionary forces, later to be supplanted by the tricolor
cockade, the symbol of the new republic.
Cockades were also employed in Haiti, where the red symbolized for pro-
revolution and white represented those associated with the status quo. See also
Symbols (American Revolutionary); Symbols (French Revolutionary).
FURTHER READING: Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. New York: Modern
Library, 2002; Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution. New York: Perennial, 2002.
CHARLES ALLAN
130 Coercive Acts
Code Napolon
See Civil Code
The Coercive Acts (also known in colonial America as the Intolerable Acts) were
ve pieces of legislation enacted by Parliament during the spring of 1774, prompted
by the previous Decembers Boston Tea Party. Parliament designed the Coercive
Acts not only to secure compensation for the British East India Companys nancial
loss, but also to tighten imperial administration of the openly rebellious colony of
Massachusetts. The Coercive Acts included the Administration of Justice Act and
the Massachusetts Government Act (both effective May 20, 1774), the Boston Port
Act (effective June 1, 1774), the Quartering Act (effective June 2, 1774), and the
Quebec Act (effective October 7, 1774). With the exception of the Massachusetts
Government Act, all were intended to be temporary measures.
Parliament drafted the Boston Port Bill to coerce the town of Boston to compen-
sate the British East India Company for the loss of its tea, then valued at 18,000.
Contemporary Whigsboth provincial and Britishregarded the Port Bills clo-
sure of Boston Harbor to all ship trafc as an extreme measure. Bostons economy
depended upon the carrying trade and its peripheral industries. When the Port Bill
was implemented, it consequently induced an economic crisis as many Bostonians
lost their livelihoods. Donations of food and money from throughout New England
and as far away as Charlestown, South Carolina, were delivered via Boston Neck
the narrow strip of land that then connected the Boston peninsula to the mainland.
Several afuent provincials (including Benjamin Franklin) offered to pay for the
cost of the tea, but Bostons town meeting refused their offers.
The Massachusetts Government Act revoked the provisions of that colonys 1691
charter. Provisions from Massachusettss 1629 and 1691 charters had granted greater
authority for self-government than enjoyed by any other English colony. Genera-
tions of Massachusetts provincials had not only used that latitude to administer
local affairs but in the preceding decade had also taken advantage of the chartered
town meeting format to debate and adopt resolutions that rejected the premise that
sovereignty rested in Parliament to legislate and tax Britains American colonies.
Parliament, however, regarded these activities as a gross abuse of chartered power.
To reign in this trend toward popular control of provincial governance, Parliament
therefore stipulated in the Government Act that town meetings could be scheduled
only with the royal governors consent and its agenda could consider local issues
only. Massachusettss towns circumvented these restrictions by recessing rather than
adjourning, which allowed them to reconvene without calling a new meeting. Even
without this parliamentary sleight of hand, the vast majority of towns lay beyond the
reach of the British occupation force in Boston.
The Administration of Justice Act provided that British ofcials could not be tried
in a local colonial court for capital crimes committed in the process of enforcing tax
regulations or suppressing riots against those regulations. Instead, the trial would
be moved to either another colony or Britain. The act provided that if the defen-
dant was acquitted of the charge, the defendant could sue the original ling party
to collect court costs as well as punitive damages. Parliament deemed this measure
Coercive Acts 131
necessary for British ofcials to enforce imperial laws (for example, the Tea Act)
without threat of retribution or biased judgments from provincial judges and ju-
ries. Provincial Americans, however, believed that at best this act released royal
ofcials from any obligation to act in accord with the interests of their provincial
constituencies and at worst gave royal ofcials carte blanche to commit atrocities
with impunity.
The Quartering Act of 1774 was actually the third revision to the Quartering
Act rst implemented in March of 1765. The original act was intended to ensure
provincial Americans cooperated in constructing adequate housing and in making
unoccupied buildings available to house British troops. The 1774 installment of the
Quartering Act (drafted by Thomas Gage while temporarily in London) required
provincial Americans to also make occupied buildings and private homes available
to billet British soldiers and ofcers.
Parliament drafted the Quebec Act to better administer the territory Britain had
won from France in the Seven Years (French and Indian) War. Among other provi-
sions, the Quebec Act stipulated that legislation of any signicance written in Que-
bec must be submitted within six months to the British government in London for
approval. Regarded in Britain as an innocuous and necessary measure to administer
an expanded empire, the Quebec Act met with a variety of objections in the Ameri-
can colonies. Many American provincials objected that the act extended Canadas
southern border to the Ohio River, creating conict with land claims made by Mas-
sachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia and obstructing these colonies from expand-
ing westward to provide farmland for future generations. Veterans of the provincial
militia units that had fought with the British in the four imperial wars with France
also objected because the act ceded land to a former enemy. New Englanders took
particular affront to the Quebec Acts provision that granted religious toleration
to Quebecs 65,000 Catholics. New Englands earliest Puritans had emigrated from
England in the 1620s and 1630s in part because they felt Anglican leaders had not
sufciently puried vestiges of Catholicism from the Church of England. New Eng-
landers therefore regarded the Quebec Acts endorsement of Catholicism as having
sanctioned a religion they deemed heresy.
Taken together, the Coercive Acts appeared to provincials in Massachusetts and
the other colonies as a plot organized by George IIIs ministers to usurp their eco-
nomic livelihood and chartered authority for self-government. Rather than isolate
provincials in Massachusetts as intended, the acts united provincial Americans and
broadened support for the revolutionary movement both within Massachusetts and
throughout the colonies. Before the Coercive Acts were imposed, many Massachu-
setts residents beyond the greater Boston area (particularly in the western counties
of Berkshire and Hampshire) had largely ignored Parliaments taxation measures
and had been disinterested in provincial Whigs resistance efforts; their distance
from the seaboard had largely insulated them from the effects of these measures.
The resistance and rebellion pervasive in and around Boston for a decade had also
appeared to provincials in other colonies as having constituted a local conict. The
Massachusetts Government Act and Boston Port Act, however, persuaded provincials
throughout the American colonies that their continued control of provincial affairs
and economic livelihoods were in jeopardy. Virginias House of Burgesses proposed
that the colonies should meet to formulate a coordinated response to Parliaments
increasingly intrusive imperial policies. This suggestion led to the formation of the
132 Collot dHerbois, Jean Marie
First Continental Congress, which rst convened in Philadelphia on September 5,
1774. See also Committees of Correspondence.
FURTHER READING: Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the
Coercive Acts of 1774. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974; Reid, John Phillip.
Constitutional History of the American Revolution. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
Jean Marie Collot dHerbois was a French revolutionary politician and member
of the Committee of Public Safety. Born in Paris to a goldsmith, Collot left the capi-
tal at a young age to seek fame and fortune in the provinces and abroad. He tried
to make a career acting, writing plays, and managing theaters throughout Europe.
By the age of 20 in 1769, he was acting in plays in Toulouse and Bordeaux. His rst
authored play, Lucie ou les Parents imprudents was performed in several provincial
theatersNancy, Toulouse, and Brusselsand a second edition appeared in 1774.
When the French Revolution broke out, Collot was in Paris, directing his plays.
He began an almanac, Lalmanach du pre Grard, which supported the constitutional
monarchy and made him famous. He joined the Jacobin Club in 1791. As a mem-
ber of the Paris Commune, he was involved in the planning of the insurrection of
August 10, 1792, which ended the monarchy. Elected a deputy to the National Con-
vention, representing Paris, Collot was elected to the Committee of Public Safety on
September 6, 1793. He was a representative on mission to the Nivre, the Loiret,
the Oise, and the Aisne departments. With Joseph Fouch, Collot was responsible
for the repression of royalist sympathizers in Lyon. He was one of the most ruthless
terrorists and extremists of the Revolution.
As a supporter of the dechristianization campaign with Jacques Hbert and Fou-
ch in late 1793, Collot came into conict with Maximilien Robespierre. Rivalry
at the Jacobin Club and Convention served to enhance their mutual animosity. Col-
lot assisted in Robespierres fall from power on 9 Thermidor ( July 27, 1794). It was
not long, however, until he fell from power, and after the abortive uprising of 12
Germinal (April 1, 1795), he was deported to Guiana, where he died of yellow fever.
See also Jacobins; Representatives on Mission; Thermidorian Reaction.
FURTHER READING: Biard, Michel. Collot dHerbois: Lgendes noires et rvolution. Lyon: Presses
universitaires de Lyon, 1995; Manseld, Paul. Collot dHerbois at the Committee of Public
Safety: A Revaluation. English Historical Review 103, no. 408 (1988): 565 87; Manseld, Paul.
The Management of the Terror in Montagnard Lyon, Year II. European History Quarterly 20,
no. 2 (1990): 465 96; Palmer, R. R. The Year of the Terror: Twelve Who Ruled France, 1793 1794.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941.
LEIGH WHALEY
The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, passed by Parliament under the conser-
vative leadership of prime minister William Pitt the Younger, forbade any form of
organized activity for workers to win improvements in working conditions or wages.
The acts were part of the reaction of the British government against the radicalism
Committee of Public Safety 133
associated with workers and the French Revolution, as well as an expression of the
conict between owners and workers in many industries. The British government
was wary of domestic revolutionaries, Jacobins, sympathetic to the French Republic.
There had been two serious mutinies in the navy in 1797, and the following year
a French army had actually landed in Ireland to collaborate with Irish rebels. The
government had been moving in the direction of greater repression from the begin-
ning of the war with France in 1793.
The act of 1799 cancelled all previous agreements, written or unwritten, made
between workers acting cooperatively and employers. It forbade workers from com-
bining to press for any improvement in wages and working conditions on pain of
two months hard labor. Workers were also forbidden to encourage other workers
to quit, or to object to working with anyone else. The act attacked workers solidar-
ity by making anyone contributing to the expenses of a person convicted under the
acts subject to a 10 ne and by making it possible to force defendants to testify
against each other.
Although there was little opposition to the act of 1799 in or out of Parliament,
after its passage it faced organized working-class opposition. A coordinated cam-
paign led to a ood of petitions to Parliament from workers in English cities de-
manding its repeal. The government decided to modify some of its more obnoxious
features. The nal version of the Combination Act in 1800 still prohibited workers
from joining together to win increases in wages or decreases in hours but made it
more difcult to convict violators. The 1800 act also set up an arbitration system,
among the last appearances of the idea that local magistrates could have a role to
play in setting wages and prices. However, this arbitration procedure was seldom
used. The new Combination Act also went beyond the 1799 act to explicitly forbid
employers combinations, but these provisions were never enforced.
The Combination Acts were not the only legal weapon available to employers,
and most prosecutions of workers organizations in the ensuing years took place
under other laws. Enforcement of the acts and other antiunion laws varied tremen-
dously across regions and industries and were often particularly lax in areas where
magistrates, frequently drawn from rural gentry or Church of England clergymen,
had more paternalistic values than did business owners. Although the acts did not
destroy workers organizations, they contributed to government and employers re-
pression of trades unions. They were repealed in 1824.
FURTHER READING: Rice, John, ed. British Trade Unionism, 1750 1850: The Formative Years.
London: Longman, 1988; Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1964.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
Commission of Orange
See Orange, Commission of
The Committee of Public Safety was an attempt to solve the problem of creating an
effective executive power to make critical decisions at a time when the government
134 Committee of Public Safety
was facing attacks from both within and without. The committee came into exis-
tence in 1793, lasting until October 1795. As a powerful executive, however, its role
really came to an end in the wake of a coup staged on 9 Thermidor, Year II ( July 27,
1794), of the French Revolution. Although described as a slight commotion that
would leave the Government intact, the coup, known as the Thermidorian Reac-
tion, effectively ended the primacy of the Committee of Public Safety.
Before the French Revolution, it had been understood that the executive, one
with almost unimaginable power, was King Louis XVI of France. Since 1789, that
power had been severely curtailed but even as he was imprisoned and tried, Louis
was still Frances executive according to the constitution of 1791. He would remain
so until his execution in January 1793. While Louiss role was diminishing, the gov-
ernment itself was facing several crises that threatened its survival. In March, the
revolutionary armies were suffering defeats at the hands of foreign armies. In the
far west of France, the Vendan rebellion created opposition that would eventually
require serious military intervention on the part of the government as well as large-
scale reprisals.
The need for some kind of executive committee, preferably based on the Com-
mittee of General Security that had existed before, was obvious. It is worth noting
that this committee, while supplanted in importance, still existed. Throughout the
life of the Committee of Public Safety, these two bodies would maintain a rivalry
that would end only with the Thermidorian Reaction, in which some Committee of
General Security members participated.
On April 6, 1793, the National Convention created a committee of nine members
called the Committee of Public Safety. The committee would meet in secret, report
to the National Assembly weekly, supervise the various ministries, and manage the
national defense effort. Thus, a great deal of power was concentrated in a rather
small group, with not a great deal of visibility into their deliberations, to see the
nation through its time of danger.
In this light, it is not surprising that even when the Constitution of 1793 was
adopted in June, its implementation was delayed. The constitutionally dened ex-
ecutive was to have been a select committee of 24 individuals selected by the Con-
vention to serve for two years. Along with the rest of the constitution, that body was
never established, its proposed role having been lled by the Committee of Public
Safety. The delay, in implementing the constitution, which turned out to be perma-
nent, was conrmed in October 1793. The Convention stated that the provisional
government of France would be a revolutionary government until the peace.
The Committee of Public Safety had a wide range of powers, but it was subject
to what in theory were stringent term limits. Each committee member served for a
period of one month, which had to be renewed by the Convention. In real terms,
within a very short time, this came to be a pro forma requirement. In the summer of
1793 the committee was expanded to 10 members, and in September of that year the
composition of the committee was set at 12. This Twelve Who Ruled, sometimes
referred to as the Great Committee, remained quite stable in terms of personnel
until 9 Thermidor. The 12 were Maximilien Robespierre (who had replaced Georges
Danton as a member of the committee), Bertrand Barre de Vieuzac, Jacques Nico-
las Billaud-Varenne, Lazare Carnot, Jean Marie Collot dHerbois, and Georges
Couthon, Marie Jean Hrault de Schelles, Robert-Thomas Lindet, Prieur de la Cte-
DOr (Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois), Pierre-Louis Prieur (called Prieur de la Marne
Committee of Public Safety 135
to distinguish him from Prieur de la Cte-DOr), Jeanbon Saint-Andr, and Louis
Antoine Saint-Just.
They came from a variety of backgrounds. In temperament they ranged from
practical men (Lindet, Saint-Andr, and Carnot) to the idealistic and impractical
(Danton once said that Robespierre was incapable of even boiling an egg). Carnot
was a military specialist, sometimes referred to as the Organizer of Victory, while
Saint-Andr, a former ship captain, became involved in naval affairs while also help-
ing to put down the rebellion in the Vende. Prieur de la Cte-DOr had also been
an army ofcer. Several (Barre, Billaud-Varenne, Couthon, Lindet, Prieur de la
Marne, Robespierre, and Saint-Just) were lawyers or at least had received legal train-
ing. One (Hrault de Schelles) was a nobleman. One, Collot dHerbois had acted
in and written plays. Most of them had been born in the 1750s, which put the aver-
age age in the late thirties to early forties. Robert Lindet, born in 1743, was the oldest;
Saint-Just, born in 1767, the youngest.
Each specialized in a particular area. Robespierre was the spokesman for the
committee and, while he held the post unofcially, was recognized as the leader
of the committee. Of all the committee members, Robespierre was the only one
never to leave Paris to go on mission. Representatives on mission of the National
Convention were often sent on assignments that combined fact nding with imple-
menting solutions (often of a judicial nature). Because members of the Committee
of Public Safety were often on these types of missions, they never met together as
a group of 12. Some would be gone for months at a time. Robespierres presence
until June 1794, when he stopped attending to committee business, was a constant
despite the shifts in who was present in Paris. The committee was supported by a
large clerical staff as well as an extensive and efcient messenger system.
Military affairs were an important part of the committees expanding responsi-
bilities and had been a key element of its original charter. Carnot, both Prieurs, and
Saint-Just all had military responsibilities, from planning to strategy to the conduct
of armies in the eld to supplying ordnance to the revolutionary armies. Lindet
supported both the armies in the eld as well as the cities by managing food sup-
plies. Diplomacy was handled by Hrault de Schelles and Barre. Correspondence
with the various departments of France (these were geographical, not functional
groupings) was handled by Billaud-Varenne and Collot dHerbois, while Couthon
specialized in police and security matters.
The members of the committee were, in the main, energetic, and some were
very competent. That was fortunate, a great deal of direction was required on their
part for the second half of 1793 and into 1794. Unfortunately, they were also mostly
zealots as well, and in implementing government with an attitude informed by high
revolutionary fervor, they established and maintained what became known as the
Reign of Terror. While this was effective in eliminating a great deal of opposition,
it also alienated supporters and in so doing eventually created the situation that
would lead to the demise of the committee as a powerful inuence in the nations
affairs.
The rst priority for the committee was to win the war against the countries that
sought to exterminate the Revolution. There had been defeats, and to send the mes-
sage that victory must be won at all costs, the committee executed a host of generals
thought to be incompetent or disloyal. After this, as 1793 wore on, France began to
hold its own against foreign armies. Ofcers of merit with successful records were
136 Committee of Public Safety
promoted by the committee. One of these was Napoleon Bonaparte, who received
a promotion to brigadier general at the end of 1793.
Economics were another matter of concern. The committee was responsible
for establishing and maintaining price controls, especially for the price of bread.
Encouraging the establishment of manufacturing and the effectiveness of farming
were other interests, as was the acquisition of wealth by other means. In September
1793 the French armies on foreign soil were ordered to strip those areas of every-
thing of value and send it back to France.
Revolutionary ideology was of concern to the committee, especially, it seemed, to
Robespierre. The replacement of Christianity with an ideology of liberty was seen
as an important task. When the rst mass executions took place, crowds went to the
cathedral of Notre Dame and cut off the heads of the statues of saints, in the belief
they were statues of the kings of France. Not content with removing or destroying
Christian icons, Robespierre and other members of the committee wished to re-
place the Christian Church with a new faith. The culmination of this effort to create
a state religion came in June 1794, when all of Paris turned out to celebrate what
was called the Feast of Reason. Robespierre presided over this in what would be his
last major public appearance before his execution.
Governing was a balancing act for the committee. While they ruled France and
ruled it in the name of the whole nation, the members of the committee were
aware that there were regional differences. The Vendan rebellion was of course
politically motivated and an especially troublesome thorn in the side of the govern-
ment. Other parts of the country, however, even those that generally favored the
Revolution, did not have the same radical fervor as the Parisians. Combined with
the ambivalence that the countryside often has for the city, there was tension that
affected such practical and potentially dangerous areas such as those concerning
food supplies. To keep their power, their position, and their heads, it was neces-
sary for politicians in Paris to make concessions to the volatile and politically active
Parisians.
All this occurred while the committee was consolidating and expanding its power.
The committee received the authority to issue warrants in the summer of 1793. In
the fall of that year, its power over the army and the navy, already substantial, in-
creased dramatically. In what was known as the Law of 14 Frimaire (December 4,
1793), the committees executive status was expanded to include direction over for-
eign policy and direct control over representatives on mission. Ministries no longer
existed after the rst half of 1794, and their tasks were also assumed by the committee.
The provisions of this law would hold for the next eight months.
It was in the realm of security, however, in which the power of the committee
would grow, stimulating its members to increase the use of terror and eventually
undermine and destroy Robespierre and his closest adherents on the committee.
Accusations of corruption were made against Danton, one of the original members of
the committee. To push the point home as to why this trial and the desired outcome
were so important, Robespierre made an impassioned speech. In it he equated cor-
ruption with materially aiding the enemies of France and the Revolution. Danton
was convicted and executed, together with Hrault de Schelles, against whom the
charges were probably manufactured.
The Law of 22 Prairial ( June 10, 1794) broadened the scope of what could be
done to ensure security. It listed new crimes that could be punished, including saying
Committee of Secret Correspondence 137
anything that could in any way be construed as being critical of the government.
It simplied trials by allowing only two outcomes: guilt and execution, or acquit-
tal. Further streamlining was achieved through the removal of the appeal process
and the right to cross-examine witnesses. The revolutionary tribunals, which were
empowered by this legislation, proceeded to accelerate their trials and subsequent
executions. It was perhaps this reform of the judicial code, which was the work of
Robespierre and Couthon, that helped to crystallize opposition to the committee,
especially as it was now constituted and most especially as it was chaired by Robes-
pierre.
It was in the National Convention that Robespierre was attacked by an alliance of
members of the Committee of General Security, which had maintained a consistent
rivalry with the Committee of Public Safety and various deputies. As a result of the
attack and destruction of Robespierres credibility, he and two other members of
the committee (Saint-Just and Couthon) were arrested and on 10 Thermidor ( July 28)
were executed.
The effective end of the committees power followed immediately, although the
committee would function for another year. The powers of the committee, especially
in security, military affairs, and foreign policy, were reduced, and the rule enforced
that its members must be reconsidered each month. The personnel on the commit-
tee changed with greater frequency during its last year. Finally, with the constitution
of 1795, the Committee of Public Safety was no more. In reviewing the signicance
of the committee and its ultimate value, historians must balance the good it did in
imposing economic reforms and attempting to main price controls against its
extensive use of terror. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Directory; Fte
de lEtre Supreme; French Revolutionary Wars; Jacobins; Patrie en Danger; Revolu-
tionary Committees of the French Revolution; Thermidorians.
FURTHER READING: Andress, David. The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution. London:
Little, Brown, 2005; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002; Fife, Graeme. The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France, 1792 1794.
London: Portrait, 2003; Gough, Hugh. The Terror in the French Revolution. Basingstoke, UK:
Macmillan Press, 1998; Kennedy, Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793
1795. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000; Mayer, Arno J. The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French
and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000; Palmer, R. R. Twelve
Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf,
1989; Scurr, Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. New York: Metropolitan
Books, 2006.
ROBERT N. STACY
The Second Continental Congress established the Committee of Secret Corre-
spondence on November 29, 1775, to initiate clandestine contacts with Europeans
in order to determine which governments might be supportive of the American
cause against Britain. The committee played a signicant role in determining
French sentiments and securing secret assistance from its government prior to the
American Declaration of Independence and is credited as being the rst American
foreign intelligence gathering organization.
138 Committees of Correspondence
Congress originally selected ve individuals to form the committee: Benjamin
Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and John Dickinson.
James Lovell and Robert Morris served on the committee at later periods. The ve
original members of the Committee of Secret Correspondence were inuential
merchants and politicians with many contacts in Europe. The Committee of Secret
Correspondence initiated secret contact with Europeans, supported and funded
propaganda activities in foreign countries, and gathered intelligence related to the
American cause.
The committee initiated correspondence with individuals in Britain and Ireland
who professed sympathy toward the American cause. Through this correspondence,
the committee members kept abreast of British sentiment toward the colonies and
their political and economic demands. Arthur Lee, the lone American still serving
as a colonial representative in London, assisted the committee by approaching his
pro-colonial contacts in that city. The committee also worked closely with Charles
Dumas, a Swiss intellectual who lived in The Hague, capital of the United Provinces of
the Netherlands. Through Dumas, the Americans were able to gather information
from many European diplomats who lived in the Dutch capital. Dumas ensured
that European merchants knew that the American colonies were eager to purchase
weapons and ammunition as well as to sell the colonial products normally traded
with Britain.
The most important contacts of the committee were with France. Dumas, with
the assistance of Lee, proved inuential in the initial contacts with France. Although
the French refused any direct involvement, Dumas reported that the French gov-
ernment would turn a blind eye toward exports of weapons and other goods to the
American colonies. Congress dispatched Silas Deane in the spring of 1776 to assist
in the negotiations with the French. Deane arrived in France claiming to be a mer-
chant seeking to purchase military supplies on credit and met with French ofcials.
The discussions resulted in the establishment of Hortalez et Cie, a ctitious private
company, for the export of weapons to the American colonies in exchange for to-
bacco and other goods. The committee members and Dumas also found success in
the Netherlands, although the country desired to maintain an outward appearance
of neutrality. The Netherlands initiated limited trade with the American colonies
and opened its ports in the West Indies to American ships. Spain also quietly moved
toward clandestine support of the American cause. Congress renamed the body the
Committee of Foreign Affairs on April 17, 1777, in recognition of the United States
as an independent country. See also American Revolutionary War.
FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Lawrence S. Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy, 1763
1789. New York: Macmillan, 1972; Stinchombe, William. The American Revolution and the French
Alliance. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969.
TERRY M. MAYS
The committees of correspondence were a communications network through
which towns, counties, and colonies shared ideas, shaped public opinion, and coor-
dinated opposition to Parliaments policies regarding Britains North American col-
onies. They were formed in 1764 in response to the Currency Act, which prohibited
Committees of Correspondence 139
the colonies from printing their own paper money (specie was scarce in the colo-
nies), and Parliaments more aggressive enforcement of customs regulations. The
Boston Town Meeting formed a committee of correspondence to encourage the
colonies to unite against these measures. The following year New York formed a
committee of correspondence with the purpose of keeping the other colonies in-
formed regarding its actions to resist the newly imposed Stamp Act. During that
intercolonial correspondence, Massachusetts suggested that the colonies should
meet to coordinate their responses to the Stamp Act. This led to the Stamp Act
Congress, to which nine of the colonies sent delegates. In New York City, merchants
banned together to form non-importation associations that pledged not to import
manufactured British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. (It is now believed
that their patriotic gesture had pecuniary roots and that the New York merchants
needed to sell excess inventory.) New York also used corresponding committees in
1769 to coordinate opposition to a rumor that the Church of England intended to
establish an Anglican episcopate in America. Each of these corresponding commit-
tees, though, had been temporary.
The rst use of permanent (standing) corresponding committees was initiated
by the Boston Town Meeting in 1772. Parliament had just determined that the
Crown (rather than Massachusettss General Court) would pay the salaries of the
governor and the colonys judges. Colonists in Massachusetts objected to this mea-
sure because it altered a provision of their 1691 charter, and because they believed
these royally appointed ofcials would be less sympathetic to provincial interests.
The Boston Town Meeting established the Boston Committee of Correspondence
on November 2, 1772, to keep British injustices in the public eye whenever the
General Court (Massachusettss elected legislature) was recessed or if the royally ap-
pointed governor prorogued (dismissed) it. The corresponding committees would
also actively work to shape public opinion against the British ministrys efforts to
usurp legitimate constitutional government.
Massachusettss 1772 incarnation of corresponding committees was instigated by
Samuel Adams and Thomas Young, an Albany physician settled in Boston since
1766. Both men knew the difculties that New Yorks committees of correspon-
dence of 1769 had encountered and were determined to avoid those errors. They
believed New Yorks network had been too expansive; it had included committees
overseas in Britain that inevitably did not share the same intense fervor for their
cause. Adams and Young therefore limited Massachusettss 1772 network to towns
within Massachusetts. More than half of the provinces 260 towns (mostly in the
eastern half) responded to letters from the Boston Committee of Correspondence.
Adams and Young also rejected New Yorks earlier reliance upon volunteers for
the time-consuming work of correspondence. Instead, they suggested each Massa-
chusetts town meeting create a committee specically for that task. In this manner
the town meetings functioned as hubs within a province-wide communication net-
workan adaptation of existing structures to assume new responsibilities.
When Bostons Town Meeting created Massachusettss network of correspond-
ing committees, it established an extralegal political body beyond the reach of the
Crown or Parliament. Unlike the General Court, the royal governor could not pro-
rogue the corresponding committees. Establishment of the corresponding commit-
tees demonstrated provincials emerging sense that sovereignty did not emanate
from a divinely inspired Crown but rather rested within the people.
140 Committees of Correspondence
Four months after Boston established Massachusettss network of correspond-
ing committees, Dabney Carr proposed to Virginias House of Burgesses that the
colonies form a permanent intercolonial network of corresponding committees.
Its objective would be to exchange ideas and coordinate a colonial response to
imperial policies. Carr spoke on behalf of a group of somewhat younger burgesses
from Virginias western counties (Hanover, Louisa, Albemarle, and Richmond).
These men (including Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and Charles Fran-
cis Lee) had less to lose nancially than the more established members from the
older tidewater counties and were therefore willing to respond more aggressively
to Britain.
All the colonies accepted Virginias invitation to form an intercolonial network
of corresponding committees; New Jersey was the last to join, one year later. British
reaction to this network revealed the disparate methods of British administration
of the American colonies. Virginias Governor John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, ini-
tially supported the committees of correspondence. Because Virginia had suffered
a spate of counterfeit activity, Dunmore had encouraged the House of Burgesses
to open and sustain communications with the other colonial legislatures in order
to better learn from their experiences. However, when Massachusetts established
its intra-colonial network, Parliament asserted that the colonys establishment of a
new, permanent governmental body grossly abused the authority granted to it by its
1691 charter.
Despite Parliaments opposition, when Governor Thomas Gage prorogued Massa-
chusettss General Court and its members reconstituted themselves as the extralegal
Provincial Congress in October 1774, that new legislature immediately appointed
a clerk to interface with Massachusettss network of corresponding committees to
coordinate the provinces political and militia activities. Rather than create its own
corresponding committee, the Provincial Congress enlisted the already-experienced
Boston Committee of Correspondence as the communications hub between provin-
cial Massachusetts and Canada. Massachusetts provincials (and later the Continental
Congress) used the corresponding committee network to entreat Canada to join
New England in its opposition to Parliaments imperial policies.
The exchange of written information helped forge bonds between the colonies.
When Massachusetts Whigs destroyed private property (tea) during the Boston Tea
Party, it shocked Virginians. They believed in the sanctity of private property and
that the New Englanders had acted too hastily, without having consulted them rst.
The established network of corresponding committees, though, enabled Massachu-
settss Whigs to convey to Virginias Whigs how the Coercive Acts (and the Massa-
chusetts Government Act in particular) threatened the continued self-governance
of all the colonies. Virginias House of Burgesses responded on May 24, 1774, by
adopting a resolution for a day of fasting as a sign of solidarity with its sister
colony. It was scheduled to coincide with the date the Boston Port Act was to become
effectiveJune 1, 1774. Two days later (May 26, 1774) Virginias Governor Dunmore
reacted by abruptly proroguing the House of Burgesses. Their legislature dissolved,
89 of the Burgesses met the next day in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern in
Williamsburg. Using the network of corresponding committees, they called for a
patriotick Assembly of the colonies to be convened. Their appeal led directly to
the formation of the First Continental Congress, which convened that September
in Philadelphia. Even though each of Britains American colonies was established at
different times and for different reasons (religious, commercial), the committees of
correspondence acted as a conduit through which they identied mutual objectives
and began to build a common American culture distinct from that of the mother
country. See also Non-Importation Acts.
FURTHER READING: Bridenbaugh, Carl. Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Persona-
lities, and Politics, 1689 1775. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962; Brown, Richard D.
Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns,
1772 1774. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
Among the most important texts in Western politics, Thomas Paines pamphlet
Common Sense played an inuential role in mobilizing popular support for American
independence from Britain, both in the colonies and among British sympathizers.
Paines text put forward the rst popular appeal for immediate and complete inde-
pendence of the colonies from Britain.
The text consisted of four primary sections. The rst two focused on the origin
and design of government, with special reference to the English constitution and
the monarchy. The next two sections offered reections on the present state of af-
fairs in America, with a consideration of the promise that an independent America
might hold for world peace and progress.
At the core of Common Sense, and the foundation upon which its powerful argu-
ments rest, is a powerful libertarian vision of society freed from the shackles of
government. Paine makes the point, forgotten even by some contemporary politi-
cal commentators, that many political writers tend to confound government with
society to such an extent that little distinction is left between them. On the con-
trary, argues Paine, society and government are not only different in character, but
in that they originate from entirely different sources. Society, for Paine, emerges
from peoples wants and attempts to meet those wants. As such, it acts positively to
promote human happiness by uniting people in their affections. Government, on
the other hand, has its roots in wickedness. It represents a purely negative force
operating on the basis of restraint. Where society encourages intercourse, govern-
ment works to create divisions. In this highly sociological presentation of society
and state relations, Paine pregures the writings of anarchists, who, inspired by the
French Revolution, would emerge in Europe almost a century after the publication
of Common Sense. At the same time, Paine was no anarchist since he did argue for the
limited necessity of a small, or minarchist, state. In a famous formulation, Paine
identies society in every state as a blessing, while government, even in its best state,
can be nothing more than a necessary evil.
Paine viewed the opportunities for political freedom within an independent
America with almost utopian hopefulness. America provided nothing less than the
possibility of beginning the world over again. Indeed, Paine suggests in Common
Sense that America has a unique moral obligation to the rest of the world, which,
in his view, is overrun in every corner by oppression and tyranny. This obligation
would be met in the form of a sovereign people armed with a noble and pure
constitution and the institution of checks and balances on the various branches
Common Sense 141
142 Compagnie de Jsus ou du Soleil
of government, a condition so woefully lacking within Britains monarchy. Further-
more, American independence would encourage world peace and prosperity, as
America could avoid the brutality of European wars and focus on developing ties of
trade and commerce with all countries of the world.
The provocative pamphlet proved an immediate success, with three editions
appearing between January 10 and February 14, 1776, and sales numbering be-
tween 150,000 to 600,000 during Paines lifetime. It became a best seller both in
the colonies and in Europe, bringing its author widespread notoriety. Originally
published anonymously, Paine donated the works copyright to the colonies rather
than accept any personal prot from the texts relatively enormous sales.
A highly effective work of agitational literature, Common Sense is widely regarded
as having contributed to the growth of the movements for independence. In addi-
tion, its ideas inuenced such revolutionary documents as the Declaration of Inde-
pendence.
FURTHER READING: Aldridge, Alfred O. Thomas Paines American Ideology. Newark: University
of Delaware Press, 1984; Fructman, Jack. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom. New York: Four Walls
Eight Windows, 1994; Keane, John. Tom Paine: A Political Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.
JEFF SHANTZ
After the Thermidorian Reaction brought an end to the Reign of Terror in the
summer of 1794, those areas of France that had suffered from long-term political
divisions and violence witnessed yet more bloodshed. This was especially true of
the region around Lyon, where the Companies of Jesus operated, and in Provence,
which was terrorized by the so-called Companies of the Sun. These were royalist
death squads, which wreaked a terrible vengeance on former Jacobins during the
White Terror of 1795, after the mass release of suspects from prisons and the return
of migrs and deserters swelled the ranks of angry young men nursing a desire for
revenge.
They were orchestrated to some extent by royalist agents, but local grudges and
the settling of personal scores also played a part. They were certainly abetted by the
Thermidorian representatives on mission and the local authorities, who, purged
of Jacobins, turned a blind eye to the atrocities. These gangs were responsible for
massacres in Lyon, Toulon, Marseille, and Tarascon, as well as for murders of in-
dividuals who, rightly or wrongly, were associated with the Jacobin regime. Order
was restored when the Thermidorian-controlled National Convention in Paris as-
serted its power over the local authorities and recalled the wayward representatives
on mission. Nevertheless, there was a further are-up of violence in 1797, when
royalists and constitutional monarchists made signicant gains in the elections of
that year.
FURTHER READING: Cobb, Richard. Reactions to the French Revolution. London: Oxford
University Press, 1972; Lewis, G. The Second Vende: The Continuity of Counter-Revolution in the
Department of the Gard, 1789 1815. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; Lewis, G., and C. Lucas,
eds. Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Regional and Social History, 1794 1815. Cambridge:
MICHAEL RAPPORT
Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de 143
Concord, Battle of
See Lexington and Concord, Actions at
Concordat (1801)
The Concordat was a treaty between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, announced
on Easter Sunday, 1802, that recognized Roman Catholicism as the religion of the
majority of Frances population yet simultaneously guaranteed liberty of worship and
established a new episcopate with bishops nominated by Napoleon, as head of state,
and conrmed by Rome. Napoleon attended the Easter Mass at Notre Dame, dur-
ing which a Te Deum was sung in celebration of the restoration of religious peace.
Between November 1800 and September 1801 the Concordat was subject to
three phases of negotiation, in which Napoleon intervened personally on numer-
ous occasions. In the nal phase, the document drafted by the plenipotentiaries of
France and the Holy See was thrown into the re by Napoleon, who then upbraided
Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, secretary of state to Pius VII, in a violent burst of anger,
before a 12-hour conference produced an agreement Napoleon approved on July 15.
Signatures were exchanged on September 10.
According to the Concordats terms, the papacy resigned claims to church prop-
erty seized during the French Revolution, including property as yet unsold. The
church was henceforth to be closely regulated by the state, which in turn paid the
stipends, roughly on par with those proposed by Mirabeau in 1789, of the bish-
ops and curs. Next to the Napoleonic Code, the Concordat ranks as Napoleons
most durable civil achievement. Because it made Pius VII available both to sanction
Napoleons acceptance of the throne and to preside at his coronation, it was liter-
ally a crowning political and diplomatic triumph. By healing the schism with Rome,
Napoleon turned the clergy into docile supporters who countenanced an imperial
catechism instructing children that to honor the emperor and serve him was was to
honor and serve God himself.
The Concordat of 1801 lasted until 1905, when a new wave of anti-clericalism
provoked by the Dreyfus Affair led to new state restrictions on church activity, and
the Third Republic formally repudiated it, thereby separating church and state.
FURTHER READING: Asprey, Robert. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: Basic
Books, 2001; Grab, Alexander. Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de (1743 1794)
The Marquis de Condorcet was a prophet of scientic politics. Having come from
a poor noble French family, Condorcet was only a minor mathematician. His most
interesting work applied mathematics to politics. His Essay on the Application of the
Analysis of Probability to Decisions Made on a Plurality of Votes (1785), the rst math-
ematical treatment of voting, is famous for the so-called Condorcets paradox of
how purely majoritarian voting fails to represent peoples true choices. Condorcet
144 Congress (United States)
promoted liberal rather than authoritarian scientic politics. Informed by science,
average citizens, including female citizens, could make correct decisions.
A supporter of the French Revolution in its early stages, Condorcet tried to se-
cure a role for the scientic community in the new France. In October 1793, the
victorious Jacobins issued a warrant for the arrest of the Girondin Condorcet. He
spent several months in hiding, writing his most famous work, Sketch for a History of
the Progress of the Human Mind (1795), in which he stated his belief in science and sci-
entic progress as driving human advancement. After his arrest and imprisonment,
Condorcet killed himself to avoid execution. See also Girondins.
FURTHER READING: Baker, Keith M. Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
The United States Constitution of 1787 established Congress as the legislative
branch of the United States government. Since the outbreak of colonial opposi-
tion to British imperial policy in the 1760s, Americans had created intercolonial
assemblies to coordinate their efforts and establish a political consensus that would
serve the needs of all colonies. The outbreak of war with Britain further necessitated
intercolonial communication and cooperation. Building on the foundations of the
Stamp Act Congress and the First Continental Congress, the Second Continental
Congress assumed responsibility for organizing American military operations and
providing political leadership for the emerging nation. The Confederation Con-
gress, established by the Articles of Confederation in 1781, became the rst ofcial
national government for the United States.
In 1787, delegates from all but one of the 13 states gathered in Philadelphia to
revise the Articles and establish a stronger national government. Delegates placed
a great emphasis on the importance of the legislature, and debates in the Consti-
tutional Convention over the structure and powers of Congress were often highly
contentious. The Framers believed that the legislature should represent the varied
interests of the American people, but they also feared that an excess of democracy
in this branch would cripple the government and the nation at large, as they be-
lieved it had done in the states.
James Madisons Virginia Plan, the model for the nal Constitution, provided for
a legislature with two branches: the rst would be elected by the American people;
the second would be elected by the members of the rst house. Representation in
both houses would be determined by the free population of each state. Madison em-
powered the legislature with the authority to veto state laws, but it was to be checked
by a Council of Revision composed of the executive and a representative from the
judiciary. The Convention rejected the idea of a Council of Revision, and there
was vociferous opposition to Madisons proposals for congressional representation.
Both southern delegates and delegates from small states believed that they would be
underrepresented and their interests would therefore be under threat. Southerners
argued that their slaves should be counted for the purposes of determining rep-
resentation, but northerners maintained that they should only be counted for the
purposes of determining taxation. A compromise was eventually reached whereby
Congress (United States) 145
three-fths of slaves would be counted for the purposes of representation and tax-
ation. The division between the large states and the small states was more critical
than the division between northern and southern states. In response to the Virginia
Plan, William Paterson proposed the New Jersey Plan, a frame of government that
more closely resembled the Articles of Confederation. Patersons plan provided for
a unicameral legislature with equal representation for each state, as there had been
for the Stamp Act, Continental, and Confederation congresses. When the Conven-
tion rejected the plan, the Convention came close to dissolution. At this point the
so-called Great Compromise was nally reached: each state would be represented
proportionally in the House of Representatives and equally in the Senate.
The House represented the people and their interests. It was to be the demo-
cratic branch of government with representatives elected popularly every two years.
By contrast, the Senate represented the states and their interests. It was designed to
serve as a check against abuses of power by the House and the federal government
in general. Unlike representatives, senators were to be elected by state legislatures
and would serve a six-year term. The Framers hoped that this congressional system
would balance the democratic demands of the American people with the political
requirements of a stable national government. In addition to stability, Congress
needed strength. Convention delegates were keen to award powers previously de-
nied to other national legislatures in the hope that this authority would remedy the
political and economic difculties the United States currently faced. Amongst other
powers, Congress was permitted to raise loans, coin money, tax, regulate interstate
and international commerce, declare war, and raise an army and navy. It was also
empowered to adopt any laws necessary and proper to achieve these ends.
The Framers believed that they had created a legislature, and a system of govern-
ment, that was protected against the destructive forces of faction. However, parti-
sanship began to emerge within a few years of the rst federal Congress in 1789.
Alexander Hamiltons proposals for the federal assumption of state debt, the cre-
ation of a national bank, and the promotion of manufacturing were criticized in
Congress, in part because they appeared to overstep the bounds of federal author-
ity. The opposition, led in Congress by Madison, argued that the Constitution did
not provide the legislature with the authority to charter a bank. Madison and his
supporters subscribed to a strict construction of the Constitution; in other words,
the government could only assume powers that were explicitly outlined in the Con-
stitution. Hamilton and his supporters advocated a broad construction of the Con-
stitution; in other words, the necessary and proper clause permitted Congress to
assume powers not expressly enumerated in the Constitution.
A difference of opinion over constitutional interpretation was only one source
of division. The Federalists and the Republicans, as they came to be known, offered
very different visions for the future direction of the government and the nation at
large. Hamilton and his Federalist supporters wanted to centralize political power,
at the expense of the states, by uniting the interests of commercial leaders with those
of the federal government. Madisonand, to a larger extent, Thomas Jefferson
believed that agrarianism, rather than manufacturing, would make America both
prosperous and virtuous. The Republicans argued that the government should
not interfere with either the economy or the liberties of the people; in time they
came to see Congress as a necessary popular check on the excesses of the Federalist
administration.
146 Connecticut
The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts by a Federalist Congress in 1798
further alienated Republicans. Ostensibly designed to protect the United States
during its conict with France, these acts limited freedom of the press and the
liberty of aliens. Opponents argued that they were primarily designed to silence
critics of the government. Madison and Jefferson responded to this legislation by
drafting the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. In these, they argued that because
the Constitution had been drafted as an agreement between the states, states main-
tained the authority to determine when Congress had exceeded its powers. The
resolutions were an important contribution to the 1800 presidential campaign, the
result of which eventually rested in the hands of Congress. Under the Constitution,
the House of Representatives was charged with deciding who should occupy the
presidency when the Electoral College was tied. After assurances were made that
Jefferson would maintain Hamiltons scal system, the House elected the Virginian
as the next president of the United States. John Adamss midnight appointments
( judicial appointments made before he left ofce) prompted the case of Marbury v.
Madison in 1803. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that it had the authority and
responsibility to determine whether congressional legislation was constitutional. See
also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Bowling, Kenneth R., and Donald R. Kennon, eds. Establishing Congress:
The Removal to Washington D.C. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005; Bowling, Kenneth R., and
Donald R. Kennon, eds. The House and Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying and Institutional
Development. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002; Bowling, Kenneth R., and Donald R. Ken-
non, eds. Inventing Congress: Origins and Establishment of the First Federal Congress. Athens: Ohio
KIRSTEN E. PHIMISTER
Congress of Vienna
See Vienna, Congress of
Connecticut
Although a small colony, Connecticut was similar to larger colonies in that its
borders contained marked regional differences. Its western and eastern regions had
different economic concerns, population densities, and political views. Eastern Con-
necticut, more sparsely populated, was more aggressive in its reaction to the acts of
the Crown in the 1760s and 1770s. The west, although not favoring these acts, was
more passive. These were differences in degree; there was no major Patriot-Loyalist
split in the colony. As time went on, however, the balance of power shifted from the
west to the east.
In 1765, Connecticut sent representatives to the Stamp Act Congress and in the
following years sent delegates to the Continental Congress, supported the Declara-
tion of Independence, and adopted the Articles of Confederation.
At the conclusion of the war, some opposition to a centralized government
surfaced, with objections based on the fear that disproportionate power might fall
to larger states, such as New York. At the same time, there was a recognized need for
something more effective than the Articles of Confederation. A convention meeting
Connolly, John 147
in Middletown in 1783 approved the idea of a strong central government. The
concerns of Connecticut and the need for balance and the protection of smaller
states were articulated and defended by its premier delegate, Roger Sherman, at
the Constitutional Convention. Despite opposition to the drafted United States
Constitution, that historic document was ratied, making Connecticut the fth
state in the Union. The state had a strong Federalist base until 1811. See also
American Revolution; American Revolutionary War; Constitutions, American
State; Continental Association; Continental Congress, First; Continental Congress,
Second; Loyalists; New England Restraining Act; Sons of Liberty; Trumbull, Jona-
than; Tryon, William.
FURTHER READING: Collier, Christopher. Connecticut in the Continental Congress. Chester, CT:
Pequot Press, 1973; Roth, David Morris. From Revolution to Constitution: Connecticut, 1763 1818.
Chester, CT: Pequot Press, 1975; Selesky, Harold E. War and Society in Colonial Connecticut. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990; Taylor, Robert Joseph, Colonial Connecticut: A History.
Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979.
ROBERT N. STACY
Connolly, John (1750 c. 1798)
John Connolly, a doctor and a Loyalist, was born in 1750 in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania. He rose to prominence at the time of American Revolutionary War.
His patron was Virginia governor John Murray (Lord Dunmore, 1732 1809),
who appointed him magistrate of West Augusta. During the so-called Dunmores
War, Connolly played a prominent part in a series of raids conducted against the
Shawnee Indians in order to establish Virginias position in the Ohio country. The
Shawnee were defeated and obliged to give up hunting rights south of the Ohio
River.
After the British closed Fort Pitt, near Pittsburgh, in order to dispatch the gar-
rison to Massachusetts, Connolly and his Virginia militia occupied the fort and de-
clared it a possession of Virginia. Claiming to be acting on behalf of Dunmore, he
named the fort after the governor. The residents of Pittsburg became angry, and
local magistrate Arthur St. Clair, a future general in the Continental Army, jailed
Connolly at Hannastown. In spite of St. Clairs appeals to Pennsylvania governor
John Penn in June 1774 against Connollys high-handed behavior toward the Indians,
Connolly was released and returned to Fort Dunmore.
Connollys position, however, was becoming increasingly dangerous amid the
growing revolutionary atmosphere in Virginia and Pennsylvania. As such, Connolly
ed, abandoning the fort to Pennsylvania control. Dunmore took refuge on a Brit-
ish warship in June 1775 and authorized Connolly to raise a regiment known as the
Loyal Foresters. While en route to Detroit to raise recruits for his unit, Connolly was
captured at Hagerstown, Maryland, and imprisoned until the end of war.
FURTHER READING: Abernethy, Thomas P. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New
York: Russell & Russell, 1959; Bloom, Robert M. The Use and Abuse of Informants in the American
Justice System. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002; Connolly, John. A Narrative of the Transactions,
Imprisonment and Suffering of John Connolly, An American Loyalist and Lieut. Col. in His Majestys
Service. Reprint, New York: C. L. Woodward, 1889.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
148 Constituent Assembly
Conspiration de lEtranger
See LEtranger, Conspiration de
The complete title for this French governing body is the National Constituent
Assembly. The members of the National Assembly voted to change their name on
July 9, 1789. They took this action to reect their decision to remain in session
until they completed the task of writing a constitution for France. The governing
body that resulted would effectively control France from July 1789 until September
1791. The Constituent Assembly thus led the country through a number of the tu-
multuous events of the early Revolution. Aside from writing a constitution, the body
created and then implemented a number of administrative reforms within France,
many of which are still in effect to the present day. Of less enduring signicance,
the Constituent Assembly enacted a number of economic policies friendly to the
capitalists of the country. Therefore, the Constituent Assembly is often associated
with what historians term the administrative or bourgeoisie phase of the Revolution.
At the same time, the Assembly often had to contend with the growing involvement
of the crowds of Paris as they sought to inuence the direction of the Revolution.
Finally, during the period the Assemblys tenure, the political parties that were to
dominate during the radical phase of the Revolution were established. Likewise,
many of the political leaders who would rise to fame and/or infamy had their rst
real experience in the national political scene.
As noted above, the Constituent Assembly came into existence on July 9, 1789.
Late June and early July of 1789 witnessed a quickening in the pace of political
events set in motion by the convocation of the Estates-General in May of that year.
At the same time, the king worked to resist the changes being made in his realm.
However, each step taken by Louis XVI to slow the progress of reform seemed to
have the opposite effect. For example, his concentration of troops in the vicinity of
Paris, very close to the meeting place of the Assembly at Versailles, spread the popu-
lar belief that the king sought to suppress the revolutionary movement by force. On
the same day that it came into existence, the Constituent Assembly asked the king to
disperse the troops, and he failed to reply. As news of these activities reached Paris,
it galvanized the masses of the city sympathetic to the Revolution, who stormed the
old royal fortress turned political prison, the Bastille. The people were in search of
weapons with which to defend the Assembly. While they failed to nd the sought-
after military stores, the event is often seen as being a watershed in the history of
France. The uprising in Paris that resulted in the fall of the Bastille on July 14 al-
tered the political dynamics of the Revolution.
The fall of the ancient prison in Paris began the process of radicalizing the Revo-
lution. In order to remain in step with popular sentiment, the representatives in the
Assembly began to take more radical actions. Seizing on the popular sentiment that
swept the countryside in the aftermath of the storming of the Bastille, events known
as the Great Fear, the members of the Assembly voted to put an end to feudal dues
on the night of August 10, 1789. In addition, as a part of their work on a constitu-
tion, the Assembly commissioned Thomas Paine to write its preamble. The resulting
document, promulgated on August 26, 1789, was known as the Declaration of the
Constituent Assembly 149
Rights of Man and of the Citizen. While it expressed the highest aspirations of the
revolutionary movement, it likewise raised a number of profound questions as to
the social limits of the Revolution. Many of these questions would return to haunt
the leaders in the later phases of the Revolution.
In keeping with its rationalizing goals, the Assembly worked to unite the various
internal regions of France to a greater degree. In December 1789, this effort bore
fruit in the form of one of the Assemblys most enduring achievements, the removal
of the old territorial divisions, which the lawmakers replaced with 88 departments.
Each of the new departments was named for various local features, and they were
all of roughly equal size. Thus, in one sweeping piece of legislation, the Assembly
restructured the bureaucratic organization of France in a pragmatic sense, making
the country much more governable, and did so in a manner in keeping with the
rationalizing ideals of the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the creation of the depart-
ments served to break down local loyalties and as a consequence foment the spread
of nationalism within France. In addition, the Assembly had already removed the
internal tolls that had been charged between the different provinces. In so doing,
they removed a barrier that had served to stie trade within France. Even as it en-
acted such monumental reforms, the Assembly simultaneously had to respond to
the demands of the Parisian people, who would take an increasingly active role in
the course of events.
The harvest of 1789 was a good one, but years of lean harvests had taken their
toll, resulting in a rise in the price of the chief staple of the citiesbread. When
bread prices began to rise in Paris, the people once again took to the streets in the
name of the Revolution. In this case, it was the women of Paris who began march-
ing to Versailles on October 5, 1789, with the avowed goal of bringing the king
and the royal family back to Paris. For their part, the people of the city felt that the
government, especially Louis XVI, had lost touch with their needs by spending too
much time away from the capital. The Marquis de Lafayette and the National Guard
joined in the march so as to keep from losing what little control they held over
the situation. When they reached Versailles, some violence occurred at the gates
to the palace before the National Guard restored order. The next day, October 6,
1789, the people marched the king and the royal family back to Paris, where they
would take up residence in the Tuileries. The members of the Constituent Assembly
returned with the crowd as well, feeling that they could do little by remaining at
Versailles. Likewise, many of the members of the Assembly felt intimidated by the
mob. This sentiment perhaps inuenced the decision of the Assembly to return to
Paris as well. For the remainder of its existence, the Constituent Assembly would
reside in Paris and therefore opened itself up to greater inuence from the urban
mobs. In addition, some of the most controversial policies of the Assembly were
implemented while it resided in Paris.
Among the most drastic of the reforms enacted by the Constituent Assembly
came in the form of the decision to seize and sell the lands of the Catholic Church
in order to utilize the proceeds to pay down the national debt. Once seized and
placed at the disposal of the nation on November 2, 1789, these lands were to
be assessed for the purpose of future sale. To gain support for the measure in the
interim, certicates were issued that were backed by the presumed value of the
conscated lands. These certicates were known as assignats. People soon began
to use them as currency. The conscation of church land led in the long run to a
150 Constituent Assembly
much more divisive measure known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which
was promulgated on July 12, 1790. In essence, this document made all members of
the Catholic Church civil servants of the French nation. They were to be paid from
public funds and were in turn required to swear an oath of allegiance to the revo-
lutionary government, an act that many of the clergy refused to take. Thus the Civil
Constitution split the church within France, simultaneously turning a great deal of
popular support against the Revolution. Some of the problems resulting from the
Civil Constitution derived from the refusal of many priests to swear the required
oath to the constitution. Many ordinary people also opposed the measure, as those
priests who refused to swear the oath were labeled as nonjuring and forbidden to
perform the duties of their ofce. Especially in rural areas, the people exhibited a
greater loyalty to their clergy than to the Revolution.
Even before enacting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the government took
a drastic step in altering the social makeup of the country. On June 19, 1790, the
Constituent Assembly formally abolished the nobility as a class, though many of the
distinctions had already been erased in practice. This increased the pressure on
many of the members of the nobility to emigrate and increased foreign criticism of
the Revolution.
The Assembly was not quiet with regard to the economic life of the country ei-
ther. On June 14, 1791, it passed Chapeliers Law, which banned workers coalitions.
While it was markedly against organized labor, the law was in keeping with revolu-
tionary economic theories that supported a free market. Still, it was quite unpopular
with the working classes. All these measures, especially those affecting the church
and the nobility, forced the king to take action.
On June 20, 1791, Louis XVI and the royal family attempted to escape France
and join the counterrevolutionary forces beginning to coalesce on its borders in
order to work more effectively to suppress the Revolution. Initially, the plan seemed
to succeed. Then, a combination of bad luck and the dawdling of the king led to the
discovery and apprehension of the royal family in the town of Varennes. The royal
family returned to Paris under guard. While the Constituent Assembly publicly de-
scribed the ight as an attempted kidnapping, they became convinced that the king
opposed the Revolution. Likewise, the ight to Varennes gave those who opposed
the monarchy more ammunition with which to work for its removal. In the resultant
debates in the Assembly, many moved for the absolution of the king if he swore an
oath to the Revolution. The acceptance of this measure split the Assembly.
The acceptance of so lenient a stance against the king once again brought about
popular pressure as well. On July 17, 1791, the radicals in the city of Paris took to the
Champ de Mars to protest the actions of the Assembly, which in turn ordered their
dispersal by force. The event came to be known as the massacre on the Champ de
Mars and was among the rst instances of the government using force to suppress
the masses.
From August to September 1791, the Assembly worked to complete their labors
on a new constitution. As the body promulgated the constitution of 1791, all pre-
pared for a return to private life or to local politics. None would return to national
government after the rst election cycle. The members of the Constituent Assembly
relinquished their power as the result of the self-denying ordinance added to the
constitution at the behest of Maximilien Robespierre, which prevented any of them
from running in the rst series of elections under the new government.
Constitutional Convention 151
Robespierre was one of the many who gained their rst national political experi-
ence in the Assembly. Among the others who rose to prominence as political leaders
while serving in the Constituent Assembly were Georges-Jacques Danton, the comte
de Mirabeau, and the abb Sieys. The period during which the National Constitu-
ent Assembly governed France likewise witnessed the rise to political parties such as
the Feuillants, Girondins, and Jacobins.
Finally, the Constituent Assembly wrote and enacted the constitution of 1791,
with its landmark statement on human rights, the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen. In addition, it dismantled the feudal system in France
and reformed the political and economic organization of the country along ra-
tional lines. All these reforms served to make the state much more governable.
Economically, the revolutionaries were very much in favor of free enterprise and
aided in the creation of a class of small-property owners, with the seizure and sale
of church lands. By the same token, the efforts of the reformers to deal with the
role of religion and the state created a great deal of tension and controversy. Much
of the resulting tension would explode internally during the Reign of Terror and
the dechristianizing that marked the more radical phase of the Revolution. See also
October Days.
FURTHER READING: Forrest, Alan. The French Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995; Furet,
Franois. La Rvolution en dbat. Paris: Gallimard, 1999; Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the
French Revolution. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1981; Popkin, Jeremy D. A Short History
of the French Revolution. Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006; Soboul, Albert. The
French Revolution 1781 1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon. Translated by Alan
Forrest and Colin Jones. New York: Vintage, 1975.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
Constitutional Convention (United States, 1787)
In May 1787, 55 delegates from 12 of the states convened at the State House in
Philadelphia to discuss revisions to the Articles of Confederation. In attendance
were such luminaries of the revolutionary era as Benjamin Franklin and George
Washington, whose presence lent an air of authority to the proceedings. Among
those who did the most to shape the document and inuence the debates were
James Madison, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason of Virginia; Pennsylvanias
Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson; Alexander Hamilton from New York; El-
bridge Gerry and Rufus King from Massachusetts; William Paterson of New Jersey;
and Charles Pinckney and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. The vast majority of the
55 delegates who participated in the Philadelphia Convention were elites or wealthy
landowners. In total, the gathering consisted of 32 lawyers, 11 merchants, 4 politi-
cians, 2 doctors, 2 educators, 2 career soldiers, an inventor, and a farmer. For almost
four months during the long and hot Philadelphia summer of 1787 the Founding
Fathers hammered out the key provisions of what eventually became the United
States Constitution.
On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention opened by creating a commit-
tee to draft rules for conducting business. Among the rst and most signicant
of these was the rule of secrecy. Because deliberations throughout the summer
took place secretly, virtually all of what is known about the debates that shaped the
Constitution is drawn from copious notes taken unofcially by James Madison and
152 Constitutional Convention
recorded each evening after the days debates had ended. In keeping with the spirit
of the original rules, Madisons notes on the proceedings were only published after
his death in 1840.
It quickly became evident that what was called for was not an amendment of the
Articles of Confederation, but an entirely new federal constitution. Setting the tone
for the Conventions deliberations, on May 29, Edmund Randolph, on behalf of
the Virginia delegation, introduced the 15 resolutions known collectively as the
Virginia Plan. These were motivated by the conviction that state legislatures and fac-
tious local majorities were threats to liberty and peaceful union and that what was
needed was a stronger centralized government that effectively stripped state govern-
ments of most of their signicant powers. The Virginia Plan called for the establish-
ment of a national legislature divided between a lower and upper chamber, the
rst branch of which would be elected by the people of each state, and the second
branch elected by the rst. This legislature would have power to legislate in all areas
where the separate states were powerless, and a negative or veto right over state
laws that contradicted national laws. The national legislature was also entrusted with
the power to choose a single national executive and create a national judiciary. The
Virginia Plan provided for proportional representation for each of the states in the
national legislature on the basis of population, an arrangement that was vigorously
opposed by representatives from smaller states, who feared that this would effec-
tively dilute the equal power qua states they enjoyed under the Articles.
Rejecting a possible compromise over representation proposed by Roger Sher-
man, delegates from smaller states, led by New Jersey, Connecticut, New York,
Delaware, and Maryland, introduced what was known as the New Jersey Plan on
June 15, 1787. Reported to the Convention by William Paterson of New Jersey, this
plan reverted to the single-chamber model of the original Articles of Confedera-
tion, guaranteeing that each state would be represented equally regardless of its
size. Powers of taxation and the regulation of interstate commerce were included
to strengthen the original Articles. Defenders of the New Jersey Plan argued not
only from their interests as small states, but on the more principled grounds that
the Virginia Plan overstepped the limited mandate from the Continental Con-
gress to amend the Articles. Proponents of the New Jersey Plan also contended
that it would be more easily ratied by the electorate than the more radical Vir-
ginia Plan.
On June 18, Alexander Hamilton not only criticized the New Jersey Plan, which
to his mind suffered from all the same defects as the original Articles, but also
complained that the Virginia Plan did not go far enough. To his mind, even the
Virginia Plan failed to adequately subsume the power of the state legislatures and
to provide for a single, unied, and powerful national government. His own plan,
outlined in a marathon speech, closely mirrored that of the British monarchy,
with a president and Senate popularly elected but holding ofce for life, subject to
good behavior. His plan so clearly hinted of monarchy that it was never seriously
considered, and Hamilton left the Convention in frustration, only to return later
and participate on the committee entrusted with shaping the Constitutions nal
language.
With the Convention on the verge of concluding in failure, delegates returned
to the compromise between proportional and equal representation that had been
proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut but rejected back on the eleventh of
Constitutional Convention 153
June. On July 2, this compromise, proposed again by Oliver Ellsworth of Connecti-
cut, failed to pass on a tie vote in committee: 5-5-1 (ve delegates for, ve delegates
against, one delegate abstaining). Confronted by a stalemate, a committee of more
moderate delegates, led by Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, was formed to ham-
mer out a compromise on the representation question. From July 5 to 7, the Gerry
Committee debated the compromise of equal representation in the Senate and rep-
resentation based on population in the House of Representatives. On July 16, the
delegates nally agreed (5-4-1) to the Gerry Committee Report, better known as
the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise. This agreement allocated
seats proportionally in the lower House of Representatives based on the population
of the states in question. Every state, regardless of its size, was guaranteed at least
one representative. The upper legislature or Senate was composed equally of two
senators from each state, regardless of its size. Although he was on the losing side of
this issue, James Madison decided not to contest the compromise as it was eventu-
ally approved.
Another daunting controversy was the constitutional status of slavery. Southern
states insisted on guarantees that northern states would not move to outlaw slavery
or the slave trade once the Constitution was approved, resulting in the 1808 so-called
sunset clause in Section 9 of Article 1. Further, the original compromise document
tacitly condoned the existence of slavery by providing that individuals held in bond-
age would count for three-fths of a white citizen for purposes of determining each
states population and calculating representation in the House of Representatives,
that slaves from one state could not be relieved of their servitude by the acts of any
other state, and that persons who were held in bondage and escaped to another
state must be returned to their rightful owners. In return for their agreement to
these provisions, northern states secured the guarantee that Congress could pro-
hibit slavery in the Territories. These compromises were eventually approved by
a vote of 7 4. The four nays (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia)
opposed this compromise on the grounds that allowing the slave trade to continue
until 1808 was unacceptable.
On Monday, September 17,

1787 the nal draft of the Constitution was read
aloud to the Philadelphia Convention. It was signed by all but 3 of the 42 delegates
who remained, presented to the Constitutional Congress, and subsequently sent to
the states for ratication. In the months that followed, supporters of the proposed
Constitution, known as the Federalists, mounted a successful rhetorical campaign
on behalf of the new system of government against its opponents, known as the
Anti-Federalists. These debates produced some of the greatest political rhetoric
in the American tradition, most notably the Federalist Papers, jointly authored by
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalists recapitulated
many arguments made during the Philadelphia Convention about the inadequacies
of the Articles of Confederation and outlined the mechanics of the Constitution as
understood by its own authors.
FURTHER READING: Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders Constitution. 5
vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; Madison, James. Notes of Debates in the Federal
Convention of 1787, as Reported by James Madison. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987. Madison,
James, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. London: Penguin, 1987;
RICHARD BOYD
154 Constitutions, American State
In 1775 and 1776, the Americans rebelling against the British government took
control of the governments in almost every colony. One of the rst issues the reb-
els faced was how to organize the new government. The colonies all had written
charters setting out, at least in outline form, the structure of government and the
responsibilities of the various entities, such as the governor and the justices. This
arrangement was in sharp contrast to political arrangements in Britain, which were
a hodgepodge of precedents, common law, statutes, traditions, and habits.
Most of the colonies had been ruled by governors appointed by the king or the
corporate entity in Britain that had established the colony. Most had legislatures
consisting of a lower house elected by some portion of the (white male) population,
usually restricted to those owning property worth more than a set amount, and an
upper house that was usually appointed by the governor. The judicial system con-
sisted of justices appointed by the governor. Most of the governors had the power
to dissolve the legislature at will and rule directly, at least for a limited period of
time. Some of the legislatures had sufcient control of the taxing power to exercise
some indirect check on the governoran arbitrary or otherwise unpopular gover-
nor might nd it difcult to raise enough money to pay his own salary. By and large,
however, the governors exercised a great deal of unchecked and, to the rebelling
Americans, tyrannical power.
Even before it issued the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Con-
gress directed the colonies to form new governments to replace the colonial gov-
ernments. The colonies needed little prodding. Some had already done so, and
by 1777, all had. The new states (with the Declaration of Independence, they had
become independent states) unanimously rejected the British style of an informal,
unwritten plan of government. Most Americans thought the arrangement had led
to arbitrary rule.
Instead, they fashioned written constitutions that carefully limited the powers of
government. Most also wrote the egalitarian natural rights philosophy of the Dec-
laration of Independence into bills of rights that protected carefully enumerated
principles of popular sovereignty. Virginia, for example, included a declaration of
principles, such as popular sovereignty, rotation in ofce, and freedom of elections,
and an enumeration of fundamental liberties: moderate bail and humane punish-
ment, speedy trial by jury, freedom of the press and of conscience, and the right of
the majority to reform or alter the government.
Beyond the basic distrust of government voiced in the bills of rights, the constitu-
tions varied widely in their distributions of power, though, interestingly, none went
the route that the British were groping toward, an executive coming out of, and
fully responsible to, the legislature on a day-to-day basis.
Pennsylvania produced the closest to what would now be called a parliamentary
model. It was also the most radically egalitarian. Philadelphia artisans, Scots-Irish
frontiersmen, and German-speaking farmers had taken control of the government
from the conservative, largely Loyalist, Quakers. The Provincial Congress adopted
a constitution that permitted every male taxpayer and his sons to vote, required
rotation in ofce (no one could serve as a representative more than four years out
of every seven) and set up a single-chamber legislature. It established a unicameral
Constitutions, American State 155
(one-house) legislature that was chosen in annual secret-ballot elections by all male
taxpayers. The executive was a 12 man committee without real power.
Nearly all the other states adopted constitutions with two-house legislatures, usu-
ally with longer terms and higher property qualications for the upper house. They
had elective governors who could veto legislation but lacked the arbitrary powers
of the colonial governors. They could not dissolve the legislature, they could not
corrupt the legislature by appointing its members to executive ofce, and the leg-
islature could override their vetoes. Pennsylvania adopted the more recognizable
elected executive form of government in its 1790 constitution.
The Continental Congress established a national government that was closer to
the parliamentary style of future years than did any of the states. Under the Articles
of Confederation, the legislative body elected a president who was little more than
the presiding ofcer of the body; there were 10 presidents in the 11 years the
Articles were in force. Most of the executive work was done by committees consist-
ing of members of the Congress.
It was the state constitutions, not the Articles of Confederation, that became the
model for the new federal constitution that was drafted in 1787. Like most of the
state constitutions, the new federal constitution created a bicameral legislature and
limited the powers of the executive.
Even after the adoption of the federal constitution, states were considered sover-
eign and were allowed to adopt their own constitutions with very little interference
from the national government. Congress did, on occasion, inuence the constitu-
tions of newly applying states through the threat of not accepting the application.
In the late 1850s, the rst Kansas constitution, adopted by a pro-slavery group that
had won an election through fraud and intimidation, was rejected by the northern
congressmen of an increasingly fractured government on the eve of the Civil War.
Utah was not accepted for statehood until it included a provision in its constitution
outlawing polygamy.
It was not until 1964 that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned most state constitu-
tions by requiring them to adopt one man one vote provisions for the elections of
state legislators. Until then, most state constitutions established the legislative dis-
tricts of one or both houses by county or another set geographic division. The result
was that some areasusually ruralwere overrepresented at the expense of others.
As has been discussed, the state constitutions were the original bastions of the
rights of the people against the federal government. At the time of the drafting of
the United States Constitution, there was even some debate as to whether there
should even be a national bill of rights, since that implied the federal government
would have some sort of direct power over the population, and for fear that naming
some rights might imply that others did not exist.
At the beginning of the twenty-rst century, however, the state constitutions are,
for the most part, more important as blueprints for state governmental procedures
than as protectors of the rights of citizens. The increasing focus of the political
system on the national government, and the increasing willingness of the Supreme
Court to intervene in state government actions, has made state constitutions sec-
ondary to the Bill of Rights as guardians of individual liberties. See also Constitu-
tions, French Revolutionary.
156 Constitutions, French Revolutionary
FURTHER READING: Amar, Akhil Reed. The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998; Gardner, James A. Interpreting State Constitutions: A
Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005; Tarr, G.
Alan. Understanding State Constitutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
JOSEPH ADAMCZYK
According to classical Western historiography, modernity begins in 1789 with the
advent of the French Revolution. This is, perhaps, not entirely due to the many
social changes inspired by that upheaval, such as the abolition of feudalism, the
liberation of the peasantry, and the secularization of church property. It is the po-
litical change, as evident most clearly in the several French constitutions, and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, that constitutes the break
between the ancien rgime and modernity, for the French Revolution marks the
beginning of modern political culture. Between 1791 and 1795, France adopted
three constitutions. The rst (1791) instituted a liberal constitutional monarchy; the
second (1793), a democratic republic based on universal manhood suffrage; and
the third (1795), a liberal republic. All three provided inspiration for constitutional
monarchists, democrats (and even socialists), and liberals far beyond the borders
of France. Indeed, the legacy of the 1791 constitution eventually forced most
if not allruling nineteenth-century monarchs to accept a constitution limiting
their powers. And of the 29 constitutions adopted across Europe during 1791 1802
alone, 26 were the result of direct French inuence.
The Constitution of 1791
The deputies to the Estates-General, who gathered in Versailles in May 1789,
arrived with the belief they would give France a written constitution. Its formal ori-
gin, however, is generally considered the Tennis Court Oath of June 22, 1789, when
the National Assembly, presided over by Bailly, declared it would stay convened until
a constitution was established. On July 6, the Committee of Thirty was formed, later
supplemented by a Revision Committee (September 23, 1790), to draft the new
constitution. On July 7, consequently, the deputies determined to call themselves
the National Constituent Assembly. The main provisions regarding the executive,
legislative, and electoral system were introduced gradually from 1789 on. Indeed,
the broad lines of the constitution had been pregured, with considerable unanim-
ity, in the cahiers de dolances, or lists of grievances of the deputies to the Estates-
General from their constituencies. These had been unanimous in their demands
for a constitution limiting the powers of the monarch and establishing a national
representative assembly empowered to make laws and vote taxes.
By August 26, the deputies had adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen, a basic bill of rights similar to the various bills of rights passed
by the American states during the 1780s. It was initially meant to be a preliminary
to a formal constitution, since domestic turmoil had prevented the deputies from
completing their draft on schedule. A revised version of this document was incor-
porated into the preamble of the constitution of 1791. It is likely that the Ameri-
can Declaration of Independence inuenced the declaration, since the Marquis
de Lafayette, chair of the drafting committee, was an intimate friend of Thomas
Constitutions, French Revolutionary 157
Jefferson, whom he consulted while at work on the document. It was also clearly
the product of the political theory and deist thought of philosophes such as Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Montesquieu, Bayle, and Voltaire. While a number
of the rights it enshrined were later revoked by subsequent revolutionary govern-
ments, it remained a major manifesto of European liberalism, and revised versions
were even incorporated into modern French constitutions, such as those of 1946
and 1958. In its preamble, the declaration made clear, on the authority of the
nationin which sovereignty residedas represented in the National Assembly,
that the rights it listed were natural, inalienable, and sacred. The declaration was
intended as a yardstick for good government, and as the foundation upon which the
people could, in future, base their legitimate grievances. Men, it stated, were free by
birth and endowed with equal rights. Governments were instituted to protect the
basic rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. All citizens
were equal before the law, and all had equal access to public ofce. Due process
was guaranteed, as was reasonable punishment, and the accused were presumed
innocent until proven guilty. No citizen could be persecuted for his opinion or re-
ligion. Freedom of the press was guaranteedunless public order was threatened.
Property was inviolable.
Two key issues divided the Constituent Assembly during the early constitutional
debate. Moderate monarchiensalso known as the English partysuch as Mounier
and Lafayette, were inspired by Montesquieu and advanced a bicameral system, with
an upper chamber either appointed for life (Mouniers proposal) or elected for a
six-year term, modeled on the U.S. Senate (Lafayettes proposal). They also pro-
moted a strong executive, endowed with an absolute veto, to balance the legislative.
Their opponents, such as Siyes, Talleyrand, and Barnave, were afraid of an over-
mighty executive and therefore favored a strengthening of the legislative. In the
end, the monarchiens were defeated when the National Assembly voted, by an over-
whelming majority, to adopt a unicameral legislature and a suspensive veto. The
structure of government then, particularly in the relationship between the execu-
tive and legislative branches, was inspired by Montesquieus separation of powers
theory, albeit in a limited fashion. The closing discussion took place in August 1791,
and the nal document was passed on September 3. On September 14, King Louis
XVI swore his oath on the constitution and was cheered, along with the queen, by
the people of Paris.
The constitution was composed of 208 articles, divided into seven sections, and
preceded by a preamble and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citi-
zen. The preamble and rst section began by making clear that the social essence
of the ancien rgimearistocratic and corporate privilegewas abolished forever.
Forthwith, all Frenchmen were to be equal before the law, admissible to public func-
tions without regard to lineage, and taxed fairly according to their means. Freedom
of movement and of peaceful assembly were also guaranteed. The establishment
of a system of public welfare was promised, as well as a system of free and universal
primary education.
Politically, the constitution was founded on the liberal notions of liberty and
equality. Liberty meant access to public ofce to all men of meritbut limited by
property restrictionsand the freedom to engage without restriction in all forms of
economic activity. Equality meant strictly civil equality, or the equality of all before
the law. It was a laissez-faire constitution both in the economic and political sense of
the term. Marxist scholars, therefore, have long interpreted it as designed to guar-
antee the rule of the bourgeois class.
The constitution distinguished between active and passive citizens, providing
suffrage only to the former, based on property requirements. Active citizens had to
be male, at least 25 years of age, not in domestic service, and domiciled and had to
pay a direct tax equal to three days wages of unskilled labor. Active citizens were
qualied to vote in the primary assemblies, which, in turn, chose the electors. To
be an elector, however, one had to have paid a direct tax equal to 10 days wages.
Electors met in secondary assemblies to elect the actual deputies, who had to have
paid a silver mark (52 livres) in direct taxes. This meant that, according to the
estimate of the historian Robert Palmer, some 70 percent of citizens could vote at
the primary level, 10 percent qualied as electors, and only 1 percent qualied as
deputies. Suffrage qualications were amended in July 1791. While the silver mark
requirement for election as a deputy was abolished, qualications for membership
in the secondary assemblies were raised above the original threshold, depending on
circumstances, to the ownership or tenancy of property valued at between 150 and
400 days labor, effectively concentrating the power to elect the Legislative Assem-
bly in the hands of the richest landowners. The revised form was accepted formally
by the king on September 13, 1791. Thus, of a total population of some 28 million,
only some 60,000 qualied as electors. The electoral system, therefore, imposed
severe restrictions. Placed in perspective, however, these were much less severe than
those of the British parliament at the time.
The executive power resided quite naturally in the hands of a hereditary mon-
arch, as any other form of executive was unimaginable for a European Great Power
at the time. His power was curtailed so as to prevent any royal tyranny but left strong
enough to protect against any political aspirations from the populace. The king was
no longer above the law, and he was subject to the will of the nation, meaning the
propertied class. His ofcial titleLouis, by the grace of God and the constitu-
tional law of the State, King of the Frenchclearly indicated a shift away from dy-
nastic monarchy to a monarchy in which ultimate sovereignty resided in the people.
He had become the rst civil servant, in the Enlightened tradition of Frederick II
of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria, salaried by the Assembly at the rate of 25 million
livres per annum. His suspensive veto could delay legislation for up to four years
(i.e., for a maximum of two consecutive Assemblies). The previous royal councilors
were replaced by six ministersheading the ministries of the Interior, Justice, War,
Navy, Foreign Affairs, and Public Financewho were responsible to the Assembly.
The king depended on their counter-signature, and he could not choose them from
within the Assembly. Empowered to appoint leading civil servants, ambassadors,
and generals, he could not make war or peace without the consent of the legisla-
ture. As William Doyle has put it, The essence of the constitution of 1791 . . . was to
keep the executive weak.
The unicameral Legislative Assembly, composed of 745 members elected for two
years, formed the legislative branch. The 83 French departmentsthe old provinces
having been abolishedwere represented proportionally according to population,
size, and wealth. The Assembly sat permanently and could not be dissolved by the
king. It voted funds for the army and controlled foreign policy through committee.
It had the legislative initiative and the power of the purse. The kings suspensive
veto aside, therefore, the legislative branch virtually dominated the government.
Constitutions, French Revolutionary 159
The Constitution of the Year I (1793)
The fall of the monarchy on August 10, 1792, made a new constitution neces-
sary, and so the Convention appointed a constitution committee on October 11.
Condorcet presented its nal report on February 15, 1793. The ascendant Montag-
nards considered the draft too moderate, however, and too closely associated with
the Girondins and thus rejected it. A new ad hoc committee, chaired by Hrault
de Schelles, proceeded with a new report, and by June 10 a draft was ready. The
constitution of the Year I (according to the new republican calendar) did away with
the separation of powers and broad decentralization. But it did not incorporate the
checks and balances and electoral limitations originally proposed by Condorcet.
Ratied by the Convention on June 24, 1793, it was subsequently accepted by a ref-
erendum held in the primary assemblies.
The constitution of 1793, composed of 124 articles, again included the Declara-
tion of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as a preamble to the actual text, but
it had been revised to specify the rights to work, public assistance, education, and
resistance to oppression. Indeed, insurrection against a government that violated
the rights of the people was considered a sacred duty. The right to and denition
of property were, however, maintained, and, contrary to the 1789 text, the right to
economic freedom made explicit. Contrary to its predecessor, the 1793 constitution
did away with property requirements, proclaiming universal manhood suffrage. The
vote for deputies in the electoral assemblies, however, was by acclamation, not by ballot.
The institution of the monarchy having been abolished, the king was replaced by
an executive council of 24 members chosen by the Legislative Assembly from among
their membersthus rendering the ministers responsible to the representatives of
the nation. The Legislative Assembly, for its part, was composed of 83 deputies elected
directly, by a simple majority, one for each department, for a period of one year.
The constitution, however, was never implemented, for the decree of October
10, 1793, declared the government to be revolutionary until the peace. Maximilien
Robespierre rationalized the suspension of the new constitution by arguing that a
revolutionary government ghting to preserve the Republic from enemies within
and outside France could not afford political structures t for the calmer times
of consolidation. Still, the violence of the regime during the Reign of Terror that
brought forth the constitution of 1793 has long obscured the documents real at-
tainments, for it was truly revolutionary in its democratic character, instituting not
only a republic founded on universal manhood suffrage, but also the right to resist
oppression and the right to organization. As such it was a historical rst. More than
just the result of immediate circumstances, the larger signicance of the constitu-
tion of 1793 resides in its inspirational quality as a point of reference for democrats
and progressive republicans throughout the nineteenth century.
The Constitution of the Year III (1795)
Robespierre and his colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety having been
overthrown in the Thermidorian Reaction, a new constitution was again needed. Its
drafting was entrusted to the Committee of Eleven elected by the Convention on
April 18, 1795, and composed mainly of conservative republicans and constitutional
monarchists. The principles underlying the constitution were enunciated by Boissy
dAnglas on June 23, 1795. These were stability, civil equality dened narrowly as
equality before the law, and government by the best, meaning educated prop-
erty holders. All members of the drafting committee agreed wholeheartedly that
the new constitution should not only return to the principles of 1789interpreted
strictly in bourgeois termsbut also provide solid guarantees against both dictator-
ship and popular democracy. The nal text was approved by the Convention on
August 22, 1795.
The constitution of the Year III (1795) was composed of 377 articles organized in
14 sections. Designed to protect against any Jacobin, sans-culotte, royalist, clerical, or
foreign threat, it provided no protection against the as yet unforeseen menace of a
Napoleonic military dictatorship. A modied version of the 1789 Declaration of the
Rights of Man was again included as a preamble, the rst article, stating, Men are
born and remain free and equal in rights, having been deleted. The right to prop-
erty, however, was reinforcedas in the 1793 version. This revised bill of rights and
duties stressed that it was the citizens obligation to protect property and obey the
law. The right to revolution (of the 1793 version) was deleted, as were the rights to
work, public assistance, and education. The principle of equality was strictly limited
to equality before the law.
The constitution of 1795 reverted to a system of suffrage with a narrow base
dened by strict property requirements, thus vesting political power in the bour-
geoisie, but less so than in 1791. To qualify as an active citizen, a Frenchman had
to be over 21 and domiciled for at least a year and had to have paid a tax. Active
citizens met in primary assemblies in the principal towns of each district, where
they elected some 30,000 electors, who themselves elected, in the electoral assem-
blies, the actual deputies. Property qualications for electors and deputies varied
according to locale (urban and rural), whether one owned or rented the property
one lived in, and the value of that property assessed according to prevailing rates of
labor. Thus, at the high end of urban rates, one needed to own property assessed at
an annual income equal to 200 days labor; at the low end of the rural rate, renting
land for the equivalent of 150 days work sufced. These requirements translated
into about ve million citizens/voters. Yet while suffrage was clearly restrictedand
certainly reduced from the universal manhood suffrage of 1793the constitution
was still quite liberal for its day. Its franchise was, for example, wider than that of the
United States. Nor was its indirect voting system especially conservative, for in the
United States, again, indirect elections chose the president and the upper house of
Congress, the Senate.
The legislature was now, following classic liberal principles, bicameral. The upper
house, or Chamber of Ancients, numbered 250 members over 40 years of age, either
married or widowers. The Ancients debated then accepted or rejected laws pro-
posed by the lower house. The lower house, or Council of Five Hundred, had the
exclusive right to initiate legislation and was composed of men over 30. To ensure
continuity and political stability, one-third of each chamber was elected annually.
Each chamber, nally, was provided a bodyguard of 1,500 men, and each member
paid a salary in kind of 300 kilograms of wheata reection of the experience of
revolutionary violence from below and hyper-inationary economic conditions.
Contrary to its predecessors, the 1795 constitutionin its revision of the Declara-
tion of the Rights of Man and of the Citizenstressed the separation of powers as
the only true safeguard of the rights of individuals. The executive, therefore, was
composed of a Directory of ve members, chosen by the Ancients from a short list
Consulate 161
of 10 submitted by the Five Hundred. Each director, who had to be over 30 years
of age, was elected for ve years but could not sit in either of the two houses of the
legislative body. During the rst ve years, one director per year, drawn by lot, would
retirein the interest of continuity and stability. Each director drew a salary of 500
kilograms of wheat. The executive as a whole commanded a bodyguard of 220 men.
A majority of three directors was needed to validate a decision of the executive. The
powers of the Directory, however, were severely limited. They did not control the
treasury, nor did they possess legislative initiative or exercise direct command of
the armed forces. Control of government was largely indirect, through the appoint-
ment of six ministers, responsible to the Directory.
The constitutions several aws, then, contributed to its fall under Napoleonic
pressure. There were constant elections, which in the end provided instability, the
lack of a means to resolve deadlocks between the executive and the legislative, no
proper method to change the political composition of the Directory in view of a po-
litical shift in the legislature, a weak executive, and an inefcient method for consti-
tutional amendment. These weaknesses resulted in a pattern of governmental coups
dtat against election results deemed undesirable, because by returning either a
radical Jacobin, or a royalist legislature, they threatened the moderate Republic that
the founders and the bulk of the directors wanted to maintain. In 1799, Napoleon
proved to be the man on horseback ready to break the pattern, restore order,
and declare the revolution effectively over. See also Constitutions, American State;
Jacobins.
Clarendon Press, 1989; Soboul, Albert. The French Revolution, 1787 1799: From the Storming of
the Bastille to Napoleon. Translated by Alan Forrest and Colin Jones. London: Unwin Hyman,
1989.
WILLIAM L. CHEW III
Consulate (1799 1804)
The Consulate was the name of the French government between 1799 and 1804.
In 1799, after returning from his campaign in the Middle East during the period of
the Directory, General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the government in what be-
came known as the coup dtat de Brumaire of November 9 10. The legislature was
dissolved, and Napoleon became First Consul for 10 years in the newly established
government. In January 1800, the Consulate established the Bank of France, while
Napoleon pursued a military campaign against Austria in northern Italy before
embarking on a series of reformssupport for which Napoleon hoped to receive as
a result of his military campaign. With support from below would come the consoli-
dation of authority from above.
In May 1800, Napoleon assembled his armies in Switzerland in preparation
for crossing the St. Bernard Pass. Northern Italy fell under French control after
Napoleon routed Austrian troops at the Battle of Marengo on June 14, while an-
other Austrian army was defeated by another French commander at Hohenlinden
on December 3. The Peace of Lunville, concluded on February 9, 1801, secured
for France the left bank of the Rhine and recognition by Austria of the Cisalpine
(northern Italian), Batavian (Dutch), and Helvetian (Swiss) republicsall French
162 Consulate
satellites. By the Treaty of Amiens with Britain in March 1802, France achieved pre-
dominance as a continental power, while Britain remained supreme at sea. The
treaty, which was disadvantageous to Britain, resulted in the recognition of the
French Republic and the restoration of the colonies of France and her allies, with
the exception of Ceylon (a Dutch colony, now Sri Lanka) and Trinidad, a Spanish
possession in the West Indies.
As First Consul, Napoleon wielded extensive power, while the other two other
consuls, Cambecrs and Lebrun, performed merely advisory functions. The con-
suls were to nominate the members of the Senate, and legislative affairs were the
responsibility of a nominated state council. Religion was among many subjects of
interest to the Consulate, for France had been immersed in religious strife since
the passing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in July 1790. Napoleon negotiated
with the new pope, Pius VII, in 1800 and ended the schism between the French
church and the papacy with the ecclesiastical settlement of July 1802. The Concor-
dat restored Roman Catholicism as the religion of the majority of French citizens,
established the supremacy of the state over the church with respect to the nomina-
tion of bishops, and granted religious liberty to other sects. During the Consulate,
Napoleon greatly strengthened his political position and was made consul for life in
August 1802 after a national referendum.
In 1803, the Consulate undertook various domestic reforms, some of which left
a permanent legacy. The Civil Code, drafted by a committee of four lawyers headed
by Cambacrs, was one of Napoleons enduring achievements. Napoleon took part
in the debates of the Council of State while nalizing the draft. The Civil Code
was passed on March 21, 1804, the precursor of what a few years later became the
Napoleonic Code (Code Napolon), which replaced the hundreds of sets of laws of
the ancien rgime. The Code was divided into three main areas: laws relating to the
individual, laws relating to property, and laws relating to the acquisition of property.
The Code guaranteed individual liberty, equality before the law, and protection
from arrest without due process of law. In addition, divorce became more difcult
to acquire, the authority of the father was strengthened within the family, and prop-
erty was to be divided equally among all legitimate heirs. The Civil Code was intro-
duced elsewhere in Europe and remains the basis of the French legal system today.
Under the Consulate, prefects and mayors were appointed to serve the various
departments and communes after the abolition of local self-governing bodies.
A broad base was created as men of different political leanings took up positions
in government. The highest French civilian award, the Legion of Honor, was also
introduced under the Consulate, as was the metric system in March 1803. The gov-
ernment encouraged industrial ventures, and French industries enjoyed a growth
rate of 25 percent; in 1803 the Bank of France was empowered to issue bank notes
backed by gold and silver; and Napoleon introduced a policy of strict control of
labor by banning trade unions. With respect to education, the First Consul believed
that its purpose was to groom the young to become capable administrators as future
servants of the state. Napoleon established 45 lyces, or high schools, with emphasis
on patriotic indoctrination. The lyces provided the best schooling in Europe. Napo-
leon also set up schools of medicine and pharmalogical studies in 1803.
The opportunity for reform during peacetime conditions was short lived. The
Peace of Amiens lasted little more than a year, and hostilities with Britain were re-
sumed in May 1803, with actions fought at sea and in the West Indies. Napoleons
Continental Army 163
bid to rebuild the French New World Empire failed with the disastrous expedition
to Saint-Domingue in 1802, and the following year, after he obtained Louisiana
from Spain, he sold it to the United States when it became clear that France had no
future in the region.
On May 18, 1804, Napoleon was given the title of emperor by the Consulate,
which was ratied by a referendum. He crowned himself emperor at Notre Dame
Cathedral on December 2 1804, and Josphine became empress. In one of historys
great ironies, the revolution that had established a republic ultimately ended in em-
pire. Before it had done so, the Consulate had established order in France and had
ended the political instability of the Revolution. Laws introduced during the earlier
years of the Revolution had already introduced into French society the principles of
equality, due process of law, religious toleration, and the sanctity of private property;
the Consulate built upon these principles and reforms.
FURTHER READING: Alexander, R. S. Napoleon. London: Arnold, 2001; Asprey, Robert B.
The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: Basic Books, 2000; Bergeron, Louis. France Under
Napoleon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981; Chandler, David G. Napoleon.
New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973; Cronin, Vincent. Napoleon. London: HarperCollins,
1994; Ellis, G. Napoleon. London: Longman, 2000; Englund, S. Napoleon: A Political Life. New
York: Scribner, 2004; Esdaile, C. The Wars of Napoleon. London: Longman, 1995; Grab, A.
Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Herold, J.
Christopher. The Age of Napoleon. New York: American Heritage, 1963; Lefebvre, G. Napoleon.
2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969 1974; Markham, J. D. Napoleons Road to
Glory: Triumphs, Defeats and Immortality. London: Brasseys, 2003; McLynn, Frank. Napoleon.
London: Pimlico, 1998.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Continental Army
The commencement of hostilities between the North American colonies and
Britain presented colonial leaders with several major challenges requiring prompt
action. The most pressing was establishing an army with a coherent command
structure to oppose British regulars, who were arriving in large numbers by 1775.
Many colonial leaders resisted forming a standing army due to philosophical objec-
tions, concerns regarding funding and nance, and opposition from those who
favored continued negotiations with the British. By June 1775, however, it was obvi-
ous that colonial militias had to be organized, deployed, and placed under a single
command structure.
On June 7, 1775, the Second Continental Congress authorized the creation of a
Continental Army for the purpose of defending the united colonies and responding
to the mandates of the Congress. One week later the Continental Army was created,
and George Washington was unanimously chosen as commander-in-chief.
During the American Revolutionary War, the army was dissolved and reconsti-
tuted on several occasions. These transitions are best viewed chronologically, start-
ing with the isolated units in New England who engaged in guerrilla efforts in 1775
and concluding in 1784 when the United States Army was established. During the
course of the war the army improved because it changed from a regional northeast-
ern militia to a genuine continental army drawing conscripts from all colonies and
other territories. Moreover, changes in conscription policies and the requirement
164 Continental Association
that each colony provide a specic number of soldiers improved the battle readiness
of the Continental Army. By 1781 1782, the morale of the soldiers had reached its
nadir because the Continental Congress was bankrupt, many colonists had grown
weary, and many colonies were unable to meet their conscription quotas. During
these years, when both British and colonial leaders were seeking a cessation of hos-
tilities, George Washingtons popularity and personal character maintained the co-
hesion of the Continental Army. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 prompted the quick
dissolution of the Continental Army and the formation of a small professional army
to protect national boundaries.
The Continental Army emerged as a competent ghting force that made an im-
pressive showing in a number of pivotal battles of the American Revolution, in-
cluding engagements in Trenton, Princeton, Germantown, Saratoga, and Yorktown.
However, lack of adequate funding from the Continental Congress, internal dissen-
sion among the soldiers, and long periods of inactivity reduced the effectiveness of
the army. In many respects Washingtons character and commitment to the ideals of
the Revolution helped maintain order and military discipline among the rank and
le during the lowest points of the struggle.
FURTHER READING: Higginbotham, Don. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes,
Policies, and Practice, 1763 1789. New York: Macmillan, 1971; Neimeyer, Charles. America Goes
to War: A Social History of the Continental Army. New York: New York University Press, 1996;
Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People a War: The Continental Army and the American Character.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979; Wright, Robert K. The Continental Army.
Washington, DC: Center for Military History, U.S. Army, 1989.
JAMES T. CARROLL
The Continental Association, passed by the delegates to the First Continental
Congress on October 20, 1774, formed a non-importation act or agreement be-
tween the 13 American colonies. With this document, the colonies presented a
unied stance against British political and economic restrictions. The Continental
Association also helped to place the colonies on a direct path to military confronta-
tion with Britain. The agreement is one of the rst examples of unied action by all
13 American colonies and helped lay the foundation for a confederal government
unifying them under the common cause of political and economic freedom from
Britain.
The British government grew weary of American colonial opposition to the vari-
ous attempts to enact taxation legislation after the French and Indian War (1756
1763). American merchants developed non-importation acts following the passage
of the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767. These agreements forced
British merchants to petition their government for the repeal of the various taxa-
tion schemes. In 1773, the British passed the Tea Act, which actually lowered the
tax on tea but diverted large shipments of the product from the nancially strapped
East India Company. The Tea Act threatened the prots of many American smug-
glers who happened to also be prominent merchants in the major ports. Opposition
to the Tea Act led to the Boston Tea Party. In retaliation for the dumping of the
tea by Boston merchants and the Sons of Liberty, the British enacted the Coercive
Continental Association 165
Acts. Anti-British sentiment spread across the American colonies, and other ports
witnessed the dumping of tea by local merchants. Sympathy for the plight of Boston
under the Coercive Acts helped persuade all the American colonies except Georgia
to send delegates to what became known as the First Continental Congress.
Delegates to the First Continental Congress sought a unied stance for measures
that could help persuade Britain to cease placing political and economic restric-
tions on the 13 colonies. After considerable debate, the delegates approved the
Continental Association, also known as the Association, on October 20, 1774. This
document became the most important agreement to emerge from the First Conti-
nental Congress. The document called for unied colonial action to oppose Britain.
The agreement opened by pledging the loyalty of the delegates to King George III
and then listed the basic grievances of the colonies, including parliamentary taxa-
tion schemes (the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts), trials outside
the 13 colonies for offenses alleged to have been committed within the colonies
(imposition of the Admiralty Courts and the Administration of Justice Act), the
extension of Quebecs borders below the Great Lakes (the Quebec Act), the British
Coercive Acts aimed at Massachusetts, and in particular the city of Boston, and the
prevention of colonial migration westward into areas designated by the British as
Native American territory (the Proclamation of 1763).
The delegates who signed the Continental Association called for the non-
importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation of goods between the Ameri-
can colonies and Britain. The document announced that the boycott would become
effective on December 1, 1774. The colonies pledged a unied position and refusal
to import any goods from Britain or Ireland, including tea from the East India
Company as well as molasses, syrup, panales (a Spanish delicacy made from honey-
comb), coffee, and pimentos from the British West Indies; wine from Madeira; and
any foreign indigo. The delegates also announced that they would not import any
slaves after December 1, 1774, nor sell any ships or goods to merchants engaged in
the lucrative slave trade.
Along the lines of non-consumption, Americans would also cease to purchase
and utilize imported goods, including taxed tea, after December 1, 1774. The
delegates declared that the colonies would not purchase or drink any tea after
March 1, 1775. The agreement provided for one exception. Any previously ordered
goods arriving in the American colonies between December 1, 1774, and March 1,
1775, could be returned to its origin or delivered to the local government commit-
tee for storage until the Association boycott was lifted, or it could be sold under
the supervision of the committee. Prots from these sales would be utilized to
reimburse the merchants who originally purchased them and also be forwarded
to Boston to assist with the relief of the locals there living under the British Co-
ercive Acts.
The non-exportation clauses stated that the American colonies would halt all
exports to Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies after September 10, 1775.
Rice exports to Europe remained the one exception. Delegates from South Caro-
lina demanded that rice and indigo be excluded from the non-exportation clauses
or the colony would not sign the agreement. Following considerable discussion,
a compromise removed indigo from the demands of South Carolina and the del-
egates agreed to accept rice as the lone commodity that could be exported after
September 10, 1775.
166 Continental Congress, First
The delegates pledged their colonies to promote self-reliance and home indus-
try. The document noted that sheep should be bred in greater numbers in order to
increase the production of colonial wool for the manufacture of clothing. Matters of
extravagance such as horse races, cock ghts, plays, and other forms of entertain-
ment were highly discouraged since they diverted resources that individuals might
need to get through the period of self-reliance. Mourners at funerals were asked to
wear small black ribbons rather than black outts to conserve fabric.
The agreement required each local community in the 13 colonies to establish
committees to oversee the obedience of merchants and citizens to the provisions
of the document. In some areas, these committees grew in power to challenge
the local elected governments. Although Georgia did not send delegates to the
First Continental Congress, the colony agreed to abide by some of the provisions of
the Continental Association after January 23, 1775. The boycott of trade was fairly
successful and alarmed many British merchants, who petitioned their government
to address the demands of the American colonies. The outbreak of ghting at Lex-
ington and Concord essentially rendered the Continental Association null and void
since a cessation of trading with Britain naturally accompanied open warfare. See
also Committees of Correspondence; Non-Importation Agreements; Slavery and the
Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the
Coercive Acts of 1774. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974; Conser, Walter H.,
Ronald McCarthy, David Toscano, and Gene Sharp, eds. Resistance, Politics, and the American
Struggle for Independence, 1765 1775. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1986; Middlekauff, Robert.
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
TERRY M. MAYS
The First Continental Congress, a body consisting of representatives from 12 out
of 13 of Britains colonies, met in Philadelphia in September and October 1774.
The purpose was to discuss recent punitive legislation by Parliament and determine
what they could do to restore what they believed were liberties they had lost.
The First Continental Congress was, in the history of the colonies, unique but
not without some precedent. Twenty years before, in 1754, an attempt at unifying
at least the northern colonies had been made in the Albany Plan of Union, drafted
by Benjamin Franklin. The Stamp Act Congress, held in October 1765, had been
a gathering of representatives from nine colonies protesting the imposition of tax
stamps. For some delegates with a sense of history, there were even earlier prec-
edents, such as the gathering of barons at Runnymede in 1215 that had led to the
Magna Carta. A more recent precedent was the agreements of 1689 with William
and Mary, who had deposed her father, James II, in the Glorious Revolution. In all
cases, the precedents, while stating rights and obligations, at no time ever contested
the sovereignty of the king.
Recently, in the minds of an increasing number of American colonists, the iden-
tication of rights lost and the attempt to regain them had taken on a new urgency.
Taxes on tea passed in 1773 by Parliament had led to the boarding of ships and the
destruction of tea in Boston Harbor in December of that year. News of this action,
Continental Congress, First 167
referred to as the Boston Tea Party, reached London on January 27, 1774. The
response was quick and harsh. A series of resolutions intended to punish Boston,
known collectively as the Coercive Acts (or the Intolerable Acts,) were passed and
sent on to Boston. Their intent was to inict damage upon the citys economy and
in so doing compel order there. In addition, they would serve as a lesson to other
colonies.
The committees of correspondence in Massachusetts informed the committees
in the other colonies about these developments. Soon, the events in Boston were
widely reported and discussed all along the coast. It was from these communications
that the idea of a congress and how to assemble it came into being. The general
topic was not to be armed resistance or independence. The goal was, instead, to
discuss how the erosion of rights could be stopped. The objective and tone of the
planned Congress could be well described in the instructions given to the Massa-
chusetts delegation. They were to meet with other colonials and discuss wise and
proper measures to get back what were perceived to be liberties lost in the past
11 years.
The time and the place were set. It would convene in September in the city of
Philadelphia. When the time came, there were, altogether, 55 delegates. Only Geor-
gia had not sent any representatives. As might have been expected, they were all
prominent within their own colonies although none at this time was really known
outside the boundaries of his particular province. Many would, however, become
well known in the coming years either militarily or politically.
Among the Massachusetts representatives were John Adams, Samuel Adams, and
Robert Treat Paine. One delegate from New Hampshire was John Sullivan, who
would command troops as a general in the coming war. Roger Sherman of Con-
necticut was there beginning a long term of service that would include participat-
ing in drafting the Declaration of Independence and working on the United States
Constitution in 1789. Silas Deane, also of Connecticut, would serve as a diplomat
for the colonies in France. John Jay and James Duane were part of the New York
delegation. Two of Pennsylvanias representatives were Joseph Galloway and John
Dickinson. Virginias delegates included Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Peyton
Randolph, and George Washington.
They represented a fairly wide spectrum of opinion as well as differing perspec-
tives based on the knowledge each had of life in his individual colony. Massachusetts
was considered to be the most radical colony, and for that reason, its delegates were
advised to stay in the background, at least at rst. For the most part, however, they
were relatively moderate, at least in the sense that none of them was at this time
advocating rebellion.
Although all the delegations had not yet arrived, the First Continental Congress
convened on September 5. Offered the facility known as Carpenters Hall, they
elected a president, Peyton Randolph of Virginia. There was a presentation of cre-
dentials from each delegation, and after their accreditation, they took their places.
The next order of business was the proposal to draw up the general rules of order.
These issues were not settled the rst day, but within a few days, the working rules
had been determined. Each colony would have one vote, regardless of its size or
wealth. Larger colonies, such as Virginia, had wanted representation that would
reect the size of the populations. South Carolina argued that a combination of
wealth and population should be the criterion for the size of a colonys delegation.
168 Continental Congress, First
Once one of the representatives noted that there was not enough information to
accurately determine size, wealth, or population, the issue was resolved. Having set-
tled it for now, the issue of proportional representation would return and be nally
settled in the constitutional debate in 1789.
Speeches were to be limited, with no representative speaking twice on the same
subject unless he had been granted permission by the Congress. While minutes
would be kept, there were to be no statements on the proceedings made by any
member in public. All discussions and decisions were to be kept secret until the
Congress as a whole decided to make them public.
Committees were then appointed. While there was to be a great deal of debate
during the almost two months that the Continental Congress met, most of the work
was done outside the main chamber. The minutes of the Continental Congress re-
cord decisions and some of the debate. They also indicate, however, that many times
Congress convened in the morning for only a short while, then adjourned to allow
delegates to discuss problems and work out solutions.
Dening the purpose of the Congress was essential. What had drawn them here,
and what were they hoping to accomplish? It was clear from the start that they had
no argument with George III. It was Parliament that they looked upon as the enemy.
Their view may have been colored by the fact that a bald statement against the
king would have been an act of treason. Alternatively, they may have believed the
king would see their best interest in a way that Parliament would not. Further, they
wished to closely dene their grievances, nally agreeing on what they considered
to have been the loss of their liberties since 1763 as the precise set of issues they
hoped to resolve.
On September 16, Paul Revere brought from Boston a copy of the Suffolk
Resolves, a formal statement drafted in Suffolk Country, Massachusetts located.
These resolves, which were to be widely interpreted in Britain as a statement of
hostility, were presented by the Massachusetts delegation the next day. They were
well received by the Congress, which then voted to adopt them as well as to send aid
to Boston. The Congress then decided to send the resolves and their response to
newspapers to publicize this issue.
Five days later, on September 22, the Congress began to discuss the Resolution
Not to Import, which would become the core of the Continental Assembly. The
terms were that after December 1, no imports would be accepted from Britain.
Additionally, there would be no sales or usage of these items after December 1, even
if they had been brought in before the cutoff date. While there was a good deal of
agreement with this plan, it was not unanimous, as the alternative proposal by Joseph
Galloway would show.
Galloways proposal, as he dened it and defended it in Congress on Septem-
ber 28, was based on what he said were two positions being held in the Congress.
The rst was to go back to a relationship with Britain that would set the clock back
to 1763; that is, no taxes would be paid by the colonies. The other was to use eco-
nomic means: a boycott of British goods. Taking no goods in and sending none out
would eliminate the taxes being paid and inict hardship in Britain, resulting in the
repeal of the taxes. In his view, both were wrong. Galloways solution was a plan of
union. If this were carried out, Parliament would no longer make laws for the colo-
nies. The colonies themselves would create a parliament that would act directly with
the king. The issue was hotly debated and nally defeated by a 6 5 vote.
Continental Congress, First 169
On October 1, the Congress resolved unanimously that a Declaration of Rights
and Grievances be sent to the king. This document was prepared by a committee
that included John Adams, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee. On October 6,
the Massachusetts delegation received another visit from Paul Revere; this time he
gave an account of military action in and around Boston. Apparently fortications
were being built on several of the hills in the city. Further, there were plans to evacu-
ate the civilian population and turn Boston into a sealed-off, armed camp. At the
same time, there were reports in New England that Boston had been red on by the
British. The result was a large mobilization of militia from all over New England to
help the citizens of Boston. This action, which was a foretaste of what would hap-
pen after Lexington and Concord the next year, turned out to have been a response
to a false alarm. It was still a matter of concern, and the Congress responded to it
by sending a letter to the commander of Boston and governor of Massachusetts,
General Gage, asking that he stop his preparations to turn Boston into a fortress.
That letter was sent on October 11. The next day, a committee was selected to plan
how the non-importation and non-export agreements, the document that would
become the Articles of Association, would be implemented. That document was
nally signed on October 26.
In the Congresss nal week, it drafted and sent to London an Address to the
People of Great Britain. The delegates also sent invitations to the colonies of Que-
bec, St. Johns Island (what is now Newfoundland), Nova Scotia, Georgia, and the
formerly Spanish (now British) colonies of East and West Florida to join them for
another Congress to be held the next year. The invitations sent out specied that
the Congress would meet once again on May 10, 1775, once again in Philadelphia,
and once again in Carpenters Hall. The Congress dissolved itself on October 26.
The First Continental Congress was an extremely important political event. The
most obvious accomplishment was the Articles of Association, a 14-point document
that set the terms for what would be done (boycott) and how it would be done.
There was a good deal more, however, that was perhaps more important. The First
Continental Congress had been a gathering of men with very local interests who
were, after a great deal of debate, able to begin to articulate the beginnings of a
national perspective. With no experience to guide them beyond what they had seen
and done at home, they were able to gather, make rules, and then debate and state
policy. What is more, they were able to devise the means (in this case the local com-
mittees) that would put the Continental Association into effect. They had recognized
that the danger presented to one city could affect them all; this constituted the be-
ginning of a national outlook. Finally, in deciding to meet again the following year,
the representatives of the colony showed that they believed that the efforts they had
made could be the start of a constructive mode of solving political problems. See also
Administration of Justice Act; Boston Port Act; Canada; Chase, Samuel; Continental
Congress, Second; Committee of Secret Correspondence; Dyer, Eliphalet; Hopkins,
Stephen; Livingston, William; Massachusetts Government Act; Navigation Acts; New
England Restraining Act; Non-Importation Agreements; Paca, William; Paine, Rob-
ert Treat; Quartering Act; Quebec Act; Rutledge, Edward; Rutledge, John; Tea Act.
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992; Davis, Derek. Religion
and the Continental Congress, 1774 1789: Contributions to Original Intent. Oxford: Oxford
170 Continental Congress, Second
University Press, 2000; Ferling, John E. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American
Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003; Harvey, Robert. A Few Bloody Noses:
The American War of Independence. London: John Murray, 2001; Henderson, H. James.
Party Politics in the Continental Congress. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974; Jillson, Calvin C.
Congressional Dynamics: Structure, Coordination, and Choice in the First American Congress,
1774 1789. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994; Marston, Jerrilyn G. King and
Congress: The Transfer of Political Legitimacy, 1774 1776. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1987; Meigs, Cornelia. The Violent Men, a Study of Human Relations in the First American
Congress. New York: Macmillan, 1949; Montross, Lynn. The Reluctant Rebels: The Story of the
Continental Congress, 1774 1789. New York: Harper, 1950; Rakove, Jack N. The Beginnings
of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. New York: Knopf, 1979;
United States Continental Congress. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774 1789. New
York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968.
ROBERT N. STACY
Although it ofcially lasted until March 1789, the key phase of the Second Con-
tinental Congress stretched from 1775 to 1781 at sessions in Philadelphia and, due
to the exigencies of wartime, in Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore.
While the powers of the Congress were limited (it could only issue nonbinding
resolutions, which the states were free to accept or reject), and although its sessions
were plagued by divisions and rivalries (notably between the southern states and the
representatives from New England), important aspects of the American republics
legal and political groundwork were laid. It was distinguished from the First Con-
tinental Congress by the participation of a Georgian delegation (absent from the
previous Congress) and by the arrival of a swathe of new members, Benjamin Frank-
lin and Thomas Jefferson among them. After the withdrawal of Peyton Randolph,
John Hancock served as the Congresss president.
When the congressional delegates convened in Philadelphias State House
(known latterly as Independence Hall) on May 10, 1775, their minds were xed
on the recent outbreak of hostilities with Britain. The actions at Lexington and
Concord had taken place in the previous month (April 19). There was a pressing
need to take charge of military affairs, and after the Congress assumed control of
the armed forces, General George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief
of the new Continental Army on June 16: he famously agreed to serve without salary.
Measures were also immediately taken to raise much-needed funds, and on June 22,
it was decided that $2 million in bills of credit would be issues. However bold the
move, the Congress would struggle nancially throughout its tenure.
Organizing the war was only half the challenge, however. It also had to be jus-
tied. Many delegates maintained the notion that Congress remained loyal to
George III and was merely dissatised with the policies and impositions of his minis-
ters. The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms encapsulated
this idea. Such casuistry aside, there was an undeniable sense of growing radicalism
within the Congress, epitomized by John and Samuel Adams.
The possibility of casting off British rule and establishing a republican idea much
helped by the publication of Thomas Paines Common Sense in January 1776 was
Corday dArmont, Marie Anne Charlotte 171
clearly gaining ground. Paines book sold some 120,000 copies, and the radicalizing
trend culminated with the appointment of a committee (including Franklin,
John Adams, and, preeminently, Jefferson) charged with drafting a declaration
of independence. On July 2, 1776, Congress voted for independence, and two
days later, the declaration was signed. Along with the promulgation of Articles of
Confederationissued in November 1777, although not ratied by all the states
until March 1781and the establishment of the rst ofcial diplomatic contacts
with various European states, this momentous declaration inaugurated the era of
American self-rule.
Congress was undoubtedly governing, but it was doing so without a rm legal
basis. The Articles of Confederation were intended to remedy this unsatisfactory
state of affairs, and when they were nally and universally adopted in 1781, the
history of the United States Congress entered a new phase. Indeed, the period be-
tween 1781 and the arrival of the United States Constitution is often referred to as
the era of the Confederation Congress and is more usefully considered as a distinct
phase in Americas political evolution. Congress now ofcially adopted the privi-
leges formerly enjoyed by the British Crown, including the right to elect ofcers of
state, to conduct diplomatic relations, and to raise troops and funds.
Legal status did not always bring effective power, however, and throughout the
1780s the efforts of the various states to retain their inuence and assert their rights
routinely stymied Congresss efforts to govern efciently. That said, the period did
witness notable achievements, chief among them the ratication, in 1784, of the
Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War, and the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787. See also American Revolution; The Northwest.
FURTHER READING: Middlekauff, R. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 1789.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1982; Rakove, J. N. The Beginnings of National Politics: An
Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. New York: Knopf, 1979.
JONATHAN WRIGHT
Corday dArmont, Marie Anne Charlotte (1768 1793)
Charlotte Corday was a French woman famous for murdering the French rev-
olutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. Born to a minor noble family at St. Saturnin,
Normandy, Corday was related to the famous seventeenth-century dramatist Pierre
Corneille on her mothers side. She was educated at the Abbaye aux Dames convent
in Caen, which she left after it was closed in 1791. She initially sympathized with
the ideas of the French Revolution and supported the Girondist faction but was
horried at the revolutionary excesses and opposed the radical Jacobins, especially
following the September Massacres of 1792. In July 1793, she traveled to Paris with
the purpose of assassinating Marat, who was elected president of the Jacobin Society
in April, and whom she held responsible for the excesses of the Revolution. Before
going through with her plan, she wrote her Adresse aux franais amis des lois et de la
paix, which explained the act she was about to commit.
On July 13, she went to see Marat before noon, offering to inform him about
a planned Girondin uprising in Caen. She was rst turned away, but on a second
attempt that evening, Marat agreed to meet her. He conducted most of his affairs
172 Corday dArmont, Marie Anne Charlotte
from a bathtub because of a rare skin condition, and while in his bath, he met Cor-
day. He was writing down the names of supposed Girondins when she stabbed him
with a knife. Corday was immediately apprehended and tried three days later. Claude
Franois Chauveau-Lagarde, who previously had represented Queen Marie Antoi-
nette, defended her eloquently, and Corday herself testied that she had carried
out the assassination alone, saying, I killed one man to save 100,000. On July 17,
1793, Corday was executed by guillotine.
The assassination of Marat proved to be a rallying cause for the Jacobins and
turned Marat into a martyr. Jacobins used his state funeral, choreographed by
Jacques-Louis David, to great advantage to make Marat into a cult gure. David also
produced the famous painting of Marat stabbed in his bathtub. Similarly, Corday
became a cult gure for anti-Jacobin forces. The assassination had important con-
sequences, for it seemingly validated the Jacobins claims about traitors within the
very bosom of the nation who were far more insidious than the foreign foe. Cordays
actions led to increased suspicion of women in the public sphere and to the closing
of the female political clubs in October 1793.
FURTHER READING: Melchior-Bonnet, Bernadine. Charlotte Corday. Paris: Perrin, 1972;
Vatel, Charles. Charlotte de Corday et les Girondins. Paris: H. Plon, 1872.
The arrest of Marie Charlotte Corday dAumont following her murder of Jean Paul Marat in 1793.
Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Council of Five Hundred 173
Cordeliers Club
Founded in April 1790, the Cordeliers Club emerged, along with the Jacobins,
as one of the two great political clubs in Paris. Ofcially known as the Society of the
Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the club adopted the nickname of
the suppressed Franciscan monastery where it rst met. The club was founded by radi-
cal members of the Cordelier district in response to the municipal reorganization of
Paris in 1790. Through 1789 and 1790, the Cordelier district had developed consider-
able popular participation, and they feared that the new section would not be able to
support their democratic practice. In response, the Cordeliers Club was created.
Led by Georges-Jacques Danton and Camille Desmoulins, among others, the club
became a base for the Parisian popular movement as a whole. While it drew most
of its membership from the immediate neighborhood, like the Jacobins, the Corde-
liers Club attracted members from all over Paris and engaged in correspondence
with provincial popular societies. Unlike the Jacobins, the Cordeliers Club main-
tained a low monthly subscription of two sous, admitted passive citizens, and showed
a greater willingness to support female participation. In doing so, the club became,
together with the sectional assemblies and popular societies, the foundation of the
radical sans-culotte movement. It was the members of Cordeliers Club who founded
and led the creation of popular societies throughout the sections, and it was the
Cordeliers Club that claimed leadership over the sectional movement.
The Cordeliers Club offered a distinctive vision of the French Revolution as re-
publican and democratic. It was at the forefront of radical agitation and was the
base for two important radical movements, the Enrags and the Hbertistes. The
club played a central role in a number of pivotal events through which the Revolu-
tion was radicalized and a republic proclaimed. In July 1791, after the ight of King
Louis XVI, the Cordeliers Club initiated the mass demonstration on the Champs
de Mars that expressed a growing republican sentiment and ended in a violent con-
frontation with the National Guard. Along with the sectional popular societies, the
club was instrumental in the agitation that led to the overthrow of the monarchy on
August 10, 1792. After the foundation of the Republic, the club remained pivotal in
the factional struggles of the National Convention and the struggle for control over
the popular movement in Paris. Increasingly, the club came into conict with the
Jacobin-controlled Convention, and following the arrest and execution of Jacques
Ren Hbert, the club lost its power and leadership over the popular movement,
nally closing by April 1795. See also Political Clubs (French); Republicanism; Sans-
Culottes.
FURTHER READING: Hammersley, Rachel. French Revolutionaries and English Republicans: The
Cordeliers Club, 1790 1794. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2005; Rose, R. B. The Making of the
Sans-Culottes. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983; Slavin, Morris. The Hbertists to
the Guillotine: Anatomy of a Conspiracy in Revolutionary France. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
BRODIE RICHARDS
As its title implies, this lower house of the legislature established by the consti-
tution of the Year III (1795), which ushered in the much-maligned period of the
174 Council of Five Hundred
Directory, was a chamber comprising ve hundred deputies. Besides helping to
select the ve executive directors, their task was to initiate bills that would then
be passed to the upper house, the Council of Elders, before going into effect.
These two legislative councils certainly succeeded in fostering some effective parlia-
mentary procedures during their four-year existence. The bicameral arrangement
produced a good deal of orderly debate, free of pressure from the public galleries
and the crowds of petitioners who had inhibited discussion in the past. Members of
both houses were similarly elected by the departmental assemblies, in other words
at the second stage of the process, by electors chosen in the primary assemblies,
who were perforce substantial property owners. Middle-class professional men who
had served in the earlier national assemblies thus maintained their predominance
in the Council of Five Hundred. Indeed, continuity was initially ensured by the
infamous two-thirds decree of 1795, which stipulated that the majority of the rst
cohort of Council members must be chosen from among retiring deputies from the
Convention.
This immediately highlighted difculties in managing an electoral process that
caused constant upheaval in the composition of both councils. Although the inten-
tion of the constitution makers was to reduce disruption by providing for partial
elections each year, it had the opposite effect. Annual spring electoral campaigns
in 1797, 1798, and 1799 were accompanied by considerable disorder and pro-
duced political landslides, rst to the Right and then to the Left. A center party
did not emerge, partly because of deeply entrenched divisions in the wake of the
Reign of Terror, but also on account of cumbersome constitutional arrangements
that failed to facilitate cooperation among the Directory, ministers, and councils,
while directors could only intervene in council matters by resorting to illegality.
The election of hostile parliamentary majorities prompted purges of both coun-
cils in the coups of Fructidor V (September 1797) and Floral VI (May 1798).
A great deal of controversial legislation was passed on matters concerning the
church and migrs, though substantial progress was made in nancial and ad-
ministrative affairs, for although it was short lived, the Directory was not without its
achievements. The fourth and nal round of elections in 1799 was actually allowed
to stand, but by then, the electoral principle had been thoroughly discredited, and
moderate deputies were increasingly drawn to the idea of constitutional revision,
which eventuated in the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9 10, 1799). This was led
by the recently elected director Sieys but plotted in the Five Hundred by Lucien
Bonaparte, who was serving as president when this nal coup took place. Numerous
deputies deed his brother Napoleon when he appeared before them to demand
the nomination of a provisional government. Yet this abortive resistance ironically
justied the use of troops to dissolve the councils and bring the directorial regime
to an end. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Hunt, Lynn, D. Lansky, and P. Hanson. The Failure of the Liberal
Republic in France, 1795 1799: The Road to Brumaire. Journal of Modern History 51 (1979),
734 59; Kuscinski, August. Les dputs au Corps lgislatif: Conseil des Cinq-Cents, Conseil des
Anciens, de lan IV lan VII. Paris, 1905; Lyons, Martyn. The Directory. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975; Sydenham, Michael J. The First French Republic, 1792 1804. London:
Batsford, 1974.
MALCOLM CROOK
Crvecur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de 175
Coup dEtat de Brumaire
See Brumaire, Coup d Etat
Georges Auguste Couthon was a revolutionary politician, deputy to the Legisla-
tive Assembly and National Convention, and member of the Committee of Public
Safety. The son of a notary, Couthon, who was born in the parish of Orcet in the
Auvergne, studied law at Rheims. By 1783, he had qualied for the law and was prac-
ticing in Clermont-Ferrand. In addition, he served as a municipal ofcer and judge
in Clermont-Ferrand. Although he was unsuccessful in his election to the Estates-
General, he was chosen to be an elector.
Couthon was elected to the Legislative Assembly in September 1791 by the de-
partment of Puy-de-Dme, where he supported Jean-Pierre Brissot in his advocacy
for foreign war. He became president of the Jacobin Club in November 1791.
Although he did not participate in the overthrow of the monarchy in August
1792, he supported it. Elected to the National Convention by the department of
Puy-de-Dme, he became a supporter of the Mountain faction after trying to recon-
cile the two major factions. During the kings trial, he voted for Louis XVIs death.
Although paralyzed by meningitis and conned to a wheelchair, Couthon was
sent on mission three times during his career. First, in November 1792, he was sent
to the Loir-et-Cher to deal with disorders resulting from food shortages. Secondly,
in March 1793, he was sent to the principality of Salem to oversee its incorporation
into the department of the Vosges. Thirdly, and most importantly, in August 1793,
he was sent to the counterrevolutionary city of Lyon to bring its siege to a conclu-
sion. He proved himself to be successful in mobilizing forces to defeat the enemies,
both domestic and foreign.
A member of the Committee of Public Safety from May 1793, and a close colleague
of Robespierre and Louis Antoine Saint-Just, Couthon was responsible for the 1794
law that decreed execution without trial. Couthon was executed on July 28, 1794,
along with other Robespierristes. See also French Revolution; Jacobins; Reign of Ter-
ror; Representatives on Mission.
FURTHER READING: Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French
Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; Sve, Marie-Madeleine. Sur la pra-
tique Jacobine: La mission de Couthon Lyon. Annales historiques de la Rvolution franaise
55, no. 4 (1983): 510 43; Soboul, Albert. Georges Couthon. Annales historiques de la Rvolution
franaise 55, no. 2 (1983): 204 27.
LEIGH WHALEY
Crvecur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de (1735 1813)
Author of Letters from an American Farmer, which was published during the Amer-
ican Revolution and enabled Europeans to understand America and Americans,
Crvecur was born in Caen, Normandy, with claims to provincial nobility. The
son of Guillaume-Augustin Jean de Crvecur and Marie-Anne Thrsa Blouet,
he grew up near Creully. In 1750 Crvecur graduated from the Jesuit Collge
Royal de Bourbon and joined the French army under General Montcalm, ghting,
176 Currency Act
surveying, and making maps in Canada during the French and Indian War (1756
1763). Wounded at Quebec, he decided to remain in America, settling in New York
in 1759, and changed his name to J. Hector St. John. Determined to know America,
he traveled from New Hampshire to Virginia and throughout the Great Lakes and
the Ohio Valley. He became an American citizen in 1765 and married Mehitable
Tippet, settling in Orange County, New York, on a 120-acre estate. His farming ex-
periences there became the basis for his later Letters and gave form to the American
dream for Europeans to live under new laws, new modes of living, a new social
system based on equality of condition.
Crvecur tried to stay above the politics of the Revolution, and in 1778 he
returned to France with his eldest son to preserve the hereditary rights of his chil-
dren to family lands in Normandy. In Paris he met Benjamin Franklin and agreed
to conduct several American seamen safely back to America. He published scien-
tic treatises on American agriculture and was entertained in the salons frequented
by philosophes of the Enlightenment. In 1782, Crvecur published his semi-
autobiographical social commentary, Letters from an American Farmer, which answered
the question What is an American, this new man? to curious Europeans interested
in the nature of their American ally. Louis XVI appointed Crvecur French con-
sul in America after 1783, and the author returned on the ship carrying the Treaty
of Paris to nd his wife deceased and his home destroyed, though he was reunited
with his two other children. He worked diligently to expand trade between America
and France and developed scientic and cultural exchanges. Crvecur returned
to France in 1785, and in 1790 founded the Socit Gallo-Amricaine, publishing in
1801 his Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans ltat de New York. He died in Sarcelles
near Paris.
FURTHER READING: Philbrick, Thomas. St. John de Crvecur. New York: Twayne, 1970.
BARBARA BENNETT PETERSON
Currency Act (1764)
The Currency Act was passed on April 19, 1764, by Parliament, acting on the
advice of Lord George Grenville, chancellor of the exchequer, who was seeking a va-
riety of regulatory and revenue acts relating to the North American colonies in the
period immediately following the close of the French and Indian War (1754 1763).
This act was purely regulatory and was supported by merchants and monetary con-
servatives, who favored hard money policies. The North American colonies all re-
sorted to printing their own specie because British mercantilism deprived them of
the amounts of hard currency required for a circulating currency. As early as the late
seventeenth century, several colonies were issuing bills of credit, which emerged as
the primary medium of exchange by the 1760s. The weakness of this practice was a
general lack of monetary regulation, a wide uctuation in the value of money from
colony to colony, and a consistent pattern of ination in North America. Supporters
of the act argued that short-term hardships would produce a stronger economy in
the long term.
Specically, the act disallowed the use of paper money as legal tender and pro-
hibited the issuance of new paper money. Paper money in circulation would be
withdrawn according to a specic timetable. This deationary measure increased
Currency Act 177
the North American decit, prompted a downturn in the colonial economy, and
contributed to increasing tensions between Parliament and the colonies. By as-
suming control of colonial currency, Parliament satised powerful merchants but
further alienated the cash-strapped colonists; this was one of a number of signicant
contributing factors that led to the American Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Bullion, John. British Ministers and American Resistance to the Stamp
Act, October December 1765. William and Mary Quarterly 49, no. 1 ( January 1992): 89 107;
Ernst, Joseph. Money and Politics in America, 1755 1775: A Study of the Currency Act of 1764 and
the Political Economy of Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973.
JAMES T. CARROLL
D
Danton, Georges-Jacques (17591794)
A French revolutionary leader and statesman who played an instrumental role in
the establishment of the First Republic in France, Danton was born on October 29,
1759, at Arcis-sur-Aube (Champagne). His parents were Jacques Danton, a procureur
(public prosecutor) in the bailiwick of Arcis, and his second wife, Marie-Madeleine
Camus. His father died before Danton was three years old, leaving the family to
scrape by. His uncle wanted him to become a priest and arranged for Danton to
attend the Oratorian seminary at Troyes; in 1774, he supposedly ran away from the
school to Rheims, some 70 miles away, to see the crowning of Louis XVI. Danton
eventually chose to seek a career in law, and in 1780, he entered the ofce of a solici-
tor at Paris and apprenticed as a clerk while preparing for the bar. He studied the
works of the philosophes and mastered foreign languages, among them English and
Italian. In 1785, he was called to the bar at Rheims but later moved to Paris to prac-
tice. Young, energetic, and eloquent, Danton was able to save enough money within
two years to buy the ofce of advocate in the Conseil du Roi in 1787. His marriage to
Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, daughter of the proprietor of the Caf Procope
in Paris, also provided him with much-needed funds. For the next two years, Danton
won a number of cases and his legal reputation spread; among his clients were the
minister of justice, de Barentin, and the comptroller general, de Brienne.
In 1789, amidst revolutionary agitation, Danton enlisted in the garde bourgeoise
(civic guard) of the Cordeliers district of Paris and was elected president of the
district in October. Although some accounts claim he participated in the attack on
the Bastille and the womens march on Versailles, Danton, in fact, was not involved
in either event. He was, however, one of the founders of the famous Cordeliers
Club, which would play an important role in the early stages of the French Revolu-
tion. Dantons popularity increased after he defended his districts interests against
the Constituent Assembly and resisted the Chtelets agents sent to arrest Jean-Paul
Marat. In January 1790, Danton was elected to the provisional Paris Commune but
was later excluded from the nal membership list. In January 1791, he was elected
to the General Council of the dpartement of Paris. He continued to be active in Pari-
sian politics, but his fame was local in nature and he exercised little inuence.
180 Danton, Georges-Jacques
His reputation was rmly rooted in the Cordeliers Club and the Jacobin Club,
where he made numerous speeches and gained supporters. In November 1790, fol-
lowing the suppression of the Nancy mutiny, Danton addressed the Constituent
Assembly as a delegate from the Paris sections and demanded the dismissal of royal
ministers, who eventually resigned. In the spring of 1791, he claimed a decisive role
in preventing the king from moving to Saint-Cloud, but his role in this matter was, in
fact, minor. In June 1791, following Louis XVIs failed attempt to ee from France,
Danton accused Lafayette of complicity and treason and called for the abdication
of the king. He supported the split in the Cordeliers Club and joined the Jacobins,
becoming a member of the Jacobin committee, and drafting a petition in support
of the kings replacement with a regency under the duc dOrlans on July 16. On
the day of the so-called Champ de Mars massacre ( July 17, 1791), Danton acted less
than heroically: forewarned of the danger, he left the capital to visit his native town
of Arcis and later traveled to England.
During his absence, the Thtre Franais section of Paris chose him as one of its
electors, and Danton returned to the capital, escaping prosecution for his role in the
events of July. Danton was not, however, chosen to represent his section in the Leg-
islative Assembly, and he pursued a new ofce. In December 1791, he was elected
second assistant to the procureur of the Paris Commune, beating Collot dHerbois by
Georges-Jacques Danton. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Danton, Georges-Jacques 181
1,162 votes to 654. Danton made a memorable inaugural address, claiming that an
enlightened public had sought him out, as a man of purity, in the rural retreat to
which he had retired. He referred to nature as having endowed him with an ath-
letic build and the erce countenance of liberty and offered his resolve to ght
against counterrevolution.
Dantons reputation grew rapidly in 1792 when he became one of the leaders
of the Parisian sans-culottes and used his eloquence and talents to champion their
demands. As a tribune of the people, he was very critical of the monarchy and
worked hard to undermine it. Although details on his role in organizing the insur-
rection of August 10, 1792, remain obscure, he was largely credited with its success
and undoubtedly played an instrumental role. He initiated the sectional movement
for the kings deposition and helped replace the regular Paris Commune with its
insurrectional successor. After the coup, he secured the votes of 222 of the 284
deputies still in the Assembly to gain the post of minister of justice.
In this capacity, Danton emerged as a dominant member of the Executive Coun-
cil and seemed to be alone among the ministers in his ability to rise to the demands
of a desperate situation. A week after becoming minister, he dispatched to the courts
of France a memo explaining the insurrection as the nations response to a coun-
terrevolutionary plot in the Tuileries. He described the Revolution as the basis for
the construction of a new society in accordance with the ideas of the Enlightenment
philosophes. He became famous for rallying the populace to defend the fatherland,
and he was not exaggerating when he claimed later that besides being minister of
justice, he also acted as de facto deputy minister of war. After the Prussian capture of
the strategic fortresses of Longwy and Verdun, some ofcials, including the minister
of the interior, Jean-Marie Roland, suggested moving the government from Paris to
Blois, but Danton objected to this in no uncertain terms, saying that he just brought
his mother and children to Paris and would sooner see it burned down than have it
fall to the Prussians.
As such, Danton advised the Legislative Assembly to order each municipality
to arm all the men within its jurisdiction and dispatch them to the various French
armies. Special commissioners were created to supervise such levies and establish
order in the provinces. Danton prepared decrees that declared that relatives of mi-
grs were considered hostages, and nonjuring priests were arrested. On August 28,
he secured authority for the authorities to search homes for weapons and to arrest
any counterrevolutionary suspects, declaring: If we have to place 30,000 traitors
in the hands of the law, let us do it tomorrow. His call to arms was repeated in the
most famous of all his speeches, delivered on September 2, when he was informed
of the fall of the Verdun fortress. With the full force of his formidable stature and
eloquence, he thundered in the Assembly: The tocsin that will ring is no signal of
alarm; it is sounding the charge against the enemies of the nation. To conquer the
enemies of the fatherland, we must dare, and dare again, and dare forever, and
France will be saved! His reputation was, however, badly damaged as a result of the
September Massacres, when an incensed populace invaded prisons and massacred
hundreds of prisoners. The moderate Girondins accused Danton of mastermind-
ing the massacres; although the degree of his involvement remains a unclear, he
probably agreed to the massacres without giving the order for them. Danton did
intercede in some cases to save prisoners, but as a powerful minister of justice, he
certainly could have done morebut chose not to.
Danton was elected to the National Convention as a deputy for Paris on Septem-
ber 6, 1792, receiving the highest number of votes among the Parisian deputies.
He was elected to two important committees, the Diplomatic Committee and the
Committee on the Constitution, where he used his oratorical talent and the sheer
force of his character to become increasingly prominent, and dominant. Unlike
other Montagnards, he chose to pursue a conciliatory policy, seeking reconcilia-
tion between the revolutionary factions. However, his efforts were thwarted by the
Girondins, who accused him of misappropriating government funds when he could
not justify 200,000 livres of secret expenditures incurred during his tenure as the
minister of justice. Incensed by this attack, Danton moved further to the Left.
In late 1792, Danton was sent on a mission to Belgium. Returning to Paris, he
participated in the concluding discussions of Louis XVIs trial in the Convention
and voted for death without reprieve. He traveled to Belgium twice more in January
and February 1793, and following the abortive insurrection against the Girondins in
March, Danton played an important role in the creation of the revolutionary tribu-
nals. Dantons reputation, weakened following the charges of misuse of government
funds, was further damaged when General Dumouriez, whom Danton defended,
defected to the Austrians following the French defeat at Neerwinden (March 18,
1793). The Girondins exploited this chance to further undermine Danton, accusing
him of complicity in the generals treachery. Danton, in turn, charged the Girondin
deputies of treason and was supported by the Montagnards.
On April 7, 1793, Danton was elected a member of the rst Committee of Public
Safety, which became the executive organ of the revolutionary government. He domi-
nated this body for the next three months and, directing foreign and military affairs,
he effectively served as the head of the government. He tried to compromise with
foreign powers and hinted that he would be able to secure the release of Queen Marie
Antoinette in return for a peace treaty. However, he failed to nd common ground
with Prussia and Austria, who seemed to be victorious by the spring of 1793. Dantons
only diplomatic success was a treaty of friendship with Sweden, but even this was not
ratied by the Swedish regent. On May 31, Danton helped suppress the Conventions
Commission of Twelve, the committee of inquiry dominated by the Giriondins, but he
did not gure prominently in the Montagnard coup against the Girondins on June 2,
1793. The Girondin defeat weakened Danton as well, since his moderate policies now
clashed with the more radical views of the Montagnards. Simultaneously, Danton,
whose rst wife died in February 1793, married 15-year-old Louise Gly, a friend of the
family. Marriage distracted him from politics.
On July 10, 1793, when the Committee of Public Safetys term expired, the Con-
vention elected a new committee in which Danton was not included, following the
charges of poor attendance and moderation. Still, Danton had his moment that
summer as he served as the president of the Convention between July 25 and Au-
gust 8, 1793. In the face of raging federalist revolt in the provinces and the Austro-
Prussian advance on the western French frontiers, Danton briey embraced radical
ideas, demanding death for anyone trying to negotiate with the rebels in Normandy,
and punishment for administrators in the provinces who had declared for the Gi-
rondins. After news of Toulons surrender to the British reached the capital, Danton
endorsed the proposal for the creation of vastly enlarged revolutionary armies, call-
ing for universal conscription, or lve en masse. He suggested proclaiming the Com-
mittee of Public Safety the provisional government, but his proposal was rejected.
Danton, Georges-Jacques 183
In late September, Danton became ill and played no part in the increasingly
bitter conict between the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety led by
Maximilian Robespierre. Danton left the capital for six weeks for the countryside
near Arcis and returned to Paris on November 18. He emerged as the leader of
the moderate opposition (les Indulgents) and sought to stabilize the revolution-
ary movement. He openly criticized the dechristianization policy of the Hbertistes
and, with the help of Camille Desmoulins Le vieux Cordelier, spoke against the use
of terrorist repression. Yet Dantons position gradually weakened, and some of his
supporters turned against him. On December 3, at a meeting at the Jacobin Club,
he was accused of moderation and treason and, instead of challenging his accusers,
struck only a feeble note of defense and required rescue by Robespierre. After this
session, Danton spoke only briey at the Assembly and at the Jacobin Club. Hereaf-
ter, his friends came increasingly under attack. In November 1793, Franois Chabot,
Philippe Franois Nazaire Fabre dEglantine, and others were arrested on charges
of corruption and embezzlement in connection with the liquidated Compagnie des
Indes. Danton came to their defense but failed.
In March 1794, Danton welcomed the downfall of Hberts ultra-Left faction,
but this left him and his Indulgents alone in the face of the governments attack.
Warned several times of the threat of arrest, Danton brushed it off. Yet on the night
of March 29, 1794, he and his friends (Delacroix, Desmoulins, Phillippeaux, and
others) were arrested. The following day, Saint-Just asked the Convention to bring
Danton and others before the revolutionary tribunal on charges of conspiring to
restore the monarchy. The frightened deputies voted in favor of the indictment
without anyone challenging it.
The trial of Danton was a well-orchestrated farce, since its failure would have
spelled the end of the government. The judges were threatened with arrest if they
showed any leniency, and only seven jurors were found suitable enough to partici-
pate in the trial. In an attempt to discredit Danton, his case was tacked on to that
of the Compagnie des Indes affair to suggest his connection with that case, while
several foreigners were added to the proceedings in order to suggest Dantons in-
volvement in a foreign plot. The trial began on April 2 and attracted such enormous
crowds that the courtroom overowed. Danton certainly had no doubt about the
outcome of the trial since, in the opening recital of the names and addresses of the
accused, he gave his address as Soon in oblivion, but my name will be in historys
Pantheon. He went on to use his oratorical talent to denounce the proceedings
and the government in such a loud manner that, as Michelet asserted, his voice
could be heard across the Seine.
Matters turned against the governments favor since its main witness, Pierre-
Joseph Cambon, defended Danton against the charge of treasonable relations with
Dumouriez. On April 3, Danton spoke for almost an entire day, and his speeches
often caused the packed courtroom to break into applause. An experienced lawyer
and one of the creators of the revolutionary tribunal, Danton knew enough about
revolutionary justice to exploit it to the fullest extent. To silence him, the Commit-
tee of Public Safety cowed the Convention into decreeing that a suspect on trial who
insulted national justice was to be excluded from the debate. I will no longer de-
fend myself, Danton cried. Let me be led to death, I shall go to sleep in glory. On
April 5, the jury withdrew to consider the verdict and was bullied by the men of the
committees of General Security and Public Safety into pronouncing a guilty verdict
based on discreditable evidence and witnesses. As one juror declared, This is not a
trial but a political act. . . . We are not jurors but statesmen. Danton was guillotined
with his friends on the same day, April 5, 1794 (16 Germinal, Year II). Dantons
last words were directed to his executioner: Do not forget to show my head to the
people: it is worth the trouble.
Danton is one of the most fascinating personalities of the French Revolution. His
character and motives remain enigmatic. He was a political realist but often acted as
an adventurer. He kept his options open and maintained connections with almost
all factions, be it the constitutional monarchists or the radical Jacobins. A prodi-
gious orator, he thrived on speeches and became intoxicated by the audiences re-
sponse and applause. Despite his occasional radicalism, he was a moderate and was
willing to forget his enemies once they were defeated.
The main controversy lies in the question of Dantons honesty and venality. His-
torians have both accused and cleared him of these charges, while Lamartine went
as far as to claim that he was bought every day and next morning was up for sale
again. Most of such claims have been made on the basis of discreditable rumors
but, as some research has shown, credible questions had been raised over Dantons
nances; in the spring of 1791 alone, he acquired land to the value of over 56,000
livres and a house for another 25,000, making payments in cash in both cases. This
naturally raised many questions, and Danton tried to placate his detractors by claim-
ing that the money was derived from his salaried positions. His supporters argued
that he was a successful lawyer, but the evidence suggests otherwise, since he was
involved in only two dozen cases before his ofce was suppressed in 1791.
Contemporaries claimed that Danton gathered enormous wealth (Madame
Roland referred to 1.5 million livres) through corruption. Dantons enemies,
Brissot and Bertrand de Moleville, accused him of receiving some 300,000 livres
from the royal court in return for his political services. Lafayette, writing long after
the Revolution, described seeing Danton receiving money on several occasions be-
tween 1789 and 1792. It is now generally accepted that Danton was an informer
for the royal court in return for payments from the funds of the Civil List. It is
nevertheless difcult to prove how such payments inuenced his conduct, since
his actions demonstrate that his devotion to the nation and the revolutionary cause
was beyond doubt. The prominent historian J. M. Thompson probably summed
him up best when he described Danton as not a great man, not a good man, and
certainly no hero; but a man with great, good and heroic moments.
FURTHER READING: Aulard, Franois-Alphonse. Les comptes de Danton. Paris: Charavay
frres, 1888; Belloc, Hilaire. Danton: A Study. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1911; Bluche,
Frdric. Danton. Paris: Perrin, 1984; Claretie, Jules. Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins.
Paris: E. Plon, 1875; Fribourg, Andr, ed. Discours de Danton. Paris: Socit de lhistoire de
la Rvolution franaise, 1910; Hampson, Norman. Danton. London: Holmes & Meier, 1978;
Lefebvre, Georges. Sur Danton. Annales historiques de la Rvolution franaise 9 (1932):
385 424, 484 500; Madelin, Louis. Danton. Paris: Hachette, 1914; Mathiez, Albert. Autour de
Danton. Paris: Payot, 1926; Mathiez, Albert. Danton et la paix. Paris: Renaissance du Livre, 1919;
Stephens, H. Morse. The Principal Speeches of the Statesmen and Orators of the French Revolution,
1789 1795. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892; Thompson, James M. Leaders of the French
Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1967; Warwick, Charles F. Danton and the French Revolution.
Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, 1908.
Declaration of Independence 185
David, Jacques-Louis (17481825)
Jacques-Louis David was one of the greatest of the French neoclassicical painters.
Among his most famous works, the Oath of the Horatii, completed in 1784, idealized
the classical virtues of stoicism and masculine patriotism and established a severe
yet seductive aesthetic that David applied to his support for the French Revolution,
most effectively in his Death of Marat, painted in 1793. A supporter of Maximilien
Robespierre, who voted for the execution of Louis XVI, David was imprisoned by
the Directory but saved through the intervention of his estranged wife. Less a com-
mitted revolutionary than an avid propagandist for the heroes of his age, David
promptly transferred his loyalty to Napoleon after 1799 and produced, in works
such as Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard Pass and the Sacre de Josphine, the opulent
and romantic image for which the rst military genius and tyrant of modern times
is remembered. It is, indeed, no exaggeration to say that the idealized legacy of
Bonapartism in French politics was in part the work of Davids brush.
FURTHER READING: Brookner, Anita. Romanticism and Its Discontents. New York: Viking,
2000; Honour, Hugh. Neo-Classicism. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1968.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
The Declaration of Independence was the rst article of American nationhood,
set forth with a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind as an explanation for
the actions of Britains American colonies in withdrawing their obedience to the
Crown and declaring themselves Free and Independent States. The Declaration
was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, who alone among the founding generation pos-
sessed what John Adams called a peculiar felicity of expression enabling him to
produce a document as succinct as it was compelling and eloquent. The Declara-
tion was the product of the Second Continental Congress, which on June 7, 1776,
accepted the Virginia Resolution demanding independence. On June 11 Congress
appointed a committee consisting of Jefferson, Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger
Sherman, and Robert Livingston to compose a document for plenary consideration.
On July 4 Congress voted 120 in its favor.
At the time the military struggle for American independence was well under way
but the rebel cause was in a phase of considerable doubt. British troops and Ameri-
can militia had clashed in minor skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, the rst ac-
tions of the American Revolution, in which the rebels had given a good account of
themselves. In June 1775, however, British forces prevailed in the Battle of Bunker
Hill, and in August of the same year American forces under Benedict Arnold and
Richard Montgomery began a campaign to invade Canada that was clearly beyond
their reach. Congress initially called upon the Canadians as fellow sufferers to
join the revolution. When the Canadians declined, Montgomerys forces marched
on Montreal while Arnolds moved against Quebec City. Winter stopped both from
accomplishing their objectives; Montgomery was killed, while Arnold subsequently
took the combined forces of the two bedraggled armies in a futile assault on Que-
bec on New Years Eve. On December 23, George III proclaimed that his American
colonies were henceforth to be closed to all foreign commerce.
186 Declaration of Independence
It was in this atmosphere that the Englishman Thomas Paine, newly arrived
in America after having been red from the British government, published the
pamphlet Common Sense in January 1776. The impact of the pamphlet on the
American cause was incendiary, not only because it expressed the conclusions that
so many in Congress had come to independently but also because its forthright
assertion of the imperative of independence challenged the reader to argue to
the contrary only if he counted himself an idiot. Paine called George III an ass
and argued that it would be absurd for a colony poised to conquer a continent to
remain bound to a tiny island in the North Sea. He maintained further that a prin-
cipal reason for American independence should be prosperity, because American
agricultural goods in particular could nd lucrative markets anywhere in Europe;
preferential economic ties with Britain damaged American prosperity every time
Britain engaged in war with another European power and Anglo-American ship-
ping came under attack. It should be American policy, Paine concluded, to achieve
independence from Britain and avoid alliances with any European state while pur-
suing peaceful commerce with all European states. Paine thus stated two themes
that brought energetic nods of agreement from Congress and have ever since reso-
nated in American history: the notion that the proper business of America is busi-
ness itself and the warning that American engagement in great power conict in
Europe could never be in the national interest of an independent American na-
tion. Over 500,000 copies of Common Sense were printed.
Its appearance throughout the colonies increased the clamor for an ofcial dec-
laration of American independence. John Adams was duly impressed with Paines
achievement in stating the common faith of the American cause with strength and
brevity but thought its author more adept at pulling down than building up and
considered some his peripheral remarkssuch as the invention of monarchy being
one of the sins of the Jewsto be inammatory nonsense. He also thought that
Paine had only a feeble grip on constitutional government and was concerned that
an ofcial declaration of independence should strike a balance between Paines
provocative call to action and a statement worthy as the cornerstone of a new politi-
cal order. The sense of urgency meanwhile was enhanced when Richard Henry Lee
of Virginia presented a resolution to Congress that the United Colonies are, and
of a right ought to be, free and independent states. The resolution resulted in the
creation of three committees: one for the independence declaration, a second to
propose a treaty for a diplomatic commission to Europe, and a third to prepare a
constitution for the governing of the United States.
The declaration committee assigned Jefferson the role of primary author in large
part because Adams deemed it appropriate that a Virginian draft the rebels declara-
tion of war just as a Virginian, George Washington, was to command the rebel army.
Jefferson drew extensively from his own previous writings as well as from those of his
colleagues, in particular George Mason and James Wilson, and his initial draft was
subject to a number of alterations by Adams and Franklin. He worked quickly and
aimed not at originality but rather to place before mankind the common sense of
the subject. The result was a statement in three parts. The rst and most quoted is a
summary of natural law and social contract theory in its rst two paragraphs, mostly
drawn from the writings of John Locke, as the foundation for incontestable maxims
upon which the case independence is erected: We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
Declaration of Independence 187
inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Governments, it continues, are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers
from the Consent of the Governed and when any form of government becomes de-
structive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and to estab-
lish in its place a new government most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The second part of the Declaration then proceeds to an extensive case against
the Crown by which Americas breach with Britain is justied. It casts aside any pre-
tense that the government in London is being accused of incompetence or neglect
rather than mendacity by indicting the king directly and in unequivocal terms: The
History of the present King of Great Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and
Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an Absolute Tyranny
over these States. This is followed by a series of charges ranging from refusal of
royal Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good to
quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us; from cutting off our Trade with
all Parts of the World to imposing Taxes on us without our Consent; from suspend-
ing our own legislatures to transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to
complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circum-
stances of Cruelty and Perdy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and
totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized Nation. The strength of the rhetoric was
debated, and certain passages struck, but the sense of multiple and irreconcilable
grievances was retained in order to underscore the fact that the Declaration was
intended as a revolutionary charter. To this end it noted that for these many griev-
ances George IIIs American subjects had previously sought redress but had been
answered only by repeated injury. Having indicted the king, the Declaration then
turns upon the British nation, our British Brethren, with the charge that they too
have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and Consanguinity.
The case against the Crown and nation of Great Britain thus established, the
Declarations last paragraph asserts that as a consequence, these United Colo-
nies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States. The document
swept past the matter of 600,000 slaves scattered through the colonies. In London,
Samuel Johnson asked appropriately, How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty from the drivers of Negroes? Congress could appreciate the yawning moral
gap between the case against a tyrant in Britain and the fact of a tyranny presided
over by many of themselves, but its southern delegates, from South Carolina in
particular, would not accept any explicit acknowledgement that slavery violated the
principles of the Declaration. Not until the 1860s, in other words, would the full
revolutionary implications of the Declaration be faced up to in the United States
itself.
The Congress debated Jeffersons draft for three days, not with regard to fun-
damental principles, but often over particularly emotional language that cited a
sense of betrayal by the British, a people of common blood, and pledged that we
must endeavor to forget our former love for them. These passages were struck,
but the prevailing spirit of the document was retained in large part because Adams
defended it so stoutly on the oor. After the July 4 vote, printed copies of the Dec-
laration were sent out to the states and circulated to the army.
The point of no return having been passed in practical terms some months
previously, this document now made it ofcial. In the event that the rebels did not
prevail militarily, the Declaration would be their collective suicide note. But on
188 Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms
December 26, 1776, Washingtons troops crossed the icy Delaware River under
cover of darkness and managed a surprise attack on British forces near Trenton,
New Jersey, thus ending six months of defeat.
More than any other single document, the Declaration captures the ideals and
principles of American republicanism, just as Lincolns Gettysburg Address ex-
presses the hopes of American democracy at the end of a civil war that redeemed
what the Declaration began. The sense of that connection has been reinforced by
the coincidences of history: both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4,
1826, while the Union victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg fell on Independence
Day in 1863six months before Abraham Lincoln announced the emancipation
of slaves in the Confederacy to vindicate the proposition that all men are created
equal. In its time each was in effect an article of war propaganda with no legal
force; both have since become sacred texts, revered yet seldom consulted and often
misunderstood. Set in marble, they are, in the words of Garry Wills, bathed in a
light that makes them easy to see but hard to read.
FURTHER READING: Jayne, Allen. Jeffersons Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy
and Theology. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1998; Maier, Pauline. American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf, 1997; McCullough, David. John Adams.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001; Onuf, Peter S. Jeffersons Empire: The Language of American
Nationhood. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001; Wills, Garry. Inventing America:
Jeffersons Declaration of Independence. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1978.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms (1775)
The Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms was a declara-
tion composed at the outset of the American Revolutionary War at the behest of
the Second Continental Congress by a committee composed of Benjamin Franklin,
John Jay, William Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson. Later, John Dickinson became
one of the key contributors to the effort. Congress accepted the nal version on
July 6, 1775. The document both announced and explained the stance of the North
American colonies with regard to Britain. The document forms part of a long tradi-
tion of British legislative writing.
Declarations were particularly strong statements that served a variety of purposes.
These could pronounce a grievance. Likewise, a declaration could serve as an ex-
planation for actions already taken. They did, on occasion, announce andfor all
intents and purposesenact a new policy. In accordance with the preceding aspects
of the British legislative tradition, this declaration both explained the grievances of
the colonists with regards to the British government and enunciated their decision
to take up arms in defense of what they perceived to be their rights.
Several attempts were made at composing this explanation of and justication for
the colonial stance. The Continental Congress rejected the rst effort, composed
by the team of Franklin, Jay, Livingston, and Jefferson, since that body perceived
the language contained in the document to be far too conciliatory. Therefore, the
Congress called for a second attempt; this time Thomas Jefferson worked only with
John Dickinson. Aside from a few paragraphs by Jefferson, the bulk of the composi-
tion is Dickinsons work.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 189
This second draft was much more assertive. It described the long series of events
that brought about the deterioration in the relationship with Britain, tracing this
disintegration back to the changes in government ministers that occurred at the end
of the French and Indian War (1756 1763). According to the authors, this series
of abuses continued down to the rst clashes between British troops and colonists
at Lexington and Concord and the actions of General Thomas Gage in imposing
martial law on the city of Boston. In cataloging this long list of grievances, the docu-
ment opened the possibility for a later declaration of independence on the part of
the united colonies. At the same time, it assured the other subjects of the British
Empire that this was not what the colonists wanted and held out the slight hope of
reconciliation. The declaration, therefore, straddled a ne line between being a
strong statement of colonial interests, a justication for their actions, and a sort of
ultimatum aimed at the Crown authorities.
The document addressed several other audiences as well, among them the edg-
ling Continental Army under George Washington, assembled outside Boston, and
King George III. It was accepted by the Congress on the same day as another com-
position by Dickinson, the Olive Branch Petition.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967; Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making
the Declaration of Independence. New York: Random House, 1998.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was a statement of indi-
vidual freedoms during the French Revolution and served as the precursor to the
rst constitution of the country. The declaration was based on natural law and in-
uenced by the American Declaration of Independence. The principles and values
enumerated within the declaration continue to form the basis for civil liberties in
France.
The French Revolution
The debts accumulated by France during the American Revolution led Louis XVI
to call a meeting of the Estates-General in 1788. The forum included representa-
tives of the aristocracy (the First Estate), the clergy (the Second Estate), and the
commoners (the Third Estate). Once convened, the Third Estate sought to expand
the scope of the session and enact a new constitution. After the king tried to dismiss
the Estates-General, the delegates of the Third Estate met at a nearby tennis court
and took an oath to continue in session. They were joined by the other estates in
a new body, the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly began work on a
basic law for France that would limit the powers of the monarchy by instituting a
representative government, as well as codifying the rights of individuals.
The Constituent Assembly was politically divided between radicals who sought to
abolish the monarchy and establish a republic along the lines of the United States
on one hand and moderates who favored limited reforms and the creation of a con-
stitutional monarchy similar to that of Britain, on the other. This led to continuing
disagreements over the specics of a new constitution. One general agreement that
190 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
bound most deputies was that any constitution should be based on the principles of
liberty, equality, and fraternity.
A committee was appointed to make recommendations on a constitution. On
July 9, 1789, the committee issued a report that contended that a constitution could
not be produced until the country created a document that detailed the basic rights
of its citizens. Once a formal declaration of rights was promulgated, it would form
the basis for the later constitution. As a rst step, the delegates agreed to draft a
document that delineated a series of basic rights for all citizens. As work progressed
on the statement, events outside of the Assembly continued to propel the Revolu-
tion, including the July 14, 1789, storming of the Bastille.
Reecting the differences within the Assembly, two gures came to dominate
the effort to craft a declaration on individual rights. Joseph-Emmanuel Sieys was
a former clergymen who became known as a radical and was elected to the Estates-
General as a member of the Third Estate. Also known as the abb Sieys, he was a
strong advocate for a representative assembly and generally considered one of the
more radical members of the subsequent Assembly. Joining Sieys in crafting the
declaration was Marie Joseph Paul, the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette had served
as a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and
had interacted with the leading minds of the independence movement, including
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Lafayette was a leader of a group of
liberal nobility who sought to develop a constitutional monarchy. As he worked
on the declaration, Lafayette consulted regularly with Jefferson, the author of the
Declaration of Independence and the rebels envoy to France at the time. Lafayette
introduced the original version of the declaration in early July 1789.
In a similar fashion to Jefferson and the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Sieys
was responsible for the majority of the content of the nal declaration. He incorpo-
rated suggestions and revisions by Lafayette and other members of the committee.
Lafayette led the subsequent ratication effort. There was considerable debate over
the scope of the declaration. Many deputies wanted the declaration to consist of a
brief and general statement of principles, while others sought a specic list of rights
and a detailed explanation of each provision. Initially, there were 32 proposed ar-
ticles (later expanded to 37 clauses). In the end, the deputies agreed on 17 brief
articles that embodied the principles and spirit of revolutionary philosophy. Louis
XVI initially refused to sign the declaration; however, after crowds attacked Ver-
sailles, the king reluctantly endorsed the measure on October 5, 1789.
Revolutionary Inuences
Both the radicals and moderates of the Assembly were inuenced by a range of
philosophical movements of the period, as well as contemporary events. Of particu-
lar importance were trends in political philosophy from the Enlightenment. The
drive for a declaration of rights and a written constitution reected the concept of
the social contract as developed by gures such as John Locke and his notions of
natural law and limited government as expressed in his inuential works An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises of Government (1690).
Other inuences included Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu,
who popularized the concept of the separation of powers, and Jean-Jacques Rous-
seau, whose 1762 work The Social Contract asserted that sovereignty should remain
the domain of the people and that government should embody the general will of
the people as codied through a constitution.
The declaration drew heavily on the concept of natural law. This concept holds
that there is a higher law that exists outside of any social or political systems devel-
oped by a country. In order for people to reach their full potential, governments
must conform to the tenets of natural law, otherwise equality and justice cannot be
achieved. Instead, citizens become marginalized and cannot participate fully in the
economic, social, and political sectors. Natural law had its roots in Roman law and
the writings of Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas (12251274).
The Declaration of Rights also drew on the philosophy of natural rights developed
by gures such as Locke. Natural rights is the doctrine that all people are entitled to
certain rights and privileges and that governments cannot violate those rights with-
out losing their legitimacy. Locke believed that foremost among these rights were
life, liberty, and property. The English bill of rights (1689) and the U.S. Declaration
of Independence embodied the notion of natural rights and served as the forerun-
ners of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The Declaration
The preamble of the declaration tied the document to the principles of natural
law and natural rights. The opening paragraph of the declaration stated that igno-
rance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfor-
tunes and governmental corruption and underscored the intent of the Assembly
to adhere to the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man. In doing so, the
preamble also conrmed the aim of the framers that the declaration would serve as
the rst component of a social contract between the people and the government. As
such, the declaration was designed to serve as a permanent reminder of the rights of
citizens and the obligation of government to respect those rights.
Unlike the English bill of rights or the Bill of Rights in the United States Con-
stitution, the Declaration of Rights concentrates on individual liberties. It does
not endorse a right to assemble or free association. The declaration rejects special
privileges for the nobility or clergy, but it does not address the issue of slavery. Nor
does it mention women. A separate Declaration of the Rights of Women was writ-
ten in response in 1791, but it never gained any ofcial status (its author, Olympe
de Gouges, was executed in 1793). The document also does not distribute power
among regional or local governments. Indeed, other than an endorsement for a
separation of powers, the declaration does not deal with the composition or struc-
ture of the national government.
After the preamble, the declaration presented 17 articles that elucidated what
were described as the rights of man and the citizen. Article 1 declared that every-
one was born with the same rights and the same degree of freedom. The next
clause asserted that governments were formed only to protect the natural rights of
citizens. The framers expanded Lockes three basic rights so that Article 2 stated
that everyone should enjoy the right to liberty, property, security, and resistance to
oppression.
Article 3 further reinforced the importance of natural law by tying sovereignty
directly to the people of France. This section rejected the notion that sovereignty
could originate from any single person or group unless it was the will of the people.
The article therefore rebuffed the notion of the divine right of kings and the legality
192 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
of an inherited monarchy. It also implicitly rejected the class system of the ancien
rgime and the privileges of the First and Second Estates. The clause also enshrined
the notion of popular sovereignty, the idea that the people are the source of the
legitimacy and authority of the government and the institutions of the state have to
be responsive to the will of the people.
Article 4 argued that liberty was the freedom to do what one wanted as long as
ones actions did not harm others. In addition, the only constraints on liberty could
be imposed through duly enacted law. The fth and sixth articles stated that the law
should only forbid actions that would harm society (or individual systems) and that
the legal code should reect the general will of the people. The sixth article also
complemented Article 3 by insisting that all citizens had an equal right to hold public
ofce and factors such as family lineage or wealth should not elevate or disqualify an
individual from service. The framers of the declaration envisioned the rise of a civil
service based on merit and talent to replace the existing system of public ofce based
on patronage and rank. Finally, Article 12 contended that all public powers exist for
the benet of every citizen, not just the elites and those who hold political ofce.
The seventh, eighth, and ninth clauses dealt with the rights of the accused and
matters of criminal law. Arbitrary arrest was prohibited and those who engaged in
unlawful detention or torture were to be punished. This part of the document was
designed to end the common practice whereby torture was used to extract forced
confessions. The declaration called upon all citizens to submit to legal arrest or be
tainted by guilt due to resistance. Punishment could only be meted out in accor-
dance with prescribed laws, and ex post facto measures were prohibited (people
could not be punished for activities committed before such actions or behavior were
declared illegal). Finally, anyone suspected of a crime was innocent until proven
guilty.
Articles 10 and 11 recognized freedom of religion and freedom of speech. How-
ever, unlike the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provided for the
free exercise of religion and prohibited the establishment of a state religion, the
declarations endorsement of religious liberty was part of a broader statement that
everyone had the right to their opinions, including religion, as long as the mani-
festation of those ideals did not did pose a threat to the broader public. Conversely,
freedom of speech was more clearly dened. All citizens had the right to speak,
write, and print freely and these freedoms were identied as among the most im-
portant rights in a free society.
The thirteenth, fourteenth and fteenth articles dealt with taxes and public ad-
ministration. Many of the French believed that the endemic corruption and inef-
ciency of the Bourbon dynasty had squandered revenues and resources and created
unnecessary taxes. The framers of the declaration sought to ensure transparency in
revenue collection and expenditure by the government and to reassure the people
of the appropriateness of taxation. In the document, taxes were identied as neces-
sary for the common good, and the declaration endorsed a progressive tax system.
It asserted that the burden of taxation should be divided among the population and
based on peoples ability to pay. This clause overturned the long-standing practice
whereby members of the First and Second Estates were exempted from various forms
of taxation because of their status or rank. Article 14 argued that taxes had to be im-
plemented with the consent of the people and that the collection and expenditure
of revenues had to be transparent. It also asserted that citizens had the ability to
supervise the apportionment, assessment, and collection, and the duration of
taxes. Article 15 guaranteed that the citizenry had an inherent oversight right of
public ofcials. The notion that public servants would be accountable to the people
instead of to the government itself was an innovative concept designed to combat
corruption and end bribery. This component of the declaration was implemented
through the civil code through the imposition of harsh nes and punishments for
illegal conduct in public ofce. Nonetheless, corruption proved difcult to control
and continued to be widespread in France through the nineteenth century.
The sixteenth clause was inserted as a means to continue the drive for a more
formal constitution and enshrine the principle of the separation of powers. After
considerable wrangling, the deputies agreed to the article that declared any govern-
ment that does not guarantee basic rights and function with a clear separation of
powers has no constitution. The insertion of this language was designed to ensure
that any future constitution, or any revisions to the declaration, could not strip away
the basic rights enumerated in the document.
Article 17, the nal clause, afrmed the right to property. Property was declared
a sacred right. Property could only be conscated under extreme circumstances
when such an act would benet the broader society. In addition, if property were
taken by a legitimate governmental authority, citizens were to be given compensa-
tion for their losses. This clause, designed to protect property, would later be used to
justify the conscation of property from some of the aristocracy and the church
through the rationale that such land redistribution beneted a greater number of
citizens and provided for the common good. Usually compensation was not forth-
coming, especially in the case of territory taken from nobles deemed enemies of
the state.
Inuence of the Declaration
The Constitution of 1791 incorporated the main ideas and concepts of the Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The constitution created a limited
constitutional monarchy and transferred most political and nancial authority to
the elected National Assembly. However, the new moderate government was short
lived and was replaced in 1792 by the First Republic, which came to be dominated
by the Committee of Public Safety. The ideals of the declaration were only partially
implemented, although successive governments, including the empire under Napo-
leon, used the rhetoric of the document to claim political authority and legitimacy.
In the colonies, reactions to the declaration were mixed, and different groups
developed different interpretations of the document. In Haiti, news of the declara-
tion arrived in September 1789 and divided the colonists. The smaller planters and
middle class supported the principles of the Revolution and the ideals of the dec-
laration. The large planters, colonial ofcials, and wealthy merchants argued that
the concept of the general will explicated in the declaration allowed the colony to
chart its own course (one that would separate the colony from France). The result
was civil war between the two groups. In addition, the planter class assumed the
property protections in articles 2 and 17 reafrmed the right to own slaves. Mean-
while, free blacks and slaves used the guarantee of equality and individual rights to
justify the rebellion that began in 1791 and resulted in the end of French rule.
The rights and liberties of the declaration were not repudiated by the revolu-
tionary government or the Napoleonic regime; however, these governments only
194 Declaratory Act
selectively implemented the principles of the document. Individual rights were
often violated, and the democratic principles it championed were routinely ig-
nored. Furthermore, Napoleon argued that he was the embodiment of the general
will of the people and used rhetoric based on the declaration to justify his policies.
For instance, when he declared himself emperor in 1804, Napoleon contended that
his assumption of the title and ofce reected the will of the majority. Nevertheless,
the values of the Declaration of the Rights of Man were spread throughout Europe
as French armies conquered the Continent. One result was increased nationalism
throughout Europe, especially in the German states and Poland.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man inuenced future French governments.
Two other declarations of rights (in 1793 and 1795) supplemented the original
document, but only the 1789 measure retained ofcial status after 1815. It was rec-
ognized as one of Frances founding documents by successive constitutions in 1852,
1946, and 1958. Under the 1958 constitution, which created the Fifth Republic, the
constitutional council cited the declaration to annul laws that violated the spirit or
intent of the document. The declaration also inuenced revolutionary movements
in other countries and served as the foundation for the 1950 European Convention
on Human Rights, which all members of the European Union must sign before
joining the organization. See also Amis de la Constitution, Socit des; Constitu-
tions, French Revolutionary; French Revolutionary Wars; Haitian Revolution; Phi-
losophes; Republicanism; Slavery and the Slave Trade; Tennis Court Oath; Women
(French).
FURTHER READING: Andress, David. The French Revolution and the People. London:
Hambledon and London, 2004; Campbell, Peter, ed. Origins of the French Revolution. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; Doyle, William. Origins of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999; Frey, Linda S., and Marsha L. Frey. The French Revolution. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2004; Livesey, James. Making Democracy in the French Revolution. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001; Pangle, Thomas L. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The
Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1988; Sepinwall, Alyssa Goldstein. The Abb Grgoire and the French Revolution: The Making
of Modern Universalism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005;
Sutherland, D.M.G. The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for Civic Order. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2003.
TOM LANSFORD
The Declaratory Act clearly stated that Parliament has full power and authority
to make laws and statutes of sufcient force and validity to bind the colonies and
people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.
Furthermore, the act asserted that all resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings,
in any of the said colonies or plantations, whereby the power and authority of the
Parliament of Great Britain to make laws and statutes as aforesaid is denied, or
drawn into question, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void to all
intents and purposes whatsoever. These two binding assertions were intended to
quell unrest in the American colonies over the Stamp Act (1765) and to clearly state
parliamentary prerogatives.
Desmoulins, Camille 195
Moreover, the Declaratory Act was designed by Lord Rockingham and his advis-
ers to garner support for repealing the Stamp Act. Parliamentary support for the
Stamp Act rested on a belief that it was a tax that would execute itself and would
engender little resistance in the American colonies. In fact, colonial resistance to
the measure was both widespread and violent and led to renewed calls for deploying
British troops to the North American colonies. Rockingham, who sympathized with
colonial grievances, was unwilling to consider increasing troop strength in North
America and quietly sought to overturn the contentious tax. The Declaratory Act
was passed to satisfy British leaders who feared a diminution of British control in
North America and those who opposed rewarding violent and unlawful acts. The
Declaratory Act, passed on the same day that the Stamp Act was repealed, asserted
British authority over the American colonies.
FURTHER READING: Bullion, John, British Ministers and American Resistance to the
Stamp Act, OctoberDecember 1865. William and Mary Quarterly 49, no. 1 ( January 1992):
89107; Derry John. English Politics and the American Revolution. London: Dent, 1976;
Donoughue, Bernard. British Politics and the American Revolution: The Path to War, 177375.
London: Macmillan, 1964.
JAMES T. CARROLL
In April 1792, Maximilien Robespierre resigned his post as public prosecutor at
the tribunal of Paris and started the newspaper Le Dfenseur de la Constitution. The
journal provided a forum for Robespierre to respond publicly to his opponents
during the reactionary period of the French Revolution, a period during which he
suffered great anxiety. Robespierre presented the newspaper as an attempt to en-
lighten the citizenry and rally them to the cause of the constitution and the general
interest, to identify the countrys social ills and offer remedies, and to analyze the
public conduct of prominent personalities. Within the journals pages, Robespierre,
the self-styled Defender of the Constitution was, in fact, defending the Constitu-
tion of 1791, which had established a constitutional monarchy in which the king
enjoyed a veto over decisions of the Legislative Assembly. Robespierre also used the
newspaper in an unsuccessful attempt to win the dismissal or arrest of the Marquis
de Lafayette, the commander of the army, whom Robespierre suspected of seeking
a military dictatorship. See also Newspapers (French).
FURTHER READING: Baker, Keith Michael, ed. The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; Jordan, David P. The Revolutionary Career of
Maximilien Robespierre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989; Rud, George. Robespierre:
Portrait of a Revolutionary Democrat. New York: Viking, 1976; Thompson, J. M. Robespierre.
London: Blackwell, 1988.
JEFF SHANTZ
Desmoulins, Camille (17601794)
Camille Desmoulins, a member of the National Convention, was a pamphleteer
and journalist who published Le Vieux Cordelier during the French Revolution.
196 Desmoulins, Camille
Desmoulins was born in Guise, in Picardy, the eldest son of an ofcial of the local
court. Encouraged by his father to study law, he won a scholarship to the prestigious
Collge Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he met fellow student Maximilien Robes-
pierre. After graduating in 1785, Desmoulins practiced law. During his studies he
developed an appreciation for the classics and for the philosophes, especially Vol-
taire and Helvetius, and a hatred of Christianity. Because of a pronounced stammer,
he never became a skilled orator. He possessed an infectious love of life and all the
joys of life that he could not always afford.
During the Revolution he vaulted to prominence when he harangued the crowd,
urging them to seize the Bastille, and when several of his pamphlets, which justied
revolutionary violence and advocated popular participation in government, were
published. He soon gravitated toward Georges-Jacques Danton, who shared his zeal
for life, and published a newspaper, Les Rvolutions de France et de Brabant. His in-
creasing fame enabled him to marry Lucile Duplessis.
Desmoulins attacked the absolute veto power of the king and the creation of a
bicameral legislature; participated in the demonstration at the Champ de Mars and
the attack on the Tuileries August 10, 1792; denounced Jean-Pierre Brissot and his
followers; and voted for the death of Louis XVI.
When he, along with Danton, urged a lessening of the Reign of Terror, Robes-
pierre and others turned against him. At his trial he was allowed neither to defend
Camille Desmoulins. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Diderot, Denis 197
himself nor to be present when the death sentence was read. His beautiful wife was
executed shortly thereafter.
FURTHER READING: Janssens, Jacques. Camille Desmoulins. Paris: Perrin, 1973; Palmer, R. R.
Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
John Dickinson was born in Maryland, studied law in England, and served in
both the Pennsylvania and Delaware legislatures before the American Revolution.
He opposed what he considered the arbitrary practices of Parliament in relation to
the American colonies and was selected as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Stamp Act
Congress in 1765. His most important political contribution was his pamphlet Letters
from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, which began to
appear in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a Philadelphia newspaper, late in 1767. It was
also carried by most of the other colonial newspapers and appeared in collected
form the following March. Dickinson denounced specic British injustices, notably
the suspension of the legislature of New York and the Townsend Acts, and encour-
aged colonial resistance without envisioning violence or separation from Britain.
The Letters were read in Britain and France as well as in America. British ofcials
sponsored the publication of a reply by the colonial administrator William Knox,
The Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed (1769).
Dickinson continued to oppose the actions of the British government and was
a delegate to the rst and second Continental Congresses. A moderate, he was re-
luctant to make a permanent break with Britain, voting against the Declaration of
Independence. Despite this, he was appointed chair of the committee to draft the
Articles of Confederation. Dickinson served briey as an ofcer in the Continental
Army, after which he resigned his commission and retiring to the country. In the
later stages of the war and afterward, he served in the state governments of Dela-
ware and Pennsylvania. Dickinson attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787
as a member of the Delaware delegation. He enthusiastically supported the new
United States Constitution. Dickinson was also among the most zealous American
supporters of the French Revolution. See also Continental Congress, First; Continen-
tal Congress, Second.
FURTHER READING: Flower, Milton E. John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary. Char-
lottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1983.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
Diderot, Denis (17131784)
The Enlightenment philosophe Denis Diderot, editor of the Encyclopdie, came to
politics late in his career, and his political views and actions were inconsistent.
Diderot distrusted the authoritarian monarchies of eighteenth-century Europe.
He had suffered imprisonment and police interference both for his own writings
and for the Encyclopdie and supported intellectual freedom from political and
198 The Directory
religious authority. Unlike other philosophes such as Voltaire, he never fell under
the spell of Frederick the Great of Prussia. However, Diderot did atter Madame
de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV of France, early in his career, and Catherine II
of Russia, whom he visited in St. Petersburg in 1773 and 1774, late in his career. At
different times he supported and opposed the hereditary law courts of France, the
parlements, identifying them as privileged reactionaries or as defenders of liberty.
Diderot deplored European colonialism and collaborated with the abb Raynal on
Philosophical and Political History of the Establishments and Trade of Europeans in the Two
Indies (1770), a passionate denunciation of the evils of imperialism.
FURTHER READING: Strugnell, Anthony. Diderots Politics: A Study of the Evolution of Diderots
Political Thought after the Encyclopdie. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
The Directory (17951799)
The Directory was the last and longest-lived government of the French Revolu-
tion. Traditionally dismissed as a corrupt parenthesis between Maximilien Robes-
pierre and Napoleon, the regime has beneted from historical reinterpretation in
the last half century. Its outright failingspolitical instability and extremes of wealth
and povertyare now understood to be partially a consequence of the preceding
six years political and social upheaval. Other domains of national life are character-
ized as experiencing both positive and negative developments. Debate continued
over the role of Catholicism in public life, for example, but it was accompanied by
efforts to develop religious practices that did not pit traditional belief against repub-
licanism. And although Frances wars with the crowned heads of Europe continued,
they shifted from defensive to offensive. Finally, these years brought greater stability
and even improvement to the economy, the world of ideas, and civil society.
Drafted in the wake of the Prairial insurrection, the last popular insurrection of
the Revolution, the Constitution of 1795 constructed a newly conservative republic.
Gone were universal male suffrage and the promises of a right to work and right to
insurrection, which, hallmarks of the Constitution of 1793, once strengthened the
political power of radical Paris artisans (sans-culottes). The new constitution crafted
a complex electoral system that permitted a small, propertied elite to choose rep-
resentatives for Frances rst bicameral legislature; legislative deputies, divided be-
tween the lower Council of Five Hundred and upper Council of Ancients, elected
the ve-man executive Directory from their ranks. Although more conservative, the
government was not severed from its radical republican roots: two-thirds of the new
legislature was drawn from the ranks of the outgoing National Convention, and all
members of the executive Directory were regicides. More importantly, the new con-
stitution afrmed rights won in 1789 by guaranteeing equality before the law, free-
dom of the press, and freedom of assembly.
Although the constitution was designed to reconcile a bitterly divided popula-
tion, the Directory and the electorate remained uncertain about what kind of re-
public France ought to have. Thus, government and voters alike veered between
Left and Right to generate the famous seesaw politics of the period. First, voters
shifted toward the Right in the wake of the radical and democratic Conspiracy of
Equals (1796) to elect royalists and men without revolutionary experience in the
The Directory 199
legislative elections of 1797. The Directory responded by staging the coup of Fructi-
dor, Year V (September 4, 1797), using military force to annul elections, close royal-
ist newspapers, and send right-wing opponents into exile. Encouraged by this turn
of events, Jacobin Clubs revived themselves to organize for the legislative elections
of the following year. When they won a majority of available seats, however, the Di-
rectory declared this a threat from the Left and staged another coup (Floreal, Year
VI; May 11, 1798). Frustrated by such ongoing instability and facing a new threat of
war, a few deputies staged the coup dtat of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (November 9,
1799), to dismiss the legislature and replace the ve directors with a stronger execu-
tive: the three-man Consulate headed by Napoleon.
The persistent political instability of these years was matched by convulsive social
change. Thanks to the Revolutions disruption of old social hierarchies and its open-
ing of careers to talent, new men accumulated fortunes by purchasing nationalized
church property or speculating on military contracts. They advertised their new
status and celebrated the end of the Reign of Terrors public austerity by spending
lavishly, gambling, and patronizing the showy balls, restaurants, and theaters of the
capital. At the other end of the social spectrum, revolutionaries abolition of tradi-
tional charitable institutions and the suppression of price controls after the Terror
decimated working peoples meager resources. Struggling unsuccessfully against
rampant ination and the scarcity of bread, many succumbed to malnutrition and
famine or turned to suicide when their penury became unbearable.
Religious life continued to suffer from revolutionary turmoil as well, but it was ac-
companied by concerted efforts to heal divisions that had emerged since 1789. The
Directory initially allowed refractory priests (those who refused to accept the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy) to return to their parishes, but it resurrected more radi-
cal republican policies after the Fructidor coup of 1797, threatening these same
men with deportation once more. Simultaneously, it renewed efforts to purge Ca-
tholicism from public life by banning processions and church bells, and attempting
to replace Sundays with the revolutionary dcadi (tenth day). More positively, a few
philosophers and legislative deputies fostered the new cult of Theophilanthropy,
which integrated belief in God with commitment to reason and natural law. This
cult died out even before Napoleon came to power in 1799, but French villages wit-
nessed popular and sustained efforts to integrate republicanism and Catholicism.
As the citizens of rural France reconciled free and open worship with revolutionary
principles of liberty and popular sovereignty, they created novel political and reli-
gious practices that endured into the nineteenth century.
Militarily, the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797) allowed France to enjoy a brief but
uncertain peace with Austria even as French armies continued to expand through
the Italian peninsula and undertook an expedition to Egypt under Napoleons lead-
ership. The Egyptian campaign was a disaster, and French ambitions in Italy en-
sured that the nation soon found itself at war again with Austria. As this perpetual
expansionist war wearied civilians at home, it created a newly professional army that
survived on the fruits of conquest and isolated soldiers from the nation, fostering
allegiance to commanding ofcers over commitment to the republic.
Finally, there were dimensions of directorial life that may be considered success-
ful. These were years of important philosophical development as a group of think-
ers who called themselves idologues drew on new institutional support to develop
the implications of their belief that all thought, even morality, originates in sensory
200 Drayton, William Henry
experience. The economy stabilized slowly, thanks to a series of good harvests and
the often-controversial monetary policies of the Directory. Finally, the government
imposed greater domestic order, using the army to dispel the banditry and coun-
terrevolutionary activism that sowed uncertainty in the countryside. See also Boissy
dAnglas, Franois Antoine de, Comte; Cisalpine Republic; Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; French Revolutionary Wars; Jacobins; Onze, Commission d; Politi-
cal Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Brown, Howard, and Judith Miller, eds. Taking Liberties: Problems of
a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2003; Desan, Suzanne. Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary
France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991; Lyons, Martyn. France under the Directory.
LAURA MASON
William Henry Drayton was a prosperous colonial South Carolina low country
planter and an American patriot leader in the American Revolutionary War until
his death at 37 years of age while a member (17781779) of the Second Continental
Congress in Philadelphia.
Drayton was elected to the South Carolina Provincial Congress (1775) and on
November 9, 1775, as the bodys president, ordered Colonel William Moultrie, com-
mander of the Second South Carolina Regiment of Foot, to re on any British naval
vessel passing Fort Johnson. Drayton would later command the South Carolina frig-
ate of war Prosper in Charlestown Harbor between the rst and second sessions of
the Provincial Congress.
Drayton rst called for independence from Britain in February 1776 and put
those words into action by coauthoring and signing South Carolinas rst indepen-
dently adopted constitution on March 26, 1776, making the colony second only to
New Hampshire in ofcially establishing an independent form of government. In
July 1776, South Carolinas General Assembly created by that constitution asked
Drayton and Arthur Middleton to design the great seal of the state.
Drayton was the only man of that era to be a member of all three branches of
state government, having been appointed the rst chief justice of the South Caro-
lina courts and elected to the legislature (Saxe-Gotha district) and to the provincial
consultative Privy Council of the congresss president. On April 23, 1776, while a
member of the states grand jury, he again urged independence from Britain. This
statement was printed in newspapers in the colonies and in Britain and was read
before the Continental Congress during the debate concerning the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence (summer 1776).
Drayton joined the Continental Congress on March 30, 1778, and soon became
aware of the deplorable conditions at the Continental Armys winter encampment
at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Draytons rst assignment as a member of the con-
gress was to resolve the food and clothing shortages that plagued General George
Washingtons force and in that regard helped the new commissary general, Jeremiah
Wadsworth, develop new regulations and procedures. The committee determined
that fraud and waste by some of the commissary departments own ofcers was the
Duane, James 201
chief cause of the problem. To help resolve the problem, Drayton was designated
the congresss representative to Washingtons headquarters. He dismissed the cor-
rupt ofcials and put procedures in place to prevent further internal proteering.
Drayton served on ve of the eight standing congressional committees (Appeals,
Indian Affairs, Marine, Commerce, and Foreign Affairs) in the 16 months before
he died; this service exceeded the participation of all the members of the congress
except John Baynard of Pennsylvania. William Henry Drayton died three months
after his father, John Drayton, died eeing the British advance on Charleston. See
also American Revolutionary War.
FURTHER READING: Dabney, William M. William Henry Drayton and the American Revolution.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962; Krawczynski, Keith. William Henry Drayton:
South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot. Southern Biography Series. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Duane, James (17331797)
Born in 1733 in New York City to a prosperous merchant, James Duane became a
successful lawyer and land speculator. After studying law under William Alexander,
Duane began to practice on his own in 1754. At roughly the same time, Duane be-
came very involved in land speculation in western New York. His business endeavors
began just as the relationship between Britain and her North American colonies was
on the brink of trouble.
He served in the rst and second Continental Congresses and remained a strong
voice for moderate action. Specically, Duane initially sought a compromise with
Britain and opposed the Declaration of Independence. Once acts such as this were
passed, however, he would throw his full support behind them. He seemed to be-
lieve that once a decision was reached, unanimity and the legitimacy it brought
outweighed public pronouncements of personal conviction.
Through the period of his involvement in the Continental Congress, Duane sat
on a number of committees, often chairing them. Among the more important of
these was the Treasury Committee, which Duane served on from its inception in
1776. Likewise, he served on the committee that helped to draft the Articles of
Confederation.
In the years following the war, Duane continued his involvement in politics, be-
coming the rst mayor of New York City following the British evacuation in 1784. As
the decade continued, and the weaknesses inherent in the Articles of Confederation
grew more apparent, Duane emerged as a strong Federalist. He worked diligently
for the ratication of the United States Constitution of 1787 in New York. Due to
failing health, he retired from public life in 1794, dying in 1797. See also Continental
Congress, First; Continental Congress, Second.
FURTHER READING: Alexander, Edward. A Revolutionary Conservative: James Duane of New
York. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938; Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution:
The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760 1790. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
202 Ducos, Pierre-Roger
French revolutionary and statesman. Born at Montfort in Landes, Ducos prac-
ticed law at Dax before the French Revolution. He served as president of the crimi-
nal tribunal of Landes (17911792) and was elected to the National Convention as
a representative of the dpartement of Landes in 1792. He sided with the Jacobins,
voting for the death sentence for Louis XVI and supporting the expulsion of the
Girondins. In 1794, he was elected president of the Society of Jacobins. He survived
the Thermidorian Reaction in 1794 and was elected to the Council of Ancients,
where he served as a president in September and October 1796. In 1797, in the ab-
sence of the incumbent president, Ducos presided at the meeting of the Council of
Ancients that approved the coup of 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797). A year later,
he was among the deputies whose election to the Legislative Assembly was annulled
in the coup of 22 Floral, Year VI (May 11, 1798). He returned to Landes, where he
resumed his presidency over the local criminal tribunal.
After the coup of 30 Prairial ( June 18, 1799), Ducos was named to the Directory
due to the inuence of Paul Barras. A shrewd man, Ducos supported Napoleons
coup dtat of 18 Brumaire in 1799 and was nominated one of the three consuls of
the Republic, acting in this capacity between November 10 and December 25, 1799.
He was then nominated to the Snat Conservateur, where he served as a vice presi-
dent. He remained loyal to Napoleon for the duration of his reign and was made a
member (1803) and grand ofcer (1804) of the Legion of Honor. However, in 1814,
Ducos withdrew his support for Napoleon and voted in favor of his deposition, which
won favor from the Bourbons during the First Restoration. Nevertheless, he rallied to
Napoleon in 1815 and was named a peer of France during the Hundred Days. During
the Second Restoration, Ducos was proscribed as a regicide and was forced into exile
in 1816. While traveling in Wrttemberg, he suffered serious injuries in a carriage ac-
cident near Ulm, fell into a coma, and died on March 17, 1816. See also Consulate.
FURTHER READING: Massie, Michel. Le troisime consul: Roger Ducos. Paris: J. & D. Editions,
1992; Robert, Adolphe, Edgar Bourloton, and Gaston Cougny, eds. Dictionnaire des parlementaires
franais. Paris: Bourloton, 18891891.
Duer, William (17431799)
William Duer was a business and political leader during the American Revolu-
tion. Born in Devonshire, England, he emigrated to the West Indies after inheriting
an estate from his father. In 1768, he again relocated to New York.
Duer settled in Fort Miller, New York, where his status as a gentleman brought
him into the public sphere. In 1773, he was appointed the rst judge of Charlotte
County and four years later obtained an appointment as a common pleas judge. As
the American Revolution approached, he aligned with the moderate Whigs and was
elected to New Yorks Provincial Congress. In 1776, he helped draft the New York
State Constitution and served on the states Committee of Safety. As a delegate to
the Second Continental Congress from 1777 to 1779, Duer had a hand in passing
the Articles of Confederation, after which he married Catherine Alexander and
returned to private life.
Dulany, Daniel, Jr. 203
Drawing on political and family connections, he proted as a war contractor in
the nal years of the Revolution. Shortly thereafter, he helped found the Bank of
New York. By 1786, he had resumed public service as a New York assemblyman.
From 1789 to 1790, he served under Alexander Hamilton as an assistant secretary
of the treasury department but was forced to resign after exploiting his position for
personal gain.
Duers life was marred by scandal and nancial ruin in the 1790s. After his dis-
graced exit from public ofce, he organized the Society for Establishing Useful
Manufactures but destroyed the companys reputation by speculating with share-
holder money. He also managed the Scioto Companys failed effort to purchase a
huge tract of land in Ohio. In 1792, he caused a stock panic through an unsuccess-
ful attempt to corner the government bond market. The incident led to reforms in
the open bidding system and left Duer with debts that landed him in prison until a
few months before his death. See also Constitutions, American State.
FURTHER READING: Jones, Robert F. The King of the Alley: William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur,
and Speculator, 17681799. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992.
ROBERT LEE
A colonial statesman and lawyer, Daniel Dulany Jr. was born in Annapolis, Mary-
land to Daniel Dulany the Elder and Rebecca Smith. His father had immigrated from
Ireland as a redemptioner and become a successful lawyer. Daniel Jr. attended Eton
and Clare College, Cambridge; studied law at the Middle Temple; and passed the
bar in 1746, becoming a barrister in Annapolis in 1747. He married Rebecca Tasker,
sired three children, managed his landed properties, was elected to Marylands co-
lonial assembly in 1751, and was appointed to the colonial council in 1757. Con-
scious of his rising social station, Dulany secured admission to establishment circles
of the colonys proprietor. Frederick, the sixth Lord Baltimore, who appointed him
provincial secretary in 1761. Dulanys reputation as a political moderate was based
upon his ability to reconcile the interests of all classes.
Following a two-year sojourn in England (17611763), he returned to oppose
the Stamp Act of 1765, anonymously drafting Considerations on the Propriety of Impos-
ing Taxes in the British Colonies for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue by Act of Parliament.
Dulany stated the colonists were not virtually represented in Parliament and that
while a tax imposed to regulate trade was legal, a direct internal tax like the stamp
tax for the single purpose of raising revenue was illegal because it was imposed by
Parliament on the colonists without their consent and thereby violated English com-
mon law. His pamphlet was quoted in Parliament to secure the acts repeal. Dur-
ing the American Revolution, Dulany remained neutral, refusing to swear loyalty
to Marylands revolutionary government, which displaced proprietors and dispos-
sessed Dulany of half of his estate for his loyalties.
FURTHER READING: Land, Aubrey C. The Dulanys of Maryland: A Biographical Study of Daniel
Dulany, the Elder (16851753) and Daniel Dulany, the Younger (17221797). Baltimore: Maryland
Historical Society, 1955.
204 Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel
Dunmore, Earl of
See Murray, John, Earl of Dunmore
Dunmores War
See Murray, John, Earl of Dunmore
Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel (17391817)
Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours was a French inspector general of commerce
(1774 1776) and a Physiocratic economist who advocated low tariffs and free trade
among nations and whose writings (e.g., On the Export and Import of Grains, 1764),
though suppressed by Louis XV, inuenced the capitalism of Scottish economist
Adam Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Na-
tions (1776).
His assistance in the preparatory negotiations for the Treaty of Paris (1783), which
ended the American Revolutionary War, led to a lifelong friendship with Thomas
Jefferson. He helped add a clause in the Treaty of Versailles (1783) calling for a
trade treaty between France and Britain and later assisted in the establishment of
one (1786). These activities led to his ennoblement, and he became secretary to the
Assembly of Notables (1787). He was a constitutional monarchist who, as a member
of the Estates-General (1789), promoted the Tennis Court Oath, which asserted
the political rights of the people and their representatives over the monarchya
central principle of the French Revolution. Though du Pont accepted the Revolu-
tion and was elected president of the Constituent Assembly (1790), he attempted to
protect Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. His opposition to the radical republicans
led to his twice being imprisoned and appointed to execution.
After his home was ransacked, he and his family ed to America (17991800),
where he speculated in land and collaborated with Thomas Jefferson in the promotion
of national education and the creation of companies involved in Franco-American
trade. His son Eleuthre Irne began a gunpowder manufacturing enterprise that
eventually evolved into DuPont chemicals. Pierre Samuel returned (1802) to France
to promote the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and in time became the vice president
of the Paris Chamber of Commerce. He later criticized Napoleons policies, helped
Prince Talleyrand restore the Bourbons (1814), became secretary-general of the pro-
visional government, was made councilor of state by Louis XVIII, and ed again to
America upon Napoleons return to power during the Hundred Days (1815).
FURTHER READING: Du Pont, B. G. Du Pont de Nemours, 1739 1817. Newark, DE: Press of
Kells, 1933; Winkler, John K. The DuPont Dynasty. Whitesh, MT: Kissinger, 2005.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Duport, Adrien (17591798)
Adrien Jean Franois Duport, a maverick French revolutionary politician, was born
in Paris in 1759. A noblesse de robe, he came into prominence when France was facing
a nancial crisis. The Paris Parlement, a law court consisting of 144 members, had
Dutch Revolutions 205
been called. In the aristocratic revolt, Duport, a progressive magistrate, was aligned
with a radical group of his colleagues, who were demanding major constitutional
reforms; specically, they were opposed to the despotism of nance ministers
Charles Alexander de Calonne (1734 1802) and Etienne Charles de Brienne
(172794). He was supported by Louis Philippe Joseph, the duc dOrlans. The
Parlement insisted on calling the Estates-General, which was ordered to convene in
May 1789, with parlementaires like Duport supporting the demands of the Third Es-
tate, though it was the nobility that had in fact elected Duport to the Estates-General
in 1789. Louis XVI headed the liberal faction of the Second Estate, with Duport as
his advisor. Forty-seven members defected to the Third Estate in June 1789, includ-
ing Duport, who, it was believed, was supplying arms to the public on the eve of the
French Revolution. The author of the Great Fear of July 22, 1789, and founder of
various secret societies, Duport was becoming a cult gure to many who believed in
change by violent means.
Duport made his mark in the Constituent Assembly as a brilliant orator and pro-
posed reforms in various areas. He took part in important debates in the summer of
1789 and was instrumental in formulating the anti-feudal decrees of August 4 and
the suspensive vote of September 10. From November 12 to December 24, 1789,
Duport spelled out an agenda for the police and the judiciary system and called for
various measures for the protection of natural rights, including his advocacy of the
principle of trial by jury, which he proposed on March 29, 1790. Along with Antoine
Pierre Barnave and Alexandre, the comte de Lameth, Duport was a leading mem-
ber of the Jacobin Club and opposed Mirabeau. This trio, known as the triumvirate,
became popular and inuential.
Afterward, Duport and others formed a group known as the Feuillants (Leaves)
in the wake of the ight of the French royal family to Varennes on June 20, 1791.
A split soon developed among the Jacobins, with Duport supporting the notion
of a constitutional monarchy and for the stabilization of the Revolution. On July
14, 1791, as a member of the commission established to question the king, Duport
opposed the prevalent view that the king was to blame for all of the nations ills.
A pamphlet two days later proclaimed the formation of the Feuillants, with 264
former Jacobins claimed as members. On September 27, 1791, Duport called for
the granting of full citizenship to French Jews, and he served as president of the
criminal tribunal after the closure of Constituent Assembly on September 29, 1791.
Duport was arrested on August 10, 1792, but escaped to Switzerland. He returned
to France but left again for exile in Switzerland and died six years later. See also As-
sembly of Notables.
Clarendon Press, 1989; McPhee, Peter. The French Revolution, 1789 1799. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York:
Knopf, 1989.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Dutch Revolutions (17801848)
A series of revolutions in the Netherlands lasting from 1780 to 1848 produced
radical changes in the social and political structures of the former Dutch republic,
206 Dutch Revolutions
ofcially known as the United Provinces of the Netherlands. In the late eighteenth
century, with the support of the French, Dutch patriots overthrew the stagnant re-
publican government and established the new but short-lived Batavian Republic.
Napoleon briey incorporated the Netherlands into his empire, after which the
Dutch proposed to establish a constitutional monarchy. At the Congress of Vienna,
the southern and northern provinces were combined as the Kingdom of the Neth-
erlands. Neither side was happy with the imposed arrangement, and in 1830, the
southern provinces broke away and formed modern-day Belgium. As a whole, the
Dutch Revolution drew some inspiration from revolutions and revolutionary ideolo-
gies elsewhere, but it also possessed many unique features, largely a product of the
distinctive history of the area.
By 1780, the Dutch republic had been in existence for over 200 years, and many
Dutch people were beginning to question its effectiveness. Though the republic
had been a powerhouse in the seventeenth century, by the eighteenth century its
inuence had considerably waned because of a staggering public debt and a loss of
commercial competitiveness, both the product of a series of wars fought in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By 1714, the Dutch could no longer af-
ford to eld a credible army or navy, the population suffered from heavy taxation,
and much of its trade and industry had disappeared. A new social class appeared,
called renteniers, who were not merchants or industrialists but rather investors who
lived off interest from investments in the public debt and foreign governments.
Renteniers were very wealthy but were not active participants in the economic life of
the republic.
Under the republic, political control had vacillated between the regent party,
generally protective of nancial interests, and the supporters of the House of Or-
ange, the leaders of the armed forces. Wealthy elites controlled most of the local
and regional politics. By the eighteenth century, as there were no new businessmen
making their fortunes in trade or industry, the elites who ruled the towns tended to
become entrenched, and few new faces made their way into their ranks. Successive
governments were becoming less democratic and more oligarchic and were ruled in
the interest of the renteniers. There was a tendency toward stabilization, rather than
dynamism, in most facets of Dutch life.
The Dutch Revolution involved the dismantling of this comfortable, if stag-
nant, society, which meant that it would be long process characterized by an often-
desperate attempt to nd the political will to peacefully reorganize. The process
began when a long period of regent rule ended in 1747 and a new stadtholder was
appointed from a secondary branch of the line of the House of Orange (the previ-
ous stadtholder, William III, left to become king of England and died with no heirs).
The Dutch had chosen to return to Orangist leadership because of increasing mil-
itary instability on the Continent and on the seas. The fourth Anglo-Dutch War
(17801784), however, ended in an embarrassing Dutch defeat, which led many
to begin questioning the leadership of the stadtholder. In 1776, with war looming
over the American Revolution, William V advocated the creation of a Dutch army to
contain the French threat, while the regents, on the other hand, wanted a stronger
navy to protect trade and commerce, especially in the East Indies. Because of the
deadlock between the two groups, the country found itself plunged into a war with
neither a navy nor an army. Criticism of the ofce of stadtholder, and republican
leadership more generally, mounted.
Dutch Revolutions 207
In this charged environment, a petty noble from the eastern provinces named Joan
Derk van der Cappellen tot den Pol wrote a widely circulated pamphlet called To
the Netherlands People. Inuenced by the ideas of the French Enlightenment, it
called for the Dutch to receive basic rights, including assembly and a free press. In the
end, it summoned the Dutch people to rebellion and told them they would need to
arm themselves for the coming days, closing with the statement, The nation belongs
to you, the descendants of the free Batavians. The pamphlet inspired what became
known as the Patriot movement (or Patriot Revolution), which urged democratic re-
forms in the Dutch polity. Lacking a central mechanism for dissemination, the Patriot
movement spread from town to town and through print, with particular strength in
the eastern provinces. Slowly but surely, patriots were elected to local ofces and put
pressure on the other regents by creating new citizen militia called the Free Corps.
While this grassroots movement was slowly working its way through Dutch society,
the Free Corps in Utrecht briey imprisoned the stadtholder William Vs wife, a
Prussian princess. Though she was released unharmed, the event became a pretext
for intervention, and the Prussian army invaded, occupied Amsterdam, and forcibly
disbanded the Free Corps before returning to Prussia. The invasion marked the
end of the Patriot Revolution, and its leaders and many supporters ed to France.
William Vs attempts to restore order afterward were largely unsuccessful. In 1793,
the French, with the support of many Patriot refugees, invaded and took over the
southern (or Austrian) Netherlands and soon threatened to take over Holland as
well. With a divided populace and no money to spend on defense, the republic col-
lapsed without a ght.
Shortly afterward, the Dutch declared a new state, the Batavian Republic, with a
constitution that reected Patriot beliefs, particularly greater democratic represen-
tation. At rst, the French granted the new state much independence because they
wanted to be able to draw off the considerable nancial power of the Dutch capital
markets. However, the Patriots proved to be divided, and their members quickly
dissolved into factions. Their in-ghting hampered the effectiveness of the new re-
public and in the rst 10 years of its existence, little was done to address the most
pressing problems of the state.
In 1805, Dutch politician Rutger Jan Schimmelpennick devised and implemented
a new system of unied taxation and central administration (based on a division by
departments) that seemed to be the answer to many of these problems. Napoleon,
however, was impatient and red Schimmelpennick in 1806, installing his brother
Louis as the leader of the Dutch state. Napoleon also grew tired of Louis after he
began to suspect him of aiding the Dutch in subverting Napoleons continental
blockade. He dismissed Louis in 1810 and formally incorporated Holland into the
French Empire. With incorporation, the French became responsible for the consid-
erable Dutch debt, which they intended to repudiate, as they had the loans of the
former French monarchy. The Dutch debt, however, was held largely by the Dutch
people, many of whom depended on it for income, so a system was devised that
allowed for partial repayment. Even so, the price of Dutch bonds fell dramatically,
and the renteniers and charitable foundations who had been living on investment
incomes found that much of their wealth evaporated. Dutch society would be very
different after the French period.
Once Napoleon was defeated, the fate of the Dutch state was once again up in the
air. After the turmoil and excesses of revolutionaries across Europe, all of Europe
208 Dutch Revolutions
entered a phase of deep conservatism, characterized by a desire to create a stable
system that would deter any such revolutions from happening again. Bearing this
in mind, leading Dutch politicians met and drafted a constitution nominating the
Prince of Orange as a constitutional monarch in 1813. Under the proposed new
constitution, the king would be the sovereign power over the Netherlands and its
colonies. The only constitutional check on his power would come from appointed
members of a unicameral legislature. William enthusiastically supported the mea-
sure and coined the slogan Oranje boven (loosely translated as Up with Orange) to
support his bid for kingship. The constitution would not have time to take effect,
however, before international events took matters out of the hands of the Dutch.
Dutch representatives attended the Congress of Vienna from 1814 to 1815 but
were not invited to participate in the major proceedings. Without consulting the
Dutch, the British argued for the creation of a United Kingdom of the Netherlands,
which would include all 17 provinces that had last been together in the late medi-
eval period under the Burgundians. William would become King William I. The
new state, the British believed, would form a stronger barrier against future French
aggression. The inhabitants of the Low Countries, long separated by politics and
religion, were not so certain.
William had grand plans for his new kingdom and hoped to combine the in-
dustrial power of the south with the commercial expertise of the north to create
a state that would rival Britain. What he did not anticipate was the animosity of
the southern provinces toward his rule. The south had remained largely Catholic,
and William was a Protestant monarch committed to a policy of freedom of con-
science. Other cultural and economic divisions compounded bitter feelings on both
sides. In 1830, the French had another revolution and replaced a king that they did
not like (Charles X) with one of their own choosing (Louis Phillipe). Inspired by
this example, the citizens of the southern provinces decided to overthrow William,
though they did not possess the strength to do this militarily. Instead, they entered
into talks with Britain in which the British granted them independence in return for
a guarantee of perpetual neutrality. The southerners decided to call themselves Bel-
gium, after the Roman word for the Low Countries. William I was so disgusted with
the Belgian Revolution that he abdicated the throne in 1840, leading to a period of
deep pessimism in the Dutch body politic.
Frustrated with the inability to control their own affairs, and confronted by a
new and quite aggressive neighbor in the east, Prussia, the Dutch began to come to
terms with their new place in the world. In 1848, the Dutch passed a constitution
that marked the end of the revolution and was, in many ways, a reection of the
Dutch resignation to their small-power status. It called for direct parliamentary elec-
tions (though property qualications on voting remained relatively high until World
War I) and equal legal status for all religious minorities and led to the creation of
a statewide system of public education. The 1848 constitution gave the Dutch sub-
stantial individual freedom and established the basis of a liberal state that is still in
place today.
The Dutch Revolution is not a well-known event outside the Netherlands. Many
historians are inclined to dismiss it as largely derivative, a pale reection of the
nobility of purpose displayed in the French Revolution. This viewpoint does not
take into account many of its unique attributes. First, it was a political process that
began well before the French Revolution. While it expressed some of the same ideas
Dyer, Eliphalet 209
and drew on some similar sources, it had striking differences, many of which stem
from the fact that the Dutch were getting rid of a republic, not an absolute monar-
chy. They had a 200-year-old tradition of republican government on which to draw,
so their goals tended toward reinvigoration rather than revolution, and the ideol-
ogy that drove it was unique in European intellectual traditions. Finally, it drew
on a far broader base of support than most other revolutions. The inclusion of
religion and religious language increased its support among many members of the
urban middle classes, the grassroots efforts of the Patriots brought revolutionary
ideology to a broad cross-section of the Dutch population, and the Constitution
of 1848 legally recognized the contribution of religious groups. In short, the cri-
sis in the Dutch state was not a derivative crisis, as its origins were in the uniquely
Dutch domestic tradition, but it could not be played out independently because of
repeated foreign interventionPrussian, French, and Britishwhich shaped and
changed its direction.
FURTHER READING: Israel, Jonathan. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477
1806. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; Jacob, Margaret C., and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, eds.
The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment, and Revolution. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992; Kossman, E. H. The Low Countries, 17801940. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1978; Leeb, I. Leonard. The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution: History and
Politics in the Dutch Republic, 17471800. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973; Newton, Gerald.
The Netherlands: An Historical and Cultural Survey, 17951977. London: Ernest Benn, 1978;
Schama, Simon. Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 17801813. New York:
Vintage, 1992; Tilly, Charles. European Revolutions, 1492 1992. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
LAURA CRUZ
Eliphalet Dyer was a jurist, military ofcer, and colonial and revolutionary leader
from Windham, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1740, after which
he worked as a town clerk and received an appointment as a captain in the Con-
necticut militia. Following his admittance to the bar in 1746, he became a justice of
the peace and was elected a deputy to the Connecticut General Assembly.
In 1754, Dyer led the organization of the Susquehanna Land Company, which
attempted to colonize land in northeastern Pennsylvania for Connecticuts rapidly
growing population. Using Connecticuts colonial charter to justify expansion, the
company obtained a questionable Indian title to the Wyoming Valley at the Albany
Congress. Connecticut and Pennsylvania wrangled over the claim for the next 30
years. When the outbreak of the Seven Years War (1756 1763) prevented settle-
ment of the Wyoming Valley, Dyer continued his military and political service. He
was appointed a lieutenant colonel of a Connecticut regiment in 1755 and resumed
work in the General Assembly, as a deputy from 1756 to 1762, and an assistant from
1762 to 1784.
An unsuccessful trip to Britain as an agent for the Susquehanna Company in 1763
marked the beginning of Dyers waning allegiance to the British Empire. He reg-
istered his radical views as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. As the
American Revolution neared, Connecticuts legislature appointed Dyer a delegate
to the First Continental Congress, where he readily supported the movement toward
210 Dyer, Eliphalet
independence. During the war, he served on the Continental Congress and the
Connecticut Committee of Safety.
In 1784, an agrarian reform movement pushed Dyer from his position on the
Governors Council. That same year, Pennsylvania was awarded the title to the Wyo-
ming Valley. Dyer maintained his 1766 appointment to the Connecticut Superior
Court, where he spent his nal four years as chief justice, until 1793, after which he
retired to his estate in Windham.
FURTHER READING: Willingham, William F. Connecticut Revolutionary: Eliphalet Dyer. Hart-
ford: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut, 1977.
ROBERT LEE
E
Sir Robert Eden, a member of a prominent Durham landed family, was the last
colonial governor of Maryland. Commissioned in the British Army in 1757, he
saw service with the Coldstream Guards in Germany during the Seven Years War
(1756 1763). In 1765, he married Caroline Calvert, the sister of the lord proprietor
of Maryland, Frederick Calvert, Baron Baltimore. In 1768 his dissolute brother-in-
law appointed Eden governor of the province, and in June 1769 Eden and his family
arrived in Annapolis.
Eden was appointed at a time when it was difcult to be an American colonial
governor; the feudal character of Marylands charter left little scope for local auton-
omy, and Baron Baltimores character complicated disputes over the establishment
of the Anglican Church and the assessment and payment of ofcial fees together
with the question of naturalizationthe latter an important issue given Marylands
large German, non-Anglican population. Friction over imperial regulations only
complicated matters, yet Eden, a diplomatic and affable man, remained popular
and sympathized with colonial aspirations. His moderation led him to recommend
the repeal of the Tea Act of 1773, and although absent from Maryland on family
business in London during the nal crisis of 1774, he later returned to Maryland.
Faced with the Annapolis Convention, an ad hoc radical organization that had as-
sumed power, Eden continued to act as though nothing had happened and re-
mained governor, if in name only, until April 1776.
In April 1776 his letter to the government in London asking for the aid of a regu-
lar British regiment to help secure Crown authority was intercepted by the local rev-
olutionary commander, General Charles Lee, and led to what was perhaps the most
important episode during his governorship. When Lee ignored the proper local
state channels and sent the letter to John Hancock, president of Congress, Hancock
demanded Edens arrest and sent troops to Annapolis to arrest Eden. Marylands
executive, the Council of Safety, refused to hand Eden over and had him escorted
to HMS Fowey. Edens departure on June 26, 1774, not only marked the end of pro-
prietorial rule in Maryland but also signied the rst expression of the states rights
position in the developing American federal union.
212 Edict of Versailles
Created a baronet in October 1776, Eden and his wife were awarded compensation
for the litigation over their proprietary rights in Maryland by a British parliamentary
act of 1781. Eden returned to Maryland in 1783 to secure family rights to cons-
cated lands but died in Annapolis in September 1784. See also American Revolution;
Carroll, Charles; Dulany, Daniel, Jr.; Paca, William.
FURTHER READING: Beirne, Rosamond Randall. Portrait of a Colonial Governor: Robert
Eden, II: His Exit. Maryland Historical Magazine 45 (1950): 294 311; Land, Aubrey C. Colonial
Maryland: A History. New York: KTO Press, 1981.
RORY T. CORNISH
King Louis XVI of France issued the Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict
of Tolerance, which granted French Jews and Protestants (Huguenots) civil status
within Roman Catholic France and guaranteed them the freedom to practice their
faiths. The Huguenots had originally been granted the same rights accruing to
French Catholic subjects and the freedom to practice their faith when Henry IV
(1586 1610) of France signed the Edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598), but that free-
dom was revoked by Louis XIV in his Edict of Fontainebleau (October 18, 1685),
also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The French revolutionary
National Assembly restored the civil rights of the Huguenots in December 1789;
however, it was not until the complete separation of the French government and
the de facto state Roman Catholic Church in 1905 that there was complete religious
freedom in France.
The Edict of Nantes granted the Huguenots the following freedoms: to worship
in the Protestant manner in approximately 200 towns under the governance of
Protestant lords; to practice their trades and participate in all political processes;
and to bring disputes before special courts, called Chambres de lEdit, composed
of equal numbers of Catholic and Protestant judges. The edict also established 70
places where Protestants could seek refuge if they felt it necessary to ee. These
freedoms allowed the party of French Protestants, also known as the Cause, to in-
crease sufciently in size, independence, and economic importance to give pause to
Louis XIII (reigned 1610 1643) and his chief minister from 1624 to 1642, Cardinal
Richelieu (1585 1642). Richelieu used the Protestant riots of 16211622 as an ex-
cuse to revoke the privileges granted to Protestant enclaves, except Montauban and
La Rochelle, the latter of which was later laid siege to in 1628, and again in 1629,
resulting in the Peace of Alais. Although he had promised continuing religious tol-
erance, Richelieu revoked the political privileges and power of the Huguenots.
The religious privileges granted by the Edict of Nantes slowly eroded under
Louis XIV, and the conversion of Protestants to Catholicism was promoted. Louis
XIV eventually revoked all freedoms given to the Protestants with the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. Fearing increased persecution, between 200,000 and one
million French Protestants responded by eeing France. Though Louis XV (1710
1774) continued to allow the persecution of ProtestantsProtestant baptisms and
marriages were, for example, declared null and voidanti-Protestant laws were
rarely used after the Calas Case (1762 1664). No Protestant property was seized after
this time, few Protestant clergy and no Protestant laity were hanged, and raids on
Emigrs 213
open-air religious meetings ceased. As toleration of challenges to French Catholicism
by French intellectuals and philosophes such as Voltaire and Diderot in eighteenth-
century Paris grew, the city became a refuge for the more vocal Protestants.
Louis XVIs Edit of Versailles (Tolerance) again allowed French Protestants to
openly practice their religious faith and again recognized Protestant baptisms and
marriages. Louis XVI had been encouraged in this action by French philosophical
and literary personalities, the most persuasive of which was Anne-Robert-Jacques
Turgot, and by Americans such as Benjamin Franklin. See also Religion.
FURTHER READING: Baird, Henry Martyn. History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France.
Kila, MT: Kessinger, 2006; Kuiper, B. K. The Church in History. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1995; Martyn, W. Carlos. A History of the Huguenots. Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Ofce,
University of Michigan Library, 2005; Sutherland, N. M. The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
William Ellery, one of the Rhode Island signers of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in December 1727. After graduating
from Harvard College when he was just 15 years old, Ellery rst worked as a mer-
chant and as a customs collector. He began practicing law at the age of 49.
An active member of the Rhode Island Sons of Liberty, Ellery was elected as a del-
egate to the First Continental Congress in May 1776. For the next two years, he served
on 14 different congressional committees. During the American Revolution, the Brit-
ish burned Ellerys property in retaliation for his wartime activities. In 1779, members
of Congress appointed him to serve on the Board of Admiralty. Much of Ellerys work
in Congress dealt with commerce and naval affairs. When it came time for representa-
tives to sign the Declaration of Independence, legend holds that Ellery seated himself
beside the secretary so that he could easily see the expressions on their faces as they
signed the document that could have turned out to be their death warrants.
Ellery was active in Congress until his retirement in 1786. That year he was ap-
pointed commissioner of Rhode Islands Continental Loan Ofce. He was also
elected the chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Ellery had served in
this position for four years when he was appointed by George Washington to be the
customs collector for the Newport district. He remained in this post until his death
30 years later in February 1820.
FURTHER READING: Barthelmas, Della Gray. The Signers of the Declaration of Independence: A
Biographical and Genealogical Reference. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997; Goodrich, Charles A.
Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence. New York: William Reed, 1856; Malone,
Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 11. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1933.
NICOLE MITCHELL
Emigrs
Thousands of people from all socioeconomic backgrounds left France dur-
ing the era of instability that followed the fall of the Bastille in 1789. However,
214 Emigrs
contemporaries and historians alike typically reserve the term migr to describe
those members of the nobility and elite classes who departed and settled in cities
such as London, Hamburg, Vienna, and Coblenz. Revolutionaries had grounds to
worry that exiles such as the Prince de Cond and the comte dArtois (the future
Charles X) would prompt European aristocrats and monarchs to take the eld as a
counterrevolutionary force. Demonized as traitors by the revolutionaries, the mi-
grs typically considered themselves more truly French and more genuinely patri-
otic than the revolutionaries themselves.
At least 150,000 nobles, clergymen, and commoners had emigrated from France
by 1793. Approximately 30,000 people had left the country because of the French
Revolution by early 1792. This exodus prompted the fear that counterrevolution
was brewing along Frances borders and thus provoked a declaration of war from
the French government. The war and the Reign of Terror encouraged many who
had been hesitating or who had believed that the Revolution would be of short dura-
tion to leave. Although attention has focused on the rst category of migr, nobles
comprised only about 17 percent of the total; among the nobility, 35 percent had
served as ofcers in the French army. The clergy represented a further 25 percent
of the migrs, and the vast majority of those served as parish priests and in other
positions low in the church hierarchy. Hence, over half of the migrs were from
the middle class, working class, or peasantry. Their experiences as migrs would
have been comparable to those of refugees in subsequent conicts, as they typically
lacked resources, personal connections, or warm receptions in their new countries.
Even members of the nobility often found themselves impoverished after a few years
in exile, and few intended to make their stays abroad permanent.
Following the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI ordered his brothers into exile so
that they could represent the monarchy at foreign courts and preserve the dynas-
tic line in case of regicide. After a period in Italy and then Belgium, the comte
dArtois established a court in exile at Coblenz in imitation of Versailles. He also at-
tempted to construct a counterrevolutionary army comprised of erstwhile members
of the French army who had gone into exile because of their noble birth or political
convictions. His supporters attempted to prepare cooperative actions with counter-
revolutionaries within France, especially with the Chouans, and with those in the
Vende, Lyon, and Toulon. The soldiers fought courageously and, they believed,
patriotically under the leadership of French ofcers or those from Britain, Prussia,
Austria, and Russia.
Meanwhile, the Prince de Cond organized his own migr army based in Worms.
The Austrian and Prussian governments worried about the migrs within their bor-
ders and the extent to which they would be implicated by their actions. After ignor-
ing Conds army, they then placed it under the control of an Austrian general in
1793. The army spent several years posted along the Rhine River then passed under
the successive control and nancing of the British, Austrians, and Russians. The
army was dissolved in 1801, at which time the Prince de Cond settled in London
with his son, who had in turn organized an army and engaged in failed military op-
erations, such as that of 1795 in the Vende.
Louis Auguste le Tonnelier, the Baron de Breteuil, became prime minister in
exile. After his departure from Paris, he briey stayed at a spa town in Germany
before settling in Switzerland, whence he negotiated with European monarchs to
obtain their nancial and military backing for a counterrevolution. Louis XVIs
brothers both intensely disliked him, yet he enjoyed the support of the queen, and
he organized the monarchs failed escape from Paris in 1791.
The vast majority of migrs never participated in military campaigns or lobbied
foreign monarchs. Most simply attempted to reestablish their lives abroad, hoping
to return home as soon as possible. Emigrs tended to concentrate in a few neigh-
borhoods in a select number of European cities, such as Hamburg, Coblenz, Aix-la-
Chapelle, and London. Hamburg lay between Russia and Britain; it also possessed
urban attractions and an urbane culture that attracted 40,000 migrs. London be-
came home to about 25,000 migrs. Provincial nobles from Brittany, Poitou, and
Anjou congregated in the West End, where they attempted to re-create a semblance
of the social life they had known. Salons sprung up almost as soon as an migr
community formed. Madame de Genlis in Hamburg and Madame de Polastron in
London supervised such gatherings, at which fellow exiles could exchange news,
participate in intellectual life, and form or reform friendships. As time passed and
nancial resources dwindled, the migrs relied upon each other even more.
Journalism became an important means of establishing community and reafrm-
ing an migrs sense of French identity. Jean-Gabriel Peltier, the abb de Calonne,
Jacques Regnier, and several other editors published newspapers for the migrs in
London. The editorials stressed the patriotism and loyalty of the exiles. They also
derided French cultural activity during the years of the Revolution and idealized a
vague moment when French life had been characterized by good etiquette, gentil-
ity, honor, and general benevolence. The newspaper publishers also enabled fellow
migrs to obtain jobs and make connections. In the most notable case, the impov-
erished migr Franois-Ren de Chateaubriand met his rst publisher, obtained
work as a translator and as a tutor, and secured sustenance from the Royal Literary
Fund because of Peltiers efforts.
The vast majority of migrs returned to France during the Restoration. Napoleon
offered a partial amnesty in October 1800, but very few royalists followed the example
of the Baron de Breteuil by accepting. All but 1,000 migrs were allowed to return
by April 1802. Those who had lost property during the Revolution and returned to
France received compensation, totaling 1 billion francs, from Louis XVIII.
FURTHER READING: Burrows, Simon F. French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792
1814. London: Boydell and Brewer, 2000; Carpenter, Kirsty. Refugees of the French Revolution:
migrs in London, 1789 1802. New York: St. Martins Press, 1999; Carpenter, Kirsty, and
Philip Mansel, eds. The French migrs in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution. New York:
St. Martins Press, 1999; Kale, Steven D. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from
the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004.
MELANIE A. BAILEY
LEncyclopdie (Diderot and dAlembert, 17511765)
The Encyclopdie was an encyclopedia that appeared in France between 1751 and
1765 under the editorship of two of the most prominent philosophes of the French
Enlightenment, Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond dAlembert. Originally planned as
a French translation and expansion of Ephraim Chamberss 2-volume English Cyclo-
pedia (1728), it ballooned to 35 volumes of text, plates, supplements, and index, and
nearly 72,000 entries. It drew on the resources of well over a hundred contributors
LEncyclopdie 215
216 Enghien, Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Cond, Duc d
(including Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) in addition to plagiarizing articles
from Chambers.
The editors had great difculty getting the book out, due to both its size and
troubles with the French government over its content. DAlembert quit in 1759, the
same year the French government formally banned the Encyclopdie, leaving Diderot
to nish the work with the collusion of some government ministers. The works
political difculties persisted long after its publication, as it had to be published
outside France and smuggled in.
The editors and many of the contributors conceived of the Encyclopdie not as
a mere reference book but as a contribution to the progress of human society.
Although the principal audience of the Encyclopdie was French, its mission of en-
lightenment was universal. The contributors were of varying political and religious
opinionssome were quite conservativebut the dominant voice of the Encyclo-
pdie was opposed to the existing order of church and state. In religious terms, it was
anti-clerical, strongly in favor of religious toleration, and in places anti-Christian,
deistic, and even atheistic.
The general political attitude of the Encyclopdie emphasizes that governments
and rulers should be evaluated according to the degree to which they provide a bet-
ter life for the common people. Although some monarchs are praised, the impor-
tant criteria by which they are judged is not glory in war or religious devotion, but
justice and concern for their subjects. Aristocrats are frequently contrasted unfavor-
ably with the common people, as in the article People. Well-being was dened
largely in economic termsin addition to its famous articles on the crafts practiced
in the eighteenth century, the Encyclopdie contains a more extensive and systematic
treatment of economics and nance than previous encyclopedias, with some articles
that look forward to the doctrines of the Physiocrats. Cross-references were used to
make political pointsat the end of a short article on France that emphasized the
countrys aws, readers were directed to articles on taxes and toleration, leading
them to conclude that high taxes and lack of religious toleration were harming the
country. Not only economic wealth contributed to human well-being, however; so
did freedom. Some articles in the Encyclopdie denounced contemporary slavery,
although others accepted it as a fact of life. See also Anti-Clericalism; Slavery and the
Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Darnton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History
of the Encyclopdie, 1775 1800. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1979; Kafker, Frank A., in collaboration with Serena L. Kafker. The Encyclopedists as Individuals:
A Biographical Dictionary of the Authors of the Encyclopdie. Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth
Century 257. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1988.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
Enghien, Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Cond, Duc d (1772 1804)
Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Cond, the duc dEnghien, the last member of
the house of Cond, a distinguished cadet branch of the royal house of France, was
executed after his implication in an assassination attempt on Napoleon.
The duc dEnghien was the only son of Louis II, Prince de Cond, and the sister
of the duc dOrlans (Philippe Egalit). Shortly after the fall of the Bastille and the
English Militia Act 217
outbreak of the French Revolution, dEnghien emigrated from France. While in
exile, he attempted to raise an army to restore the Bourbon monarchy and partici-
pated in an ill-fated invasion of France in 1792. The duc dEnghien continued to
serve in the Cond army under the command of his father and grandfather until the
dissolution of that force following the peace of Lunville in 1801. He married Prin-
cess Charlotte, niece of Cardinal de Rohan, and settled at Ettenheim in Baden.
In early 1804, French police investigations connected the duc dEnghien to the
Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy against then First Consul Napoleon. The evidence
against dEnghien was dubious, yet Napoleon ordered his arrest. French gendarmes
secretly and illegally crossed the Rhine into Baden to seize Enghien, bringing him
to Strasbourg in March 1804. He was then brought to the castle of Vincennes for a
hasty military trial. Further investigations revealed Enghiens probable innocence
in the conspiracy. He was nevertheless charged with bearing arms against France
in the late war and for intending to join the new European coalition being formed
against Napoleon. Enghiens execution vilied Napoleon in the eyes of the Euro-
pean aristocracy and counterrevolutionaries. One of Napoleons ministers, Prince
Talleyrand, later remarked that the execution was worse than a crime; it was a mis-
take. See also Cadoudal, Georges; Emigrs.
FURTHER READING: Herold, J. Christopher. The Age of Napoleon. Reprint, Boston: Mariner
Books, 2002.
ERIC MARTONE
The English militia was initially formed during the reign of King Alfred of Wes-
sex. The militia served as an auxiliary force whose activities were documented for
the rst time between 1558 and 1604. They subsequent operated in the periods
from 1648 to 1735, 1757 to 1831, and 1852 to 1908.
Historically the militia was responsible to the high sheriff, but after some time
they became answerable to the lord lieutenant. Because the militia was a local
country-based group recruited for home defense, it usually consisted of local land-
owners, who could rise to ofcer status. It was primarily a voluntary force: ballots
were used for recruitment purposes if the militia required supplementing. Clergy,
soldiers, and some other sectors in English hierarchical society were exempt. The
1662 Militia Act was the basic foundation of the organization and was enforced until
1908. During the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the militia showed themselves quite
ineffective as a result of practices stemming from the Militia Act of 1662. George
Townshend (1724 1807) and William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham (1708 1778),
thoroughly revised the militia.
The passage of the Militia Act of 1757 under William Pitt the Youngers coalition
government resulted in riots when recruitment and quotas became the responsibility
of the individual rather than of the country parishes. The act was land based, and males
ages 18 to 45 were eligible for service. Anyone unable to serve was ordered to pay the
princely sum 10, a huge amount by contemporary standards. The militia forces were
trained on an annual basis, in case of a threat to the country. Despite the discontent of
the populace, militia regiments based on selective recruitment appeared throughout
England and Wales. While the provisions of the Militia Act dealt with matters of home
218 Enlightenment
defense, provisions allowed for regular army troops, answerable to the king, to ght
the nations conicts abroad. Thus, with Britain herself well protected throughout the
eighteenth century, the army was well prepared when the Seven Years War began in
1756. Conscription in the militia became mandatory in 1758.
FURTHER READING: Christie, Ian R. War and Revolutions: Britain, 1760 1815. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982; Gould, Eliga H. The Persistence of Empire: British Political
Culture in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2000; Speck, W. A. Stability and Strife: England, 1717 1760. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1979.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was a European intellectual and cultural movement of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that instigated revolutionary developments
in politics, culture, and philosophy. The term itself is relatively new, being rst used
in English to refer to a historical period in the late nineteenth century; thus it is a
later construction projected back onto the eighteenth century.
Driven by philosophes, the Enlightenment tradition became associated with
the use and the celebration of reason to understand the universe and to improve
human lives. The term Enlightenment, however, is not limited to intellectual his-
tory alone but also includes various political and social reforms that it inspired.
Its character and achievements are still debated. The movement produced many
prominent thinkers, among them Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
the Marquis de Condorcet, and Charles de Montesquieu in France; Thomas Hobbes,
John Locke, Edward Gibbon, and Jeremy Bentham in England; David Hume and
Adam Smith in Scotland; Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany; Cesare Beccaria in Italy; and Thomas Jeffer-
son and Benjamin Franklin in America. Proponents of the Enlightenment agreed
on many broad principles, but they disagreed and often clashed about how these
concepts should be implemented.
The intellectual origins of the Enlightenment can be traced to the humanism of
the Renaissance, which encouraged scholarly interest in classical texts and values
and are intertwined with the ideals of the Age of Reason and the scientic revolu-
tion. The Enlightenment, although principally a French movement, was a Euro-
pean phenomenon, while some of its contributions came from across the Atlantic.
The key factor to this intellectual movement was a change in how men thought
about the world around them. The successes of the scientic revolution convinced
educated Europeans of the power of human reason. Increasingly, they applied criti-
cal and constructive reason to examine available knowledge and search for ways to
improve human society. Such new thinking was not limited to the realm of science
alone but was applied to the arts, politics, literature, theology, and other elds. The
philosophes believed in human progress (or the possibility of it) and in the ability
of reason to promote such progress for the benet of all humankind.
In this search for progress, the philosophes tended to become materialistic in
outlook and empirical in approach. They distrusted dogmas, irrational doctrines,
and traditional institutions. Religion was a prime target of this scholarly inquiry,
Enlightenment 219
which led to the rise of deism, a rational religion that combined elements of classical
theology with a new critical view. Deism suggested the existence of one God, an
architect who created the universe but then refrained from interfering in its de-
velopment. This was an important break from the prevailing theist belief in a God
who actively intervenes in the affairs of men. Further inquiry into religious issues
led to skepticism, atheism, and materialism. To the philosophes, what was natural
was also good and reasonable, and many believed that reason could be applied to
discover natural laws or laws that govern human natureand society in general.
Many thinkers admired the English political system (despite its many deciencies)
and envied the liberties that the English had won in the late seventeenth century.
The English political system, thus, served as an inspiration to the philosophes on the
Continent in their quest to reform governments and free society from restrictions.
The English were the early pioneers of the Enlightenment tradition, and their
Protestant faith certainly facilitated this. The English philosophers Thomas Hobbes
(1588 1679) and John Locke (16321704) had a profound effect on the intellec-
tual movement as they set forth ideas on human nature and the role of government.
In his famous Leviathan (1651), Hobbes explored the founding principles of human
societies and their governments. He argued that, in their natural condition, people
were cruel, greedy, and selsh and humankind would nd itself in a state of con-
ict for resources and power, which Hobbes famously summarized as bellum omnium
contra omnes (war of all against all). To escape this solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short life, Hobbes suggested, people entered into a social contract by which they
gave up their natural rights for an organized society. Thus, laws and government
were necessary to control the selsh nature of man. Hobbes favored a strong au-
thoritarian monarch who would impose order, represent the will of all, and act on
behalf of all members of society. Hobbes had written his book amid the English Civil
War, and this explains his argument in favor of a strong central authority to prevent
civil strife and discord.
Locke developed an alternative to the Hobbesian view. In his Two Treatises of Gov-
ernment (1690), he disagreed with Hobbes on human nature and argued that it
was characterized by reason, morality, and tolerance. He argued that people had
certain natural rights, that is, rights that belonged to all humans from birth. These
included the right to life, liberty, and property. Locke suggested that a government
could only be legitimate if it received the consent of the governed through a social
contract and protected natural rights for the public good. If a ruler/government
failed to secure this public good, then he/it forfeited this contract and could be
removed through a rebellion. The idea of a peoples right to revolution was a radi-
cal one indeed, and it echoed across Europe over the next decades. Locke opposed
authoritarianism and instead argued in favor of conditional power.
In the eighteenth century, France became the heart of the Enlightenment and
produced many of the leading thinkers of this intellectual movement. Among the
early thinkers was Charles de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, who studied
the governments of various European states and published a sharp criticism of ab-
solute monarchy in his The Spirit of the Laws in 1748. Montesquieu wrote admiringly
of Britains constitutional monarchy and disapproved of the authoritarian power
of the French kings. He oversimplied the British political system and felt that it
was possible to avoid absolutism by dividing the various functions and powers of
government among three separate branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial.
220 Enlightenment
Each of them would be able to serve as a check on the other two and, the whole
system thus depended on a system of checks and balances.
Montesquieus compatriot Franois-Marie Arouet took the name Voltaire and
used his biting wit as a weapon to expose contemporary society and its abuses. His
sharp tongue made him numerous enemies at court, and he was twice sent to prison
and later exiled to England. Voltaire came to admire the relative laxity of the Eng-
lish system of government, and after returning to France, he ridiculed and criticized
French laws and customs, government ofcials, and aristocrats and battled against
inequality, injustice, religious prejudice, and superstition. In his novel Candide, Vol-
taire sent his hero traveling across Europe and the Americas in search of the best
of all possible worlds and used his experience to expose the hypocrisy, abuses, and
corruption of contemporary European society. In Philosophical Letters, Voltaire ex-
plored the benign effects of religious toleration, which he defended in practice in
the court cases of Jean Calas (1762) and the Chevalier de la Barre (1766).
In 1747, Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond dAlembert embarked on a monu-
mental task of producing a quintessential summary of knowledge, which resulted
in the 35 volumes of the famous Encyclopdie. Despite erce opposition from the
church and nobility, the rst 28 volumes were published between 1751 and 1766,
and an additional 7 volumes in 1777 and 1780. Many leading thinkers, among them
Voltaire, Baron dHolbach, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Montesquieu, Louis de
Jaucourt, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contributed to over 70,000 articles that even-
tually constituted this massive project. As Diderot wrote, the purpose of an en-
cyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its
general system to the men with whom we live, and to transmit it those who will
come after us. The Encyclopdie, however, did more than just compile information
on human knowledge but rather analyzed it in a critical manner and served as a
means of challenging existing traditions, views, and superstitions. In their essays,
the philosophes criticized political and social arrangements of the day, condemned
slavery and the slave trade, urged education, and called for freedom of expression.
It naturally caused a strong reaction, and critics condemned it as an attack on pub-
lic morals. However, the Encyclopdie enjoyed unprecedented popularity and played
an important role in fermenting the intellectual debates leading up to the French
Revolution. Translated into other languages, the Encyclopdie also facilitated the
spread of Enlightenment ideas throughout Europe and across the Atlantic.
Probably the most controversial thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau came from a dif-
ferent background than most of the French philosophes. Born into a poor Swiss
family, Rousseau felt detached from the glittering social world of the upper-class
society that surrounded Voltaire and Montesquieu. He disagreed with their reliance
on reason and suggested that people should instead rely more on their emotion and
instinct. In 1760, Rousseaus New Eloise described the beauties of nature and the plea-
sures of simple country life. Two years later, his Emile used the novel form to discuss
the importance of education in the development of human personality. Rousseaus
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) and The Social Contract (1762) became two
of the most important and inuential works in Western political philosophy. In the
Discourse, Rousseau, like Locke, contended that man was good natured in his natural
state but was prone to be in competition with his fellow men. To protect themselves,
men chose to adopt institutions of law and government or perish. Thus, they joined
their forces in a social contract to form a civil society that would provide peace for
Enlightenment 221
everyone and protect the right to property. However, the new society and its concept
of private property corrupted men and beneted the wealthy at the expense of the
disadvantaged. As a result, society compels its members to hate one another and
leads to a conict of interests.
The opening line of The Social Contract was sensational for its time, as its author
declared that man was born free but everywhere he is in chains. Rousseau argued
that the social contract described in his Discourse was fraudulent for beneting only
the few and must be replaced by a new, genuine contract that would benet all
members of society. Rousseau described this society as united by a general will (vol-
ont gnrale) into a republic that would seek to further public good. Thus, Rous-
seaus view differed greatly from Hobbess, whose social contract was an agreement
between a society and its government. Rousseau instead argued that it was an agree-
ment among free individuals to create a society and a government. Rousseaus views
nd more afnity with Locke, but unlike him, Rousseau calls for a much broader
democracy and champion individual freedoms.
He suggested that in return for surrendering their natural rights, the fulllment
of which depended on each individuals will and strength, members of civil society
would enjoy civil rights that would be protected and enforced by the entire com-
munity. Rousseau argued that sovereignty should be in the hands of the people,
while the government would be responsible for implementing and enforcing the
general will of the people. He was opposed to the idea that the people should exer-
cise sovereignty through their representatives (deputies) in an assembly but rather
advocated direct democracy that would allow the people, as a collective group, to
express their sovereign will in the laws that these very same people would then obey
as private individuals. To Rousseau, such laws would be inherently just since no soci-
ety would make laws detrimental to itself. In this new society, Rousseau contended,
Christianity would be unnecessary, since it was unable to teach citizens the true re-
publican virtues of patriotism, courage, and virtue. Instead, he suggested a new civil
religion that would instill citizens with republican virtues. Rousseaus idea that man
was good by nature conicted with the Christian principle of original sin and led to
the condemnation of his books.
Rousseaus ideas had a profound inuence on the French revolutionaries, espe-
cially the radical Jacobin faction that eventually succeeded in establishing a French
republic in 1792. However, his views were also extorted and exploited to justify the
excesses of the Reign of Terror, when thousands were executed and civil liberties
were curtailed in the name of protecting the public good. Rousseaus criticism of
private property also makes him one of the forerunners of socialism.
The Italian Cesare Bonesana Beccaria (1738 1794) criticized the contemporary
justice system and argued that laws existed not to avenge crimes but to preserve so-
cial order and seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In 1764, he
published his book On Crimes and Punishments, which condemned common abuses
of justice, including arbitrary and cruel punishments, lengthy and irregular trials,
and the torturing of suspects and witnesses. Beccaria believed that the accused had
the right to a speedy trial and that the degree of punishment should consistent
with the seriousness of the crime. He wanted to prohibit torture and abolish capital
punishment.
Some philosophes, known as Physiocrats, focused on economic reforms and
sought to use natural laws to create a rational economic system. They argued against
222 Enlightenment
mercantilism, which required government regulation of the economy and empha-
sized the importance of acquiring wealth in the form of gold and silver through trade.
In contrast, the Physiocrats advocated the development of extractive industries (ag-
riculture, mining) and the adoption of a laissez-faire policy in which the free market
would be allowed to regulate business activity. The British economist Adam Smith,
who described the free-trade theory in his inuential work, The Wealth of Nations, in
1776, emerged as one of the most important Physiocrats. Smith tried to explain that
the marketplace was better off without any government regulation and that trade,
manufacturing, and economic growth were all linked to the market forces of supply
and demand. When there is a demand for goods or services, Smith explained, supplies
will seek to meet it in order to attain prots and other economic rewards. Govern-
ment should avoid unnecessary involvement in the economy and instead concentrate
on protecting society, administering justice, and providing public works. Smiths ideas
had a profound inuence as they shaped the productive economies of the European
powers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers was Immanuel Kant (1724 1804),
who disagreed with many philosophes. He believed that reason could not answer
the problems of metaphysics, that is, philosophical issues dealing with spirituality,
God, human freedom, beauty, and immortality. He asserted that reality consisted
of the physical and spiritual worlds, each requiring different methods for know-
ing. While reason and the senses could be used in the physical world, the spiritual
world could be understood only through faith and intuition. Kant conceived his
critical philosophy in direct reaction to the ideas of David Hume, a towering gure
in the Scottish Enlightenment, who believed that man is more a creature of sensitive
and practical sentiment than of reason and considered philosophy. Hume shaped
several key economic concepts, arguing that wealth consisted of commodities, not
money, and that the amount of money should be maintained in balance with the
number of goods in the market. He opposed mercantilism and argued that no na-
tion can survive on exports and bullion.
The Enlightenment thinkers were predominantly men and, despite their pro-
gressive views on many subjects, they often took a traditional view toward women.
Rousseau, thus, argued in favor of limited education for girls, who had princi-
pally to be trained in how to be a good wife and mother. His famous novel Emile
viewed women exclusively through the eyes of men and in relation to them. In
1772, Antoine-Lonard Thomas, in his Essay on Women, praised women but accused
them of moral laxity and frivolity and brought about a new spirit in society. In re-
sponse, Louise dEpinay challenged Thomass view of the difference between men
and women and asserted that both genders are by nature the same. This issue was
further explored by female writers who sought to improve the social status of their
gender. In the 1690s, Mary Astell, in her A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, condemned
the lack of educational opportunities for women as well as the prevailing inequali-
ties within marriage between men and women. If all men are born free, how is
it that all women are born slaves? she asked. In the 1790s, Mary Wollstonecraft,
Germaine de Stal, and Catharine Macaulay disagreed with Rousseaus ideas and
argued in favor of better education for women, social equality, and the right to
participate in politics.
The Enlightenment was not, however, without its opponents. The Counter-
Enlightenment movement attacked the Encyclopedists and fought to prevent the
Enlightenment 223
dissemination of Enlightenment ideas. Many of them attacked the philosophes for
undermining religion and (thereby, in their minds) social and political order. This
later became a major theme of the conservative criticism of the Enlightenment after
the French Revolution and its excesses appeared to vindicate the warnings of the
anti-philosophes in the decades prior to 1789.
The Enlightenment had a profound effect on European society. Over a span of
a few decades, the philosophes challenged long-held beliefs, principles, and tradi-
tions, including such political cornerstones as the divine right of kings and the role
of the church in the state. They developed and popularized new social and political
theories that shaped public opinion and encouraged reforms. The Enlightenment
led to a more secular outlook within European society and facilitated the rise of
individualism. Its ideas persuaded some monarchs, known as enlightened mon-
archs, to embrace new ideas and implement reforms that at least partially reected
the Enlightenment spirit. Thus, Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and
Catherine II of Russia introduced various reforms that granted limited freedoms,
including religious tolerance and reduced censorship.
The Enlightenment facilitated the growth of public opinion, which was formu-
lated in an informal network of groups. In Paris, this network was represented in
salons, informal regular meetings for artists, writers, nobles and cultured individu-
als that became the discussion for a for a variety of ideas. Essays and various literary
works presented there eventually appeared in the growing number of newspapers
and journals that further disseminated information. The spread of the Masonic
movement, which was introduced from England in the early eighteenth century,
further stimulated discussions, since it advocated an ideology of equality and moral
improvement regardless of social rank. The process of secularization accelerated
after 1750 and affected both the elite and the lower classes. Cafs in Paris and other
cities established reading rooms where patrons could peruse and discuss a wide
range of literature, notably the works of the philosophes. The late eighteenth cen-
tury also saw the rapid growth of pamphleteering, which was largely directed against
the government.
The birth of the United States was a direct outcome of Enlightenment ideals. The
Founding Fathers were inspired by the ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.
It was these men who had, earlier in the century, explained government in terms of
a social contract and provided for a representative government. The Declaration of
Independence reected such a philosophy as it incorporated the concepts of self-
determination, natural law, and deism. The Declaration proclaimed that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness.
The United States Constitution (1787) put in practice what Montesquieu and
Locke advocated on paper. It created a federal republic with power divided between
the federal government and states, each of them based on the principle of the
separation of powers and check and balances.
224 Equality
FURTHER READING: Astell, Mary. Political Writings. Edited by Patricia Springborg.
Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Darnton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979; Elliot, Simon, and Beverly Stern, eds. The Age of
Enlightenment. 2 vols. London: Ward Lock Educational, 1979; Gay, Peter, ed. The Enlightenment:
A Comprehensive Anthology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973; Hampson, Norman. The
Enlightenment. New York: Penguin, 1982; Hof, Ulrich Im. The Enlightenment. Translated by
William E. Yuill. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994; Israel, Jonathan. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy
and the Making of Modernity, 1650 1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Kors,
Alan, ed. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003;
McMahon, Darrin. Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making
of Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; Spencer, Saima I., ed. French Women and
the Age of Enlightenment. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Equality
The political philosophy of equality, also known as egalitarianism, has a long his-
tory in human societies. As long as societies have been divided into classes and castes,
political and social movements have arisen to challenge the status quo and ght for
a world in which human beings are treated equally under the law and have access
to the same chance for material well-being. In Roman times, when a vast proportion
of the population labored as slaves to support the empire, numerous slave revolts
occurred that challenged the division of society into masters and slaves. Similarly, at
the height of the feudal period in Europe, peasant revolts repeatedly challenged the
division of society into lords, vassals, and serfs, often harkening back to the egalitar-
ian lifestyles of the early Christian communes as the model of a just society.
Nevertheless, it would not be until the age of revolution, at the close of the eigh-
teenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century, that political and social
movements taking the philosophy of egalitarianism as their inspiration would come
to fruition in the Atlantic world, striving to create nations in which the equality of
all citizens would be the guiding principle of public life.
During this period, two revolutionary movements broke out, in the soon-to-be
United States and in France, that challenged the old feudal political order with a
philosophy of government based on equality before the law. However, these revo-
lutionary movements, in large part due to their different circumstances and theo-
retical inspirations, brought forth different notions of equality and led to different
social and governmental outcomes.
To understand these revolutionary movements, it is necessary to examine some
of the main philosophical developments of the preceding century, which in many
ways underpinned the notions of equality that came to fruition in the United States
and France during the age of revolution.
When the revolutionary wave of the turn of the nineteenth century broke out in the
Atlantic world, the old feudal order had already been in a steady, albeit slow, decline
for several centuries throughout much of Europe. With the recovery of commerce fol-
lowing the Black Death of the fourteenth century and the discovery of the Americas at
the close of the fteenth century, Europe experienced a remarkable period of growth
and development based largely on a growing trans-Atlantic mercantile trade.
This trade rested squarely on the urban commercial classes who ran the shipping
companies and invested in the colonial corporations. Slowly, as this trade progressed,
Equality 225
the European urban commercial classes began to accumulate more wealth and take
on a more important role in the social, economic, and political life of their societies
than the old regulated hierarchies of the feudal orderwhich favored the landed
aristocracycould tolerate.
As the urban elite accumulated more and more wealth, many political philoso-
phers of this period challenged the legal division of society into the old feudal classes
with new ideas that emphasized the importance of ones good works in this world as
the basis of social prestige rather than ones class of birth. During this period even Eu-
ropean monarchs began to recognize the importance of the new urban bourgeoisies
wealth, and many borrowed from them to nance their wars and dynastic ambitions.
In England, the most important representative of this school of thought was
John Locke. Lockes most inuential work on political philosophy was his Second
Treatise of Government (1689). Here Locke outlines a philosophy of government
based on the consent of the governed. In Lockes view, no government that does
not have the consent of the governed is legitimate. Locke believed that in the course
of their affairs, people recognize the need to come together in a social contract to
protect themselves from the burdens of enforcing law in a state of nature. Accord-
ing to Locke, the people give over their right to enforce the laws of nature in return
for good governance and the guarantee that the right to their accumulated private
property would be protected.
In stressing the importance of protecting the right to private property, Lockes
ideas suited the need of the rising urban classes to protect their accumulated wealth
from the arbitrary usurpation of the state. Central to Lockes ideas was the desire to
make every man equal under the rule of the same set of laws. Lockes ideas were in
large measure behind the political and social movements of the eighteenth centuries
that took the cry of Equality under the rule of law as their motto. Commercial elites
across the Atlantic world increasingly employed Lockes ideas in their struggle to limit
the authority of the state to regulate their commerce and appropriate their wealth.
Lockes ideas would serve as an important inspiration for the political unrest that
rocked Britain during this period, but his philosophy came to its ultimate fruition
in Britains North American colonies during the American Revolutionary War. Over
the course of the eighteenth century, many in America began to grow impatient
with the seemingly arbitrary power of the British government to intervene in Ameri-
can affairs, particularly in imposing duties and taxes on commerce. The political
inequality of the American colonies within the British Empire was made all the
more apparent by their lack of representation in Parliament. No taxation with-
out representation! became an important rallying cry of Americans disgruntled by
their second-class status within the Empire.
In 1775, war between the colonies and Britain broke out, and the following year,
elites from the 13 colonies met in Philadelphia to decide whether to sever their
political ties with the mother country. The resulting Declaration of Independence
written largely by Thomas Jeffersonproclaimed the creation of a new country and
proudly proclaimed, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cre-
ated equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Nevertheless, the understanding of equality that the Founding Fathers of the
United States possessed did not extend to every person in the new country. For
the most part, they understood equality in a strictly political and legal sense and
226 Equality
extended it only to property-owning white males. Women, black slaves, indentured
servants, and other workers without property were not included in the denition of
the political community that the new principles of legal equality would cover. This
reality would emerge more fully when the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia
once again in 1787 to draft the United States Constitution, the legal document set-
ting out the structure and principles of the new government. In a heated debate
about how the slave population of the southern states would be counted for the
purposes of portioning out seats in Congress, the Founding Fathers decided that
every ve slaves would count for three men.
In the concrete result of the American Revolution, the limitations of the Lockean
model of equality emerged in full view. In this conception, equality is limited only to
a kind of formal equality in the public realm of political and legal affairs. Outside
this purview, all other types of social inequality are ignored and even expressly per-
mitted. In fact, Locke himself expressly sanctioned the existence of social inequality
in the community, through his labor theory of valuewhich permitted employers
to expropriate the products of their servants labor as his own.
The paradox in the form of equality expressed in the founding documents of
the United States has been summarized in the idea that under this conception one
is guaranteed equality of opportunity, but not equality of result. In this concep-
tion, while it is necessary for the state to guarantee that all citizens have a level
playing eld through the equal application of the law, it is left up to each individual
to utilize his talents to achieve social and material success, things that are not the
proper subject of political regulation.
Almost from its inception, the limitations of this model of equality would be
called into question, as women, slaves, Native Americans, indentured servants, and
others excluded from the original denition of citizen struggled to be seen as
proper subjects of the law, but also to construct a different type society with a more
thorough and social idea of equality.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in France, another revolutionary movement was
brewing, albeit with a different philosophical inspiration giving rise to a more com-
plex conception of equality and its role in public life. In 1789, the popular classes in
Paris rose up in anger at King Louis XVI over their declining living conditions. Fol-
lowing the famous storming of the Bastille in July of that year, a nationwide revolu-
tionary movement would develop that would eventually result in the overthrow and
execution of the king along with Queen Marie Antoinette and the establishment of
a republic in the place of the monarchy.
The French Revolution was different in many ways from the American Revolu-
tion; however, both were animated by the strivings of urban elites to challenge the
arbitrary power of the monarchy and the political inequalities evident in their soci-
eties at the time.
However, while the main philosophical inuence of the American Revolution was
Locke, who emphasized the formal equality made possible by a limited government,
the French revolutionaries were more inspired by the idea of Jean-Jacques Rous-
seau, who championed a more robust notion of equality based on the participation
of all citizens in the construction of an egalitarian community with a common social
fabric and moral purpose.
In his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men (1755), Rous-
seau blamed modern civilization itself for inequality. He argued that the relatively
Equality 227
egalitarian, although spartan, existence of primitive societies was morally superior
to the class divisions of modernity. While Rousseau recognized it was not practical
for humanity to revert to primitive ways of life, he did think it was possible to con-
struct a political community in which personal alienation could be overcome and
real freedom and equality achieved for all.
In his On the Social Contract, Principles of Political Right (1762), Rousseau set down
his blueprint for what such a community would look like. According to Rousseau,
in order to promote the freedom of all, each member of the community would
have to be driven by a common purpose and a common moral will. It would thus
be necessary for each citizen to fully and equally participate in the political life of
the community in order to shape this purpose and will and to ensure no citizen
became estranged from the broader communal life of the polity.
Rousseaus thought contained many idiosyncrasies, and he was quick to suggest
that his ideas would probably only work in a very small community. Nevertheless,
his ideas were a clear inspiration for many of the main protagonists of the French
Revolution. Moreover, the values of the new republic that emerged from the ashes
of the old monarchy clearly bore the stamp of Rousseaus notion of the equality of
all citizens. The French revolutionaries took the expression Libert, Egalit, Fraternit
(Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity) as their motto, symbolizing the more robust no-
tion of political equality expressed in the French events of this period as opposed to
the American Revolution.
During the French Revolution, the equality of citizens was given a dimension
over and above the right to be free from the intrusions of the state. In the French
context, equality and freedom also required a positive contribution from the citi-
zenry to the public life of the state. In the context of the wars that broke out be-
tween revolutionary France and the other European powers at the time, this often
meant that all citizens who were able had to contribute to the military defense of the
Republic. However, it also meant that the Republic itselfthe symbolization of the
collective will of the French nationhad a duty to its citizens over and above that of
simply leaving them alone to enjoy the fruits of their private labor.
In fact, as the French Revolution grew more radicalized, some movements devel-
oped that expressly sought to make all citizens of the Republic equal in both legal
status and material circumstances. Movements such as the Conspiracy of Equals, led
by Babeuf, displayed a proto-socialist character calling for the Republic to fulll its
promise of equality in both the social and economic spheres.
Nevertheless, the application of equality in the French Revolutionlike its Amer-
ican counterpartwas far from complete. Babeufs movement was defeated, and
the status of slavery in Frances colonial empire was far from clear. Moreover, as
France experienced growing social and economic inequality with the spread of a
more commercial economy, the Revolutions promise of equality retreated more
and more to the political and cultural spheres. While the ideas of equality that
came out of the French Revolution remained more robust than the formal legalistic
ideas prevalent in the American Revolution, they too would come to lack substance
beyond the political sphere. By the time Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor of
France in 1804, the idea of equality had largely come to serve as part of the nation-
alistic propaganda of the French Empire, even if Napoleonic armies did help spread
systems of formal legal equality under the law in the areas of Europe they would
occupied.
228 Estates-General
The idea of equality played a very important role in the age of revolutions. Its
different manifestations helped shape the structure and character of the revolution-
ary movements that developed in this period and in turn the nature of the political
and governmental structures that developed in their wake. Nevertheless, notions of
equality in this period tended to remain on the legal and political level, emphasiz-
ing the equality of all citizens under the law, even as they permitted tremendous
inequalities in private life. While the French Revolution did produce a more robust
notion of equality that emphasized the common will of the people, this too tended
to ignore the very severe economic inequalities that were growing during this pe-
riod. In the nineteenth century, the socialist and communist movements would
criticize the incompleteness of the doctrines of equality that emerged in the age of
revolution and expanded them to include notions of economic and social equality
as well. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Dunn, Susan. Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light. New
York: Faber and Faber, 1999; Locke, John. Two Treatises of Civil Government. London: Dent,
1955; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. A Discourse on Inequality. New York: Penguin, 1984; Rousseau,
Jean-Jacques. On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy. Edited by
Roger D. Masters. New York: St. Martins Press, 1978; Sperber, Jonathan. Revolutionary Europe,
1780 1850. New York: Longman, 2000.
MICHAEL F. GRETZ
Estates-General
The Estates-General was the chief representational body of the ancien rgime in
France. Throughout its sporadic existence between the thirteenth and eighteenth
centuries, it varied in its degree of actual representativeness and in the extent of its
powers, at some points approaching a true legislative body, and at others a mere
rubber stamp for taxation already decided by the crown. Several constants unify
the history of the Estates-General, notably its composition of delegates of the three
orders (or estates) of French society and its two primary functions of counsel and
aid to the sovereign. In the actual composition and function of the institution, each
session differed in many respects, from means of elections and the procedures for
separate or joint meetings between the three orders to the ultimate success or fail-
ure of the sessions goals. At the end of the ancien rgime, it was the Estates-General
that played a most crucial role in determining the course of French political culture
in refusing to simply sanction a bankrupt governments tax proposals and instead
demanding a more representational form of government. It was this demand, in
May and June of 1789 not the more symbolic violence that followed at the Bastille
on July 14that was the real kernel of the French Revolution.
Formation and Function
Across western Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there were vari-
ous moves to expand the princes personal council into a larger body to represent the
wider interests of the medieval state. Many of these drew their inspiration from earlier
general popular assemblies that had been quashed by the advent of feudalism and
personal allegiances to a ruling prince. But these newer assemblies were mainly con-
stituted as a means for the prince to ascertain the mood of his subjects, to gain their
moral support for his endeavors, and to raise funds for his wars and the defense of
Estates-General 229
the kingdom. In time these developed into organizations by various names: the Cortes
in Spain, the Landtag or diet in Germany, and Parliament in England. In 1302, King
Philippe IV of France called together a meeting of prominent clergymen and nobles,
plus representatives of the most important towns and cities, in order to obtain support
in a dispute with the pope. He then recalled this same body in order to raise funds for
his campaigns. It was this last function that remained the primary reason for being of
the Estates-General. Other similar bodies, notably the English parliament, developed
into legislative bodies almost independent of their monarch. In the Low Countries,
the Estates did in fact ultimately do away with the power of the prince in the late six-
teenth century. The French Estates-General did not develop to this extent.
The name Estates-General can be most easily understood in two ways. Estates
were legally recognized component parts of society, sometimes known as orders, that
differ from class in that they are based on legal and social status, not wealth. Most Eu-
ropean states were divided into three orders, clergy, nobles, and commoners, though
these were sometimes further subdivided in some parts of Europe. General differ-
entiates this meeting from the local assemblies held in Frances regions, known as
the provincial estates (or specic estates). The history of provincial estates is incred-
ibly diverse. Most ceased to meet entirely by the sixteenth century, but some (in prov-
inces known as the pays dtats) continued with varying degrees of actual authority
until the end of the ancien rgime. These ranged from the very large in Languedoc
and Burgundy to the very small in some districts in the Pyrenees and along Frances
eastern borders. An Estates-General was, therefore, ideally a calling together of these
various bodies to meet with the king, present grievances, and help him collect funds
for the common security of all parts of the kingdom.
The Estates-General was never a true legislative body. Its members were asked to
gather together and submit local concerns to the king, which he and his chief minis-
ters would then consider, after which they would issue new laws based on the advice
given or ignore it completely. Still, this system did comprise an effective means for the
crown to communicate with its subjects and secure their support, particularly through
the difcult century of Anglo-French conict. By the end of this period, the middle of
the fteenth century, the Estates-General was being consulted fairly regularly and had
agreed to ever-increasing royal subsidies to pay for the war. Communication worked
the other way as well, and the kings policies were best transmitted to every corner of
the kingdom by the return of the Estates deputies to their homes. When the system
was working well, as in the fteenth century, the Estates-General and its provincial
counterparts also developed some administrative functions, centered not only on the
collection of the agreed taxes, but also on their uses and distribution. Not all taxes
went to pay for royal military expendituresome also were used to build bridges and
roads and to pay for local justice. Thus the Estates-General in the fteenth century
was a two-way conduit of royal and regional partnership. As the most prestigious coun-
trywide government body in the kingdom besides the monarchy itself, the Estates-
General also served as a guarantor of the fundamental laws of the kingdom. These
were never dened but included the laws of succession should the ruling dynasty be-
come extinct and permanent reforms of royal powers concerning taxation.
Taxation without Representation
As it was taxation that increasingly occupied the chief function of the Estates-
General, the focus shifted increasingly toward representing the voices for whom
230 Estates-General
taxation mattered the most, the Third Estate. Since the rst two estates, the clergy
and the nobles, were for the most part exempt from taxation, it fell to the Third Es-
tate to bear the nancial burden. But the chief representatives of the early Estates-
General came from the privileged cities of France, most of which controlled their
own tax contributions, or from royal ofcials and magistrates, who were generally
exempt, leaving the rest to the people of the countryside. Thus the fashion by which
deputies to the Estates-General were selected became a matter of importance, and
there several solutions were tried over the fteenth and sixteenth centuries, mostly
coming to compromise between town and country. Yet the problem remained that
the three estates each counted as one unied body at the Estates-General, and the
Third Estate could always be voted down by the other two.
Disunity between the orders, and the increasing strength of the crown after the end
of the Hundred Years War, led to the crowns usurpation of the rights of the Estates-
General to approve of taxation. Initially forced upon Frances law courts, taxes like
the taille (personal tax) and the gabelle (salt tax) became permanent by the end of the
fteenth century. The Estates-General summoned in 1484 demanded that the taille
continue for only two years, and that within that time span the king would call another
Estates-General. The crown agreed, but another session was not held until 1560. In that
year, religious and scal crises forced the monarchy to convene the larger body to raise
funds and to regain the popular condence of its subjects, but the Estates-General was
ineffective at curtailing the growing absolutism of the French monarchy. Thus, when
a meeting was held in Paris in 1593 by the Catholic League in order to elect a new
king in opposition to the heretic Henry IV, it never gained popular support. Contin-
ued bickering among the three orders marked the session of 1614, and the proposal
put forward by the First Estate calling for a permanent position within the govern-
ment and a unied system of presenting grievances was rejected by the Third Estate.
Aside from two planned sessions in the times of crisis known as the Frondes (1649 and
1651), which never met, the Estates-General was not called again. Taxation ordered by
a nearly absolute monarchy was to be registered in the parlements of France, or the
cours des aides (the courts of taxation) for the next century and a half.
The Crisis of the 1780s
In 1787, however, the Parlement of Paris rejected this role and declared itself
unt to approve or disapprove of royal taxation. This was the job, they said, of the
Estates-General, and pressure was put on the royal government to convene one for
the rst time since 1614. Louis XVI reacted by creating a Plenary Court, the function of
which was simply to register new legislation for the short term, until a wider Estates-
General could be called. The parlements across France were sent on vacation, and
they protested to the extent of inciting popular unrest. The judiciary across France
was nearly paralyzed. Assemblies of the clergy and of the nobles were held to try to
diffuse the immediate crisis, but they too called for a reconvening of the Estates-
General. The royal government made vague promises, but no immediate plans,
until the scal crisis of August 1788 forced them to concede, to suppress the Plenary
Court, and to send out the call for an Estates-General in May 1789. Nevertheless,
the royal government under Brienne fell, and a new government, under Necker,
pushed for the meeting of the Estates-General even sooner.
But the question of representation remained. The Parlement of Paris took the lead
and demanded the three estates be composed as before (1614), with equal weight
Etranger, Conspiration de l 231
for each, but that the body as a whole become a far wider-reaching legislative body
(thus committing its own political suicide as claimant to any legislative authority).
The Parlement called for an Assembly of Notables to decide the question. This was
agreed, and it met in November and agreed that the traditional forms for the ses-
sion were best. In late December the government agreed to a doubling of the size
of the Third Estate but maintained the old practice of separate deliberations of
the three orders, and even the restriction of one vote for each order, thus negating
the gains made by doubling the Third Estate.
The Estates-General of 1789 nally convened on May 5 in various locations
around Paris and Versailles. There were 326 clergymen, 330 nobles, and 661 mem-
bers of the Third Estate. A signicant difference from the composition of the estates
of 1614 was that the clergy were overwhelmingly ordinary curs (parish priests), not
senior churchmen, and their sympathies were much closer to those of the Third
Estate. Similarly, the nobility (Second Estate) was represented more by the rank-
and-le nobles, not the great aristocrats of the royal court. The goal of the members
of the Third Estate was to deliberate as one united body, and to transform it into a
genuine representative organ of government. This was aided by the slowness of the
royal authorities to come up with a location for their separate deliberations. This
chance was seized upon, and the reformers in the Third Estate began to call the
main chamber simply the National Hall and invited the other two orders to join
them in it. A reforming clergyman, the abb de Sieys, moved on May 28 that the
Third Estate proceed with the verication of its powers without coming to the con-
clusion of the disagreement over equal versus proportionate voting by the three
estates. This was followed by a proclamation of a National Assembly on June 17;
again the other two orders were invited to join, but there would be no waiting if they
refused. The king responded by shutting down the hall in which the Assembly met,
so they moved their deliberations to a nearby tennis court, where they proceeded
to swear the Tennis Court Oath ( June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to
separate until they had given France a constitution. After a visit by the king himself
on June 23, members of the other two orders did join the Assembly (a majority of
the clergy and 47 of the nobles). On July 9, the body renamed itself the Constituent
Assembly, and the Estates-General ceased to exist.
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. 2nd ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Jones, Colin. The Great Nation. London: Penguin,
2002; Major, J. Russell. From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and
Estates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994; Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions
of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1589 1789. Vol. 2. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; Price, Munro. Politics: Louis XVI. In Old Regime
France, ed. William Doyle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
During the Reign of Terror of 1793 1794 in the French Revolution, the Conspira-
tion de l Etranger was an alleged foreign plot that helped discredit both the extreme
Left, or Hbertiste, and the moderate or Indulgent opposition to the revolutionary
government. The accusations of conspiracy were based on some real evidence of par-
liamentary corruption involving the East India Company and a few very ambiguous
232 Etranger, Conspiration de l
clues of the involvement of shady foreigners. The threads of the plot began to be
woven together when, independently of each other, two members of the National
Convention, Fabre dEglantine and Franois Chabot, warned the government of
some sleazy dealings among their fellow revolutionaries. Fabres denunciation came
in October 1793, Chabots in November. Fabre and Chabot both implicated the
Hbertistes. Fabre claimed that some of these extremists were being paid by Aus-
trian agents to push the Revolution to ever-greater extremes and so discredit it.
Fabre further accused three deputies to the Convention, including Chabot, of hav-
ing taken bribes to protect these foreigners. Chabot, on the other hand, claimed
that the affair was masterminded by the swashbuckling royalist, the Baron de Batz,
who was using British money to bribe the deputies to secure favorable nancial
terms for the East India Company, which had been abolished.
There was certainly concrete evidence of nancial corruption, but the govern-
ment either genuinely believed or was willing to exploit for political purposes the
suggestion of foreign and counterrevolutionary involvement. In the end, both Fabre
and Chabot were arrested, as well as most of the people they had accused, such as
the Belgian nancier Pierre Proli and the Moravian brothers Frey. When the Hber-
tistes were tried and executed in March 1794, they were presented as the agents of
foreign counterrevolution. When the Indulgents, including Georges-Jacques Dan-
ton, followed them to the guillotine in April, among them were Fabre, Chabot, and
some of the very people whom they had implicated.
FURTHER READING: De Batz, C. Etudes sur la Contre-Rvolution. La conspiration et la n de Jean,
baron de Batz, 1793 1822. Paris: Calmann-Lvy, 1911; Eude, M. Une interprtation non-
Mathizienne de laffaire de la Compagnie des Indes. Annales historiques de la Rvolution
franaise 53 (1981): 23961; Hampson, N. Franois Chabot and His Plot. Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 26 (1976): 114; Lestapis, A. de. La conspiration de Batz, 1793
1794. Paris: Clavreuil, 1969; Mathiez, A. La conspiration de ltranger. Paris: A. Colin, 1918;
Mathiez, A. La Rvolution et les trangers: Cosmopolitisme et dfense nationale. Paris: La Renaissance
du Livre, 1918; Price, M. The Foreign Plot and the French Revolution: A Reappraisal.
Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French
Revolution, ed. B. Coward and J. Swann. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
MICHAEL RAPPORT
F
The Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, 17871788)
Originally published serially between October 1787 and May 1788, these 85 essays
in support of the ratication of the United States Constitution were the collective
work of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, published under the
signature of Publius. Their choice of a Roman pseudonym was intended not only
to communicate their republican solicitude for the public good but as a reference to
Publius Valerius, a Roman hero known from Plutarch as having established a stable
republican government and acting as the Roman equivalent of the Greek lawgiver
Solon. The rst essay appeared in New Yorks Independent Journal on October 27,
1787, and the letters continued to appear there and later in three other New York
newspapersthe New York Packet, the Daily Advertiser, and the New York Journalin
defense of the proposed constitution. Sometimes referred to collectively as the Fed-
eralist Papers, the rst 36 of these essays were published together in book form in
March 1788 as The Federalist, and a second volume of the remaining essays followed
a few months later in May 1788. They became an instant classic of American po-
litical thought and constitutional interpretation, offering the most profound and
authoritative statement of the original intentions of the Founders and the design of
the U.S. Constitution.
Scarcely weeks after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia presented the
U.S. Constitution to the states for ratication, it came under heavy attack in the
New York press. Among the most inuential of these attacks were Anti-Federalist
letters published under the pseudonyms Federal Farmer (Melancton Smith), Cato
(George Clinton), and Brutus (Robert Yates). Although Anti-Federalist critics were
far from uniform in their beliefs and criticisms, they generally argued that the Con-
stitution granted too much centralized power to the national or federal govern-
ment, that its form of representation would unduly dilute the will of the people
and threaten their liberties, that the Constitution was inected with an aristocratic
bias, and that it would be impossible to have one uniform and centralized legisla-
tion encompassing a territory as large and diverse as the United States. What was
needed, according to these critics, was not an entirely new constitution that would
fundamentally deprive the states of their sovereignty, but a looser confederation of
234 The Federalist Papers
states that amended the defects of the Articles of Confederation, as the Constitu-
tional Convention was originally charged to do.
In the face of these public criticisms, and earlier opposition to the Constitu-
tion at the Convention by New Yorks two other delegatesGeorge Clinton and
Abraham YatesAlexander Hamilton took the lead in responding to these pub-
lished attacks. With the cooperation of James Madison and John Jay, the three men
penned the Federalist essays in order to explain to the public the working of the
Constitution. Although the authorship has been disputed over the years, Hamilton
is now credited with having written 51 of the essays (numbers 1, 69, 1113, 1517,
2136, 5961, and 6585); Madison with 29 essays (numbers 10, 14, 1820, 3758,
and 6263); and Jay, who fell ill in the winter of 1788, with only 5 essays (numbers
25 and 64).
Roughly speaking, the essays are organized according to the following schema.
The rst 37 essays all detail the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation and
the principle of confederation more generally. In particular, numbers 2 through
5 deal with the threat of conicts between independent states and foreign powers,
numbers 6 through 8 with conicts among and between the separate states, and
numbers 9 and 10 with factional disorders within the states themselves. Running
throughout these essays are realist assumptions about the constancy of conict
in political life and the need for properly designed institutions to counter the
worst effects of these conicts on the security and stability of nations. Numbers
38 through 51 detail the general principles of the Constitution and its superiority
to the Articles. Numbers 52 through 61 examine the House of Representatives.
Numbers 62 through 66 treat the Senate. Numbers 67 through 77 defend a strong
and vigorous model of executive power. Numbers 78 through 83 outline the role
of the federal courts. Finally, numbers 84 and 85 are concluding essays that round
out the whole.
The Federalist essays have both an immediate historical as well as a broader practi-
cal and philosophical signicance. As a matter of historical inuence, the publica-
tion of these essays has been credited with shifting public opinion in the state of
New York in support of the Constitution. Arguments drawn from these papers also
set the tone for the ratication debates in other states, particularly in Virginia and
New England, where some of the essays were reprinted. Having already been rati-
ed by nine states, the Constitution was already technically in force by the time New
York narrowly voted to accept it in the summer of 1788 by a margin of 30 to 27. So
it is perhaps misleading to say that the Federalist authors were determinative in the
Constitutions ultimate ratication. Even so, it is unlikely that without the eventual
support of large and inuential states like New York and Virginia the new union
would have been successful, and the careful logic and powerful rhetoric of Publius
did much to allay the fears of those suspicious of the new government.
Second, because the essays were intended to elucidate the workings of the Con-
stitution, they also give us denitive insights into how the Framers themselves
understood its design. The Federalist exerted then, and continues to exert even today,
a major inuence on how the American Constitution is interpreted. Contemporary
jurists and legal scholars often appeal to The Federalist as evidence of the Constitu-
tions original intent or for elucidation beyond the text of the document itself.
Finally, there is also considerable evidence that the authors intended their work
as a timeless meditation on human nature, popular sovereignty, and the science of
The Federalist Papers 235
government whose implications were larger than the ratication debates or even
the American Constitution. The essays bear the inuence of Enlightenment philo-
sophers like Montesquieu, Hume, Locke, and Blackstoneand more debatably, that
of Machiavelli and Hobbes. Given the acquaintance of the authors with these philo-
sophical sources, it is clear that they intended their own work not just as an elabora-
tion of arguments drawn from earlier sources, but as a more ambitious exercise in
founding an entirely new science of politics.
Alexander Hamilton sets the philosophical tenor of the essays in the opening
paper by pointing out that Americans are engaged in a great experiment to deter-
mine whether it is possible to acquire good government through reection and
choice, or whether one must always rely for ones system of government upon acci-
dent and force. Contrary to the tradition of classical republicanismwhich empha-
sizes the importance of an active life of political participation in local communities
and lofty assumptions about virtuous human characterHamilton makes it clear
that the assumptions upon which The Federalist operates are fundamentally practical
and realistic. Some who favor the Constitution have self-interested motives, while
others oppose it for purely disinterested reasons. But rather than judging the Con-
stitution against idealized views of human nature, or cynical allegations about the
motivations of its sponsors, Hamilton invites the reader to judge the Constitution
on its own merits.
Reminding the reader that a specious rhetoric on behalf of popular govern-
ment and liberty has often been the source of oppression and conict, Hamilton
contends that a strong centralized state endowed with sufcient power to maintain
peace and security is better positioned to safeguard the rights of individuals and mi-
nority groups than a plethora of weakly confederated states with neither the power
nor the energy to act on the public behalf. Hamilton appeals not only to abstract
arguments drawn from political philosophy, but the examples of classical history
and the nations own recent experience with lawlessness and disorder under the
Articles of Confederation, such as Shayss Rebellion of 1787. It had became evident
both to Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike that neither the states nor the national
government had sufcient power to put an end to this uprising or the many other
conicts and disagreements that had arisen among the states under the Articles of
Confederation.
Addressing this main shortcoming of the Articles, one of the key themes of the
Federalist essays is the need for energy and vigor in government. This energy
is to be supplied by the ofce of the presidency, which is defended by Hamilton,
especially in Federalist nos. 69 and 70. On one hand, Hamilton is concerned with
demonstrating how much more limited the power of the American presidency is
in contrast to that of the British monarchy. Indeed the ofce of the president will
more closely resemble that of the governor of the state of New York, upon which
the American presidency was in some degree modeled. At the same time, however,
Hamilton argues that the presidency must necessarily be unitary, independent to
some degree of the legislature such that its power is not absorbed by the latter, and
invested with the power of commander and chief of the military. Without these
clearly delineated but unlimited powers, the executive will be unable to act swiftly
and efcaciously in times of national crisis.
Such an energetic and powerful national government must nonetheless be
balanced against a concern for the rights of individuals and minority groups. The
236 The Federalist Papers
tendency of popular governments to trample on the rights of individuals motivates
perhaps the single most famous and inuential of the Federalist essays, James Mad-
isons Federalist no. 10, which explores the dangers of faction and the possibility of
majority rule. The problem of faction, Madison notes, is one that has bedeviled
popular government since its origins in classical Athens and Rome. The history of
republicanism has to modern times been a history of petty republics, with popular
democracy quickly devolving after a generation or so into conict and civil war. The
accomplishments of classical republics have been every bit as brief as they have been
glorious because of the tendency for a single majority interest to impose its will on
the rights of minorities. Rather than combating the latent causes of faction, which,
according to Madison, are sown in the very nature of human beings, and whose sup-
pression would require the destruction of liberty itself, the Constitution operates by
counteracting factions most egregious effects.
The solution to the problem of faction lies in modern republican government.
Republican government in this formulation refers to a popular government, rooted
in the will of the people, but that has nonetheless been passed through the medium
or lter of representation. This feature of representation, The Federalist argues, en-
sures that the quality of deliberation is likely to be more rened at the national
level because it takes place among the most exceptional representatives of every
state gathered together at some distance from the passions and conicts that bestir
smaller local communities. In this respect, the modern republicanism of The Federal-
ist is incompatible with the classical republicanism of Greece or Rome, or the pure
democracies envisioned by philosophers like Rousseau. In contrast to classical con-
cerns about the character or virtue of the representatives, the key issue for modern
representative government, according to Madison, is the purely technical problem
of nding the proper balance or ratio of representation. Representatives must be
sufciently numerous that they have some acquaintance with the constituents whose
will they are to represent. However, they cannot be so numerous that the national
assembly becomes mob-like or anonymous. Ironically, erring on the side of having
too many representatives, as the Anti-Federalists argue, risks making government
more oligarchical, rather than less so, by making the national legislature susceptible
to secret cabals of elites who will manipulate the assembly just as demagogues ma-
nipulated the mobs of the classical world.
In addition to the salutary effects of representation, which were not unknown to
Montesquieu and earlier thinkers, the originality of the Constitution consists of the
idea of an extended republic, widening the sphere of government across an entire
continent and centralizing that power at a national level. Doing so effectively trans-
forms local majorities into different and contending national minority interests.
Unlike the parochial or simple majorities that form naturally in smaller communi-
ties, the compound majorities responsible for legislation in an extended republic
are necessarily the product of compromise, moderation, and reasoned deliberation.
Madisons argument in Federalist no. 10 transforms the Constitutions main weakness
in the eyes of its criticsnamely, its attempt to bring together into a single, powerful
federal government a diversity of states, regions, and local communitiesinto its
primary virtue. This idea of a pluralism of distinct and competing minority interests
outlined by Madison has become a governing ideal for the kind of interest group
that pluralism so often associatedfor better or worsewith the practical workings
of the American Constitution.
Fte de lEtre Suprme 237
FURTHER READING: Adair, Douglass. Fame and the Founding Fathers. New York: W. W. Norton,
1974; Bailyn, Bernard, ed. The Debate on the Constitution. 2 vols. New York: Library of America,
1993; Epstein, David F. The Political Theory of the Federalist. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984; Gillespie, Michael, and Michael Lienesch, eds. Ratifying the Constitution. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1989; Hamilton, Alexander, John Jay, and James Madison. The
Federalist. Edited by George Carey and James McClellan. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001;
McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1985; Storing, Herbert J., ed. The Complete Anti-Federalist. 7 vols.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
RICHARD BOYD
The Fte de lEtre Supreme (Festival of the Supreme Being) took place in Paris on
20 Prairial, Year II ( June 8, 1794). The festival was intended to celebrate the cult of
the Supreme Being inaugurated by Maximilien Robespierre, and ofcially adopted
by the National Convention as a state religion on 18 Floral, Year II (May 7, 1794).
This cult was a deliberate attempt to counter the unsuccessful efforts at dechristian-
ization, and the atheistic Cult of Reason, which reached its high point in the winter
of the previous year.
The Cult of the Supreme Being extolled the virtues of a nebulous creative force
rooted in an ideologically motivated denition of Nature. Jacques-Louis David, the
Jacobin history painter and member of the Convention, was charged with orches-
trating the festival, which took the form of a complex procession culminating in a
series of elaborate ceremonies staged on an articial mountain in the center of the
Champ de Mars, the ritual arena built for the 1790 Festival of Federation. Davids
stipulations for the ceremony were lengthy and precise and were loaded with com-
plex allegory and symbolism. The festival was criticized for its lack of spontaneity
and the forced character of crowd participation and has been viewed by many as the
last vain act of a cold, repressive regime. During the festival ceremony, ephemeral
sculptures representing Egoism, Atheism, and, improbably, Nothingness were sym-
bolically burned, although, as unsympathetic commentators rejoiced in pointing
out, the re failed fully to consume these objects, leaving a charred, smoking, but
still recognizable residue. Certainly, however, the festival was visually spectacular,
its multiple locations and complicated scenography requiring the involvement of a
large team of artists, carpenters, designers, and set builders.
Under a blazing sun, and against a backdrop of cannon salvoes, tricolor ags,
and ower garlands, the festival moved through the day from the Tuileries to the
Champ de Mars, where a huge choir sang the patriotic hymns of Gossec to prear-
ranged responses sung by the audience. In accordance with Jacobin strictures on the
role of the family, mothers, fathers, and children were to march in the procession,
robed in white and holding palms, their every movement strictly choreographed.
It was even scripted when they should turn to smile at one another. At the Champ
de Mars, a triumphal chariot drawn by oxen carried diverse symbols of productive
labor and abundance. On the plaster-and-board mountain, beside a Doric column
topped by a gure of Hercules, Robespierre, elected president of the Convention
four days earlier, made a triumphal entrance to derision from those critical of his
self-elevation and perceived megalomania. The festival was meant to inaugurate a
238 Feuillants
new calendar of revolutionary festivals announced on 18 Floral, although it was
ultimately the last major festival held under the Jacobin Republic, due to the fall of
Robespierre, its main protagonist, the following month. See also Jacobins; Symbols
(French Revolutionary).
FURTHER READING: Biver, Marie-Louise. Ftes rvolutionnaires Paris. Paris: Puf, 1979; Ozouf,
Mona. Festivals and the French Revolution. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
RICHARD TAWS
Feuillants
A political faction in the Constituent Assembly during the liberal phase of the
French Revolution, the Feuillants were a group of constitutional monarchists within
the Jacobin Club who held meetings in a former monastery of the Feuillants on the
Rue Saint-Honor in Paris and came to be known as the Club des Feuillants. The
emergence of the Feuillants in 1791 signied the fragmentation of the moderate po-
litical consensus that had carried through the Revolution of 1789. Although repub-
licanism claimed few adherents in 1789, support for King Louis XVI collapsed after
his ight to Varennes in June 1791. Fearful of growing opposition to the monarchy
in the Paris sections after Varennes, as well as the slide toward republican radical-
ism, the Feuillants sought to stabilize the moderate revolution of 1789, strengthen
the king, and combat extremism.
Led by Antoine Barnave, the Feuillants emerged after a split within the Jaco-
bin Club between supporters of constitutional monarchy and those favoring the
creation of a republic. After the Massacre of the Champs de Mars, the Feuillants
pursued the enactment of the liberal Constitution of 1791 in a futile attempt to
prevent the further radicalization of the Revolution. In March 1792, the Feuillants
were outmaneuvered and expelled from the Constituent Assembly by Brissot and
the Girondins in retaliation for their opposition to war with Austria. Denounced as
counterrevolutionaries and traitors, they were persecuted after the fall of the mon-
archy. In August 1792, 841 members of the Feuillant faction were arrested and tried
for treason. Barnave was guillotined on November 29, 1793. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Fitzsimmons, Michael. The Remaking of France: The National Assembly
and the Constitution of 1791. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Hampson,
Norman. Prelude to Terror: The Constituent Assembly and the Failure of Consensus, 17891791.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1988; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New
York: Knopf, 1989.
BRIAN W. REFFORD
Born in Oberlausitz in Saxony to a family of weavers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was
a German philosopher and leading gure in the development of German nation-
alism. Fichte studied theology in Jena and worked for several years as an itinerant
tutor in Leipzig and Zurich before he became interested in Kantian philosophy and
traveled to Knigsberg to study with the master himself. Kant eventually arranged
Fiefs 239
the publication of Fichtes Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation in 1792. As a professor
of philosophy at Jena from 1794 to 1799, Fichte established a reputation as a major
gure in the German philosophical tradition and produced a number of works,
among them The Science of Knowledge and The Vocation of Man.
A republican attracted to the ideals of the French Revolution, Fichte was sub-
sequently repelled by Napoleonic France and was fundamentally altered in his
political outlook by Napoleons humiliation of Prussia. During his Berlin period
(18001814), he produced popular writings such as The Characteristics of the Present
Age (1806) and the Addresses to the German Nation (1808). In the Addresses, 14 alto-
gether, Fichte cited the intellectual and moral primacy of Germany and stressed its
mission to humanity. The Germans, he argued were an Urvolk, an authentic people
uncorrupted by Latin civilization and destined by their very nature to lead human-
kind to a new order, not least of all through the destruction of French power. To
accomplish this mission, however, the Germans had rst to become the great nation
that their natural endowments merited through the vehicle of a strong state that
would give the nation discipline and purpose. A German nation-state would, Fichte
reasoned, be naturally expansive in its attempt to assimilate the entire human race
to itself. Fichte was thus among the earliest and most effective propagandists of
German nationalismand an advocate of an expansive Reich whose academic voca-
tion gave a moral sheen to totalitarian ambition.
FURTHER READING: Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern: World Society 18151830. New
York: Harper Perennial, 1991; Mann, Golo. The History of Germany Since 1789. Translated by
Marion Jackson. London: Chatto and Windus 1968; Meinecke, Friedrich. Cosmopolitanism and
the Nation-State. Translated by R. B. Kimber. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Fiefs
A ef was the basic unit of the feudal system, as developed across most of Europe
in the Middle Ages. It was the main form of property holding under the ancien
rgime and was inextricably tied into the old system of privilege and judiciary com-
plexity that was one of the chief targets of reformers of the eighteenth century.
From the earliest days of medieval feudalism, the ef represented a piece of land,
usually including arable and grazing land, a manor house, a church, a wine press, a
mill, and so forth. These estates were held usually by nobles in fee from a greater no-
bleman, in exchange for an oath of delity and military service. The ef holder then
served as protector of the people who lived and worked on the estate in return for a
portion of their labor and produce. The ef could be inherited, but it remained the
property of the lord. Over time, this developed into a more complex system through
the division of the estate into its component parts, some purely scal: a ef could
thus be the right to collect tolls on a road in the estate, or the monopoly to run the
mill and charge for its use. Even justice could be separated from the ef, though
this was usually restricted to nobles only. The ancient exchange of ef for military
service was gradually replaced by fees and charges, in particular when a ef holder
died and passed on the property to an heir. The fees derived from these sorts of
transactions (feudal dues) sometimes comprised a very minor part of a landowners
income, but sometimes they could be quite substantial.
240 First Consul
As pertains to the reforms of the eighteenth century, efs were viewed as an
embodiment of the outmoded form of land-ownership that was restricting the de-
velopment of modern agriculture, particularly in France. Specic grievances in-
cluded personal servitude (wherein peasants were tied to properties on which they
lived and worked), and of noble exemptions attached to feudal rights such as the
taille (a tax attached to each individual, except in the south of France, where it was
attached to property). One of the rst actions of the newly created National Assem-
bly was to abolish feudal rights on August 4, 1789. See also Physiocrats.
FURTHER READING: Baur, Grard. Property. In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Michel
Delon. Vol. II. Translated by Philip Stewart and Gwen Wells. Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn, 2001;
Bressan, Thierry. Feudalism. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Michel Delon. Vol. I.
Translated by Philip Stewart and Gwen Wells. Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn, 2001; Mousnier,
Roland. The Institutions of France Under the Absolute Monarchy, 1589 1789. Vol. 1. Translated by
Brian Pearce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
First Consul
Napoleon Bonaparte wanted the Consulate to be the true representative of the
nation (Englund, p. 169). As First Consul, following the coup of 18 Brumaire (No-
vember 910, 1799), he was the most powerful partner in this executive triumvirate.
The Consulate, which replaced the Directory, consisted of three magistrates, but both
the second and third consuls were conned to merely consultative roles. Bonaparte,
Sieys, and Roger Ducos were the rst provisional consuls. Cambacrs and Lebrun
later became second and third consuls, while Bonaparte remained First Consul and
was eventually consul for life before becoming emperor in 1804.
The term consul was borrowed from ancient Rome to lend authority to the new
regime, which sought to bring order from the chaos of the French Revolution and
the Reign of Terror. The First Consul had to steer between the dangers of a royalist
restoration, on one hand, and a Jacobin social revolution on the other. The quest
for stability resulted in a formidable centralization of power in Napoleons hands.
The First Consul set about constructing a constitution that would further strengthen
the regimes claims to legitimacy. It formed two legislative bodies with insignicant
power, as they could merely tinker with laws passed to them by the executive.
Napoleon effectively ruled supreme as First Consul, retaining most of the Repub-
lics administrative, diplomatic, civil, and military powers. He relied on a Council of
State, which advised him and consisted of some of Frances nest minds. This hand-
picked body was a further example of increasing centralization and could draft leg-
islation for the First Consuls approval. The First Consul also appointed a prefect
and a subprefect to represent central government in all of the Republics depart-
ments, where these ofcials gathered information and ensured that the wishes of
the central government were carried out.
The role of the First Consul can be viewed either as an innovation that restored
cohesion and unity to a tormented country or a huge step on the road to dictator-
ship. Bonapartes consulship certainly meant that France did not relapse into a re-
gime prone to immediate purges and prompt proscriptions (Sydenham, p. 222). As
First Consul, Bonaparte enjoyed one of his most administratively creative periods.
First Estate 241
The range of reforms was massive and included the Civil Code, retitled the Code
Napolon in 1807, which remains the bedrock of the modern French state. Other
measures covered everything from higher education, taxation, and banking to the
road and sewer systems. A note signed by Bonaparte, Ducos, and Siyes in 1799,
and addressed to the people of France, perhaps summed it up best when it said of
the new regime: The powers it provides for are strong and stable as they should
be to guarantee the rights of citizens and the interests of the State. Citizens, the
Revolution is now anchored to the principles which gave it birth. The Revolution is
nished. See also Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. New York: Scribner, 2004;
Johnston, R. M., ed. In the Words of Napoleon: The Emperor Day by Day. London: Greenhill Books,
2002; Lyons, Martin. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. London: Macmillan,
1994; Sydenham, M. J. The First French Republic 17921804. London: B. J. Batsford, 1974.
STEPHEN STEWART
First Continental Congress
See Continental Congress, First
First Estate
The clergy, those who prayed and were thus closest to God, traditionally formed
the First Estate of the realm in France. In 1789, members of the church were accord-
ingly dismissed as a privileged order that enjoyed huge scal and social advantages,
but in fact the clerical estate ranged from aristocratic archbishop to impoverished
priest. Alongside 135 bishops in charge of dioceses that varied greatly in size,
there were 60,000 parish clergy, more than one for each village in the country, and
more than 20,000 canons and clerics who held no particular ofce. Not only were
there nobles and commoners in the First Estate, but also females as well as males,
with womens congregations faring better than mens houses, as monasticism lost its
attraction in an age of secular utilitarianism. Yet the regular clergy, perhaps 80,000
strong, still performed vital tasks in education and welfare, while the general role
of the church (and Catholicism was the religion of the overwhelming majority of
French people, with a monopoly of public worship) was far wider than it is today.
Besides offering spiritual resources, the cur was a community leader, who, in reg-
istering births, marriages, and deaths, attended to all his parishioners at key points
in their lives. To conduct its mission to society, the French church had amassed vast
amounts of property in the form of pious bequests, which covered over one-sixth of
the cultivable surface of the kingdom. It received the tithe from all those who tilled
the soil and was allowed to tax itself via the don gratuit, voted periodically by the as-
sembly of the clergy in which its corporate status was embodied.
With the benet of hindsight, it is easy to exaggerate the internal divisions to
which the church was prone. Most of the hierarchy had obtained their positions
through connections at court, some, like Talleyrand, at a tender age. However, most
administered their dioceses in a competent fashion. There was some tension with
hardworking parish clergy, who were better educated in the eighteenth century and
were often anxious for a greater say in running the institution, and sometimes angry
242 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward
over their meager stipends. In certain areas, clergy faced the challenge of enlight-
ened ideas and new forms of sociability, which inuenced members of the male
laity. There were demands for ecclesiastical reform in the cahiers de dolances of
1789, yet few saw an ax about to fall. It was, signicantly, the solitary Protestant in
the kings government, the controller general Jacques Necker, who threw a veritable
spanner into the works. By giving parish priests a vote equal to that of bishops in
elections to the Estates-General, which were, of course, conducted by order, with
the clergy occupying a separate chamber, he created a clerical democracy. Lower
clergy thus outnumbered upper clergy when the Estates-General met at Versailles,
and it was many of the former who joined the Third Estate at the invitation of Sieys,
himself a renegade priest. Yet few of these patriotic curs had any inkling that by
rallying to the newly formed National Assembly, they were effectively abolishing the
clergy as a distinct order in French society. This misunderstanding sowed the seeds
of a schism between church and Revolution that created an enduring division in
modern France. See also Second Estate.
FURTHER READING: Aston, Nigel. Religion and Revolution in France, 1780 1804. Basingstoke,
UK: Macmillan, 2000; Lewis, Gwynne. France 17151804: Power and the People. Harlow, UK:
Pearson, 2004; McManners, John. Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. 2 vols. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
MALCOLM CROOK
Edward Fitzgerald, the twelfth child of the rst duke of Leinster, the premier
peer in Ireland, and the daughter of the Duke of Richmond, was born in London.
He was a cousin of Charles James Fox and was well connected with liberal Whigs
in both England and Ireland. He was educated in Ireland by William Ogilvie, who
became his mothers lover, and then briey at a military academy in Paris before
being commissioned in a British infantry regiment in 1778. He served in America
in 1781 and was badly wounded at the Battle of Eutaw Springs during the American
Revolutionary War. He was carried from the battleeld by a former black slave, who
thereafter became his loyal servant. He served briey in the Irish parliament in
the early 1780s, associating himself with the Patriot opposition, before serving in
Canada in 1788. Elected again to the Irish parliament in 1790 for County Kildare,
where his family possessed considerable inuence, he became increasingly associ-
ated with radical reformers. He was inuenced by the ideas of Thomas Paine and
even lodged with Paine when he visited Paris in October 1792. In November 1792,
he renounced his title and became increasingly inuenced by French revolutionary
principles. This led to his being cashiered from the British Army. While in France,
he married Pamela, the daughter of the educationist Madame de Genlis and (re-
putedly) the Duke of Orleans, on December 27, 1792. The young couple had three
children in quick succession.
Fitzgerald returned to Ireland in January 1793, advocated reform in the Irish
parliament, and associated with both Catholic Defenders and United Irishmen
in County Kildare. In 1796, he visited Hamburg with Arthur OConnor, a leading
United Irishman seeking to enlist French support for a rising in Ireland. He com-
mitted himself to the United Irishmen, decided not to seek reelection to Parliament
Flood, Henry 243
in 1797, and offered his military expertise to the United Irishmen, who were planning
a rebellion in 1798. He evaded capture when almost the entire Leinster Directory
of the United Irishmen was arrested on March 12, 1798. He went into hiding in
Dublin but was betrayed by a government informer and was arrested by troops on
May 19, 1798. In the ensuing struggle, he mortally wounded one of the soldiers try-
ing to arrest him, and he himself was shot in the shoulder. His inuential relatives
hoped to save him from serious punishment, but his wounds became infected and
he died in his cell on June 4, 1798, in the middle of the Irish rebellion. An act of at-
tainder deprived his immediate family of his estate, but it was purchased by William
Ogilvie, the long-time lover of his mother, and passed on to his heir. See also Society
of United Irishmen.
FURTHER READING: Chambers, Liam. Rebellion in Kildare, 1790 1803. Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 1998; Moore, Thomas. The Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. London: Longman, Rees,
Orme, Brown, & Green, 1831; Tillyard, Stella. Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 17631798. London:
Chatto and Windus, 1997.
H. T. DICKINSON
The illegitimate son of an eminent state lawyer, Flood was born in County Dublin.
Despite his illegitimacy, he never lacked for money. He was educated at Trinity Col-
lege Dublin; Christ Church, Oxford; and the Inner Temple in London. He rst en-
tered the Irish House of Commons in November 1759, and he married a daughter
of the Earl of Tyrone in April 1762. In Parliament, Flood rapidly gained a reputation
as an able orator, a formidable debater, and an expert in parliamentary procedure.
Although he soon joined the Patriot opposition in the House of Commons, he was
always ambitious for ofce and was ready to support a reform-minded Irish admin-
istration. Unfortunately for him, few attempts were made to create such an admin-
istration, though he was able to support the governments Octennial Act of 1768,
which limited the duration of the Irish parliament to a maximum term of eight
years. Whenever he could achieve little in Parliament, he resorted to publishing
anonymous essays critical of the Irish government in the Dublin press. His career
was only temporarily stalled when he killed an electoral rival in a duel in 1769.
In late 1775, he nally reached an accommodation with the Irish administration
when he was appointed the vice-treasurer of Ireland and to the Irish and British
privy councils. He was soon dissatised, however, when the promise of a major ofce
was not forthcoming, and he failed to give the Irish government as much political
support as it had expected. His failure to support all of the administrations policies
led to his dismissal from his position as vice-treasurer, and the British Privy Council
in late 1781. He promptly allied himself with the Irish Volunteers outside Parlia-
ment and with Henry Grattan and the Patriot opposition inside the Irish House of
Commons. He helped to secure the political reforms of 1782 that secured greater
legislative independence for the Irish parliament. Not satised, as Grattan was, with
the 1782 repeal of the Irish Declaratory Act of 1720, which had claimed the right
of the Westminster parliament to legislate for Ireland, he successfully pressed for
the Renunciation Act of 1783, which forced the British parliament to renounce this
claim explicitly. He and Grattan soon fell out, and Grattan set about denigrating
244 Fouch, Joseph
Floods character and his checkered support for the Patriot cause. A duel between
the two was narrowly averted by the authorities.
Flood was prepared to support the campaign of the Ulster Volunteers for a
measure of parliamentary reform, but he still wished to exclude Catholics from
the political process. He made repeated efforts to secure a reform bill in the Irish
parliament between 1783 and 1785, and he was also active in the 1785 campaign
to defeat William Pitts plan for a commercial union between Britain and Ireland.
Meanwhile, Flood, supported by the patronage of the Duke of Chandos, had also
been elected to the Westminster parliament in 1783 for the borough of Winchester.
This had long been an ambition of his, but he did not adapt well to the growing
party disputes at Westminster. A dispute with Chandos meant that he lost his seat
at the general election of 1784, but he eventually secured election for another bor-
ough in 1786. He spent his last politically active years in the Westminster parliament
rather than in the Irish parliament, but he was not very successful in what he sought
to achieve. In 1787 he unsuccessfully opposed Pitts commercial treaty with France,
and in March 1790, he failed in his efforts to introduce a moderate parliamentary
reform bill in the House of Commons. He hoped reform might avert revolution.
Flood did not seek reelection to the Westminster or the Irish parliament in 1790.
He retired to his estate in County Kilkenny, where he died on December 2, 1791. He
and his wife were childless.
FURTHER READING: Kelly, James. Henry Flood: Patriots and Politics in Eighteenth-Century
Ireland. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998; McDowell, R. B. Ireland in the
Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 1760 1801. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979; Moody, T. W., and
W. E. Vaughan, eds. A New History of Ireland. Vol. 4: The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986.
H.T. DICKINSON
Fouch, Joseph (17631820)
Joseph Fouch was a cunning statesman who served in every French government
from 1789 to 1815. Born near Nantes, Fouch was a tutor at several colleges, in-
cluding Arras, where he had dealings with Maximilien Robespierre at the French
Revolutions outbreak. In 1790, Fouch transferred to Nantes, where he became
a member of the local Jacobins. In 1792, Fouch became deputy to the National
Convention. He gained a reputation by zealously combating uprisings against the
revolutionary government. Fouchs disagreement with Robespierre over his Fte
de lEtre Suprme resulted in his expulsion from the Jacobins. In 1794, Fouch
conspired against Robespierre in the Thermidorian Reaction.
During the Directory, Fouch allegedly betrayed to director Barras information
about Babeufs conspiracy. In the coup dtat of Fructidor, Fouch assisted Barras,
who appointed him ambassador to the Cisalpine Republic. Fouch became minister
of police in 1799. Charged with suppressing Jacobins, Fouch arrested producers of
material subversive to the government.
He supported the coup dtat de Brumaire, gaining Napoleons favor. Wary of
Fouchs intrigue, Napoleon deprived him of his post in 1802. Fouch continued
to intrigue and provide intelligence services for Napoleon. In 1804, Napoleon re-
stored Fouch to the reconstituted ministry of police, later entrusting to him that
of the interior. Fouch initiated peace overtures to the British in 1809. Such actions
Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine Quentin 245
angered Napoleon, who dismissed Fouch in 1810. He regained favor by providing
useful information.
Following Napoleons abdication, Fouch made overtures to the Bourbons. Un-
successful, he conspired against the Bourbons. After Napoleon escaped from Elba,
Fouch again headed the ministry of police while conspiring with Metternich at
Vienna. After Napoleons second abdication, Fouch became president of the pro-
visional commission governing France. He furthered the Bourbon cause, securing a
position in Louis XVIIIs ministry to nish his career.
FURTHER READING: Cole, Hubert. Fouch: The Unprincipled Patriot. New York: McCall, 1971.
ERIC MARTONE
Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine Quentin (17461795)
Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville was public prosecutor during the phase of
the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror. After years of nancial dif-
culties, in 1774 he found work as a prosecutor in Paris. In 1783, he gave up his
practice and again fell into poverty until 1792, when Camille Desmoulins, a distant
cousin, helped him get elected to the new criminal tribunal. Ironically, 18 months
later, Fouquier sent his protector to the guillotine.
Joseph Fouch. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
246 Fox, Charles James
After the crowd killed hundreds of people arrested for counterrevolutionary
activities, the Convention created the revolutionary tribunals, and Fouquier was
named their public prosecutor. The tribunal judged its rst case on April 6, 1793.
The trial of Marie Antoinette, prosecuted by Fouquier, signaled the beginning of
the Reign of Terror. On October 24, the Girondins were accused of conspiracy and
Fouquier displayed extreme fervor in his prosecution. Trying to please Maximilien
Robespierre, he wanted the court proceedings to last only a single day, to be fol-
lowed immediately by execution.
On March 31, Danton and Desmoulins were arrested. During their three-day
trial, Fouquier realized that if found not guilty and released, they would send him
to the guillotine. He therefore spared no effort in obtaining the verdict he needed.
After the Law of 22 Prairial, the number of people accused increased tremendously,
and Fouquier had clearly innocent defendants executed. In one month, he was re-
sponsible for the death of over a thousand people.
However, the list of Robespierres enemies remained lengthy, and on July 27,
1794, the Convention unanimously agreed to arrest him. After a quick impromptu
trial led by Fouquier, Robespierre was guillotined the following day. Five days later,
Fouquier was arrested. His countless transgressions of the law were revealed, and
he himself was guillotined on May 6, 1795. Fouquiers death marked the end of the
revolutionary tribunal and of the Terror as well. See also LAccusateur Public.
FURTHER READING: Dunoyer, Alphonse. The Public Prosecutor of the Terror, Antoine Quentin
Fouquier-Tinville. London: Jenkins, 1914; Jacotey, M. L. Le tribunal rvolutionnaire au service de
la terreur. Langres: Guniot, 1995.
GUY-DAVID TOUBIANA
Fox, Charles James (17491806)
Born in London, Fox was the second son of Henry Fox, later Baron Holland, who
had enriched himself in politics and who had been a great rival of William Pitt the
Elder, rst earl of Chatham. Fox was his fathers favorite and was much indulged by
him. Free of all discipline and restraint, he long adopted a dissipated lifestyle that
saw him spending a fortune on gambling, drinking to excess, and enjoying the com-
pany of a succession of mistresses. He was twice bankrupted, and he often had to
be rescued from complete nancial disaster by the generosity of family and friends.
Educated at Eton and Oxford, he was asked to leave the former early, and he left the
latter without graduating. Highly intelligent, he made many visits to the salons of
Paris and spent almost two full years on the grand tour. Throughout his life, he read
widely in classical and European literature and he started but did not complete a
History of the Reign of James II. Extremely sociable, he enjoyed cricket and horse racing
and spent much of his time in social clubs. He had a wide circle of friends and many
devoted admirers. In 1795 he secretly married Elizabeth Armistead, his long-time
mistress, and became increasingly domesticated, but his earlier life of debauchery
always damaged his political prospects and credibility. He was the butt of more po-
litical caricatures than any other politician of the age.
Elected to Parliament on May 10, 1768, when he was only 19 and technically
underage and so ineligible to sit in the House of Commons, his intelligence, ora-
tory, debating skills, and frequent contributions to debates soon made his name.
Fox, Charles James 247
He initially adopted his fathers opinions and was a critic of John Wilkes and a sup-
porter of Lord North. In February 1770 he was appointed to the admiralty board but
resigned two years later. In December 1772 he was appointed to the treasury board
but resigned in February 1774. On both occasions his resignation was precipitated
by perceived slights to his family rather than any serious disagreement about policy
or principle. This did not prevent him, however, from gradually gravitating toward
the Rockingham-led opposition and becoming increasingly critical of Lord Norths
policies. Fox came increasingly under the inuence of Edmund Burke, who sought
him out, and he became a major critic of the governments American policies. He
attacked the governments policy of trying to tax the American colonists, and he was
appalled at the outbreak of war. He believed that the American Revolutionary War
was ill advised, and he feared that it would be prolonged and might well be lost. He
repeatedly accused leading ministers of mishandling the war, and he was one of the
rst of the leading politicians to accept the inevitability of American independence.
In July 1780 Fox chose to stand as member of Parliament for Westminster, the most
populous urban constituency in the country, and he began to be seen as a reformer
and a Man of the People.
Lord North resigned in March 1782, and Fox was appointed as foreign secretary
in the Rockingham administration. He supported the ministrys economic reforms
and its concessions to the Patriot cause in Ireland, but he soon came to believe
that his efforts to negotiate peace with France and America were being thwarted
by Lord Shelburne. When Shelburne became prime minister in July 1782, after the
death of Rockingham, Fox resigned and opposed Shelburnes peace negotiations.
This brought him into an alliance with Lord North, who also opposed these peace
negotiations. When the peace proved unpopular, Fox and North were able to re-
place Shelburnes administration with their coalition government in March 1783.
They had worked together between 1769 and 1774, but they were now very differ-
ent in their politics, and this was soon seen as an unnatural alliance. It was also an
administration doomed from the start because George III bitterly resented having
this coalition forced upon him. In November 1783 the coalition passed through the
Commons the India Bill. The bill was designed to put the administration of India
on a new footing, but one that reduced the Crowns inuence over appointments.
The king intervened decisively in the Lords, threatening and cajoling the peers
into narrowly defeating this bill on December 15. Fox was appalled by this use of
Crown inuence. He was even more offended when the king promptly appointed
the younger William Pitt as his new prime minister, despite the fact that he had only
minority support in the Commons.
Fox was now convinced that the king was determined to undermine the indepen-
dence of Parliament and to subvert the constitution. He tried to obstruct the mea-
sures of Pitt, including money bills, but would not believe that this persuaded public
opinion, independent MPs, and even reformers to turn from him to Pitt. When the
king dissolved Parliament three years early in March 1784 and exploited Crown
inuence to support Pitt in the great victory achieved at the subsequent general elec-
tion, Fox was again convinced that he had been defeated by the unconstitutional
actions of the king, not by his own political mistakes and factious conduct. From
now onward, Fox hated the king and regarded him as a threat to the constitution.
In return, the king hated Fox for debauching his son, the Prince of Wales, and re-
garded Fox as a factious politician who could not be trusted.
248 Fox, Charles James
Foxs election in Westminster in 1784 was bitterly contested, and the disputed
return had to be considered by a House of Commons now dominated by Pitts
supporters. Fox was not able to take his seat in the Commons until early 1785, and
this increased his personal antipathy toward Pitt. Fox thereafter sought every oppor-
tunity to oppose Pitts measures. In a series of speeches from February to July 1785
he opposed Pitts plans for a commercial treaty with Ireland and was delighted to
see this rejected by his friends in the Dublin parliament. Fox joined Burke in man-
aging the impeachment of Warren Hastings in February 1788. He was motivated
more by revenge for the defeat of his India Bill of 1783 than by a desire for justice in
India or in the trial of Hastings. He soon lost interest in the protracted proceedings,
much to the irritation of Burke. Fox also made a series of major misjudgments dur-
ing the Regency Crisis from November 1788 to March 1789. When George III was
incapacitated with a mental disorder, and it was feared that he might not recover,
Fox rushed back from Italy and promptly demanded that the Prince of Wales be
given full authority as regent without consulting his colleagues. Fox undoubtedly
hoped that the Prince, his personal friend, would dismiss Pitt and return the Foxites
to power. Foxs claim that the House of Commons could not legitimately restrict the
powers of a regent contrasted sharply with his previous attacks on the kings use of
his powers. It gave Pitt the opportunity to un-Whig Fox and to expose him as being
motivated more by self-interest than by principle. When the king recovered, Foxs
reputation was irreparably damaged at court and far beyond its connes.
Fox had long been a Francophile and he had a wide circle of liberal aristocratic
Frenchmen whom he termed the French Whigs. He therefore rejoiced at the fall
of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, famously exclaiming: How much the greatest event
it is that ever happened in the world, and how much the best. He was convinced
from the outset that the French only sought to replace an absolute monarchy with
the kind of constitutional monarchy that the Whigs had established in Britain in
16881689 and were still seeking to safeguard. Fox never understood the real nature
of the French Revolution, and he blamed its enemies when it descended into anar-
chy, violence, and terror. He rejected the views advanced by Burke in the Reections
on the Revolution in France (published in November 1790), and as late as April 1791,
he was informing the House of Commons how much he admired the new constitution
in France as the most stupendous and glorious edice of liberty. By May this had
produced a permanent and public breach with Burke in a famous debate in the
House of Commons.
Worried by Frances decision to become a republic, and appalled by Frances de-
scent into violence and terror, Fox refused to blame the revolutionaries in France,
preferring to blame Louis XVI and his monarchical allies in Europe. When war
broke out in Europe, Fox blamed it on Austria and Prussia. When France declared
war on Britain in February 1793, Fox blamed Pitt for joining a reactionary conspiracy
against liberty. He seemed thereafter almost to rejoice at every French victory and
every allied reverse. When peace efforts foundered on several occasions, Fox again
blamed Pitt rather than the more intransigent French. When popular radicalism
began to ourish in Britain in the early 1790s, Fox showed no real personal commit-
ment to parliamentary reform, but he made no effort to prevent some of his Whig
colleagues from establishing the Association of the Friends of the People in April
1792. The more conservative Whigs became increasingly concerned at Foxs stance
on revolution and reform. A few prominent members followed Burke and deserted
France 249
Fox in 17921793. In July 1794 the Duke of Portland, the nominal head of the party,
led a very substantial portion of the opposition into a grand coalition with Pitt.
These defections drastically reduced the number of Foxs supporters in Parliament
and it was clear that they had no chance in the foreseeable future of defeating Pitt
or forming an alternative government. Fox had supported the Libel Act of 1792,
which allowed the jury, not the judge, to decide whether the offending words were a
libel, and he opposed all of the governments repressive measures in the mid-1790s.
He spoke out bravely in support of civil liberties. Fox was a character witness at the
trial for treason of Arthur OConnor at Maidstone in May 1798, and he began to
consort with radicals such as John Horne Tooke for the rst time. At a reform din-
ner in 1798, Fox toasted Our sovereign lord, the people and was struck off the
Privy Council. Fox was never a genuine radical, however, though he was a staunch
champion of civil liberties and religious toleration. He tried to hold the middle
ground between reactionaries and revolutionaries. Losing hope of inuencing Par-
liament, he rarely appeared in the House of Commons between 1797 and 1801.
Fox returned to public life in February 1801, when Pitt suddenly resigned, but
he made few speeches and his attendance in the Commons was infrequent. He wel-
comed the peace with France made by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 and promptly
visited Paris from July to November 1802. He met old friends and even had three in-
terviews with Napoleon, but these did not go well. Fox was far too interested in civil
liberties for Napoleons taste, and Fox regarded Napoleon as a military adventurer.
His visit was much lampooned by caricaturists. When war resumed in May 1803 and
Pitt returned to power in May 1804, Fox entered a loose alliance with Lord Grenville
and his group, who refused to rejoin Pitt in ofce. When Pitt died in January 1806,
the king reluctantly agreed to a ministry of all the talents, led by Grenville. Fox was
appointed foreign secretary, but he could make no headway in his plans to negotiate
peace with Napoleon. Foxs one achievement was his leading role in promoting a
bill for the abolition of the slave trade. This measure was carried through in 1807,
after Fox had died on September 13, 1806. Before his death, Foxs admirers created
the Fox Club to honor his support for liberal causes. His younger admirers went on to
deify him in the years ahead, toasting his memory at annual dinners. They eventually
carried through the Great Reform Act of 1832, a moderate measure of which Fox
might have approved. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade; Tories.
FURTHER READING: Ayling, Stanley. Charles James Fox. London: John Murray, 1991; Derry,
John W. Charles James Fox. London: St. Martins Press, 1972; Mitchell, L. G. Charles James Fox.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; Reid, Loren. Charles James Fox: A Man for the People.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969.
H. T. DICKINSON
France
By the eighteenth century, France had developed from a medieval principality
into the largest and most populous kingdom in western Europe and seemed poised
to dominate the entire continent. King Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), as
he was known, ascended the throne as a child of four years old and over the next
seven decades transformed his kingdom into a great power. However, his legacy also
proved an immense liability for his successors. Louis created a complex bureaucratic
250 France
apparatus centered at his palace in Versailles, from where he exercised virtually
absolute power. Supporters of limiting royal absolutism had placed their hopes
on Louis heirs, but the king outlived his son, grandson, and even eldest great-
grandson. After his death in 1715, Louis was succeeded by his ve-year-old great-
grandson, Louis XV, but real authority lay in the hands of the regency led by the
kings cousin Philippe II, the duc dOrlans. To secure his authority, Orlans made
an important deal with the advocates of limiting absolutism. In return for their
support, Philippe allowed the parlements, the chief judicial bodies in France, to
exercise their power to review and approve royal decrees. This would prove conse-
quential since the parlements eventually emerged as well-entrenched institutions
opposed to royal authority.
The foremost problem facing Louis XV was the disastrous state of French nances.
In social terms, France was divided into three estates that corresponded to medieval
concept of those who prayed, those who fought, and those who farmed/worked.
The First Estate consisted of the clergy, who were subject to their own church court
system and were entitled to collect tithes. Catholicism was the dominant denomina-
tion since Protestantism had been persecuted since Louis XIVs revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Second Estate consisted of the nobility, who had over
the centuries accrued numerous privileges, which allowed it to claim a monopoly
on the top positions in the church, army, and royal administration and to collect
seigneurial dues from commoners. The Third Estate consisted of unprivileged
commoners, who numbered over 95 percent of the population of France. It was a
loose group, lacking common interests, since it included the wealthiest bourgeoisie,
who mixed easily with the nobility, and the poorest peasants and townspeople. The
wealthy commoners were, naturally, dissatised with the social and political system
in France, which placed a heavy tax burden on their shoulders yet failed to provide
them with proper representation in government. The First and Second Estates were
both privileged in that both were exempted from tax, notably the principal direct tax,
the taille, which was levied on land and property. Attempts to introduce income tax
without exemptions had been consistently blocked by the nobility and the church. To
make up for its inadequate sources of revenue, the French monarchy began to sell
government posts, which created independent venal ofceholders who could not be
removed unless the government purchased back the seat. This policy in turn pro-
duced an independent-minded and cumbersome bureaucracy. Responsibility for tax
collection was leased out to so-called tax farmers, who paid the treasury a xed fee
in exchange for the right to collect taxes in a specic region. This system provided
the monarchy with a steady ow of income but also allowed the ofcials in charge to
squeeze as much as they could from an increasingly discontented population.
To maintain their position relative to other states, especially in their long-standing
rivalry against Britain, the Bourbon kings of France incurred increasingly higher ex-
penses that became a heavy burden on the kingdoms economy; in 1739, the debt
amounted to some 36 percent of the governments budget. Louis XIVs wars, notably
his lastthe War of the Spanish Succession (17021714)signicantly weakened
the French economy. Louis XV, an intelligent and capable man, was initially disin-
terested in governing and entrusted daily state affairs to his ministers. Thus, Cardi-
nal Fleury effectively directed the French government between 1726 and 1743 and
through his reforms helped stabilize and organize the government. After Fleurys
death, Louis XV decided to rule personally, taking an active part in governing the
France 251
country. However, he was often inuenced by his mistresses, notably the Marquise de
Pompadour, who exerted a liberal inuence on French policy. After the marquises
death, Louis XV took another ofcial mistress, Madame du Barry, who, however,
lacked the skills and education of Pompadour. In addition to high military expendi-
ture, the French treasury was drained by the extravagance of the court as well as the
elaborate welfare system that beneted the upper classes.
The Bourbon monarchy could not resolve this difculty due to the underlying
problem of an inadequate taxation system. Louis XVs involvement in the Seven
Years War (175663), when France lost many of her colonial possessions in Canada,
India, and the West Indies to the British, transformed a nancial problem into a
national crisis. The national debt increased to 62 percent of the national budget
in 1763 and kept growing due to interest obligations and a tax system unable ef-
fectively to address it. To meet its obligations, the French government took on new
loans, which only perpetuated the problem. France would have easily managed
these nancial strains if not for the governments inability to implement much-
needed reforms.
Although popularly described as absolute monarchs, the French kings, were,
in reality, obliged to rule according to laws and customs accumulated over the ages.
In this respect, the parlements represented an important check on royal authority,
as they claimed the right to review and approve of all royal laws to ensure that they
conformed to the traditional laws of the kingdom. In the absence of representative
institutions, the parlements (although representing the nobility) claimed to defend
the interests of the entire nation against arbitrary royal authority. After the Seven
Years War ended, Louis XV tried to retain a wartime tax, a 5 percent vingtime tax
on all classes, but faced a virtual revolt from the clergy and nobility, who used their
control of the parlements to declare the kings decree illegal. When the king tried to
use a royal corve to construct a road in Brittany, the Parlement of Rennes joined
the aristocratic opposition to block the kings decree. Exasperated, Louis ordered
the arrest of the president of the Parlement of Rennes, which caused the remaining
parlements to unite in their opposition and claim themselves to be the custodians
and the depository of the unwritten French constitution. In 1766, Louis turned
to his troops to suppress the Parlement of Paris while his chef minister, Ren de
Maupeou, led the ght against the aristocratic opposition. In 1771, Maupeou abol-
ished all parlements and created a new court system in which the magistrates and
judges became state employees. However, when Louis XV died in 1774, his succes-
sor, the 19-year-old Louis XVI, was compelled to dismiss Maupeou and restore the
parlements.
After inheriting a nancially and militarily weakened realm, Louis XVI stood by
helplessly as Frances traditional ally, the Kingdom of Poland, was partitioned by
Austria, Russia, and Prussia in 1772. He was able to intervene in the American Revo-
lutionary War, where the French expeditionary corps played an important role in
securing the colonies independence from Britain. However, this success cost France
a great deal nancially and delivered no tangible rewards that could have rectied
the massive strain this imposed on its economy. In short, French participation in the
American Revolution had driven the government to the brink of bankruptcy. Such
nancial difculties soon affected French foreign policy, since the fear of increasing
the nations debt prevented Louis XVI from opposing Prussias intervention in the
Netherlands in 1787.
252 France
The French bourgeoisie (wealthy, middle-class commoners) grew signicantly
in number in the eighteenth century, and merchants in Bordeaux, Marseille, and
Nantes exploited overseas trade with colonies in the West Indies and the Indian
Ocean to reap tremendous prots. As its economic power grew, the bourgeoisie
resented its exclusion from political power and positions of privilege. The foremost
source of French wealth was agriculture and the peasantry that cultivated the land.
The majority of French peasants enjoyed certain legal freedoms; some owned land
but most rented land from local seigneurs or bourgeois landowners. By the late
eighteenth century, the heavily taxed peasants were acutely aware of their situation
and were less willing to support the antiquated and inefcient feudal system. The
peasantry enjoyed prosperous years between the 1720s and the late 1760s, during
which period the population grew. However, climatic conditions changed in the
1770s, bringing the repeated failure of crops and economic hardship that was even
more acute due to the enlarged population. Secular attitudes become prominent in
the countryside, and tolerance for the existing social order began to wear thin.
Louis XVI made several attempts at reforming the tax system. In 17741776,
Jacques Turgot reduced government spending, levied taxes on landowners, and
eliminated tariffs and the guilds that suffocated economy. These reforms, however,
faced erce opposition from many groups, which successfully lobbied to bring down
both ministers. Between 1778 and 1781, Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker turned
French minister of nance, was also unsuccessful in overcoming aristocratic op-
position to his reforms. As a result, the French national debt rapidly increased and
consumed almost the entire national budget by the late 1780s. To resolve it, the
parlements had proposed to call elections for the Estates-General, an assembly of
all three estates (clergy, nobility, and commoners) that was last summoned in 1614.
Louis XVI was initially opposed to this idea but eventually agreed to a meeting of
the Estates-General in May 1789. His decision opened the rst modern political
debate in French history as numerous political pamphlets debated such key issues
as double representation and the methods of voting for the Third Estate. Abb Em-
manuel Sieys defended the Third Estate in his famous pamphlet, proclaiming that
it was everything yet had nothing. Louis agreed to double the representation of
the Third Estate but retained the ancient voting tradition by which the estates met
and voted separately. During the elections, each district was required to prepare lists
of their grievances (cahiers des dolances), many of which criticized the existing sys-
tem and level of taxation and some elements of royal privilege, such as its arbitrary
power of arrest through lettres de cachet.
The Estates-General convened on May 5, 1789, but immediately became divided
over the issue of voting since the Third Estate insisted on voting by head. On June
17, after over a month of bitter struggle over this legal issue, the deputies of the
Third Estate declared themselves the National Assembly and invited other estates
to join it. A political revolution had begun. When, three days later, royal ofcials
locked the Third Estate out of its regular meeting hall, the deputies occupied the
kings indoor tennis court, where they pledged an oath (the Tennis Court Oath)
not to disperse until they had produced a new constitution. The court opposed this
notion and the king considered using troops to disperse the deant Third Estate,
whose deputies, as the comte de Mirabeau, one of its leaders, proclaimed, would
not leave our places except by the power of the bayonet. In the event, the king
chose to negotiate.
France 253
The political revolution that began with the aristocracy and expanded through
the involvement of the deputies of the Third Estate soon passed beyond anyones
control. Paris and other cities and provinces suffered from lack of provisions and
high prices, which combined to create a volatile situation. Many feared that the king
would turn to the army to suppress the National Assembly. When, under pressure
from his court, Louis dismissed the popular minister Necker, a Parisian crowd rose
up and attacked the Bastille fortress, a symbol of absolutism, which was seized and
demolished. Rumors of an aristocratic conspiracy to overthrow the Third Estate,
meanwhile, spread throughout France and led to the start of rural disturbances.
The Great Fear, as this turmoil is known, was largely sustained by various rumors
that caused peasants to arm themselves in self-defense and turned their anxiety to the
estates of their seigneurs.
The Constituent Assembly quickly proceeded with its reforms. On August 4,
1789, it decreed the abolition of the feudal regime and of the tithe gathered by
the Catholic Church. The Assembly began working on the rst constitution of the
French kingdom, and on August 26, it introduced the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming liberty, equality, the inviolability of property,
and the right to resist oppression. The court opposed these political reforms, and
the Assembly itself became divided into various feuding factions. In October, radi-
cal elements in Paris incited the hungry masses of thousands of Parisian women to
march on Versailles to express their grievances to the Assembly and the king. These
October Days had a dramatic inuence on the subsequent course of the Revolu-
tion. Following the mobs attack on the palace, the royal family was compelled to
move to Paris, where it was soon joined by the Assembly. From then on, both the
king and the Assembly became the hostages of radical Parisian crowds, which here-
after began to play an important role in the political events of the Revolution.
In the rst year of its existence, the Assembly implemented a variety of reforms
that began to transform France. The Constitution of 1791, drafted between July
1789 and September 1791, established a constitutional monarchy in France. Legis-
lative power was delegated to the Legislative Assembly, a unicameral legislature of
745 representatives that was elected by active citizens (those who had the vote, itself
determined based on how much tax one paid), who met in local primary assemblies
and elected 1 percent of their number as electors, who then elected representatives.
Although the new suffrage excluded women from voting, it was still far broader
that the existing system in Britain. Executive power was delegated to the king, but
his authority was curtailed. The ancient administrative system by which France was
divided into provinces was replaced by 83 departments, which were themselves sub-
divided into districts and cantons. In February through March 1790, provincial and
municipal councils were elected at each of these levels, signaling a decentralization
of the French government. The Assembly created a new judiciary, eliminated mon-
asteries and religious orders, abolished the parlements, nationalized royal land, cre-
ated a land tax, abolished internal tariffs, established civil rights for Protestants, and
introduced uniform weights and measures and a whole host of other reforms.
The decision to nationalize the lands of the Roman Catholic Church in France
to pay off the national debt led to a widespread redistribution of property but alien-
ated the clergy, who still wielded enormous inuence in rural regions. To ensure
the clergys loyalty, the Assembly drafted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which
dened the clergys rights and place in the new France. After Pope Pius VI refused to
254 France
approve these changes, the Assembly demanded that the clergy take an oath of loy-
alty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Almost all bishops refused to take it, while
the parish clergy was evenly split among refractory priests, who refused, and juring
priests, who accepted, the oath. This produced a schism that had a profound ef-
fect on the subsequent course of events, since the refractory priests often provided
leadership to the counterrevolutionary movements of 17921793, especially in the
western and southwestern regions of France. After nationalizing church property,
the government issued assignats, a large denomination of paper bonds guaranteed
by the sale of conscated church property. While the assignats provided an impor-
tant economic respite in 17901791, the Assemblys subsequent actions led to rapid
ination of the assignats, which all but lost its face value over the next few years. The
failure to repay the state debt led to the loss of public credit and inadequate funds
for local administration, while high ination limited commercial activity.
In foreign policy, most European rulers initially were indifferent to the Revolu-
tion, considering it the internal affair of France. However, areas along the French
border faced the increasing problem of hosting numerous French migr commu-
nities who openly declared anti-revolutionary sentiments. The Assembly proclaimed
that all peoples had the right of self-determination and it was the Assemblys mission
to bring the Revolution to them. The king felt increasingly uncomfortable with his
status as a titular head and the general course of the Revolution. After publicly ex-
pressing his support for the Assembly throughout 1790, he secretly ed the capital
in June 1791. The kings ight to Varennes, where he was arrested, proved to be one
of the most important events of the Revolution. A manifesto that Louis left behind
explained his motives, denounced the revolutionary government, and suggested
that he was seeking foreign help against the Revolution. This exacerbated the split
between the moderate mass of citizens, who still believed in a constitutional mon-
archy, and the vociferous urban minority of radicals, who demanded the creation
of a republic.
The arrest of the French royal family persuaded Emperor Leopold II of the Holy
Roman Empire, and brother of the French queen, Marie Antoinette, to seek in-
ternational support to protect the Bourbons. In August 1791, Austria and Prussia
issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which threatened the revolutionary authorities
with intervention if the royal family were harmed. The declaration was intended as
a warning to the revolutionary government not to infringe on the rights of the king,
but instead it facilitated the start of the French Revolutionary Wars the following
spring. On April 20, 1792, France declared war against Austria, which was later sup-
ported by Prussia. The war initially proved unsuccessful for the French, whose inex-
perienced and weakened army following the ight abroad of many of its aristocratic
ofcers suffered defeats. The Austro-Prussian army crossed the French frontier and
advanced rapidly toward Paris. Foreign invasion exacerbated tensions in the capital,
where many believed that they had been betrayed by the king and the aristocracy.
On August 10, Parisian radicals led an attack on the Tuileries Palace, all but ending
the power of the Bourbon monarchy.
The Assembly decided to create a new legislature, the National Convention,
which would be elected by universal manhood suffrage and would write a more
democratic constitution. In September, Parisian crowds, still anxious about sus-
pected enemies within, broke into the prisons and murdered hundreds of prisoners
held there in what became known as the September Massacres. At the same time,
France 255
volunteers poured into the army, the Austro-Prussian invasion having awakened
French nationalism. On September 20, the French army defeated the Prussians at
the Battle of Valmy, and the following day the Convention ofcially proclaimed the
abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the republic.
The Convention was polarized by the struggle between the moderate Girondins,
who sought to establish a bourgeois republic, and the Montagnards, who advocated
a more radical program and wanted to give the lower classes a greater share in politi-
cal and economic power. The rst year of the Convention witnessed a power struggle
for predominance between these two factions, and the kings trial became the great-
est issue of the day. In the end, the Montagnards won the debates, and the king was
condemned to death for treason and beheaded on the guillotine in January 1793.
The period between September 1792 and April 1793 proved to be successful for
the revolutionary armies as they invaded Belgium, the Rhineland, and Savoy and
helped establish revolutionary governments in those regions. However, in the spring
of 1793, the tide of war shifted against France as Austria, Prussia, and Britain formed
a coalition (later called the First Coalition). The French were driven out of Belgium
and the Rhineland, and the Revolution was in peril once more. Such a threat only
strengthened the radicals, especially in Paris, where the Jacobins enjoyed the full
support of the Parisian sections and the sans-cullottes (the revolutionary element of
the lower class). Between May 31 and June 2, the Montagnards organized a coup,
which drove the moderate Girondins out of the Convention, and seized power.
Over the next 13 months, sometimes referred to as the Montagnard Dictator-
ship, the Montagnards dominated the Convention and controlled the government.
They drafted the 1793 constitution and implemented radical policies to stabilize
the country amid civil strife and foreign invasion. The Montagnards used terror to
pursue their radical economic and social policy and to ght political enemies. They
established strict state control of the economy, which beneted the poor. To ght
the threats of invasion, the government issued the leve en masse (August 1793) that
mobilized the resources of the entire nation and transformed the nature of military
conict forever. This period also saw the further secularization of French society as
churches and monasteries were closed and dechristianization began. A new calen-
dar advocated the ideals of the Revolution, while a civil religion dedicated to the
Supreme Being sought, unsuccessfully, to replace traditional beliefs.
The Montagnards policies, however, provoked violent reactions in various prov-
inces. The insurrection of the Chouans in Brittany and the war in the Vende con-
tinued without restraint, forcing the revolutionary government to divert substantial
forces there. The Girondins, who escaped persecution in Paris, incited the so-called
federalist risings in Normandy and in Provence. In August 1793, the federalists sur-
rendered the strategic port city of Toulon and the entire French Mediterranean
eet to the British. In a desperate ght to save the republic, the Montagnard gov-
ernment turned to increasingly more violent methods. In September, the Reign
of Terror became ofcial government policy. Special legislation was passed that
limited civil liberties and expanded the governments authority. The Committee of
Public Safety, a 12-member executive committee with vaguely dened powers and
led by Maximilien Robespierre, assumed executive power, while the revolutionary
tribunals rendered swift, often summary, justice. Representatives on mission, wield-
ing supreme political and military authority, were sent to the provinces and armies
to enforce the will of the government.
256 France
By early 1794, the harsh methods of the Montagnard government seemingly paid
off. The revolutionary armies halted the Austro-Prussian invasion and suppressed the
federalist uprisings. These successes led some to suggest that the Terror should be
brought to an end, which caused the Montagnards to split into factions, with Robes-
pierre and his allies advocating a radical program of continued Terror, while Georges
Danton and his supporters called for moderation. In April, Danton and his allies
were arrested and, after a farcical trial, executed. Robespierre himself became more
isolated and conspicuous, insisting on continuation of the Terror. Yet, in the coup of
the 9 Thermidor ( July 27, 1794), known as the Thermidorian Reaction, Robespierre
and his supporters were arrested and executed.
The 9 Thermidor signaled the end of the radical stage of the French Revolution.
The Convention promulgated a new constitution that created a bicameral legislative
branch (the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients) and delegated ex-
ecutive power to a ve-member Directory. Suffrage was curtailed from the universal
suffrage granted in 1793 to a limited one based on the amount of tax paid by the
prospective voter. Many of the Montagnard democratic reforms were reversed, and
efforts toward social and economic equality were abandoned. Under the Directory,
in fact, France became a bourgeois republic that struggled to nd stability amid
internal chaos and war. The government attempted to stand in the political center,
opposing both Jacobinism and royalism, which made it vulnerable to conspiracies.
The general discontent led to several abortive uprisings, rst by the radical sans-
culottes in the Prairial Rising (May 20, 1795) and then by the right-wing sections on
13 Vendmiaire, Year IV (October 5, 1795).
The Directory failed to solve the continuing nancial crisis in France. It elimi-
nated the (by then worthless) assignats and issued the territorial mandates, which
quickly shared the assignats fate. As hyperination began, the prices of goods rap-
idly increased and caused widespread hardship among the populace. In 1797, the
government returned to metal currency, but this did not alleviate the crisis. Civil
strife rendered the government unable to collect regular taxation, leaving the state
treasury empty. In 1796, the Conspiracy of Equals, led by Gracchus Babeuf, sought
a social model closely resembling communism, but this group was discovered and
its ringleaders executed.
The Directory was relatively more successful in its foreign policy. In 1795, peace
treaties were signed with Prussia and Spain, while French armies advanced into
the Rhineland and Holland. In 17961797, Napoleon Bonaparte led French troops
on a triumphant campaign in Italy, forcing Austria to sue for peace and cede the
Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium) and their northern Italian possessions
to France. In 1798 and 1799, the French occupied Switzerland, the Papal States,
and Naples, where they established the sister republics. In May 1798, in order to
threaten British commercial interests in India, the French government dispatched
an expeditionary corps under General Bonaparte to Egypt.
Frances aggressive foreign policy and expansionism, however, threatened other
European powers and encouraged the formation of the Second Coalition among
Austria, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Britain in 1799. This coalition achieved
great successes during the spring and summer of that year, when Russo-Austrian
forces defeated the French and reconquered all of Italy. At the same time, various
French provinces had fallen into a state of disorder. A peasant uprising had to be
suppressed in Toulouse, while the Chouans rose again in Brittany. The Directory
France 257
itself was in turmoil as its membership changed several times in the spring and
summer of 1799. Some members of the Directory actively conspired against their
colleagues and sought the support of the military to achieve their political goals.
At this crucial moment, Bonaparte returned to France in early October 1799 and
organized the coup dtat of 18 Brumaire (November 910), which overthrew the
Directory and established the Consulate.
The period of the Consulate (17991704) proved to be one of the most impor-
tant periods in the history of modern France. The Constitution of 1799, the fourth
constitution since the start of the Revolution, established an authoritarian regime
that retained some democratic elements. Executive power lay in the hands of three
consuls, but the First Consul (Napoleon) held more power than his two colleagues.
Legislative authority was divided between several bodies, the Legislative Corps,
the Tribunate, the Senate, and the State Council, all designed to draft bills, debate
them, vote on them, and rule on their constitutionality. Despite universal manhood
suffrage, elections were not democratic since the process was divided into three
stages: voters rst elected their representatives, who then chose electors, who chose
legislators from a list prepared by the First Consul. Napoleon resorted to plebiscites,
but the veracity of their results is still debated. In 1802, France received its fth
constitution, which reduced the legislative bodies to mere ornaments and made
Napoleon the First Consul for life. Two years later, the trappings of republicanism
were discarded and Napoleon was proclaimed the emperor of the French.
Throughout his rule, Napoleon sought to retain some elements of the revolu-
tionary era that his rule replaced while undoing other achievements of the past de-
cade. He legalized slavery again and dispatched an expeditionary corps to suppress
the slave rebellion on Saint-Domingue, a conict known as the Haitian Revolution.
In 1801, a Concordat was signed with the Vatican. The Catholic Church was allowed to
operate in France, and Roman Catholicism was recognized as the religion of the
majority of Frenchmen. However, the French government reserved the right to
nominate the clergy, while the pope would appoint them. The Concordat helped
Napoleon to pacify the royalist-clerical revolts in the Vende and Britanny, and the
French government granted freedom of worship to Protestant churches and the
Jews. In 1807, a Grand Sanhedrin of rabbis from all over Europe was summoned
in order to acquaint Napoleon with Jewish practices and advise his government
regarding its policy respecting them.
The Consulate introduced a series of economic reforms that helped stabilize
France. Direct taxes were kept at a steady level, while indirect taxes on beer, wine,
tobacco, liquor, and salt were increased. A system of hard money was developed,
and in 1802, Napoleon created the National Bank of France, which handled the
governments money and issued its securities and loans at controlled rates. The
consuls established protective tariffs for national industries and provided low inter-
est loans to promote industry. A livret or work card was introduced to keep track of
the workforce.
Napoleon retained the administrative division of the country into 83 departments
but ended the decentralization that began during the Revolution. Instead, he estab-
lished a highly centralized administration, where prefects of departments, subpre-
fects of districts, and mayors of cities were appointed by central authorities. A highly
effective secret police and gendarmerie were created to maintain tight control on the
population. Napoleon also expanded education, creating a national school system
258 France
(Imperial University), which consisted of lyces, special schools for women, and grand
coles. Most importantly, the Consulate developed a new legal system, starting with
the Civil Code in 1804 and followed by a Code of Civil Procedure in 1806, a Commer-
cial Code in 1807, a Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure in 1808, and
a Penal Code in 1810. The Code Napolon, as these codes were commonly known,
eliminated antiquated laws and codied the legislation of the revolutionary years.
It dened provisions regulating the rule of law and guaranteed individual liberty,
equality before the law and in taxation, freedom from arrest without due process,
religious freedom, and the right to choose ones work. However, the Code was also
paternalistic, treating women as subordinates of men and delaying their emancipa-
tion until well into the twentieth century.
Between 1804 and 1814, Napoleon devoted most of his time to war, as he faced
repeated attempts by European powers to defeat him. However, the French waged
successful campaigns (with the exception of the war in Spain) for the next 10 years,
occupying almost all the capitals of Europe. Vienna fell in 1805, followed by Berlin
in 1806 and Madrid in 1808. The French Empire gradually expanded into Italy and
the Netherlands while Napoleon used his victories to redraw the map of Europe.
The Confederation of the Rhine was formed from the Germanic states, and the
Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806. Prussia, following its crushing defeat in
1806, was forced to give up substantial territory, some of which Napoleon used to
create the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1808.
In 1806, to counter his arch nemesis, Britain, Napoleon launched the Continen-
tal System, which attempted to close the entire continent to British goods. This form
of economic warfare, however, proved ineffective, as the British took advantage of
their naval power to shift their markets to others regions, namely South America,
while Frances continental allies suffered economically and became increasingly dis-
content with the restrictions imposed on them. In 1812, following Russias refusal
to maintain the blockade, Napoleon led his Grande Arme toward Moscow, which
he occupied in the fall of that year. Disaster eventually befell him: the Russian army
and the winter soon combined to annihilate almost all his troops.
Napoleons defeat in Russia led directly to the collapse of the French Empire. In
18131814, a coalition of Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia defeated Napoleon
and occupied Paris in March 1814. Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, while
the Bourbon family was restored to the throne of France. The French Empire was
reduced in size and returned to its 1792 borders, bereft of all its Napoleonic con-
quests. The political fate of Europe was decided at the Congress of Vienna, where
the major European powers redrew the entire map of the Continent. Although a
defeated power, France did manage to reassert itself as one of the ve Great Powers,
largely owing to the skill of the French foreign minister, Prince Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand.
The new French king, Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, resisted pressure
from the more reactionary aristocratic groups and agreed to grant the Charter of
1814 (Charte Constitutionnelle), which, in effect, established a constitutional mon-
archy, in which the king enjoyed executive power, and legislative power was concen-
trated in a bicameral legislature known as the Chambers of Peers and of Deputies.
Still, the Bourbon monarchy proved unpopular with the French people, as it tried
to reverse some of the achievements of the Revolution and the Empire. Such poli-
cies even prompted the famous remark that the Bourbons had learned nothing and
Francis II, Emperor of Austria 259
remembered everything during their period in exile. Within a year of their restora-
tion, the Bourbons were forced to ee from Paris on news of Napoleons departure
from Elba in February 1815. During the Hundred Days, as Napoleons brief reign is
known, the European powers again joined forces against him. In a very brief mili-
tary campaign, Anglo-Allied and Prussian forces defeated the emperor at the Battle
of Waterloo on June 18, and by the following month the Bourbons were once more
ensconced in Paris. See also Calendar, French Revolutionary; Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Bergeron, Louis. France under Napoleon. Translated by R. R. Palmer.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990; Bouloiseau, Marc. The Jacobin Republic, 1792
1794. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the
French Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Furet, Franois, and Denis Richet. La
Rvolution franaise. Paris: Hachette-Pluriel, 1986; Herold, Christopher. The Age of Napoleon. New
York: Houghton Mifin, 2002; Jones, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon.
New York: Penguin, 2003; Kissinger, Henry. A World Restored; Metternich, Castlereagh and the
Problems of Peace, 181222. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000; Lefebvre, George. The
French Revolution. Trans. John Hall Stewart and James Friguglietti. 2 vols. New York: Columbia
University Press, 19621964; Lefebvre, George. Napoleon. Translated by Henry F. Stockhold.
2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 19691970; Sutherland, Donald. France 1789
1815: Revolution and Counter-Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Francis II, Emperor of Austria (17681835)
Francis II was the last Holy Roman emperor, the rst emperor of Austria, and
king of Hungary and Bohemia. Francis Joseph Charles was born on February 12,
1768, in Florence. The eldest son of Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany and future
Holy Roman emperor, and his wife, Archduchess Maria Louisa of Spain, Francis
would have 15 siblings. He was reared by a gentle governess in simple surroundings.
Through private tutors, Francis was taught religion, languages, translation, history,
writing, arithmetic, and sports in a strict daily educational regimen that began at
7 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. Exacting order combined with a methodical upbringing
were his educational mainstays. Francis enjoyed learning about the historical vaga-
ries of Europes royal houses. He concluded that the downfall of Athens was due
to its democratic form of government and distrusted the idea of letting the people
take part in government. Francis became a steadfast and absolute conservative, his
beliefs never wavering.
Francis grew up to be vain, arrogant, miserly, deceitful, suspicious, and critical.
He scarcely paid attention to his lessons, often misbehaved, and was apathetic to
matters not directly related to him. He moved to Vienna and joined his uncle Em-
peror Joseph II in 1784. Franciss work habits changed; he learned to work dili-
gently and attained an encyclopedic knowledge. In Vienna he began to assemble
what would become a 40,000-volume library and a magnicent portrait collection.
Francis disagreed with Emperor Josephs liberal innovations, and as a future mon-
arch he tried to learn what mistakes to avoid.
To complete his studies, Francis became involved in the Habsburg Empires mili-
tary affairs, which he enjoyed. This nal component of his education taught him an
immense capacity for work, a trait that never deserted him. He studied every aspect
260 Francis II, Emperor of Austria
of military affairs in excruciatingly close detail. Francis also fought in numerous
battles and learned to enjoy war. He also traveled extensively through his uncles
domains and took copious notes in his journals about the places he visited and the
characteristics of the people he met. Francis also demonstrated a strong interest in
the economies and societies of the lands through which he traveled.
Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph II arranged Franciss marriage to
Duchess Elizabeth Wilhelmina Louise of Wrttemberg. The ceremony was held
on January 6, 1788, but Elizabeth died on February 19, 1790, after a difcult birth.
The baby, Ludovica, herself died 16 months later. Further tragedy in Franciss life
ensued: Emperor Joseph died on March 1, and on May 15, Franciss mother died.
His second marriage to a cousin, Maria Theresa of the Kingdom of Naples, on
August 15, 1790, produced 12 children, of whom only 7 reached adulthood.
Upon Joseph IIs death, Francis became Holy Roman emperor on March 1, 1792,
at the age of 24. He inherited a troubling legacy: the Holy Roman Empire consisted
of far-ung domains, from the Austrian Netherlands in the Low Countries to the
middle of Europe, including most of Germany and parts of northern Italy, and of
eastern Europe, consisting of present-day Croatia, Hungary, and Bohemia. These
countries were populated by multiethnic groups who vied with one another for
primacy. Francis also faced territorial encroachment, not only from Russia, Prussia,
and the Ottoman Empire, but more ominously from France.
Francis strongly opposed the ideology behind the French Revolution, which
preached the spread of equality and liberty not only throughout France but beyond
her borders. Queen Marie Antoinette, Franciss aunt, and her husband, King Louis
XVI, had both been guillotined in 1793. His cousins, the couples children, were
kept in prison, where 10-year-old Louis XVII died.
Francis fought against the French in ve wars during his reign. His determina-
tion to maintain the status of his royal house led to several foreign policy disasters
during his period of rule. The Treaty of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797) not only
destroyed the First Coalition against France but also substantially redrew the map of
Europe. As a result of this settlement, Francis was forced to cede Belgium to France,
by which he lost 1.5 million subjects, in exchange for Venice, Istria, Friuli, and Dal-
matia, by which he gained a half-million subjects. He also ceded some islands in the
Mediterranean, including Corfu. The French were guaranteed free navigation of
the Rhine, Moselle, and Meuse rivers, and Austria was forced to recognize the Cisal-
pine and Ligurian republicssatellite states of revolutionary France.
As a result of French victories at the battles of Marengo and of Hohenlinden on
June 14 and December 3, 1800, respectively, on February 9, 1801, Francis was forced
to conclude the Treaty of Lunville, which conrmed and extended the terms of
Campo Formio. Austria was the principal member of the Second Coalition against
France but was defeated at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805, as a result
of which Francis had, by the Treaty of Pressburg on December 26, to cede Venice,
Tyrol, Swabia, and Dalmatia to France or her allies. On August 6, 1806, Napoleon
forced Francis to renounce his title as Holy Roman emperor and assume in its stead
the designation of Emperor Francis I of Austria.
In 1806 Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine, which initially
consisted of 16 German states that had been part of the Holy Roman Empire under
Francis. Napoleon used the territory, with a population of 15 million inhabitants,
as a counterbalance to Austria and Prussia. The Confederation would eventually
Franco-American Alliance 261
accept 23 more German states. Napoleon created the kingdoms of Wrttemberg
and Bavaria as well as grand duchies and principalities, all under his auspices. As
part of the Fifth Coalition, Austria was again defeated in 1809. The Treaty of Schn-
brunn, signed on October 14, 1809, cost the Habsburgs considerable territorial
losses, and nearly 2 million inhabitants found themselves under new rulers.
In 1810 Napoleon stood at the height of his power, but only after making many
enemies. Francis had little choice but to allow his daughter Archduchess Marie Lou-
ise to marry the French emperor on March 11, 1810, in Vienna, and on April 1 in
Paris. The marriage was politically arranged by Austrian foreign minister Clemens
von Metternich and produced a son, Napoleon II, known as the king of Rome.
Austria was nally victorious in the campaigns against Napoleon of 1813 and
1814 as a result of a grand alliance with Russia, Prussia, and Britain. The Congress
of Vienna, which convened in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, largely returned
Europe back to the conservative style of politics that had existed before the French
Revolution. Francis himself, who believed his authority was granted by God, vehe-
mently opposed the inuence of revolutionary thought in Austria, where he strictly
adhered to the repressive policies pursued by Metternich despite the criticism he re-
ceived from liberals throughout Europe who deemed him a tyrant. Francis opposed
reform and insisted on employing his own antiquated methods of governance, as a
result of which the Habsburg political system grew stagnant. Francis died in Vienna
on March 2, 1835, and was buried in the Imperial Crypt.
FURTHER READING: Bible, Viktor. Kaiser Franz. Vienna: Gunther, 1928; Herold, J. Christ-
opher. The Age of Napoleon. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1987; Langsam, Walter C. Francis
the Good: The Education of an Emperor, 17681792. New York: Macmillan, 1949; Markham,
Felix. Napoleon. New York: Mentor Books, 1966; Okey, Robin. The Habsburg Monarchy: From
Enlightenment to Eclipse. New York: St. Martins Press, 2001.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Concluded on February 6, 1778, by Benjamin Franklin and the French foreign
minister, the comte de Vergennes, the Treaty of Alliance with France, together with
the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, provided French aid to the American colonies at
a critical point during the American Revolutionary War. Although French liberal in-
tellectual circles supported the cause of American independence for ideological rea-
sons, the French crown was motivated by the geopolitical expedience of undermining
Britains position in the world after its conquest of Canada from France in 1763.
The treaty provided that if war should break out between France and Britain,
France and United States shall make it common cause and aid each other mutu-
ally and mutually engage not to lay down their arms until the independence of
the United States shall have been formally or tacitly assured. Vergennes was con-
cerned that the treaty not strengthen the United States in proportion to its effect in
weakening Britain, but it nonetheless had the immediate effect of broadening the
colonial conict to American advantage when in June 1778 British warships red on
French vessels, so precipitating war.
In 1779 Spain exploited the opportunity to recover colonies lost to Britain in
the Seven Years War (17561763) and entered the conict on the side of France,
though not in alliance with the United States. When in 1780 Britain declared war on
262 Franklin, Benjamin
the United Provinces of the Netherlands in response to continuing Dutch trade with
the Americans, it found itself at war with three European powers whose collective
challenge strained British resources to a much greater extent than the American
threat alone. The alliance was thus decisive to the cause of American independence,
above all at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, but yielded little long-term benet to
France. See also American Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Schroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics, 17631848.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Franklin, Benjamin (17061790)
Benjamin Franklin was a principal leader of the American Revolution. Before
the war for independence, Franklin earned fame as a Philadelphia publisher and
writer and world recognition as a scientist and inventor. As early as 1754, he pro-
posed the Albany Plan of Union as a design for the union of the American colonies
within the British Empire. Although rst reluctant to embrace the idea of revolu-
tion, Franklin swiftly became one of its greatest champions at home and abroad and
came to personify the American character in Europe as an agent for the colonies in
London and eventually for the United States as ambassador in Paris. At home, he
served as deputy postmaster-general for the colonies and on the committee in the
Second Continental Congress responsible for drafting the Declaration of Indepen-
dence in 1776. He also reorganized Pennsylvanias government to better prosecute
the Revolution. As ambassador in Paris, he achieved critical nancial and military
support for the American war effort and in 1783 returned to France to represent the
United States in the negotiations with Britain that resulted in the Treaty of Paris, an
accord formally ending hostilities and recognizing the United States. As a member
of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he helped draft the United States Con-
stitution and successfully urged compromise among the delegates. He promoted
civic improvements in Philadelphia; the abolition of slavery; and the establishment
of educational, medical, and charitable institutions. Unlike many American leaders
The French vessels Languedoc and Marseillais, outtted with new sails, rejoin the French eet under
Comte dEstaing, whom France sent to assist her American allies. Library of Congress.
Franklin, Benjamin 263
of his day, he was able to look beyond local interests and attachments to a broader
continental perspective and national unity.
Early Life
Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706,
the fteenth of 17 children of a candle maker, Josiah Franklin. His mother, Abiah
Folger, was Josiahs second wife. Although mainly self-taught, Franklin attended
Boston Grammar School, where he mastered Greek and Latin but demonstrated
poor skills in mathematics. After abandoning the hope that Franklin would become
a clergyman, his father removed him from school to learn a trade. This change of
plans may have been an effort to curb Franklins rebelliousness and desire to go to
sea. In 1718, Josiah made Benjamin become an apprentice to a half-brother, James,
to whom he was bound in service until the age of 21.
Franklin hated the apprenticeship and the beatings his jealous brother inicted,
but as expected, he learned the printing trade. He also became an excellent writer,
often having satirical articles published in his brothers newspaper, the New England
Courant, using the name Silence Dogood. His popular satires were entertaining
and sometimes controversial. For example, he poked fun at Puritanism and criti-
cized the Massachusetts government for its failure to deal effectively with pirates
stalking the colonys coastal waters. One such criticism of the government resulted
in the jailing of James, during which Franklin managed the newspaper.
Eventually breaking his apprenticeship contract, Franklin hid aboard a ship in
Boston Harbor. He made his way to New York and then to Philadelphia, where he
met Sir William Keith, Pennsylvanias governor. Impressed by the personable and
enthusiastic 18-year-old, Keith offered to appoint Franklin ofcial printer for the
colony. With promised letters of credit from the governor, Franklin sailed to Lon-
don to purchase a printing press, only to discover that Keiths commitments and
credit were worthless. Stranded in London, Franklin secured positions with promi-
nent printers before returning to Philadelphia, with the assistance of a Quaker mer-
chant, after two years. His experience with Sir William soured his view of the British
aristocracy, but he liked London and seriously considered remaining in Britain. His
early life inuenced his beliefs in individual freedom, equality, social mobility, and
freedom of the press.
Fame, Fortune, and Politics
Back in Philadelphia, Franklin co-founded a newspaper, the Philadelphia Gazette, in
1728 and in time became sole owner. During this period he took a common-law wife,
Deborah Read Rogers, a penniless widow, and started a family. Through his diligence
and business acumen, his newspaper and printing business prospered. He was named
ofcial printer for Pennsylvania and opened book and stationary shops. His most fa-
mous publication was Poor Richards Almanac, which was in great demand throughout
the colonies and in Europe. With homespun wisdom, both original and borrowed,
his annually published volume advised self-reliance, frugality, and hard work. He also
published the rst foreign-language newspaper in America, a German newspaper
entitled the Philadelphia Zeitung, and various pamphlets advocating his economic, so-
cial, and political views. His most notable pamphlet was entitled A Modest Inquiry into
the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency. The Pennsylvania assembly was persuaded by
his arguments and gave Franklin a contract to print currency. His printing enterprise
was so successful that he was able to retire at the age of 42 and devote himself to
scientic, civic, and political causes.
Scientist and Civic Leader with a Continental Perspective
Franklins greatest renown prior to the Revolution came from his ingenious in-
ventions and scientic experiments. Most notable were his studies of electricity com-
mencing in 1746. He proved that electricity and lightning are the same, discovered
positive and negative electricity, improved ways of storing electricity, and explored
means of protecting buildings from lightning with lightning rods. He applied him-
self to many elds of science and made signicant achievements in meteorology
due to his weather prediction research and studies of the Gulf Stream. He invented
bifocals, the smokeless Franklin stove, an odometer, a desk-chair combination used
in schools to this day, and a musical instrument called the armonica, for which Mo-
zart composed music. He established the forerunner of the American Philosophical
Society, which was Americas rst scientic organization, and was elected a fellow of
the Royal Society, receiving its Copley Medal in 1753. In 1757, due to his scientic
contributions, he was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Edinburgh
and Oxford and henceforth proudly went by the title Doctor Franklin.
Along with others, Franklin organized Philadelphias rst public library and rst
professional police force, and Americas rst free hospital, rst re department,
and rst re insurance company. He helped found the Academy of Philadelphia,
which later became the University of Pennsylvania. He served on Philadelphias city
council and the colonial assembly, and as Philadelphias postmaster, and was sub-
sequently named deputy postmaster for the colonies. In that capacity, he traveled
extensively, instituted reforms promoting efciency and regular mail deliveries,
and gained a unique continental perspective and desire for improved cooperation
among the colonies.
The Albany Plan and the Frontier
As early as 1751, Franklin proposed the rst plan of union of the American colo-
nies as a purely defensive measure against the Indians. Ironically, he compared his
plan to the Iroquois Indian federation known as the Six Nations. Realizing that such
a proposal would meet with little support from the colonial governors and therefore
would not be presented by the governors to their assemblies, he suggested to its
supporters that it be transmitted to the leading men of each colony, who would in
turn promote the idea within their respective colonies; yet little came of his early
proposal.
At the Albany Congress of 1755, a conference called by the British Board of Trade
to consider means of dealing with the French and Indian threat, and attended by
representatives of six colonies, Franklin served as a delegate from Pennsylvania. He
crafted and presented, along with Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts,
an unprecedented proposal for a union of the colonies within the British Empire.
Franklin explained his new plan in his essay Short Hints towards a Scheme for Uniting
the Northern Colonies.
The plan proved far broader than his 1751 concept. Under what became known
as the Albany Plan, a grand council would be chosen by the colonial assemblies
with apportionment of representation determined by the amount of taxes paid
by each colony. Taxation would be levied on liquor and the issuance of stamps
for legal documents. Executive power would be vested in a president general
appointed by the Crown. The president general would have the authority to deal
with the Indians, make war, defend coastal waters from pirates, and govern fron-
tier regions until they were organized into new colonies. Accordingly, Franklin
saw the Albany Plan not just as securing a united defense, but also as the key to
future colonial economic prosperity, with the united colonies jointly developing
the western frontier into new colonies freed from burdensome trade restrictions.
He also noted that new colonies would support an increasing population. Franklin
further contended that union must originate with the colonies, not the British gov-
ernment. The plan proved unacceptable to the colonial assemblies for being too
radical, but it did serve as a model for future efforts toward a unied governance
of America.
In later years, Franklin would look back on the Albany Plan as a lost opportunity
to prevent British abuse of colonists and the resulting American Revolution. His
concern for westerners and their equality would lead to his great popularity in the
trans-Appalachian west. In 1784, the aborted state of Franklin, located within the
current borders of Tennessee, would be named in his honor, as were many towns
and counties on the western frontier.
His knowledge of the frontier grew when he was sent by Pennsylvanias governor
to organize the defense of the colonys northwestern region. There he designed and
supervised the construction of three forts and commanded about 500 militiamen.
On his return to Philadelphia, he was elected colonel of Pennsylvanias militia.
Colonial Diplomat
Franklin was selected as Pennsylvanias agent to deal with the British propri-
etors of the colony in 1757. Although the Penn family, who inherited their pro-
prietary rights from William Penn, refused to deal with Franklin, he became the
unofcial representative for American interests in London and eventually the of-
cial agent for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts as well as Pennsylvania. In
1769, he asked the British government to make Pennsylvania a royal colony but
was ignored.
While Franklin opposed the enactment by Parliament of the Stamp Act as an
unconstitutional internal tax, as opposed to legal external taxes or custom duties
on the colonies, many in America felt he had not objected strongly enough. Yet the
Stamp Act was nally repealed due to the protests of British merchants harmed by
the American boycotts of British goods and the renewed forcefulness of Franklins
arguments to members of Parliament. Consequently, Franklins image in American
was rehabilitated, and for nine years he pressed for colonial rights in London while
urging moderation and compromise on both sides of the Atlantic. As the situation
deteriorated, Franklin counseled colonists to use boycotts instead of armed resis-
tance while at the same time urging pro-American members of Parliament to be
more vocal.
Franklin nally reached the conclusion that independence was the only option
for the colonies because of the so-called Hutchinson Affair, in which Franklin was
publicly insulted and berated before the Privy Council as he stood silently, on Janu-
ary 19, 1774, for leaking letters of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson that
called for the disregard of Americans rights. His treatment by the British govern-
ment greatly increased Franklins popularity at home.
Revolution and Independence
Franklin returned to America and threw all his energy into the movement for inde-
pendence despite the opposition of his illegitimate son, William, the royal governor
of New Jersey. He served in the Second Continental Congress and was appointed to
the committee responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence. Although
Thomas Jefferson was the author of the document signed on July 4, 1776, Franklin
and John Adams provided editorial assistance. Franklin next served as president of
Pennsylvanias constitutional convention and reorganized the states government
to more effectively wage war as a tight committee system fashioned after the Sons
of Liberty. This government structure served as a model to other states during the
Revolution and later to French revolutionaries.
In late 1776, Franklin returned to France to seek an alliance and needed nancial
and military assistance. In Paris, he became popular, partly due to his manipulation
of public opinion. He wore plain clothes and often a fur cap in order to cultivate
the impression that he was a simple, plainspoken American frontiersman. Because
of his democratic ideals and scientic credentials, he was viewed as the personica-
tion of the New World Enlightenment. The French aristocracy was enchanted, and
his picture appeared in homes across France and on all sorts of household items.
After convincing the French government that the United States would not resolve
their differences with Britain and abandon the goal of independence, a critical alli-
ance was forged with France on February 6, 1778. He subsequently won indispens-
able nancial and military assistance. Franklins home in Passy, just outside Paris,
became the hub of American diplomatic activities in Europe. In 1779, he presented
his credentials to the king of France, becoming the rst minister (now ambassador)
of the United States to be received by a foreign power.
After the American victory at Yorktown in 1781, achieved with the coordination
of the French navy, Franklin was sent to London to negotiate a peace treaty. Before
fellow commissioners John Adams and John Jay arrived, Franklin worked out much
of the accord. The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, formally ended the
war and recognized the independence of the United States. Furthermore, Britain
relinquished its claim to the territory from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from
the Atlantic to the Mississippi River, effectively granting the United States one-fth
of the continent. Franklin refused to guarantee repayment to Loyalists for prop-
erty losses but agreed to a recommendation that Congress provide compensation,
knowing well that Congress had already turned the issue of Loyalist compensation
over to the unsympathetic states. The British also pledged to remove their troops
still garrisoning forts in the Northwest. Many consider the treaty Franklins greatest
diplomatic achievement. Upon his triumphant return to Philadelphia in 1785, he
was elected president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania at the age
of 79, a position to which he was twice reelected and lled for three years.
The Constitutional Convention
With the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Franklin witnessed the achievement
of his long-held dream of a strong central government for America to replace the
arrangement of the Articles of Confederation, which he and most other delegates
viewed as weak and ineffectual. Despite his advanced age and declining health, he
was selected as a delegate representing Pennsylvania at the Convention to com-
mence in March 1787. He was the oldest of the participants and, due to his illnesses,
had to be carried to the meetings on a litter. Throughout the secret proceedings
during an unusually hot summer, he chiey advised the younger delegates and, like
George Washington, who presided over the meeting, lent the unprecedented gath-
ering an aura of trustworthiness and legitimacy.
Franklin favored a multiple executive or triumviratesimilar to that of the an-
cient Roman Republicwith three individuals holding power rather than a single
chief executive or president. He also preferred a unicameral (one-house) legislative
branch and opposed salaries for high government ofcers in order to ensure that
those truly desiring public service, not those simply seeking nancial reward, would
seek ofce. Although these ideas were not adopted, Franklin still made signicant
contributions to the nal draft of the United States Constitution.
Franklin played a key role in crafting and urging acceptance of the so-called
Great Compromise between the large and small states. The most populous states
wanted representation in the House of Representatives based on population, which
would thus give them the advantage. The smaller states wanted each state to have
equal representation, as under the Articles of Confederation. An agreement was
forged whereby representation in the House would be based on population, and
each state would have an equal vote in the upper house, or Senate. He also sup-
ported a provision requiring that money bills originate in the House. Even with this
compromise and others, many delegates were dissatised with the nal draft. At a
critical moment during the last day of the meeting, September 17, 1787, Franklin,
who was in pain and unable to give a speech, had another delegate read a message
to the Convention for him. In it he stated that there were parts of the Constitu-
tion he did not agree with, but that the delegates should doubt their fallibility and
approve the nal draft. When the Convention approved the document, Franklin
joyfully observed that during the proceedings he had often wondered whether a
carving of the sun on George Washingtons chair was a rising or setting sun. He had
now determined that it was rising.
Last Years, Ideology, and Slavery
Retiring from public life in 1788, Franklins last years were encumbered by ill
health. Nevertheless, he continued to write letters for publication from the connes
of his bedroom. To the end, his faith in the common man never wavered, and he
continually expressed belief in social mobility over class barriers, pragmatism over
ideology, and nationalism over provincialism. He also recognized the benets to
society of middle-class values and religious tolerance and teachings. An issue draw-
ing much of his attention was slavery and its conict with the ideals represented by
the Revolution. As early as the 1730s, he advocated against the slave trade and in
the 1780s had communicated with antislavery reformers in Britain and America. He
also served as president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. His
last public act was his signing of the societys petition to Congress calling for eman-
cipation on February 12, 1790. He failed to nish his autobiography and died in his
sleep at the age of 84 on April 17, 1790. He was interred at Christ Church Burial
Ground in Philadelphia. In his will, Franklin left large sums to the cities of Boston
and Philadelphia. See also Abolitionists; American Revolutionary War; Constitutions,
American State; Equality; France; Franco-American Alliance; Franklin, William;
Loyalists; Newspapers (American); Revolutionary Committees of the French Revo-
lution; Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
268 Franklin, William
FURTHER READING: Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin.
Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 2002; Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin: Writings. New
York: Library of America, 1987; Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 2003; Isaacson, Walter. A Benjamin Franklin Reader. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 2003; Morgan, Edmund S. Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2002; Srodes, James. Franklin: The Essential Founding Father. Washington, DC: Regnery,
2002; Van Doren, Carl C. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Viking, 1938; Wood, Gordon S. The
Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Penguin, 2004.
RUSSELL FOWLER
William Franklins life and career show that the American Revolution was really a
civil war with divisions not only between parties but also within families. He was born
in 1731, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. Growing up at his fathers house,
he was well educated and given several opportunities to serve with the militia; the
postal service, which his father had organized and managed; and the Pennsylvania
Assembly.
In 1756, Benjamin was sent to Britain to act as Pennsylvanias agent. William ac-
companied him to London, where he then studied law. In 1763, he was named, in
large part through his fathers efforts, governor of New Jersey. The beginning of
Franklins tenure was promising. The colony faced several problemssome nan-
cial, some revolving around land grants in disputebut he was popular and was a
good administrator. The Stamp Act began to change that, however, and despite the
fact that New Jersey was not as actively or stridently opposed to royal policy as other
colonies, Franklins task of governing an increasingly alienated population became
more difcult. He attempted, but eventually failed, to convince the New Jersey As-
sembly to reject the First Continental Congresss resolutions to include the forma-
tion of the Continental Association. As the political situation hardened, so did the
disagreement between William and his father. The break came in 1774, and they
never fully reconciled after that.
Despite Franklins partial successes, he lost control of the New Jersey govern-
ment. The rst Provincial Congress assembled in 1775 and began to effectively gov-
ern. The second Provincial Congress met in January 1776; in that same month,
Franklin was arrested and held until the middle of the year, when he was sent to
Connecticut as a prisoner. After two years, Franklin was released and went to British-
occupied New York. He left for Britain in 1782 and never returned to America. See
also American Revolution; American Revolutionary War; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Randall, Willard Sterne. A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin and His Son.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1984; Skemp, Sheila L. Benjamin and William Franklin: Father and Son,
Patriot and Loyalist. Boston: St. Martins Press, 1994.
ROBERT N. STACY
Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia (17121786)
Frederick the Great was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 and was known as an
enlightened despot. Born on January 24, 1712, in Berlin, he was the son of Frederick
William I (16881740) and Sophia Dorothea (16871757), daughter of the future
King George I of Hanover and Britain. Frederick William treated his artistically and
linguistically gifted son abominably and quashed his emerging liberal tendencies;
he had the boy trained in military matters from the age of six.
While attempting a ight to his mothers family in England to escape his fathers
omnipresent control, Frederick was caught, arrested, and forced to watch the ex-
ecution of his friend and accomplice Hans Hermann von Katte on November 6,
1730. Frederick was court-martialed, temporarily imprisoned, and banned from
court. As a result, Frederick suffered a nervous breakdown but thereafter obeyed
all his fathers commands. By this time the focus on military affairs had become an
overpowering obsession that would eventually stand him in good stead.
Fredericks politically arranged marriage to Elizabeth of Brunswick-Bevern in 1733
failed. Although the couple remained married, they did not have a conventional
marriage. Frederick refrained from having any other relationships with women. His
father gave him Chteau Rheinsberg, near Berlin. There, Frederick was happy for
the rst time in his life and pursued the study of the arts and became enthralled
with Enlightenment ideals. He wrote Anti-Machiave in 1739 and began correspond-
ing with Voltaire, whom he greatly admired. He also studied the biographies and
strategies of military leaders.
Frederick succeeded to the throne upon Frederick Williams death on May 31,
1740. Prussia only had a population of about two million people, but the abun-
dant treasury allowed Frederick the luxury to make signicant changes. He never
believed in the divine right of kings, but he could be a despot at times. He quickly
realized that his far-ung territoriesscattered across northern Germany, and often
not contiguousrequired modernization, and he implemented major reforms to
benet his people. Frederick made major improvements in the army, the infrastruc-
ture, the judicial system, nance, and the education system. He abolished torture
and tolerated religious differences, which earned him the gratitude of his people.
He had Sans-Souci palace built in the rococo style and lived there for six months
every year. Under Fredericks enlightened guidance, Berlin became the leading cen-
ter for art, culture, and research. He wrote poetry and over 30 books and became
the symbol of Prussian patriotism.
Fredericks outstanding military training provided him with excellent leadership
skills that would be respected by friend and foe alike, though many reigning houses
initially considered him insignicant. This assumption was to be permanently shat-
tered by the beginning of the Seven Years War (17561763). Fredericks primary
goals were to expand Prussian inuence through territorial expansion; his brilliant
campaign strategies in various battles achieved this goal. During the War of the Aus-
trian Succession (17401748), he annexed parts of Austrian Upper and Lower Sile-
sia. At the same time he instituted more reforms at home: land was reclaimed from
swamps for agricultural purposes, and he introduced the turnip and the potato into
Prussian agriculture and encouraged German immigration. He placed only minor
restrictions on domestic trade and used high protective tariffs to protect Prussias
nascent industry. Canals were built, and the existing system of indirect taxation was
reorganized.
On the diplomatic front, Frederick made peace with Tsar Peter III of Russia in an
alliance that made possible the three eventual partitions of Poland. The end result
of his maneuverings was that by the conclusion of the Seven Years War, Prussia had
become Europes leading power and retained all its conquests. As a result of his
Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia 269
270 French Revolution
impressive battleeld record, Frederick was by this time recognized across Europe
as a military genius. Astute diplomacy followed this period of ghting; Frederick
instigated the Peace of Hubertusburg on February 15, 1763, and the War of the
Bavarian Succession from 1778 to 1779, primarily to prevent Austria from annexing
Bavaria. On June 23, 1785, he established the Frstenbund, a league of rulers, to
restrain the designs of Austrian emperor Joseph II. Frederick nancially supported
Russia in the Russo-Turkish War of 17681767.
Frederick died on August 17, 1786, at Sans-Souci in Potsdam. Remembered as
Frederick the Great, this imposing ruler genuinely cared for his subjects, who were
themselves devoted to their country. He succeeded in making Prussia the most pow-
erful country in Europe: by the time he died, Frederick had six million subjects and
Prussias size had increased by 75,000 square kilometers.
FURTHER READING: Asprey, Robert B. Frederick the Great. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1986;
Duffy, Christopher. Frederick the Great: A Military Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985;
Gaxotte, Pierre. Frederick II the Great. Translated by R. A. Bell. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1975; Gooch, George P. Frederick II: King of Prussia, 17121786. Hamden, CT: Archon Books,
1962; Mitford, Nancy. Frederick the Great. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970; Palmer, Alan W.
Frederick the Great. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974; Ritter, G. Frederick the Great: A
Historical Prole. Translated by Peter Paret. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1968.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
The importance of the French Revolution, the period of profound political, so-
cial, and cultural change that transformed France and Europe between 1787 and
1799, can hardly be overestimated, and its origins and tumultuous course of events
are still debated.
Origins
The French Revolution was precipitated by a host of complex problems, but -
nancial difculties contributed most in bringing it about. Throughout the eigh-
teenth century, France was troubled by the governments inability to balance its
income and expenses. By this period, France had emerged from a medieval princi-
pality into the largest and most populous kingdom in Europe and seemed poised to
dominate the entire continent. However, such a task also carried immense liabilities.
To maintain their position relative to other states, especially in an age-long rivalry
against Britain, the Bourbon kings of France incurred increasingly high expenses
that lay a heavy burden on the kingdoms economy. King Louis XIVs wars, notably
his last, the War of the Spanish Succession (17011714), signicantly weakened the
French economy, which was further undermined by Louis XVs involvement in the
Seven Years War (17561763), when France lost many of her colonial possessions
in Canada, India, and the Caribbean to the British. After inheriting a nancially
and militarily weakened realm, Louis XVI stood by helplessly as Frances traditional
ally, the Kingdom of Poland, was partitioned by Austria, Russia, and Prussia in 1772.
He was able to intervene in the rebellion of the British colonies in North America,
where French expeditionary forces played an important role in securing their inde-
pendence from Britain. However, this success cost France a great deal of investment
French Revolution 271
and delivered no tangible rewards that could have rectied dire nancial conditions.
Furthermore, French participation in the American Revolutionary War had driven
the government to the brink of bankruptcy. This proved to be a major impediment
to the pursuit of objectives abroad, since the fear of increasing state debt prevented
Louis XVI from opposing Prussias intervention in the Netherlands in 1787.
Financial difculties were not linked to foreign policy and wars alone. French
monarchs presided over an elaborate welfare system that maintained roads, un-
dertook public works, and provided justice, education, and medical services, all of
which required substantial investments. The royal court also drained huge sums of
money as the king underwrote the expenses of courtiers and granted lavish awards
and pensions. To make up for its inadequate sources of revenue, the French mon-
archy began to sell government posts, which reduced their efciency, and created
independent venal ofce-holders who could not be removed unless the govern-
ment purchased back the seat. This policy consequently produced an independent-
minded and cumbersome bureaucracy. The collection of taxes was leased out to
individuals who paid the treasury a fee in exchange for the right to collect taxes in
a specic region. While this system provided the monarchy with a steady ow of
income, it also allowed ofcials in charge to squeeze as much as they could from an
embittered population.
France could have easily managed these nancial strains if not for the gov-
ernments inability to implement the much-needed reforms. Although popularly
described as an absolutist monarchy, the French kings, in reality, were far from
exercising unlimited authority and were obligated to rule according to laws and
customs developed over the ages. In this respect, the royal appeal courtsthe 13
parlementsrepresented an important check on royal authority. Although nomi-
nally royal courts, the parlements were, in essence, independent bodies after their
members purchased their seats from the monarchy. The parlements, especially the
Parlement of Paris, emerged as a potent opposition to the crown, claiming the right
to review and approve all royal laws to ensure that they conformed to the traditional
laws of the kingdom. In the absence of representative institutions, the parlements
(although representing the nobility) claimed to defend the interests of the entire
nation against arbitrary royal authority.
The late eighteenth century was a healthy period of French trade and created
a prosperous elite of wealthy commoners (merchants, manufacturers, and profes-
sionals), often called the bourgeoisie, who resented their exclusion from political
power and positions of privilege. In social terms, France was divided into three es-
tates that corresponded to the medieval notion that some prayed, some fought,
and the rest farmed or worked in some other capacity. The First Estate consisted of
the clergy, who were subject to their own church court system and were entitled to
collect tithes. Over the course of hundreds of years, the Catholic Church had be-
come a wealthy institution, owing large tracts of land and real estate. While bishops
and abbots led a lavish lifestyle, the parish clergy maintained a much more modest
lifestyle, often in poverty. The Second Estate consisted of the nobility, who accrued
numerous privileges over the centuries. Its status granted the nobility the right to
collect taxes from the peasantry and to enjoy many privileges. Thus, top positions
in the church, army, and royal administration were limited to nobles. The nobil-
ity, however, was not a monolithic block. It was divided into the noblesse dpe and
the noblesse ancienne, the traditional nobility that monopolized court positions and
enjoyed enormous wealth, and the lesser nobility, such as the noblesse de robe and the
noblesse de cloche, who held certain government or municipal positions. Finally, there
was the noblesse militaire, who earned their title by holding military ofces. The First
and Second Estates were both privileged in that both had a privileged status with
respect to taxes and opposed the governments reforms as a threat to their respec-
tive positions.
The Third Estate consisted of unprivileged commoners, that is, the remaining
95 percent of the French population. As such, it was a loose group, lacking com-
mon interests, since it included the wealthiest bourgeoisie, who mixed easily with
the nobility, and the poorest peasants and townsfolk. The bourgeoisie saw a sig-
nicant growth in the eighteenth century, and merchants in Bordeaux, Marseille,
and Nantes exploited overseas trade with colonies in the Caribbean and the Indian
Ocean to reap tremendous prots. These wealthy commoners were, naturally, dis-
satised with the social and political system in France, which placed a heavy tax
burden on their shoulders yet failed to provide them with proper representation in
government. The role of the bourgeoisie at the start of the French Revolution had
been hotly debated and laid the basis for the so called bourgeois revolution thesis,
which argues that revolutionary upheaval was the inevitable result of the common-
ers struggle for class equality. Recent historical research has downplayed such an
explanation of the Revolution since the boundary between the nobility and bour-
geoisie was very uid and both classes often shared common interests.
Of the groups comprising the Third Estate, the peasantry was the largest. Un-
like their brethren in eastern or central Europe, the majority of French peasants
enjoyed legal freedoms, and some owned land, but most rented land from local
seigneurs or bourgeois landowners. Rural conditions differed depending on the
region, and such differences later inuenced peasants reactions to revolutionary
events. By the late eighteenth century, the heavily taxed peasants were acutely aware
of their situation and were less willing to support the antiquated and inefcient feu-
dal system. The peasantry enjoyed prosperous years between the 1720s and the late
1760s, which produced a growth in the population. However, climatic conditions
changed in the 1770s, bringing repeated crop failures and economic hardships that
were exacerbated by the increased population. Secular attitudes become prominent
in the countryside, and tolerance for the existing social order began to wear thin.
The ideological origins of the French Revolution are directly linked to the activi-
ties of the philosophes, who championed radical ideas and called for social and po-
litical reform. The intellectual arguments of the Enlightenment had been read and
discussed more widely in France than anywhere else. Applying a rational approach,
the philosophes criticized the existing political and social system. In his Spirit of the
Laws (1748), Montesquieu, a prominent political thinker, provided a detailed study
of politics and called for a constitutional monarchy that would operate with a sys-
tem of checks and balances between its branches. Franois Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
directed his sharp wit and tongue at the social and religious ills aficting French so-
ciety, denouncing religious intolerance, fanaticism, and superstition and advocating
the British system of constitutional government. Starting in 1751, many philosophes
participated in a monumental undertaking to produce the Encyclopdie, edited by
Jean dAlembert and Denis Diderot. Completed in 1765, the Encyclopdie applied a
rational and critical approach to a wide range of subjects and became a best seller
that, in part, shaped the newly emerging public opinion. The works of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau proved to be especially important for the inuence they exerted. In his
famous The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau explained the rise of modern societies
as a result of complex social contracts between individuals, who were equal and
possessed a common interestwhat he called the general will. If the government
failed to live up to its contractual obligations, Rousseau maintained, citizens had
the right to rebel and replace it. Rousseaus ideas would eventually nourish the radi-
cal democratic section of the revolutionary movement.
One of the major outcomes of the Enlightenment was the growth of public opin-
ion, which was formulated in an informal network of groups. In Paris, this network
manifested itself in salons, informal regular meetings of artists, writers, nobles, and
cultured individuals that became the discussion forum for a variety of ideas. Es-
says and various literary works presented here eventually appeared in the growing
number of newspapers and journals that further disseminated information. The
spread of the Masonic movement, which was introduced from Britain in the early
eighteenth century, further stimulated discussion, since it advocated an ideology of
equality and moral improvement, irrespective of social rank. The process of secu-
larization accelerated after 1750 and affected both the elites and the lower classes.
Cafs in Paris and other cities established reading rooms where patrons could peruse
and discuss a wide range of literature, notably the works of the philosophes. The
late eighteenth century also saw the rapid growth of pamphleteering, which was
largely directed against the government and provided ample criticism of the royal
family, particularly the widely unpopular queen, Marie Antoinette. Some pamphle-
teers eventually emerged as leading revolutionary orators and journalists.
Finally, a brief note should be made of the royal family itself. King Louis XVI, who
ascended the throne in 1774, was an intelligent, kind-hearted, and generous man
who was more interested in his favorite pastime of hunting and making mechanical
gadgets than governing the country. He was hardly t for the position he inher-
ited, which demanded a man of rm will, energy, and interest in a variety of affairs.
He would have made an exemplary small-town burgher, but not the king of France.
His wife, Marie Antoinette, who exerted a strong inuence over the king, was a beau-
tiful and vivacious woman whose Austrian origin proved to be an important factor
in shaping contemporary attitudes toward her. Although allied since 1756, France
and Austria were historical enemies and the French public was unsympathetic to the
young Austrian archduchess when she wed the heir to the French throne. Her lavish
lifestyle, often exaggerated by pamphleteers, created a deeply negative impression
of the queen, whose reputation was further damaged by the infamous Diamond
Necklace Affair in 1785.
The Revolt from Above (Aristocratic Opposition), 17871789
The French government was well aware of the problems it faced, and throughout
the eighteenth century, it attempted to introduce a series of reforms, some of which
faced staunch opposition. As early as 1749, Machault dArnouville, the controller
general of France, had tried to establish a uniform tax on all landed property but
was foiled by the resistance of the nobility and clergy. In the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury, the Physiocrats, a group of economic reformers, advocated free trade by seek-
ing to eliminate commercial restrictions, especially on the grain trade, in order to
facilitate commerce and production. However, a series of bad harvest years, which
produced shortages, social unrest, and opposition from various groups, thwarted
this program. In the last years of Louis XVs reign, the ministers Maupeau and Terray
successfully campaigned against the parlements, which served as bulwarks for the
reform opposition, and had them abolished. However, the death of Louis XV in
1774 led to the dismissal of these ministers and an end to their reforms.
Two years later, Jacques Turgot, a Physiocrat, launched an ambitious program
to transform the French economy into a free market, abolishing trade restrictions
and guilds that held monopolies over specic forms of production. This produced
a backlash from the interested parties, who succeeded in having the minister re-
moved. Yet Turgots successor, Jacques Necker, continued most of these reforms
and even introduced representative assemblies in several provinces in order to give
public opinion some role in lawmaking. To justify these reforms, Necker, and his
predecessors, had to criticize the existing institutions and practices, which under-
mined their legitimacy and opened the way for further criticism. Thus, Neckers
publication of the rst public accounting of the state nances, the Compte rendu au
roi, in 1781 led to a public discussion of royal expenditure, not least the familys lav-
ish lifestyle. As before, Neckers reforms resulted in growing opposition and, facing
a vehement pamphlet campaign, Necker unsuccessfully sought royal support before
resigning in May 1781.
Several events in 17871789 proved to be catalysts for the Revolution. In January
1787, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, Neckers successor as controller general of
nances, summoned the Assembly of Notables (prelates, great noblemen, and a
few representatives of the bourgeoisie) to propose reforms designed to eliminate
the budget decit, chiey by taxing the privileged classes. The Assembly refused
to agree to such reforms and instead suggested the calling of the Estates-General,
a joint assembly of the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the
Third Estate. The Estates-General had not been summoned since 1614. Further ef-
forts to enforce drastic scal reforms by Calonne and his successor, the archbishop
of Brienne, led to what the great French scholar Georges Lefebvre labeled an
aristocratic revolution when the landed aristocracy fought against its weakening
position and the parlements refused to approve royal edicts sanctioning reforms.
Although the parlements were suppressed in May 1788, the populace, believing
that the parlements spoke for the entire nation, supported them, causing popular
unrest in Paris, Grenoble, Dijon, Toulouse, and other cities in the summer of 1788.
Louis XVI yielded to public pressure and reappointed the reform-minded Jacques
Necker as the nance minister. Necker promised to convene the Estates-General
on May 5, 1789, and granted freedom of the press, which resulted in a ood of
pamphlets across the country. The newly restored Parlement of Paris entered the
fray as it ordered that the Estates-General should be organized according to the
procedures of 1614, which meant that three estates would meet and vote separately,
giving an edge to the rst two estates. This decision naturally alienated the Third
Estate, which had previously supported the parlements but now realized that they
were bent on ignoring its interests in favor of the privileged estates. The Committee
of Thirty, consisting of liberal nobles and bourgeoisie, was established to argue in
favor of doubling the Third Estates representation to match that of the two other
estates and of voting by head, as had been done in some provincial assemblies. The
example of the provincial assembly of Dauphin province was particularly impor-
tant in this respect, since the local Third Estate managed to secure double repre-
sentation there. In the fall of 1788, the abb Sieys produced his famous pamphlet
What Is the Third Estate? in which he asked, What is the Third Estate? Everything.
What has it been in the political order up to now? Nothing. What does it demand?
To become something. In December 1788, Necker managed to secure royal ap-
proval for double representation, but not for the method of voting, which had to be
decided after the Estates-General convened.
The elections to the Estates-General, held between January and April 1789,
coincided with further disturbances, as the harvests of 1788 and 1789 had been
extremely bad. Nevertheless, the elections produced 648 deputies for the Third Es-
tate, while the First and Second Estates each chose about 300 deputies. The electors
drew up cahiers de dolances, which listed their grievances and hopes. The cahiers
differed greatly depending on region, but they tended to represent the thinking
of the literate and politically astute men in their respective constituencies. The ca-
hiers from urban centers emphasized the need for a constitution that would secure
individual rights, regular meetings of the Estates-General, and no taxation without
consent. The cahiers drawn up in rural parishes, however, hardly mentioned indi-
vidual rights but rather called for equality of taxation and pointed out abuses in the
existing feudal system. None of the cahiers suggested the abolition of the monarchy
or any major governmental change. Only the cahiers prepared in the Parisian sec-
tions contained calls for fundamental social and economic change.
Revolt from Below (Popular Revolution), 1789
The Estates-General held its rst session in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs at Ver-
sailles on May 5, 1789. In their opening speeches, both Louis XVI and his minis-
ter Necker failed to provide the much-needed leadership or offer a program upon
which the deputies could act. Many deputies of the Third Estate were disappointed
by such a start and began to look for leadership within their own ranks. From the
very beginning, the Estates-General faced a fundamental issue: should the depu-
ties follow the tradition and vote by estatein which case the two privileged orders
would always outvote the Third Estateor vote by head, giving the advantage to the
Third Estate? Naturally, the First and Second Estates upheld tradition and refused
to compromise out of fear of losing their privileges. On June 17, after over a month
of bitter struggle over this legal issue, the deputies of the Third Estate declared
themselves the National Assembly and invited the other estates to join it. Two days
later, they were supported by the parish priests of the First Estate, who outnumbered
the aristocratic upper clergy and voted in favor of joining the National Assembly.
The king could have interfered at this moment, but on June 4, he lost his son and
heir to the throne and was in mourning.
On June 20, royal ofcials nally reacted and locked the deputies of the Third
Estate out of their regular meeting hall. In response, the deputies occupied the
kings indoor tennis court ( jeu de paume) and pledged an oath, known as the Ten-
nis Court Oath, not to disperse until they had produced a new constitution. The
oath did not call for the abolition of the monarchy but rather sought to establish a
limited (constitutional) monarchy. Yet, the Tennis Court Oath also represented a step
toward revolution since the deputies had come to Versailles with cahiers that said
nothing about a constitution or any limits on the monarchy. By declaring them-
selves a National Assembly, the deputies also claimed sovereignty as a principle
deriving from the people, not from the king. The king grudgingly consented to the
Third Estates actions and instructed the nobles and the remaining clergy to join
the assembly, which now assumed the title of the National Constituent Assembly.
The royal court, however, began gathering troops in the capital to dissolve the de-
ant estate.
Political vacillation at Versailles coincided with the ongoing crisis of food sup-
plies and anxiety among the rural population. The gathering of troops around Paris
and the dismissal of the popular minister Necker on July 11 provoked insurrection
in Paris. On July 14, 1789, the Parisian crowd seized the Bastille, a symbol of royal
tyranny. Again the king had to yield. He restored Necker to ofce and personally
visited Paris, wearing the tricolor cockade of the Parisian militia. Rumors of an aris-
tocratic conspiracy to overthrow the Third Estate, meanwhile, spread throughout
France and led to a series of rural disturbances, known as the Great Fear, in July.
This turmoil was largely sustained by various rumors that, for example, held that
aristocrats, concerned by events in Versailles, were preparing some terrible revenge
and that troops were to be set loose on the peasantry. Peasants armed themselves in
self-defense and turned their anxiety on the estates of their seigneurs. Peasants also
sought to destroy the records of the feudal dues that they owed.
To calm the provinces, the Constituent Assembly quickly moved forward with
its reforms, and on August 4, it decreed the abolition of the feudal regime and
of the tithe gathered by the Catholic Church. On August 26, it introduced the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming liberty, equality,
the inviolability of property, and the right to resist oppression. The Assembly then
continued working on the rst constitution of the French kingdom. However, the
fast pace of changes and the nature of political reforms that served to limit royal
power caused the king to withhold his acceptance of these reforms. The Assembly
was also divided into various feuding factions, some of which sought support from
political groups in Paris, where an ongoing scarcity of food agitated the masses. On
October 56, thousands of Parisian women marched on Versailles to express their
grievances to the Assembly and the king. These so-called October Days had a dra-
matic inuence on the subsequent course of the Revolution. The mob stormed the
palace and forced the king to move to Paris. The Constituent Assembly followed
the king to the capital on October 19, and thereafter, the king, his advisers, and
the entire Assembly effectively became the hostages of radical Parisian crowds, who
began to play an important role in the political events of the Revolution. Royalist
factions lost their power as they became overwhelmed by a radical, oftentimes hos-
tile, populace, while radical left-wing factions beneted as they gained the kings
acceptance of their reforms. The governments move to Paris also stimulated the
growth of political clubs, the most inuential of them being the Cordeliers Club
and the Jacobins.
The rural provinces reacted differently to the events of the summer of 1789. Most
peasant cahiers called for the abolition of various seigniorial obligations and taxes,
mainly the widely hated salt tax (gabelle) and the head tax (taille). While the As-
sembly did abolish feudal dues, tithes, and other taxes, it still relied on the old tax
registers to determine local tax assessments, which, to most peasants, represented
the same old tax under a new name. The urban leadership of the Revolution also
ignored some grievances that seemed insignicant to them but were urgent to the
peasant population. While the Revolution offered many benets to peasants, the peas-
ants in some regions felt that they were robbed of the full benets. The conscation
and sale of church property allowed some peasants to increase their landholdings,
but rural property most often ended up in the hands of the urban middle classes,
who possessed the resources to buy land in large amounts.
The New Regime Takes Shape, 1790 1792
In the rst year of its existence, the Assembly implemented a variety of reforms
that began to transform France. The Constitution of 1791, drafted between July
1789 and September 1791, established a constitutional monarchy in France. Legis-
lative power was delegated to the Legislative Assembly, a body in constant session
that the monarch had the power to dissolve. A unicameral legislature of 745 rep-
resentatives, the Legislative Assembly was elected by active citizens whose power to
vote was based on how much tax they paid, and who met in local primary assemblies
and elected 1 percent of their number as electors, who then elected representatives.
Although the new suffrage excluded women from voting, it was still far broader
that the existing systems in Britain or even the United States. Executive power was
delegated to the king, but his authority was curtailed. The ancient administrative
division of France into provinces was replaced by a system of 83 smaller jurisdictions
called departments. Within the departments, the Assembly established districts that
were further divided into cantons. In February and March 1790, provincial and
municipal councils were elected at each of these levels, signaling a decentralization
of the French government. The Assembly created a new judiciary that answered to
the people and the Assembly, not the king. It eliminated monasteries and religious
orders, abolished the parlements, nationalized royal land, created a land tax, abol-
ished internal tariffs, established civil rights for Protestants, and introduced uni-
form weights and measures and other reforms. One of its most important reforms
restricted the rights of workers in the form of Chapeliers Law ( June 1791), which
outlawed trade unions and abolished the guilds.
Despite its many successes, the Assembly also failed to address many crucial mat-
ters. The most important of them was that of the place of the Catholic Church in
the new France. The decision (in November 1789) to nationalize the lands of the
Roman Catholic Church in France to pay off the public debt led to a widespread
redistribution of property but naturally upset the clergy, who still wielded enormous
inuence in rural regions. To ensure the clergys loyalty, the Assembly drafted the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which dened the clergys rights and position in
the new France. Priests and bishops became servants of the state, elected by depart-
mental or district electors, and received a state salary. However, the old bishoprics
were abolished and bishops instead ruled over departments. After Pope Pius VI
refused to approve these changes, the Assembly demanded that the clergy take an
oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Almost all bishops refused to
take it, while the parish clergy was evenly split between the refractory priests, who
refused, and juring priests, who accepted the oath. This produced a schism that had
a profound effect on the subsequent course of events since the refractory priests
often provided leadership to the counterrevolutionary movements in 17921793,
especially in the western and southwestern regions of France.
The Assembly also failed to solve the interrelated issues of state debt and taxa-
tion. After nationalizing church property, the government issued assignats, large-
denomination paper bonds guaranteed by the sale of conscated church property.
While assignats provided an important economic respite in 17901791, the Assemblys
subsequent actions led to rapid ination of the assignats, which all but lost their face
value over the next few years. The failure to repay the state debt led to the loss of
public credit and inadequate funds for local administration, while high ination
limited commercial activity. In foreign policy, most European rulers initially were in-
different to the Revolution, considering it an internal affair of the French. However,
areas on the French border faced the increasing problem of nding themselves
the sites of numerous French migr communities who openly manifested anti-
revolutionary sentiments. The Assembly proclaimed that all peoples had the right
of self-determination and it was the Assemblys mission to bring the Revolution to
them. This, in effect, justied the invasion of neighboring territories and made the
presence of French migrs an additional pretext for territorial aggrandizement.
The Assembly also failed to establish a strong executive branch. The king felt in-
creasingly uncomfortable with his status as a titular head and the general course of
the Revolution. After publicly expressing his support for the Assembly throughout
1790, he secretly ed the capital in June 1791. The kings ight to Varennes, where
he was arrested, proved to be one of the most important events of the Revolution.
A manifesto that Louis left behind explained his motives, denounced the revolu-
tionary government, and suggested that he was seeking foreign help against the
Revolution. This event exacerbated the split between the moderate mass of citizens,
who still believed in a constitutional monarchy, and the vociferous urban minority
of radicals, who demanded the establishment of a republic.
As discussed earlier, in October 1791 the Legislative Assembly succeeded the
Constituent Assembly. The new legislative body was very different from its predeces-
sor since the law prohibited the serving Assembly deputies from participating in
elections. The new deputies, thus, were younger (half of them were under 30) and
were more committed to the principles of a new order. Among the main political
groups in the Assembly were the Feuillants, conservative members who defended
the king and urged moderate reforms. The Left was represented by the moderate
Girondins and the more radical members of the Jacobin and Cordeliers clubs.
Relations between the new legislature and the king proved to be strained, and
the fall of 1791 was marked by the kings veto of a number of important decrees.
By early 1792, both the Assembly and the king desired a warthe former eager to
spread the Revolution, and the latter hopeful that war would either strengthen his
authority or allow foreign armies to end the Revolution. On April 20, 1792, France
declared war against Austria, which was later supported by Prussia.
The rst phase of the war (AprilSeptember 1792) proved unsuccessful for the
French revolutionary government, whose inexperienced and weakened army suf-
fered defeats; an Austro-Prussian army crossed the French frontier and advanced
rapidly on Paris, taking fortresses in succession. The threat of foreign invasion exacer-
bated tensions in the capital, where many believed that they had been betrayed by the
king and the aristocracy. On August 10, Parisian radicals led an attack on the Tuileries
Palace, where the king was living, and imprisoned the royal family in the Temple.
This event signaled the end of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the beginning
of the First Republic. The Legislative Assembly decided to create a new legislature,
the National Convention, which would be elected by universal manhood suffrage
and would draft a more democratic constitution. In September, the Parisian crowd,
still anxious about alleged enemies within, broke into the prisons and massacred
hundreds of prisoners held there. At the same time, volunteers swelled the army as
the Austro-Prussian invasion awakened French nationalism. On September 20, the
French army defeated the Prussians in a decisive action at the Battle of Valmy; the
Revolution was safe for now. The following day, the National Convention met and
ofcially proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the
Republic.
Building a French Republic, 17921793
In the National Convention, no faction held a majority, but universal suffrage
and the ongoing war produced a radical body. The Feuillants were virtually elimi-
nated from the legislature. Instead, the Convention was polarized by the struggle
between the moderate Girondins, led by Jean-Pierre Brissot and Jean Marie Roland,
who wanted to organize a bourgeois republic in France, and the Jacobins and their
allies, who wanted to give the lower classes a greater share in political and economic
power; the latter were also called Montagnards because they sat in the upper seats of
the Convention and included many radicals deputies, among them Georges Danton
and Maximilien Robespierre. The rst year of the Convention was characterized by
a power struggle for predominance between these two factions, and the kings trial
became the greatest issue of the day. In the end, the Jacobins won the debates; the
king was condemned to death for treason and beheaded on the guillotine in Janu-
ary 1793; the queen, Marie Antoinette, was guillotined nine months later.
Thereafter, the conduct of the war came to dominate the political debates of
the Convention. The period between September 1792 and April 1793 proved to be
successful for the French revolutionary armies, which invaded Belgium, the Rhine-
land, and Savoy and helped establish revolutionary governments in those regions.
However, in the spring of 1793, the tide of war shifted against France as Austria,
Prussia, and Britain formed a coalition (later called the First Coalition). The French
were driven out of Belgium and the Rhineland, and the Revolution stood in peril
once more. Such a threat only strengthened the radicals, especially in Paris, where
the Jacobins enjoyed the full support of the Parisian sections and the sans-culottes
(lower-class revolutionaries). Between May and June 2, the Montagnards organized
a coup that drove the Girondin leaders out of the Convention and allowed them to
seize power.
The Montagnards thereafter dominated the Convention and controlled the revo-
lutionary government for the next year during a period sometimes referred to as
the Montagnard Dictatorship. They drafted the Constitution of 1793, which was the
most democratic constitution at the time, and implemented radical policies to stabi-
lize the country in the midst of civil strife and foreign invasions. They adopted a rad-
ical economic and social policy, used terror to ght political enemies and perceived
counterrevolutionary activities, and established strict state control of the economy
through the Law of the Maximum, which beneted the poor. To oppose foreign in-
vasion, the Montagnard government issued the leve en masse (August 1793), which
mobilized the resources of the entire nation and transformed the nature of military
conict, helping to turn the tide of the war. This period also saw the further secular-
ization of French society as the church and monasteries were closed and a process
of dechristianization began. A new calendar advocated the ideals of the Revolution,
while a civil religion dedicated to the Supreme Being sought to replace traditional
beliefs.
The Montagnards policies, however, provoked violent reactions in various
provinces. The insurrection of the Chouans in Brittany and the war in the Vende
continued without respite, forcing the revolutionary government to divert substantial
forces to that troubled region. The Girondins, who escaped persecution in Paris, in-
cited the so-called federalist risings in Normandy and in Provence. In August 1793,
the federalists surrendered the strategic port city of Toulon and the entire French
Mediterranean eet to the British.
The Reign of Terror, 17931794
The context of the Reign of Terror was thus an intimidating climate of fear of
internal and external threats to the Revolution and a desperate ght to save the
Republic and the Revolutions achievements. To do so required harsh measures,
and the Montagnard government was not constrained in using them. In September
1793, terror was made into ofcial government policy. The enactment of the Consti-
tution of 1793 was postponed, freedom of the press was suppressed, and severe laws
were adopted to oppose any counterrevolutionary activity. The Law of Suspects ex-
panded the governments authority and authorized the arrest of anyone suspected
of anti-revolutionary conduct or connections. The Committee of Public Safety, a
12-member executive committee with vaguely dened powers and operating under
the leadership of puritanical Robespierre, assumed executive power while the revo-
lutionary tribunals rendered swift justice untempered by mercy. Representatives on
mission, akin to political commissars and wielding supreme political and military
authority, were sent to the provinces and to accompany the armies in the eld.
Over the next 13 months ( June 1793July 1794), the Montagnards used the Ter-
ror for a partisan political purpose and as a means of stabilizing the country. They
attacked their rivals and succeeded in executing the early leaders of the Revolution,
members of the royal family, feminists, and the leading Girondins, literally decapi-
tating their most dangerous opponents. The executions were used to eliminate any
potential threat to the revolutionary government, and the bloody blade of the guil-
lotine, or the Republican Razor, as it was crudely called, became a grisly symbol
of this turmoil. The total number of those executed remains unknown and varies
from as low as 14,000 to as high as 40,000. Contrary to popular notions, most of the
people executed were workers and peasants, not aristocrats and priests.
By early 1794, the harsh methods of the Montagnard government seemingly paid
off as the military situation improved following the French victory at the Battle of
Wattignies, in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) on October 1516, 1793. The rev-
olutionary armies suppressed the federalist uprisings, in which the representatives
on mission employed ferocious methods to eliminate the enemies of the Revolution.
Jean Baptiste Carrier drowned hundreds of prisoners in the Loire River, while Joseph
Fouch used canister shot to execute people in Lyons. These events led some to sug-
gest that the Terror should be brought to an end. However, like the god Saturn in
classical mythology, instead the Terror consumed its own children. The Conventions
policies backred by early 1794 when a series of intra-Montagnard conicts took
place. The Montagnards split into factions, with Robespierre and his allies advocat-
ing a radical program of continued Terror, while Danton and his supporters (the
Indulgents) called for moderation. In April, Danton and his allies were arrested and,
after a farcical trial, executed. Robespierre himself became more isolated and con-
spicuous, insisting on a continuation of the Terror. By June 1794, the Montagnards,
never a solid block, disintegrated and collapsed in the coup of the 9 Thermidor
( July 27, 1794); Robespierre and his supporters were executed the following day.
Following this coup, the National Convention drafted yet another new constitu-
tion. This created a bicameral legislative branch (the Council of Five Hundred and
the Council of Ancients) and delegated the executive power to the ve-member Di-
rectory. Suffrage was curtailed from the system of universal suffrage granted in 1793
to a limited one based on the amount of tax paid by the potential voter. The Con-
vention, however, sought to protect its own interests by decreeing in the Fructidor
Laws that two-thirds of the membership of the new legislative branch had to come
from among its own ranks. The 511 returning conventionnels were mainly drawn the
old Girondin faction as well as from the more conservative wing of the Convention,
among them 158 conrmed royalists. The increasing general discontent led to abor-
tive uprisings, rst by the radical sans-culottes in the Prairial insurrection (May 20,
1795), which was suppressed by government troops, and then by the right-wing
sections on 13 Vendmiaire, Year IV (October 5, 1795), which was crushed by the
young General Napoleon Bonaparte. A few days later the Convention dispersed,
paving the way for the Directory.
The Directory, 17951799
The rst year following Robespierres fall was known as the Thermidorian Reac-
tion. The Montagnards were purged from the Convention and persecuted by right-
wing dandies (the muscadins, jeunesse dore) throughout the country. Many of the
Montagnard democratic reforms were reversed, most notably the Law of the Maxi-
mum, and efforts at social and economic equality were abandoned. The Catholic
Church was allowed to return. The Directory was a bourgeois republic that strug-
gled to nd stability amidst internal chaos and war. The government attempted to
stand in the political center, opposing both Jacobinism and royalism, which made
it vulnerable to conspiracies. It failed utterly in most of its economic policies. The
economic crisis got worse when the Directory eliminated the (by then worthless)
assignats and issued territorial mandates, which quickly shared the assignats fate.
As hyperination set in, the price of goods rapidly increased and caused widespread
hardship among the populace. In 1797, the government returned to metal currency,
though this did not alleviate the crisis. Civil strife prevented the government from
collecting taxes on a regular basis, leaving the state treasury empty. Many industries,
especially silk-cloth manufacturing in Lyon, were devastated. In 1796, the economic
and social disgruntlement of the lower classes was expressed in the Conspiracy of
Equals, which proposed a social model closely resembling communism. The con-
spiracy, however, was uncovered and its ringleaders executed.
Relations between the Directory and the legislative councils were strained and
disputes were often settled in a series of coups. Thus, a coup of 18 Fructidor, Year V
(September 4, 1797), removed the royalists from the Directory and the councils. The
Directory was, however, more successful in its military endeavors. The French armies
advanced into the Rhineland and Holland and compelled Prussia and Spain to nego-
tiate peace. In 17961797, Bonaparte waged a triumphant campaign in Italy, where
he defeated Piedmont-Sardiania and Austria, forcing both countries to accept French
terms of peace. In 1798 and 1799, the French entered Switzerland, the Papal States,
and Naples. Most of the countries occupied by the French were organized as sister re-
publics (the Batavian in Holland, the Helvetic in Switzerland, and the Parthenopean
in Naples), with their institutions modeled on those of revolutionary France. More
importantly, these successful campaigns provided the Directory with much-needed
282 French Revolutionary Wars
nancial rewards, which came in the form of war contributions, including the seizure
of hundreds of works of art from the occupied territories into France.
By 1798, only Britain remained at war with France and the Directory. On Bonapar-
tes request, the Directory decided to threaten the British commercial interests in
India by occupying Egypt. A French expeditionary force easily occupied Egypt but
was isolated there following the British naval victory at the Battle of the Nile on Au-
gust 1. Frances aggressive foreign policy and expansionism encouraged the forma-
tion of the Second Coalition, consisting of Austria, Russia, Turkey, and Britain, in
1799. This coalition achieved great successes during the spring and summer of that
year, when Russo-Austrian forces drove back the revolutionary armies to the French
frontiers and recaptured all of Italy. The Directory itself was in turmoil as its mem-
bership changed several times in the spring and summer of 1799. Some Directors
actively conspired against their colleagues, while the provinces were in disorder.
A peasant uprising had to be suppressed in Toulouse, while, following a break in
the ghting, the Chouans rose again in Brittany. Meanwhile, Bonaparte abandoned
his army in Egypt and returned to France in early October 1799. Only one month
later, he and his supporters, notably Sieys (one of the directors) and Fouch (min-
ister of police) organized the coup dtat of 18 Brumaire (November 910), which
overthrew the Directory and established the Consulate, under which government
the Revolution may be said to have come to a close. See also Calendar, French Revo-
lutionary; Clubs (French); Constitutions, French Revolutionary; The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Bouloiseau, Marc. The Jacobin Republic 17921794. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1983; Cobban, Alfred. The Social Interpretation of the French Revo-
lution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964; Doyle, William. The Oxford History
of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Furet, Franois, and Denis
Richet. La Rvolution franaise. Paris: Hachette-Pluriel, 1986; Gendron, Franois. The Gilded
Youth of Thermidor. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993; Lefebvre, George. Le
Directoire. Paris: Armand Colin, 1946; Lefebvre, George. The French Revolution. Translated
by John Hall Stewart and James Friguglietti. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press,
19621964; Lefebvre, George. Les thermidoriens. Paris: Armand Colin, 1937; Soboul, Albert.
The French Revolution, 17871799. Translated by A. Forrest and C. Jones. New York: Random
House, 1974; Sutherland, Donald. France 17891815: Revolution and Counter-Revolution. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986; Thompson. James M. Leaders of the French Revolution.
New York: Harper & Row, 1967; Vovelle, Michel. The Fall of the French Monarchy, 17871792.
The French Revolutionary Wars, a series of campaigns fought between 1792 and
1802, involved revolutionary France and her allies on one side, and various Euro-
pean states bent on restoring the Bourbon monarchy on the other.
The War of the First Coalition, 1792 1797
Growing anti-monarchist agitation in revolutionary France led to widespread
fear that the major monarchical powers, supported by French migrs, were plan-
ning to invade France and restore the ancien rgime. On April 20, 1792, the French
National Assembly declared war on Austria. Fighting began on the frontier with the
Austrian Netherlands (hereafter referred to as Belgium), but it was not until July
French Revolutionary Wars 283
that an Allied army, consisting of Austrians and Prussians, began to assemble in the
Rhineland for an invasion of France. On August 19, the Allies crossed the frontier
and took the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun, though the Duke of Brunswick plod-
ded on slowly, while the French, under General Dumouriez, sought to halt him at
Valmy. There, on September 20, the two sides did little more than exchange artil-
lery re, but the experience was enough to persuade Brunswick to disengage and
withdraw east. The Revolution was thus saved from an infant death, and Europe was
condemned to another two decades of war, for not until 1814 would the forces ar-
rayed against France come so close to reaching Paris.
The ghting, known as the War of the First Coalition, took place on numerous
other fronts. In the south, the French invaded Piedmont and Savoy, in the process of
which they occupied Nice. In the Rhineland, General Custine emerged from Alsace
and captured Mainz. In Flandersthe principal theater of operationsGeneral
Dumouriez pushed north, while in Paris the government declared the nation a re-
public. The French victory at Jemappes, in Belgium, on November 6, 1792, roused
the enthusiasm of the troops, and 10 days later, Brussels fell to them. Nevertheless,
on the Rhine, the Allies drove back Custine in December.
Early in 1793, the war grew in scope, for the execution of King Louis XVI on
January 21 aggravated still mounting Anglo-French tensions. Britain, already con-
cerned over the French occupation of Belgium and the opening of the Scheldt estu-
ary, was bracing for confrontation. On February 1, France saved Britain the bother
by declaring war on her, as well as on Holland and Spain. The French annexed
Belgium and prepared to invade Holland. The Allies, for their part, were prepar-
ing an offensive of their own, in the course of which Prince Saxe-Coburg defeated
Dumouriez on March 18 at Neerwinden and retook Brussels. Custine, replacing
Dumouriez, was himself defeated near Valenciennes on May 2123, and French
forces in Belgium rapidly retreated. By August the French war effort was approach-
ing collapse, with an Anglo-Hanoverian army under the Duke of York force besieg-
ing Dunkirk. Worse still, far to the south an Anglo-Spanish eet took control of the
port of Toulon, made possible by the royalist revolt there. French republican forces
were also engaged in counterrevolutionary operations in the Vende. To tackle the
emergency, the Committee of Public Safety under Maximilien Robespierre issued
the leve en masse, a form of universal conscription that brought hundreds of thou-
sands of men to the colors.
French morale improved with the victory at Hondschoote on September 8 against
the Duke of York in Belgium, while ve days later General Houchard routed the
Austrians at Menin. Further success on October 1516 at Wattignies resulted in an
Austrian retreat eastward, and between these three victories the French, bolstered
by reinforcements sent by the Convention, now felt themselves the equal of any
opponent, including those inside France. By late October 1793 the royalist revolt
in Lyon had been put down, the uprising in the Vende was nally suppressed by
the end of the year, and, far to the south, republican forces, besieging the royalists
and their Anglo-Spanish allies at Toulon, retook the city on December 19. A week
later, on the Rhine, one French army drove the Austrians back across the river after
defeating them at the Geisberg while another retook Mainz and cleared Alsace and
the Palatinate.
During the new year, fortune continued to favor the French, who defeated an
Anglo-Austrian force at Courtrai on May 11, and again at Tourcoing a week later.
Both sides fought a drawn action at Tournai on the May 23, but the decisive battle
of the campaign came on June 26, when at Fleurus the French drove the Austrians
from the eld before following up their victory by occupying Brussels on July 10
and Antwerp on July 27. With these two vital cities in their hands, the French rap-
idly completed the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands and advanced north into
Holland. At about the same time, along the Rhine, the French pushed the Prussians
off the left bank of the river, and by the end of 1794 the Rhineland was rmly in
French hands.
In the rst three months of 1795 the French consolidated their hold over Hol-
land, going so far as to capture the Dutch eet while it sat frozen in the Texel. On
April 5, Prussia, unable to bear the nancial cost of the war and seeing no benet
to further hostilities, signed a separate peace with France at Basel, while Spain fol-
lowed suite in June. Austria and Britain continued the struggle, the latter support-
ing a royalist landing at Quiberon Bay, on the Breton coast, which ended in disaster
for the migrs, who lost nearly half their force. Along the Rhine, French armies
under generals Jourdan and Pichegru made no substantial progress and had mixed
success, with Jourdan failing to make headway against the Austrians there, and Pi-
chegru losing an engagement near Mainz. Still, the Austrians called for a general
armistice, which stabilized the situation for the French. In Italy, the French forces
under General Schrer advanced along the Mediterranean coast, but nothing of
consequence occurred apart from Massnas minor victory over the Austrians at
Loano in late November. Revolt in the Vende broke out again in 1795, but the
uprising was short lived and was brutally repressed by General Hoche the following
spring.
During the campaign of 1796 in Germany, General Jourdan crossed the Rhine in
June to be repulsed by Archduke Charles and his Austrians at Wetzlar on June 16,
although Moreau more than reversed the effect by obliging Charles to recross the
Danube after his defeat at Neresheim on August 11. Charles recrossed the river in
August and decisively defeated Jourdan at Amberg on August 24, while on the same
day Moreau drubbed another Austrian force at Friedberg. Charles followed up his
early success by enveloping both French anks at Wrzburg on September 3 before
concluding an armistice.
The decisive front in 1796 was, however, in northern Italy, where the young
General Napoleon Bonaparte exercised overall command. Although he inherited
poorly clothed and fed troops, Bonaparte instilled new vigor into their ranks and
would lead them in the series of astonishing victories over the Austrians for which
he would become famous as a military commander. He scored his rst victory at
Montenotte on April 12, before pushing on to Dego, which he captured on April
1415. The Piedmontese under Baron Colli attempted to halt the French advance
at Mondovi, where on April 21 Bonaparte inicted a defeat of sufcient magni-
tude to oblige Piedmont rst to seek an armistice and then to withdraw from the
war. Thereafter, Bonaparte advanced to the Po, ghting the Austrian rearguard
on May 10 at Lodi, where he demonstrated great personal bravery and followed up
his success by occupying Milan on May 15. Within two weeks he had reached the
Mincio and invested the strategically vital fortress of Mantua. Substantial Austrian
forces arrived in the summer to relieve the garrison, but Bonaparte defeated two
enemy formations in turn, rst at Lonato on August 3, and then, more convincingly,
at Castiglione on August 5. The French siege of Mantua, temporarily lifted due to
ongoing operations in the eld, was resumed, now directed against the reinforced
Austrian garrison.
While the conquest of northern Italy from the Austrians may largely be attrib-
uted to Bonaparte, some of his subordinates enjoyed independent successes of their
own, in particular generals Augereau and Massna, who on September 8 defeated
the Austrians at Bassanothough they could not prevent the reinforcement of the
Mantua garrison. In their third attempt to relieve the fortress, the Austrians again
failed, despite success at Caldiero on November 12. Bonaparte bolstered his repu-
tation with a minor victory at Arcola on November 1517 and frustrated a fourth
and nal Austrian attempt at relieving Mantua in January 1797. The decisive battle
of the campaign in Italy came on January 14, when Bonaparte smashed General
Alvintzys attack and inicted over 10,000 casualties at a cost to himself of only a
third as many. Mantua nally capitulated on February 2. The following month the
French proceeded to invade Austria itself, obliging the Habsburgs to sue for peace.
Preliminary terms were agreed at Leoben on April 18, with denitive arrangements
concluded at Campo Formio on October 17. The Austrians ceded substantial ter-
ritories in northern Italy as a result.
The War of the Second Coalition, 17981802
With Austria driven from the war, the First Coalition collapsed, and France, fac-
ing no further resistance on the Continent, could occupy Switzerland in April 1798
without a ght. Hostilities continued against Britain, the Republics most implacable
enemy, but being unable to strike Britain directly due to the superior power of the
Royal Navy, France looked for an alternate strategy. This came in an unlikely form
when the Directory approved Bonapartes proposal to dispatch an expeditionary
force to Egypt, an Ottoman province whose possession could serve as a springboard
for an overland attack against British India. A eet carrying over 30,000 troops left
Toulon on May 19, 1798, took Malta en route to Egypt, and captured Alexandria
on July 2. Bonapartes army then advanced on Cairo, defeating the Mamelukes at
the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21. This seemed to bode well for the French until
they unexpectedly found themselves isolated in Egypt when Vice Admiral Horatio
Nelson discovered the French eet at anchor in Aboukir Bay and annihilated it on
August 12.
The Turks, meanwhile, were gathering an army in Syria, while Bonaparte, leaving
a garrison behind in Cairo, advanced into Palestine, taking El Arish on February 14
15, 1799, and Jaffa in operations conducted on March 37, and laying siege to Acre
on March 17. The Turks sent an army to relieve this coastal city, only to be defeated
by General Klber at Mount Tabor on April 17. This ended Bonapartes hopes of
consolidating his hold over the Holy Land, for despite numerous assaults, the French
failed to take Acre and were forced to withdraw south on May 20, reaching Cairo on
June 14. A Turkish army escorted to the Egyptian coast by a British squadron landed
at Aboukir on July 25, only to be disastrously repulsed by the French. Sensing that
his luck was soon to turn, and learning that a new coalition in Europe was pressing
heavily on the French armies there, Bonaparte left his men behind in Egypt and
returned to France on October 23.
General Klber, left in Bonapartes stead, soundly defeated the Turks at He-
liopolis on March 20, 1800, but he was assassinated on June 14, and his successor,
General Menou, was left to make the best of a hopeless situation. The beginning
of the end came on March 8, 1801, when Sir Ralph Abercromby landed with British
and Turkish forces, swept aside French resistance at Alexandria on March 2021,
and nally took Cairo on July 28. French forces in Egypt capitulated on August 31 and
were granted free passage home, so ending forever Bonapartes unlikely plan to end
British power in India.
While the two sides were vying for control of Egypt, much was occurring in
Europe, where in December 1798 Britain and Russia had established a second co-
alition, which Austria, Turkey, Portugal, and other powers joined early the follow-
ing year. Operations took place on four fronts: in Italy, on the Rhine, in Holland,
and in Switzerland. In January 1799, the Austrians engaged the French along the
river Adige, where Habsburg forces threw back their opponents at Magnano on
April 5. After assuming overall command in Italy, the Russian general Alexander
Suvorov sent an Austrian force to besiege Mantua, defeated Moreau at Cassano on
April 27 and then entered Milan. He continued his success in mid-June, defeat-
ing the French at the Trebbia on June 1719, and then driving them west along
the Mediterranean coast. On August 15 the French sought to slow Suvorovs ad-
vance at Novi, but they failed comprehensively, and Suvorov pursued them across
the Apennines. The Russian commander was then ordered to Switzerland, leaving
his Austrian colleague, Melas, to defeat the French at Genoa and push them back
across the Alps.
In Germany, General Jourdan crossed the Rhine in March 1799 and confronted
Archduke Charles at Stockach on March 25. An Austrian counterattack punched
through Jourdans center, not only achieving a tactical victory but effectively ending
the French offensive on the Rhine altogether. In Holland, a British force under the
Duke of York landed near the Texel, where a Russian expeditionary force, conveyed
by the Royal Navy, disembarked to reinforce him. The British and Russians failed to
coordinate their efforts, and their mixed force was defeated by the French and their
Dutch allies at Bergen on September 16. On recovering, York renewed his march
and drove off his opponents on October 2 in a second action at Bergen before
proceeding south. He made little progress. In an action at Castricum on October 6,
Franco-Dutch forces halted Yorks advance, obliging the British general, who had
already succeeded in his principal mission of capturing the Dutch eet back in
August, to withdraw northward. By the Convention of Alkmaar, the Allied army
withdrew from Holland after the exchange of prisoners.
Simultaneous operations had been underway in Switzerland, where the French
entered the country in March 1799. After considerable maneuvering by both sides,
General Massna advanced against Zurich, outside of which he was repulsed by the
Austrians on August 14. A second battle, fought on September 25, now involved the
Russians, who were soundly defeated, and while Suvorov managed to ght his way
across the Alps to aid his subordinates, he arrived too late to avert disaster for Rus-
sian forces already in Switzerland and withdrew back across the Alps to the upper
Rhine. Disappointed by his generals performance in Switzerland, Tsar Paul I with-
drew from the Second Coalition, leaving only Austria as the principal continental
power still opposing France.
In March 1800, Bonaparte raised a new army and in May crossed the Alps via the
St. Bernard Pass, though he was too late to prevent the capitulation of the French
garrison in the fortress at Genoa, which had undergone a dreadful siege at the
hands of the Austrians. At Montebello, on June 9, General Lannes drove an Austrian
force toward Alessandria, but the decisive battle of the campaign took place ve
days later at Marengo, where Bonaparte, at rst seemingly defeated, summoned
nearby reinforcements late in the day, counterattacked with devastating effect, and
snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Simultaneous operations conducted in
Germany also went badly for the Austrians, with General Moreau scoring successes
in Bavaria at Stockach on May 3 and Hochstdt on June 19, leaving him free to ad-
vance on Munich. On December 3, Moreau confronted Archduke John at Hohen-
linden, where he surrounded much of the Austrian army, which suffered massive
casualties. With Vienna now threatened, Austrians sued for peace on Christmas Day,
and by the Treaty of Lunville, concluded on February 8, 1801, they reafrmed the
terms of Campo Formio and left the Second Coalition. Finding herself supreme at
sea but unable to eld an army of her own, Britain reached an accord with France
at Amiens on March 27, 1802.
Peace was, however, to prove short lived, and the Anglo-French conict that re-
sumed in May 1803 was to inaugurate another decade of general European hostili-
ties known as the Napoleonic Wars.
Operations at Sea, 17921802
No naval operations of signicance took place in the rst year of the war, not
least because the French navy was suffering from an acute shortage of trained of-
cers due to the replacement of many by a revolutionary government keen to strip
aristocrats of their former privileged status, and because of the ight of other of-
cers who did not wish to serve the Republic or feared for their lives. In August
1793, however, with the royalist rising in the south of France, an Anglo-Spanish
eet took possession of the French Mediterranean naval base at Toulon. While
many French ships were burned by the British, the republican forces laying siege
to the city rained down artillery re on the Allied eet and forced it to withdraw
in late December.
The rst major naval engagement of the war took place on June 1, 1794, when
Admiral Lord Howe attempted to intercept a grain convoy bound for France from
the United States. He managed to capture six French ships of the line, but Ad-
miral Villaret-Joyeuse safely escorted the convoy into port, thus conceding only a
tactical victory to the British. In 1795, the British admiral, Lord Hotham, fought
two indecisive actions in the Mediterranean, while Lord Bridport captured three
French line-of-battle ships off the Ile de Groix on June 23. Nevertheless, no de-
cisive encounters took place that year, naval activity being largely conned to
the seizure of enemy commerce, conducted both by bona de naval vessels and
privateers.
In 1795, Spain, having failed in its operations along the Pyrenees since 1793,
withdrew from the First Coalition and, by the terms of the Treaty of San Ildefonso,
concluded on August 19, 1796, allied herself to France, an act that put the Span-
ish navy in contention with that of Britain. Action took place off Cape St. Vincent
on February 14, 1797, where Admiral de Cordova fell in with Sir John Jervis, who
captured four Spanish vessels, two by Nelson. In the same year, Admiral Duncan
engaged the Dutch off Camperdown, capturing nine ships of the line, though suf-
fering severe losses and damage of his own. In the Mediterranean, Nelson discov-
ered Admiral Brueyss eet in the harbor at Aboukir after it had landed Bonapartes
army and captured or destroyed all but two of the French forcea comprehensive
288 Frron, Louis-Stanislas
victory. The nal eet action of the war took place in the Baltic, where Denmark
had joined a league of neutral states challenging the Royal Navys policy of search
and seizure. On April 2, 1801, Nelson engaged the harbor defenses and Danish eet
anchored at Copenhagen, destroying most of the vessels and taking away those that
were still serviceable. See also Carnot, Lazare; Consulate; Lafayette, Marie Joseph
Paul, Marquis de; Representatives on Mission.
FURTHER READING: Blanning, T.C.W. The French Revolutionary Wars, 17871802. London:
Arnold, 1976; Blanning, T.C.W. The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars. London: Longman,
1987; Boycott-Brown, Anthony. The Road to Rivoli: Napoleons First Campaign. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 2001; Chandler, David. The Campaigns of Napoleon. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1995; Esposito, Vincent J., and John R. Elting. A Military History and Atlas of the
Napoleonic Wars. New York: AMS, 1978; Fremont-Barnes, Gregory, ed. The Encyclopedia of the
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. 3 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2006; Fremont-
Barnes, Gregory. The French Revolutionary Wars. Oxford: Osprey, 2001; Grifth, Paddy. The Art
of War of Revolutionary France, 17891802. London: Greenhill, 1999; Herold, J. Christopher.
Bonaparte in Egypt. London: Leo Cooper, 2005; Phipps, Ramsay Weston. The Armies of the First
French Republic. 5 vols. London: Greenwood Press, 1980; Rodger, A. B. The War of the Second
Coalition, 17981801: A Strategic Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964; Ross, Steven T.
Quest for Victory: French Military Strategy, 17921799. South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1973.
Louis-Stanislas Frron enjoyed a varied, indeed, notorious career. His father was
a reactionary journalist and an adversary of Voltaire who secured the services of
Stanislas Lescynski, ex-king of Poland, as a godfather to his infant son. Frron ls
attended the prestigious College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where his classmates
included future revolutionaries Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins.
Prior to 1789, however, Frron descended into Grub Street when he lost control of
the family newspaper and was obliged to live off hack writing. Others who plunged
into this murky demimonde resurfaced to seize the opportunities presented by
the events of 1789. Frron participated in storming the Bastille, joined the radical
Cordeliers Club, and founded a fresh newssheet, the Orateur du Peuple.
In August 1792, he was involved in the attack on the Tuileries that deposed the
king, and he was subsequently elected as a Parisian deputy to the Convention,
where he sat with the Montagnards. Like them, he voted for Louis XVIs death
and, in the summer of 1793, he was sent as a reprsentant en mission to Provence, in
company with Paul Barras. Faced with anti-Montagnard uprisings (often termed
federalist revolts), notably at Marseille and Toulon, the pair constituted a deadly
duo, exacting ferocious punishment on those who had deed the Republic. Such
excesses prompted their recall and doubtless Robespierres disdain. A desire to
avenge the death of Desmoulins inclined Frron to join the plot to unseat the so-
called Incorruptible in Thermidor ( July 1794). Surprisingly, Frron now turned his
coat completely and threw himself into the repression of former Montagnards (the
so-called White Terror), reviving his paper for this purpose. Dispatched on a sec-
ond mission to Marseille, his conduct was similarly discredited by violent behavior,
plus an abortive affair with Pauline Bonaparte (the sister of Napoleon). He became
Frron, Louis-Stanislas 289
something of a pariah but eventually secured a government post in Saint-Domingue,
where he succumbed to disease. See also The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Arnaud, Raoul. Journaliste, sans-culotte et thermidorien: Le ls de Frron.
Paris, 1909; Frron, Louis-Stanislas. Mmoire historique sur la raction royale et sur les massacres du
Midi. Paris, 1796; Poup, Edmond. Lettres de Barras et de Frron. Draguignan, 1910.
MALCOLM CROOK
G
Thomas Gage is known principally for his role as military governor of provincial
Massachusetts when the political tension between Britains American colonies and
Parliament escalated into military hostilities at Lexington and Concord. Though
a career military ofcer and a capable administrator, Gage had little actual bat-
tleeld experience and is not considered to have been a great strategist, militarily
or politically.
Because Gage was his fathers second-born son, primogeniture and entail laws
precluded him from inheriting any portion of his fathers estate. He therefore
chose a career in the British Army, beginning in 1740. A major by February 1747, he
accompanied General Braddocks 1754 1755 expedition to western Pennsylvania
during the French and Indian War (1754 1763). Their objective was to capture the
newly constructed Fort Duquesne, so positioned as to enable the French to expand
from Canada into the Ohio River Valley. This incursion threatened Britains claim to
that territory, as well as claims made by Virginia land speculators (including George
Washington). Gage led the advance forces and was wounded when ambushed by an
overwhelming force of French and Indians. He survived, but Braddock was killed,
which left Washington (colonel of the Virginia militia) to command the retreat.
This encounter precipitated war between Britain and France for control of eastern
North America.
Gage served under General Jeffrey Amherst in the march on Montreal that
forced French forces in Canada to capitulate in 1760. In December 1763, Gage suc-
ceeded Amherst as commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, head-
quartered in New York City. In 1768 Gage was posted to Boston to quell provincial
riots against the Townshend Acts and their opposition to the quartering of British
soldiers in unoccupied public buildings. During a peaceful interlude Gage returned
to England in February 1773 but soon returned.
Following the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, Gage helped Parliament draft
the Coercive Acts. Specically, Gage aided in writing the Massachusetts Govern-
ment Act and was responsible for the provision of the 1774 Quartering Act that
required provincials to house British soldiers and ofcers in their private homes.
292 Gallicanism
Shortly thereafter he was appointed military governor of Massachusetts. Gage ar-
rived in Boston in May 1774, accompanied by four regiments of British regulars sent
to enforce the Coercive Acts. Gages previous popularity as governor of Montreal
(1760), combined with his marriage to American Margaret Kemble (rumored to
be sympathetic to the provincial Whig cause) and his 20-year residence in North
America, led many in Massachusetts to hope that he might be more inclined than
his predecessor, Thomas Hutchinson, to mediate their grievances with Parliament.
Gage avoided political entanglements, though, and instead focused upon defus-
ing the possibility of military conict; on several occasions he ordered his troops
to seize colonists military supplies. British seizure of provincial munitions in Char-
lestown on September 1, 1774 (the Charlestown Powder Alarm), prompted Mas-
sachusettss Provincial Congress in Boston to establish a network of messengers
throughout the colony that could quickly notify neighboring towns if British troops
should ever again march out of the city.
Following the actions at Lexington and Concord, approximately 20,000 New Eng-
land militiamen surrounded Boston for what proved to be a year-long siege. On June
12, 1775, Gage issued a proclamation that offered to pardon all rebels in arms (ex-
cept John Hancock and Samuel Adams), but the colonists responded on the night
of June 16 by erecting military fortications on Breeds Hill (across the Charles
River from Boston). The following day, Gage ordered General Howe to attack the
deant Americans. The British won the Battle of Bunker Hill, but Gages insistence
upon a frontal assault to awe the rebels into submission resulted in 1,150 British
casualtieshalf the men involved in the battle. This costly victory prompted Gages
recall in August 1775; he was replaced by General William Howe. In October, Gage
returned to London, where he served under Amherst and organized English militia
units to defend against an anticipated French invasion. Gages health declined, and
he died on April 2, 1787, survived by his wife for another 37 years. See also Tea Act.
FURTHER READING: Alden, John Richard. General Gage in America: Being Principally a History
of His Role in the American Revolution. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948;
Billias, George A., ed. George Washingtons Generals and Opponents: Their Exploits and Leadership.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
Gallicanism
Gallicanism asserted in general that monarchs, bishops, and popes have equal
authority over the Roman Catholic Church. Gallicanism originated in France (Gaul
was the ancient name of France and Belgium) in the fourteenth and fteenth cen-
turies (propagated by William of Occam, John of Jandun, Marsilius of Padua, John
Gerson, and Peter dAilly), blossomed in the European Low Countries in the eigh-
teenth century, and ceased to be important by the mid-nineteenth

century as the
European political and ecclesiastical landscape changed following the French Revo-
lution. Gallicanism strode to travel the road between ultramontanism, the belief that
the pope has temporal authority over the church and kingdoms, and Anglicanism,
the belief that monarchs have temporal authority over the church and kingdoms.
This general assertion united the threads that interwove to form the tapestry of
Gallicanism. Ecclesiastical or theological Gallicanism asserted that the pope, though
292
Galloway, Joseph 293
supreme in spiritual matters, was not infallible and was subject to the decisions
of ecumenical councils (Conciliarism) as adopted by the Council of Constance
(1414 1418). Though bishops were the divinely appointed successors to the apos-
tles, the power to appoint them and the revenues from their vacant bishoprics re-
sided with the divinely appointed secular rulers. Royal Gallicanism asserted that
kingsFrench kings in particularpossessed absolute authority in all temporal
matters (Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 1438). Parliamentary Gallicanism insisted
on the complete subordination of the French church to the state in all temporal
matters, including the administration of the French church.
Gallicanism dissipated during the reign of the reign Henry IV, the rst Bourbon
king of France (1589 1610), but was reborn when the humanists of the Sorbonne
endorsed it (1663) and the Assembly of the Clergy of France (1682) codied it in
their Four Articles. Gallicanism waned again when the persecution of the clergy
and the ecclesiastical restrictions imposed on the French church during the French
Revolution led the bishops to reassert their association and subordination to the
Roman church. See also Papacy; Religion.
FURTHER READING: Parson, Jotham. The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political
Ideology in Renaissance France. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Galloway, Joseph (c. 1731 1803)
The colonial statesman and revolutionary Loyalist who attempted to preserve
a place for the American colonies within the British Empire, Joseph Galloway was
born to Peter Bines Galloway and Elizabeth Rigbie in West River, Maryland. In 1747
Galloway went to Philadelphia to practice law, becoming a specialist in land titles
and marrying Grace Growdon in 1753. Elected to Pennsylvanias provincial assem-
bly in 1756, he petitioned the king for the royal replacement of proprietary rule.
Defeated for reelection over his actions, he advocated moderation in opposing the
Stamp Act of 1765 and encouraged payment of constitutional taxes. Reelected to
the assembly in 1765, he was made Speaker, remaining in this position for 10 years and
advocating that the American colonies should be better represented in Parliament
while recognizing the Crowns sovereignty.
Galloway joined the First Continental Congress and advanced his moderate Plan
of Union, in which a British and American legislature, for regulating the adminis-
tration of the general affairs of America, be proposed [by the Continental Congress]
and established in America, including all the said colonies; within, and under which
government, each colony shall retain its present constitution, and powers of regu-
lating and governing its own internal police. This legislature would be supervised
by a president general appointed by the king and subordinate to the Crown. The
president generals assent would be essential to effect laws passed by the American
legislature. Its members to be elected every three years; the legislature representing
the people would be called the Grand Council and would meet at least once every
year, a system modeled upon the House of Commons. Galloway proposed that this
Grand Council and president general should function as an inferior and distinct
branch of the British legislature, united and incorporated with it, for the purposes
of establishing policies in the colonies and granting them representation. Criticism
294 Genet, Edmond Charles Edouard
of Galloways plan arose over the appointment of the president general by the king
and the Crowns veto power over acts of the legislature.
Galloways plan was not adopted. Rather more confrontational politics were
adopted when the Continental Association boycotted British goods. Because of this
rebuff, Galloway declined to serve in the Second Continental Congress, preferring
to defend his moderate proposal for an American legislature with A Candid Examina-
tion of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies, with a Plan of Accommodation,
on Constitutional Principles. He remained a Loyalist during the Revolution, serving
as superintendent general in occupied Philadelphia under General William Howe.
General Henry Clinton, Howes successor, conducted Galloway and his family to
British-occupied New York and then to Britain. Galloway was formally dispossessed
of his American properties in March 1779 for his Loyalist activities. In 1780, he pub-
lished Historical and Political Reections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion
and still hoped to reconcile America and the British Empire. He died in exile in
Watford, Hertfordshire, England. See also Albany Plan of Union; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Boyd, Julian Parks. Anglo-American Union: Joseph Galloways Plans to
Preserve the British Empire, 1774 1788. New York: Octagon Books, 1970. First published 1941.
Genet, Edmond Charles Edouard (1763 1834)
Genet served as a diplomat during the French Revolution. Born in Versailles to
a cultured family that had traditionally served the monarchy, he, like his father,
joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He worked abroad at, among other places,
the embassy at Vienna, before assuming his fathers position as head of translation
in 1781. Louis XVI then sent him to St. Petersburg, where he served as secretary of
the embassy and then charg daffaires.
Because of Genets active partisanship of the Revolution, he offended Cather-
ine II, who forbade him to appear at court, placed him under surveillance, and
eventually ordered his expulsion in July 1792. The French next dispatched him as
their representative to the United States, where he arrived in the spring of 1793.
Genet had been ordered to improve relations with the United States and to involve
that republic in a war with Britain. A gifted linguist, he was, however, not skilled in
diplomacy. He offended many Americans, even such close supporters as Thomas
Jefferson, then secretary of state, who, in remarking upon the ministers conduct,
observed astutely that Genet was absolutely incorrigible. He went on to stress the
necessity of quitting a wreck which could not but sink all who should cling to it.
Genet issued French military commissions to American citizens, reprovisioned
French privateers in American ports, authorized the capture of British ships in
Americanthat is, neutralwaters, and launched schemes to invade Spanish Flor-
ida and Louisiana and incite an uprising in Canada. He even publicly attacked the
authority of the president. Genet refused to recognize international law and argued
that governments should follow natural law. He boasted that he would throw Vattel
and Grotius into the sea whenever their principles interfere with my notion of the
rights of nations. Such actions prompted President Washington to request his recall.
Robespierre and other members of the Committee of Public Safety denounced the
conduct of Genet, whom they regarded as a member of the discredited Girondin
Club, and ordered his recall. When his successor, Fauchet, arrived to arrest him and
send him back to France for trial and certain death, Washington refused to allow his
extradition and permitted him to remain in the United States.
Genet subsequently became an American citizen and a prosperous farmer and
married rst Cornelia Clinton, the daughter of the governor of New York, and then
Martha Osgood, the daughter of the rst postmaster general. Genet died in 1834
and was buried in his adopted country.
FURTHER READING: Cobbett, William. The Parliamentary History of England. London:
T. S. Hansard, 1817; De Conde, Alexander. Entangling Alliance: Politics and Diplomacy under
George Washington. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1958; Frey, Linda S., and Marsha L.
Frey. The History of Diplomatic Immunity. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.
Gens de Couleur
The gens de couleur, or free people of color, were an intermediate group in Frances
Caribbean colonies who stood between the mass of African slaves and the white mi-
nority. Including both freed slaves and free descendants of black slaves and white
masters, the groups racial and economic heterogeneity led it to play an ambiguous
role in the revolutionary struggles at the end of the eighteenth century. Many gens
de couleur were property owners and supported slavery and the slave trade, yet their
demands for equality with whites posed a radical challenge to racially determined
conceptions of citizenship.
Whatever their origin or wealth, no free people of color in the French colonies
were considered the equals of whites. The social status of individual gens de couleur
varied, however, according to their racial mixture (identied by different contem-
porary terms of varying specicity) and to the process by which they had gained
freedom (purchased, granted on the basis of service, or being the child of free
parents). The free colored population in the Caribbean rose during the eighteenth
century so that by 1789, gens de couleur comprised almost half the free inhabitants of
Saint-Domingue, although a much smaller proportion of the populations of Guad-
eloupe and Martinique. This increase occurred despite colonial administrations
efforts to limit their number by imposing a duty on the manumission of slaves.
A broadening range of racially restrictive legislation beginning in the 1760s dem-
onstrated white concern at this increase and at the expanding free-colored role in
the colonial economy. Beyond their activities as craftsmen and small merchants in
colonial ports, free people of color became independent farmers. White masters
donated land and slaves to colored mistresses or children, and colored planters
thrived in the coffee boom following the Seven Years War (1756 1763). A free
colored planter elite, which acquired wealth and sought social status by choosing
light-skinned marriage partners, developed in Saint-Domingue. While some gens de
couleur owned slaves, others provided the colonies with internal security as members
of the mounted police and the militia, which countered the threat of slave revolt
and hunted down runaway slaves. In theory all free men belonged to the militia, but
white colonists avoided military service whenever possible. Colonial authorities rec-
ognized the vital importance of colored troops to these forces, but white colonists
never treated them with respect. Gens de couleur adhered to the values of colonial
Gens de Couleur 295
society yet were excluded from white privilege, and their frustration was apparent
by the end of the ancien rgime.
The free colored elite was aware of the liberal currents within the Enlightenment
and petitioned the metropolitan authority directly for equality with whites. In 1785
the wealthy colored planter Julien Raimond met with the minister of marine to ask
him to end racial discrimination in Saint-Domingue. In arguing that gens de couleur
had proven their virtue, however, Raimond advocated equality only for the wealthy
light-skinned elite. The coming of the French Revolution presented a new oppor-
tunity, and in August 1789 Raimond and Vincent Og, another wealthy free man
of color, were in Paris to seek civil equality and the right to representation. These
demands were presented to the National Assembly in October 1789. While the anti-
slavery Socit des Amis des Noirs supported this campaign, the Club Massiac, an
association of absentee planters, lobbied vigorously against extending rights to free
people of color.
Despite the principles articulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
of the Citizen, the National Assembly proved as reluctant to grant gens de couleur
equality as it was to abolish slavery. Its decree of March 1790 authorized colonial
assemblies to propose constitutional arrangements but was ambiguous regarding
who was eligible to elect these assemblies. Free colored property owners appeared
to meet the criteria, yet white colonists excluded them. This drove Og to return
to Saint-Domingue in October 1790 and to raise a rebellion: its failure ended with
Ogs execution in February 1791. Following this episode, the National Assembly at-
tempted to clarify the status of gens de couleur. It decreed in May 1791 that free men
of color born of free fathers and mothers would be admitted to future parish or
colonial assemblies if they met age and property qualications. While this granted
political rights to a relatively small number, it aroused heated opposition. In a new
decree of September 1791, the National Assembly relinquished the authority to de-
termine the status of free people of color to colonial assemblies: this allowed white
colonists to continue to exclude them from public life. News of the outbreak of
Saint-Domingues massive slave revolt in August 1791, however, reversed metropoli-
tan policy yet again. The new Legislative Assembly was desperate to regain control
of the colony and decreed political equality for free men of color in March 1792,
but developments in the Caribbean overshadowed the new law.
Gens de couleur fought for their rights and interests within ruthlessly shifting al-
liances. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, free people of color backed the colonial
assemblies counterrevolution against metropolitan authority in September 1792
but switched their allegiance in January 1793 to the French Republic, whose rep-
resentative promised them equality and pledged to maintain slavery. The British
conquest in spring 1794 shook this allegiance, as did Victor Huguess recapture
of Guadeloupe for the French republic in June 1794. Hugues brought news of the
National Conventions February 1794 decree of abolition and freed Guadeloupes
slaves. If this alienated slave owners, most of Guadeloupes gens de couleur supported
Hugues regime, which guaranteed them equality. The role of free people of color
in the Haitian Revolution was even more complex. In September 1791, white plant-
ers in Saint-Domingue established alliances with free colored property owners in
hopes of protecting plantations and containing the slave revolt. These collapsed,
and free colored ghters under the command of Andr Rigaud took control of
much of the west. At the same time, other gens de couleur, the most famous being
296 Gens de Couleur
Gensonn, Armand 297
Toussaint lOuverture, joined the slave insurgents. Toussaint allied his forces ini-
tially with Spain then switched to the French Republic after its abolition of slavery.
He repelled Spanish and British troops from the colony but also defeated Rigauds
army. Napoleon was determined to restore slavery, however, and dispatched a major
military expedition to Saint-Domingue in 1801. Toussaint was arrested and died in
a French prison. News from Guadeloupe, where former free person of color Louis
Delgrs led a revolt against the reimposition of slavery and racial inequality in 1802,
reignited resistance in Saint-Domingue, which led to French evacuation and the
declaration of the Republic of Haiti in 1804.
FURTHER READING: Garrigus, John D. Sons of the Same Father: Gender, Race and
Citizenship in French Saint Domingue, 1760 1792. In Visions and Revisions of Eighteenth-
Century France, ed. Christine Adams, Jack R. Censer, and Lisa Jane Graham. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997; Hunt, Lynn, ed. The French Revolution and Human
Rights: A Brief Documentary History. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins Press, 1996; King, Stewart R.
Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2001; Quinney, Valerie. The Problem of Civil Rights for Free
Men of Color in the Early French Revolution. French Historical Studies 7, no. 4 (Fall 1972):
544 57.
WILLIAM S. CORMACK
Armand Gensonn was a French revolutionary politician, a deputy to the Legis-
lative Assembly and National Convention. The son of an army surgeon, Gensonn
was educated at the College of Guyenne. He was chosen by Leberthon, the rst
president of the Parlement of Bordeaux, from among 25 of the best students at the
age of 16 to train as a barrister. He was called to the bar in 1779. Gensonn and his
future colleague Vergniaud shared an interest in the arts. They were members of a
Bordeaux literary society, the Muse.
Gensonn greeted the French Revolution with enthusiasm. He was a captain of
the local National Guard regiment in addition to being an elected administrator of
the Bordeaux Commune and a member of the Bordeaux Jacobin Club. As president
of the club, he wrote the societys statutes. Before his election to the Legislative As-
sembly, Gensonn had been commissioned to report on these movements in the
departments of the Vende and Deux-Svres. His research in these areas found
widespread oath refusal by priests and an overwhelming lack of support for the
constitutional priests.
Elected deputy from the Gironde to the Legislative Assembly on September 4,
1791, Gensonn sat on the Left and recommended vigorous measures against the
refractory priests. He was an ardent supporter of the war against Austria and ad-
vocated punitive measures against King Louis XVIs two migr brothers. A lead-
ing member of the Assembly, Gensonn served on the Diplomatic Committee and
served terms as vice president and president in March 1792. In July 1792 on the eve
of the insurrection of August 10, with Vergniaud and Guadet, Gensonn tried to
negotiate with the king to reinstate the Patriot ministry in exchange for a delay in
the uprising of August 10.
Reelected to the Convention, Gensonn sat on the right with his Girondin col-
leagues, but he did not submit to Madame Rolands inuence, and during the kings
298 George III, King of Great Britain
trial, unlike many of his colleagues, Gensonn voted for death and against reprieve.
Although he was one of the most virulent critics of the Paris Commune and the
Montagnards, when the Convention voted on the impeachment of Marat (April 13,
1793), he declared himself incompetent to judge him.
Gensonn was an inuential member of this assembly, holding ofces of secre-
tary (October 18, 1792) and president (March 1793). He sat on the constitution
and diplomatic committees.
Accused by Marat of being an accomplice of the treacherous General Dumouriez,
Gensonn was placed under house arrest during the uprising of June 2, 1793. Al-
though he wrote a famous protest against this event, in which he portrayed himself
as the victim of a popular movement and a would-be legal assassination, he did
not ee from Paris as did many of his colleagues. However, Gensonn helped to
promote the counterrevolution in the department of the Gironde by sending his
address to the sections of Bordeaux, which arrived on June 8. Gensonn remained
in prison until his execution on October 31, 1793. He went to his death with dig-
nity. See also Civil Constitution of the Clergy; French Revolutionary Wars; Girondins;
Jacobins; The Mountain; Political Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Favreau Bertrand. Gensonn ou la fatalit de la Gironde. In La
Gironde et les Girondins, ed. Franois Furet and Mona Ozouf. Paris: Editions Payot, 1991;
Kuscinski, A. Gensonn, Armand. In Dictionnaire des Conventionnels. Paris: Socit de
lhistoire de la Rvolution franaise, 1916; Stephens, H. Morse. The Principal Speeches of the
Statesmen and Orators of the French Revolution, 1789 1795. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1892; Whaley, Leigh. Radicals: Politics and Republicanism in the French Revolution. Stroud, UK:
Sutton, 2000.
LEIGH WHALEY
George III, King of Great Britain (1738 1820)
George III was king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 to 1820, elector of
Hanover from 1760 to 1814, and king of Hanover from 1814 to 1820. His tumul-
tuous reign endured signicant political upheavals, but Britain emerged stronger
than ever before at his death. George William Frederick was born on June 4, 1738,
at Norfolk House, St Jamess Square, the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Au-
gusta, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Gotha. He had seven siblings. George
was the rst of the Hanoverian line to be born and raised entirely in England and
spoke uent English, unlike his predecessors.
George was tutored by George Lewis Scott, a fellow of the Royal Society, and
Andrew Stone. George learned German, French, some Latin, mathematics, ancient
history, British and European history, the British constitution, and governance. When
the tutors were falsely accused of favoring Jacobite ideology, they were replaced.
Georges household was administered by the Earl of Harcourt, while the Bishop of
Norwich and Thomas Hayter concluded his formal education. George was continu-
ally upbraided for the slightest infraction or seemingly inappropriate comment or
behavior. The passive and cripplingly shy George accepted his parents stronger
love for his brother, Edward, and conned him to his brothers company, hoping
Edward would serve as a positive inuence to bring out some of the livelier aspects
of Georges personality. Cloistered in an adult world, George had no experience
with society and never learned to enjoy the company of adults, court life, or the
George III, King of Great Britain 299
endless royal ceremonies. He would be sharply criticized later in life for the traits
he developed as a child.
Upon the death of his father on April 20, 1751, the 12-year-old George became
Prince of Wales. He was strongly inuenced by his mother, Augusta, who served as
his regent, but she was in turn heavily reliant on the advice of John Stuart, the third
earl of Bute. George had always been socially isolated, and as a child and teenager
he was emotionally neglected. He therefore turned to the intellectual Bute as a
father gure, a relationship he had never experienced. Bute showed him affection
and some kindness. Bute quickly became Georges inspiration, his teacher, and his
mentor, inuencing and encouraging Georges interest in botany. While he eventu-
ally convinced George to become a patron of the arts, the domineering and exact-
ing Bute created an insecure and vacillating youngster who dreaded his mentors
displeasure.
As he matured, the kind-hearted George exhibited a religious, modest, extremely
moral, and temperate personality of sincere convictions complemented by an in-
nate rectitude. He proved to possess great personal courage, but he was often ex-
tremely obstinate. George was not, at any time in his life, a charismatic man. His
conscientious character seemed dull and boring to the public.
George was a practical man; he did not enjoy the royal lifestyle. He hunted and
enjoyed botany and agriculture, the latter earning him the pejorative sobriquet of
Farmer George. He liked working with mechanical contrivances. He showed little
interest in literature and the ne arts, though he became an enthusiastic bibliophile
as he aged. His collection of books was donated to the nation and became the nu-
cleus of the Kings Library at the British Museum. George eventually grew to enjoy
his private reclusive world, but this would create strong tensions and great misun-
derstandings that would have calamitous effects on the world stage.
On October 25, 1760, upon the death of his grandfather George II, George ac-
ceded to the throne at age 23. Georges rst decade as sovereign was politically
unstable, and he was burdened with political controversy of his own making, largely
due to his inexperience. George possessed neither tact nor subtlety, and was an
ineffective leader at a time when no formal political parties existed. He failed to
work prociently with the frequently shifting alliances that constituted the politi-
cal groupings in Parliament. This proved politically fatal. The Whig faction did not
favor the monarchy, while the conservative Tory members sided with the institu-
tion of kingship. George lacked foresight and had he installed an executive with
a proper infrastructure, he would have prevented much personal grief. Although
he rmly believed it was his patriotic duty to make parliamentarians work together,
ultimately he aimed to expand the Crowns inuence.
Georges personal life was exemplary for a monarch. On September 8, 1761, he
married the German noblewoman Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, daughter of
Charles, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They had not previously met. Charlotte was
the stronger character in the marriage, and she provided the emotional security
George had lacked most of his life. His decorum as both husband and father was
praiseworthy. He never took mistresses, and his dealings with his wife were always
above reproach. The couple remained devoted to one another for over 50 years of
a marriage that produced 15 children: George, Frederick William, Charlotte, Ed-
ward Augustus, Augustus Frederick, Sophia, Elizabeth, Ernest Augustus, Augustus
Frederick, Adolphus, Mary, Sophia, Octavius, Alfred, and Amelia. George bought the
Queens House, which was later renamed Buckingham Palace, for Charlotte. George
was irrationally possessive of all of his children. The Prince of Waless coming of age
in 1783 caused him a depression and, indeed, his sons generally disappointed him.
Provoked by the unsuitable and secret marriages of his brothers, George had the
Royal Marriages Act passed in 1772, so that the consent for any lineal descendant
of George II under the age of 25 had to be acquired from the sovereign for a lawful
marriage to occur, except for females marrying into other royal families. This act is
still in force today, and those who have married without the monarchs consent have
had to forfeit their rights to the throne. After the death of his youngest child and
frequent companion, Princess Amelia, in 1810, George was inconsolable. Several
historians intimate that he never fully recovered from her death.
A metabolic defect caused George to be aficted with porphyria in 1762. Twentieth-
century medical specialists have identied porphyria as a physical rather than men-
tal illness; it would incapacitate George numerous times throughout his life and
eventually led to insanity. Doctors at that time had no knowledge of the iniction,
nor did they understand how to treat it.
Upon his accession, George inherited responsibility for waging the Seven Years
War (1756 1763). The conict was fought on the Continent between Prussia and
Austria, supported by Russia, and in North America, India, and elsewhere between
Britain and France. Decisive campaigning by the best senior British commanders
who received adequate numbers of well-trained troops resulted in a victory over
the French at Quebec in 1759 and the eventual loss of Canada. When Spain ceded
Florida to Britain, the French were left without a strong foothold in North America
altogether.
George insisted on recovering the royal prerogative of appointing the prime
ministera prerogative lost to his predecessors. George relied on Lord Bute as
the former struggled with the burdensome royal responsibilities and quickly became
fully dependent on him. Neither George nor Bute liked the prime ministers William
Pitt the Elder, later the Earl of Chatham, and Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of New-
castle, both of whom resigned in 1761. George, determined to weaken the Whig fac-
tion, succeeded in this goal through coercion, patronage, and bribery, an approach
that worked well for the rst 20 years of his reign. As a result, he appointed the am-
bitious, tactless, and manipulative Bute as prime minister in 1761, upsetting many
members not only because he was a Scot but because he was totally unsuited for that
high ofce. The Treaty of Paris concluded the Seven Years War under Butes minis-
try. The votes of those British politicians who disagreed with the treaty were bought
off, and the public regarded the peace settlement as inadequate. In this respect, as
well as in others, Bute simply did not possess the personality required of a prime
minister, and he made numerous enemies. He was forced to resign in April 1763 but
remained a strong inuence on the kings political opinions for some time. By this
period Britain had become the premier colonial and naval power.
After Butes resignation George rapidly went through four different prime min-
isters: George Grenville, who began to tax the American colonists; Charles Watson-
Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham; William Pitt the Elder, who opposed
Georges American policies; and Augustus Henry Fitzroy, the third Duke of Grafton.
George also appointed to the cabinet mediocre members of Parliament who acted in
accordance with his wishes. While in the 1760s no particular group could control the
House of Commons, Edmund Burke, a Whig statesman, held George responsible for
George III, King of Great Britain 301
the political vacillation that characterized its politics. Burke thought that the cabinet
should solidify and create party loyalty, and that the king should symbolize commonly
accepted principles and use Parliament as understood by the countrys unwritten
constitution. This inadvertently produced the basis of modern-day party politics.
The economic decit of 114 million that Britain faced after the Seven Years War
caused a nancial crisis, with a heavy burden on the Treasury to service this debt.
Problems had been brewing and escalating since 1763. The Proclamation of 1763,
which governed territorial, social, and economic conditions after the British victory
in Canada, was an early catalyst for colonial dissension and drastically changed life-
styles in the colonies, bringing harsh limits to an already difcult life. Moreover, the
British Army policed the coloniesa much-resented practice. Administering the
vast expanse of territory was prohibitively costly at 2 million a year. George saw no
reason why the colonists should not help defray the costs of ghting a war on their
behalf; specically, he deemed it unfair that the British taxpayer should carry the
burden.
The king and Parliament were both astonished by the dissent shown by the colo-
nists, whose complaints were simply ignoredanother cause for the growing revo-
lutionary fervor. Grenville initiated the fatal mercantile policies. First the Plantation
Act (1754), then the Currency Act (1764), and then the Quartering Act were passed,
causing unexpected deance in the colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765, which re-
quired every ofcial document to be taxed, provoked an economic crisis. Although
the act was revoked, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act (1766), binding the
colonies to its legislation. The Townshend Acts of 1767 expanded the methods of
collecting revenue and intensied the mounting discontent, while in 1768 most
Bostonian households refused to billet British troops in their homes.
By 1770 George was more familiar with kingship and had learned how to work
within the constraints of Britains political system. He never wavered in using his ex-
ecutive power to win elections for his favorite candidates and ofcially disapproved
of many politicians. The stubborn king proved tenacious in his dealings and even-
tually used his guile to recover the royal prerogatives that had been granted to the
ministerial council. In 1770 he appointed Fredrick, Lord North, prime minister.
North and George worked well together, and the former remained in ofce for over
a decade.
George was stubborn and refused to accede to colonial demands; they revolted.
The King Street Riots of March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers killed ve Bostoni-
ans, resonated throughout the colonies, where the incident became known as the
Boston Massacre. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the Coercive Acts of 1774 were
deemed the nal offenses by the colonists. The insensitivity and disrespect conveyed
to the colonists by George and by Parliament were deemed unwarranted and be-
came additional factors contributing to the outbreak of rebellion in 1775.
The resulting American Revolutionary War became an ideological struggle, for
the colonists threatened Parliaments authority from the outset. Many colonists
believed they were being taxed unfairly yet enjoyed no representation in Parlia-
ment. Many insisted on receiving the same rights as British subjects in Britain well
before Thomas Paine published Common Sense. Paine attacked kingship as an insti-
tution and advocated a republican form of government, ideas the colonists read-
ily accepted. Many colonists deed the Prohibitory Act of 1776 and declared their
independence on July 4, 1776. The supremacy of Parliament clashed with many of
the colonists belief in an independent republic. Although he believed that the war
was economically indefensible, the king feared that permitting colonial disobedi-
ence would lead the Irish to follow with their own revolt. Consequently, George
stubbornly pursued the war until the nal rebel victory at Yorktown on October
19, 1781, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army. The Peace of Paris in 1783
secured British acknowledgment of the United States of America; the colonies were
irreversibly lost, and George was held responsible. Norths ministry was defeated in
1782. His successors, the Marquess of Rockingham, the Earl of Shelburne, and the
Duke of Portland, failed as prime ministers, after which George contemplated abdi-
cation. William Pitt the Younger succeeded them in 1783 and held ofce until 1801,
and again between 1804 and 1806.
Porphyria reappeared on November 5, 1788 when George physically attacked his
eldest son, George, the Prince of Wales. George was placed in a straitjacket and was
made to sit in a specially made iron chair. Doctors at the time still believed in the ex-
istence of evil humors and treated the king with various poultices. George recovered
by April 1789 and resumed his royal duties. A regency plan was later introduced and
approved by George after his recovery.
Political unrest continued to plague Georges reign, most dramatically during
the Gordon Riots of 1780 and in the 1798 Irish rebellion, in which the United Irish-
men unsuccessfully rose up in favor of Irish autonomy. Ireland was ofcially unied
with Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) to form the United Kingdom in
1801, the same year in which George came into conict with Pitt over the concilia-
tory Catholic Emancipation Act. Pitt wanted Catholic emancipation as a principle
included in the Act of Union with Ireland. George rmly opposed it, for he was
conscious of the religious strife experienced by previous British monarchs. As such,
he rmly upheld his role as head of the Church of England and urged defeat of the
policy. When, in order to win his favor, the parliamentary backbenchers agreed with
the king, Pitt resigned over the issue, thus reafrming Georges control.
Pitt was replaced by Henry Addington (later the rst Viscount Sidmouth), whose
administration collapsed in 1804. Pitt was returned to ofce but had given up his
proposals for Catholic emancipation. Instead, he concerned himself mainly with
combating Napoleonic France, though he died in January 1806. By 1807, with Lord
Grenville in ofce, George was nearly blind and required his secretary to read him
his ofcial papers. In one instance George mistakenly believed his Whig ministers
were trying to trick him and demanded restrictions designed to hamper the power
of the government. The kings ministers refused and were replaced by a succession of
Tory governments under the Duke of Portland from 1807 to 1809, Spencer Perceval
from 1809 to 1812, and Lord Liverpool from 1812 to 1827.
From 1808, British forces gradually pushed the French from the Iberian Pe-
ninsula and contributed to the nal defeat of Napoleon when Anglo-Allied forces
under the Duke of Wellington defeated the emperor at Waterloo in 1815.
Social unrest characterized the last years of Georges reign. The economic down-
turn that struck Britain in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars brought mass unem-
ployment and severe economic depression. Luddite agitators wrecked factories and
machinery in an attempt to preserve their manual labor jobs. Emerging industri-
alization exacerbated the already-strong class distinctions. The Enclosure Acts of
1801 resulted in less need for agricultural workers, who ed to the cities in the hope
of nding work. In addition, the Corn Law of 1815, meant to temporarily exclude
Georgia 303
foreign grain from the country, instead increased prices. Social reform became the
preeminent issue, but the government replied with oppressive measuresmost
infamously in the form of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, which resulted in several
deaths and hundreds of injuries. Dissent was quashed by the passage of the Six Acts
of 1819, which repressively squashed opposition to social and political reform.
Conversely, progressive improvements were introduced at the same time: the
slave trade was abolished in Britain in 1807, the population increased as a result
of rising standards of living, and advances were made in agricultural and indus-
trial methods. The later years of Georges reign also witnessed a great outpouring
of English literature by writers and poets such as Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats.
George granted a charter to the Royal Academy and encouraged the sciences. He
strongly supported the works of Cook, Byron, Wallis, and other explorers.
In his lucid periods, George was always a kind and well-intentioned man who
sincerely believed his actions were benecial for his country. But by 1810, Georges
porphyria had permanently incapacitated him to the extent that he was unable to
rule. He was incorrectly deemed insane, and his son George became prince regent.
George III died at Windsor Castle on January 29, 1820. He is known to history as the
king who lost the American colonies. Ultimately, he suffered from all-too-human
frailties and was confronted by problems too sizeable for his limited personality to
solve. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Brooke, John. King George III. London: Constable, 1972; Macalpine,
Ida. George III and the Mad Business. London: Allen Lane, 1969; Namier, Sir Lewis Bernstein.
England in the Age of the American Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1961; Pares, Richard. King
George III and the Politicians. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953; Watson, J. Steven. The Reign of
George III. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Georgia
Founded in 1733, the colony of Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the
United States Constitution in 1788. Georgia played little part in the events leading
up to the American Revolution. The French and Indian War (1756 1763) had left
Britain in considerable debt. As a result, Britain passed a series of acts pertaining to
the colonies that taxed a number of products and goods. Though the rst of these
acts, the Sugar Act, caused public outcry throughout New England, Georgia only
really became involved after the passage of the Stamp Act.
Georgians in Savannah who were opposed to the new act took to the streets,
burning and hanging the efgies of stamp collectors. Despite these incidents,
the colony failed to send a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress held in New York
in November 1765. Georgia also neglected to send representatives to the First
Continental Congress, where the other 12 colonies drafted the Declaration of Rights
and Grievances.
Most Georgians continued to hope for reconciliation with Britain. Once news of
the confrontations at Lexington and Concord (April 1775) reached Georgia, how-
ever, public sentiment essentially turned against the British. In July, Georgians cap-
tured a British vessel anchored off the coast, sending most of the gunpowder they
found to the Continental Congress.
304 Germain, Lord George
The following year, Georgians arrested the royal governor of the colony. Once
the revolutionaries were in charge of the colony, they appointed ve delegates to
attend the next meeting of the Continental Congress. All of Georgias members of
the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence in July
1776. Upon hearing the news of the document, Georgians in Savannah staged a
mock funeral of King George III.
FURTHER READING: Coleman, Kenneth. History of Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1977; Johnson, Amanda. Georgia as Colony and State. Atlanta, GA: Walter W. Brown,
1938; Mitchell, Nicole. Georgia. In The Uniting States: The Story of Statehood for the Fifty United
States, ed. Benjamin F. Shearer. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
NICOLE MITCHELL
Lord George Germain was a British soldier and statesman whose narrow strategic
vision was partially responsible for the British colonial retreat from the 13 colonies.
The third son of the rst Duke of Dorset, Germain was educated at Trinity Col-
lege, Dublin. He was known as Lord George Sackville until 1770, when under the
terms of a will he took the name Germain. He was made commander-in-chief of
British forces in Germany in 1758, but his early military career, in the War of the
Austrian Succession (1740 1748) and the Seven Years War (1756 1763), ended
in court-martial and eventual dismissal. After leaving military service, he spent the
next 16 years rebuilding his parliamentary career.
Germains consistent opposition to all liberal measures made him highly unpop-
ular in his own country. He was compelled to barricade his house during the Gor-
don Riots in London in 1780. However, with the inauguration of the ministry under
Lord North ( January 1770 March 1782), Germains illiberal ideas found new sup-
porters. His tough attitude toward the colonies led to his appointment as secretary
of state for the American colonies. He zealously supported all vigorous measures
against the colonists and sternly opposed every attempt to effect a termination of
hostilities. He urged the various Native American tribes to unite against the rebels,
advocated the hiring of mercenaries, rejoiced over massacres conducted by the Indi-
ans, and enthusiastically praised British rapacity and cruelty in the colonies.
Germains strategic arrogance reected the shifting balance of power in Europe
and beyond. The international scene prior to 1763 was characterized as a bipolar
world where France and Britain were virtually equal superpowers, with awesome mil-
itary and economic resources and vast colonial empires centered in North America
but extending far aeld. The European balance of power, however, shifted in favor
of Britain, when, at the end of nearly a century of intermittent warfare, France suf-
fered her most humiliating defeat and was driven out of Canada and off the North
American continent in 1763. As long as France held Canada, Britain had remained
reluctant to force any kind of showdown with her 13 colonies. But with the French
threat eliminated, British attitudes changed.
However, the surrender of a British army at Saratoga in 1777 revealed Britains
military weakness, a circumstance of which her rivals could take full advantage.
France, in particular, was still seeking revenge for the losses she had suffered after
the Seven Years War. The French minister Choiseul had in 1765 prophetically stated
Germain, Lord George 305
that revolution in America would weaken Britain and reduce her as a threat to the
continental powers. Saratoga convinced the French that the time had come to act,
and in the following year, France joined the conict on the Patriot side.
France was Britains traditional political and economic enemy, and the British
had more stomach for a war of this kind than for one in which, in effect, they were
ghting fellow Englishmen. However, in order to conduct a successful campaign
against the French, it would be necessary to recall much of the naval strength then
on service in American waters. Clearly, many in Britain felt that the time had come
to negotiate with the American colonies and secure peace, even at the price of
granting full independence to the rebels.
The entry of Spain into the war, when Spain signed the Convention of Aranjuez in
1779, increased the problems facing the British government, since Spain threatened
Gibraltar and Minorca. In 1780 another European threat appeared. Britain, since
France had entered the war, had insisted on the right to search Dutch ships carry-
ing Baltic naval stores to France. The Dutch resented this and, in an attempt to gain
protection from the British, began negotiations to join Tsarina Catherine IIs League
of Armed Neutrality. The threat of facing the whole league, should the Dutch join
it, forced the British government to declare war on the United Provinces, on the
pretext that the Dutch were negotiating with the Americans. Britain was now in the
position of being at war with a large part of Europe as a direct result of the war with
America. Almost inevitably, the effort of trying to conduct such a war, with a large
proportion of the Royal Navy occupied in American waters, while also attempting to
press on with the war against Europe and facing opposition in Parliament, did noth-
ing to alleviate Lord Norths despairing view of his prospects. The growing war in
Europe also helped to persuade independent members of Parliament that the only
realistic course to follow was to negotiate for peace with the Americans.
The European factorthe absence of continental allies and the entry of France
and later Spain into the wardestroyed any possibility of victory, if one had in fact
ever existed. The defeat of Burgoynes army at Saratoga in 1777 changed what was
a colonial rebellion into a wider conict. The government in London, experienc-
ing a dilemma as to whether it should ght a land war or a naval war, and how
to conduct it, never developed a strategically unifying concept. For his part, Ger-
main seemed unwilling or unable to develop a comprehensive strategic initiative.
He was not helped by the deep suspicions and rivalries among the British generals
themselvesHowe, Burgoyne, Clinton, and Cornwallisand between the army and
the navy. Lord Germains arrogance and lack of strategic understanding, moreover,
ensured the defeat of General John Burgoyne at Saratoga.
As secretary for America, Germain was completely ignorant of American geog-
raphy and the character of the colonists. One of his worst mistakes as far as British
military efforts in America were concerned was his propensity to tie down his eld
commanders by issuing minute instructions. Exacerbating this problem, he repeat-
edly issued exact orders but failed to provide adequate reinforcements to enable
them to be carried out. Germain also utterly failed to act as an efcient liaison
between eld commanders by not coordinating concurrent battle plans. He often
bypassed theater commanders and wrote directly to their subordinate ofcers, is-
suing confusing or contradictory orders. Underscoring all of this was the fact that
some ofcers in the eld found it difcult to serve under him because of his previ-
ous conviction for disobedience.
306 Girondins
As to his relations with the commanders in America, Germain was regularly at
odds with Sir Guy Carleton, the commander of British forces in Canada. This situa-
tion led to much consternation for Howe, who was ghting a major conict with lit-
tle help, coordination, or guidance from London. Germain was a typical maladroit
who contributed his fair share to the disaster but never missed a chance to criticize
others for their failures. Thus, a substantial amount of the criticism leveled at Howe
that surfaced during and after the war was orchestrated by Germain to cover his
own poor performance. The British strategic confusion, aggravated by Germains
arrogance, ultimately contributed to British defeat in America and resulted in the
loss of the 13 colonies.
FURTHER READING: Anderson, Troyer Steele. The Command of the Howe Brothers during
the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936; Bird, Harrison. March to
Saratoga: General Burgoyne and the American Campaign. New York: Oxford University Press,
1963; Brown, Gerald Saxon. The American Secretary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1963; Byrd, Martha. Saratoga: Turning Point in the American Revolution. Philadelphia:
Auerbach, 1973; Elting, John R. The Battles of Saratoga. Monmouth Beach, NJ: Philip Freneau
Press, 1977; Sobel, Robert, For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga. London:
Greenhill Books, 1997.
JITENDRA UTTAM
Germany
See Prussia and Germany, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Girondins
Girondins is the name used by historians to describe a loosely knit group
of French deputies who contested the Montagnards for control of the National
Convention. The Girondin factions fate was closely tied to the rise of Parisian po-
litical radicalism: it owed its origin to anti-Parisian sentiment following the storming
of the Tuilleries on August 10, 1792, and to the September Massacres of the same
year, and it was overthrown by still another Parisian insurrection on June 2, 1793.
Revolutionary gures commonly associated with the Girondins include Jean-Pierre
Brissot, Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, Jrme Ption, and Franois Nicolas Lonard
Buzot. Still, the term Girondin is quite controversial; not only is there disagreement
as to which deputies belonged to the Gironde, but some historians even contend that
the Gironde barely existed or existed only in the Mountains imagination.
The term Girondin owes its origins not to the Girondins themselves, but rather
to their left-wing Montagnard opponents, who claimed as early as April 1792 that a
counterrevolutionary faction had coalesced around deputies of the department of
the Gironde. Girondin was in fact only one of several contemporary terms, includ-
ing Brissotins, Rolandins, and Buzotins, that were employed in Montagnard
attacks against Brissot and his political allies in the hall of the National Convention.
Whichever label was applied, the message was clear: these deputies were seeking
the treasonous gain of their faction rather than the general good of the peoplea
point that was hammered home repeatedly during the Montagnard-orchestrated
trial of the Girondins in the summer and early fall of 1793. To a large degree, then,
the idea of a Girondin faction was constructed after the members of that faction
Girondins 307
had already been removed from the stage of history. As for the supposed Girondins
themselves, they consistently denied membership in any political party.
In general, historians have accepted the truth of Montagnard rhetoric, and
most histories of the French Revolution divide the Convention into Montagnard
(left-wing), Plain (centrist), and Girondin (right-wing) factions. There has been less
agreement on what factors determined membership into these groups. One tradi-
tional view concerning the Girondins is that they represented the class interests of
the commercial bourgeoisie of the coastal seaport towns, as opposed to the petty
bourgeois interests represented by the Montagnards. Very few historians still accept
this interpretation, however. Attempts to explain the Girondin-Montagnard split in
terms of age, education, or geographical origins have proved unsatisfactory as well,
prompting at least one historian (M. J. Sydenham) to argue for the abandonment
of the term altogether.
More recently, historians have sought to demonstrate the validity of the tradi-
tional categories by exploring political and ideological differences between the two
main groups. The Girondins, some argue, were united by a common opposition to
the Paris Commune and the Parisian sections, which increasingly claimed to rep-
resent the will of the French people and repeatedly challenged the authority of
the elected legislature. For this reason, many Girondins embraced federalism, at
least insofar as they called for the power of Paris to be balanced by the will of the
departments. Other historians have demonstrated that Girondin deputies generally
took a legalistic, constitutional attitude toward political problems, as opposed to
Montagnard deputies, who were more likely to appeal to the will of the people and
inalienable natural laws.
Be that as it may, the Girondin conversion toward legalism and anti-Parisian poli-
tics came relatively late in the history of the Revolution. In the period before the
summer of 1792, in fact, the deputies of the future Mountain and Gironde were fel-
low travelers of the Revolution, united by their political radicalism and shared social
connections. Members of both groups were active in the Paris political societies, for
example, and in September of 1790, Brissot and Ption, two future Girondin lead-
ers, were even invited along with the arch-Montagnard Maximilien Robespierre
to Camille Desmoulins wedding. What is more, members of both groups drank
deeply from the same philosophic wells, especially the writings of Montesquieu and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The work of Rousseau was especially crucial, as it provided
future Girondins and Montagnards not only with a set of radical political doctrines,
but also a model of republican virtue and noble martyrdom that many future Giron-
dins would later follow to their graves.
For the most part, the ssures that would later divide the two groups did not
yet exist in 1789, at the start of the Revolution. Few members of either the future
Montagnard or Girondin factions were elected to the Estates-General, which gov-
erned France under the name of the National Assembly until late 1791, and those
who were elected to that body found that their radicalism set them at odds with the
more moderate majority. The future Girondins and Montagnards were not idle,
however, and took advantage of the opportunities afforded by local elections, new
political clubs, and the new journalistic opportunities provided by the relaxation
of censorship to participate in revolutionary politics. The crucial formative event
for these radicals in this period was the ight to Varennes, the kings attempted
defection from the Revolution in June 1791, which persuaded many of these radicals
308 Girondins
to abandon monarchical sentiments in favor of republican ideals. In the period
that followed, some future Girondins rose to positions of considerable inuence:
several future Girondins served as ministers for Louis XVI in the spring of 1792,
and Brissot dominated French foreign policy in the same period. These men were
the exception, however; during this period, most Girondins and Montagnards con-
tinued to participate in revolutionary affairs in more modest ways, such as through
municipal politics, journalism, and participation in the increasingly inuential
Jacobin Club.
The Montagnards and Girondins, then, ought to be counted as a single radical
group headquartered in the Jacobin Club until the Parisian insurrection of August 10.
Still, a perceptive observer might have noticed that ssures were already forming in
the edice of the radical movement by the summer of 1792. Some splits were the
fruit of personal dislikes, such as a growing atmosphere of mutual suspicion between
Robespierre and Brissot. What is more, the willingness of some future Girondins to
serve as ministers to the king raised the hackles of some republican-minded future
Montagnards. Furthermore, common participation in the Cercle Social publishing
group served to forge strong social and political ties between a number of radicals
who would eventually be counted in the ranks of the Girondins.
Nonetheless, it was the political events of August and September that were chiey
responsible for the Girondin-Montagnard conict. The Parisian insurrection of
August 10 led to the election of a new National Convention for the purpose of pro-
ducing a republican constitution. As a result of the abolition of property require-
ments for voting and a certain amount of voter intimidation, radical candidates
swept the election, and all future Girondins and Montagnards were seated in the
Tuileries Palace for the opening of the Convention on September 22. By the time
this occurred, however, several circumstances had served to alienate Brissot and his
followers from their former radical allies. By the time of the election, Brissot had
fallen out with the Jacobin Club, and since the Jacobin Club exerted such a control-
ling inuence on the Paris election that it virtually handpicked the deputies, Brissot
and his allies regarded the Paris deputies, including Robespierre, as illegitimate.
Some of this was sheer sour grapes, since Brissot and other future Girondins wanted
to represent the prestigious city of Paris themselves. What is more, Brissot and his
friends were wary of the power exercised by the Paris Commune, the revolutionary
municipal government established after the August 10 insurrection and joined by
many radicals who would later be counted with the Mountain. This distrust of the
Commune turned into dismay after Brissot and his associates learned that members
of the Commune had debated arresting them shortly before the prison massacres
of September 2; if warrants had been drawn up, Brissot and his supporters realized,
they would have been sentenced to death.
Not surprisingly, then, Brissot and his friends launched a political campaign
against Robespierre and his allies almost as soon as the Convention opened. On
September 24, Buzot called for the formation of a special guard drawn from the
departments to protect the Convention from Parisian insurrection, a proposal that
outraged the future Montagnards, who had forged alliances with Parisian radicals.
The Montagnards were further infuriated by Jean-Baptiste Louvets October 29
so-called Robespierride speech, which accused Robespierre of aspiring to become
the dictator of France. The appeal to the people debate during the kings trial,
which ran roughly from December 26, 1792, to January 4, 1793, was also seen by
Girondins 309
Robespierres supporters as a Girondin attack on Paris and, by extension, them-
selves. The successful vote to impeach Jean-Paul Marat, a rebrand deputy with
ties to both Robespierre and the Paris Commune, was also seen as a Girondin plot.
In response to these attacks, Brissot and his friends were progressively purged
from the Paris Jacobin Club, which increasingly became dominated by Robes-
pierres clique.
It is important to note, however, that political alliances through most of this
period were still quite uid. The words Montagnard and Girondin were ban-
died about, but formal party structures were entirely absent, and relationships
between deputies tended to revolve around patronage and friendship, as well as
personal animosities with often-petty origins. The Mountain was a somewhat more
homogeneous faction than the Girondins and tended to display a greater degree of
uniformity in their voting record in the Convention, due in part to peer pressure
exerted by the Paris deputies and the Jacobin Club. The Girondin voting record,
by way of contrast, was far more inconsistent, with many Girondin deputies voting
against supposedly Girondin legislative proposals, such as the appeal to the peo-
ple in the kings trial and Marats impeachment. Still, clear patterns of factional
membership were beginning to crystallize over time, especially toward April and
May 1793.
Nonetheless, the fatal blow against the Girondins came not from within the Con-
vention, but from outside. Constant Girondin attacks on the Parisian assassins and
incendiaries had inamed public opinion in Paris, especially among the sans-culotte
militants in control of many radical sections, and economic shortages at home and
military defeat abroad in the spring of 1793 added further fuel to the re. The nal
straw, for the Parisian radicals, was the May 28 vote by the Convention to reinstate the
Commission of Twelve. This vote, which revealed the clearest Girondin-Montagnard
division of any vote to date, resurrected a much-hated committee within the Con-
vention charged to forestall Parisian insurrections. The result was exactly what the
commission had been established to prevent: the Convention was surrounded ve
days later by up to 10 thousand armed militiamen, who demanded the expulsion
and arrest of the 22 Girondin deputies. At rst, the expelled deputies suffered only
house arrest, but after the assassination of Marat on July 13, most were brought to
trial for treason and either took their own lives or were executed, proclaiming their
innocence and patriotism to the end. The Girondin faction, which had never been
much more than a loose association in any case, was now gone, and the way was
clear for the triumph of the Mountain, the dictatorship of Robespierre, and the
Reign of Terror. See also Jacobins; Sans-Culottes.
FURTHER READING: Higonnet, P. Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998; Kates, G. The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the
French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985; Lewis-Beck, M., A. Hildreth,
and A. B. Spitzer. Was There a Girondinist Faction in the National Convention, 1792 1793?
French Historical Studies 11 (1988): 519 36; Patrick, Alison. The Men of the First French Republic:
Political Alignments in the National Convention of 1792. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1972; Reilly, Benjamin. Polling the Opinions: A Reexamination of Mountain, Plain, and
Gironde in the National Convention. Social Science History 28 (2004): 53 73; Sydenham, M. J.
The Girondins. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1961; Whaley, Leigh. Radicals: Politics and
Republicanism in the French Revolution. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 2000.
BENJAMIN REILLY
310 Goddard, Mary Katherine
Goddard, Mary Katherine (1738 1816)
Mary Goddard was the rst publisher to print a copy of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence including the names of all the signatories, and the rst postmistress in the
United States.
Born on June 16, 1738, in Connecticut, she grew up in New London before mov-
ing in 1762, along with her widowed mother, Sarah (ne Updike), to Providence,
Rhode Island, where her elder brother, William, had opened a printing business.
The three worked together, and in the summer of 1765, when William moved to
Philadelphia, Mary and her mother continued with it themselves, publishing the
Providence Gazette from 1766 on, and then printing West s Almanack. In 1768 they sold
the printing works and moved to be with William in Philadelphia.
Mary Goddard assisted her brother, who printed and published the Pennsylvania
Chronicle, until 1773, when William moved again, this time to Baltimore, Maryland,
where he printed and published the Maryland Journal, urging the end to British
rule. Mary followed him in February 1774 and also started working on the journal,
which she edited and published throughout the American Revolutionary War.
In 1775, Mary Goddard took over the running of the Baltimore post ofce and
became the rst postmistress in America. She remained in that position for 14 years,
nally being dismissed, amid wide protests, when the government wanted a man to
take over so that he could more easily travel around, supervising the postal services.
After the Declaration of Independence was issued, it was printed by John Dunlap
in Philadelphia. In January 1777, however, Mary Goddard was the rst to print the
Declaration together with the names of all the signatories. As the document was re-
garded by the British as treasonable, printing it was fraught with risks. In 1784 William
Goddard returned to publishing the Maryland Journal, and following her dismissal
from the post ofce, Mary Goddard opened a bookshop. She died on August 12,
1816, in Baltimore. At her death, she freed a slave woman who had helped her in her
last years and made her the beneciary of her will. See also Newspapers (American).
FURTHER READING: Young, Christopher J. Mary K. Goddard: A Classical Republican in a
Revolutionary Age. Maryland Historical Magazine 96 (2001): 4 27.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Usually acknowledged as the rst systematic exponent of philosophical anar-
chism, Godwin also enjoyed a long career as a writer of ction, childrens literature,
and history. Born in Wisbech, England, Godwin came from a line of Protestant
nonconformist ministers and trained for the ministry himself at Hoxton Academy
in London. After losing his faith, he settled in 1783 in London, where he made a
precarious living as a political journalist, reviewer, and novelist. He rose to sudden
fame in 1793 with the publication of An Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and Its In-
uence on General Virtue and Happiness. Political Justice, as the work came to be known,
was an important contribution to the pamphlet war that surrounded the outbreak
of the French Revolution. Responding to the conservative criticisms of Edmund
Burke, Godwin crystallized and extended existing critiques of aristocracy and mon-
archy, arguing ultimately for the immorality of all government as it controverted
the human individuals essential and denitive right of private judgment. The work
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 311
caused a sensation, and during the mid-1790s Godwin was regarded as Britains
premier liberal intellectual. Godwins fame was enhanced by his publication in 1794
of the novel Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams. Part detective
novel, part psychological thriller, and part damning critique of the British political,
social, legal, and penal systems, Caleb Williams instantly achieved and has deservedly
retained, the status of a classic. It was, as Godwin admitted, an attempt to dissemi-
nate to a wider audience the political and moral ideas of Political Justice. In 1797,
Godwin married the feminist philosopher and novelist Mary Wollstonecraft, with
whom he had a daughter, Mary, later the author of the horror novel Frankenstein.
Although prolic in his literary output over the rest of his long life, Godwin never
attained the fame of this early phase of his career. Godwins life was also a continual
struggle against poverty, and his choice of literary output usually reected his nan-
cial needs. Among Godwins important other writings are the novels St. Leon (1799)
and Fleetwood (1805); his biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, Memoirs of the Author
of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798); and his History of the Commonwealth of
England: From Its Commencement, to the Restoration of Charles the Second (1824 1828).
Godwins writings attract increasing scholarly interest, but most attention continues
to be devoted to Political Justice and Caleb Williams. Godwin was undoubtedly an in-
novator in the detective novel and an important political theorist who took to its
logical, if extreme, end the rationalism and perfectibilism of liberal Enlightenment
thought.
FURTHER READING: Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fiction of Godwin,
Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; Locke, Don. A Fantasy
of Reason: The Life and Thought of William Godwin. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980;
Marshall, Peter. William Godwin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984; Philp, Mark.
Godwins Political Justice. London: Duckworth, 1986; St. Clair, William. The Godwins and the
Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
ROWLAND WESTON
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist, is
one of the most inuential gures of modern literature and important thinkers in
Western culture. Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main to the family of a lawyer,
Johann Caspar Goethe, and Katherine Elisabeth Textor, the daughter of the mayor
of Frankfurt. In 1765, Goethe went to Leipzig to study law. There he wrote his earliest
lyric poems, which were published in 1769. After a period of illness, he completed
his studies at Strasbourg in 1770 1771. In Strasbourg, Goethe met Johann Gottfried
von Herder, who became a close friend. For 20 years Herder exercised a vital inu-
ence on Goethes intellectual development, and it was through Herder that Goethe
became interested in Shakespeare and Ossian and German folk poetry.
After graduation, for a short period of time Goethe practiced law in Frankfurt
and Wetzlar, but disappointed, he turned to literature. He contributed to the Frank-
furter Gelehrte Anzeigen and published his novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The
Sorrows of Young Werther) in 1774. Written as a series of letters from a sensitive young
artist with commentary by the editor, the novel depicts emotional breakdown lead-
ing to suicide. Printed anonymously, the book started the controversial Werther-Fieber
(Werther Fever), a wave of admiration and imitation of the romantic hero all across
312 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Europe. The Sorrows of Young Werther elevated Goethe to the position of leader of
the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement. Reecting on the zeitgeist of
the age of sentiment, in his novel Goethe stressed subjectivity, an enthusiasm for
nature, and the importance of the emotional life of the individual.
In 1775, Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, invited Goethe to Weimar, where
he spent the rest of his life. At the Weimar court, Goethe immersed himself in state
affairs as the privy councilor, the head of the state theater and of various scientic
institutions, a council member, a member of the war commission, director of roads
and services, and administrator of the courts nancial matters. He also became
the center of Weimars cultural and intellectual life. During 1786 1788, Goethe
traveled through Italy. This trip inspired his enthusiasm for the classical ideal, as
he elaborated in his Die italienische Reise (1816, Italian Journey) and in Winckelmann
und sein Jahrhundert (1805, Winckelmann and His Century). While in Italy, Goethe
carried out geological and botanical research in Naples and Sicily, climbed Mount
Vesuvius, and wrote his rst version of Faust. During this period he met Christiane
Vulpius, his future wife and mother of his children.
In 1792, as an ofcial historian, Goethe accompanied the Duke of Saxe-Wiemar
in the campaign against revolutionary France and participated in the historic Battle
of Valmy. In 1794, Goethe established a friendship and close collaboration with Fried-
rich von Schiller, who, to some extent, inuenced the development of Goethes aes-
thetic theory. In 1808, Goethe published the rst part of Faust, nishing the drama
only in 1831, the year before his death.
Goethe is a cultural and intellectual force not only for Germany, but for Europe
as a whole. His life and works reected and inspired several trends in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries. Starting with Sturm und Drang, with its cult
of sensibility and critique of the principles of the Enlightenment, he immersed him-
self in the movement of Weimar classicism and profoundly inuenced romanticism.
His poetry, dramas, novels, novellas, essays, and autobiographical volumes became
of central importance to world literature.
Goethe himself expected to be remembered as a scientist. His scientic interests
were extensive, including the conceptualization of morphology, which is fundamen-
tal to the theory of evolution; his discovery of the human intermaxillary bone; and
his formulation of a vertebral theory of the skull. Goethe considered Zur Farbenlehre
(Theory of Colors, 3 vols., 1810) to be his most important work. A general explanation
of color, it is better known for Goethes criticism of the Newtonian doctrine of light
and colors. Goethes polemic is traditionally interpreted as an episode in the battle
between romantic poetry and physical theory. It is also often seen as an attempt at
subversion of the tyranny of the master Newton by the dilettante Goethe and
an indication of Goethes concern with overthrowing mechanical philosophy as
an embodiment of a dangerous political ideology.
Perceptions of a political Goethe are a controversial issue. His name was used in
the establishment of the ideological foundations for the second and third German
empires, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich. Germanys national hero, he be-
came a poster boy for the ideology of romantic nationalism. Given his activity as a privy
councilor and head of the War Commission of Saxe-Weimar, Goethe is often seen as
a conservative who supported the state and the old order. He showed a skeptical re-
serve toward the French Revolution and played rather a harsh role in his policing of
professors at the University of Jena, from which Johann Fichte was dismissed from the
La Grande Chambre 313
faculty. At the same time, his widely humanistic views and his emphasis on toleration
and the right and power of the individual to inquire freely into political affairs are
often overlooked. See also Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Kant, Immanuel.
FURTHER READING: Hoffmeister, Gergart, ed. The French Revolution and the Age of Goethe.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1989; Richards, Robert J. The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and
Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002; Sharpe, Lesley,
ed. The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002;
Stephenson, Roger. Goethes Conception of Knowledge and Science. Edinburgh, UK: University
Press, 1995; Ugrinsky, Alexej, ed. Goethe in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1987; Williams, John. The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
NATALIE BAYER
The riot at Golden Hill, actually a clash between local colonists and British soldiers,
occurred in New York City on January 19, 1770, over one year before the better-
known confrontation referred to as the Boston Massacre. Tensions among New
Yorkers had been simmering since the British government imposed the Quartering
Act of 1765 and then the New York Restraining Act of 1767 on the colony. The Sons
of Liberty led local protests against the acts and erected a liberty pole in deance
of the British. On January 18, an estimated 3,000 New Yorkers roamed the streets
and offered threats to any armed soldiers found outside their quarters in response
to the destruction of the liberty pole. The next day, British troops placed placards
denouncing and ridiculing the actions of the Sons of Liberty and their supporters
around the city.
A group of local citizens seized three soldiers with placards, and approximately
20 British troops attempted to intervene and rescue their comrades. As more local
citizens arrived, a ght erupted between the two groups, forcing the soldiers to
retreat toward Golden Hill, where they were reinforced by more men from the Brit-
ish garrison. The ghting escalated as the soldiers began using their bayonets on the
crowd before withdrawing back to their barracks. Contemporary reports indicate that
one New Yorker died and several were wounded. However, researchers believe that
while several locals and soldiers were injured, no one died in the riot. See also Ameri-
can Revolution; Townshend Acts.
FURTHER READING: Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York. New York: Scribners, 1975.
TERRY M. MAYS
La Grande Chambre
In the ancien rgime, the Parlement of Paris was the supreme court of justice in
France. Previously named the Chambre au Plaidthe central pleading chamber
the Grande Chambre was the core of the Parlement. There were other chambers,
such as the Chambre des Enqutes, which held judicial inquests; the Chambre de
Requtes, which dealt with petitions; the Chambre de la Tournelle, which settled
criminal cases; the Chambre de la Mare, which handled sh trade affairs; and the
Chambre de lEdit, which originated after the Edict of Nantes (1598), which settled
cases where Protestants were involved.
314 Grattan, Henry
The Grande Chambre, which had over a hundred magistrates, dukes, and other
peers, handled appeals from lesser courts. It dealt with trials concerning peers, mem-
bers of the aristocracy, members of the Parlement, and the kings rights. The rst
presidentle premier presidentwas appointed by the king, but other members attained
their acted positions through purchase from the sovereign dating back to the reign of
Francis I in the early sixteenth century. The Parlement acted as a legislative body, cre-
ating laws that applied within its jurisdiction. It could also refuse to accept legislation
with which it disagreed until a lettre de cachet signed by the king was received. Imme-
diately before the French Revolution, the Parlement blocked reforms, although harsh
methods of execution and judicial torture were abolished by Louis XVI in 1788.
FURTHER READING: Royer, Jean Pierre. Histoire de la justice en France, de la monarchie absolue
la Rpublique. Paris: PUF, 2001; Soman, Alfred. Criminal Jurisprudence in Ancien-Regime
France: The Parlement of Paris in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. In Crime and
Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada, ed. Louis A. Knaa. Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier
ISABEL PEREZ-MOLINA
Henry Grattan never held any important political ofce, failed to achieve many
of his cherished political aims, and spent nearly 40 years on the opposition benches
in the Irish and Westminster parliaments, yet he was undoubtedly one of the most
important gures in Irish politics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies. A member of the Irish parliament from 1775 to 1797, and a member of the
Westminster parliament from 1805 to his death in 1820, he was renowned for his
well-prepared and well-delivered speeches in support of various liberal and reform-
ing measures. Engaging, generous, and highly principled, he strove, largely unsuc-
cessfully, to steer a moderate, liberal course between the reactionary upholders of
the Protestant Ascendancy and the radical members of the United Irishmen, and
between the sectarian bigots in both the Catholic and the Protestant camps.
Grattan was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College in that city and for
four years at the Middle Temple in London. Called to the Irish bar in 1772, he soon
showed a preference for a career in politics. He entered the Irish House of Commons
in 1775 and quickly became a leading spokesman for the Patriot opposition to the
conservative government in Dublin Castle during the crisis of the American Revolu-
tion. With the aid of the Patriots in the Irish parliament and with the backing of the
armed Irish Volunteers outside Parliament, he sought to gain greater political inde-
pendence for Ireland without pressing for a complete breach with Britain. In 1780,
because of its failures in the American Revolutionary War, Britain made concessions,
granting Ireland free trade with the British colonies and in 1782 conceding a meas-
ure of legislative independence by repealing the Irish Declaratory Act of 1720 (which
had maintained the Westminster parliaments right to pass legislation for Ireland)
and removing the Irish Privy Councils right to interfere in the legislation drafted
by the Irish parliament. Grattan was satised with these achievements and did not
support Henry Floods successful effort to secure the Renunciation Act of 1783 from
Westminster that explicitly renounced Britains right to legislate for Ireland.
Grattan was granted 50,000 by the Irish parliament for his efforts in 1780 1782,
but he did not achieve as much as he thought, since Britain still exercised very
Grgoire, Henri 315
considerable inuence over Irish politics and still appointed the Irish executive.
He did show that the Irish parliament could resist the British and Irish executives
by leading the successful campaign against Pitts proposed free-trade treaty between
Britain and Ireland in 1785 and by securing the Regency Act in 1789, which would
have granted the Prince of Wales very considerable powers had George III not re-
covered from his illness. After some hesitation, Grattan took up the cause of par-
liamentary reform and Catholic relief in the early 1790s but found that his small
group of Irish Whigs stood on narrow ground between the radical Society of United
Irishmen, who pressed for more extensive reforms, and the leaders of the Prot-
estant Ascendancy, who resisted any political or religious concessions. He hoped
that the liberal lord lieutenant, Earl Fitzwilliam, would secure moderate reforms in
1794 1795 and was appalled when Fitzwilliam was dismissed. He gradually withdrew
from parliamentary life and did not stand for reelection in 1797. In 1798 he was
in England during the terrible events of the Irish rebellion. This rebellion further
weakened his political inuence and set back the whole cause of reform.
In late 1799 Grattan reentered the Irish parliament but was unsuccessful in his
efforts to defeat the legislative union between Britain and Ireland in 1800, and he
was alarmed at Pitts failure to secure Catholic emancipation. He again retreated
from politics but was persuaded by the Whigs to enter the new united parliament
in 1805, and he served in it until his death in 1820. Throughout this period he was
critical of political corruption and regularly and bravely brought forward petitions
and motions for various measures of Catholic relief, including the type of reform
for Catholic emancipation eventually passed in 1829, but he failed to defeat the
entrenched Protestant interest. He was, however, praised as a rm friend of the
Catholic cause in Ireland. See also Tories.
FURTHER READING: Gwynn, Stephen. Henry Grattan in His Times. Dublin, UK: Brown and
Nolan, 1939; Mansergh, Danny. Grattans Failure: Parliamentary Opposition and the People in
Ireland 1779 1800. Dublin, UK: Irish Academic Press, 2005; McDowell, R. B. Grattan: A Life.
Dublin, UK: Lilliput Press, 2001.
H. T. DICKINSON
Great Britain
See Britain (1760 1815)
Henri Grgoire was a French priest who was an inuential politician during the
French Revolution. Grgoire, more commonly known as the abb Grgoire, was
born in the village of Vho in Lorraine. Prior to the Revolution, Grgoire was an
outspoken advocate of Jewish rights and won a prize from the Metz academy for an
essay that he wrote on this topic in 1788. Later that year, Grgoire was a representa-
tive at the Estates-General and was one of the priests who took part in the Tennis
Court Oath. Inuenced by Jansenism, Grgoire favored limited reform of the Cath-
olic Church and in 1790 took the oath of loyalty despite some concerns that he had
about the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. He was elected a bishop and served in
that capacity before being elected to the National Convention in 1792. It was when
Grgoire was appointed to the Colonial Committee that he joined the Socit des
316 Guadeloupe
Amis des Noirs, and his activism on behalf of oppressed peoples was expanded to
include slaves and gens de couleur.
During the radical phase of the Revolution, Grgoire continued to support the
revolutionary government despite some objections to its anti-clericalism and his
refusal to renounce his religious convictions. Following the Reign of Terror, Grgoire
worked to reestablish the constitutional church but later saw his efforts undermined
by Napoleons religious policies, including the Concordat of 1801, which Napoleon
signed with the papacy. Grgoire died in 1831, disappointed with the failure of the
Revolution he had supported. See also Religion; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Necheles, Ruth. The Abb Grgoire 1787 1831: The Odyssey of an Egalitarian.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971; Popkin, Jeremy, and Richard Popkin, eds. The Abb Grgoire
and His World. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2000.
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe refers to a series of islands in the eastern Caribbean. The most
prominent of these are the two islands of Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre. Spain was
the rst European power to colonize the island in 1626, displacing the Carib in-
habitants. However, France successfully wrested the island away from Spain, and in
1674 Guadeloupe became part of the French Empire. It was then that Guadeloupe
was transformed into a giant sugar plantation, which necessitated the importation
of thousands of African slaves. Slaves, the small white elite planter class; a number
of middle- to lower-middle-class whites, who lled modest positions in the economy;
and freed persons of color and mulattos made up the islands social structure. Slaves
accounted for the vast majority of the population.
At the height of the French Revolution, British troops and French royalists occu-
pied the island in 1794. However, the French revolutionary government sent Victor
Hugues and a military expedition to the island, which was retaken. In accordance
with the principles of the Revolution, Hugues abolished slavery. The resulting power
imbalance enraged the white planters. Hugues executed hundreds of white planters
in the ensuing power struggle.
The Consulate under Napoleon rescinded the slaves freedom and reestablished
slavery in 1802. British forces captured Guadeloupe in 1810 during the Napoleonic
Wars, but with the emperors defeat in 1815, Guadeloupe reverted to French con-
trol. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776 1848. London:
Verso, 1988; Duffy, Michael. Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower: British Expeditions to the West Indies and
the War against Revolutionary France. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
CHARLES ALLAN
A French revolutionary politician, Marguerite-Elie Gaudet was one of the leaders
of the Girondin faction in the National Convention. Guadet, the son of the mayor
of Saint-Emilion, received his bachelor of law in 1778 after he studied at Guyenne
and the University of Bordeaux. He registered as a lawyer for the Parlement of
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace 317
Bordeaux in 1781. Before the French Revolution, he worked as a secretary to the
lawyer Elie de Beaumont, a friend of Voltaire.
During the early years of the Revolution, Guadet participated in local politics. He
was elected an administrator to the department of the Gironde in 1790 and presi-
dent of the criminal court in 1791.
Guadet became involved in national politics in October 1791 when he was elected
to the Legislative Assembly for the Gironde department. In the Assembly, the offen-
sive against refractory priests was dominated by the radicals, or those who sat on the
Left: Guadet, Gensonn, Pierre Vergniaud, the Marquis de Condorcet, and Georges
Couthon. At the Legislative Assembly, he met Jean-Pierre Brissot and became an
active proponent of foreign war.
During July 1792, with his colleagues from the Gironde, Vergniaud and Gensonn,
Guadet entered into secret negotiations with Louis XVI in an attempt to reappoint the
Brissotin or pro-war ministry that had been in ofce from March to June. The deal,
which involved delaying the insurrection of August 10, which overthrew the monar-
chy, in return for the reappointment of pro-Brissot ministers, was a failure. As a mem-
ber of the Legislative Assemblys extraordinary commission on the eve of August 10,
Guadet was one of those deputies who attempted to stall the imminent revolution.
Guadet was reelected to the National Convention for the Gironde in 1792. He
was elected secretary on October 4 and president on October 18 and served on both
the diplomatic and legislative committees. In addition, he served on the Committee
of General Defense, which would become, in amended form, the famous Commit-
tee of Public Safety.
With respect to Louis XVIs trial, upon Guadets proposal, the Convention decreed
that it would deliberate on the questions that dealt with the kings guilt, the rati-
cation of the Assemblys vote by the people, and the type of punishment to be in-
icted. Guadet voted in favor of the referendum and death but with reprieve.
During the period of the Convention, Guadet became one of the most vocal
opponents of the Mountain or Jacobin faction. He demanded that a vote be taken
to impeach Jean-Paul Marat. Yet he voted himself incompetent to judge on April 13,
1793. The next day, Marat was impeached. He was less successful in his attempt to
have the Conventions sessions moved to Versailles later the same month.
Purged from the Convention and placed under house arrest on June 2, Guadet
ed to the Gironde, where he hid out for a year. He was guillotined on June 20,
1794. See also Brissotins; Jacobins; Parlements.
FURTHER READING: Furet, Franois, Mona Ozouf, and Bronislaw Baczko. La Gironde et
les Girondins. Paris: Payot, 1991; Guadet, J. Les Girondins, leur vie prive, leur vie publique, leur
proscription et leur mort. 2 vols. Paris: Dibier, 1861; Patrick, Alison. The Men of the First French
Republic: Political Alignments in the National Convention of 1792. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1972; Sydenham, Michael J. The Girondins. London: Athlone Press, 1961.
LEIGH WHALEY
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace (1738 1814)
Guillotin was a French doctor who recommended to the Constituent Assem-
bly that they adopt a mechanical means of implementing capital punishment in
revolutionary France. As a result of this recommendation, the device came to bear
his name, though he neither invented it nor further pursued its adoption.
318 Guillotine
Dr. Guillotin was a renowned physician who founded the French Academy of
Medicine and supported the French Revolution from its early stages. He belonged
to a group of revolutionaries (inspired by the reform writings of Cesare Beccaria)
who sought to eradicate capital punishment and to replace it with rehabilitation.
He, and others in his circle, envisioned the adoption of the guillotine as an inter-
mediary step that would make execution more equitable across social classes. On
October 10, 1789, he proposed six articles to amend the French penal code, includ-
ing the adoption of a new decapitation device. The Assembly accepted his proposals.
After the rst public execution by guillotine in 1792, Guillotins family fought
to have the name disassociated with the device. Ultimately unsuccessful, the fam-
ily changed their name instead. The e at the end of the name was added later to
make the word easier to pronounce in English. Records of the Committee of Public
Safety indicate that a Dr. Guillotin was executed by the device, which gave rise to
statements about the irony of his demise, but subsequent research has proved that
he died of natural causes well after the Reign of Terror had ended.
FURTHER READING: Morowitz, Harold. The Kindly Dr. Guillotin and Other Essays on Science
and Life. New York: Counterpoint Press, 1998; Soubiran, Andr. The Good Doctor Guillotin and
His Strange Device. Translated by Malcolm MacCraw. London: Souvenir Press, 1964.
LAURA CRUZ
Guillotine
The guillotine was a bladed instrument used for public executions beginning in
the late eighteenth century, especially during the French Revolution. Scholars believe
that it symbolizes both the ideology of the Enlightenment and its contradictions.
Prior to the use of the guillotine, public beheadings were performed with an
executioners ax. The ax was not always sufcient to remove the head cleanly, which
occasionally had grisly results. The guillotine, a wooden frame with a mechanism
for dropping a sharp metal blade, was designed to sever the head more efciently.
The rst modern guillotine was built by Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer work-
ing in Paris, in 1792. A French doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, advocated its use
by the French government because he believed it to be more humane than the ax.
Once adopted, the device was named after the doctor and became symbolic of the
Enlightened program for reform of crime and punishment.
The guillotine was frequently used by French revolutionaries, particularly during
the mass execution of political enemies during the period of power of the Commit-
tee of Public Safety, commonly known as the Reign of Terror. Scholars have fre-
quently pointed out the hypocrisy in using a more humane method for what would
seem to be an inhumane purpose. After the Terror, criminal reform took a turn
away from capital punishment and toward incarceration as a means of rehabilitating
criminals, though the guillotine remained in use in France until 1977.
FURTHER READING: Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Reprint,
New York: Vintage, 1995; Geroud, Daniel. Guillotine: Its Legends and Lore. New York: Blast
Books, 1992.
LAURA CRUZ
H
A revolution that took place in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, located
on the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, the Haitian Revolution
resulted in the abolition of slavery and the establishment of the independent state
of Haiti in 1804.
On the eve of the French Revolution of 1789, Frances sugar-, indigo-, and coffee-
producing colony of Saint-Domingue was the largest and most protable of all the
slave colonies in the Caribbean. Because of Saint-Domingues abundant natural
resources and competitive position on the world market, many white landowners
desired eventual autonomy or independence from France. Slave revolts were not
uncommon and the practice of marronage, or slaves running away and establishing
temporary refuges in the mountains, was frequent and became an effective means
by which slaves could organize. Situated between the 465,000 slaves and the 40,000
whites in the colonys legal hierarchy were the gens de couleur. In 1789 they num-
bered about 28,000 and ranged from recently freed slaves to wealthy plantation and
slave owners. The desires for freedom on the part of slaves, legal equality on the part
of gens de couleur, and autonomy on the part of white planters were among the causes
of the Haitian Revolution. Yet it was political developments in France that would
ultimately set in motion the series of events leading up to the Haitian Revolution.
In 1788 white planters, long displeased with the existing mercantilist policies
of the French crown, sent representatives to the meeting of the Estates-General in
the hopes of obtaining economic emancipation for Saint-Domingue. Aware of the
formation of abolitionist organizations, such as the Socit des Amis des Noirs, the
white planters formed the Club Massiac to represent their interests. The Revolu-
tion in particular also created opportunities for groups to dismantle the very ra-
cial hierarchy the Club Massiac sought to protect. Emboldened by the egalitarian
rhetoric of the French Revolution, the gens de couleur sent representatives, including
Julien Raymond and Vincent Og, to the newly formed National Assembly in 1789
to obtain active rights on an equal basis as white property owners. Frustrated by
the French governments refusal to enact such legislation, Og returned in 1790
320 Haitian Revolution
to Saint-Domingue, where he led a group of gens de couleur in an uprising that was
suppressed in 1791. Although initially a victory for the white planters, the suppres-
sion of this uprising ultimately destroyed any possibility of what could have been
a strategic alliance between the white planters and the gens de couleur, both of whom
wanted to protect the institution of slavery. Upon hearing the news of Ogs violent
capture and execution, the National Assembly in Paris enacted a decree on May 15,
1791, granting rights to all free people of color born to free parents. Adamant at
maintaining the existing racial hierarchy, the governor of Saint-Domingue refused
to promulgate the Assemblys decree. This resulted in renewed uprisings among the
gens de couleur.
Meanwhile, elite slaves on plantations all over the northern region of the colony
watched the disunity of the propertied classes with interest and met at the Bois Ca-
man to plan the revolt that would begin in August 1791 and take the propertied
classes by surprise. Soon the northern part of the colony became embroiled in slave
rebellions, while the southern and western parts were divided between areas con-
trolled by whites and areas controlled by gens de couleur, with both factions recruiting
rebelling slaves to ght on their side under various pretenses of freedom. When
news of the bloody slave revolt reached Paris, the most alarming aspect of it was the
fact that members of the colonial assembly had appealed to the governor of Jamaica
for help and, in one case, actually had written to the British government to invite
them to occupy and restore order in the colony. The French government, fear-
ing foreign invasion, sent civil commissioners headed by Lger-Flicit Sonthonax
to the colony to restore order. This was temporarily achieved in April 1792 when
France granted citizenship to all gens de couleur, thus winning their support.
The effects of the French Revolutionary Wars would soon reach Saint-Domingue
with British and Spanish invasions of the colony. Both powers recognized the tenuous
hold the French revolutionary government had over the colony and sought to form
alliances with various warring factions in an effort to defeat France and claim this
wealthy colony. Like Britain and Spain, France was forced to negotiate with the slaves
and in 1793 offered freedom to any slave who would ght on the French side against
the British and Spanish. In 1794 the decisive negotiation was made; the French gov-
ernment made good on Sonthonaxs original promise to free slaves with a decree
abolishing slavery in all the colonies. Toussaint lOuverture, who had initially fought
for the Spanish, was attracted by the promise of freedom and joined the French,
along with many of his followers. When Toussaint foiled a British invasion and an at-
tempt to overthrow the governor of Saint-Domingue in 1796, the French government
recognized that they depended on him to keep the island in French hands. Tous-
saint was appointed deputy governor, and in 1800 he became the governor. Conict
between Toussaint and French authorities in Paris arose in 1801 when Toussaint an-
nexed the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. French troops arrived in Saint-
Domingue in 1802, and Napoleon reinstated slavery. Slaves resumed their rebellion
and Toussaint was captured. Ultimately the slaves were victorious, earning their free-
dom in 1803 and independence from France in 1804. Jean-Jacques Dessalines be-
came the rst leader of the newly independent nation of Haiti, named in honor of
the islands indigenous Arawak inhabitants. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 17761848. Lon-
don: Verso, 1988; Fick, Carolyn. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below.
320 Haitian Revolution
Hamilton, Alexander 321
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990; James, C.L.R. Black Jacobins: Toussaint lOuverture
and the San Domingo Revolution. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1963.
Hamilton, Alexander (17551804)
Alexander Hamilton was an American soldier, politician, and statesman; author
of the Federalist Papers; and the rst secretary of the treasury of the United States
(17891795). Among those gures involved in the founding of the American re-
public who never became president, Hamilton ranks as the most signicant. His
recorded thoughts on the principles and purposes of American government and
his deeds in its service together reveal Hamilton to have been a major thinker on
the virtues and perils of republican government anywhere, but also a powerful in-
uence both on the formative history of the United States and its relationship with
the rest of the world.
Hamilton was born out of wedlock on the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis in
1755. When he was 10 years old, his father moved the family to the nearby island of
St. Croix and subsequently abandoned them, whereupon his mother opened a shop
while Hamilton found a job as a clerk at a trading post. It was in this position that
Hamilton was rst immersed in bookkeeping and economics and began to demon-
strate an extraordinary capacity for systematic self-education and adaptation to ad-
verse circumstance. The labor-intensive nature of the sugar trade at the time made
Hamilton a witness to the brutality of slavery and developed in him an aversion
that prevented him from ever owning slaves or endorsing the practice. The death
of Hamiltons mother made him an orphan at age 13, which of itself established a
lifelong habit of self-reliance and close collaboration with like-minded friends.
Friends and relations helped Hamilton at age 17 to secure passage to the colony
of New York, where he enrolled in Kings College (now Columbia University) in
1772, just as the American colonies were moving toward open revolt against Brit-
ish rule. There he absorbed a mass of historical, legal, constitutional, and political
knowledge and developed a precocious talent for its practical application. Not ini-
tially an enthusiast of the revolutionary cause, he was quickly driven into the thick
of the agitation by the works of James Otis and John Adams, coupled with the
Crowns inept demonstrations of imperial authority. Hamilton was gifted with the
pen and the sword. He was a strong speaker and was only surpassed in the art of
churning out revolutionary pamphlets in short order by Thomas Paine and Benja-
min Franklin. He joined the New York Militia in 1775, became a captain of an artil-
lery unit, distinguished himself at the siege of Yorktown, and gained the respect of
General George Washington, who appointed him his aide-de-camp with the rank of
lieutenant colonel. Washington found Hamilton to be the best executive ofcer in
his armyloyal, apparently fearless, and capable of performing difcult tasks with
thoroughness and speed.
Hamilton was also brimming with good ideas and acute perceptions. Among
the latter was an appreciation of the merits and limitations of the revolutionary
alliance with France. Hamilton spoke French uently, and as Washingtons aide-de-
camp, he established professional contacts and personal friendships with aristo-
cratic ofcers posted to America, the most notable being the Marquis de Lafayette.
322 Hamilton, Alexander
But Hamilton equally appreciated that French policy was motivated less by genuine
favor to the American cause than by the impulse to harm Britain in return for de-
feat in the Seven Years War. Beyond the expedient alliance of 1778, France had
no interest in a strong America. French benevolence would last no longer than was
convenient to French goals.
Proximity to Washington put Hamilton in a position to inuence the United
States Constitution once independence was won. Intellect and tireless drive did the
rest. During the revolutionary war, Hamilton witnessed rsthand the inadequacies
of the Continental Congress in furnishing supplies and soldiers. With Washington,
he developed strong opinions favoring energetic central government. In 1780, Ham-
ilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, daughter of a major Hudson Valley landowner,
and, once demobilized, began a successful Manhattan law practice and represented
New York at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Hamilton led the
Federalist side in the constitutional debates, accounting for two-thirds of The Feder-
alist, a series of 85 newspaper essays written together with James Madison and John
Jay on the fundamental principles and constituent institutions of government that
represent both the rst major work of political theory produced in America and the
blueprint for the Constitution. The coherence of Hamiltons ideas and the force
with which he articulated them did much to secure ratication of the Constitution.
Hamilton then served as secretary of the treasury under President George Wash-
ington (17891797) and worked to establish a strong national bank, assume the
debt of the individual states, and clear the national debt left over from the war. He
advocated assertive central authority, and his Report on the Subject of Manufactures
made the case for protective tariffs for the manufacturing sector. He also strove to
place American relations with Britain on an amicable and mutually protable basis
as quickly as possible. This led him to oppose American support for the revolution-
ary cause in France for prudential as much as ideological reasons and to support
the Jay Treaty of 1794, which reestablished trade relations with Britain. Hamilton
was an empiricist and pragmatist in the English tradition, for whom it did not fol-
low that independence from Britain meant the rejection of all things British. Of
events in France, he wrote to Lafayette in October 1789 that I dread the reveries
of your Philosophic politicians who appear in the moment to have great inuence
and who being mere speculatists [sic] may aim at more renement than suits either
with human nature or the composition of your Nation. Although Hamilton ap-
preciated on another level Frances mastery in power politicsa game be believed
the United States must equip itself to playhe rightly saw British dominance as the
international reality to be reckoned with over the next century. This perspective
led to conict with equally prominent gures of the founding generation, such as
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who held that the American republic owed
ideological fraternity with the French Revolution. Hamilton ridiculed their attach-
ment as womanish and argued that, whatever suitable return the United States
owed France for help in the struggle for independence, it did not include hating
and wrangling with all those whom she hates.
Jefferson and other Anti-Federalists also bitterly opposed Hamiltons designs for
strong central government on the grounds that a government actively promoting
industrial capitalism would inevitably be corrupted by the same. Some Anti-
Federalists took Hamiltons admiration of the British system as the mark of a closet
monarchist. Hamilton was nothing of the sort, but he neither subscribed to the
Hamilton, Alexander 323
classical liberal idealism of Jefferson nor cringed at statements evincing a vast ambi-
tion for the United States. Conict with a great naval power such as Britain would en-
danger the navigation and trade upon which the growth of the republic depended;
the United States, he argued, was the embryo of a great empire and the powers
of Europe would happily crush the American experiment if it were so imprudent
to hazard a premature contest of arms. Hamilton also looked with envy on Britains
capacity to mobilize wealth on a scale sufcient to support a large navy and wage
war at great distance from home. It was his inuence above all that led the United
States to establish a system of public debt resembling Britains, and Hamilton also
eventually overcame Jeffersons opposition to the establishment of the Bank of the
United States, modeling its charter on the Bank of England. These endeavors were
designed to build national strength and political unity. In the short term, Hamilton
deemed it imperative that the republic avoid any overseas commitments beyond
occasional alliances, a sentiment evident in Washingtons Farewell Address, which
Hamilton coauthored. The speech is often cited as the rst article of American
isolationism in the rst half of the twentieth century. In fact, abstinence from Euro-
pean affairs was for the purpose of building up national strength for the day when,
in Washingtons words, the United States would be able to bid deance, in a just
cause, to any earthly power.
Hamilton nonetheless used his inuence to help his rival Jefferson to win the pres-
idency over Vice President Aaron Burr, whom Hamilton distrusted personally and
politically. He also supported Jefferson in the Louisiana Purchase, deeming it im-
portant to American security that European power be progressively eliminated from
the North American continent and eventually the hemisphere. In this attitude, he
anticipated the Monroe Doctrine, most especially in the advocacy of a non-transfer
policy on European colonies in the Americas. In his own time, many of Hamiltons
ideas on the requirements of American government ran counter toin many cases,
rather, ahead ofthe spirit on the times in a young republic only recently torn from
British control. Many of those ideas stood the test of time and the American experi-
ence better than those of Jefferson, in particular the role of national government in
regulating and expanding the opportunities for national industry and commerce;
the preference for the instruments of warfare such as a large navy and a standing
professional army; and, in time, the advocacy of free trade and open seas as vital
national interests of the United States. It is fair to say that the United States evolved
as a commercial and military power on Hamiltons plan but also that successive
governments defended Hamiltonian policies with Jeffersonian rhetoric.
Hamilton died young and suddenly at the age of 49. Among his weaknesses was
a tendency toward intrigue that aroused the suspicions and passions of the politi-
cal rivals he routinely outmaneuvered. Aaron Burr, who hated Hamilton for having
barred him from the presidency in favor of Jefferson in 1800, was again thwarted by
Hamilton in his pursuit of the governorship of New York in 1804. Hamilton viewed
Burr as personally ambitious to a dangerous extent in much the same way as Jef-
ferson had come to regard Hamilton. Hamilton did indeed see the United States
as destined to become a commercial and military power, but one to be ruled by
the vigorous Whig structures of government he had advocated from the outset and
worked so hard to establish, rather than a demagogue like Burr, whom he suspected
of wanting to take New York out of the Union. When Burr lost the election, his
political career was effectively over. He promptly challenged his nemesis to a pistol
324 Hancock, John
duel over derogatory remarks Hamilton had made during the campaign. Hamilton
red wide, but Burr did not, and Hamilton was slain. See also American Revolution;
American Revolutionary War.
FURTHER READING: Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin, 2004; Ham-
ilton, Alexander. Hamilton: Writings. Washington, DC: Library of America, 2001; Harper, John
Lamberton. American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Mead, Walter Russell. Special Providence: American
Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. New York: Knopf, 2001; Pocock, J.G.A., The
Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, John Hancock, a mercantile shipper, revo-
lutionary statesman, and patriot, was the son of John Hancock, a Congregational
minister, and Mary Thaxter Hawke. Upon the death of his father when he was
eight, Hancock lived with his childless paternal aunt and uncle Lydia and Thomas
Hancock, attending Boston Latin School and graduating from Harvard College in
1754. During the Seven Years War (known in America as the French and Indian
War; 17561763), he aided his adoptive uncles mercantile-shipping business, which
traded in whale oil, wines, and general merchandise often under government con-
tracts. Upon his return from a visit to London in 1761, Hancock took over control
of the business and inherited the rm in 1764. He resented what he regarded as
the unjust British taxes and policies of the Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765),
the Townshend Acts (1767), and the Tea Act (1770) and resisted the enforcement
of the Navigation Acts generally at a time when Britain desired to tighten their appli-
cation following their salutary neglect during the war in an attempt to collect rev-
enues in the colonies.
Hancock entered politics as a Boston selectman (17651774) and as a member
of the Massachusetts General Court (17661774), generously distributing part of his
personal fortune to patriotic causes. He was protected by the Sons of Liberty when
his ship the Liberty was impounded for smuggling by customs collectors. He received
honorary masters degrees from Yale and Princeton in 1769 and honorary LL.D.
degrees from Brown and Harvard in 1788 and 1792, respectively.
Hancock was seen as a popular resistance leader against British tyranny and was
called upon as an orator to memorialize those who had fallen during the Boston Mas-
sacre of March 5, 1770. Hancock supported the uprising against the British East India
Company that culminated in the Boston Tea Party, even, according to some witnesses,
dressing as a Mohawk and taking part in the raid on the ships himself. He spoke against
the Coercive Actsthe Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Act
for the Impartial Administration of Justice, the Quartering Act, and the Quebec Act lev-
eled against Boston that sought to secure payment for the destroyed tea and to enforce
British laws. The closure of the port of Boston hurt Hancock nancially and the General
Court became a provisional local government in Watertown in opposition to British
General Thomas Gages forces sent to police the colony. Regarding this as an army
of occupation, Hancock led resistance to Gage as president of the Provincial Con-
gress. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Hancock and Samuel Adams
Hancock, John 325
journeyed to Lexington as leaders of the revolutionary opposition and were warned by
Paul Reveres ride that the British were on their way to arrest them as rebels and con-
scate revolutionary supplies. Under the Administration of Justice Act, the British had
sought to bring Hancock and Adams to trial in England for their rebellious crusading.
After the action at Lexington on April 18, 1775, Hancock and Adams escaped to Phila-
delphia, where Hancock was elected president of the Continental Congress. To share
his triumph, he married Dorothy Quincy, with whom he would have two children.
Hancock was a deft president of the Congress, overseeing its functions through
committees, its selection of George Washington as Continental Army commander,
and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hancock signed the document
rst as presiding ofcer and wished his signature to be large enough so that King
George could read it without his glasses. Additional major decisions that Hancock
oversaw at the Congress involved preparing for defense and war production; printing
continental currency; organizing departments to deal with Indian affairs; establish-
ing a system of military hospitals; adopting responses to Lord Norths Conciliatory
Resolution; coordinating purchases of military weapons abroad; building a navy;
intercepting British supply ships, fortifying the Hudson River; adopting regulations
concerning prisoners of war and ships captured on the high seas; selecting Silas
Deane, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson as agents to France to transact
commercial and political business; adopting resolutions concerning privateering;
and organizing recruitment and payment of the Continental Army. Hancock and
the Congress coordinated military strategy with General Washington, mobilized the
militias, recruited foreigners to aid the war effort, and sent commissioners to Aus-
tria, Spain, Prussia, and Tuscany.
Hancock was so committed to the revolutionary cause during the British occu-
pation of Boston under Gage that he was reputed to have said, Burn Boston, and
make John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it. In October 1777,
Hancock returned to Boston on business after the British had evacuated the area
and occupied New York. In his absence, Henry Laurens was elected president of the
Continental Congress, and Hancock increasingly took part in state affairs. Hancock
was a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1780 and, follow-
ing adoption of the state constitution, was elected governor, serving until 1785. He
was reelected after Shayss Rebellion and quieted the economic upheavals caused
by postwar nancial problems. He had generously contributed to the revolutionary
war effort and assisted the poor and needy through charitable donations from his
personal funds.
As further testament to his popular leadership, he was elected president in ab-
sentia of the United States in Congress Assembled in November 1785 but resigned
in May 1786 due to illness. Hancock was assisted in performing his duties respect-
ing the Articles of Confederation by David Ramsay and Nathaniel Gorham, who
alternately served as chairman. He resigned in June 1786. Recovering his health,
Hancock, as a delegate to the Massachusetts special ratication convention, where
he again served as president, supported the ratication of the United States Con-
stitution, drafted in Philadelphia in 1787. His pivotal speech in favor of ratication
swayed members of the Convention to accept the historic document by a vote of
187 to 168. Hancock continued to be exceptionally popular, and his leadership was
further lauded with an LLD from Brown in 1788 and from Harvard in 1792. Han-
cock was annually reelected governor of Massachusetts from 1787 and continued to
326 Hanriot, Franois
serve in that function until 1793. Ever strong minded and always politically adroit,
Hancock was a brilliant gure during the periods of the Revolution, the Confedera-
tion, and the Constitution, around which lesser lights coalesced to affect republican
policies and principles. See also Lexington and Concord, Actions at.
FURTHER READING: Allan, Herbert Sanford. John Hancock, Patriot in Purple. New York:
Macmillan, 1948; Pencak, William. War, Politics and Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts. Bos-
ton: Northeastern University Press, 1981.
A populist during the French Revolution, Hanriot was a rabble rouser who be-
came commander of the Paris National Guard during the Jacobin period as a loyal
supporter of Maximilien Robespierre.
Born on December 3, 1759, at Nanterre (Ile de France), his parents were poor,
and his rst job was working with a procureur, a position he lost through dishonest
conduct. He then took up a clerkship in Paris but was dismissed when he did not
turn up for work when revolutionaries burned the barriers of the octroi (municipal
customs posts) on the night of July 1213, 1789. Hanriot then lived as a pauper before
discovering his talent as an orator.
Hanriot became closely associated with the revolutionaries, raising and then
commanding the sans-culottes in the Jardin des Plantes suburb of Paris. He took
part in the storming of the Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792, and the subsequent
September Massacres. Following the events at the Tuileries, Hanriot was elected
commander of the sans-culottes section of the Paris National Guard.
In May and June 1793, Hanriot played an important role in the overthrow of
the Girondins, and on May 31 he was appointed provisional commandant-gnral
of the Paris National Guard by the general council of the Paris Commune. When,
on the following day, a member of the National Convention wanted to dissolve
the pro-Jacobin Committee of Twelve, Hanriot moved against the opponents of
Robespierre. On June 2, he surrounded the Convention with some 80,000 sup-
porters and forced the Convention to order the arrest of 29 Girondin deputies.
This resulted in Hanriot being elected the permanent commander-in-chief of the
National Guard, a position he held during the Reign of Terror that followed.
When Robespierre was overthrown in July 1794 during the Thermidorian Reac-
tion and taken prisoner, Hanriot tried to rescue him. When that failed, he ed but
was captured. He and Robespierre were guillotined on July 28, 1794. See also Com-
mittee of Public Safety; Jacobins.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Jacques Hbert pushed the leaders of the French Revolution in ever-more radical
directions. As the editor and chief writer of the popular newspaper Pre Duchesne,
Hbert enjoyed great authority among the Parisian working class. Whether the views
Hbert, Jacques 327
he expressed were genuinely his own or whether he cynically articulated what his
audience of sans-culottes readers wanted to hear, Hbert had an effect on the course
and character of the French Revolution between the time he and his paper rose to
prominence, after November 1790, and his execution in 1794.
Born to a provincial bourgeois family, Hbert arrived in Paris in 1780. In the
10 years before he started to publish Pre Duchesne, he lived in impoverished obscu-
rity. The character known as Pre Duchesne, at rst a sailor and later a merchant
of stoves, had appeared in plays and novels since at least the seventeenth century.
Various anonymous writers had already introduced him through pamphlets and
plays into the milieu of the Revolution by the time that Hbert made the personage
his. In Hberts hands, he became a means to convey ultra-revolutionary opinions
in the language of the popular classes. Although far from great literature, the paper
succeeded brilliantly because it was easily read aloud (most of its audience was il-
literate), used popular jargon and imagery, and resonated with the outlook of the
Parisian sans-culottes.
As a journalist and as an activist, Hbert participated in the overthrow of the
monarchy and establishment of the Republic. A representative to the Commune of
Paris, he led efforts to transform roughly 2,000 churches into Temples of Reason.
During his period in the National Convention, he promoted the Jacobins and at-
tacked the Girondins. Hbert and his followers planned demonstrations by Paris
workers in September 1793 that culminated in the National Conventions decision
to create the Committee of Public Safety as a revolutionary executive.
Hbert and Pre Duchesne contributed to the demonization of Marie Antoinette that
fed popular demands for her execution. By printing assorted libel that accused the
former queen (and mother of the heir to the throne) of crimes ranging from treason
to incest with her son, Hbert destroyed her right to the protections ordinarily en-
joyed by a mother, let alone a woman. The newspaper proclaimed that the greatest
of all joys had been felt by Pre Duchesne when Marie Antoinette became the victim
of the guillotine.
Hbert expressed the fervent nationalism of the French revolutionaries, who be-
lieved that their nation had accepted an historic mission to eliminate tyrants from
the European continent and to spread liberty. Given that almost all of Frances
opponents were monarchies, the rabid anti-royalism of Pre Duchesne gained even
more force and substance after the execution of Louis XVI. Hbert worried about
the apparent tolerance for royalists and counterrevolutionaries. In the midst of the
war that would secure or destroy the Revolution and the Republic, he advised the
sans-culottes to pressure their leaders to prosecute each battle and each counterrevo-
lutionary with all the ferocity they could muster.
In contrast to the evil royals and churchmen, the sans-culottes who appeared in
the pages of Pre Duchesne embodied honesty, hard work, and a willingness to sac-
rice themselves for a great cause. Hbert won readers and supporters through
his repeated evocations of the worker who was content with merely a four-pound
loaf in his bread box and a glass of red wine and who endured snubs from lazy
aristocrats. Pre Duchesne evoked the fraternal relations that prevailed among fel-
low revolutionaries while urging them to denounce and raid the homes of nobles
and moderates. The sans-culottes, Hbert suggested, had a crucial role to play in the
Revolution as exemplars of virtue. As the heads of their households, the sans-culottes
had to ensure that their children would always be good citizens and would love
328 Hbertistes
the Republic above all else. He proclaimed, The people as a whole is always pure;
it may be misled, but its intentions are good.
Although Hbert and his allies had done much to bring the Jacobins and the
Committee of Public Safety to power, their incessant demands for ever-more radical
economic measures, including attacks on even small-scale merchants, prompted
Danton and other Jacobins to reject the Hbertistes. In March 1794, Hbert urged
another uprising in response to food shortages, but he received virtually no sup-
port. The Committee of Public Safety ordered his arrest on March 14. Along with
17 of his followers, he was found guilty and executed. Jacobin control did not long
outlast him, however, as it lost its sans-culotte base and collapsed in July 1794. See also
Newspapers (French).
FURTHER READING: Agostini, Antoine. La pense politique de Jacques-Ren Hbert (17901794).
Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires dAix-Marseille, 1999; Jacob, Louis. Hbert, le Pre
Duchesne: Chef des sans-culottes. Paris: Gallimard, 1960; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year
of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969; Slavin,
Morris. The Hbertistes to the Guillotine: Anatomy of a Conspiracy in Revolutionary France. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
MELANIE A. BAILEY
Hbertistes
The Hbertistes promoted a radical agenda during the French Revolution in
line with that advocated by their inspirational and sometime leader Jacques-Ren
Hbert. The names of those afliated with the Hbertistes varied with time and
the particular stage in the Revolution. Generally, men who opposed Maximilien
Robespierre but supported the Reign of Terror as a means to promote a popular
revolution may earn such an appellation. Many were executed or else deported as
a consequence of their activities during the Terror, as were Jacques Nicolas Billaud-
Varennes and Jean Marie Collot dHerbois.
Together, the Hbertistes led the revolutionary Commune of Paris after Au-
gust 10, 1792, and also provided leadership in the Club des Cordeliers. Thus, they
occupied positions that enabled them to exercise inuence on the character of the
Revolution. They formulated demands on behalf of the sans-culottes that included
political measures against suspected counterrevolutionaries and a socioeconomic
program.
They participated in the August 23, 1792, leve en masse. Hbert, Pierre Gas-
pard Chaumette, Billaud-Varennes (later a member of the Committee of Public
Safety and eventually an opponent both of Hbert and of Robespierre), and Col-
lot dHerbois (also a future member of the Committee of Public Safety) helped to
organize the September 4 popular insurrection that followed it. The Hbertistes
enjoined workingmen to prepare to make the Terror the order of the day. On
September 5, Chaumette, representing the Commune of Paris as a guest of the
National Convention, gave an important speech that claried the perspectives and
goals of the sans-culottes, whom the Hbertistes claimed to represent. He identied
European tyrants and French traitors as the cause of bread shortages and other
problems, as they wanted to crush the French people by forcing it shamefully to
exchange its liberty and sovereignty for a morsel of bread. He further averred that
New lords no less cruel, no less greedy, no less insolent than the old have risen
Hbertistes 329
upon the ruins of feudalism. The conict at that moment boiled down to one
between the rich and the poor, though he preferred to describe the poor as the na-
tion and the people rather than as an economic group.
The petition made by the Hbertistes and their popular supporters demanded
the organization of a revolutionary army from among the sans-culottes for use in
the countryside against greedy farmers who withheld food and as a more general
means of defending liberty at home. The Convention ceded to these demands, de-
spite its wariness about unleashing militants upon the countryside. The Hbertiste
view of the war also became that of the Convention and then the Committee of
Public Safety: no negotiations or diplomatic relations with monarchies, paired with
a broadening of war objectives to include a vague quest to spread freedom through-
out the Continent. In addition, the Hbertistes supported the dechristianization
effort that culminated in the late 1793 creation of the Cult of Reason.
Several Hbertistes were foreign-born men who had accepted French citizen-
ship in order to demonstrate their support for the Revolution. Prior to 1789, Jean-
Baptiste Cloots (Anarcharsis) (17551794) was an independently wealthy, nobly
born Prussian philosopher who contributed to the Encyclopdie and who promoted
an aggressive anticlericalism. After rallying to the Revolution immediately after the
fall of the Bastille, he became a member of the Jacobin Club, the National Conven-
tion, and the Hbertistes. The self-proclaimed orator of human kind and citi-
zen of humanity spoke on behalf of various radical causes during the Revolution.
Given his earlier anti-clericalism and his self-description as the personal enemy of
Jesus Christ, he had no difculty endorsing dechristianization, and he happily cel-
ebrated the Cult of Reason. He wrote for various periodicals, including the Moniteur
and the Patriote Franais, in which he articulated his intense antipathy toward mon-
archy. Along with Hbert, he recommended that the French revolutionaries seek to
overthrow kings across the European continent. Cloots believed that such a move-
ment would culminate in the establishment of a universal republic, to be formed
through the federation of individual European republics.
Clootss foreign birth proved to be his Achilles heel. The acute fear of foreign
collaboration in a counterrevolution pervaded politics in the mid-1790s and did not
differentiate among foreigners. In fact, Cloots had been awarded French nationality
by legislative decree. Nonetheless, he was arrested by the Convention as a foreigner.
Robespierre rejected the notion that a man born into the German nobility could
ever merit acknowledgment as a French patriot. Further, Clootss participation in
the cult of Reason had become a liability after the Committee of Public Safety opted
in favor of the cult of the Supreme Being. He was executed with other Hbertistes
on March 24, 1794. Clootss story reveals the ambiguous situation of foreigners who
not only accepted the Revolution but actually embraced it enthusiastically. It also
highlights the dilemmas faced by the Hbertistes as they encountered foes more
powerful than themselves.
The association of one Hbertiste with another warranted the execution of all of
them. Chaumettes friendship with Cloots elicited accusations that he was a foreign
agent. Perhaps more signicantly, he had attracted the enmity of Robespierre for
turning the Commune of Paris into a disturbingly powerful and autonomous force
in the Revolution. He was guillotined along with Cloots and the others after having
been found guilty of destroying all morality and of having been paid as an agent
by the British.
330 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
After having helped the Jacobins and the Committee of Public Safety to power,
the Hbertistes in turn became the objects of criticism from Danton and from Robe-
spierre. Their inability to sustain popular mobilization on behalf of their radical
agenda left them unprotected when the committee decided to have many Hber-
tistes arrested. See also Cordeliers Club; French Revolutionary Wars.
FURTHER READING: Agostini, Antoine. La pense politique de Jacques-Ren Hbert (17901794).
Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires dAix-Marseille, 1999; Jacob, Louis. Hbert, le Pre Duch-
esne: Chef des sans-culottes. Paris: Gallimard, 1960; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the
Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969; Slavin, Morris.
The Hbertistes to the Guillotine: Anatomy of a Conspiracy in Revolutionary France. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
MELANIE A. BAILEY
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (17701831)
Hegel was a proponent of German idealism and one of the most systematic phi-
losophers who attempted to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology
from a logical standpoint. Hegel was born in Stuttgart on August 27, 1770, in the
family of a revenue ofcer of the Duchy of Wrttemberg. He studied at the Stuttgart
Gymnasium and in 1788 entered the Stift Theological Seminary at the University of
Tbingen. There he developed friendships with the poet Friedrich Hlderlin and
the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.
During the French Revolution, as an enthusiastic supporter, Hegel participated
in a support student group in Tbingen. After completing his studies at the semi-
nary, Hegel decided not to enter the ministry and in 1793 became a private tutor in
Bern, Switzerland. Together with Schelling, Hegel wrote The First Program for a System
of German Idealism in 1796. In 1797, Hlderlin found Hegel a position as a tutor
in Frankfurt, but in 1799 Hegels father died and left him enough money to leave
tutoring. In 1801 Hegel went to the University of Jena, where he studied, lectured,
and collaborated with Schelling on the Critical Journal of Philosophy. Hegel published
his rst philosophical work, The Difference between Fichtes and Schellings System of Phi-
losophy, at the end of 1801. While in Jena, Hegel also completed his rst draft of The
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), which considered human history as an idealistic self-
development of an objective Spirit. Later that year after the defeat of the Prussian
army at the Battle of Jena, Hegel saved a copy of The Phenomenology from the re set
by French soldiers in his house.
Hegel became editor of the Catholic daily Bamberger Zeitung in 18071808. Dis-
satised with this position, he moved to Nuremberg to serve as headmaster of a
gymnasium. During the Nuremberg years, Hegel married Marie von Tucher, daugh-
ter of the mayor of Nuremberg. Hegel continued to work on The Phenomenology
and published The Science of Logic (1812, 1813, 1816). In 1816, Hegel accepted a
professorship in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. There he published
his comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817, 1827, 1830), which
included a version of The Science of Logic together with Philosophy of Nature and The
Philosophy of Spirit. Two years later he was invited to teach at the University of Berlin,
where he taught on aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of
history with great success. In 1829 Hegel was elected rector of the university. He
stayed in Berlin until his death in 1831.
Henry, Patrick 331
A systematic thinker, Hegel aimed at introducing a system that would allow for a
philosophical understanding of the present, the past, and the future. According to
Hegel, reality is Absolute Mind, Reason, or Spirit, which manifests itself in history.
Because reality is rational, it acts in accordance with the laws of reasoning that can
be understood. Nature itself can be studied rationally because it manifests the dia-
lectical activity of Spirit.
According to Hegel, the history of philosophy thus reveals the development of
Spirit in the pursuit of its own unication and actualization. The history of philoso-
phy becomes a progression in which each successive stage is the result of a resolution
of the contradictions inherent in the preceding movement. In this developmental
scheme, the French Revolution, the rst real introduction of freedom, is a new oc-
currence in history. With its radical nature, it culminates in the Reign of Terror. But
because history progresses by learning from mistakes, the experience of the Revolu-
tion would eventually lead to a new stage: the creation of a constitutional state with
the government organized around rational principles and ideals of freedom and
equality.
Hegel maintained that all human history is a progression to freedom that can
be achieved if the desires of individuals are integrated into the unied system of
the state where the will of one is replaced by the will of all. This view on the dia-
lectical development of history divided Hegels followers into left- and right-wing
Hegelians. The right-wing Hegelians emphasized the compatibility between Hegels
philosophy and Christianity, especially Protestantism. Politically, they advocated
conservatism and the unity of the state. The left-wing Hegelians (the Young Hege-
lians) interpretation of Hegels philosophy leads to atheism and liberal democracy.
Marxism stemmed from the left-wing Hegelian to develop the scientic material-
ist approach to society and history. See also Kant, Immanuel.
FURTHER READING: Beiser, Frederick C. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993; Dickey, Laurence. Hegel: Religion, Economics, and Politics
of Spirit, 17701807. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Franco, Paul. Hegels
Philosophy of Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999; Houlgate, Stephen. An
Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005; Neuhouser, Frederick.
Foundations of Hegels Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2000; Pelczynski, Z. A., ed. The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegels Political Philosophy.
NATALIE BAYER
Henry, Patrick (17361799)
Lawyer, colonial and revolutionary statesman, and governor of Virginia, Patrick
Henry was born to Scottish planter John Henry and Sarah Winston Syme in Studley,
Virginia. Henry was educated in local schools and tutored by his father, who had
attended Kings College, University of Aberdeen. At 15, he became a mercantile
clerk before opening his own country store and at 18 marrying Sarah Shelton, who
brought to their marriage 300 acres and slaves from her father. They would have
six children, and Henry, with encouragement from Thomas Jefferson, decided on
a career in law to provide for his family, passing the bar in Hanover County in 1759
and handling 1,185 cases in a three-year period. Henry became well respected for
winning the case of the Parsons Cause in December 1763 when he defended Louisa
332 Henry, Patrick
County and the taxpayers interests against local Anglican clergymen who had sued to
receive additional remuneration. Each parson in the past had received 17,280 pounds
of tobacco annually, which they then sold at market value. But the county changed
the rules and no longer gave the tobacco but authorized a monetary salary based
on the former amount of tobacco being sold at two pence a pound. The parsons
objected to their salaries being commuted to a xed money payment because the
price received for tobacco on the market had greatly increased and they wished to
reap additional rewards. Henry argued that the parsons plea was so outrageous
that they should receive a mere one pence. He won his case and chided the church-
men for their avarice. The public loudly applauded this decision, making Henry a
prominent political gure.
Henry was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765 as the Stamp Act
was levied on the colonies and challenged as illegal. He led the opposition among
the Burgesses, securing the adoption of part of his seven Virginia Resolves on
May 30, 1765. These resolves proclaimed that all liberties, privileges, franchises,
and immunities held in England were held also by the colonists; that taxation was
the right of the people themselves, either directly or through their representatives;
that this right had been recognized by the Crown; that the General Assembly of the
colony of Virginia had the exclusive right to lay taxes upon its populace, and there-
fore the inhabitants of Virginia would not be bound by any other levies imposed by
the Crown; and that any person who attempted to do so was an enemy of Virginia.
The Virginia Resolves placed Virginia rmly in opposition to parliamentary taxation
and requested that George III respect colonial rights. The Stamp Act Congress held
in New York in October 1765 used the Virginia Resolves as the basis for their argu-
ments to mount their opposition, adopting similar resolutions and denouncing the
British use of admiralty courts instead of civilian courts. Henry further elevated his
reputation by defending Americans liberties in cases argued before the General
Court involving the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act, and the Navigation Acts. His dra-
matic, extemporaneous, and riveting oratorical style hypnotized his listeners. Henry
supported the committees of correspondence as they sprang into action, support-
ing Boston after the Boston Tea Party and the imposition of the Coercive Acts.
He was elected to the First Continental Congress, held September 1774, where
he urged the recognition of colonists as Americans seeking to present a united
front against Britains harsh imperial policies, not as distinct citizens of individual
regions (i.e., Virginians, Pennsylvanians, or New Yorkers). He served on the
most important committees, including those that drafted a declaration of rights and
grievances, investigated parliamentary abuses of American rights, and drafted state-
ments of colonial rights and the position of the colonies within the Empire. Sarah
died in 1775 as the crisis mounted. Henry took solace in politics and action and was
elected to the second Virginia convention, held in Richmond in March 1775. Here
Henry rose to new heights of leadership as he advocated immediate preparedness
for possible war with Britain to protect American rights. He reiterated that over the
past 10 years the conduct of the British ministry had been to use implements of
war and subjugation to disregard colonial liberties. Now Americans should prepare
themselves for confrontation rather than reconciliation. It was time to stand up and
ght rather than to submit in humble supplication, and he concluded this famed
speech of March 23, 1775, with the elegant plea Give me liberty or give me death!
The colonial stand was made on Lexington Green on April 18, 1775, and following
Hrault de Schelles, Marie Jean 333
this event, Virginias royal governor Dunmore gave the order to seize powder and
weapons in the Williamsburg arsenal. Henry led troops to confront Dunmore, de-
manding payment for the weapons cache. Henry used his talents for political per-
suasion at the Second Continental Congress in May 1775 and then briey became
commander of the provincial Virginia regiments later incorporated with the Conti-
nental Army. Returning to politics, Henry attended the provincial convention held
in Williamsburg in May 1776 and supported a resolution calling for independence
for the colonies from Britain. This call for independence was echoed by the Virginia
delegates in the Second Continental Congress.
The Williamsburg convention drafted a new state constitution and a declaration
of rights. In July 1776, Henry was elected Virginias rst governor under the new
constitution and served three consecutive terms until June 1779 and was reelected
again, serving from November 1784 to November 1786. In October 1777, Henry
married Dorothea Dandridge, with whom he would have 10 children. Henry raised
troops and war materials in Virginia to support General George Washingtons army
and was interested in defending the Ohio Valley against the British. Upon leaving
the governorship for the rst time, Henry was reelected in 1780 to Virginias House
of Delegates, where he supported Thomas Jeffersons Statute for Religious Freedom
but otherwise favored using state tax funds to continue to pay churchmen and sup-
ported the intertwining of church and state.
Henry declined to join the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787,
as he was wary of centralized national government that would supplant states
rights. However, he was later elected to the special state convention called to ratify
the new United States Constitution upon its completion and spoke out against
ratication, fearing consolidated government. Nevertheless, Virginias convention
delegates voted 89 to 79 to accept the new Constitution. At a time when many in
Virginia were turning to the Jefferson-Madison Anti-Federalist clique, Henry was
drawn to the Federalist leadership of President Washington, who offered him posts
as secretary of state, attorney general, justice of the Supreme Court, and minister
to Spain, all of which he declined, preferring to stay active in local politics. He re-
tired from the legislature in 1790 but had just been reelected again in March 1799
when he died. Henry lived on a large estate known as Red Hill in Charlotte County
and spent his last years mentoring young politicians who, like himself, came from
prosperous circumstances but possessed the common touch. See also Lexington
and Concord, Actions at.
FURTHER READING: Henry, William Wirt. Patrick Henry, Life, Correspondence, and Speeches.
New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1891; Meade, Robert D. Patrick Henry. 2 vols. Philadel-
phia: Lippincott, 19571969; Tyler, Moses Coit. Patrick Henry. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington
House, 1970.
Hrault de Schelles, Marie Jean (17591794)
French revolutionary and member of the Committee of Public Safety, Hrault de
Schelles differed from the rest of his colleagues on the committee since he came
from an ancient Norman family and his grandfather, Rn Hrault, had served as
a lieutenant general in the Paris police, while his father had risen to be a colonel
334 Hrault de Schelles, Marie Jean
in the army before being killed at Minden in 1759. Hrault de Schelles was born
in Paris and received a good private education. He showed a talent for writing and
published Eloge de Suger in 1779. After studying law, he was admitted to the bar at
the Chtelet of Paris, the citys civil and criminal court, in 1777. Introduced to the
court by his cousin Madame de Polignac, he became known at le beau Schelles for
his handsome appearance and wit and caught the fancy of Queen Marie Antoinette,
who helped him become avocat-gnral of the Parlement of Paris in 1785.
Despite his upbringing and career success, Hrault de Schelles welcomed the
French Revolution and participated in the attack on the Bastille in July 1789. He
served as the judge for one of the arrondissements of Paris in late 1789 and was sent
on a mission to Alsace in early 1791. Upon his return to the capital, he became com-
missaire du Roi at the Court of Appeal (cour de cassation), and in September 1791,
he was elected a deputy for the department of the Seine to the Legislative Assembly,
where he sided with the radical Left and emerged as one of the leading members
of the assembly. Serving on the Diplomatic Committee, he presented the famous
report that stated the need to declare the nation in danger (la patrie en danger). Dur-
ing the turbulent days of August through September 1792, he served as vice president
(August 20September 2, 1792) and president (September 2September 16, 1792)
of the Legislative Assembly. His eloquence made its mark in the various procla-
mations that he wrote, including the one on the Allied capture of the fortress at
Longwy, which precipitated the September Massacres.
In September 1792, Hrault de Schelles was elected to the National Convention
by two dpartements but opted to represent Seine-et-Oise. He sat with the Montag-
nards and served as president of the Convention (November 1792) and as a mem-
ber of the Committee of General Security. In late 1792, he was sent on a mission
to organize the conquered province of Savoy and was absent during the trial and
execution of Louis XVI, which he nevertheless supported. On his return to Paris,
he supported Georges Danton and was elected to the rst Committee of Public
Safety in May 1793. He helped organize the Jacobin coup against the Girondins on
June 2 and was elected for another term as president of the Convention in August
1793. He drafted most of the new republican Constitution of 1793. As a member of
the Committee of Public Safety, he concerned himself with diplomacy and served
on a mission to Alsace in late 1793. As Jacobin in-ghting intensied, Hrault de
Schelles remained loyal to the Dantonists and opposed Robespierres faction. His
epicurean lifestyle, noble origins, and cynicism aroused distrust among many and
led to unfounded accusations of treason. As a result, Hrault de Schelles was sus-
pended from his duties on the Committee of Public Safety. In March 1794, he was
arrested and tried along with Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and others. He
was executed on April 5, 1794. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Jaco-
bins; The Mountain; Parlements.
FURTHER READING: Aulard, A. Les orateurs de la Rvolution. Vol. 2. Paris: Edouard Cornely
et cie, 1905; Dard, Emile. Un picurien sous la terreur, Hrault de Schelles (17591794) daprs
des documents indits. Paris: Perrin et cie, 1907; Daudet, Ernest. Le roman dun conventionnel:
Hrault de Schelles et les dames de Bellegarde daprs des documents indits. Paris: Librairie Hachette,
1904; Locherer, Jean-Jacques. Hrault de Schelles: Laristocrate du Comit de salut public. Paris:
Pygmalion/G. Watelet, 1984.
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel 335
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel (17531811)
Don Miguel Hidalgo was the main agitator for Mexican independence from
the Spanish and is revered in Mexico to this day as one of the countrys greatest
heroes.
Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Mandarte Villasenor y
Lomel was a Mexican of Spanish ancestry and was born on May 8, 1753. His parents
were Cristbal Hidalgo y Costilla, an administrator in the hacienda of Corralejo in
Guanajuato, and Ana Maria Gallaga. He was the second of ve children and was
educated in a Jesuit college, as was his older brother. However, in 1767 the Jesu-
its were expelled from Spanish colonial territory, and Miguel Hidalgo went to the
College de San Niclas Obispo in Michoacn (modern-day Morelia). He studied
philosophy, theology, and the liberal arts and gained a degree in arts and then com-
pleted a degree in theology at the Real y Pontica Universidad de Mxico, the most
important university in New Spain. In 1776, he was ordained as a deacon and was
ordained a priest two years later.
Initially Miguel Hidalgo returned to the College de San Niclas Obispo, where he
gained the nickname the Fox, to teach philosophy, theology, and Latin. However,
he had some unorthodox theological views, and this forced the authorities to post
him to Valladolid, in the east of the country. Although his views were certainly the
main reason, the church was also concerned about his mishandling of church funds,
his involvement in gambling, and his fathering of two children; he would father an-
other soon after his move. By this time, Hidalgo had a large private income, owning
three haciendas, and was able to make large donations to establish a school at the
next parish to which he was posted.
In 1807 Hidalgo was denounced by the Tribunal of the Inquisition for speaking
out against the Spanish monarchy and also challenging Roman Catholic orthodoxy.
He was also to be accused of possessing banned books. His denunciation was also
probably connected to the fact that he encouraged some of his parishioners to pro-
duce their own wine, a practice that challenged the Spanish monopoly on wine pro-
duction. He was also involved in the cultivation of silk worms and apiculture. None
of the indictments against him were proceeded with, and Hidalgo continued with
his new agricultural ideas, with much support from the people of his parish.
The invasion of Spain by French troops in 1808, and the replacement of King
Ferdinand VII by Joseph Bonaparte, led to a major catharsis in Spanish America.
Few people supported the new king, and many remained loyal to Ferdinand VII.
Others felt that it might be time to sever the political ties across the Atlantic, and for
Mexico, and other colonies, to become independent.
To this end Hidalgo became involved with an independent group at San Miguel,
near Dolores. However, with the colonial authorities rapidly supporting the restora-
tion of Ferdinand VII, Hidalgo found himself betrayed, and several of his confeder-
ates were arrested. Instead of eeing, however, the priest decided to raise the ag of
rebellion. On the morning of September 16, 1810, Hidalgo managed to secure the
release of the pro-independence prisoners before gaining the support of the local
Spanish garrison. He rang the church bell at Dolores, urging his parishioners to
join a revolution against Spain. The uprising quickly spread throughout New Spain,
gaining support from two quite different constituencies. One consisted of the cril-
los, Mexicans of Spanish descent, such as Hidalgo himself; the second comprised
336 Hispaniola
the campesinos, the peasant class, which included very large numbers of Indians.
The banner that Hidalgo raised bore an image of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, sym-
bolizing to many rebels the religious justication for the revolt.
It did not take long for Hidalgo to raise a force of several thousand men. With it,
he captured Guanajuato and other major cities to the west of Mexico City. Hidalgos
men often looted shops owned by Spanish merchants after seizing a city or town
and were even responsible for the killing of numbers of Europeans. As the ght-
ing became more savage, especially after the taking of Guanajuato, bloody reprisals
followed. These excesses by Hidalgos men tended to alienate many of the more
conservative people in Mexico who favored independence but were worried about
a potential revolution.
Spanish authorities were slow to launch a counterattack. The church excommu-
nicated Hidalgo and his supporters, and the Tribunal of the Inquisition reopened
their case against him. When Hidalgo nally led his men to Mexico City, he faced
a force of royalist militia under the command of Torquato Trujillo. Although Hi-
dalgos men prevailed and reached Cuajimalpafrom where they could see the
capitalHidalgo decided not to attack the city, demanding instead that the viceroy
surrender. Hidalgo did not believe his force capable of laying siege to Mexico City,
especially as his forces were unpopular in the area and could not rely on local sup-
port. Indecision caused desertions from his army, and faced by a renewed Spanish
force, Hidalgo was forced to fall back to Valladolid. On November 25, 1810, he lost
control of Guanajuato and on January 17, 1811, was defeated at the bloody battle
of Caldern.
At this point, Hidalgo appears to have decided to head for the United States to
seek sanctuary there, along with his leading lieutenants. The plan failed, however,
when on March 21, 1811, Hidalgo and some of his commanders were captured
and taken to Chihuahua. There Hidalgos three lieutenantsIgnacio Allende, Jos
Mariano Jimnez, and Juan Aldamawere executed on June 26. The authorities
had to delay Hidalgos execution for administrative reasons. As he was a clergyman,
the church had to formally defrock and excommunicate him, which they did on
July 29, making way for his execution the following day. The four men were decapi-
tated, and their heads were then placed on the four corners of the Alhndiga de
Granaditas in Guanajuato as a warning to other revolutionaries. Although he was
not able to lead his men to victory, Hidalgo has come to symbolize Mexicos struggle
for independence. See also Mexican Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Flores Caballero, Romeo. Counter-Revolution: The Role of the Spaniards in
the Independence of Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974; Hamill, Hugh M. The
Hidalgo Revolt: Prelude to Mexican Independence. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Hispaniola
The island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, now divided into Haiti and the Do-
minican Republic, was initially occupied by the Spanish when Christopher Colum-
bus landed there on his rst voyage in 1492. On his second voyage in 1493, he
moved his base to another spot, and in 1502 Fortaleza Ozama was built on what
became Santo Domingo. This ensured that the Spanish administration was based
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d 337
on the south coast of the east of the island. During the seventeenth century, French
settlers started to land on the west coast, and in 1771 it was necessary to demarcate
a border, as the French and their slaves now outnumbered the Spanish and their
slaves.
Both the French and Spanish parts of Hispaniola were slave societies, with a
small number of wealthy whites, and a large number of black slaves working on
sugar plantations. One of those who lived in the French colony, which was called
Saint-Dominique, was Josephine de Beauharnais, who would later marry Napoleon
Bonaparte.
There had been a number of small unsuccessful slave revolts throughout the Ca-
ribbean during the eighteenth century. They were harshly put down, and in 1758,
when his rebellion was crushed, Makandal, a legendary black slave, was executed.
The French Revolution stimulated the slaves to action, and in August 1791 there
was a massive revolt in Saint-Dominique. The man who emerged as the leader of
the rebellion was Toussaint lOuverture (usually known simply as Toussaint), the
son of an educated slave who had been legally freed in 1777. In the retribution that
resulted from the rst days of the rebellion, Toussaint helped his former master
escape. Many others were not so lucky.
The Spanish in the east of Hispaniola decided to support the rebel slaves, but in
September 1793 the French abolished slavery. In October 1795 the Spanish ceded
their part of the island to France and agreed to resettle all their citizens within a
year. Many, however, had no wish to move to Cuba, and the French were more con-
cerned with suppressing the rebellion. In January 1801 Toussaint led his men into
Santo Domingo and abolished slavery throughout Hispaniola. His two greatest sup-
porters were Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe. Toussaint was subse-
quently betrayed to the French and taken to France, where he died in April 1803.
Back in Hispaniola, the Republic of Haiti was proclaimed on January 1, 1804the
rst black republic in the Americas, and the second republic there (after the United
States). In September 1805, Dessalines proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I of
Haiti but was assassinated two years later. In 1811 Christophe took over Cap-Hatien,
on the north coast of Haiti, which he renamed Cap-Henri. He then proclaimed
himself king and ruled for the next nine years. The hopes of many of the former
slaves in Haiti quickly evaporated. The eastern part of the island declared itself inde-
pendent on November 30, 1821, and although it was occupied again by Haiti from
1822 to 1844, became independent thereafter as the Dominican Republic. See also
Haitian Revolution; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Brown, Gordon S. Toussaints Claude: The Founding Fathers and the
Haitian Revolution. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005; James, C.L.R. The Black
Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1963.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d (17231789)
Author, philosophe, and Encyclopedist, Baron dHolbach was born into a Ger-
man family in Edesheim but was raised in Paris by his uncle Franciscus Adam
dHolbach. He studied at the University of Leiden in 17441749 and inherited
a considerable fortune after the death of his uncle and father-in-law. Known for
338 Hopkins, Stephen
his lavish dinners, Holbach hosted many prominent intellectuals of the age,
among them the Encyclopedists Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
Jean Le Rond dAlembert; the philosopher Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger; the crit-
ics Friedrich-Melchior Grimm and Jean Franois Marmontel; the historian abb
Guillaume-Thomas-Franois Raynal; and the naturalist Charles-Georges Le Roy.
Holbachs dinners for his coterie continued for 30 years between early 1750 and
1780 and served as the occasion for the meeting of important intellectuals. Holbach
proved himself a prolic writer, producing a large number of articles covering poli-
tics, science, religion, and other topics for the famous Encyclopdie. His atheistic views
were revealed in the Christianisme dvoil (1761), which attacked Christianity, and
religion in general, as opposed to the moral advancement of humanity. In 1770, he
published Le systme de la nature, which presented more radical ideas.
Holbach believed that nature consisted only of matter and motion and argued
in favor of mechanistic metaphysics. He supported the notion of naturalistic eth-
ics, noting that each person seeks happiness and self-preservation. His criticism of
religion, especially of Catholicism, was based on his conviction that religion was the
source of vice and unhappiness.
Holbachs political theory presented a notion of the just state, or ethocracy, as
he described it, which was founded on general welfare. Holbach elaborated on this
idea in several of his works, notably La politique naturelle (1773), Systme social (1773),
La morale universelle (1776), and Ethocratie (1776.) Like Rousseau, he worked on the
theory of a social contract, which consisted of two stages. In the rst stage, individu-
als unite to obtain personal and proprietary security, while in the second, society
concludes a contract with a sovereign power (a king or an elected body) to secure
the general welfare of its members. In Holbachs view, the rst-stage contract, be-
tween individuals in society, can never be broken, while the second-stage agreement,
between society and a sovereign power, can be withdrawn if the government fails to
secure the general welfarea view similar to that of John Locke. As a result of this
view, Holbach was often regarded as an advocate of revolution, which he was not.
Instead, his argument suggested that when government fails to maintain the welfare
of its citizens, the latter will be guided by passion and a sense of self-preservation,
which will lead to revolution. His ideas, therefore, were to be understood not as
advocating revolution, but rather as offering advice so as avoid it.
FURTHER READING: Kors, Alan. DHolbachs Coterie. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1976; Ladd, Everett C., Jr. Helvtius and dHolbach. Journal of the History of Ideas 23,
no. 2 (1962): 22138; Wickwar, Hardy W. Baron dHolbach: A Prelude to the French Revolution.
New York: A. M. Kelley, 1968.
Holland
See Netherlands, United Kingdom of the
Stephen Hopkins was a Rhode Island politician and signer of the Declaration
of Independence. Born in Providence and largely educated by his Quaker mother,
Hopkinson, Francis 339
Hopkins became a leading merchant in the province and rst entered local ofce in
1735. He was allied with the powerful Brown family, attended the Albany Congress,
founded the radical Providence Gazette, 1762, and was the rst chancellor of Rhode
Island College (now Brown University). Hopkins served as Speaker of the Rhode
Island Assembly seven times and was elected governor of the province for nine one-
year terms between 1755 and 1768.
One of the earliest opponents of Grenvilles imperial policy, he published in
1764 An Essay on the Trade of the Northern Colonies, which attacked the Sugar Act. He
also published the more important The Grievances of the American Colonies Candidly
Examined, which questioned the British concept of parliamentary sovereignty and
its extension to the colonies. Hopkins believed that only the colonial assemblies
themselves could levy internal taxes in America, and he suggested that sovereignty
in the Empire should be divided between the assemblies and Parliament in a federal
association. As the imperial crisis continued, Hopkins became more radical, and
as Rhode Islands chief justice he refused to sign a court order to apprehend the
individuals responsible for burning the Gaspee, a grounded British revenue cutter,
in 1722.
At the outbreak of the American Revolution Hopkins was 60, but he was an active
member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. As chairman of the naval
committee, he helped create the Continental Navy and was one of the two Rhode
Island delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Hopkins also
served as the Rhode Island delegate to the committee that drafted the Articles of
Confederation, and although he did not serve in Congress after September 1776,
he continued to serve in the Rhode Island state legislature until 1779. Hopkins died
in Providence in July 1785. See also Albany Plan of Union; Continental Congress,
First; Continental Congress, Second; Pamphlets (American); Signers of the Declara-
tion of Independence.
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967; Foster, William E. Stephen Hopkins: A Rhode Island
Statesman. Providence, RI: Island Historical Tracts, 1884.
RORY T. CORNISH
Hopkinson, Francis (17391791)
Francis Hopkinson was an American composer, revolutionary politician, and pos-
sibly the designer of the Stars and Stripes. Born to English parents in Philadelphia,
he was politically well connected (his cousin was the bishop of Worcester) and was
a graduate of the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania). His
family connections led to his appointment as the collector of customs at Salem in
1763 and his later appointments as collector of customs at Newcastle, Delaware, in
1772, and as a member of the New Jersey council in 1774. Better known as a poet
and a composer than a royal ofcial, Hopkinson became an ardent American pa-
triot, and in 1776 he resigned his Crown appointments.
In 1774, Hopkinson published A Pretty Story, an allegory on how a wicked step-
mother (Parliament) and her steward (Frederick North, Lord North) disrupt the
peace of the family farm. In 1776, he published A Prophecy, which predicted the
inevitability of American independence, and was elected a delegate to the Second
340 Htel des Invalides
Continental Congress, consequently becoming a signer of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. Holding various ofces during the American Revolution, Hopkinson, a
lawyer by profession, served on the committee that drafted the Articles of Confed-
eration. In 1787, President George Washington appointed Hopkinson a judge for
the United States court for eastern Pennsylvania.
During the Revolution, however, Hopkinsons most important role was as a re-
publican publicist. The composer of many popular patriotic ballads, including The
Battle of the Kegs, the most celebrated patriotic song of the Revolution, Hopkinson
also staged in 1781 a patriotic oratorio, The Temple of Minerva, in Philadelphia
to celebrate the Franco-American alliance and the victory at Yorktown. A talented
craftsman, he also helped design many heraldic national and state emblems, in-
cluding the Great Seal of the United States. In 1780, Hopkinson claimed sole
responsibility for the design of the Stars and Stripes, a claim Congress refused to
acknowledge in 1781, as, it was thought, many individuals had been consulted over
the design. There can be no doubt, however, that Hopkinson played a leading role
in the ags eventual form.
A strong Federalist, Hopkinson supported the ratication of the United States
Constitution and on July 4, 1788, he stage-managed the massive Federal procession
in Philadelphia that celebrated its ratication. His son Joseph Hopkinson, a con-
gressman, composed the song Hail Columbia. Hopkinson died in Philadelphia
in May 1791. See also American Revolutionary War; Signers of the Declaration of
Independence; Symbols (American).
FURTHER READING: Anderson, G. The Temple of Minerva and Francis Hopkinson: A
Reappraisal of Americas First Poet Composer. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
120 (1976): 16677; Hastings, George. The Life and Works of Francis Hopkinson. Reprint, Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
RORY T. CORNISH
Hostages Law of
See Law of Hostages
Htel des Invalides
The Htel des Invalides, also known as Les Invalides, is a complex of institutions
that specically relate to the French nations military history and are located in the
now centrally situated Seventh Arrondissement of Paris. Initiated by King Louis XIV
in November 1670 for the purpose of housing aged and unwell soldiers, the Htel
des Invalides originally served as both a hospital and retirement home for French
soldiers, although in later years it has become a burial place for military heroes.
Designed by Liberal Bruant (16351697) and completed in 1676, the Htel des
Invalides stands as a ne example of French classical architecture. With a front
measuring almost 200 meters and its numerous courtyards, including the Cour
dHonneur (Court of Honor), Les Invalides creates an imposing environment con-
sisting of a range of buildings with connected open spaces within which thousands
of soldiers were once housed and military parades took place. The complex was
expanded after 1676 by the addition of a chapel designed by Bruant and the Baroque
House of Representatives (United States) 341
master Jules Hardouin Mansart (16461708), and construction continued into the
1680s thanks to Mansarts Church of St. Louis, a private place of prayer for the royal
family. With its centrally placed pediment, the Church of St. Louis not only skillfully
merges with the overall aesthetic of the earlier buildings but also has a larger vertical
scale than the surrounding edices, which allows it to visually dominate the overall
complex of buildings, especially when seen from the nearby open area known as the
Esplanade des Invalides. With its majestic interior, the church somewhat unsurpris-
ingly became used as a burial place for persons considered of military signicance
to the nation, including those from the time of Louis XIV and those from the post-
revolutionary era, like Claude Rouget de Lisle (17601836), writer of the French
national anthem, Le Marseillaise; Napoleon, his brothers, and some military of-
cers from that time; and the young Napoleon II.
FURTHER READING: Jones, Colin. Paris: The Biography of a City. New York: Viking, 2005;
Muratori-Philip, Anne. LHtel des Invalides (la mmoire des lieux). Paris: Muse de lArme, 1992.
IAN MORLEY
The Htel de Ville de Paris (City Hall of Paris) refers to the administrative gov-
ernment of Paris. The city has a long history of self-government, beginning in the
twelfth century when King Louis VI granted a charter to local water merchants. By
giving the merchants a certain degree of autonomy in return for their assumption of
responsibility for the city, including its amenities and, signicantly, its safety, Louiss
grant initiated a long period of city government in one form or other. Housed in an
edice now standing in the Fourth Arrondissement in the Place de lHtel de Ville
(Place of the City Hall), the City Hall has had a turbulent history since its inception
that has included severe damage to the City Hall Building during the 1871 Paris
Commune. Nonetheless, the City Hall as an institution has expanded greatly since
its inception, particularly during the nineteenth century, when Paris expanded in
political and cultural depth, industrial strength, and demographic size. Since the
declaration of the Third Republic in 1870 at the Htel de Ville de Paris, the City
Hall has become an emblem of republicanism and has consequently been widely
perceived in both Paris and the nation at large as symbolizing many of the values of
the French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Jones, Colin. Paris: The Biography of a City. New York: Viking, 2005.
IAN MORLEY
One of the two chambers of the United States Congress, the House of Representa-
tives is a legislative body in which each state is represented proportionally according
to its population. In 1787, the Articles of Confederation established a unicameral
Congress, but it proved to be ineffective and was modied at the Constitutional Con-
vention in 1787. The future structure of the U.S. Congress proved to be a divisive issue,
as the state delegations disagreed on many issues. Thus, in his Virginia Plan, Edmund
Randolph proposed a bicameral Congress, in which people would participate in the
342 House of Representatives (United States)
direct election of the lower chamber, which would then elect the upper chamber.
This plan beneted states with large populations and was naturally supported by
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts, all of which stood to gain from it.
Opposing this plan, William Paterson drafted the New Jersey Plan, which pro-
vided for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states. Eventually,
the delegations reached what became known as the Connecticut Compromise, ac-
cording to which states would be represented based on their population (and three-
fths of the slaves) in the House of Representatives (which was what populous states
wanted), but equally in the Senate (as smaller states wanted). After the Constitution
came into force in March 1789, the rst House of Representatives began work on
April 1, 1789.
At rst, it was proposed that there would be one representative for every 40,000
inhabitants and, thus, a House of 56 members was anticipated; eventually, this num-
ber was modied to 65. James Madison argued that the number of House members
should be doubled in order to reect the nations diverse interests, but this was op-
posed by other members on the grounds that such a plan would be expensive and
the size of the House would reduce its effectiveness. On the last day of the Conven-
tion, Rufus King of Massachusetts and Daniel Carroll of Maryland proposed alter-
ing provisions so that there be no more than one representative for every 30,000
citizens. This was adopted unanimously after George Washington himself made a
speech on its behalf and was eventually reected in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, of
the Constitution.
Following the rst census in 1790 and the addition of Kentucky and Vermont,
the size of the House of Representatives increased from 65 to 106. Virginia was rep-
resented by 19 members, Massachusetts by 14, Pennsylvania by 13, New York and
North Carolina by 10, Maryland by 8, Connecticut by 7, South Carolina by 6, New
Jersey by 5, and New Hampshire by 4. The smallest delegations came from Georgia
(2), Rhode Island (2), and Delaware (1). Eventually, Congress capped the size of
the House of Representatives at 435 members.
The Constitutional Convention also debated the length of terms for members of
the future House of Representatives and considered proposals for annual, biannual,
and triennial elections. Eventually, the Convention settled for two-year terms, which
are specied in Article 1, Section 2. At two years, the term of a House member is the
shortest of any ofcial specied in the Constitution, as presidents are elected for four
years and senators were granted six-year terms. The decision was justied by the del-
egates desire to keep the House members close to the people. Article 1, Section 2,
of the Constitution species that The House of Representatives shall chuse their
Speaker and other Ofcers. The Speaker of the House thus was regarded as the
second most powerful ofcial in the United States. The Constitution species that
the House may punish members for disorderly behavior and expel them by a
two-thirds vote.
Under Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, the qualications of
voters for the U.S. House of Representatives is the same as those qualications
requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. This
provision was the result of a compromise between the delegates to the Constitu-
tional Convention, who failed to agree on universal voting qualications due to dis-
agreements about freeholders, that is, to those with a certain amount of property.
Thus, the individual states were allowed to make their own arrangements on this
Hume, David 343
issue. The franchise was largely reserved for white males, but suffrage was eventu-
ally extended to African American men (the Fifteenth Amendment), women (the
Nineteenth Amendment), and 18-year-olds (the Twenty-sixth Amendment), while
the Twenty-fourth Amendment eliminated the poll tax, which a number of states
had employed to restrict the voting rights of African Americans.
The Constitution species that All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in
the House of Representatives, which prevents the Senate from initiating bills im-
posing taxes. The Senate does not have the power to originate appropriation bills
authorizing the expenditure of federal funds. The early federal period was marked
by frequent disagreements between the House and the Senate over the delimitation
of powers. This struggle also reected the growing conict between the more popu-
lous North, which dominated the House, and the South, which enjoyed an equal
footing in the Senate.
FURTHER READING: Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention. 4 vols. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937; Kromkowski, Charles A. Recreating the American
Republic: Rules of Apportionment, Constitutional Change, and American Political Development, 1700
1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Vile, John R. Encyclopedia of Constitutional
Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues, 17892002. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-Clio, 2003.
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher and historian. He was a leading member
of the Scottish Enlightenment but was rejected for university positions because of
religious authorities concerns about his agnosticism. In his own time, Hume was
best known for his essays and his six-volume History of England (17541762). How-
ever, today he is remembered mostly for his philosophical works such as A Treatise of
Human Nature (173940), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), and
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1758).
As a philosopher, Hume was skeptical of humankinds ability to nd ultimate ra-
tional proofs for its ideas. He thought that truth was learned only by experience, not
by pure reason. Hence, he is properly called an empiricist rather than a rationalist.
In the branch of philosophy called epistemology (the study of how we come to have
knowledge), an empiricist is someone who believes that knowledge begins with our
sensory inputs. Rationalism, which Hume rejected, is the opposing belief that knowl-
edge comes from our ability to discover logically self-evident truths by reason alone.
More important than reason and logic, according to Hume, is the simple human
ability to nd persistent patterns in the raw data of our sensations. We are able to
nd the orderly patterns of nature by using three simple powers of perception: the
ability to recognize similarity, proximity, and repetition or persistence. Of these, the third
is the most important. Hence, for Hume, the true patterns of nature are those that
persist. Thus, in his version of empiricism, long-term experience is the ultimate key
to knowledge.
The idea of long-term experience also led to Humes most important contribu-
tion to political thought, the belief that the source of our best moral and political
principles is not reason but custom. Reason can tell us how to get what we want, but
344 Hume, David
it cannot tell us what we should want. Our wants, wrote Hume, come from human
nature and from socialization, but our moral principles come from the traditions
that represent the long-term learning of our culture. He followed earlier empiricists
in using the word passions to describe the built-in desires and aversions of human
nature. However, he added the idea that second-order passions could be learned
through long-term experience. Through social experimentation over generations,
humans learn from the experiences communicated to them by their predecessors.
In this way, social institutions such as the rules of morality and the administrative
units of the state emerge over time. In turn, we learn to love morality and social civil-
ity. These are second-order passions derived from long-term social experience.
Thus, in Humes political ideology, each society consists of the traditions of mo-
rality and order that give pattern and meaning to peoples lives. Hence, Hume was
one of the founders of modern conservatism, the anti-revolutionary movement that
rejects radical political change in favor of incremental social evolution. However,
because Hume rejected religious beliefs as superstitions, his traditionalism repre-
sents only one of the prevailing components of contemporary conservatism.
FURTHER READING: Mossner, Ernest Campbell. The Life of David Hume. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1980; Norton, David Fate, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hume. New York: Cambridge
BORIS DEWEIL
David Hume. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Samuel Huntington, the president of the Second Continental Congress, was
born on July 16, 1731, in Scotland, Connecticut, to Mehetabel and Nathaniel Hun-
tington. He was an avid reader of law books in the local libraries and was admitted
to the bar of Connecticut in 1758. Huntington began a ourishing law practice in
Norwich. His career in politics and in the judiciary progressed rapidly: he became a
member of the provincial assembly in 1764, justice for the peace and kings attorney
for Connecticut, and a member of the Superior Court in 1773.
In October 1775, Huntington was elected a delegate from Connecticut to the
Second Continental Congress a few months after the outbreak of the American
Revolutionary War. He attended the Congress in Philadelphia in January 1776; took
an active part in its deliberations, among them decisions to abrogate various acts
of Parliament and to impose a boycott on British goods; and signed the Declara-
tion of Independence in July 1776. Presiding over the Continental Congress from
September 28, 1779, Huntington persuaded the 13 states to ratify the Articles of
the Confederation on March 1, 1781, thereby making the United States an effective
reality ve years after it declared its independence. Huntington was the president
of the United States in Congress Assembled from March 1, 1781 to July 9, 1781, and
was succeeded by nine presidents until George Washington became the president
of the United States of America in 1787. Huntington served as lieutenant governor
and chief judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut between 1784 and 1786. He
became governor of Connecticut in 1786 and remained in ofce until his death at
his home in Norwich on January 5, 1796.
FURTHER READING: Dreher, George K. Samuel Huntington, President of Congress Longer
Than Expected: A Narrative Essay on the Letters of Samuel Huntington, 17791781. Midland, TX:
Iron Horse Free Press, 1996; Gerlach, Larry R. Connecticut Congressman: Samuel Huntington,
17311796. Hartford: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut, 1977;
Waugh, Albert E. Samuel Huntington and his family. Stonington, CT: Pequot Press, 1968.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Thomas Hutchinson, who reached the peak of his public career as the appointed
governor of Massachusetts, was the best-known colonial supporter of the British
government in the years leading to the American Revolution. The son of a dis-
tinguished Boston family, Hutchinson enjoyed all the perquisites of power in pre-
revolutionary America. He accumulated a large number of government ofces, he
vigorously defended Londons policies in public, and he clung to the view that po-
litical leadership should be exercised cooperatively by the established elite in both
American and British society. As a prime spokesman for acceding to British wishes,
Hutchinson became a widely vilied gure as the Revolution approached. He went
into exile in 1774 and spent the remainder of his life as an increasingly marginal
gure in British life.
Born in Boston on September 9, 1711, Hutchinson was a descendant of an old
New England family. Beyond an enviable lineage, the young man also inherited a
substantial family fortune based upon shipping. The numerous ofces held by older
members of his family encouraged young Thomas, who entered Harvard at the age
of 12, to consider devoting much of his own energy to public life.
Hutchinson, Thomas 345
346 Hutchinson, Thomas
In 1737, Hutchinson began his political career as Bostons representative to the
Massachusetts Assembly. As a member of the Assembly and subsequently as a judge
(despite his lack of formal legal training), Hutchinson quickly joined a political es-
tablishment loyal to the Crown. In 1758, he was appointed the lieutenant governor
of Massachusetts. By that time, he had distinguished himself in negotiating on the
colonys behalf with Indian tribes as well as the neighboring colonies of Connecticut
and Rhode Island.
As Hutchinsons reputation grew, he became widely identied as a member of the
so-called court party. This was a group centered on the governors of the colony of
Massachusetts, ofcials who were appointed in London. To leaders from lower lev-
els of society, such as Samuel Adams, Hutchinson symbolized an entrenched semi-
aristocracy that identied its continued well-being with loyalty to measures imposed
by London. Thus, Hutchinson found himself attacked both for his policies and as a
high-prole representative of an old political order now under challenge.
The growing chasm between the home country and its obstreperous North Amer-
ican colonies after 1763 increased Hutchinsons difculties in his own society. He
was quietly critical of British measures to tax the colonists without their consent. In
private letters, he objected to the Stamp Act and the subsequent Townshend Acts as
gross errors on the part of the British government. In public, however, he defended
the actions of the Crowns ministers. A key consideration for Hutchinson was the
belief that Britains North American colonies could not survive without the protec-
tion of the home country and its government. He soon paid a heavy price for his
statements. In August 1765, Bostons protests against British policy turned violent.
After a crowd wrecked the house of the colonys governor, they turned to destroy
the mansion of Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor.
Hutchinson became acting governor of Massachusetts in 1769 and took over the
post ofcially the following year. Thus, in late 1773, when the issue of the tea tax
reached a critical stage, he was the principal representative of British authority on
the scene. Hutchinson opposed the Tea Act, recently passed by Parliament, but as
a royal appointee, the conservative Bostonian knew that he had to enforce its provi-
sions. At the same time, acutely aware of the violence that unloading boxes of newly
taxed tea would arouse, Hutchinson delayed requiring that the tea be unloaded.
But neither would he order the ship carrying the tea to leave the harbor. When a
crowd dressed as Indians took over the ship and threw the tea in the harbor, co-
lonial public opinion found Hutchinson to be both ineffectual and hostile to the
rising revolutionary tide.
Hutchinsons public image had already been disastrously scarred earlier in the
crucial year of 1773. Benjamin Franklin obtained copies of private letters that
Hutchinson had dispatched to ruling circles in Britain starting in 1768. Six of these
were published in June, and these indicated that the Massachusetts leader had en-
couraged ministers in London to crack down harshly on opposition in the colonies.
Hutchinson specically accepted suspending long-established liberties the settlers
in America enjoyed.
By now Hutchinson was an exhausted man in his early sixties, widowed for more
than a decade. He had abandoned any expectation that he could restore stability in
an increasingly tumultuous colony like Massachusetts. Hoping to exonerate himself
with the authorities in London, and also to win a badly needed pension, Hutchinson
left Boston with two of his children in 1774 and was succeeded as governor by Gen-
eral Thomas Gage. The New England patrician never saw his homeland again.
Hutchinson, Thomas 347
The nal six years of Hutchinsons life delivered a number of severe blows to this
once privileged high ofcial. Initially, the ruling circles of British society greeted
him with enthusiasm, and Hutchinson had an audience with King George III. In
time, however, Hutchinson found himself increasingly ignored by the British elite.
He was even vilied in Parliament for the mistakes he had made that helped to
bring on the Revolution. On the other side of the Atlantic, Hutchinsons American
opponents continued to see him as a hated personication of the old order. His
property, including a beloved suburban retreat he had built in Milton, just outside
Boston, was conscated. His personal life was further darkened by the loss of his
youngest daughter, Peggy, who had accompanied him to England and passed away
there of consumption at the age of 23. Tired and embittered, Hutchinson died in
London on June 3, 1780. See also Boston Tea Party.
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974; Ferling, John. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle
to Create the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003; Walmsley, Andrew
Stephen. Thomas Hutchinson and the Origins of the American Revolution. New York: New York
NEIL M. HEYMAN
I
Idologues
The term idologue was applied to a group of French republican philosophers
and economists who sought to revive the liberal spirit of the Enlightenment against
the intellectual relics of the pre-revolutionary regime. Prominent among them were
Antoine-Louis-Claude, comte Destutt de Tracy (1764 1836); Germain, the comte
de Garnier (1754 1821); and Jean-Baptist Say (17671832). De Tracy and Say rep-
resented a French strain of liberal economics akin to the British Manchester school
yet concerned to a greater extent with theory and with the science of ideas that
Destutt de Tracy referred to as ideology.
De Tracys main work was the series Elments didologie, published between 1801
and 1815, which developed further the ideas of the philosopher and psychologist
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715 1780), himself an admirer of John Locke. De
Tracy believed that the task of ideology was to understand human nature and to
rearrange the social and political order in accordance with the aspirations of hu-
mankind scientically revealed. For his part, Say served as the editor of La Dcade
Philosophique and attempted to blend Condillacs theory of utility with Adam Smiths
cost theory of supply.
The laissez-faire spirit of economics expounded in Says Treatise on Political Econ-
omy, published in 1803, met with the disapproval of Napoleon, who demanded a re-
vision to conform to the protectionist and regulatory requirements of a national war
economy. When Say refused, Napoleon ousted Say from his post in the Tribunate
and denounced De Tracy, Say, and their colleagues as idologues whose vague and ab-
stract doctrines could only undermine the rule of lawa pejorative implication of
impractical philosophical rigidity that the term has retained ever since. The insult
was appropriate to many of the ideologues, but not, it seems, to Say himself. He left
Paris, applied his theory to a cotton factory that he established in the Pas-de-Calais,
and became very wealthy.
FURTHER READING: Kennedy, Emmet. A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution: Destutt de Tracy
and the Origins of Ideology. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978; Welch,
350 Impartiaux, Club des
Cheryl B. Liberty and Utility: The French Idolgues and the Transformation of Liberalism. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
The Club des Impartiaux was a group of deputies in the National Assembly who
fought to maintain the executive power of the French monarchy. Allied with other
centrists against the radical Jacobins, the Club des Impartiaux later became the
Society of Friends of the Monarchical Constitution before the National Assembly
ordered its closure in March 1791.
The club was founded in January 1790 by the moderate royalist Pierre Victor,
Baron Malouet. Malouet distinguished himself and soon became a spokesman for
liberal nobles in the National Assembly. Despite his sympathy for the Third Estate,
Malouet opposed attempts to strip Louis XVI of his powers. Malouet allied with
other liberal nobles in the National Assembly, notably Lafayette, but his staunch
royalism soon broke up these alliances.
The club was widely unpopular, despite its attempts to curry favor with the public
by distributing free bread. It attempted to shrug off some of its tarnished reputation
by changing its name to the Society of Friends of the Monarchical Constitution. As
the Jacobins gathered power, Malouet and his allies found themselves increasingly
isolated. In March 1791, a mob attacked the clubs headquarters. Shortly thereafter,
the National Assembly ordered the club dissolved. See also Political Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Cormack, William S. Revolution and Political Conict in the French Navy,
1789 1794. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Hardman, John. Louis XVI. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993; Legg, L. G. Wickham, ed. Select Documents Illustrative
of the History of the French Revolution. Vol. 1: The Constituent Assembly. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1905.
JAMES L. ERWIN
India
The ideals of the French Revolution have served as a frame of reference to many
people living under foreign domination, and its impact was not conned to Europe
alone. In the course of the Revolution, the ruler of the state of Mysore, Tipu Sultan
(1749 1799), resisted British rule. In 1778, he had sent an embassy seeking military
help to France. Tipu himself had been trained by French ofcers employed by his
father, Haider Ali (1722 1782). Napoleon had written to Tipu in 1798 announcing
his intention to march overland from Egypt to India so that the subcontinent could
be liberated from British rule. Napoleons defeat in Egypt, however, dashed Tipus
hopes of receiving any French aid, and Tipu himself was nally defeated at Seringa-
patam on May 4, 1799.
By way of mimicking aspects of the French Revolution in his own kingdom, Tipu
had started a Jacobin Club in his court and styled himself as Citizen Tipu. Moreover,
on May 14, 1797, the French tricolor was hoisted in Mysore and a toast made to
France in the presence of French ofcers. Tipu even planted a republican tree out-
side his palace. Deeply inuenced by the concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity,
Ireland 351
Tipu even envisioned the establishment of a republic, a notion that came to naught
as a result of the British conquest of his kingdom. See also Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Ali, Sheikh B. Tipu Sultan. New Delhi: NBT, 1992; Goel, Sita Ram. Tipu
Sultan: Villain or Hero? New Delhi: Voice of India, 1995.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Intolerable Acts
See Coercive Acts; Massachusetts Government Act
Ireland
Although Ireland retained a separate parliament and executive throughout the
eighteenth century, it could not be regarded as an independent kingdom with the
same monarch as England, Scotland, and Wales. Irish politics were dominated by
the British executive and Parliament at Westminster, and so the Dublin parliament
could not control its own legislative processes. The Irish legislature could only pre-
pare Heads of Bills, that is, draft legislative proposals that needed to be submitted
rst to the Irish Privy Council and then to the British Privy Council. In both coun-
tries, the Privy Councils could approve, reject, or amend these proposals, and the
Irish parliament could do nothing but decide whether to proceed with the proposals
that had been approved or amended. To compound this subordination to Westmin-
ster, in 1720 the British parliament passed the Declaratory Act that gave Westminster
the right to pass laws (though not taxes) that applied to Ireland. The Irish executive
was also subordinated to British interests. The head of the Irish executive, the lord
lieutenant, was almost invariably a British peer, and he was expected to serve British
interests. The lord lieutenant appointed Englishmen to some of the highest ofces in
church and state and expected even the leading Irish politicians to support British
interests in return for the rewards of ofce and titles. Many of the most powerful
men in Ireland, almost all of them Anglo-Irishmen and members of the established
Protestant Church of Ireland, were prepared to manage the Irish parliament as the
lord lieutenant directed so long as they were rewarded with high ofce.
Not surprisingly, this political system was deeply resented. The Catholic majority
could do little about it because they were denied many civil liberties by the penal
laws and they had no political rights because they were denied the vote and the
right to sit in the legislature or serve in the executive. The Scots-Irish, who were
mainly Protestant Dissenters, were about as numerous as the Anglo-Irish settlers
and outnumbered them in Ulster, but they too labored under serious disadvantages.
Not enough of them possessed the vote to be able to return many MPs (members
of Parliament) to the Irish House of Commons, and all of them were excluded
from holding ofce in the state by the Test Act of 1704. Both houses of Parliament
therefore were dominated by the Anglo-Irish propertied elite. Some members of
this elite, however, did resent British inuence on Irish politics. Their resentment
had three main causes: there was not enough Crown patronage to reward every
Irish peer and MP, this Crown patronage did not always go to Irishmen, and some of
these Anglo-Irishmen had a pragmatic or a principled objection to specic British
policies pursued by the Irish executive.
352 Ireland
Occasionally in the earlier eighteenth century this resentment had provoked a
Patriot opposition to some of the policies pursued by the Irish executive, but it was
not until the era of the American Revolution that the Patriots were able to make
signicant political gains. The American crisis seriously weakened British author-
ity within Ireland, and effective American protests against the British parliament
inspired the Irish Patriots. American patriot protests against the sovereignty of
the Westminster parliament reminded Irish Patriots of the arguments along the
same lines that had been advanced in 1698 by William Molyneuxs celebrated
pamphlet, The Case of Ireland Justly Stated. Molyneuxs pamphlet was reprinted in
1770 and 1780. In 1779 Charles Francis Sheridan rejected William Blackstones
claim that the Westminster parliament was the sovereign authority in all the kings
dominions. Patriot arguments began to ll the columns of the Freemans Journal
and the Hibernian Journal, both published in Dublin. The Patriot opposition in
Parliament, while still a minority, gained renewed vigor under the able leadership
of such politicians as Henry Flood, Henry Grattan, and the Earl of Charlemont.
In Dublin, James Napper Tandy led the citys corporation in support of the Patriot
cause. British disasters in the American Revolutionary War greatly assisted the
Irish Patriot cause. Ireland was denuded of troops needed for the war effort, and
the government had no alternative but to accept the support offered by armed
Volunteer corps to meet any possible invasion attempt. The rst part-time Volun-
teers corps was raised in Belfast in March 1778. By 1780 there were about 60,000
Volunteers, and they began to look favorably on the causes advocated by the Patriot
opposition. In October and November 1779 Henry Grattan and the Volunteers,
inside Parliament and on the streets of Dublin, respectively, demanded free trade
for Ireland. In November the Irish parliament voted a money bill for six months
only as a warning to the executive of the nancial problems they could create for
the Irish state. In 1780 the British agreed that Ireland should be allowed to trade
with the British colonies on the same terms as British merchants, and the Irish
parliament was persuaded to repeal the Test Act of 1704 in order to placate the
Scots-Irish.
In February 1782, the Volunteers elected delegates to meet at a convention in
Dungannon, where they agreed to support the political resolutions drawn up by
the Patriots. On April 16, 1782, Henry Grattan, with unanimous support in the
Irish House of Commons, proposed a series of resolutions designed to secure
legislative independence for Ireland. On May 17 the Westminster parliament re-
pealed the Declaratory Act of 1720 and amended the old law so that the Irish
legislature did not need to draft Heads of Bills requiring approval from the Irish
Privy Council before these proposals could be presented as parliamentary bills.
Grattan was satised with these concessions, but Henry Flood pressed for a Re-
nunciation Act whereby the Westminster parliament would explicitly renounce
that it possessed the constitutional right to legislate for Ireland. In April 1783, the
Westminster parliament passed such an act. The lord lieutenant also conceded
that the Irish parliament should meet every year, instead of every second year,
in order to conduct business. This raised the prestige and inuence of the Irish
parliament.
The leading Irish Patriots were delighted with these political concessions and
were prepared to call a halt to their campaign. Some of the Volunteers, however,
had a more radical agenda and wished to pursue measures of parliamentary reform
Ireland 353
that would make the Irish House of Commons more representative. A few even
considered granting the franchise to Catholics. The Patriot leaders were alarmed
at such proposals and feared alienating the propertied classes. They did not desire
complete independence, like the American patriots, because they did not think the
political system in Ireland could stand without British support against an invasion
from abroad or a Catholic revolt at home. Grattan and the others thought they had
secured complete legislative independence, but their gains were not as great as they
believed. They had not curbed the power of the Irish executive, which soon showed
that it could still largely dominate the legislature. The British Privy Council could
still approve, reject, or amend Irish legislation, and the royal veto was sometimes
used (whereas it was never used against Westminster legislation). The Catholics had
been granted some relief from their civil disabilities by acts passed in 1778 and 1782,
but they were still denied the vote and any right to sit in the legislature or serve in
the executive. The Irish parliament was still dominated by the Anglo-Irish proper-
tied elite.
The Irish Patriots had rather more political inuence than before, and they
did defeat prime minister William Pitts proposal for a commercial treaty between
Britain and Ireland in 1785. But in the dramatically changed and highly charged
political atmosphere of the 1790s, they found their inuence much reduced, and
they were increasingly sidelined as most Irishmen were sharply polarized by their
reactions to the French Revolution and the great war that broke out in 1793. Ini-
tially, the French Revolution encouraged moderate reformers to hope for further
gains, and it persuaded the British government to make concessions to the Catho-
lics. A Catholic Relief Act removed restrictions on Catholics in the legal profes-
sion, and in 1793 Catholics were given the parliamentary franchise on the same
basis as Protestants. At the same time the constitutional activities of the Society of
United Irishmen were based on the optimistic assessment that further gains could
be made. The growing violence and the Terror in France and the outbreak of war
soon put an end to these hopes. A conservative reaction and a militant Protestant
backlash developed, and the Irish government responded to the demands for radi-
cal change at home with a reinforcement of the Protestant Ascendancy. The Con-
vention Act of 1793 sought to suppress all those seeking to alter the establishment
in church and state. The Dublin Society of United Irishmen was dispersed in May
1794. The defenders of the Protestant Ascendancy ensured the rapid recall of the
liberal lord lieutenant, Earl Fitzwilliam, in January 1795 and welcomed his replace-
ment by the conservative Earl Camden. Militant Protestants in Ulster formed the
Orange Order later that year. In 1796 the Insurrection Act increased the powers
of local magistrates so that they could impose curfews, search for arms, and arrest
idle and disorderly persons. The army and the newly raised Yeomanry were used
to disarm the United Irishmen and the Catholic Defenders in 1796 1798 and to
make hundreds of arrests.
This draconian response did not entirely crush the United Irishmen or the
Catholic Defenders. In 1794 1795, the United Irishmen were transformed into a
secret, mass-based, and oath-bound conspiracy that was ready to achieve its ends
by force of arms. It recruited large numbers, including many Catholic Defenders
who were prepared to join them in destroying British inuence in Ireland and the
authority of the Protestant Ascendancy. Whereas the United Irishmen were preoc-
cupied with creating a democratic republic, however, the Defenders were more
354 Ireland
interested in improving the socioeconomic conditions of the Catholics. Whereas
the United Irishmen sought political rights for all Irishmen, the Defenders were
a sectarian force committed to pursuing social and economic changes for the
benet of Catholics. It was therefore a loose alliance of convenience. The United
Irishmen in exile sought to enlist French military support for an insurrection, but
the major French expedition in late 1796 failed, and thereafter the French were
unwilling to launch another attempt until the United Irishmen had rst risen in
rebellion.
The United Irishmen planned to rebel on May 23, 1798, but shortly before that
date many of its leaders were arrested. The plan to capture Dublin at the outset of
the rebellion failed and the rebellion elsewhere was less organized, coordinated,
and disciplined than the United Irishmen had planned. Fierce ghting took place
in Wexford and surrounding areas, and in Antrim and Down. The rebellion was
marked by erce ghting in pitched battles and by barbarous acts committed by
both sides as militants fought a sectarian war and wreaked revenge on their oppo-
nents. It was soon crushed, though small-scale banditry continued for many months.
The French arrived too late, in the wrong place, and in insufcient numbers to save
the rebellion from collapse. Thousands died during the rebellion, thousands were
punished afterward, and there was massive material damage. The United Irishmen
and the Defenders were destroyed as effective organizations and the militant Prot-
estants triumphed, aided by British forces. Grattan and the Irish Whigs, and the
Catholic clerical hierarchy and moderate Catholic reformers, were little more than
observers of this terrible tragedy.
The British government was convinced that the political system in Ireland needed
to be changed. Pitt, supported by Henry Dundas and the Duke of Portland at home
and by Cornwallis (the new lord lieutenant) and Viscount Castlereagh in Ireland,
decided that the only viable solution to the desperate situation in Ireland was to pass
an incorporating Act of Union that would abolish the separate Irish parliament and,
instead, give the Irish representation in the Westminster parliament. Pitt believed
that this would improve the strategic position of the British Isles in the war against
France, would produce better government and increased prosperity in Ireland, and
would enable the Catholic question to be addressed. Since the Catholics were a
large majority in Ireland, any attempt to give them political equality alarmed the
militant Protestant minority. Pitt believed it would be possible to admit Catholics
to the legislature and executive of the United Kingdom because there they would
be in a clear minority. Thus, Pitt proposed that the Act of Union be followed by a
Catholic Emancipation Act giving the Catholics access to the Westminster legisla-
ture and to ofce in the state. The Union was easily accepted by the Westminster
parliament, but it met stiff resistance in the Dublin parliament. The Union bill was
defeated in 1799 in Dublin, where it was opposed by radicals such as William Dren-
nan, by Henry Grattan and the Whigs on national and Patriot grounds, and by some
staunch defenders of the Protestant Ascendancy who feared the Westminster parlia-
ment would make too many concessions to the Catholics. Only determined efforts
in 1800 involving the carrot and the stick ensured that the Union was passed. It
came into force on January 1, 1801.
The Act of Union granted the Irish 100 MPs in the House of Commons at West-
minster and 28 peers and 4 bishops in the House of Lords. It also conceded com-
plete free trade and reasonable terms on taxation and the national debt. But Pitt
Isnard, Henri Maximin 355
failed to persuade George III to accept Catholic Emancipation, and he resigned
in protest. Thus, the Union created a new political system in which the Catholics,
a large majority in Ireland, were denied equal political rights. The Catholics in
Ireland were so disorganized and demoralized by the crushing of the rebellion of
1798 that they were unable to mount an effective campaign of their own to secure
Catholic emancipation until the 1820s. Long before then many Catholics had given
up believing that the Union parliament at Westminster could give them justice. See
also Britain; French Revolutionary Wars.
FURTHER READING: Bartlett, Thomas, David Dickson, Daire Keogh, and Kevin Whelan,
eds. 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective. Dublin, UK: Four Courts, 2003; Geoghegan, Patrick M.
The Irish Act of Union: A Study in High Politics 1798 1801. Dublin, UK: Gill & Macmillan, 1999;
Mansergh, Danny. Grattans Failure: Parliamentary Opposition and the People in Ireland 1779 1801.
Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005; McBride, Ian R. Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterianism and
Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; McDowell, R. B.
Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1760 1801. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979;
Moody, T. W., and W. E. Vaughan, eds. A New History of Ireland. Vol. 4: The Eighteenth Century.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986; Morley, Vincent. Irish Opinion and the American Revolution
1760 1783. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Powell, Martyn J. Britain and
Ireland in the Eighteenth-Century Crisis of Empire. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003;
Small, Stephen. Political Thought in Ireland 1760 1798: Republicanism, Patriotism and Radicalism.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002; Smyth, Jim, ed. Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union.
H. T. DICKINSON
Isnard, Henri Maximin (1758 1825)
A modest merchant-manufacturer from Grasse, Isnard was elected to the Legis-
lative Assembly and then the National Convention to represent his native depart-
ment of the Var. His radicalism led him to demand severe punishment for refractory
priests and abolition of the monarchy in 1792. Yet he followed a typical Girondin
trajectory, subsequently falling foul of erstwhile Jacobin colleagues in the Conven-
tion and becoming increasingly unpopular with the Parisian crowd. Though he
voted for the kings death, his support for the creation of revolutionary tribunals
and the Committee of Public Safety was mainly a means of restoring order in the
capital and curbing the power of the Commune.
As president of the Convention in May 1793, Isnard made his celebrated
denunciation of the overweening inuence of Paris: I tell you in the name of the
whole of France that if these perpetually recurring insurrections ever lead to harm to
the parliament chosen by the nation, Paris will be annihilated, and men will search
the banks of the Seine for traces of the city. The bluster was in vain, yet he was not
arrested on June 2 with other Girondins when the Convention was purged as a re-
sult of sans-culotte pressure. It was clearly prudent to withdraw, and Isnard went into
hiding. He reemerged after the Thermidorian Reaction a erce anti-Jacobin and
resumed his career as a deputy for the Var. When his term of ofce expired in 1797,
he returned to his business in the Var and later rallied to Napoleon Bonaparte,
becoming a baron of the Empire in 1813. Despite welcoming Napoleon during the
Hundred Days, this bourgeois who had briey risen to prominence under the Revo-
lution was allowed to live his nal years in peace. See also Jacobins; Sans-Culottes.
356 Italy
FURTHER READING: Patrick, Alison. The Men of the First French Republic. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1972; Sydenham, M. J. The Girondins. London: Athlone Press, 1961.
MALCOLM CROOK
Italy
During the age of revolution, Italy was not a single united country, but rather a
collection of small states sharing a common language and culture, but politically,
socially, and economically distinct. Unlike France, Spain, and Britain, Italyalong
with Germanydid not experience the emergence of a centralized nation-state
in the late medieval and early modern periods. In Italys case, this was due to
the fact that during the Renaissance, Italian city-states like Venice, Genoa, and
Florence were leaders in trade and culture. The strong economic power of these
individual city-states acted as a barrier to effective state consolidation on the Ital-
ian peninsula, with each one tending to balance out the territorial ambitions of
the others.
While this arrangement kept Italy at the forefront of commerce and culture dur-
ing the Renaissance, it proved a serious hindrance when monarchs in other Euro-
pean states began to consolidate centralized power and build powerful national
armies. The presence of the Vatican on Italian soil also contributed to this situation
as the papacy created its own mini-state around Rome, ostensibly in order to remain
independent from any other state authority.
The position of the Italian city-states suffered decline with the discovery of the
Americas and the beginning of a vibrant trans-Atlantic trade dominated by the
emerging powers of Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The cross-
Mediterranean trade with the Islamic world and points Eastwhich the Italians
dominateddeclined in importance, as did Italys economic and social position
relative to the rest of Europe.
Italy would therefore enter the age of revolution not only as a nation in economic
and social decline, but as a nation that was not even politically unied under one
government. As the power of the centralizing European states expanded in the two
centuries leading up to the French Revolution, the individual Italian mini-states
would fall under the strong inuence of foreign powers, particularly Spain, France,
and Austria.
Moreover, with commerce on the decline and proving ever more risky in the com-
petitive international environment, many Italian merchants began to invest in land.
While land was a safer investment, this policy contributed to a certain retrenchment
in Italian social life. While elsewhere in Europe economic life was becoming less tied
to the land, the opposite was actually occurring in Italy, further leading to its overall
decline. Nevertheless, in the mid- and late eighteenth century, Italy did begin to
undergo a process of economic change and political reform in the context of the
wider European Enlightenment. Many Italian intellectuals of the period contributed
to Enlightenment thought and encouraged Italian statesor their foreign benefac-
torsto institute political reforms and improve the productivity of agriculture. For
most of the latter half of the eighteenth century, Europes Great Powers left Italy in
peace, as their attentions were focused elsewhere. Nevertheless, Spain, France, and
Austria continued to maintain strong inuence in many parts of the peninsula. Their
desire to keep Italians pacied often led them to implement limited Enlightenment
Italy 357
reforms. During this period, domestic intellectuals subscribing to progressive ideas,
working with foreign rulers keen to keep the peninsula quiet, contributed to a de-
gree of resurgence on the Italian peninsula in administrative and economic affairs.
Nevertheless, the indigenous balance of power on the peninsula and the desire
of the Great Powers to prevent the emergence of another rival meant that Italy
remained politically divided into a number of separate political entities, each with
a different political structure and affected to varying degrees by Enlightenment
reform. In the north (Lombardy)dominated largely by Austrian inuencethe
Republic of Venice dominated the region at the head of the Adriatic Sea, while the
duchies of Milan, Modena, and Parma controlled the central region. To the west,
on the border with the France, the Kingdom of Sardiniawhich consisted of the
Piedmont region and the island of Sardinia itselfwas growing in strength and
inuence under the House of Savoy and enjoyed a favorable strategic position be-
tween France and Austria. On the western coast, the Republic of Genoa controlled
access to the Ligurian Sea and the island of Corsica until it sold it to France in 1768.
In the center of the peninsula, the grand duchy of Tuscany consisted of the territory
around the Renaissance centers of Florence, Siena, and Pisa. South of Tuscany, the
pope controlled the central position of the peninsula directly, stretching all the way
up the east coast to Bologna. In the south, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, better
known as Naples, was among the largest of the Italian states and was closely associ-
ated with the Bourbon monarchy in Spain. Several other small republics and duch-
ies completed the map of the Italian peninsula of the day.
For the most part, the northern regions of the peninsulawith the exception
of Piedmontexperienced the most far-reaching administrative and economic re-
forms in the pre-revolutionary period. A new middle class that provided the social
bases for reform was beginning to emerge. In the south, while several important
Enlightenment thinkers emerged, the feudalistic structure of society served to hold
reform back. In the papal region, church control of social and intellectual life re-
mained strong.
Despite the importance of the Enlightenment in Italy, it would enter the age of
revolution as a divided nation, economically and socially behind much of the rest
of Europe. Nevertheless, by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Italian
society itself had grown restless. A new class of incipient merchants and investors
a nascent bourgeoisiehad developed, and they had an interest in political reform.
Many intellectuals had become imbued with revolutionary ideas and many wished
to emulate the French and create a revolution in Italy that would sweep away the ves-
tiges of the old order and unite the peninsula. The popular classesmany pushed
into poverty by economic changeswere likewise restive, and many saw the spread
of revolution to Italy as their only hope for a better life.
However, the ensuing period of pan-European warfare that followed the French
Revolutionpitting revolutionary France against successive coalitions of Britain,
Austria, Prussia, and Russiawould have drastic consequences on Italy that would
come to shape the peninsulas destiny in the modern era.
When the French Revolution broke out, most Italian rulersfearful of revolution
in their own realmsaligned with the Great Powers to prevent the spread of revo-
lution. When the French Revolutionary Wars broke out in 1792, the revolutionary
armies were able to make some initial headway into Italy and occupy Piedmontese
territory. However, they were unable to advance further until Napoleon Bonaparte
358 Italy
assumed command of French forces on the Italian front in 1796. By the following
year, Bonaparte had defeated the Piedmontese and driven the Austrians out of Italy
with the treaty of Campo Formio.
During this period, the French conquerors reorganized Italian political life and
set up a number of new republics and states based primarily on the administrative
model of the French Directorythe moderate committee that ruled revolutionary
France from 1795 to 1799. In doing so the French redrew political boundaries in
Italy to their own convenience, often dissolving states and creating new ones when
they proved problematic. In carrying out this policy, the French served to delegiti-
mize the existing separation of Italy into different states in the eyes of many Italians
and gave fuel to the Enlightenment ideas of the cultural and linguistic unity of the
Italian people and fuel to a burgeoning sense of Italian nationalism.
For the most part, these new republics were governed by moderate administra-
tions willing to implement Frances will in Italy, including raising troops and taxing
the local population. Still, Italian intellectuals sympathetic to the radical ideas of the
Jacobin period of the French Revolution remained important gures in Italian so-
ciety. These intellectuals championed administrative, economic, and social reforms
and ultimately held out hopes of creating a united Italian state. In general, they sup-
ported French foreign policy during this period. Nevertheless, under the Directory,
the French Revolution itself shifted to a more moderate phase. Many French leaders,
although sympathetic to the goals of the Italian revolutionaries, opposed an outright
revolution in Italy for diplomatic reasons in a time of great international tension.
Many Italian Jacobins began to grow weary of the French due to their hesitations
in promoting a full-scale revolution in Italy. Napoleons decision to award Venice to
Austria was taken by many Italian revolutionaries as a symbol of Frances willingness
to compromise revolutionary principles in favor of diplomatic expedience. In 1799,
the situation reached a breaking point. War between France and the other Euro-
pean powers resumed, and the anti-French coalition sought to overthrow French
dominance in Italy. Moreover, the Italian peopleangered by French exploitation
and their antichurch positionswere on the verge of revolt.
In Naples, the French-dominated Parthenopean Republics half measures to
abolish feudalism, coupled with high taxes, provoked a peasant uprising that was
supported by the church. Facing an Austrian advance in the north, the French with-
drew, forcing the republican leaders to face the crowds on their own. Although
the republic resisted, the result of the uprising was the temporary restoration of a
Bourbon kingdom in Naples.
In 1799, Napoleon seized control of France itself and quickly turned his atten-
tion toward reasserting French dominance in Italy. In 1800, he defeated the Aus-
trians at the Battle of Marengo in northern Italy and eventually forced them to
recognize the French dominance of Italy in the Treaty of Lunville in 1801. Napo-
leon once again redrew the map of Italy, annexing most of Piedmont and the west
coast of the peninsula directly to the French Empire and creating the Kingdom of
Italy in the north and the Kingdom of Naples in the south, both wedded to French
policy. Once again, by shifting the boundaries of the various Italian statesand, in
this case, reducing them to only twoNapoleon was giving Italians a taste of what
national unity could mean.
Although many of the reforms of the revolutionary period were enacted in Italy
during this time, the peninsula remained in a subservient position with respect to
Italy 359
France, and domestic goals often took a backseat to the interests of French foreign
policy. Taxation remained high and Italy continued to supply troops for Frances
European war effort. Moreover, the imposition of Napoleons Continental System,
which forbade trade with Britain, seriously retarded the growth and development of
Italian industry at this time.
As the Napoleonic Wars dragged on in the rst decade and a half of the nineteenth
century, Italy remained under French dominance, with the exception of Sardinia
and Sicily, whose monarchs continued to rule with British support. While many Ital-
ians welcomed the political and administrative reforms the French brought, they
also grew weary of war, taxation, and economic stagnation. The agricultural lower
classes were in particular put off by French policies, which favored the landowners.
Nevertheless, many Italians gained a deepening sense of national consciousness as a
direct result of the experience of state consolidation that the French brought to the
peninsula, a consciousness that would form the basis for Italian unication in the
second half of the nineteenth century.
With Napoleons defeat in Russia in 1812, which contributed greatly to his even-
tual military defeat, abdication, and exile two years later, Italian leaders would make
an attempt to assert independence in hopes of gaining the recognition of the Great
Powers before a different foreign power could assert domination once again. In the
north, the Kingdom of Italy sought to elect an independent king and gain British rec-
ognition. However, the British refused, and the area once again passed to Austrian
control. In the south, Napoleons brother-in-law and celebrated marshal, Joachim
Muratwhom Napoleon had made king of Naples in 1808tried to exploit the situ-
ation to lead a peninsula-wide movement for Italian unication. However, Murats
diplomatic and military miscalculations, as well as his failure to appease domestic
unrest by not offering a constitution, led to his defeat, exile, and eventual execution
in 1815, ending the rst concrete movement for Italian unication in failure.
At the Congress of Vienna following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the
Great powers essentially returned Italy to the status quo ante bellum, returning the
old deposed monarchs to their thrones and reviving the Papal States. Italy would
remain a divided nation for another half century. Nevertheless, the sense of unity
and nationalism and the political and economic reforms that took place during the
age of revolution were not completely extinguished by the postwar settlement. New
classes that saw their fate as dependent on the construction of a unied Italian state
and national culture had emerged in Italian society. While it would take another
half century for the goal of Italian unity to nally come to fruition, the basis for Ital-
ian nationhood was clearly laid in its experience during the age of revolution. See
also Concordat; Pius VI, Pope; Pius VII, Pope.
FURTHER READING: Broers, Michael. The Napoleonic Empire in Italy, 1796 1814: Cultural
Imperialism in a European Context? New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Broers, Michael. The
Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War against God, 1801 1814. London: Routledge,
2002; Connelly, Owen. Napoleons Satellite Kingdoms. New York: Free Press, 1965; Di Scala,
Spencer. Italy from Revolution to Republic: 1700 to the Present. San Francisco: Westview Press,
1995; Gregory, Desmond. Napoleons Italy. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 2001; Hanlon, Gregory. Early Modern Italy, 1550 1800. New York: St. Martins Press,
2000; Sperber, Jonathan. Revolutionary Europe, 1780 1850. New York: Longman, 2000;
Woolf, Stuart. A History of Italy: 1700 1860. London: Methuen, 1979.
MICHAEL F. GRETZ
J
Jacobins
The Jacobins were the most powerful political club of the French Revolution.
Developing a broad network of clubs stretching throughout the major urban cit-
ies, villages, and communes of France, the Jacobin movement came to dominate
revolutionary politics. Organized by this broad base, the Jacobins not only wielded
considerable inuence over public opinion but developed the club network as a tac-
tical means to inuence the National Assemblies. Numerically a minority, the move-
ment was able to use the clubs to secure considerable political power, which they
came to exercise within the National Convention, instituting the Reign of Terror as
the political tool for securing their own increasingly radical vision of the Revolution
Between 1793 and 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, the Jaco-
bins controlled the new Republic, developing a distinctive system of revolutionary
government that was overthrown by the Thermidorian Reaction. From its origins
as a club for representatives of the National Assembly through its development as
a club network and its subsequent control of the Republic, the Jacobins constantly
transformed themselves. While certain continuities existed in the structure of the
club, its membership changed considerably, and it moved from a club that repre-
sented a broad revolutionary consensus toward a more restrictive, orthodox, and
radical movement that developed a distinctive ideological denition of the Revolu-
tion. The Thermidorian Reaction overthrew the Jacobins, closing the clubs and put-
ting its leaders to death, but Jacobinism would come to dene a specically French
variant of revolutionary republicanism that had a lasting legacy throughout the po-
litical struggles of the nineteenth century.
The Jacobin movement originated as a political club, and the club remained the
fundamental institution from which the Jacobins developed their ideology and in-
uence over revolutionary politics. Initially, the term Jacobin was a nickname for
a political club that emerged in Paris in 1789. The label referred to the members of
the Socit des Amis de la Constitution (Society of the Friends of the Constitution),
who began to meet in the Jacobin convent of Paris beginning in November of 1789.
Emerging out of the Breton Club, a meeting place for provincial deputies at the
362 Jacobins
outset of the Estates-General, the Jacobin Club was established in Paris shortly after
the National Assembly moved from Versailles to Paris. Formed by roughly 15 or 20
former members of the Breton Club, the society began as a meeting place for depu-
ties of the National Assembly. The club was not founded as an oppositional group,
and its original members represented a broad group of Patriots who supported the
Revolution and viewed the club as a means to support the work of the Assembly.
Its primary purpose, as outlined in its rst formal constitution, was to discuss in
advance the questions to be decided by the Assembly, to work for the establishment
and strengthening of the constitution, and to correspond with other societies of
the same kind throughout France. The club brought together both moderate and
radical elements, while it socially comprised a group that included liberal aristocrats
and well-to-do bourgeois. In this early phase, many of the most prominent deputies
and leaders of the National Assembly, including such men as Honor Mirabeau, the
Marquis de Lafayette, Antoine Barnave, and Robespierre, were counted as mem-
bers of the Jacobin Club. At the same time, the club became a focal point for many
of the most talented and vocal revolutionary journalists, including Camille Desmou-
lins and Jean-Pierre Brissot, and the relationship between the club and the press
would constitute an important means through which the Parisian club reached out
to the provinces and founded a network of afliates.
Beginning in early 1790, the Jacobins developed a network of clubs throughout
France, while the Paris club served as the largest club and the central hub of the
network. The development of the Jacobin network was central to its power and in-
uence, but although the network stretched throughout every department, it was
not geographically uniform. For example, there were considerably more clubs in
the south than in any other region. Furthermore, over the next four years the club
network was prone to considerable change, both expanding and contracting in re-
sponse to the changes in revolutionary politics. Many provincial clubs closed down
for brief periods only to reopen according to a perceived need, such as when King
Louis XVI was overthrown and when the Republic was proclaimed. Attendance in
these clubs also uctuated, peaking during elections and periods of great agitation
and waning during other periods. The struggles of the capital, such as when the
Feuillants split from the Jacobin Club, greatly inuenced the network. This was
even more acute during the struggle between the Girondins and Jacobins, when the
so-called federalist revolt forced many provincial clubs to choose between the two
factions of the capital. During the Reign of Terror, owing to the importance of clubs
for revolutionary government, the Jacobin network was at its peak, estimated as
numbering as many as 5,000 clubs across France, while the practice of purication
nally made the network extremely uniform and cohesive.
The Jacobin Club developed a highly formalized organizational structure along
with a highly ritualized club culture. The constitution of the club dened a struc-
ture that included a president, who was elected every month; a secretary who kept
minutes; a treasurer; and committees who oversaw a variety of tasks, including elec-
tions, correspondence, and the administration of the club. Membership was highly
contested, and it required not only nomination by a member but the presentation
of the candidate to the whole membership. Members were expected to conform in
principles and character to the central moral values of the club, and their conduct
was examined unceasingly. These values were expressed in the oaths that were taken,
as well as in the hymns and chants that often accompanied the meetings. Members
Jacobins 363
carried cards that conrmed their conduct, and the club developed a system of
purication, especially important during the Terror, which expelled members for
anything that was deemed contrary to the clubs moral vision of a proper Jacobin.
Despite uctuations in membership, the social composition of the Jacobin Clubs
remained principally elite, differentiating the club from Pariss more popular sec-
tions and the Cordeliers Club. The Jacobins charged a relatively high entrance fee
and dues, unlike the Cordeliers, the other major political club of Paris, and it origi-
nally organized itself as a rather exclusive club. Initially its members were exclusively
deputies to the National Assembly who convened at the club in the evening to dis-
cuss strategy and to coordinate parliamentary business. In time, the club expanded
to include non-deputy members, including prominent writers, scholars, journalists,
and inuential bourgeois who also paid an entry fee and high dues. It was not until
October 1791 that the Paris club opened its sessions to the public, a practice that
was quite common at the Cordeliers and even among provincial Jacobin Clubs. The
introduction of a public gallery transformed the club, giving the orators who spoke
at the club a broad public audience, and providing the Jacobins with the means,
along with the printed word, to inuence the popular movement. In time, the re-
lationship between the Jacobin Club and the sans-culotte movement became cen-
tral to the Jacobin strength and ability to dominate the National Convention. The
composition of the club was distinctively middle class, owing to its high dues, and
even though the Jacobin movement would experience considerable change and
transition through the Revolution, it never lost its primarily middle-class character,
despite the eventual reduction in dues and the increase in the number of artisans as
members. As a result, in the period from 1789 to 1791, the Jacobins developed the
basic structure of their network, survived the rst major schism in their member-
ship, and developed the basic institutional structures and regulations of club life.
However, between 1789 and 1791 the broad consensus that exemplied early
Jacobinism eroded, and the club slowly divided between moderate supporters of
the Revolution and those who favored a more radical and democratic revolution.
The rst sign of such a division in the revolutionary movement was the exit of Lafay-
ette from the Jacobin Club to form his own club, the Society of 1789. More seriously,
in the summer of 1791, after the ight of the king, the Jacobin Club experienced its
rst major schism when a large number of moderate members who favored the pol-
icy of supporting the king left the club and formed the Feuillant Club. This schism
very nearly destroyed the Jacobin movement, as the Feuillants were initially success-
ful at attracting a sizeable portion of both the membership and the provincial af-
liates. Despite this early success, the Jacobins regained much of their membership
and afliates, largely through the effective leadership of Robespierre, and by the
end of 1791, the Jacobin Club was not only the strongest club in the capital and the
provinces but now represented a distinctively radical movement that opposed all
calls for ending the Revolution along moderate lines.
The creation of the rst Legislative Assembly, following the ratication of the
Constitution of 1791, brought more conict within the Jacobin movement and
led to a further radicalization. Within the Legislative Assembly, only a minority of
the deputies were Jacobin, but the efcient organization of the movement and the
strength of the network of clubs meant that theses deputies had considerable inu-
ence. This was exemplied when the king was forced to name many prominent
members as ministers, leading to a period of a so-called Jacobin Ministry. Not only
364 Jacobins
did the Jacobin movement increasingly agitate against the king, but the movement
itself became very divided as both Brissot and Robespierre struggled to secure the
leadership of the movement. The issue that most divided these two men, and the
movement, was the decision to declare war on Austria. This was the policy that Bris-
sot favored, and the Jacobin ministers managed to convince the king, the Assembly,
and the Jacobins to support a declaration of war. However, the struggle between
him and Robespierre would culminate in the bitter factional struggle of the Na-
tional Convention that further divided the movement between a radical group who
followed Robespierre and a more moderate position exemplied by Brissot. The
Jacobins responded to the crisis of the war with hesitation and moderation, opting
in the summer of 1792 to remain aloof from the radical protests being made by the
Parisian sections against the king. The Jacobins played no role in the petition move-
ment that called for the dethronement of the king, nor did they participate in the
uprising of August 10, 1792, that overthrew the monarchy.
With the convocation of the National Convention, the Jacobins remained an or-
ganized but efcient and vocal minority who sought to shape a radical denition
of the Republic against the moderate impulses of the majority of the deputies. It
was at this time that the society ofcially changed its name to the Society of the
Jacobins, Friends of Liberty and Equality. The Convention became the site of the
bitter factional struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondins as each republican
group vied for the support of the majority of deputies who belonged to neither
faction. This conict was central to the debates that surrounded the kings trial, to
the debates on establishing a republican constitution, and to the question of what
emergency measures were appropriate for securing the resources needed for the
war and what measures should be adopted to ght counterrevolutionary forces.
The Jacobins approached these problems by outlining a radical egalitarianism that
conicted with the moderate views of the Girondins. The Jacobins opposed the trial
and any notion of an appeal to the people, called for a broadly democratic constitu-
tion, and were willing to accept the role of popular violence in combating counter-
revolution. This nal issue was critical. The two groups shared very contrasting views
of the Parisian sans-culottes and the sectional movement. Unlike the Girondins, the
Jacobins openly supported the sans-culotte movement, including its appeal to popu-
lar violence, and they used the support of this movement to secure control of the
counterrevolution and the Convention. The Jacobins were willing to accept many of
the sans-culottes demands regarding the economic and social policy of the Republic.
Additionally, the Jacobins shared the sans-culottes appeal to the centrality of swift,
inexible justice toward all enemies of the Republic.
The struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondins came to a climax in late
May 1793. The Jacobins called for an insurrection against the Convention and,
aided by the sans-culottes, purged the Girondin leaders from the Convention; the
Girondin leaders were eventually tried before the revolutionary tribunals and put
to death. The victory over the Girondins not only secured the Jacobin mastery of
the Convention but solidied the movement. Following the insurrection, all the
clubs put their members through an examination, and this process of regeneration
purged from the network any members who openly sympathized with the Girondins
or had shown any signs of supporting the Girondins. Henceforth, all moderates
were removed from the club network, which created a structural and ideological
orthodoxy that would dene a more uniform Jacobin movement throughout 1793.
Jacobins 365
With the purge of the Convention, the Jacobins controlled the Convention and
the Committee of Public Safety, using this power to construct the system of terror
and revolutionary government that administered the new Republic. The Jacobins
quickly nalized a republican constitution, but they did not put the constitution
into effect, arguing that the country must be ruled by a revolutionary government
until the end of the war and the suppression of all counterrevolutionary forces.
Outlining this new form of revolutionary government, they placed extraordinary
powers with the Committee of Public Safety. From June 1793 to June 1794, the Ja-
cobin dictatorship ruled the Republic and the club network became a semi-ofcial
branch of the revolutionary government. The clubs became the central local insti-
tutions that executed the Law of Suspects, monitored municipal authorities, and
served as the Jacobin instrument for ensuring that the decrees of the Convention
were executed throughout France. The Jacobins strove for absolute uniformity and
conformity, sending deputies to the provinces as representatives on mission; these
representatives were given unlimited and extraordinary powers to enforce the will
of the Convention regarding requisitioning supplies for the various French armies,
detaining suspects, and purging clubs and municipal governments of anyone who
challenged the Jacobin vision of a Republic of Virtue.
The Jacobin movement came to represent a distinctive vision of the Revolution
and the Republic. From 1789, the Jacobin movement was always dened by its com-
mitment to the Revolution, but the denition of the Revolution changed. Through-
out 1793 the Jacobins demanded the moral transformation of the citizen as part
of the founding of a new Republic. Appealing to the centrality of patriotism and
republican virtue, the Jacobins believed that the Republic could only be secured
if the citizen were morally transformed into a republican citizen. The demand for
such a moral transformation was central to the two main practices of the Terror.
First, the Jacobins used terror to kill, to arrest, and to threaten those citizens who
resisted this moral transformation, or, according to the Jacobins, were incapable of
transforming themselves into proper republican citizensnotably aristocrats. Sec-
ondly, the Terror included a widespread cultural program that organized a broad
republicanization of France. This cultural program not only involved large archi-
tectural projects but nanced contests for the creation of art to depict republican
values and contests for drafting almanacs, catechisms, and civic manuals that would
be used in a new system of public education to instruct the citizen about the values
of the Republic and the demands of republican citizenship. One of the central pur-
poses of the club network became the propagation of these republican values into
the villages of France.
The Jacobin Terror eventually produced considerable resistance both inside and
outside the Convention. In order to maintain their control, the Jacobins continued
to purge the Convention, attacking Georges Danton and his followers, including
Desmoulins. The Jacobins also began suppressing popular revolutionary groups
outside the Convention who threatened their position, including Jacques-Ren
Hbert and his Hrbertiste supporters. In time, the Jacobins attacked the sans-
culottes, specically the sectional movement of Paris. On July 27, 1793, Robespierre,
Louis Antoine Saint-Just, and Georges Couthon, the recognized leaders of the Jaco-
bin dictatorship, were denounced in the Convention and arrested. Under the very
laws the Jacobins had constructed to ensure their own control, the leaders were
immediately guillotined without trial and the Thermidorians toppled the Jacobins.
366 Jamaica
Shortly thereafter, the Paris club was closed and the club network was dismantled.
Throughout the Directory a small Jacobin movement survived, but never again did
the Jacobins reach the heights of control and inuence of 1793.
As France reverted to monarchical rule in the Restoration, the Jacobins were
transformed into symbols of revolutionary republicanism, democracy, and egalitari-
anism, and the revolutionaries of the 1830s and 1840s would look back to the Jaco-
bins as their model. This legacy would remain, and in Europe, Jacobinism has come
to dene a specic form of revolutionary politics and republicanism that has had
tremendous inuence on the radical and revolutionary politics of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; The Moun-
tain; Political Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Brinton, Crane. The Jacobins. New York: Russell & Russell, 1930;
Higonnet, Patrice. Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998; Kennedy, Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution,
17931795. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000; Kennedy, Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the
French Revolution: The First Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982; Kennedy,
Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The Middle Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1988; Woloch, Isser. Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movement under the Directory.
BRODIE RICHARDS
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island located south of Cuba and west of Haiti with an overwhelm-
ingly African population and an economy historically based on sugar cultivation
that has been independent since 1962. The island was rst discovered by Europeans
during Christopher Columbuss second voyage to the Caribbean in 1494. Jamaica
was captured for Spain in 1508 by Juan de Esquivel. The English captured the island
in 1655 and maintained administrative control over it until August 6, 1962.
The Spanish had paid little mind to the island and only partially cultivated its re-
sources before the English gained possession. The last of Englands acquisitions in
the New World, Jamaica would become an integral hub for the slave trade and an in-
valuable resource for sugar cultivation. By 1770, Jamaica surpassed all the other Brit-
ish colonies combined in sugar production. By 1790, Jamaica had become the most
trafcked outpost for the slave trade. The Spanish slaves still on the island, referred
to later as Maroons, became an integral part of both the British economic successes
on the island and the gradual release of authority on the island to natives. The rst
Maroon War, between 1725 and 1740, was a severe strike against British authority
and led to a 1739 treaty separating Maroon communities from other slaves. Subse-
quent slave insurrections in 1760 in the St. Mary community and the threat of in-
surrection in 1776 demonstrated the loose hold the British had over its possession.
The period of European revolution and Caribbean unrest from the time of the
American Revolutionary War and ending with the reign of Napoleon in 1815 was a
quieter period in Jamaica, though this did not mean that all was well on the island.
The second Maroon War, between 1795 and 1796, was led by the Trelawney Ma-
roons and resulted in a slim but humiliating victory for the British. This uprising
was caused by a rapid inux of African slaves into Jamaica, ensuing famine and
Jansenism 367
disease, and the inuence of the Saint-Domingue uprising against the French. The
last insurgent was caught in March 1796, but the British were weakened by guerrilla
warfare in Jamaica. See also Haitian Revolution; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Alleyne, Mervyn. Roots of Jamaican Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1988;
Sherlock, Phillip, and Hazel Bennett. The Story of the Jamaican People. Kingston, Jamaica:
I. Randle, 1998.
NICHOLAS KATERS
Jansenism
Jansenism was a revival of Augustinian theology led by the Flemish theologian
and bishop of Ypres, Cornelis Jansen (15851638), which contended that many of
the theologians of the Catholic Counter-Reformation Council of Trent (15451563)
lapsed into Pelagianism by emphasizing human responsibility and a works-based
righteousness over Gods intervention in the conversion process. Jansenism be-
came pervasive within European Roman Catholicism in the seventeenth century
and remained prominent into the nineteenth century before dwindling in impor-
tance and adherents in the twentieth century. Jansenists believed in original sin,
human depravity, irresistible converting grace, the election to salvation of a limited
number of people, and the necessity of divinely enabled holy living characterized by
extreme piety and the rigorous maintenance of divinely ordained morality.
Jansenisms emphasis on personal piety rather than religious ritual and intense
moral introspection, prayer, and confession before receiving the elements in the Eu-
charist contrasted with the ritualized practices of the contemporary Roman church
in general and the more tolerant Jesuit morality in particular. Though Jansenism
claimed itself true to Catholicism as taught and practiced by Augustine and asserted
that salvation was possible only within the Roman church, its opposition to ritualism
and the Jesuits led in part to the suppression of the Jesuits and the desacralization of
the French church and monarchy before and during the French Revolution.
Jansen was himself never condemned by the church, in part because he died be-
fore publishing his views and in part because of his claimed delity to the church.
However, Jansens doctrines, especially the ve propositions ascribed to him in
France by Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (Saint-Cyran), theologian and philosopher
Antoine Arnauld, and scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (Provincial Letters,
1660) were condemned by Pope Innocent X in his papal bull Cum Occasione (With
Occasion, 1653). A so-called second Jansenism promulgated by Pasquier Quesnel
(16341719) was condemned by both King Louis XIV, who closed and razed the
Jansenist spiritual center at Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1709, and Pope Clement XI in
his papal bull Unigenitus (Only-Begotten, 1713). The Jansenists increasingly allied
themselves with the Gallicans (believers in the supremacy of secular authority over
papal authority in France and in the French church) and together with Enlighten-
ment humanists and the public in general forced the Jesuits to leave France (1765).
The Jansenism that survived the antireligious fervor of the French Revolution did
so outside France, specically in Spain, Italy, and Austria, and was less Augustinian
and more Calvinistic in its theology, was Gallican in its view of the relationship of the
church and state, and favored a Presbyterian form of church government over the
centralized administration of bishops and popes. See also Gallicanism; Religion.
368 Jay, John
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Refor-
mation to the French Revolution. Studies in European History. New York: St. Martins Press,
2001; Kreiser, B. Robert. Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics in Eighteenth-Century
France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978; McManners, John. Church and Society
in Eighteenth-Century France. Vol. 2: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion. Oxford
History of the Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Jay, John (17451829)
John Jay was born on December 12, 1745, in New York City and quickly displayed
natural intelligence and a shrewd sensibility. When he was 14 years old, he was ad-
mitted to Kings College (now Columbia University), where he received a classi-
cal education, which served him well in both law and politics. He was admitted to
the bar and briey served as the rst chief justice (17891795) in New York (seat
of the Supreme Court from 1789 to 1791). Ironically, though he broadly supported
the Patriot cause, Jay refused to sign the Declaration of Independence because he
still harbored some hope of a peaceful reconciliation with Britain.
Casting aside initial reservations, Jay served in a number of national positions
during the early federal period. He served as president of the Continental Congress
in 1778 and was embroiled in controversies over foreign policy and the role that
France and Spain should play in the American Revolution and its aftermath. A year
later he became envoy to Spain and attempted to secure Spanish recognition of the
United States in order to bolster the position of the new nation in the international
community. Together with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, Jay was one of sev-
eral American diplomats who in 1783 negotiated the Treaty of Paris, which ended
the American Revolutionary War. Between 1784 and 1789 he served as secretary
of foreign affairs for the Confederation government and recognized the inherent
weaknesses of confederation.
Jay was not a member of the Constitutional Convention but was a strong pro-
ponent of ratication and contributed ve essays to the Federalist Papers. He ar-
gued that there was a direct connection between a strong national government and
successful foreign policy. He was offered the position of secretary of state by Presi-
dent George Washington, but due to poor health and prolonged absences during
the Revolution and Confederation period, he did not accept the position. Instead
he accepted the more sedentary role of rst chief justice of the Supreme Court,
where he served until 1795, when he was elected governor of New York. In 1794
Jay traveled to Europe in an effort to settle the lingering issues between the United
States and Britain. The blighted Jay Treaty was largely ineffectual and prompted
political divisions in the United States.
He retired from public life in 1801 and died on May 17, 1829. See also Articles of
Confederation.
FURTHER READING: Morris, Richard. Witness at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and
the Constitution. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1983; Stahr, Walter. John Jay: Founding Father.
London: Hambledon and London, 2006.
JAMES T. CARROLL
Jefferson, Thomas 369
Jeanbon Saint-Andr, Andr (17491813)
Andr Jeanbon Saint-Andr, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, dem-
onstrated both technical expertise and ideological fervor in organizing the French
revolutionary navy. Born in Montauban, he served in the merchant marine before
becoming a Protestant minister in 1773 and adding Saint-Andr to his name to
avoid persecution in Catholic France. A leader of Montaubans Jacobin Club, Jean-
bon was elected in 1792 to the National Convention, where he joined the radical
deputies of the Mountain and voted as a regicide in the trial of Louis XVI. The
Convention named him to the Committee of Public Safety in June 1793, and in Oc-
tober the committee dispatched Jeanbon and Pierre-Louis Prieur de la Marne to the
port of Brest to regain control of the Republics navy. Jeanbon restored order and
asserted the revolutionary governments authority, in the context of the Reign of
Terror, and mobilized a eet capable of engaging the (British) Royal Navy in battle
on June 1, 1794. He was imprisoned in 1795 as a terrorist but later held diplomatic
posts under the Republic and served as an administrator under Napoleon. Jeanbon
died of typhus in Mainz in 1813. See also Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Cormack, William S. Revolution and Political Conict in the French Navy
17891794. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled:
The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Reprint, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
WILLIAM S. CORMACK
Jefferson, Thomas (17431826)
Thomas Jeffersons life and political career spanned the American Revolution
and early years of the new republic. Arguably no other gure of the founding gen-
eration exerted as much intellectual inuence over the nations political birth and
subsequent development.
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell plantation in what would later
become Albemarle County, Virginia. His parents were Peter Jefferson, a planter and
surveyor, and Jane (formerly Randolph) Jefferson, daughter of a prominent Virginia
family. He was educated at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Vir-
ginia, where he studied law after completing undergraduate studies in mathematics,
philosophy, and French under the direction of William Small, a Scot and the only
layman on William and Marys faculty of Anglican clerics. He married Martha Way-
les Skelton, a widow, in 1772. After briey practicing law, he was elected to the Vir-
ginia House of Burgesses in 1769, where he served as representative for Albemarle
County until 1776. With the deepening of hostilities between the American colonies
and Britain, Jefferson prepared a draft of instructions for the Virginia delegates to
the First Continental Congress in 1774, which was published in pamphlet form as
A Summary View of the Rights of British America to some acclaim. Jefferson himself was
elected the youngest delegate from Virginiaalong with George Washington, Pat-
rick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, Richard Henry Lee, and Edmund Pendletonto
the Second Continental Congress in 1775. There he prepared in the summer of
1776 the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, which was approved
with minor revisions and amendments by the Congress. After the initial objections of
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and South Carolina were overcome, the Declaration passed
370 Jefferson, Thomas
unanimously (with New York abstaining) on July 4, 1776, and served to launch the
American colonies in their revolt against Britain.
The Declaration of Independence is without question Jeffersons greatest and
most enduring contribution to American political thought. There he famously estab-
lished, in the documents rst paragraph, the sovereignty of the colonies and their
standing as a free and equal nation in the eyes of the world. His assertion that the
colonies were one people was vital in shaping the consciousness of the colonists as
engaged in a common struggle against the British Empire, even though the docu-
ment carefully left open the possibility that after the revolutionary break with Brit-
ain they might very well become Free and Independent States. The Declarations
rst paragraph also makes it clear that the American Revolution was to be a fun-
damentally political revolutionconcerned with changing forms of government,
rather than remaking society in its entiretyand that this revolution would be civil,
insofar as a decent respect to the opinions of mankind required the colonists to
submit the reasonable causes of their grievances to the scrutiny of the world.
The documents more celebrated second paragraph outlines the general prin-
ciples of liberty, equality, and popular government upon which the American Revo-
lution was premised. According to the Declaration, it is the case that governments
derive their just powers only from the consent of the governed; that all men
are created equal; that as human beings they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap-
piness; and that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, the people have the right to abolish that government and to form another
more conducive to their Safety and Happiness. The rhetoric of the Declaration
functions at two levels: the universal and the particular. On one hand, the Declara-
tion outlines the colonists complaints about the specic abuses and injustices com-
mitted by George III and his ministers, asserting the rights of the colonists in the
context of the traditional rights of Englishmen. On the other hand, the document
can be read as a universal statement of the self-evident truths of natural rights
and the legitimacy of political revolution applicable in all times and places. It is this
universalistic thrust that has made the document a lodestone for popular revolu-
tions throughout the world. Despite the fact that Jeffersons original condemnation
of the role of George III in perpetuating the slave trade was omitted, and the docu-
ment as ratied is silent on the question of slavery, its universal postulates of human
equality and natural rights would prove to be, in the words of Abraham Lincoln,
one tough nut to crack for subsequent tyrants and defenders of slavery.
After serving in the Virginia House of Delegates and two terms as governor of
Virginia, Jefferson was elected a delegate to Congress from the state of Virginia
in 1783 under the Articles of Confederation. Shortly afterward he was appointed
minister plenipotentiary to Europe in 1784, eventually replacing Benjamin Frank-
lin as minister to France in 1785. He followed the vagaries of the edgling American
government under the Articles of Confederation and the drafting and ratication
of the new United States Constitution from abroad, although his correspondence
with James Madison and subsequent commentary make clear his general support
for the Constitution. After his return from France in 1789 he reluctantly accepted
an appointment as secretary of state under George Washingtons rst administra-
tion, resigning in the winter of 1793 after protracted disagreements with Alexander
Hamilton over foreign treaties and the constitutionality of a national bank, to which
Jefferson objected strenuously. In the election of 1796, Jefferson was chosen to be
John Adamss vice president after receiving the second-largest number of electoral
votes. While still Adamss vice president, Jefferson secretly collaborated with Madi-
son in 1798 to draft the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions opposing the Alien and
Sedition Acts as an unconstitutional violation of individual rights. In 1801, a tie vote
between Jefferson and Aaron Burr among state electors was settled by Congress
in Jeffersons favor on the thirty-sixth ballot, and Jefferson became the third pres-
ident of the United States and the rst to be inaugurated in the new capital of
Washington, D.C.
During his rst term in the presidency Jefferson struggled mightily to solidify the
economic and diplomatic status of the United States, restoring scal health to the
nation while maintaining a commitment to his vision of limited government. None-
theless, and crucially for the long-term power and security of the United States,
Jefferson took advantage of Frances precarious situation in 1803 to acquire the
Louisiana Territory from Napoleon for the relatively trivial sum of $15 million. The
Louisiana Purchase consisted of almost 800,000 square miles of land in the Missis-
sippi River Valley and the Midwest, effectively doubling the size of the United States.
The high points of Jeffersons two terms as president are this purchase and the
Lewis and Clark expedition. The low point was perhaps his signing of the unpopular
Embargo Act in 1807, which suspended all foreign trade. After the inauguration of
Madison as the nations fourth president in 1809, Jefferson returned to Monticello,
his home in Virginia built atop an 867-foot mountain on land inherited from his
father. He remained in the state of Virginia until his death.
Jeffersons long-term vision for American society was every bit as important as his
directly political contribution to the building of the new nation. He was above all
else a thinker of profound and uncommon sagacity. In 1812 Jefferson took up his
lapsed correspondence with his estranged friend John Adams at the latters initia-
tive. In this famous series of letters, Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams debated
the role of an aristocracy in the United States. Jefferson extolled the meritocratic
principles of a natural aristocracy of genius and talent that must, in his terms, be
raked from the rubbish annually. Some provision for the advancement of natural
virtue and talent must be discovered in order to counteract the noxious inuence
of the Pseudo-aristoi of wealth and birth loathed by Jefferson but defended by
Adams. Virginias passage of bills putting an end to primogeniture and entail were
important steps toward eliminating the inuence of this so-called tinsel aristocracy,
but Jefferson was disappointed that his proposed system of common schools, which
would once and for all have laid the axe to the root of Pseudo-aristocracy, was not
adopted by the Virginia legislature.
In his later years, Jefferson devoted himself with even greater energy to the cause
of public education in the state of Virginia. His preoccupation with public educa-
tion dated back to his scheme for reforming the curriculum of his alma mater,
the College of William and Mary, as well as his thoughts on the need for public
education and common schools sketched out briey in his Notes on the State of Vir-
ginia (17811782). Here and in his proposed Bill for the More General Diffusion
of Knowledge (1778) Jefferson reasoned that because even under the best forms,
those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into
tyranny, some means must be found to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds
of the people at large so that they may be enabled to know ambition under all its
372 Jefferson, Thomas
shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes. To this
end Jefferson proposed dividing each of the counties of Virginia into hundreds or
districts where a common school would be built to educate all the children of the
state in the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic at public expense, followed by
a system of grammar schools where the best and brightest of these students would
be educated before advancing to the state college or university. The chartering
of the University of Virginia in 1819 after Jeffersons strenuous work on its behalf
marked the culmination of this vision of the integral role of public education in a
republic. Under his oversight and planning, the University of Virginia opened to
students in 1825.
Another cornerstone of Jeffersons political theory was the value of religious
toleration, which he addressed most directly in his Bill for Establishing Religious
Freedom (1777, 1779), which was nally adopted by the state of Virginia in 1786.
Modeled on the theories of religious toleration advanced by John Locke, Jefferson
famously argued that it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty
gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg. State-sponsored
religion or church establishment, he argued, can be conducive to nothing other
than persecution or hypocrisy. In keeping with his deism, Jefferson prepared what
became known as the Jefferson Bible, a collection of the moral teachings of the New
Testament from which any stories that conicted with reason were removed. Jeffer-
son styled himself an Enlightenment thinker and a philosopher-statesman. Newton,
Bacon, and Locke were his three intellectual heroes. He was acquainted with many
of the leading philosophes of eighteenth-century France and followed closely the
latest debates in natural philosophy, including the 28-volume Encyclopdie compiled
by Denis Diderot. He was sympatheticunlike many other leading American think-
ers of the erato the cause of the French Revolution, having personally attended
the rst meeting of the Estates-General in Paris in 1789. Throughout his diplomatic
and political career he consistently fought against the pro-British and anti-French
bias of many of the leading Federalists. Indeed Jeffersons republican commitments
led him to the conclusion that a society might need to undergo a revolution every
generation or so to maintain its republican stock of morals.
This question of the requirements of republican virtue was a long-standing pre-
occupation of Jeffersons. In contrast to Alexander Hamilton, whose Federalist essays
envisioned a low but solid foundation for a government where institutional design
and enlightened self-interest functioned as a surrogate for virtue, Jefferson focused
directly on the need for moral character and civic virtue. Although he proclaimed
during the ratication debates that he was neither federalist nor anti-federalist,
and that if he could not go to heaven but with a party, [he] would not go there at
all, his own political orientation and sympathies ultimately lay more closely aligned
with the latter. The Anti-Federalist emphasis on the need for virtue and their so-
licitude for the threat centralized government posed to local liberties became cor-
nerstones of the platform of the Republican Party whose leader and presidential
candidate Jefferson became.
Jeffersons writings feature a distinctively classical republican ideal of what the
new republic might become. This is as much a socioeconomic as a political vision
of Americas future. Indeed, for Jefferson the social and political are intimately
linked. His model of political economy was that of a predominantly agrarian na-
tion of yeoman farmers whose austerity, independence, and purity of morals would
allow them to stave off the corruption Jefferson believed historically inevitable for
all popular governments. Those who labor in the earth, Jefferson noted, are the
chosen people of God . . . whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for sub-
stantial and genuine virtue. Agrarian virtue and an austere avoidance of luxury and
debts are reasons why corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenom-
enon of which no age or nation has furnished an example. This vision of political
economy was in strict contrast to that of Alexander Hamilton, who supported an
urban, industrialized market economy centered on wage labor, manufacturing,
and a mobile immigrant workforce. Although Jefferson came reluctantly to accept
later in life the necessity of immigration and domestic manufactures, he remained
wary of the caustic effects of wage labor on republican morals. Likewise, he worried
about the inux of European immigrants into a republican society like America. He
conjectured that they might bring along with them the monarchical or licentious
principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in youth, which would serve to
dilute Americas republican genius.
Jeffersons views on race and slavery have become increasingly controversial in
recent years. Despite his steadfast commitment in the abstract to the idea of natural
rights and his lifelong concern about the morally and politically degrading aspects
of slavery, Jefferson was himself a slaveholder who freed only ve of his own slaves
upon his death. Although he was committed to the proposition of the equality of
all human beings, Jefferson speculated that there were physical differences between
blacks and whites, and that one solution to the abolition of slavery might be the re-
patriation of free blacks to Africa. Revelations of illegitimate children fathered with
his slave Sally Hemings have further tarnished Jeffersons reputation on this score.
Scholars continue to debate the intellectual origins of Jeffersons political
thought. Some point to the patently Lockean liberal provenance of the Declara-
tions rights-based language; others note Jeffersons classical republican preoc-
cupations with virtue, luxury, and corruption that run throughout his public and
private writings, while still others focus on the alleged inuence of the common
sense philosophy of the Scottish moralists. What seems clear is that Jefferson was a
consistent and eloquent spokesman for the cause of liberty and reason in human
affairs. Only the dissemination of the rights of man throughout the world could
propagate the truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on
their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,
by the grace of God.
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826the same day as his long-time correspondent
and sometime political nemesis John Adamsexactly 50 years to the day after the
ratication of the Declaration of Independence. Reecting on his sense of his own
life and priorities, he instructed that the following accomplishments be recorded on
his tombstone: Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of
American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father
of the University of Virginia. See also The Federalist Papers; Slavery and the Slave
Trade.
FURTHER READING: Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978; Boorstin, Daniel J. The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson.
New York: Holt, 1948; Cappon, Lester J., ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters. 2 vols. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1959; Koch, Adrienne. The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1943; Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time. 5 vols.
374 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Boston: Little Brown, 19481974; McCoy, Drew. The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in
Jeffersonian America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980; Peterson, Merrill, ed.
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Library of America, 1984; White, Leonard D. The
Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 18011829. New York: Macmillan, 1951.
RICHARD BOYD
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (17411790)
Joseph II, the enlightened Holy Roman emperor, was born in Vienna to Empress
Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman emperor Francis I. Joseph II succeeded Francis
as emperor in 1765. He was made the co-regent by his mother, who had ruled the
Habsburg Empire since 1740. In 1777, Joseph went to France to meet his sister,
Marie Antoinette. He was received by the Encyclopedists and predicted the downfall
of the Bourbon monarchy. Joseph implemented numerous reforms after the death
of his mother in 1780, having been greatly moved by the miserable condition of the
peasantry during his younger years. Personal convictions based on the ideas of the
Enlightenment were the prime motives that lay behind his reforms.
Within the framework of an enlightened despotism, Joseph reduced ecclesiasti-
cal privileges, created a bureaucracy based on merit, and abolished serfdom and
feudal dues in 1781. He was inuenced by the Physiocrats on the issue of nancial
reforms, and he permitted peasants to acquire land from the nobility by paying a
reasonable amount, marry whom they wished, and change their place of residence.
During Josephs reign, free food and medicine were distributed to the needy, and
hospitals, orphanages, and mental asylums were built.
In foreign policy, Joseph was aligned with Tsarina Catherine II of Russia, and
various plans of his were obstructed by France, Prussia, the Netherlands, and Brit-
ain. Ill and distraught at the failure of some of his reform plans, Joseph died on
February 20, 1790. Josephs death and the threats posed by the French Revolution
resulted in the abrogation of many of his reforms by his successor, Leopold II. Al-
though ridiculed by the clergy and nobility, the so-called revolutionary monarch,
a devoted patron of the arts, was loved by the common people for his attempt at
achieving social security and equality. See also LEncyclopdie; Enlightenment.
FURTHER READING: Blanning, T.C.W. Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism. London: Longman,
1970; Bright, J. Franck. Joseph II. London: Macmillan, 1923; Kros, A. C., ed. Encyclopedia of the
Enlightenment. London: Oxford University Press, 2003; Wangermann, Ernst. From Joseph II to
the Jacobin Trials: Government Policy and Public Opinion in the Habsburg Dominions in the Period of
the French Revolution. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Josephine, Empress of France (17631814)
Empress Josephine, vicomtesse de Beauharnais, was the rst wife and consort of
Emperor Napoleon I of France. Her inability to produce an heir gave Napoleon an
excuse to divorce her. Josephines considerable social contribution to Napoleons
court facilitated a large degree of his success. She acted as hostess for him and set
the fashions and the decorating styles of his era. He would likely not have reached
the exalted heights of his career without her assistance.
Josephine, Empress of France 375
Josephine was born Marie-Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie on June 23, 1763, in
Martinique, West Indies, to Joseph-Gaspard Tache de La Pagero, an impoverished
plantation owner, and his wife, Rose Claire. The paternal family traced its noble
lineage to the Loire valley in the twelfth century. The maternal side also had noble
ancestry. Josephine was called Yevette as a child. She had two sisters: Catherine, who
died at age 14, and Minette. Her childhood on the plantation allowed for close con-
tact with plants and animals, with which she surrounded herself throughout her life.
Josephines formal education consisted of four years of convent schooling at Dame
de la Providence at Fort-Royal in Martinique. She took the teachings to heart and
learned the rigid rules of social etiquette: deportment, hostessing, letter writing,
and the other necessary accoutrements of her class. She left the convent at age 15.
Yevettes pleasant personality was her greatest strength. She was kind, naturally
warm hearted, and sweet tempered and possessed an acutely accurate intuition. She
was not classically beautiful but her graceful demeanor was alluring to those who met
her. Her melodious voice and Creole accent added to the glamour she exhibited,
even at an early age. She retained these traits during all her subsequent travails.
To help the family fortune, Rose, as she became known, was married at age 15
to a family acquaintance from Martinique, the vicomte Alexandre de Beauharnais
(17601794). They moved to Paris in 1779. The unhappy couple was incompatible
Empress Josephine, the rst wife of Napoleon I. Courtesy of
Alexander Mikaberidze.
376 Josephine, Empress of France
and unsuited to one another. They produced two children, Eugne-Rose (1781
1824) and Hortense (17831837). Beauharnais abandoned Rose, leaving her to
nd resources to raise their children. During the Reign of Terror, Beauharnais was
arrested and found guilty on the basis of his failure to defend Mainz and because of
his suspect aristocratic background. He was guillotined in 1794.
Rose was also arrested and endured horric conditions during her three months
in prison. Prior to these events she had been very popular as an eminent socialite in
Paris. Fortunately, she had established a huge network of friends and contacts, who
arranged for her release. As was common to the times, Rose survived by becoming
a mistress to a succession of leading political gures, which resulted in her increas-
ingly widening political connections. Some of her liaisons were nancially bene-
cial, though some of her business connections were corrupt. Roses greatest failing
was that she led a nancially extravagant lifestyle and was seldom out of debt.
Rose met Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris in 1796. He was awkward and gauche
in Parisian society, usually wore disheveled and ragged clothing, and was very self-
conscious about his short stature and Corsican origins. He had little use for women
but was searching for a rich heiress to marry. Their relationship was based on friend-
ship. Rose became Napoleons social mentor, teaching him how to dress properly
and to speak less belligerently. By giving him the condence to overcome his lowly
Corsican stature, Rose raised his self-esteem. He enjoyed her stately deportment,
social nesse, and advantageous connections.
The 25-year-old Napoleon married 32-year-old Rose in a civil ceremony on March 9,
1796, in a blatant attempt to advance his career and gain access to a fortune he dis-
covered she did not possess. He changed her name to Josephine. Although his family
vehemently opposed the union, Josephines huge network of connections made her
an asset to his lofty ambitions. The expedient union beneted both; it offered her
children some security, and she enjoyed being the center of attention.
Josephine was responsible for Napoleon obtaining command in Italy, where he
gained brilliant military victories for France. Marital delity was anathema in the
upper echelons of French society, and Josephine proved no exception. She had
an affair with Hippolyte Charles (17731837), a dashing ofcer. In retaliation, an
enraged Napoleon also engaged in extramarital sexual dalliances, which he contin-
ued throughout the marriage. Napoleon threatened to divorce her in 1799 but the
couple reconciled at Eugnes urgings.
Josephines widespread popularity was an advantage when she offered Napoleon
staunch support on the night of November 910, 1799, when he overthrew the Di-
rectory. Her role as hostess extraordinaire heightened his importance, for Jose-
phine single-handedly revived the stagnant social life of Paris by throwing massive
balls and parties. Her rened tastes transformed the style of society while Napoleon
acted as First Consul.
Shortly before Napoleon became emperor, Pope Pius VII decreed that the cou-
ple would marry in a religious ceremony; they complied. Napoleon crowned himself
on December 2, 1804, and made Josephine empress. She rose to the task by per-
forming her onerous royal duties awlessly. Josephines style was greatly admired,
she played a superb role at formal ceremonies, and her numerous functions were
impeccably staged. In short, she charmed the French public with her attentive and
warm personality.
The misogynist Napoleon retained his grudge against Josephines indelity
and used psychological warfare against her for the remainder of their marriage.
Josephine, Empress of France 377
He aunted his own affairs, forced her to travel wherever and whenever he com-
manded itdespite the debilitating migraines and other frailties Josephine suf-
feredand demeaned her by often ignoring her in public.
Napoleon believed it was his destiny to create a dynasty and realized he could sire
children after one of his mistresses bore him a son. Openly searching for a new wife
while still married to Josephine, he nally divorced her on January 10, 1810, though
she was allowed to retain her title of empress. Napoleon continued to look after her
children, but he forced her into isolation and retirement at the Chteau de Malmai-
son, their country residence, in spite of which the two remained friends.
Josephine remained popular after the divorce. Even after Napoleons defeat in
1814, she received numerous visitors from all levels of society, from the Russian tsar,
Alexander I, to her numerous friends, who had not abandoned her. She also occupied
herself with her massive garden, her animals, and her grandchildren. Shortly after Na-
poleons abdication, Josephine contracted a cold that quickly turned into pneumonia.
She died at Malmaison on May 29, 1814, and was genuinely mourned by the French
people. Upon his death on May 6, 1821, Napoleons last word was Josephine.
FURTHER READING: Bruce, Evangeline. Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996; Castelot, Andr. Josephine. New York: Harper &
Row, 1967; Epton, Nina. Josephine: The Empress and Her Children. New York: W. W. Norton,
1976; Erickson, Carrolly. Josephine: A Life of the Empress. New York: St. Martins Press, 1998;
Hibbert, Christopher. Napoleon: His Wives and Women. London: HarperCollins, 2002; Laing,
Margaret. Josephine and Napoleon. London: Sidgwich & Jackson, 1973; Schom, Alan. Napoleon
Bonaparte. New York: HarperCollins, 1997; Thompson, J. M. Napoleon Bonaparte: His Rise and
Fall. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Journes
The acknowledged key events of the French Revolution, commonly referred to
as journes, were central to a process by which revolutionaries became aware of the
historical character of the Revolution in progress. From the meeting of the Estates-
General to the storming of the Bastille, the September Massacres to the taking
of the Tuileries and the declaration of the Republic, journes were occasions dur-
ing which the balance of power shifted, often dramatically, and often with a high
level of popular involvement. Previously synonymous with warfare, the term journe
was adapted during the Revolution to refer to a diverse range of events, which in-
creased in quantity as the Revolution progressed and were often known simply by
their dates. Journes, for instance July 14, 1789, or August 10, 1792, were frequently
commemorated, and even reenacted, in public in the form of revolutionary festivals
held on the anniversary of their occurrence. Image making too was central to the
establishment of a journe in the popular imagination, and publications such as the
successful and long-running historical print series Les tableaux historiques de la Rvolu-
tion franaise found a ready market by breaking the complexities of the Revolution
down into a series of digestible scenes.
FURTHER READING: Richet, Denis. Revolutionary Journes. In A Critical Dictionary of the
French Revolution, ed. Franois Furet and Mona Ozouf. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989; Sands, Patricia H. Making History:
Illustrating the Journe in the Revolution. In Iconographie et image de la Rvolution franaise,
378 Juries
ed. Claudette Hould and James Leith. Montreal: Association Canadienne-Franaise pour
lAvancement des Sciences, 1990.
RICHARD TAWS
Juries
A jury is a trial method in which the facts of a case are decided by a group of
individuals selected from the community, instead of by the judge or other legal
professional. Juries are an integral part of Anglo-American common law, especially
in the United States.
The concept historically originated in England prior to the Norman Conquest,
when disputes, whether criminal or civil (at the time, no distinction was made), were
settled at a trial presided over by a judge appointed by the king or local lord, with
assistance and information provided by a group of locals who knew the parties in-
volved. It was one of the few aspects of Saxon law the Norman French kept after
the Norman Conquest, and it developed into what the lower classes considered an
important protection against arbitrary judicial processes.
The system was taken to North America with the English colonists and was con-
sidered by them to be a cornerstone of the judicial process. One of the major dis-
putes of the American colonists with Parliament concerned the decision to move
smuggling and some other criminal trials from the colony in which the crime was
committed to London. This added excessive expense for the accused and (more to
the point) took the case away from his friends and acquaintances, who were likely to
acquit, and put it in the hands of Londoners, who were likely to convict.
Colonists considered juries so important because of the practice of jury nullica-
tion. Jurors knew that if a criminal law was unjust, they could refuse to enforce it by
acquitting a defendant who had obviously committed the crime for which he was
accused.
Jurors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries routinely refused
to convict defendants under the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made criticism of
the government a crime. Later in the nineteenth century, jurors would refuse to
enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the
legal system increasingly discouraged this kind of intervention by ordinary juries. In
1895 the Supreme Court held that trial courts were not required to inform jurors
of their power to refuse to convict or to convict on lesser charges if they believed a
conviction on the facts proved at trial would be unjust. In the years since, American
courts have interpreted the decision as a prohibition on informing jurors of their
right to check laws they felt were unjust through acquittals.
Nevertheless, the system remains an integral part of the jurisprudential philoso-
phy of the United States. A typical criminal case jury consists of 12 members; their
verdict must be unanimous in order to secure a conviction. Jury procedures in civil
cases vary from state to state but generally involve juries of 6 to 12 individuals, and
verdict requirements ranging from 10 of 12 to unanimity.
FURTHER READING: Abramson, Jeffrey. We the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; Posner, Richard A. Frontiers of Legal Theory.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
JOSEPH ADAMCZYK
K
Immanuel Kant was one of the most inuential philosophers in history. A creator
of critical philosophy, he postulated that the laws of nature and the laws of morality
are grounded in human reason, the idea that laid the foundations of much of the
philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Kant was born in Knigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, on April 22, 1724. At
the age of eight he was sent to a Pietist gymnasium. When Kant was 16, he entered
the University of Knigsberg to study philosophy. Not having any nancial support,
Kant had to leave the university in 1746 and work as a tutor for the next eight years.
During this time he completed his rst work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Liv-
ing Forces (1746, published 1749), in which he attempted to mediate between the
Cartesian and Leibnizian theories of physical forces.
Kant returned to the university as a lecturer in 1755. By this time he had pub-
lished several works, including Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,
which was based on the hypothesis that the solar system originated out of a nebular
mass by mechanical means, and his doctoral thesis, A New Explanation of the First Prin-
ciples of Metaphysical Knowledge. At rst, he lectured on logic, metaphysics, ethics, and
physics, adding physical geography, anthropology, pedagogy, and natural right later.
In the early 1760s, he wrote a number of works on philosophy: The False Subtlety of the
Four Syllogical Figures (1762), Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into
Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of
God (1763), and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764).
In 1770, Kant was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics at the University
of Knigsberg, the position that he occupied until just a few years before his death.
In relation to this appointment, he wrote the Inaugural Dissertation, which raised
several central themes that he would develop in his mature work, including the dis-
tinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity.
Kants next 10 years, however, are often called his silent decade. He spent this
time working on Critique of Pure Reason (1801), an expansion of his dissertation.
Although now universally accepted as one of the greatest works in the history of
philosophy, Critique was at rst largely ignored because of its length and scholastic
380 Kant, Immanuel
style. Recognizing the need to revise the treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics (1783), a summary of the Critiques main ideas.
During the 1780s Kant wrote a series of important works, including the 1784 essay
Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Groundwork of the Metaphysics
of Morals (1785), and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). He contin-
ued to develop his moral philosophy, writing Critique of Practical Reason (the sec-
ond Critique) in 1788 and Metaphysics of Morals in 1797. The third Critique, Critique
of Judgment, was written in 1790. Kant also wrote extensively on religion, politics,
and history during this period. When Kant retired from his university position in
1797, he devoted his time to writing The Transition from the Metaphysical First Princi-
ples of Natural Science to Physics, which was left unnished when Kant died in 1804.
The problems of moral self and human autonomy are at the core of Kants phi-
losophy, and his characterization of freedom as an idea of reason is among the most
controversial aspects of his moral philosophy. In his political philosophy, Kant aims
at rst explaining the possibility and actuality of freedom, the absence of natural ne-
cessity, in human action; second, developing an account of autonomy as the source
of human value and dignity; and third, juxtaposing this account with the external
imposition posed by religion.
The notion that people are free because they can form, regulate, and direct the
maxims of their conduct informs Kants analysis of the relations among human
reason and moral autonomy, political action, and social change. Freedom in the
positive sense becomes for him both the goal of any political community and the
basis for the creation of the measures that restrict the behavior of individuals and
states. Another dimension of the idea of autonomy is the problem of rights and
duties. Kant builds the negative argument by postulating that a persons freedom
acts as a barrier between the person and any unwarranted invasion from authority
or from other individuals. Coercion is justied only if it is directed at preserving
external freedom that does interfere with the external freedoms of others. Thus,
the governments role is the protection of the freedom of the individual to the ex-
tent compatible with the freedom of other citizens. Kants idea of freedom, on one
hand, establishes the basis for legitimate power and, on the other, offers criteria for
legislative action.
Kants enthusiasm for the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and
the issues connected with Irish separatism is well known. Marx called Kants phi-
losophy the German theory of the French revolution and perceived the revo-
lutionary content of Kants thought in that he asserted the independence of the
individual in the face of authority. But the fact that Kant approved of the ideals of
liberty and equality does not mean that he also approved of the means of revolu-
tion. He denied any right to pursue violent revolution for several reasons. First,
during revolution there is no time for the reform of principles. Second, a desire
for greater happiness does not constitute a legitimate reason for the overthrow
of a state. Kant posed the question: can people revolt to remove illegitimate con-
straints to their freedom? If a constitution grants a legal right to rebel against
authority, it means it does not create the authority after all and would thus be
contradictory. So by denying a legal right to rebel, Kant does not explicitly deny a
moral right to rebel, which provoked nineteenth- and twentieth-century philoso-
phers debate on the nature of Kants moral and political philosophy. His insist-
ence on obeying the law obscured the liberal component in Kants system, and
Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich 381
even a charge of authoritarianism has been leveled against him. See also Hegel,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich.
FURTHER READING: Bayer, Natalia, Ronald Beiner, and William James Booth, eds. Kant
and Political Philosophy: The Contemporary Legacy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993;
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Translated by Marijan Despaltovic.
Boston: Birkhuser, 1987; Guyer, Paul, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992; Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil
and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Rawls, John. Lectures
on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Sauer, Hans.
Kants Political Thought: Its Origins and Development. Translated by E. B. Ashton. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1973; Shell, Susan Meld. The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kants
Philosophy and Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980; Zammito, John. Kant,
Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
NATALIE BAYER
Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1766 1826)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, the Russian writer, poet, publisher, and histo-
rian, was born on December 12, 1766, into a family of provincial gentry. At 14, Kara-
mzin went to Moscow to attend Moscow University and study languages, literature,
history, and philosophy. After graduation, he briey served in the army, but in 1785
he left his military career behind to become one of the rst professional men of
letters in Russia.
Karamzin spent his formative years in the Moscow circle of Russian Freemasons
led by writer and publisher N. I. Novikov and Professor Schwarz. During 17851789
he began publishing his own literary magazines and was actively involved in translat-
ing activities of his circle. Under the guidance of his German and Russian friends,
including poets M. Kheraskov and J. M. Lenz, Karamzin was taught that literature
served a social function of educating the nation and that the author could mold the
reading publics opinion.
In 1789 Karamzin went to Europe on a 13-month journey that played a major
role in his development as a thinker. Sponsored by Freemasons from the Novikov-
Schwarz circle, he visited various German states, France, Britain, and Switzerland.
His journey, meetings, and impressions are reected in his semi-ctional account
published under the title Letters of a Russian Traveler (17911801). In this work Ka-
ramzin emphasized that despite all the differences between Russia and western Eu-
rope, Russia had participated in the Enlightenment as a part of Western civilization.
The critics hailed Karamzin as a Russian Sterne for the Letters.
Upon his return, the 23-year-old Karamzin started the Moscow Journal (17971801),
which published original stories and translations from English, German, and
French. Karamzins best-known works, Poor Liza and Natalia the Boyars Daughter,
appeared in this magazine and initiated the so-called Karamzin period of Russian
literature. The foremost channel of nascent Russian Sentimentalism, the Moscow
Journal was closed down by the authorities when Karamzin involved himself in sen-
sitive political affairs in 1792. In his ode on N. I. Novikovs arrest, Karamzin publicly
asked Catherine II to end Novikovs prosecution and release him from prison. This
did not help Novikovs cause and only brought about the nal demise of the Mos-
cow Journal.
382 Kentucky
From the mid-1790s, Karamzin immersed himself in the study of Russian folk-
tales. He also published poetic almanacs and edited collections of translated works
of ancient and modern authors. In 1802 and 1803 Karamzin edited the famous
journal European Messenger.
An admirer of all things English, Karamzin was also known as a Russian Gibbon
for his unnished 11-volume history of the Russian state (1818 1824) and critical
Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia (1810 1811). In his historical writings, Karam-
zin returned to the origins of the Russian state and the beginnings of the Romanov
dynasty and displayed his admiration for Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Both works received
high acclaim from Tsar Alexander I, who made Karamzin a state historian. His con-
servative views and attacks on projects of constitutional reform formed the basis
for the ofcial ideology of the Russian Empire in the rst half of the nineteenth
century. Karamzin died on June 15, 1826.
FURTHER READING: Anderson, Roger B. N. M. Karamzins Prose: The Teller and the Tale.
Houston: Cordovan Press, 1974; Black, J. L. Nicholas Karamzin and Russian Society in the
Nineteenth Century: A Study in Russian Political and Historical Thought. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1975; Cross, A. G. N. M. Karamzin: A Study of His Literary Career, 1783 1803.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971; Essays on Karamzin: Russian Man-of-
Letters, Political Thinker, Historian, 1766 1826. Edited by J. L. Black. The Hague: Mouton,
1975; [Karamzin, N. M.]. Selected Prose of N. M. Karamzin. Translated and introduced by Henry
M. Nebel Jr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 196; Nebel, Henry M., Jr. N. M.
Karamzin: A Russian Sentimentalist. The Hague: Mouton, 1967; Pipes, Richard. Karamzins
Memoirs on Ancient and Modern Russia: A Translation and Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
NATALIE BAYER
Kentucky
Kentuckys political and social evolution ran the course from a loose group of
settlements to a privately run proprietorship to a county to a state. In the mid-1760s
settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia moved into this western region, which even-
tually led to a conict between Pennsylvania and Virginia known as Lord Dunmores
War. The confusion became compounded in 1775, when the Transylvania Company
began issuing land grants. Additionally, the company sponsored the rst efforts at
creating a political entity: while keeping executive power for itself, it sponsored a
small-scale legislature.
Later that year a Transylvania representative went to the Second Continental
Congress but was not recognized because of Virginias claim. The next year, Vir-
ginia recognized the county of Kentucky, which sent two representatives to the
Virginia House of Burgesses.
After the war, conventions gathered several times to discuss separation from Vir-
ginia as an independent nation (negotiations with Spain were conducted) or as a
state. Similar activity in western North Carolina, in the state of Franklin, later to be
Tennessee, was setting a precedent for the separation of a region as a separate politi-
cal entity. Kentucky became the fteenth state of the Union on June 1, 1792. See also
Murray, John, Earl of Dunmore.
FURTHER READING: Channing, Steven A. Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1977; Chinn, George Morgan. Kentucky Settlement and Statehood, 1750 1800. Frank-
King, Rufus 383
fort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1975; Harrison, Lowell Hayes. A New History of Kentucky.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.
ROBERT N. STACY
King, Rufus (1755 1827)
Born in Massachusetts, Rufus King, an American lawyer, politician, and diplo-
mat, served both that state and New York. After ghting at Lexington and Concord
and Bunker Hill, he returned to his studies, became a lawyer, and practiced in Mas-
sachusetts. He was a member of the Massachusetts state legislature from 1783 to
1785. Overlapping part of this service, he served in the Second Continental Con-
gress from 1784 to 1787. He supported the Northwest Ordnance of 1787, which
prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory.
Very active in the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was part of the commit-
tee that worked on the nal draft (with Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Ham-
ilton). He was also a member of the important Committee for Postponed Matters.
Although his efforts to get Massachusetts to ratify the United States Constitution
were successful, he failed in his attempt to become a senator. Moving to New York
State, he became a state legislator in 1788 and the following year became one of
New Yorks senators. He served in the Senate as a Federalist from 1789 to 1796
and returned to that position in 1813 until 1825. King ran for the ofce of vice
president in 1804 and 1808 and ran for the presidency in 1816 as the last Federalist
candidate, an election in which he carried only 3 states against James Monroes 19.
King was neither a deep political thinker nor an ideologue, but a practical man of
talent committed rst to independence and then to the idea of a strong, centralized
national government. See also American Revolution; American Revolutionary War;
The Northwest.
FURTHER READING: Ernst, Robert. Rufus King, American Federalist. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1968; King, Charles, ed. The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King.
6 vols. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971. First published 1894 1900.
ROBERT N. STACY
L
Lacombe, Claire, (1765c. 1798)
Claire Lacombe was an actress, political activist, and founder of the Society of
Revolutionary Republican Women during the French Revolution.
Lacombe was a provincial actress who performed in theaters in Lyon and Mar-
seille before and during the French Revolution. She arrived in Paris at the beginning
of 1792 and became an active participant in various revolutionary uprisings, includ-
ing those on August 10, 1792, and May 31 through June 2, 1793. With fellow activ-
ist Pauline Lon, Lacombe frequented meetings of the Cordeliers Club and other
fraternal societies beginning in 1790. In February 1793, they founded the militant
all-female Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. The society, which had a
membership of approximately 170, was preoccupied with subsistence issues, improved
occupational education for women, and the implementation of the Constitution of
1793, which had been suspended during the Reign of Terror. Members were pri-
marily working-class women. Lacombe was also involved with the left-wing Enrag
group led by Jean-Thophile Leclerc, whose ideas inuenced her own. The Society
of Revolutionary Republican Women was short lived. It was closed by the orders of
the Jacobins during a crackdown on left-wing groups on October 20, 1793.
Arrested on March 31, 1794, Lacombe was sent to Saint-Plagie prison, where she
remained until her release on August 18, 1795. Upon release, she returned to her
acting career. She was last heard from in 1798, when she returned to Paris from act-
ing in provincial theaters. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Cerati, Marie. Le Club des Citoyennes rpublicaines rvolutionnaires. Paris:
Editions sociales, 1966; Larue-Langlois, Franois. Claire Lacombe: Citoyenne rvolutionnaire.
Paris: Punctum, 2005.
LEIGH WHALEY
Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de (17571834)
Born on September 6, 1757, Marie Jean Paul Joseph Roche Yves Gilbert du Motier,
the Marquis de Lafayette, was a wealthy liberal French aristocrat who was involved
386 Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de
in three revolutions, including both the American Revolution and the French
Revolution. His father was Michel Roche Gilbert du Motier, also the Marquis de
Lafayette, and his mother was Marie Louise de la Rivire; their combined family
connection with the French state went back centuries. Lafayettes classical and mili-
tary education imbued him with pronounced liberal ideas. His family wealth al-
lowed him a place at court, where he made good connections. He was married at
age 17 and soon had three children.
Lafayette was intrigued by the American Declaration of Independence, which
reected his liberal thoughts. Indeed, Lafayette, who supported American indepen-
dence, took unapproved leave to go to America to ght the British. The Continental
Congress made him a major general with the condition that he cover his own ex-
penditures. He met George Washington, with whom he soon developed a father-son
relationship. Lafayette was involved in the Battle of Brandywine on September 11,
1777, and on November 25 of the same year he defeated a force of Hessians at
Gloucester Point. In 1778, Lafayette supervised a remarkable retreat at Barren Hill,
near Philadelphia, on May 20; fought at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28; and
served under the command of General John Sullivan in Rhode Island on July 21.
Lafayette made an 80-mile, eight-hour journey on horseback from Newport to
Boston on August 29 to help in the retreat of the American forces.
Marie Joseph Paul, Marquis de Lafayette.Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de 387
Upon his return to Paris, King Louis XVI appointed Lafayette a colonel of dra-
goons. Lafayette recommended sending 6,000 French troops to help Washington.
He returned to America on April 27, 1780, while Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur,
the comte de Rochambeau, arrived in Rhode Island on July 19, 1780, with French
troops. Washington gave Lafayette command of 2,000 light infantry on August 7,
1780. Washington, Rochambeau, and Lafayette met on September 20, 1780, to estab-
lish their strategy. The paucity of supplies was the bane of Washingtons armies, but
Lafayette used his own nancial resources to rectify this scarcity for his troops.
Lafayettes role in the defeat of the British was crucial. On March 15, 1781, British
general Charles Cornwallis moved into Virginia with 4,000 troops. Lafayettes forces
were reinforced by Baron Friedrich von Steuben. Lafayette then reached Yorktown
and quickly established an efcient spy network that was crucial for the Americans.
Once Washington and Rochambeau reached the area, Cornwallis was surrounded,
which led to his surrender on October 19. Lafayette had spent $200,000 to help
ght the British. Upon his return to France in 1782, he was hailed as a hero.
Lafayette visited America in 1784 and later toured Germany, where he became
engrossed in the movement for the abolition of slavery. His plan to emancipate
the slaves on his Cayenne plantation greatly impressed Washington and Thomas
Jefferson.
The liberal-minded Lafayette hoped to resolve problems coming to the fore
prior to the French Revolution by implementing representative government with
a constitutional monarchy. He served as a member of the Assembly of Notables
in 1787 and was one of the signatories to the document that recalled the Estates-
General on May 5, 1789, after a 175-year absence. Lafayette served as commander
of the newly established National Guard from July 25, 1789, until October 8, 1791,
with responsibility to protect the royal family. He rescued the royals when they were
threatened by a crowd at Versailles on October 7, 1789, and brought them to Paris.
He ordered the royal familys return to Paris when they were eeing to Austria and
caught at Varennes on June 20, 1791. He later regretted that decision.
On July 11, 1789, Lafayette proposed a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen and chose the tricolor ag still used today. Lafayettes liberal tendencies
were clearly revealed when he insisted that arbitrary punishment be abolished and
advocated religious toleration, trial by jury, a popular franchise, freedom of the
press, the abolition of slavery, and the abolition of noble titles. He founded the
Feuillant Club in 1789. He proved far too liberal for the radical Jacobins and for his
own safety retired to a private life on September 18, 1791. Declared a traitor because
he wanted a restored but limited monarchy after its overthrow on August 10, 1792,
he escaped to Lige, Belgium, but was taken prisoner, held rst in Magdeburg and
then for four years in a dungeon in Olmutz, Austria, where he endured insufferable
cruelty. His family voluntarily joined him in his incarceration in 1795.
Napoleon secured Lafayettes release on September 23, 1797, as a stipulation
in the Treaty of Campo Formio. Once again retired, Lafayette had lost his wealth
during the Revolution, but he rejected all offers of help from both Napoleon and
the United States government.
True to his liberal principles, Lafayette voted against Napoleons advocacy of the
establishment of a consul for life, and he vehemently objected to the new imperial
title. Lafayette did not support Napoleons return to power during the Hundred
Days in 1815, instead calling for the emperors second abdication on June 2, 1815.
388 La Lanterne
Lafayette held a liberal seat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1818 until 1824 and
was also leader of the opposition.
At age 68, Lafayette, along with his son, made a return visit to the United States,
visiting 24 states in 14 months. A grateful Congress repaid him the $200,000 he
had spent to nance his military exploits and provided him with 24,000 acres of
land. Lafayette was reelected as a liberal to the Chamber of Deputies in 1827,
a position he held until his death. He commanded the National Guard during
the 1830 Revolution and was instrumental in placing King Louis Philippe on the
French throne as a constitutional monarch. Lafayette died in Paris on May 20,
1834, and received an impressive funeral. He was buried in Le Jardin de Pipcus
cemetery in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine beside his wife, Adrienne, who had died
on December 24, 1807. See also American Revolutionary War; Feuillants; Slavery
and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Bernier, Olivier. Lafayette: Hero of Two Worlds. New York: E. P. Dutton,
1983; Bickman Peter. Lafayette: A Biography. New York: Paddington Press, 1977; Gottschalk,
Louis R. Lafayette at the Close of the American Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1965; Gottschalk, Louis R. Lafayette Comes to America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1974; Gotschalk, Louis. Lafayette in the French Revolution: From the October Days through the
Federation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
La Lanterne
The French word for lamppost, la lanterne became a symbol of popular justice
in the early days of the French Revolution. It symbolized the assertion of power
over life and death by the French people, with or without the assent of legitimate
authority.
During the violence of the Revolutions early days, mobs captured despised of-
cials and hanged them from lampposts in the streets of Paris. These acts were
embraced by revolutionary radicals, and A la lanterne (To the lamppost) soon
became a radical slogan. While the National Assembly moved to suppress mob jus-
tice, the phrase remained popular in rhetoric and popular culture.
The term rst gained this meaning following the lynching of the universally
unpopular controller general of nances, Joseph-Franois Foulon, on July 22, 1789.
Foulons impromptu execution took place in the rst explosion of mob violence
following the storming of the Bastille. He was hanged from a lamppost in Paris, but
after the rope broke, Foulon was decapitated and his head paraded through the
streets. A few days later, his son-in-law Bertier de Sauvigny, the intendant of Paris,
was also killed by a mob. The murders became a topic of hot debate in the National
Assembly. The National Guard was organized to quell the rioting mobs and prevent
further unrest.
In 1790 the song a ira became popular after public celebrations of the anniver-
sary of the storming of the Bastille. The lyrics centered around the refrain a ira, an
expression of optimism, but turned dark as Frances mood soured. A version of the
songs lyrics included the phrase Les aristocrates la lanterne! meaning Aristocrats,
to the lamppost! During the rule of the Directory, a ira was played before shows in
the theater. The inammatory song was suppressed after Napoleon rose to power.
Lameth, Alexandre-Thodore-Victor, Comte de 389
FURTHER READING: Kennedy, Emmet. A Cultural History of the French Revolution. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1989; Rogers, Cornwell B. The Spirit of Revolution in 1789: A Study
of Public Opinion as Revealed in Political Songs and Other Popular Literature at the Beginning of the
French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949.
JAMES L. ERWIN
Lally-Tollendal, Trophime-Grard, Marquis de (17511830)
A son of the comte de Lally, who was executed following false charges of treason,
Lally-Tollendal devoted many years to the rehabilitation of his fathers reputation.
Lally-Tollendal gained the support of Voltaire and in 1778 persuaded Louis XVI to
annul the decree sentencing his father, although the courts never proclaimed his
fathers innocence.
In 1789, he became a deputy of the National Assembly but resigned his post in
1790. Lally-Tollendal took part in the early stages of the French Revolution, initially
supporting Lafayette, but his conservatism prevented him from continuing his sup-
port of the Revolution and its values. He became an opponent of Mirabeau and
established himself as a defender of traditional institutions. He was arrested in 1792
but managed to gain refuge in England prior to the September Massacres. He later
offered to defend Louis XVI during his trial before the National Convention but was
refused permission to return to France.
Lally-Tollendal eventually did return at the time of the Consulate and supported
the Bourbon dynasty at the Restoration. Louis XVIII named him a peer of France,
and in 1816 he was named a member of the French Academy. Among his publica-
tions are the Defense of the French Emigrants and Life of the Earl of Strafford. The last de-
cades of his life were devoted to philanthropic work, especially the cause of prison
reform. Lally-Tollendal died in Paris on March 11, 1830.
FURTHER READING: Hamont, Tibulle, ed. La n dun empire franais aux Indes sous Louis XV.
Lally-Tollendal daprs des documents indits. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et cie., 1887.
JEFF SHANTZ
Lameth, Alexandre-Thodore-Victor, Comte de (17601829)
Alexandre-Thodore-Victor, the comte de Lameth, was a French aristocrat who
served in the French army in the American Revolutionary War and as a leading
advocate of constitutional monarchy during the moderate phase of the French
Revolution.
Born in Paris in 1760, Lameth and his brothers fought for the colonists in the
American Revolution under General Rochambeaus command. Lameth later served
as a representative of the Second Estate, or nobility, to the Estates-General, which
convened in May 1789. However, in June, Lameth joined the cause of the Third
Estate, which had declared itself a revolutionary National Assembly. He participated
in drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, supporting mea-
sures abolishing feudalism, and limiting monarchical power. In September, Lameth,
Antoine Barnave, and Adrien Duport formed the so-called triumvirate, inuencing
delegates in the Constituent Assembly to prevent legislation to establish a separate
legislative chamber for the nobility.
390 Lanjuinais, Jean Denis, Comte de
In 1791, fearing that the Revolutions continuation would endanger the monar-
chy and private property, Lameth and his associates covertly advised the royal fam-
ily. However, Louis XVIs disastrous attempt at escape in June 1791 discredited the
system of constitutional monarchy. To consolidate their position, Lameth and his
associates withdrew from the Jacobin Club to form the Feuillants. The triumvirate
was ineligible to serve in the Legislative Assembly, which convened in October.
Following war with Austria in 1792, Lameth served in the Army of the North. After
the monarchys collapse and the Revolutions increasingly radical shift, Lameth was
accused of treason in August 1792 and ed to Austria, where he was interned. In
1796, Lameth settled in Hamburg. He returned to France in 1800 during the Con-
sulate, serving as prefect from 1802 to 1815. During the Bourbon restoration, which
followed Napoleons downfall, Lameth initially attached himself to the monarchy,
later becoming a member of the liberal parliamentary opposition. He wrote a his-
tory of the Constituent Assembly shortly before his death in 1829. See also Jacobins;
Varennes, Flight to.
FURTHER READING: Davidson, Michael. The Landing of Rochambeau. Providence, RI:
Burning Deck, 1984; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. 2nd ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002; Rice, Howard C., and Anne S. K. Brown, eds. The
American Campaigns of Rochambeaus Army. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1972; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1992.
ERIC MARTONE
Lanjuinais, Jean Denis, Comte de (17531827)
A French revolutionary politician, Jean Denis, the comte de Lanjuinais, was a dep-
uty to the Constituent Assembly, the National Convention, the Council of Ancients,
and the Napoleonic Senate. Son of a lawyer in the Parlement of Rennes, Lanjuinais
studied law and received his doctorate in 1772. He was a professor of canon law at
the University of Rennes at the age of 21. In 1779, he was elected an advisor to the
Estates of Brittany. As a leading opponent to the Breton nobility before 1789, Lan-
juinais published a memoir extolling the virtues of equality and condemning noble
privileges. He assisted in drafting the cahiers of the Third Estate of Rennes and was
elected second out of seven deputies for the Third Estate of Rennes. During the
Constituent Assembly, he signed the Tennis Court Oath and was a member of ve
committees, one of which was the Ecclesiastical Committee. Church affairs were his
specialty, as he believed religion to be the basis of civil society. He was a founder of
the Breton Club, which became the Jacobin Club.
In the period between the end of the Constituent Assembly and the National Con-
vention, Lanjuinais was elected to the high court of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine.
At the National Convention, he sided with the moderates during the trial of Louis
XVI, voting for the referendum and banishment. One of the proscribed deputies
on June 2, 1793, he escaped to Rennes. He was reintegrated into the Convention on
March 8, 1795. He helped to draft the 1795 constitution and sat on the Council of
Ancients until 1797. After Napoleons coup, he was nominated to the Senate but he
voted against both Napoleons life consulate and imperial titles. He was made a count
in 1808. See also Brumaire, Coup dEtat de; Cahiers de Dolances; Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; Consulate; First Consul; French Revolution; Jacobins; Parlements.
La Rochejaquelein, Henri Du Vergier, Comte de 391
FURTHER READING: Clment Jean Paul. Aux sources du libralisme franais: Boissy dAnglas,
Daunou, Lanjuinais. Paris: L.G.D.J., 2000; Lemay, Edna Hindie. Lanjuinais, Jean-Denis. In
Dictionnaire des Constituents: 17891791, vol 2 (L-Y). Oxford and Paris: Voltaire Foundation &
Universitas, 1991.
LEIGH WHALEY
La Rochejaquelein, Henri Du Vergier, Comte de (17721794)
Henri Du Vergier, comte de La Rochejaquelein, was a French commander and
one of the primary counterrevolutionary leaders in the Vendan rebellion He was
noted for his fervent royalist and Catholic principles as well as for his gallantry and
tactical abilities.
La Rochejaquelein was born in August 1772 at the chteau de la Durbellire,
near Chtillon. As a young man, he served in the French army and supported the
king during the French Revolution. Following the fall of the monarchy, La Roche-
jaquelein joined a collection of aristocrats and peasants in the Vende, a region
in western France, to aid in a large-scale rebellion against the French revolution-
ary government. He rallied the self-proclaimed Catholic and Royal army, known
as the whites, through his passionate and charismatic speeches. While attaining
some initial victories, the poorly trained Vendan peasants were no match for the
Henri, Comte de La Rochejaquelein. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
392 Latin American Revolutions
professional army of the revolutionary government, known as the blues. In October
1793, at the age of 21, La Rochejaquelein became the gnralissime of the Vendan
rebels. He was killed in battle in January 1794.
FURTHER READING: Biggane, Cecil, ed. Memoirs of the Marquise de la Rochejaquelein. London:
Routledge, 1933; Ross, Michael. Banners of the King: The War of the Vende, 17934. New York:
Hippocrene, 1975.
ERIC MARTONE
In the second half of the eighteenth century, Spanish rule extended over most
of Latin America, with Brazil in the hands of the Portuguese, and a handful of
British settlements along some of the coastal regions in the Caribbean. The last
major rebellion by the Indians, led by Tupac Amaru II, was put down in 1781, and
the rebel leader was executed in Cuzco on May 18, 1781. However, during the age
of revolutions, most of the nations of Central and South America achieved their
independence, leaving only small pockets of European colonies in the Caribbean
region and in Brazil.
In 1767, the king of Spain expelled the Jesuits from his lands, and this was to
have a dramatic effect in many ways. The Jesuits had been keen educators, and their
expulsion saw the closure of many progressive schools. They had also established
reductions in southern Paraguay, where large numbers of Indians worked the lands
and produced massive agricultural surpluses that were sold to traders in the region
and elsewhere. The closure of Jesuit educational establishments was to inuence the
school career of Manuel Hidalgo in Mexico, and the end of the Jesuit reductions
in Paraguay came soon after the birth of Jos Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, whose
father supervised a tobacco plantation that had been established at the suggestion
of the Jesuits. Indeed, it is worth mentioning that Voltaire supported the ejection of
the Jesuits, although he was later to change his views on this topic.
The ideas of the Enlightenment in Europe were well received throughout intel-
lectual circles in Latin America. Many educated people were receptive to the views
espoused by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, although some had reservations
about their implementation in the Americas. This was largely because political progres-
sives in Latin America were in disagreement about slavery, and the role, if any, of the
Indians in any revolutionary society. Latin America at the time was seen by many in Eu-
rope as a strange and remote area of the world, although Mexico, Peru, and modern-
day Argentina were reasonably accessible to many. Voltaire himself in his book Candide
(1759) sets part of his story in Paraguay, which was seen as an even more remote part
of the continent. Potions and quack cures in British newspapers in the 1790s often
referred to herbal infusions that were said to have originated in Paraguay.
In 1771, the dispute over the Falkland Islands began, and from 1776 to 1777 there
was a Spanish-Portuguese war over the Banda Oriental (modern-day Uruguay).
From 1779 until 1783 Spain also participated in the American Revolutionary War,
capturing Mobile, Pensacola, and the Bahamas. Florida was given to Spain at the
end of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
The event that was to change Latin America forever was the forced abdication
of King Ferdinand VII of Spain on May 10, 1808. The French had invaded the
Latin American Revolutions 393
countryit had previously been their allyin order to attack Portugal, and then
Napoleon decided to overthrow the Spanish monarchy and enthrone his brother
Joseph Bonaparte. It was a move that Napoleon felt might be welcomed by the poor
of the Iberian Peninsula. Although it might have been popular under different cir-
cumstances, the actions of the French army quickly alienated many Spaniards and
were an affront to the patriotism of many of Spanish descent in Latin America.
The overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain led Spaniards in Latin America
to seek to declare their loyalty to Ferdinand VII. This resulted in the proclamation
by the Chuquisaca Audencia in Alto Peru of its support for the king in May 1809,
followed by the formation of juntas in La Paz and Quito. It also resulted in the wide-
spread belief that the time had come for independence for Spanish America. The
rst major move took place in Buenos Aires, where the situation was complicated by
the fact that prior to the overthrow of Ferdinand, a British expeditionary force dis-
patched from Cape Colony, in southern Africa, under Admiral Sir Home Popham,
had taken the city on June 17, 1806, before being ejected from it on August 12.
By that time, many British merchants, aware that Buenos Aires had been taken by
Popham, but not that he had lost it, had arrived on the scene with goods to sell.
A second British force under General John Whitelocke took Montevideo, holding
the city in July 1807 until they were forced to surrender. The ease with which the
portenos (urban dwellers) of Buenos Aires had ejected the British encouraged many
to seek independence by retaining control of the city and refusing to allow Spanish
ofcials to reestablish their authority. The British encouraged Spanish people out-
side Spain to form provisional governments (or juntas) loyal to Ferdinand, but many
people used legal precedents to show that, in their opinion, under the ancient prin-
ciple of Spanish law, the king of Spains dominions in the Americas had the right to
govern themselves using a junta until the restoration of a legitimate king in Madrid.
The viceroy in Buenos Aires was Santiago Liniers, a Frenchman, whom Ferdi-
nands supporters immediately overthrew. Acting in the name of Ferdinand, a junta
appointed a new viceroy, but on May 24, 1810, an armed revolt led to the establish-
ment of another junta, which claimed that it would rule in the name of King Fer-
dinand until his restoration. This had been preceded by a similar action in Caracas
on April 19 and was followed by the proclamation of juntas in Bogot on July 20,
Asuncin on July 24, Santiago on September 18, and Cartagena soon afterward.
When the restoration of the Bourbons did take place four years later, Ferdinand
quickly made himself unpopular with many people in Latin America, who then
rebelled against Spanish rule.
In the meantime, in Mexico, simmering discontent became concentrated in the
countryside, where Hidalgo was able to use the resentment at the Spanish to lead a
rebellion. Hidalgo was a priest who became the focus of discontent in the country.
He quickly amassed an army of 80,000 peasants, but their looting of some towns,
as well as their attacks on Europeans, alienated many moderate people. When he
nally moved his forces to attack Mexico City, even Hidalgo realized that his largely
untrained force would be unable to take the city, and he was forced to pull back and
allow the Spanish to retake most of the country. On January 17, 1811, at the Battle
of Calderon, Hidalgos army was destroyed, and he himself was captured and later
executed. Ten years later, the man who defeated Hidalgo, General Augustn de Itur-
bide, a Mexican-born Spanish soldier, decided to launch a rebellion himself. This fol-
lowed the revolution in Spain the previous year, and Iturbide, on February 24, 1821,
394 Latin American Revolutions
declared Mexican independence, took Mexico City, and crowned himself Agustn
I, emperor of Mexico on July 21, 1822. A republican movement rapidly formed
around Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna, who deposed Iturbide in March 1823 and es-
tablished a federal republic on October 4, 1824. In the meantime, Central America
had broken away after the overthrow of Iturbide and formed the United Provinces
of Central America in July 1823.
In Paraguay, Jos Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, a lawyer, took the initiative. The
formation of the viceroyalty of the River Plate in 1776 had seen a diminution of the
importance of the city of Asuncin as Buenos Aires became the capital of this new
entity, which covered what is now Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The
result was that Francia proclaimed the independence of Paraguay on May 14, 1811,
making Paraguay the third country in the Americas to gain its independence (after
the United States and Haiti). Enthusiastically greeted by many people in Asuncin,
Francia offered a military alliance with Buenos Aires, certain that, legally, if the porte-
nos replied, it would be tantamount to recognition of Paraguayan independence.
This took place, but Francias plan for a wealthy Paraguay with massive revenues
generated by the cultivation of yerba was not to be realized, and his country re-
mained isolated from the rest of the world for most of the period until his death in
1840. Although many writers have seen Francia as the sole cause of this isolation, it
is clear that the Argentine and other authorities were as much to blame.
While Francia managed to gain independence for Paraguay peacefully and cer-
tainly was helped by his countrys position, most of the rest of the Spanish posses-
sions in America were involved in a series of wars, mainly under Simn Bolvar,
Jos de San Martn, and Bernardo OHiggins. All three of these individuals were
born in the Americas and were to become the most prominent gures in the revo-
lutionary wars in Latin America. There were, essentially, two major conicts, and
a number of interconnected ones. While Bolvar fought the Spanish in Colombia,
Venezuela, and northern Peru, Bernardo OHiggins and San Martn did the same
in the United Provinces (Argentina), Chile, Bolivia, and southern Peru. There
was also one other small conict being waged in the Banda Oriental, where Jos
Artigas led many locals in ghting for the Spanish people of that region against
the Portuguese. Brazil annexed the area in 1816, formalizing their rule, but Uru-
guay was able to declare its independence on August 25, 1825; it was recognized
by Brazil on August 28, 1828.
The rst major military move by those seeking independence in South America
was in Chile, where Jos Miguel Carrera staged a rebellion. At Suipacha, in Alto
Peru, on November 7, 1810, the royalists were defeated by a republican force. How-
ever, on June 20, 1811, at Huaqui, the royalists were able to destroy the republican
forces. Simn Bolvar took part in the next signicant event. On July 5, 1811, Ven-
ezuela declared its independence, and Bolvar, who had been placed in command
of Puerto Cachello, was ejected by the Spanish commander, Juan Domingo Mon-
teverde. Francisco Miranda, leader of the revolt, was captured and taken back to
Spain, where he subsequently died in prison. Bolvar ed to Dutch-controlled Cu-
raao but returned in May 1813. Raising an army, he defeated Monteverde at the
Battle of Lastaguanes and then captured the city of Caracas on August 6. He again
defeated the royalists at the Battle of Araure on December 5 and won two more
battlesat La Victoria in February 1814, and at San Mateo the following month.
In May 1814 he also won a signicant victory at Carabobo but two months later was
Latin American Revolutions 395
defeated by General Jos Toms Boves at La Puerta. In spite of his earlier successes,
this nal victory by the Spanish restored their rule in Venezuela, forcing Bolvar to
ee to New Granada (modern-day Colombia). There he was defeated in 1815 by
General Pablo Morillo at Santa Mara, which forced him again to ee, this time to
Jamaica and then to Haiti. With the Napoleonic Wars in Europe over, the Spanish
now had signicantly more troops to deploy against the rebels.
On March 9, 1812, San Martn, who had been born on the Argentine-Paraguayan
border, returned to Buenos Aires after having served in the Spanish army in Europe.
He was heavily inuenced by revolutionary ideas and also had faced discrimination
by dint of his birth in the Americas. Soon after his arrival in Buenos Aires, he was
to become involved in the establishment of a large republican army to combat the
main Spanish royalist one, which was based in Peru. San Martn realized that any
victory by the republicans was unlikely to be permanent if the Spanish could always
bring more forces into battle, as they had done against Bolivar. For that reason he
felt that the only way to end the war completely was to attack and capture the Span-
ish royalist stronghold in Peru. To do so, he needed to equip and train his soldiers
for a long campaign. His so-called Army of the Andes, composed of Chileans under
Bernardo OHiggins, and Argentinians, was moved to Mendoza for training. On
July 9, 1816, the United Provinces declared their independence, and their army
under San Martn was ready to attack Peru.
On January 24, 1817, San Martn led his men through the pass in the Andes at
Gran Cordeillera. The Spanish never expected the Army of the Andes to be able
to launch an invasion through an Andean pass in winter, and on February 8, San
Martns men were regrouping in Chile to face the Spanish, whom they encoun-
tered on February 1213 at the Battle of Chacaburo. The Spanish were not only
surprised but also outnumbered, and some 500 of their 2,000 men were killed, and
another 600 taken prisoner. They also lost all their artillery to the republicans. By
contrast, San Martn lost only 12 dead and 120 wounded. He occupied Santiago on
February 15, and in the following year, on February 12, 1818, Chile proclaimed its
independence from Spain, although ghting continued along the area that is now
the Chilean-Peruvian border.
San Martn knew that he had to attack Peru, and this strategy was conrmed
when Spanish forces there attacked and defeated him at the Battle of Cancha-
Rayada on March 16, 1818. This was a major blow to the morale of the republicans,
but on April 5, at the Battle of Maipo, the royalists were defeated. By the end of
the year, the republicans had also started amassing a navy for a seaborne attack on
Peru. In January 1819 this was placed under the command of Thomas Cochrane,
who had left the (British) Royal Navy under odd circumstances and then moved to
Valparaiso, the main port in Chile. It was not until June 18, 1820, that the new Chil-
ean navy was able to drive the Spanish from the port of Valdivia and prepare for the
invasion of Peru, which was launched on September 8, 1820. On July 12, 1821, San
Martn led his men into Lima, previously the principal Spanish stronghold in Latin
America, and the other Spanish garrison at Callao surrendered on September 21.
In the meantime, Bolvar had returned to Venezuela in December 1816 and man-
aged to defeat the Spanish at Barcelona, in Venezuela, on February 16, 1817. However,
he was again defeated in another battle fought at La Puera on March 15, 1818. On
June 11, 1819, he also launched an attack on the Spanish by crossing the Andes.
Outside Bogot, on August 7, 1819 at the Battle of Boyaca, Bolvars forces, which
396 Law of Hostages
included the British LegionBritish veterans of the Peninsular Warsmashed the
Spanish forces of Colonel Barreiro, and three days later Bolvar entered Bogot
in triumph, establishing himself as president of the newly proclaimed Republic
of Colombia. Fighting continued in Venezuela, with Bolvar winning the Battle of
Carabobo on June 24, 1821, and capturing the important port of Cartagena on
October 1. The nal victory of that part of the conict took place at Pichincha on
May 24 1822, where the Spanish under Melchior Aymerich were defeated.
On July 2627, 1822, at Guayaquil, San Martn and Bolvar met for a condential
meeting. Much has been written about what may and may not have been discussed.
It certainly appears that San Martn was disheartened by it, for he retired from
further participation in the revolutionary wars, leaving Bolvar in command of the
armies. Bolvar, with the help of Antonio Jos de Sucre from Venezuela, defeated
the Spanish at the Battle of Junin on August 6, 1824, and Sucre routed them again
at the Battle of Ayacucho on December 9, 1824, effectively ending Spanish attempts
to reconquer their colonial possessions.
Brazil, a Portuguese colony, found itself in a very different position to the Span-
ish colonies. In 1807 the Portuguese court ed as Napoleons forces reached Lisbon
and established Rio de Janeiro as the seat of their government. In 1821 John VI of
Portugal returned to Lisbon, with Dom Pedro, his son, remaining in Brazil as prince
regent, and later crowning himself as emperor of Brazil on December 1, 1822.
There was some ghting in Brazil, but the British naval commander, Cochrane, was
placed in command of the Brazilian navy on March 21, 1823, and the dissensions
and small-scale ghting that did take place focused largely on whether or not Brazil
should achieve its independence under its own emperor, who was the son of the
king of Portugal. The matter was settled in 1825 when Portugal recognized Brazilian
independence. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Harvey, Robert. Liberators: South Americas Savage Wars of Freedom,
181030. London: Constable and Robinson; Hooker, Terry, and Ron Poulter. The Armies of
Bolivar and San Martin. London: Osprey, 1991; Trend, J. B. Bolivar and the Independence of
Spanish America. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
The Law of Hostages was passed by the Directory of France following the revolt
of Prairial on June 18, 1799. This law delegated power to provincial authorities to
round up political prisoners, or hostages, and imprison them until their fate was
decided. A wide range of activities were subject to the Law of Hostages, including
simple political protests and organizations that were deemed a threat to the Directo-
rys power. Quelling rebellion by holding political prisoners was only effective when
provincial loyalty to the national government was widespread. Often, provincial
leaders felt no compulsion to assist the Directory in the apprehension of suspects
and allowed minor offenses to go unpunished as a means of expressing their own
distaste for the governments Directory policy. The Law of Hostages demonstrated
that the often draconian measures associated with the National Convention, which
was replaced by the Directory in August 1795, had yet to be eradicated even as the
French Revolution progressed through its later, more moderate, phases.
Law of 22 Prairial 397
FURTHER READING: Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984; Troyansky, David, Alfred Cismanru, and
Norwood Andrews Jr., eds. The French Revolution in Culture and Society. New York: Greenwood
Press, 1991.
NICHOLAS KATERS
Decreed on September 17, 1793 by the National Convention, this was one of
the dening laws of the Reign of Terror. It was debated after the invasion of the
National Convention by the sections of Paris on September 5, during which the leg-
islature was forced to make terror the order of the day and adopt the Maximum,
as well as to adopt several other fairly radical measures. Its purpose was to broadly
dene those categories of people who should be immediately arrested and brought
before the revolutionary tribunals for examination. Suspects were those who were
deemed by their behavior, associations, speech, or writings to be friends of tyranny
or federalism and thus enemies of liberty; those who could not prove where their
income originated or that they were actively participating in their civic duties; those
who had been refused certicates proving their patriotism; civil servants who had
been suspended from their positions; nobles whose relatives had emigrated and
who could not prove their devotion to the Revolution; and migrs who left between
July 1, 1789, and April 8, 1792, even if they had later returned during a grace period
that allowed them to do so without penalty. The committees of surveillance in each
community were given the task of compiling a list of suspects, issuing arrest warrants
and empowering the National Guard to execute them, and then forwarding a list
of those arrested to the Committee of Public Safety, a committee of the National
Convention. The law supplemented an earlier law of March 10, 1793, which had
created the revolutionary tribunals but had provided a much narrower denition
of a suspect that did not ultimately satisfy activists. It also codied the maxim that
anyone who was suspected of subversion should have to prove his or her innocence,
which was later extended by the Law of 22 Prairial.
FURTHER READING: Gough, Hugh. The Terror in the French Revolution. New York: Mac-
millan, 1998; Stewart, John Hall. A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution. New York:
Macmillan, 1951.
LEE BAKER
The Law of 22 Prairial (June 10, 1794) intensied the Reign of Terror by alter-
ing the procedures of the revolutionary tribunals and redening who constituted
an enemy of the people during the bloodiest phase of the French Revolution.
The law transformed the tribunal into four separate courts, increasing its speed
and efciency. The law reduced the possibility of acquittal by denying defense
counsel to conspirators and by severely limiting the use of witness testimony. The
tribunal was brought under tighter control by the Committee of Public Safety,
and the death sentence was imposed for all offences. The law broadened the de-
nition of an enemy to apply to such a wide variety of practices that even many
398 Lebrun, Charles-Franois, Duc de Plaisance
devout revolutionaries were accused of threatening the republic. It made possible
the practice of combining offenders under one charge, and a period of mass tri-
als followed the adoption of Prairial. The application of the law transformed the
revolutionary tribunal and signicantly increased the number of victims killed
by the government known as the Convention. See also Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine
Quentin; Law of Suspects.
FURTHER READING: Godfrey, J. L. Revolutionary Justice: A Study of the Organization, Personnel,
and Procedure of the Paris Tribunal, 17931795. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1951; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941.
BRODIE RICHARDS
LCS
See London Corresponding Society
Lebrun, Charles-Franois, Duc de Plaisance (17391824)
A noble and a high ofcial in the ancien rgime, Charles-Franois Lebrun served
throughout the revolutionary era, becoming third consul and then arch treasurer
of France during the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Lebrun was a prominent ofcial under the French monarchy but fell out of favor
in 1774. He spent over a decade in political exile and dedicated himself to literary
pursuits. In 1789, he was elected to the National Assembly, where he distinguished
himself as a moderate royalist. Following the formation of the Legislative Assembly
in 1791, to which members of the National Assembly could not be elected, Lebrun
became president of the department of Seine-et-Oise.
Lebruns royalist past made him an obvious target after the Jacobins took power,
and he was imprisoned twice. He was close to execution after his second arrest but
escaped the guillotine when a relative stole his court records. After the fall of the
Jacobins and the establishment of the Directory, Lebrun was freed and elected to
the Council of Ancients, where he voted against the prosecution of former Jacobins
and promoted reconciliation.
In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte organized the Consulate and selected Lebrun as
third consul. Lebruns royalism made him an excellent counterbalance to the ex-
Jacobin second consul, Cambacrs. In addition, Napoleon made excellent use of
Lebruns nancial skills. During the period of the Consulate, Lebrun participated
in a number of important policy decisions, although he initiated few reforms on his
own authority.
Despite Lebruns apprehensions over the reestablishment of a titled aristocracy,
he continued to serve in the government after Napoleon declared himself emperor.
He was well rewarded for this loyalty; in 1804, Lebrun was made arch treasurer of
France. In 1805, Lebrun served as governor-general of the Ligurian Republic, in
northern Italy, and prepared its administration for annexation to France. He served
with distinction in these capacities, and Napoleon created him the duc de Plaisance
in 1808. Lebrun reluctantly accepted the hereditary ef.
In 1810, Napoleons brother Louis was forced to abdicate his position as king
of the Netherlands. Napoleon appointed Lebrun the governor-general of the
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Gui 399
Netherlands and tasked him with organizing the nation into departments in order to
prepare it for annexation to France. Lebrun governed fairly and earned the respect
of the Dutch before he ed the Netherlands in fear for his life after the collapse of
the French Empire.
Lebrun was able to navigate the end of the Napoleonic regime with the same
agility with which he had maneuvered through the revolutionary era. He was made
a peer by Louis XVIII. His rehabilitation was ended when Napoleon returned from
exile on Elba and made Lebrun grand master of the University of Paris. After the
Battle of Waterloo and Napoleons nal exile to St. Helena, Lebrun was stripped of
his peerage. In 1819, he was restored once again, although he was too old to partici-
pate meaningfully in the House of Peers. He died in 1824.
FURTHER READING: Gershoy, Leo. The French Revolution and Napoleon. New York: Meredith,
1964; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989;
Thibaudeau, Antoine Claire. Bonaparte and the Consulate. Translated and edited by G. K.
Fortescue. New York: Macmillan, 1908; Woloch, Isser. Napoleon and His Collaborators: The
Making of a Dictatorship. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001; Woolf, Stuart. Napoleons Integration of
Europe. London: Routledge, 1991.
JAMES L. ERWIN
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Gui (17541794)
Isaac-Ren-Gui Le Chapelier was the French revolutionary politician responsible
for the Le Chapelier Law. A barrister in Rennes before the French Revolution, Le
Chapelier came from a family of celebrated jurists. His father was ennobled in 1769,
but Le Chapelier was elected to the Estates-General by the Third Estate of Rennes.
A prominent revolutionary during the early years, Le Chapelier and the abb Sieys
were leaders of the Patriot Party. Le Chapelier was one of the founders of the Breton
Club, which later became the Jacobins. In the Estates-General, he advocated voting
by head. In the National Assembly, he presided over the famous session on the night
of August 4 when privileges were abolished. He was voted president of the Assem-
bly on August 3, 1789. He voted in favor of the election of judges on May 5, 1790,
and on June 9, he demanded the abolition of noble titles. As a member of the con-
stitutional committee, Le Chapelier advocated the nationalization of church lands.
Le Chapelier is best known for the law of the same name, passed by the National
Assembly on June 14, 1791. Le Chapelier was responsible for introducing this law to
the Assembly. The law regulated the right of petitioning, prohibited the formation
of workingmens associations, and abolished craft guilds. The context in which the
Le Chapelier law was introduced and passed was one of labor disorders and worker
meetings in Paris and surrounding departments. Workers had met to discuss issues
such as wages in a fashion similar to the meetings of clubs and popular societies.
Guilds had recently been abolished by the dAllarde decree on March 2, 1791, named
after the deputy Pierre dAllarde. Le Chapelier and like-minded deputies were op-
posed to guilds and workers associations on the principles of individual liberty and
laissez-faire economics. Le Chapelier insisted organizations such as guilds were privi-
leged and thus contrary to the principles of the new order. The Le Chapelier legisla-
tion had a lasting effect, as trade unions were banned in France until 1884.
During the political crisis that followed Louis XVIs ight to Varennes, Le
Chapelier revealed himself as a moderate and left the Jacobin Club for the more
400 Lee, Arthur
conservative Feuillants. In addition, he advocated restrictive voting rights. In Sep-
tember 1791, with the close of the Constituent Assembly, Le Chapelier returned to
his native Rennes. He lived in hiding for 18 months. Although he remained a con-
stitutional monarchist throughout his life, he nevertheless wrote to the Committee
of Public Safety in February 1794, offering to work as a spy in England. Perhaps this
was a last attempt to escape persecution. On March 1, he was arrested, after which
he was transferred to Paris, condemned by the revolutionary tribunal, and executed
on April 22, 1794.
FURTHER READING: Burstin, Ham. La loi Le Chapelier et la conjuncture rvolutionnaire.
In Naissance des liberts conomiques. Le dcret dAllarde et la loi Le Chapelier, ed. Alain Plessis. Paris:
Institut dhistoire de lindustrie, Ministre de lindustrie, 1993; Fitzsimmons, Michael P. The
National Assembly and the Abolition of Guilds in France. Historical Journal 39, no. 1 (March
1996): 13354; Manceron, Claude. La Rvolution franaise dictionnaire biographique. Paris:
Renaudot et Cie, 1989; Soreau, E. La loi Le Chapelier. Annales historiques de la Rvolution
franaise 8 (1931): 286314.
LEIGH WHALEY
Lee, Arthur (17401792)
Arthur Lee was a younger son of rich plantation owners in Virginia who died
before he was 10 years old. He was given an excellent and prolonged education in
Britain (at school at Eton College, and earning a medical degree at the University of
Edinburgh and a law degree at the Inns of Court in London). A difcult personality,
he held very strong views and spent much time on both sides of the Atlantic, associ-
ating with and, despite his overall political stance, often quarrelling with British rad-
icals and American patriots. From 1764 until the mid-1770s he produced a stream
of essays, poems, and pamphlets on the American crisis. These were published in
both Britain and the colonies, under a variety of pseudonyms. His early publications
were vituperative, but his later ones were more coolly reasoned. In Britain he co-
operated with Lord Shelburne and John Wilkes, both critics of British government
policies at home and toward the American colonies. He even became the secretary
of the radical Bill of Rights Society in London. He also corresponded on politics
with his brother Richard Henry Lee and Samuel Adams. He worked with Benjamin
Franklin in London from 1771 to 1774 and cooperated with him in publishing the
correspondence of Thomas Whately, which helped to unseat Thomas Hutchinson
as governor of Massachusetts. He later quarreled with Franklin on personal and
political grounds, because he came to believe that Franklins patriotism was less
rm than his own. Lee frequently attacked the British efforts to tax the American
colonies, though he was also critical of slavery in the colonies.
He welcomed the American Revolutionary War and spent some years as an in-
telligence agent and a diplomat seeking to promote covert French, Spanish, and
Prussian support for the American cause. He visited all three kingdoms and regu-
larly worked with Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin in seeking such assistance.
He did not trust either of them, and he tried to undermine the inuence of both.
Nor was he convinced that France was genuine in her expressions of support for
American independence. His self-righteousness and suspicious personality won him
few friends, though he did the American cause some service in securing foreign
funds and arms. He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1781, and
Lee, Richard Henry 401
he served in Second Continental Congress from 1782 to 1785. Although he had
been a vociferous critic of the policies of Robert Morris, he served in the Ameri-
can treasury from 1785 to 1789. This experience convinced him of the shortcom-
ings of the Articles of Confederation, but in public discussions on the new federal
constitution he was a mild Anti-Federalist. Lee failed to gain any position in George
Washingtons administration, and he retired to his plantation in Virginia. He died
there, unmarried, in December 1792. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade; United
FURTHER READING: Potts, Louis W. Arthur Lee: A Virtuous Revolutionary. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1981; Sainsbury, John. Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters
of Revolutionary America, 17691782. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1987.
H.T. DICKINSON
Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence Richard Henry Lee was born
in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in January 1732. After journeying to England for
his formal education at Wakeeld Academy in Yorkshire, Lee returned to Virginia
in 1752. He was immediately elected to political ofce as justice of the peace for
Westmoreland County. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses just six
years later.
Though a shy young man, Lee was a skilled orator and was known as the Cicero
of the eighteenth century. Just a year after Lee became a member of the Virginia
House of Burgesses, he delivered one of the most important speeches of his entire
career. This antislavery speech was a dening moment for the Virginia statesman;
the colony now saw him as both an accomplished speaker and a natural leader.
Virginians turned to Lee during the events that led up to the American Revolution
since the politician had long been a champion of colonial rights.
Lee was one of the rst leaders to initiate the process of independence from
Britain. With the passage of the Stamp Act in early 1765, he eagerly aligned himself
with fellow patriot Patrick Henry. After Lee introduced the subject to the Virginia
Assembly, the body appointed him chair of a committee with the purpose of draft-
ing an address to King George III, the House of Lords, and the House of Com-
mons. As chair, Lee recounted the colonys grievances against the act. The following
February, Lee formed a group known as the Westmoreland Association to prevent
any stamped paper from being sold in the county. He also led the group to one tax
collectors house, forcing the man to surrender all his stamps and pledge that he
would not collect any stamp taxes.
Lee was an early advocate of declaring independence from Britain. In July 1768,
he suggested that the colonies form a correspondence group to communicate
effectively about their various oppositional activities, though it was not until ve
years later that intercolonial communication was nally established. In March 1773,
Lee joined friends Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to form the committee of
correspondence in Virginia. After introducing the idea to the House of Burgesses,
the men appealed to legislatures in the other colonies to establish similar groups.
In May of the following year, Parliament passed an act closing the port of
Boston. Lee and other colonial leaders saw the act as a means of stripping the
402 Legislative Assembly
colonists of their rights. Upon hearing news of the impending port closure, Lee,
Henry, and Jefferson developed a strategy for May 13, 1774the day the port was
to be closedto be a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. Lee also drafted
seven resolutions calling for a boycott and requesting a Constitutional Congress.
Virginias royal governor disbanded the Virginia Assembly, but this act did not stop
the colonys delegates. They met anyway and decided that it was time to call a meet-
ing of all the colonies. As such, the Virginia Convention met in August of that year
to elect delegates to the First Continental Congress. Lee was the second representa-
tive chosen to represent the colony.
Meeting on September 5, 1774, Lee was an active participant to the First Conti-
nental Congress, serving on six different committees, and was an ardent supporter
of a non-importation and non-exportation agreement with Britain. After consider-
able discussion, the Congress agreed to stop all imports after December 1774 and
all exports after September of the following year.
Firmly believing that the public should be made aware of any danger they might
face, Lee was reelected to the Second Continental Congress. In mid June 1775,
when Congress began assembling troops, Lee was on the committee that appointed
George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. By April 1776,
Lee strongly advocated total independence from Britain. Though he was appointed
to serve on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, Lee had
to return to Virginia because of family illness and was unable to sign the document
until September of that year.
Lee was active in the Congress for the next several years. In 1780, he was elected
to the Virginia House of Delegates. He was elected to the Second Continental Con-
gress again in 1784 and was consequently chosen as president of that body. Though
initially a radical, Lee ultimately aligned himself with conservatives. He eventually
led the opposition to the proposed United States Constitution and was one of the
documents most enthusiastic critics during the campaign for ratication. Lees
35-year political career ended in October 1792 when he resigned his seat in the
Senate because of poor health. He died two years later in June 1794. See also Boston
Port Act; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Barthelmas, Della Gray. The Signers of the Declaration of Independence:
A Biographical and Genealogical Reference. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997; Goodrich, Charles A.
Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence. New York: William Reed, 1856.
NICOLE MITCHELL
The Legislative Assembly (October 1, 1791September 20, 1792) led the course
of events during the early phase of the French Revolution as a result of its legisla-
tion, political debates, and military policy. The fast-moving events, which occurred
within the 11-month span of the Assemblys life, rendered it one of the most im-
portant political bodies in revolutionary France. Its predecessor, the Constituent
Assembly, had completed the task of preparing a constitution. The king, Louis XVI
(reigned 17741792), had accepted it on September 13, 1791. As a result of its lim-
ited franchise and property qualications for public ofce, the constitution was only
partially democratic. Although the source of its mandate was the people, there was
Legislative Assembly 403
no scope for popular participation, and as a result, within a year another legislature
would replace the Legislative Assembly.
After the elections, the Assembly opened its rst session on October 1 and the
745 newly elected deputies took an oath according to the new constitution. The
responsibility for governing the nation was held by new deputies largely derived
from the middle class, as no deputy of the Constituent Assembly was eligible for
reelection. A group of committed constitutionalists made up the Feuillant (leaf)
party sitting on the right (hence the origin of the term Right to mean conserva-
tive). They took directions from the triumvirate of Alexandre de Lameth, Antoine
Barnave, and Adrien Duport, who had parted with the Jacobins earlier. There were
about 350 uncommitted deputies in the Assembly. The Jacobins numbered 330 and
sat to the left (and hence the term Left to mean liberal). A group known as the
Brissotins emerged within the Assembly later, led by Jean-Pierre Brissot, the deputy
from Eure et Loir and editor of the popular journal Patriote Franais. Brissot enjoyed
the support of representatives hailing from the department of Girondehence
they were known as Girondists or Girondins after 1792. They were inuenced by the
romantic republicanism of Marie-Jeanne Philipon Roland (17541793). As the Gi-
rondins came from different geographical, class, and ideological backgrounds, divi-
sions between them and the Jacobins were inevitable, and these were reected in
various issues confronting the Legislative Assembly.
The exodus of noblemen together with army ofcers had a devastating effect
on France, particularly in terms of trade and administration. La France extrieure
was formed as a French department in the occupied Australian Netherlands and
bordering areas. The comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII, had become the
leader of the migrs and enlisted the help of European monarchs in a conspiracy
against the Revolution. The Legislative Assembly passed a decree on November 9
ordering the migrs to return by the end of 1791, though the king vetoed it three
days later. On November 29 a decree demanded that the clergy abide by the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy. Otherwise, pensions for nonjurors or refractory priests
would be stopped. The king again used his veto power on December 19. By his
action, the king proved himself an accomplice of migrs and nonjurors. The Jaco-
bins were naturally opposed to the kings decision.
Brissot advocated exporting the Revolution beyond the borders of France and
thus encouraged war with the monarchies of Europe. He put forth his views on
the oor of the Assembly on October 20, 1791. He also debated with Maximilien
Robespierre in the Jacobin Club in December. The royalists supported him, with
the hope of going to war with Austria and Prussia, in whose army many migrs had
enlisted. The king supported the idea, as it would make him popular in the event of
victory and he would be retained on the throne by his fellow monarchs in the event
of defeat. The majority of the Assemblys deputies supported Brissot. Robespierre
had lost his case, but he would be proved correct afterward as a result of initial
French defeats in the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. Circumstances
were favorable for the Brissotins for approximately the rst six months of the Legis-
lative Assemblys tenure. The king had been compelled to form the patriot ministry,
the members of which were close to Brissot. The Feuillant minister of war, Louis
Marie, the comte de Narbonne-Lara, was dismissed. The minister of the interior was
Jean Roland de la Platire (17341793), husband of Marie-Jeanne Roland. General
Charles Dumouriez became the foreign minister in March 1792. Etienne Clavire
404 Lon, Pauline
served as nance minister. On April 20, war was declared by the Legislative Assem-
bly against the Austrian monarch, Leopold II, with only seven dissenting votes, while
on July 24, Prussia joined forces with Austria. The war went badly for France and
had disastrous consequences for the Brissotins as well as for the whole country.
Gradually, the Legislative Assembly became helpless amid mob violence and dete-
riorating economic conditions. Defeats at the front had led to rumors of treason by
the king, and once again he vetoed the decree against nonjuring priests on June 19.
On the same day, he also vetoed a decree providing for a military camp in Paris.
The king had dismissed the patriot ministry six days before. A mob of insurgents
consisting of urban workers and peasants (sans-culottes), along with radical Jacobins,
stormed the royal palace, known as the Tuileries, on June 20. The Brissotins, still
in control of the Assembly, declared that nation in danger (la patrie en danger). In
spite of the royal veto, the 20,000 men arrived in Paris in early July by order of the
Assembly. It was the last attempt by the Brissotins to control the Feuillants, Louis
XVI, and the Assembly itself.
Matters grew still worse when the Duke of Brunswick, the commander of the
Austro-Prussian army, threatened the city of Paris, thereby infuriating the populace.
A new revolutionary committee under Georges Danton with numerous supporters
marched on the Tuileries on the night of August 910, forcing Louis to take ref-
uge in the Legislative Assembly. With one-third of the deputies present, the king
was suspended and imprisoned in the Temple. The Assembly reinstated the Roland
ministry and Danton became the new minister of justice. With the Paris Commune
controlling the affairs of the Assembly as well as the nation, an extraordinary tribu-
nal was created on August 17. The events of August and Septemberparticularly
the September Massacresrevealed the power of the sans-culottes. The elections to
the National Convention were underway, and the days of the Legislative Assembly
were numbered. On September 20, 1792, the Legislative Assembly dissolved itself
and the rst session of the Convention began on the following. See also Constitu-
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. New York:
Clarendon Press, 1989; Furet, Franois. The French Revolution, 17701815. Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1996; Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution: The Day-to-Day Story
of the Revolution. New York: Morrow/Avon, 1981; Kennedy, Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the
French Revolution: The First Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982; McPhee,
Peter. The French Revolution, 17891799. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Mignet,
Franois Auguste Marie. The French Revolution: The National Legislative Assembly: October1, 1791
to September 21, 1792. New York: Collier Books, 1920; Mitchell, Jim, and Chris J. Mitchell.
The French Legislative Assembly of 1791. Leiden: Brill Academic, 1997; Popkin, Jeremy. A Short
History of the French Revolution (17891799). New York: Prentice Hall, 1995; Schama, Simon.
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989; Soboul, Albert. A Short
History of the French Revolution 17891799. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1977; Sydenham, M. J. The French Revolution. London: Batsford, 1965; Thompson, J. M.
Robespierre and the French Revolution. New York: Collier Books, 1971.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Lon, Pauline (. 17931794)
Pauline Lon, an orphan and spinster chocolate-shop owner in Paris, was a
leading female activist of the French Revolution. An advocate of violent political
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor 405
agitation, she and Claire Lacombe, an actress, set up the radical Citoyennes
Rpublicaines Rvolutionnaires (Society of Revolutionary Republican Women)
in February 1793. They were associated with the extreme revolutionary party, the
Enrags. The Citoyennes, donning the uniform of le bonnet rouge (the red cap), tri-
color ribbons, and sans-culottes (a type of trousers), and bearing arms, would seek
out counterrevolutionaries, particularly women, who did not put on the prescribed
uniform. They demanded before the Convention in September 1793 that the uni-
form be made compulsory. Lon broke away with the Jacobins after the Assembly
rejected the Citoyennes demand that prostitutes be rehabilitated. The government
disbanded female political associations, and Lon was arrested in 1794. After her
release, she married Thophile Leclerc, leader of the Enrags. Her activities there-
after are unknown.
FURTHER READING: Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and the French Revolution.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988; Landes, Joan B. Women and
the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988;
Moses, Claire Goldberg. French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: State University
of New York, 1984; Piercy, Marge. City of Darkness, City of Light. New York: Fawcett Columbine,
1996; Proctor, Candice E. Women, Equality, and the French Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1990; Spencer, Samia I, ed. French Women and the Age of Enlightenment. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (17471792)
Holy Roman emperor Leopold II, the brother of Queen Marie Antoinette of
France, issued the declaration that the powers of Europe would intervene militarily
in the French Revolution to protect the French royal family and thus was instrumen-
tal in initiating the French Revolutionary Wars.
Peter Leopold Joseph, the ninth child and third son of Austrian empress The-
resa and her husband, Holy Roman emperor Francis I, Grand Duke of Tuscany and
Duke of Lorraine, was born on May 5, 1747, in Vienna. Leopold was educated to
become a priest, though the subjects he was taught led him to resent the control the
church exercised over people. Leopold grew up to be cold hearted and arrogant.
Upon the death of his father on August 18, 1765, Leopold inherited the Duchy
of Tuscany. He was married to Maria Louisa, daughter of King Charles III of Spain,
as part of the settlement for his bequest of inheritance to Tuscany. The couple had
16 children. It took a few years for Leopold to gain control over Tuscany. He proved
to be an innate administrator and was strongly inuenced by Enlightenment ideas.
Due to his lengthy reign, Leopold had time to reform the Tuscan government. He
abolished the practice of torture, equalized taxation, eliminated the death penalty,
improved public works, and tried diligently but unsuccessfully to take control of the
church.
Leopold became Holy Roman emperor on February 20, 1790, upon the death of
his brother Joseph II. Always diplomatic, Leopold appeased the varying peoples in
the countries he ruled; consequently he was crowned in Bohemia, the Austrian Neth-
erlands, and Hungary. Finding himself placed in a precarious political situation by
his brothers policies, Leopold repealed some of Josephs reforms. In the end, he ac-
complished more reform that his predecessor had during his reign. One such major
406 Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis Michel
economic reform was allowing the free import of foreign goods into the Holy Roman
Empire, which thereafter enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Leopold also made
German the administrative language of Hungary and abolished personal serfdom.
In 1790 Leopold entered into an agreement with Frederick William of Prussia,
who had been the bane of his mothers rule. Frederick William wished to prevent
Austrian expansion eastward and would have allied Prussia with Turkey, which
was then at war with Austria and Russia. Upon the ofcial signing of the agree-
ment, Prussia remained out of the conict, while Leopold abandoned his pact with
Catherine II of Russia. Leopold also oversaw the successful conclusion of Austrias
war with Turkey. The Peace of Sistova, concluded on August 4, 1791, with Turkey,
restored Austrias territory to its prewar limits. He had also successfully put down an
insurrection in the Austrian Netherlands the previous year.
Leopolds youngest sister, Marie Antoinette, was married to Louis XVI of France,
and thus he felt an obligation to protect the French royal family during the French
Revolution. The Declaration of Pillnitz, issued on August 25, 1791, and instigated
by Leopold and supported by Frederick William, declared that various European
powers would ght to restore the French monarchs powers if the need arose. The
declaration proved to be a propaganda disaster because it aggravated the French
and was a catalyst for the French Revolutionary Wars. Leopold died unexpectedly
on March 1, 1792, and was buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.
FURTHER READING: Kerner, Robert J. Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Political,
Economic, and Social History, with Special Reference to the Reign of Leopold II, 17901792. New
York: AMS Press, 1969; Okey, Robin. The Habsburg Monarchy: From Enlightenment to Eclipse.
New York: St. Martins Press, 2001; Wandruszka, Adam. Leopold II: Erzherzog von sterreich,
Grossherzog von Toskana, Kning von Ungarn und Bhmen, rmisher Kaiser. Vienna: Verlag
Herold, 19631965; Wangermann, Ernst. From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials: Government Policy
and Public Opinion in the Habsburg Dominion in the Period of the French Revolution. London:
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis Michel (17601793)
A deputy to the Constituent Assembly and the National Convention, Lepelletier
came to be regarded as the rst martyr of the French Revolution after he was mur-
dered for his support for the execution of King Louis XVI.
Louis Michel Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau was the son of Michel-Etienne, the
comte de Saint-Fargeau, who was a close private adviser to King Louis XV. Louis-
Michel was admitted to the Paris Parlement in 1779 and 10 years later became a
deputy from the nobility in the Estates-General on its recall. Initially, Lepelletier
was conservative in his views, but this changed quickly. The reasons for this are
not known with any certainty, but they do not appear to be simple opportunism. It
seems that he, like the duc dOrlans, saw serious problems with the social structure
of France and was eager for change. It is also possible that he was heavily inuenced
by his brother, Flix Lepelletier (17691837), a prominent thinker who had long
been involved in the Jacobin cause.
On July 13, 1789, Michel Lepelletier was involved in demands to recall Jacques
Necker, the minister who had been sacked by the king. He was also involved in
Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis Michel 407
progressive reforms, urging the abolition of the death penalty, of sending people
to work on galleys, and of the branding of criminals. When it became clear that the
death penalty would remain in place for criminals convicted of capital offenses,
he urged beheadingincluding use of the guillotinerather than hanging. He was
also keen on ending dueling, suggesting that those found guilty should be bound to
a scaffold for two hours, wearing armor, and then jailed for two years in an asylum
for the insane. The measure was rejected.
Rapidly creating a name for himself in the Patriot Party, Michel Lepelletier was
made president of the Constituent Assembly on June 21, 1790. He represented the
department of the Yonne in the Legislative Assembly and was subsequently elected
to represent the Yonne in the Convention. During this period Lepelletier became
interested in the concept of free and compulsory public education and drew up
some plans for this. Some of these ideas were later put into practice.
Lepelletier, a Montagnard in the assembly, quickly came to favor the trial of
Louis XVI by the Legislative Assembly and indeed subsequently voted for the exe-
cution of the king in a motion that was carried by 380 votes to 310. This conrmed,
in the eyes of many royalists, that he was a traitor to his class, and although there
were later accusations that legislators had been swayed by threats of violence, Lep-
elletier was to be the rst casualty from this decision. On the night of January 20,
1793, with Louis XVIs execution scheduled for the following day, a member of the
former royal bodyguard killed Lepelletier in the Palais Royal, in Paris, by thrusting
a sword into him. The assassin, Pris, then ed to Normandy, where, after being
identied, he committed suicide to prevent his capture. One account noted that
Pris had not planned on killing Lepelletier, his intended victim having been the
duc dOrlans.
The Convention quickly hailed Lepelletier as the rst martyr of the Revolution
and organized a massive funeral. On January 23, 1793, the Proclamation of the
Convention to the French People noted that the tyrant [Louis XVI] is no more.
After invective aimed at the king, it spoke of the emergence of a new nation fac-
ing many hazards and attacks from its enemies that might overwhelm the French
Republic unless strong action were taken. The example given was the assassination
of Lepelletier, whose murder was deemed not an attack on an individual, but on all
the French people, its liberty, and its sovereignty. At his funeral the members of the
Convention had sworn on the tomb of a martyr to Republican opinion that they
would give France a constitution to defend the Republic from its enemies. It is now
felt that Lepelletier was perhaps more famous in death than in life, as the French
republican cause became eager to have a cult of martyrs. Indeed, the commemora-
tion of his death came at the same time that the royalists were mourning their royal
martyr, making the rising cult around Lepelletier even more important. It also al-
lowed extremists to argue that reason was not enough to save the Republic but that
force should be met with force, or the Republic could be overwhelmed.
A bust of Lepelletier was subsequently placed alongside those of Voltaire, Rous-
seau, and Marat at the Temple of Reason. The painter Jacques-Louis David was
commissioned to paint the scene showing Lepelletiers death at the hands of Pris,
although the picture was later destroyed by Lepelletiers daughter. Louis Michel
Lepelletier was interred at the Panthon, the fourth person to be buried there, but
his body was later removed from this site. His daughter, Suzanne Louise, was then
adopted by the French nation. See also The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Stewart, John Hall. A Documentary History of the French Revolution. New
York: Macmillan, 1951; Woloch, Isser. Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movement under the Directory.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
A French phrase meaning injury to the nation, crime de lse-nation was coined
in 1789 by analogy to the existing phrase lse-majest, injury to the king. The phrase
asserted that sovereignty was derived from the French people through the elected
National Assembly instead of the monarchy.
The phrase was rst used by the moderate Honor Gabriel Riqueti, the comte de
Mirabeau, in June 1789. His speech to the National Assembly caused a minor sensa-
tion. Lse-majest was any act of speech that threatened the king or his authority, and
those charged with the crime faced penalties for treason. When Mirabeau coined
lse-nation in a public speech, the phrase was more than a witty remark; it was a chal-
lenge to the concept of treason and therefore to the basis of the French state.
As the National Assembly gathered power, it ofcially declared lse-nation a crime
in October 1789, and prosecutions were handed over to the Chtelet of Paris, a
criminal court that had existed under the ancien rgime. The term did not gain cur-
rency immediately; cahiers distributed in 1789 referred to the same crime variously
as lse-patrie, lse-libert, and lse-humanit.
The majority of trials before the Chtelet ended in acquittal, as the monarchical
sympathies of the court protected those charged with lse-nation. In August 1790, the
Chtelet was suppressed, and lse-nation cases were tried in the regular courts. Only
one person was executed for lse-nation between 1789 and 1792. After the execution
of Louis XVI that year, the term lost much of its rhetorical value and fell out of
usage. See also Cahiers de Dolances.
FURTHER READING: Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution from Its Origins to 1793.
Translated by Elizabeth Moss Evanson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962; Rogers,
Cornwell B. The Spirit of Revolution in 1789: A Study of Public Opinion as Revealed in Political Songs
and Other Popular Literature at the Beginning of the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1949; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York:
Knopf, 1989.
JAMES L. ERWIN
Les Invalides
See Htel des Invalides
Lessart, Claude Antoine de Valdec de (17421792)
A French politician whose name is sometimes spelled Lessart de Waldec or
Delessart, Clause Antoine de Valdec de Lessart was born in Guienne. Young
Lessart moved to Paris, where he befriended Jacques Necker. Serving as the mas-
ter of requests (matre des requtes) since 1768, Lessart served under Necker in the
1780s and was in charge of nancial administration. He was one of the mediators
408 Lse-Nation, Crime de
(commissaires conciliateurs) employed by Necker to bring the three estates in the Es-
tates-General closer together. Lessart obtained the post of controller general of
nance on December 4, 1790, and served as the last controller general of nance
until this post was transformed into that of minister of public contributions and
revenues, which Lessart held between April and May 1791.
On January 25, 1791, Lessart also became minister of the interior (January
November 1791), retaining his post of minister of public contributions. His tenure
was marked by his increasing clash with republican elements, who criticized his
moderate political views, support of the king, and sympathies toward the migrs
and refractory priests. On September 18, 1791, he was appointed interim minister
of marine and colonies (SeptemberOctober 1791) and then succeeded Armand
Marc, comte de Montmorin de Saint-Hrem, as the minister of foreign affairs on
November 29, 1791. He tried in vain to prevent war through negotiation with
foreign powers, but these efforts made him unpopular and subject to charges of
treason from the Girondins, which resulted in his arrest on March 10, 1792. Lessart
was sent to be tried by the High Court at Orlans and remained in captivity for the
next ve months. After the storming of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792, he was
escorted to Paris, but en route from Orlans, he was murdered at Versailles with
other prisoners on September 9, 1792.
FURTHER READING: Cassagnac, Adolphe Granier de. Histoire des Girondins et des massacres de
Septembre. Vol. 1. Paris: E. Dentu, 1860; Lamartine, Alphonse. Histoire des Girondins. Vol. 1. Paris:
Jouvet et cie. 1884; Michaud, J. F., ed. Biographie universelle. Paris: Chez L. G. Michaud, 1819.
Lettres de Cachet
See Cachet, Lettres de
Leve en masse
The leve en masse was a crucial decree issued during the French Revolution on
August 23, 1793. By that time, France was at war with most of Europe and the situ-
ation was desperate. During the Reign of Terror, when France confronted both
foreign invasion and civil war, the National Convention changed the nature of con-
ict by declaring that the entire nation was at war. Civilians would be increasingly
involved in the struggle. The decree required all individuals to help in the war ef-
fort and requisitioned vital materials. The government conscripted all unmarried
men between the ages of 18 and 24 and forbade the use of substitutes. Even so,
the wealthy and the educated did evade the requirement. The decree also ordered
men to manufacture and transport munitions and supplies, and women to make
uniforms and tents, and children bandages. Even the very old were to join in the
effort by inciting patriotic fervor. The government also requisitioned saddle horses
and converted buildings into barracks. In part because of this decree, the French
mustered an army of nearly 800,000 men. Unlike those who had earlier volunteered
for the war effort, those conscripted could not return home after the rst campaign.
Many of those conscripted became professional soldiers. Although highly effective
as a means of raising armies, the decree evoked some opposition in the countryside
Leve en masse 409
410 Lexington and Concord
and added fuel to the counterrevolution. Conscription remained in effect through-
out the remainder of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
FURTHER READING: Bertaud, Jean-Paul. The Army of the French Revolution: From Citizen Soldiers
to Instrument of Power. Translated by R. R. Palmer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1988; Forrest, Alan. The Soldiers of the Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990.
The actions at Lexington and Concord marked the commencement of military
hostilities between Britain and her American colonies. They were the culmination
of the Massachusetts Whigs nine months of resistance to the Coercive Acts. On the
evening of April 18, 1775, Massachusetts governor General Thomas Gage dispatched
1,800 British regulars from their encampment on Boston Common and instructed
them to seize the munitions he believed Massachusettss extralegal Provincial Con-
gress had hidden 22 miles away in Concord. Colonel Francis Smith led the British
expedition from Boston across the Charles River, where it disembarked at Phipps
Farm, west of Charlestown. En route to Concord, the British entered Lexington just
after daybreak on April 19.
Before the British departed Boston, though, Dr. Joseph Warren (a member
of the Committee of Safety that functioned as the Massachusetts Provincial Con-
gresss executive body whenever the Congress was recessed) sent Paul Revere and
William Dawes to Lexington. Each carried the same message for John Hancock
and Samuel Adamsthat the British were marching toward Lexington with the
intent, Warren believed, to seize them to stand trial in Britain for treason. (Gage
had just received these exact instructions from Lord Dartmouth, but having lived
in the American colonies for the previous decade, Gage believed the arrest of Han-
cock and Adams would only incite further violence in the province.) As Dawes and
Revere traveled toward Lexington (and then Concord, where they were joined by
Dr. Samuel Prescott), they triggered the network of messengers that the Provincial
Congress had recently established to alert surrounding towns militias of Brit-
ish troop movements. The Provincial Congress had made preparations for this
notication in the event the British marched from Boston. Hancock and Adams,
leaders in Massachusettss Provincial Congress, were lodging temporarily in Lex-
ington at the home of Hancocks cousin, the Reverend Jonas Clarke. When alerted
by Dawes and Revere that they might be in danger, Hancock and Adams ed sev-
eral miles north to a more remote farmhouse and then soon after departed to join
the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
The British had never intended to stop in Lexington but were forced to when
confronted by the towns minutemen, already mustered on the village green. The
advance guard of British light infantry, led by Major Pitcairn, assembled themselves
into ring formation. After the minutemen, led by Captain John Parker, refused
the British order to stand down and disperse, someone red a shot. Eyewitness ac-
counts conict regarding which of the belligerents red this shot heard round the
world. The ensuing exchange of gunre left 8 provincials dead and 10 wounded.
The British then proceeded the six miles to Concord, where 150 militiamen op-
posed them at the North Bridge.
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity 411
The British destroyed sacks of our in a pond, but during the preceding 48 hours
all provincial munitions had already been removed. Based upon patriot observations
of British longboat movements in Boston Harbor that revealed that a major expedi-
tion was imminent, the Provincial Congress had ordered all provincial munitions
removed (from Concord and elsewhere) and stored safely farther away.
During their 20-mile retreat from Concord to Charlestown (and ultimately
Boston), the British suffered more than 250 casualties at the hands of minutemen
acting as snipers, who were organized by Colonel William Heath in a mobile ring
of re. Only the arrival of British reinforcements with artillery, led by Lord Percy,
and a negotiated cease-re in Charlestown saved the British expedition from catas-
trophe. See also Suffolk Resolves.
FURTHER READING: Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Reveres Ride. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994; Hallahan, William H. The Day the American Revolution Began: 19 April 1775. New
York: HarperCollins, 2000.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
The trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity is widely recognized as the motto of
several republics, starting with the French Revolution of 1789. But it is not clear who
put the political triad forward. It might have been French archbishop and writer
Franois de Fnelon (16511715) who linked the three concepts at the end of the
seventeenth century. The revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre might have been
responsible for bringing the phrase into use in the eighteenth century, when he
praised the ideal of fraternity and associated it with the organization of the National
Guard at the 1790 Festival of Federation in Paris. There is also a possibility that
Antoine-Franois Momoro (17561794), a printer and Cordelier activist, persuaded
the Paris mayor to inscribe, Unity, indivisibility of the Republic; liberty, equality
American Minutemen being red upon by British troops on Lexington Common in April 1775. Library
of Congress.
412 Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
or death on the facades of public buildings. The French National Constituent
Assembly instituted the phrase as a political ideal in the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen in 1789.
It is often argued that each of the concepts came into use during a separate
period of the French Revolution. Until August 10, 1792, the date of the storming of
the Tuileries Palace and the following radicalization of the Revolution, liberty was
emphasized more than two other values. During the second stage, equality reigned
triumphant until the violence and dictatorship of the Reign of Terror in 17931794
put fraternity on the pedestal as a means of establishing political and social unity
and afforded the revolutionary motto with a more radical meaning. But despite the
different emphases placed on the values, at any stage of the Revolution, the rhetoric
of the triad was at work.
The political philosophy of the eighteenth century dened good government
as being founded on liberty. Starting with Thomas Hobbes (15881679), political
philosophy was preoccupied with maximizing individual liberty and protecting it
from arbitrary power. Before the French Revolution, liberty was understood as the
freedom from (to be free is not to be constrained), not the freedom to. Revolu-
tionary rhetoric contrasted the notion of liberty with liberties, privileges and ex-
emptions provided by the ancien rgime, and extensively criticized the notion of
liberty as the absence of external constraints or barriers. Considering citizens not
as abstract individuals but as active social beings, revolutionary ideologues argued
that the liberty of every individual was directly dependent on the state of liberty of
the society as a whole and everyones work for the common good. The Constituent
Assembly of 1789 established mans natural and inalienable rights of liberty, prop-
erty, safety, and resistance against oppression. Considering liberty to be a universal
principle of individual expression, the deputies emphasized that the spirit of liberty
required individuals to participate in public life for the common good. The declara-
tion was meant to protect both the liberty of the state from the pressures of special
interests and the independence of citizens from possible abuses of the state. During
the period of the Terror, while the denition of the government as founded on the
free will of individuals remained the same, the idea of people as inseparable from
the government was developed to suppress the enemies of the Revolution.
In contrast with the Christian idea of equality that justied existing inequality as
part of Gods will, the notion of equality used in the Revolution was based on the
universal human capacity for reasoning and moral judgment. Criticizing the in-
equality of privilege, revolutionary ideologues insisted that equality was dependent
on the services provided by every individual for the common good. The Constituent
Assembly made several steps toward establishing the equal participation of individu-
als in the general will and the equalization of legal status by allowing individuals to
enter into contracts and to buy, sell, and marry, and even toward the equalization of
political rights (except for the rights of women, religious minorities, men who did
not own property, and slaves). Recognizing equal human rights and creating the
basis for a legal equality, the Assembly did not abandon the principle of property
and never created political equality.
Fraternity was included in the triad of revolutionary values later than liberty and
equality. It was introduced into the ofcial language in a supplementary article
to the Constitution of 1791, which fostered fraternity as a result of national holi-
days. As opposed to liberty and equality, fraternity is not a right but rather a moral
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert 413
obligation, a virtue to be cultivated. However, fraternity was central to revolutionary
rhetoric, as it established humanity within each persons individuality, added social
rights to individual rights, and inscribed the social revolution in the logic of the
political revolution. The suggestion of all men as brothers and the abolition of dif-
ference served the idea that fraternity could lead the way in overcoming threats of
social disintegration. But when coupled with terror and violence, fraternal group
associations acquired an air of extremism, which was later reected in conspiracy
theories that linked Jacobins, philosophes, and Freemasons.
After 1789, the French actively used the triad in everyday life. Each of the three
values was associated with particular symbols. Liberty was customarily pictured as a
young female warrior later called by the common name of Marianne (Marie-Anne).
She usually wears the so-called Phrygian cap, which was worn by the freed Roman
slaves, and carries a pikestaff to symbolize the idea that liberty is worth ghting for.
Equality is also depicted as a young woman, often with children carrying the sym-
bols of the three orders of the ancien rgime: the agricultural tools of the Third
Estate, the Bible of the clergy, and the crown of the nobility. Another interpretation
of equality associates it with the scales of justice to symbolize equity, or the builders
level to reect equality. The female gure of fraternity traditionally holds a staff
surmounted by a Gallic rooster and is often followed by two children leading a lion
and a sheep tied together. Fraternity is also represented by fasces of grain. See also
Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Cordeliers Club; Political Clubs (French).
FURTHER READING: Bayer, Natalia, Jack R. Censer, and Lynn Hunt, eds. Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2001; Furet, F., and M. Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1989; Palmer, R. R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political
His tory of Europe and America, 17601800. Vol. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1959.
NATALIE BAYER
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert (17461825)
Jean-Baptiste Robert Lindet was a prominent French revolutionary and a mem-
ber of the Committee of Public Safety. Born at Bernay in Normandy, Lindet studied
law and began his career as a lawyer in his hometown. His brother Robert-Thomas
Lindet embarked on a clerical career and would eventually become a constitutional
bishop and member of the National Convention. Thomass success helped his
brother Robert, who was elected procureur-syndic of the district of Bernay, and, in
September 1791, deputy for the Eure to the Legislative Assembly. Lindet initially
sided with the Girondins but disagreed with them with respect to King Louis XVI,
and in 1792, he produced the famous Rapport sur les crimes imputs Louis Capet,
which listed the kings alleged crimes. Lindet later voted for the kings execution in
January 1793. Lindet proved a most efcient member of the Financial Committee
and played an important role in shaping economic policies during the Revolution,
calling for strict economic controls in order for the Republic to survive.
In 1793, Lindet was instrumental in the establishment of the revolutionary
tribunals and supported the Mountain against the Girondin faction. In April 1793,
he was elected to the rst Committee of Public Safety, and in June, he was elected to
414 Lindet, Robert-Thomas
the Great Committee of Public Safety. He showed remarkable administrative skills in
provisioning armies and directed the central economic planning carried out by the
committee. In the summer of 1793, he was sent on several missions to the provinces
(notably to Lyon), where he pursued conciliatory policies and sought to overcome
deeply felt political divisions. Although he never publicly clashed with Maximilian
Robespierre, Lindet did oppose the more radical policies of the National Conven-
tion and disapproved of the Reign of Terror. He essentially remained a moderate
and refused to support the persecution and eventual execution of Georges Danton
and his supporters.
Although he often supported the opponents of Robespierre, Lindet was not
involved in the conspiracy that led to Robespierres downfall on 9 Thermidor (July 27,
1794). His moderate stance helped him avoid the Thermidorian Reaction, and he
remained on the Committee of Public Safety until October 1794. He was neverthe-
less denounced and persecuted in May 1795, though, with the help of his brother
Thomas, he was able to receive an amnesty in October. In 1796, Lindet was accused
of participating in the conspiracy of Franois Babeuf but was acquitted. After being
elected to the Council of Five Hundred, he briey served as minister of nance under
the Directory in June to November 1799. Following General Napoleon Bonapartes
Brumaire coup in November 1799, Lindet refused to serve during the Consulate and
the Empire and spent the rest of his life practicing law in Paris. Upon the Bourbon
restoration, he was proscribed as a regicide but was later allowed to return to France.
FURTHER READING: Dupre, Huntley. Two Brothers in the French Revolution: Robert and Thomas
Lindet. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1967; Montier, Amand. Robert Lindet: Dput lAssemble
lgislative et la convention, membre du Comit de salut public, ministre des nances. Paris: Flix Alcan,
1899; Pascal, Franois. Lconomie dans la Terreur: Robert Lindet, 17461825. Paris: SPM, 1999.
Lindet, Robert-Thomas (17431823)
Thomas was the elder and less famous brother of Jean-Baptiste Robert Lindet.
Nonetheless, he enjoyed a signicant revolutionary career typical of many well-
educated, ambitious parish priests like himself, rising to political as well as eccle-
siastical prominence in the 1790s before quitting the church altogether. Born in the
Norman town of Bernay, Thomas took a theology degree at the Sorbonne before re-
turning to his native province as a cur. In 1789, he was chosen to represent the
clergy of the bailliage of Evreux at the Estates-General, where he strongly supported
the Third Estate and extensive reform of the church. This ensured his election as
constitutional bishop of the new department of the Eure, but not at the expense of
his political career. Both he and his younger brother were elected as representatives
of the Eure to the National Convention, where the pair associated with the Montag-
nards and voted for the kings execution.
While Robert went on to achieve truly national stature as a key member of the
Committee of Public Safety, Thomas was content with a lower prole. Having
spoken out in favor of ending clerical celibacy, he set a personal example by getting
married at the end of 1792, and then a year later, he renounced his priestly vows
and resigned his bishopric. For the most part he lived in his brothers shadow, help-
ing organize Roberts defense when he fell under suspicion after the Thermidorian
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri 415
Reaction and was subsequently implicated in the Babeuf conspiracy. Thomas served
as a deputy in the Council of Ancients from its inception and was reelected in 1798,
only to be denied his seat as a former Jacobin, though by now he was much more
moderate. He returned to his native town and, like his brother, refused to rally to
Napoleon Bonaparte after the coup dtat of Brumaire. He held no further public
ofce, but as a defrocked and married ex-priest, he was denied a religious burial
when he died in 1823. See also Jacobins; The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Dupre, Huntley. Two Brothers in the French Revolution: Robert and Thomas
Lindet. Hamden, NY: Archon Books, 1967; Montier, Amand, ed. Correspondance de Thomas
Lindet pendant la Constituante et la Lgislative, 17891792. Paris: Socit de lhistoire de la
Rvolution franaise, 1899; Soulas de Russel, Dominique. Un rvolutionnaire normand: Robert-
Thomas Lindet. Luneray: Bertout, 1997.
MALCOLM CROOK
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri (17361794)
A French journalist and lawyer, Simon-Nicolas Linguet was a political thinker
whose views annoyed many in the Enlightenment and for which he was exiled,
imprisoned, and guillotined.
Born on July 14, 1736, at Reims, Simon-Nicolas Henri Linguet was the son of the
former assistant principal of the Collge de Beauvais, Paris, who had been exiled
for his support for Cornelius Otto Jansen. Linguet was educated at the Collge de
Beauvais, and having a brilliant academic career there, he was welcomed into the
company of the philosophes. However, Linguet started to be critical of the philoso-
phers of the period.
In 1762 Linguet wrote a history of the period of Alexander the Great, Histoire
du sicle dAlexandre le Grand. He was sharply critical of the Macedonian king, argu-
ing that Nero had caused fewer deaths but was openly reviled. Two years later he
wrote Le fanatisme des philosophes (The Fanaticism of the Philosophes), which at-
tacked many of the ideas highlighted during the Enlightenment. In 1767, in his
Thorie des lois civiles (Civil Theory), he argued that slaves in a market economy, as
property, were treated better than factory workers, who could be replaced when
injured. He also felt that some non-European despots treated their poor better than
did those in Europe. Linguet also wrote a number of history books, including one
on the Roman Empire and another on the Jesuits.
On the political front, Linguet was an advocate in the Paris Parlement of 1764. His
constant criticisms of other lawyers saw him expelled from the French Bar in 1775,
whereupon he went overseas, visiting Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Britain. On
his return he was so critical of the duc de Duras that he was jailed in the Bastille
from 1780 until 1782. On his release, he wrote of his experiences in prison and then
went to Brussels, where he initially found favor with Joseph II but then supported
the Belgians against Hapsburg rule. In 1791 he presented a petition to the National
Assembly to protect the people of Saint-Domingue, a French West Indian colony.
He then retired but was arrested for his support of Austria and Britain. He was
guillotined in Paris on June 27, 1794. See also French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Baruch, Daniel. Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet, ou Lirrcuprable. Paris:
F. Bourin, 1991; Levy, Darline. The Ideas and Careers of Simon-Nicolas-Henri Lingue: A Study in
416 Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson
Eighteenth Century French Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980; Paskoff, Benjamin.
Linguet: Eighteenth-Century Intellectual Heretic of France. Smithtown, NY: Exposition Press, 1983.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of (17701828)
Robert Banks Jenkinson, second earl of Liverpool, was rst lord of the treasury
and prime minister of Britain for almost 15 years in the early nineteenth century.
He was born on June 7, 1770, and his mother died about a month later. His father,
a rising politician, anticipated a great future for Jenkinson, took a keen interest in
his upbringing, and later intervened to advance his career. Jenkinson left Charter-
house in 1787 and joined George Canning at Christ Church, Oxford. Jenkinson be-
came a leading member of a debating society for awhile, though he allowed himself
few distractions from his studies. He continued his education in Paris in 1789 and
witnessed the storming of the Bastille. On his return home, John Reeves, a barrister,
tutored him in law, and Jenkinson graduated the following year.
Jenkinson was elected a member of Parliament for Rye in 1790, but before he
took up his seat he returned for a time to the Continent. As he enjoyed a privileged
youth and became engaged in public life at an early age, it is hardly surprising
that a certain arrogance can be detected in his character at this point. His maiden
speech in 1792 was well received, and Jenkinson became a loyal government friend
and an active parliamentarian. He rmly supported the war and received a senior
commission in the militia in 1794. In 1795, Jenkinson married Lady Louisa Theodo-
sia Hervey, but he never had any children. Two years earlier he had been appointed
to the Board of Control, and in 1799 he became master of the mint and was sworn
in as a member of the Privy Council.
Two years later, William Pitt the Younger resigned, and his successor as premier,
Henry Addington, struggled to cobble together an administration from those Pit-
tites who were still willing to serve. Lord Hawkesbury, as Jenkinson became known
when his father was granted an earldom in 1796, found himself appointed to the
cabinet as foreign secretary. He sought to maintain good relations with Pitt and his
distinguished predecessor at the Foreign Ofce, Lord Grenville. Grenvilles good-
will toward Hawkesbury, however, was lost over the terms of peace with France in
1802. Although Hawkesbury sought to cultivate a better understanding with the
United States, the resumption of hostilities on the Continent the following year
served to ensure that his prole was not raised for the better during his stint at the
Foreign Ofce. His speeches, however, continued to make a good impression, and
Hawkesbury was moved to the upper chamber in 1803.
In 1804, Pitt returned as premier. Hawkesbury became home secretary and took
responsibility for a wide range of issues, including arranging Nelsons funeral in
1806 and discouraging loitering and other anti-social nocturnal practices in St.
Jamess Park in 1808. His position as home secretary brought him into closer con-
tact with George III. Hawkesbury was instrumental in persuading Addington to
make peace with Pitt and join the administration in 1805. After Pitt died in January
1806, Hawkesbury turned down the kings offer of the premiership, instead suc-
ceeding Pitt to the coveted title of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and entering
opposition. The Ministry of All the Talents fell in 1807, however, and Hawkesbury
returned to the Home Ofce under the titular leadership of the Duke of Portland.
Livingston, Philip 417
Spencer Perceval took over from the dying Portland in 1809, and Lord Liverpool,
who had succeeded to his fathers title in 1808, was appointed secretary of state for
war and the colonies. His main concern was the military campaign in the Iberian
Peninsula. Liverpool sought to keep Wellington supplied with troops, money, and
other essentials. He even thought at one point in 1810 that there would be no
objection if, in order to strengthen the land defenses, the army chose to relieve the
neighboring eet of their guns and assigned sailors to man them. While the secre-
tary of state was prepared to caution and liked to be kept informed, he never tried
to dictate to the general. Liverpool sought to maintain a close relationship with Wel-
lington, conveying news, satisfying requests, resolving differences, and acting with
kindness. In one such incidence, Liverpool sensitively informed Wellington in one
letter in 1810 that his young sons had recovered from an infection.
Perceval was assassinated on May 11, 1812, and Liverpool was chosen to succeed
him. The prince regent was obliged to consider other arrangements when the gov-
ernment lost an important vote in the House of Commons, but no stronger candi-
date emerged, and Liverpool was appointed on June 8. The prime minister acted to
stabilize his administration by reshufing the cabinet, allowing ministers to adopt
their own position on the divisive issue of Catholic emancipation, and calling a
general election. In 1814, Liverpool succeeded in bringing the Canningites back
into government and brought to a close the inconclusive war fought ostensibly over
maritime rights with the United States that had begun in 1812. His early leadership
was dominated by the nal stage of the conict with France, and Liverpool carefully
monitored the handling of the negotiations at Chtillon, Vienna, and Paris by the
foreign secretary, Viscount Castlereagh. Liverpool kept his head when Napoleon
escaped from exile in 1815 and played a central role in ensuring the emperors
permanent captivity after the Battle of Waterloo.
Liverpool continued as premier for over 10 more years. He was faced with some
major issues during this time, including the consequences of the prince regents
failed marriage, and, on a personal level, the death of his beloved rst wife. He re-
signed in 1827 after suffering an incapacitating stroke, and he died on December 4,
1828. Liverpool has been a much-neglected gure in British political history and
has only recently begun to receive the coverage and credit that he deserves from
historians.
FURTHER READING: Gash, Norman. Jenkinson, Robert Banks, Second Earl of Liverpool.
In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Vol. 29.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Gash, Norman. Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political
Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, 17701828. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1984.
JAMES INGLIS
Livingston, Philip (17161778)
A signatory of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Philip Livingston was
born in 1716 in Albany, New York. He received a good education and graduated
from Yale College in 1737. Livingston became a prominent member of the Dutch
Reformed Church and a leading philanthropist in New York City. He founded a
chair of divinity at his former college in 1746 and in 1771 he helped to establish the
418 Livingston, William
New York Hospital. His wealth derived from two main sources: a mercantile business
that ourished greatly during King Georges War (17441748) and the French and
Indian War (17541763), and substantial land holdings. Livingston also served his
community as a politician, rst at city level. He was elected to the provincial assem-
bly in 1758 and rose to become Speaker 10 years later. He attended the Stamp Act
Congress in 1765.
Although he was a casualty of a political campaign that saw moderate legislators
removed from ofce in 1769, Livingston was elected to the First Continental
Congress in 1774. That same year he wrote a tract expressing very grave doubts
about independence. Nevertheless, he supported the war effort, sitting on impor-
tant congressional committees and enabling the federal authorities to meet their
nancial obligations.
Livingston entered his states senate in 1777 and found his fears about the impact
of independence seemingly conrmed. He judged that only seven fellow legislature
members had the capacity to fulll their public responsibilities. There had been
some talk of him running for state governor the previous year. Livingston died in
1778 at the Second Continental Congress in York, Pennsylvania. He had raised a
large family, having married in 1740.
FURTHER READING: Kierner, Cynthia A. Livingston, Philip. In American National Biography,
ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, Vol. 13. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999;
Kierner, Cynthia A. Livingston, Philip. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G.
Matthew and Brian Harrison. Vol. 34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Kierner, Cynthia
A. Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 16751790. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1992.
JAMES INGLIS
Livingston, William (17231790)
William Livingston was a popular political writer, governor of New Jersey during
the American Revolutionary War, and a delegate to the United States Constitutional
Convention in 1787. Born in Albany, Livingston was a scion of one of New Yorks
most powerful landed families. Following his studies at Yale from 1737 to 1741,
he became a lawyer and went into partnership with William Smith Jr. and John
Morin Scott, with whom he began publishing the Independent Reector in 1752. This
weekly newspaper was at the forefront of Whig colonial opposition to developing
British imperial policies, and Livingston, a Presbyterian, strongly defended colonial
religious pluralism and the separation of church and state, and he unsuccessfully
mobilized New York opinion against the establishment of Kings College (now Co-
lumbia) as an Anglican institution. He had more success in the 1760s, however, as
an opposition leader in the colonial assembly, a writer under the pseudonym of
American Whig, and a leading opponent against the establishment of an Anglican
bishopric in the colonies.
Never happy as a public gure, Livingston retired from politics and moved to
New Jersey in 1772. His intention of following the quiet pursuits of a country gentle-
man were disrupted by the nal imperial crisis, and he was elected to both the First
and Second Continental Congress but later vacated his seat in favor of a commission
in 1775 to organize the New Jersey militia. Elected governor in 1776, Livingston
Locke, John 419
played a pivotal role in supporting General George Washingtons war effort and the
attempt to clear his much-divided state of Tories. An extremely popular and demo-
cratically inclined patriot, Livingston was elected annually to the governorship until
his death in 1790. During the war Livingston proved to be an effective propagandist,
and his many letters and essays to the New Jersey Gazette did much to bolster patriot
opinion against the frequent British raids upon the state.
Livingston led the New Jersey delegation to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
As a fairly silent Founding Father, he initially supported the Paterson Plan but eventu-
ally came to accept the Great Compromise. Livingstons most important role in the
Convention was as the chairman of the committee that considered the divisive issue
of slavery. An early and vocal abolitionist, Livingston nonetheless accepted the need
for compromise over the acceptance of the continuation of slavery and supported
the three-fths clause in the Constitution. It was his hope, however, that the abolition
of the slave trade projected for 1803 would gradually undermine the institution, and
he vigorously supported the ratication of the Constitution in New Jersey. One of
the most talented of the Founding Fathers, Livingston died on his New Jersey estate
in July 1790. See also Livingston, Philip; Loyalists; Newspapers (American); Paterson,
William; Slavery and the Slave Trade; Smith, William; United States Constitution.
FURTHER READING: Bridenbaugh, Carl. Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideal,
Personalities in Politics, 16891775. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962; Ketchum, Richard
M. Divided Loyalties. How the American Revolution Came to New York. New York: Holt, 2002; Klein,
M. M. The Independent Reector. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
RORY T. CORNISH
John Locke was an English physician and philosopher. His political theory and
empirical epistemology greatly inuenced democratic thought in the eighteenth
century in the United States and in Europe.
Locke was born in Wrington in Somerset, in the southwest of England, on Au-
gust 29, 1632. His father was a Puritan who fought for Parliament as a captain with
Alexander Popham. John Locke was sent to Westminster School in London at age 15.
However, Westminster School was still royalist. After nishing school, he entered, at
the age of 20, Christ Church, one of the colleges of Oxford University. Unhappy
with the medieval curriculum, he developed an interest in experimental science
and medical dissection, which was then being practiced in private homes. In the
process Locke was substituting experimentalism for some of the royalist traditional-
ism and Puritan moral enthusiasm he had learned in his youth. Graduating in 1656,
Locke remained at Oxford until 1658, when he received his master of arts degree.
When the Restoration occurred in 1660, Locke was supportive of the return of
the monarchy. His political concerns at this time were more about anarchy and
despotism than about liberty. He was supportive of Thomas Hobbess views on the
absolute power needed by the monarchy, although he never acknowledged any in-
uence from his reading of Hobbess Leviathan.
In 1661, Locke was elected to teach Greek at Christ Church. He met Robert
Boyle, the father of modern chemistry. With others, they sought to follow Francis
Bacons experimental philosophy. His examination of things led him to read Ren
420 Locke, John
Descartes writings and to the beginning of his speculations on inquiry. In 1665,
Locke took the opportunity to travel as a secretary to a mission to Brandenburg. His
visit to the town of Cleves, where Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists lived
tolerantly of one another, left in him an impression of the possibilities of religious
toleration.
In 1666, Locke returned to study medicine at Oxford, where he began an as-
sociation with Thomas Sedenham, a pioneer in the clinical method. That year he
met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the future rst earl of Shaftsbury and Lord High
Chancellor. After operating on a cyst on Ashleys liver in 1668, Locke became Lord
Ashleys lifelong personal physician and friend. Ashley would make it possible for
Locke to have tenure at Christ Church without taking holy orders. In 1668 Locke
was elected a member of the Royal Society and moved to London, where he lived
with Lord Ashley.
In 1668 Locke became secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina Colony.
He was a major inuence in the drafting of the colonys proprietary charter. His
draft charter sought to avoid the dangers of democracy; however, the charter was
never adopted because it was unacceptable to the colonists. He was also appointed
a secretary to the Council on Trade and Plantations.
As Lockes patron, Lord Ashley rose in the English political scene to become
Lord Shaftsbury and the lord chancellor; so, too, did Locke as his secretary rise
politically. However, after Shaftsbury discovered that King Charles II had made a se-
cret proRoman Catholic treaty (the Treaty of Dover) with the French, he unhappily
left the kings service.
In 1680 Locke read Sir Robert Filmers books, Patriarchia and Inquest. Soon there-
after he started writing his First Treatise on Civil Government in opposition to Filmers
divine right theory of monarchy. The occasion was the Exclusion Controversy, in
which Whigs like Shaftsbury attempted to exclude the Duke of York (James, the
brother of King Charles II) from the succession. The execution of Algernon Sidney
by Charles due to his outrage at Sidneys book Discourses Concerning Government prob-
ably convinced Locke that silence was the better part of valor. Shaftsburys attempt
to use the Popish Plot failed. In 1682, Shaftsbury ed England when his plotting
against the king was discovered. He died in Holland in early 1683 from a stomach
ailment. Following the Rye House Plot in June of 1683, Locke ed England for the
Netherlands, where for a time he hid under the name of Dr. van der Linden. In
November 1684 the king ordered Locke red from his post at Oxford.
In 1685, King Charles II died suddenly, to be succeeded by this brother James.
James II was a Roman Catholic, but without an apparent heir other than the Protes-
tant Mary of Orange. However, the birth of a son in 1688 alarmed Protestants. William
of Orange sailed for England with Admiral Herbert and a eet of 400 ships. Landing
at Brixham on November 5, 1688, they marched on London under Lord Mordaunt
with little opposition. James II ed to France.
Locke returned to England in 1689. He declined a diplomatic appointment to
the elector of Brandenburg for reasons of health but accepted the post of commis-
sioner of appeals, which would provide an income but would require lighter work.
Lockes major publications appeared in 1689. He published The First Treatise on Civil
Government, which refuted Filmers divine right arguments. He also published The
Second Treatise on Civil Government to justify the Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution.
And he published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which rested knowl-
edge upon empirical experience.
Locke, John 421
In 1691 Locke, suffering from a lung ailment, moved to Oates, the country estate
of old friends, Lord and Lady Masham. That year he published Some Considerations
of the Consequences of Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of the Money. It discussed
the problem of interest rates and the practice of clipping small bits off coins. Locke
viewed recoinage as a partial solution.
In 1692, Locke edited much of Robert Boyles History of the Air for posthumous
publication. He also wrote his Third Letter for Toleration. In 1695, Lockes inuence
played an important part in the repeal of the Act for the Regulation of Printing. His
major arguments were directed at liberty for trade. He also published The Reason-
ableness of Christianity. The anonymously published work was accused of advocating
Socinianism; however, he published an effective refutation.
In 1696, Locke took a job with the Board of Trade, a new board that was
seeking to deal with the problems of rising Dutch competition, piracy, colonial
administration, and other matters. Despite his ill health, he played the key role in
developing the boards policies. He also began but never nished The Conduct of
the Understanding.
In 1697, Lockes report on Pauperism for the board was considered, but not ad-
opted. Lockes solution to the problem of beggars was imprisonment, impressment
into the army or navy, or deportation. The report demonstrates that Lockes liberal-
ism was limited. In 1700, Locke resigned after Lord Chancellor Somers was impli-
cated in the Captain Kidd piracy scandal. He retired to Oakes, where he wrote to
friends, responded to critics, and received visitors. He died on October 28, 1704.
Lockes political philosophy is principally found in the Two Treatises on Civil
Government. The First Treatise attacked the claims of Sir Robert Filmer (in Patriarchia)
that the king ruled by divine right. More important are his Second Treatise on Civil
Government and Letter on Toleration, both published in 1689.
Locke taught that governments originated from a primal social contract. Locke,
like other social contract theorists, posited a political ction called the state of na-
ture. He argued that originally people lived in a primitive state of nature without
any government in accordance with the law of nature, which was a natural knowl-
edge of the Golden Rule. However, in the state of nature there were a few bad souls
who violated the natural rights of others. To protect their rights, people joined to-
gether to create a government. This was done by means of each person agreeing to
join in a social contract in which each would give up certain rights to better protect
the more fundamental rights of life, liberty, and property.
The social contract creates a government that is assigned the duty of protecting
natural rights. Laws are made legitimate by the fact that the government is created
by the will of the people or consent of the governed. By consenting to the social
contract, each person is obeying himself or herself, because the law is really each
persons will. This is the case even if someone has not expressly agreed to the social
contract. By staying in a society and not voting with ones feet, a party to the social
contract has given tacit agreement. The social contract then makes government
legitimate.
Locke also advocated religious toleration. At the time, he excluded Roman
Catholics, perhaps because the Edict of Nantes, which gave protection to French
Protestants, had been revoked in 1689. Lockean political philosophy is very explic-
itly present in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson argued that
people are born with natural rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pur-
suit of happiness. Moreover, governments exist to protect the rights of individuals.
422 Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles
If the government fails to protect the civil liberties or rights of the people, there is
not only a right to revolution, but a duty to change the government.
Lockes inuence on James Madison, one of the major architects of the United
States Constitution, was enormous. Constitutionalism, the idea that governments
are to be limited by a written document that assigns limited powers, is also Lockean.
The Constitutions Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments quote Lockes Second Treatise
directly in the statements that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or prop-
erty without due process of law. For Locke, property was a natural right. Locke be-
lieved in the labor theory of value. The theory posits that property is created when a
person mingles his or her human energy as labor with materials. To take a persons
property then is to steal a part of his or her labor.
Many American states wrote constitutions putting the states bill of rights as the
rst article of the constitution. In succeeding parts of the constitution, it is stated
that a government is created to defend life, liberty, and property, thus demonstrat-
ing that a limited government derived from a social contract exists to protect the
civil liberties and rights of the people.
Lockes An Essay on Human Understanding (1689) has been continually read since
it was published, often as a kind of neutral statement about how people acquire
knowledge. As far as Locke is concerned, the method for deciding what is
knowledgethat is, what is good, true, and beautifulcreates winners and losers in
the political realm. Ultimately there is either an epistemological chaos like that of
the Sophists, which Socrates opposed, or there is an authority that determines what
is good, true, and beautiful. For Locke, the empirical method, which was driving
the scientic revolution, was the authority for deciding what it a fact, what is true,
and was therefore the basis for authoritative decisions made by liberal science as the
basis of liberal politics.
Lockes inuence in Europe was great: his thought dominated the age of En-
lightenment. He was a physician, a scientist, a philosophical psychologist, and an
advocate of tolerance who viewed human nature as essentially good. For the philos-
ophes, Locke was the thinker of the age. The French philosophes and intellectuals
like Franois Marie Voltaire and Denis Diderot read, discussed, and eventually acted
upon Lockes thought, so preparing the way for the French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Aaron, R. I. John Locke. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press,
1955; Chappell, Vere. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994; Cranston, Maurice W. John Locke: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985; Czajkowski, C. J. The Theory of Private Property in Lockes Political Philosophy. Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1941; Filmer, Robert, Sir. Patriarcha and Other Writings.
Edited by Johann P. Sommerville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; Johnson,
Merwyn S. Locke on Freedom. Austin, TX: Best Printing, 1978; Sabine, George H. A History of
Political Theory. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961; Yolton, John W. John
Locke: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
ANDREW J. WASKEY
Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles (17271794)
Etienne Charles Lomnie de Brienne was a French statesmen and cardinal. As
a member of the Assembly of Notables, and later nance minister, Brienne was
an important gure in the so-called aristocratic pre-revolution that preceded the
London Corresponding Society 423
Revolution of 1789. In an attempt to resolve the nancial crisis that faced France,
Charles Alexandre de Calonne, contrleur-general (17831788), proposed a land tax
to be administered by provincial assemblies (August 20, 1786). In 1787, Calonne
attempted to secure the adoption of this reform by bypassing the recalcitrant parle-
ments and convoking an Assembly of Notables. Calonnes tax reform was rejected
by the Assembly, and he was dismissed by the king on April 8, 1788. A member of
the Assembly of Notables and an enemy of Calonne, Brienne replaced him in May
1788. Brienne offered a diluted version of Calonnes plan, but it was also rejected
by the Assembly.
With the notables unable to deal with the crisis, the king dissolved the Assembly
on May 25, 1788. Briennes failure to address the nancial crisis forced the king to
convoke the Estates-General in July 1788. No longer able to raise tax revenue and
borrow money, the French government was effectively bankrupt by August 1788.
As a result, the king dismissed Brienne on August 25, 1788, and recalled Jacques
Necker. Brienne was created a cardinal in December 1788 and accepted the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy on January 30, 1791, one of the few French prelates to
do so. Arrested by the revolutionary government on February 18, 1794, he died in
prison soon thereafter.
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. Origins of the French Revolution. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999; Egret, Jean. The French Prerevolution, 17871788. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York:
Knopf, 1989.
BRIAN W. REFFORD
London Corresponding Society (LCS) (17921799)
During the 1790s, the London Corresponding Society (LCS) was an important
radical organization that focused on the issue of parliamentary reform.
In January 1792, Thomas Hardy, a shoemaker, met with eight other men in the
Bell Tavern in London to establish a society committed to campaigning for annual
general elections and universal manhood suffrage. Hardy had been inuenced
by publications by the Society for Constitutional Information, by recent events in
France, and by Thomas Paines Rights of Man. The London Corresponding Society
was to be the most inuential and the longest-surviving radical society in Britain in
the 1790s. Its most active members included some men of superior education, in-
cluding lawyers, physicians, journalists, and merchants, but most members were arti-
sans, mechanics, shopkeepers, and tradesmen. The three largest categories of known
members were shoemakers, weavers, and tailors. Many of these skilled workers edu-
cated themselves and associated with and learned from leading middle-class reform-
ers. The society sought numbers unlimited and tried to attract quite humble men
by charging an entrance fee of one penny and a weekly subscription of one penny.
It is difcult to establish the exact size of the LCS, as membership uctuated
greatly due to government repression. Many more men attended meetings than
paid their dues, and more paid their dues than were recorded as voting at meet-
ings. The society claimed a membership of 5,000 at its height, but the most reliable
estimates suggest there were only about 650 regular members in 17921793. Even
these numbers declined in late 1794, but they rose substantially to perhaps 3,000
424 London Revolution Society
active members in later 1795. Numbers held up quite well until mid-1796 but then
slumped thereafter. The society met in divisions or branches that were expected to
recruit 30 members; new divisions were supposed to be created once numbers in a
single division reached 46, but some divisions were much larger until government
legislation against seditious meetings in late 1795 forced division meetings to remain
below 50 members. Divisions met once per week, usually in a public house between
the hours of 8 and 10 p.m. Each division elected a delegate to attend the weekly
meetings of the general committee, and the general committee elected a smaller
executive committee composed of a secretary (who was also the treasurer), a presi-
dent, and six ordinary rotating members. The rst secretary was Thomas Hardy, and
the rst president was Maurice Margarot; both were replaced after their arrests.
The society frequently made new rules and constitutions to ensure that meetings
were orderly, but spies often inltrated meetings. Divisions often discussed reform
publications and recent developments at home and abroad and debated political
issues. The general committee coordinated the activities of the divisions, received
reports from delegates, and read the societys correspondence. The executive com-
mittee looked after correspondence, petitions, and addresses. On several occasions
the society organized large out-of-doors public meetings that attracted thousands of
participants and spectators. The society prepared petitions and addresses for reform,
corresponded with other reform societies, and even sent an address to the French
Convention in Paris. It printed The Politician, an eight-page weekly, between Decem-
ber 13, 1794, and January 3, 1795, and the Moral and Political Magazine, a 48-page
monthly, between June 1796 and May 1797. Although the society seems to have been
more inuenced by older ideas about Englands ancient constitution than by the nat-
ural rights theory of Thomas Paine, its activities and its membership greatly alarmed
the authorities. Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerrald were arrested at the conven-
tion of radicals in Edinburgh in late 1793, were convicted of sedition, and were trans-
ported to Botany Bay. Thomas Hardy, John Thelwall, and others were arrested and
charged with treason in 1794 but were acquitted at the end of the year. The so-called
Two Acts of 1795 were aimed at the LCS and other popular radical societies. In
1797, some of the most active members became more militant and advocated arm-
ing members. On April 18 and 19, 1798, nearly 30 leading members were arrested,
including the whole general committee. A small number of committed members
continued to meet until Parliament passed an act banning the LCS by name.
FURTHER READING: Barrell, John. Imagining the Kings Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies
of Regicide, 17931796. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; Collins, Henry. The London
Corresponding Society. In Democracy and the Labour Movement, ed. John Saville. London:
Lawrence and Wishart, 1954; Goodwin, Albert. The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic
Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. London: Hutchinson, 1979; Thale, Mary, ed.
Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society, 17921799. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983; Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London:
Penguin, 1991.
H. T. DICKINSON
The London Revolution Society was one of the most important organizations
associated with the development of radical politics in Great Britain. Formed in
London Revolution Society 425
1688 by individuals of differing religious persuasions, including both Anglicans and
Dissenters, the London Revolution arose out of the Glorious Revolution of 1688,
a conspiracy to overthrow King James II that was led by his son-in-law William of
Orange-Nassau and some British parliamentarians. While the events of 1688 led to
a new evolution in the relationship between Parliament and the monarchy, as made
evident by the 1689 Bill of Rights, which created a constitutional monarchy, it also
led to the forming of opinions and to the creation, chiey within the larger towns
and cities of Britain, of societies that sometimes adhered to militant political per-
spectives about the development of society at large. Along with the Old Revolution
Club, which was formed in Edinburgh in 1689, the London Revolution Society was
among the most prominent of these organizations.
Gaining much momentum from the hundred-year anniversary of the Glorious
Revolution, by the late 1780s, the societies such as the one in London, as well as
others in places such as Shefeld, not only celebrated British religious and civil lib-
erties as created by the Glorious Revolution but furthermore publicly vilied slavery
and public abuses of power. By 1788, the London Revolution Society had not only
forged links with similar organizations in Britain, such as the Cambridgeshire Con-
stitutional Society, but established a manifesto consisting of some basic principles:
the abuse of power justies resistance; civil and political authority is drawn from the
people; the independence of the press is to be safeguarded by the guarantee of lib-
erties such as freedom of the press and private judgement; and trials will include a
jury and shall consider the liberty of conscience. Such virtues, perceived the London
Revolution Society, were apparent not only in the Glorious Revolution but also in
contemporary France during the early days of the French Revolution. Consequently
the London Revolutionary Society began a communicative process consisting of
written dialogue with the French National Assembly. Despite the increasingly cruel
and bloody nature of the revolution in France in the subsequent months, the Lon-
don Revolutionary Society maintained a cordial tone with the National Assembly,
much to the chagrin of many members of the public and the British political estab-
lishment at that time.
Condemned in many quarters by the societys apparent ignorance of the vio-
lent events in France, the London Revolutionary Society came to the attention of
the British government, led by William Pitt the Younger, which was increasingly
concerned by the violence in France and its potential to spill over into Britain. As
a result of events in France and its perceived threat to British social stability, societ-
ies such as the London Revolutionary Society came under heavy censure, which to
a great extent restricted its activities and those of similar groups. However, by the
early 1790s, the effects of the French Revolution and the censure of radical groups
had led to the reorganizing of British radical elements and the growth of new orga-
nizations like the London Corresponding Society (1792), which sought to encour-
age parliamentary reform. However, Pitts government was equally harsh on the new
sort of activism, passing new laws that removed civil liberties (e.g., the removal of
habeas corpus, a legal writ that protects against arbitrary imprisonment, in 1794),
and banning radical society meetings (e.g., by the Seditious Meetings Act in 1795
and Corresponding Societies Act, 1799). See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Burke, Edmund. Reections on the Revolution in France: And on the
Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. London: Penguin, 1973;
426 Louis XVI, King of France
David, Michael T., ed. London Corresponding Society, 1792 to 1799. London: Pickering and
Chatto, 2002.
IAN MORLEY
Louis XVI, King of France (17541793)
The king of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and so-called king of the
French from 1791 until 1792, Louis XVI was executed in 1793, his death ending
the tradition of absolutist monarchical rule in France. He had initially tried to be a
reforming king, keen to avoid foreign wars. After French involvement in the Ameri-
can Revolutionary War, the government went even further into debt, and he proved
unable to deal with the escalating situation that led to the French Revolution.
Born on August 23, 1754, Louis XVI was the second son of Louis, dauphin of
France (17291765), the oldest son and heir of Louis XV (17101774; reigned
17151774). His mother was Marie-Josephe of Saxony, daughter of Frederick
Augustus II of Saxony, Prince-Elector of Saxony, and king of Poland. He grew up
as the second son of the dauphinand living very much in the shadow of his older
and more precocious brother, the Duke of Bourgogne; another brother, the duc
dAquitaine, died in infancy. Bourgogne, however, died in 1761, leaving Louis,
King Louis XVI of France. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Louis XVI, King of France 427
known as the duc de Berry, the oldest surviving son of the heir to the throne. The
duc de Berrys father, the dauphin, supervised the education of his children, and
Berry was taught by the duc de La Vauguyon (Antoine de Qulen de Caussade). As
a boy, Berry became interested in history and geography, developed an excellent
memory, and became reasonably uent in Latin and English. The dauphin died in
1765, and his widow (Berrys mother) soon afterward.
As the heir to the throne of France, the duc de Berry was now groomed to gov-
ern the country. He also had two younger brothersthe comte de Provence (later
Louis XVIII) and the comte dArtois (later Charles X). From a young age, Berry
kept a diary, but his observations were largely factual and devoid of any philosophi-
cal observations. It was during this period that Berry became keen on hunting and
also fascinated by locksmithing. On May 16, 1770, when Berry was 15, he married
Marie Antoinette, the 14-year-old daughter of Francis I of Austria and Empress Maria
Theresa. However, they experienced initial problems with their marriage, which
are thought to have been the consequence of Berrys inability to consummate the
marriage for several years due to his phimosis, which made full intercourse impos-
sible. The marriage was generally a happy one, and the couple had four children:
Marie Thrse Charlotte, born in 1778; Louis Joseph Xavier Franois, born in 1781;
Louis Charles, born in 1785; and Sophie-Beatrix, born in 1786.
Following the death of Louis XV on May 10, 1774, Berry was proclaimed king of
France and Navarre as Louis XVI. It was a particularly difcult time in French history,
and Louis inherited a troubled government. He had come to the throne with great
hopes for his country, but involvement in several expensive and destructive wars, as well
as his maintenance of a decadent court at Versailles, put the nation heavily into debt.
Louis was always a voracious reader. Most of his booksmany in English were
nonction, and his diary entries, which show a fondness for seemingly trivial de-
tails such as the number of times he left Versailles852 days since his marriage
indicate his dislike of imagination in favor of the simple recording of facts. Louis
XVI was also keen not to agrantly overspend, a practice for which his two royal
predecessors had become notorious. Instead, he bought some of his books second-
hand, rarely wore lavish clothing, and tried to reduce the number of his servants.
He was always ready to pay off the debts incurred by his younger brothers.
On an administrative level, Louis XVI worked extremely hard to keep conversant
with matters of state. He spoke awkwardly, however, and lacked the presence that
his grandfather and great-grandfather had displayed when they attended functions.
This was combined with some personal austerity and a degree of hesitation, which
made him indecisive on some crucial occasions. Determined to introduce reform
and gain popularity, Louis recalled the Paris Parlement, restoring its authority in
August 1774, and granting concessions that he hoped would be the start of a good
working relationship between the ruler and his people. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot
managed to introduce a far better transport system in the country, but the fact that
coach passengers missed Sunday church services led to some opposition from cleri-
cal interests. Many of the kings other attempts at reform were regularly stymied by
interest groups. Moreover, aristocratic reaction to these reforms destroyed attempts
to stabilize the nances of the country.
One of Louiss early pronouncements stated that honesty and restraint must be
our policya statement that was taken by many to suggest opposition to Frances
involvement in costly foreign wars. However, this policy came to an end with the
start of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. There was pressure in the French
army to become involved in the war in the hope that France might be able to re-
deem itself militarily after its defeat in the Seven Years War (17561763). Eager not
to incur Britains wrath, Louis decided instead to supply money secretly to help the
rebellion against the British. Although the French denied such involvement, the
British remain suspicious of French designs. Gradually, with more and more French
ofcers eager to ght in North America, the Marquis de Lafayette emerged as the
man who might be able to lead the French against the their traditional enemy. Plans
were drawn up to widen the war in the hope of recapturing former French colonies
in the West Indies, and possibly even Canada, but Louis was eager to restrict the war
to Britains 13 colonies, which had declared their independence on July 4, 1776.
It was not long before France became openly involved in the conict, largely
in naval terms, for the purpose of regaining some of its lost prestige. For several
years the British had the upper hand, but when the rebels, with French troops,
surrounded the British at Yorktown, what little remained of their authority in the
13 colonies all but came to an end. For Louis it should have been a triumph. How-
ever, the British were keen on arranging a peace treaty with the Americans in order
to continue their war against the French. Worse still, Louis had spent 18 million
livres on the war, which would eventually have dire consequences for the economy.
After the war, he decided to lend an additional 6 million livres to the Americans at
5 percent interest, which was 2 percent less than what it had cost him to borrow the
money in the rst place. Initially, it placed only minor pressure on the French bud-
get. Within a few years it would become a major nancial problem.
The marriage of Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette had been controversial due to
the fact that she was from Austria, a traditional enemy of France. However, it was a
loving union, and both Louis and his queen were devoted to their children. Marie
Antoinette nevertheless strongly wished to play a more active role in matters of
state, which her husband refused to allow for personal as well as political reasons.
This upset her and caused her to nd solace in the performing arts, parties, and
eventually friendships with many people, including Count Axel Fersen, a Swede
with whom she was later romantically attached. For the rst years of her marriage,
Marie Antoinette lived a relatively carefree existence, but by the 1780s she had be-
come very modest in her dress and her expenditure. Indeed, her favorite hobbies
were embroidery and running a small dairy farm on the grounds of Versailles.
The appointment by Louis XVI of Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker, to sort out
the nances of the kingdom was initially very successful. The king liked Necker,
and the nancier decided that the only way of achieving his objective was to be
open about the countrys nances. To this end, he published his famous Compte
rendu, which, for the rst time in France, revealed the nances of the kingdom
on paper, in this case for the year 1780. It revealed that the economic position
was good, and renewed public condence in the strength of the economy gave it
added buoyancy. However, he had added a small rider in the text that the nances
excluded the cost of the American Revolutionary War, and this was to prove to be a
signicant omission. Necker then proposed an overhaul of the entire taxation sys-
tem of France. He briey lent a copy of the secret report to the comte de Provence,
Louis XIVs younger brother (later Louis XVIII). Monsieur, as the younger brother
of the French king was styled, printed some copies of it, and the reaction to the
report resulted in the swift fall of Necker.
Neckers replacement was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who was appointed
controller general of nance in 1783. His aim was to encourage industry in France,
and he used French government grants to seek to persuade manufacturers to
operate in the countryside and thus raise the overall wealth of the nation. Practical
projects included the establishment of a school of mines in 1783 and the hiring of
some British entrepreneurs to run factories in France. Louis visited some of these
projects in 1785, donating generously to the various hospitals that he visited. The
king also wanted further scientic discoveries; he was very supportive of the Mont-
goler brothers, who pioneered hot-air ballooning, and he supported Jean Franois
de La Prouses expedition to the Pacic, even going so far as brieng La Prouse
himself. The porcelain factory at Svres turned out some of the most beautiful
pieces produced during the eighteenth century, in a style now recognized as Louis
XVI. Louis was also keen on the subject of religious toleration, and in 1787, against
considerable pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, he placed an edict before
the Parlement granting civil rights to the 70,000 Protestants in France.
Louis still had many enemies from among the elite. His cousin Henri, the duc
dOrlans, hated him and was determined to undermine his authority. While the
king lived a relatively modest and family-orientated lifestyle, Orlans lived in a world
of gambling and debauchery. He agrantly overspent, which forced him to sell
some of his properties to be turned into commercial premises. However, the main
attack on the king would come from a swindle known as the Diamond Necklace Af-
fair. Marie Antoinette had made two purchases of diamonds from a jeweler called
Bhmer, partially paying for the second one with a swap of some of her old jewelry.
She also told him that she would not be buying any more. Bhmer had already
borrowed heavily to make a large diamond necklace, which he hoped to sell to
Louis XV in the hope that it might be given away to one of his mistresses. Louis XV,
however, had died, and Bhmer now hoped that Marie Antoinette might buy it. The
queen declined to purchase it, as did the queen of Spain, leading Bhmer to plead
with Marie Antoinette. Again she declined, and when Louis XVI offered to buy it
for her as a present, she also declined, saying that it was an extravagance at a time of
government austerity measures.
The matter might have ended there, had not a lady called Jeanne de la Motte
decided to use subterfuge to get the necklace for herself. Using Cardinal Rohan as
a middleman, perhaps unwittingly on his part, she forged some letters that claimed
to be from the queen, directing the cardinal to take charge of the necklace and give
it to one of her servants, who was actually a friend of Jeanne de la Motte, in disguise.
The necklace was handed over in exchange for a forged letter that contained a
promise of payment in four installments. When the rst payment fell due, the jew-
eler was persuaded to delay his approach for payment a few days, while many of the
people involved ed the country. Cardinal Rohan was arrested and charged before
the Paris Parlement due to his involvement in the plot but was acquitted. Although
historians have been highly praiseworthy of the manner in which both Louis and his
wife handled the incident after rumors claiming that the queen had masterminded
this theft spread around Paris, the rumors were believed by many and severely dam-
aged the queens reputation.
The continued aristocratic reaction against attempts by Louis XVI to introduce
reforms split the royal advisers. Many wanted to push through the reforms in spite
of resistance from the nobility, and when Calonne faced pressure to abandon his
Louis XVI, King of France 429
economic and administrative reforms in 1787, Louis decided to break the impasse
by summoning the Estates-General in July 1788, with representatives of the clergy,
nobility, and commoners, for the rst time in 175 years. This was the move that was
to lead to the French Revolution.
Initially it seemed as though Louis might be able to establish a form of a limited
constitutional monarchy in France, but aristocratic intransigence and the kings de-
sire not to confront or offend anybody in person were going to cause major problems.
He could have formed an alliance with the middle class, but instead his advisers
became more and more inuenced by reactionaries favored by his youngest brother,
the comte dArtois, who championed tax exemptions for the clergy and the nobility.
When the Estates-General met, they were keen to resolve issues that had been
held in abeyance in the 175 years since their last meeting. Louis became unwilling
to surrender all his powers to them, but facing a battle with the aristocracy, and
also being undermined by Orlans and others, his ideas, which might have resulted
in a constitutional monarchy, were brushed aside. On July 14, 1789, when crowds
stormed the Bastille, Louis, whose diary entries were often mundane, wrote a single
word, Rien, indicating that he had not caught anything while hunting that day. He
was gradually to be outmaneuvered at court by Artois, and radicals in Paris were to
gain increasing support in the Estates-General. When Louis did not support moves
like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, his more radical op-
ponents started to portray him as a reactionary. There were also claims that he was
being badly advised at Versailles, and on October 6, 1789, a large crowd marched to
Versailles and tooksomewhat roughlyto the Tuileries Palace in Paris.
Louis became nervous and was quickly caught up in a conspiracy involving Marie
Antoinettes friend Count Axel Fersen, who organized an escape attempt from
the capital. It was well planned, but the king did not want to travel in a separate car-
riage from his wife and children. As a result they had to escape in a single large and
much slower carriage on June 21, 1791. This slowed them down considerably, as did
Louis waving fondly to people on the route, a few of whom recognized him. At Va-
rennes, French cavalry stopped the coach before it reached the nearby border with
the Austrian Netherlands and brought the royal family back to Paris. This destroyed
the credibility of the king in the eyes of many Frenchmen, who began to believe he
was conniving with the Austrians.
In late 1791, the king still hoped that he might be saved by foreign powers but
also managed to urge the Girondins to continue their plans for war with Austria, in
the hope that a military defeat would result in the fall of the politicians who opposed
him. At this point Louis started becoming intransigent. He rejected plans by mod-
erates to support the Constitution of 1791 and started to try to undermine it. War
with Austria broke out in April 1792, and when the Duke of Brunswick threatened
to destroy Paris if the royal family was harmed, the Paris mob stormed the Tuileries
on June 20, 1792, killing the kings Swiss Guard. Subsequently, the royal powers of
the king were suspended by the Legislative Assembly. In August, the royal family was
imprisoned, and on September 21 the First Republic was proclaimed.
Two months later evidence was found that Louis was involved in counterrevolu-
tionary plotting, some involving foreign powers, and on December 3, the rulers of
the new French Republic decided that the king should be put on trial, together with
his family, to face charges of treason. Louis had behaved with great dignity during
the storming of the Tuileries in June and also defended his record when brought
Louis XVII, King of France 431
before the National Convention on December 11 and 23. His fate, however, was
sealed.
The Girondins tried to save Louis from execution, but on January 18, 1793, the
Convention voted by 387 to 334 to execute the king, with 26 of the former content
to consider a delay to the execution, and 13 of the latter in favor of a death sentence
that could then be suspended. A nal vote on the execution was held on the fol-
lowing day, January 19, and went 380 for and 310 against. On hearing the sentence,
Louis asked for a stay of execution for three days and a priest. Henry Edgeworth,
an Irish-born priest, spent the night with the royal family and accompanied the
king on January 21 for the two-hour journey to the guillotine. The executioners
opened the door of the carriage and transported the king at the Place de la Rvolu-
tion (now the Place de la Concorde), where Louis climbed out of the tumbrel and
mounted the scaffold. Facing the crowd, the king declared: I am innocent of the
crimes of which I am accused. I forgive those responsible for my death and I beg
God that the blood you are about to spill will leave no stain on France. See also Con-
stitutions, French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Cronin, Vincent. Louis and Antoinette. London: Collins, 1974; Hardman,
John. Louis XVI. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993; Padover, S. K. The Life and Death
of Louis XVI. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1963.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Louis XVII, King of France (17851795)
Louis XVII was the titular king of France from 1793 to 1795. Louis Charles, the
second son and third child of Louis XVI of France and his wife, Marie Antoinette,
was born on March 27, 1785. He had his own household with a huge retinue of
servants and lived in a rened royal environment. The death of his elder brother,
Louis Joseph, on June 4, 1789, made Louis Charles the dauphin (i.e., heir to the
throne of France).
The royal family became prisoners after they were forcibly removed from Ver-
sailles. Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793. Louis Charles was proclaimed
king by the future Louis XVIII; this sealed his fate. Marie Antoinette, Louis Charles,
and his sister Marie Thrse Charlotte were incarcerated in the Temple Tower.
Upon the kings death they were separated to prevent any royalist attempts to free
the royal family. He was taken to his fathers room in the Temple Tower, a oor
below his mothers rooms. She could hear his inconsolable crying but never saw him
again. Marie Antoinette was moved to the Conciergerie, put on trial for treason, and
executed on October 16, 1793. Louis Charles was forced to declare that his mother
had sexually mistreated him. He never knew his mothers fate.
Louis Charles was attended by Antoine Simon, a failed shoemaker who abused
and humiliated the young boy. The child was derisively referred to as Capet
and taught to act like a commoner and hate his royal heritage. Louis Charles was
sometimes kept in solitary connement. At one time his cell was not cleaned out
for eight months. His suffering was reported in the press, but curiously, those who
wrote about it were found dead. Although he received slightly better treatment to-
ward the end of his life, his health deteriorated; following his death, his body was
found to be full of scabies and tumors, and his distended stomach indicated that he
432 Louis XVIII, King of France
scarcely ate. Louis Charles died of tuberculosis on June 8, 1795, at the age of 10. The
attending physician who performed the autopsy secretly removed the boys heart,
which was smuggled out of the prison. The body was thrown into a mass grave.
In 2000, DNA tests based on comparisons with Marie Antoinettes hair deter-
mined that the heart belonged to Louis Charles. His heart was reburied in Saint
Denis Basilica on June 8, 2004, in the presence of many descendants of the Bourbon
royal family and the former French nobility.
FURTHER READING: Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: A True Story of Revolution,
Revenge and DNA. New York: St. Martins Press, 2002; Francq, H. G. Louis XVII: The Unsolved
Mystery. Leiden: Brill, 1970.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Louis XVIII, King of France (17551824)
King of France and Navarre between 1814 and 1824, Louis XVIIIs reign was of-
cially backdated from June 8, 1795, when the young Louis XVII died in prison,
and was briey interrupted by Napoleons escape from Elba in 1814. Louis-Stanislas-
Xavier was the fourth son of Louis-Ferdinand de France, dauphin de Viennois, and
Maria Josepha Carolina Eleonora Franziska Xaveria, Princess of Saxony; grandson
of King Louis XV; and brother of kings Louis XVI and Charles X.
As a child, he received the title of comte de Provence, and after the death of
his elder brothers and the accession of Louis XVI in May 1774, he was considered
heir presumptive (referred to as Monsieur) to the king before the latter had sired
children. In 1771, the comte de Provence married Marie Josephine Louise of
Sardinia (17531810), but their marriage was childless.
During the French Revolution, the comte de Provence was among the rst mi-
grs to leave France on June 21, 1791, and was known for his die-hard reactionary
stance against the revolutionary authorities. He was living in exile in Westphalia
when his brother, Louis XVI, was executed and, on January 28, 1793, declared him-
self a regent for his nephew, the 10-year old Louis Charles (Louis XVII), who never
ascended the throne. After Louis XVIIs death in 1795, the comte de Provence
claimed the throne and issued a declaration from his exile in Verona that renounced
all the changes introduced in France since 1789. His refusal to compromise effec-
tively doomed the hopes of moderate constitutional monarchists in France.
After General Napoleon Bonapartes coup in 1799, Louis XVIII had hopes that
Napoleon would follow the example of General Monck, who had restored Charles II
on the English throne in 1660. He wrote two letters to Napoleon suggesting the res-
toration of the monarchy. Napoleon, however, dashed his hopes in a brief letter that
advised Louis XVIII not to attempt to return to France. To do so, you must trample
over a hundred thousand dead bodies. Sacrice your interest to the repose and
happiness of France, and history will render you justice. Louis XVIII spent the next
14 years traveling under the quasi-incognito name of the comte de Lisle, through-
out Europe, living for a time in Prussia and Russia before settling in Britain. He
watched anxiously as the power of Napoleonic France expanded to dominate all of
Europe, dashing hopes of a Bourbon restoration. However, Napoleons disastrous
campaign in Russia in 1812 revived such hopes, and in 1814, Louis XVIII was able
to secure his claim to the French throne after the Allied powers defeated Napoleon
Louvet de Couvray, Jean-Baptiste 433
and entered Paris at the end of March. Louis was offered the throne of France in
accordance with the constitution promulgated by the Senate on April 6, 1814, and
was acknowledged as king in the Declaration of Saint-Ouen on May 2.
Restored on the French throne, Louis XVIII resisted pressure from the more reac-
tionary groups (the ultras) and agreed to grant the charter of 1814 (Charte Consti-
tutionnelle), which, in effect, established a constitutional monarchy, with the king
charged with executive powers and a right of legislative initiative, but with legislative
powers concentrated in a bicameral legislature consisting of a Chambers of Peers
and of Deputies. Nevertheless, the Bourbon monarchy proved unpopular with the
French people, as it tried to reverse some of the achievements made during the
period of the Revolution and the Empire. Such policies even prompted the famous
remark that the Bourbons had learned nothing yet remembered everything while in
exile. Within a year of their restoration, the Bourbons were forced to ee Paris on
the news of Napoleons escape from Elba.
Louis XVIII returned following the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 but strug-
gled to shrug off the accusation that he had been brought back in the baggage
train of the victorious Allies. The Second Restoration also witnessed the start of the
White Terror, in what amounted to royalist persecution of Bonapartists and their
sympathizers. Still, Louis XVIII was able to follow a cautious, moderate policy de-
spite pressure from the ultraroyalists. Indeed, he attempted to counterbalance
the inuence of the ultraroyalists, who dominated the Chamber of Deputies, by
appointing moderate government leaders, such as the duc de Richelieu and Elie
Decazes. He supported the measures directed against the Chambre Introuvable
(a Chamber of Deputies that was elected in 1815 and dominated by ultraroyalists),
which resulted in its dismissal and led, through electoral changes, to its replace-
ment by a more liberal chamber in 1816. Nevertheless, the king found it difcult to
cooperate with the liberals as well, and in 1820, he supported the election of more
conservative deputies. He turned to those of the reactionary camp after the murder
of his nephew, the duc de Berry, on February 14, 1820. Although a new ultra min-
istry, headed by the comte de Villle, was established, Louis XVIII still managed to
moderate some of the reactionaries policies. He died on September 16, 1824, and
was buried in the Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his brother, the comte
dArtois, who became Charles X. See also Brumaire, Coup dEtat de.
FURTHER READING: Backouche, Isabelle. La monarchie parlementaire, 18151848 de Louis
XVIII Louis-Phillipe. Paris: Pygmalion, 2000; Lever, Evelyne. Louis XVIII. Paris: Fayard, 1988;
Lucas-Dubreton, J. Louis XVIII. New York: Putnam, 1927; Mansel, Philip. Louis XVIII. London:
Blond and Briggs, 1981.
Louvet de Couvray, Jean-Baptiste (17601797)
Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray was the son of a paper merchant. His father
intended him for a career in small business. An enthusiastic reader of literature,
he worked in a bookshop, peddling pornography, and began writing his celebrated
three-part novel, Les amours du Chevalier Faublas, the rst part of which appeared
in 1787. The booka combination of pornography and praise for Jean-Jacques
Rousseauwas commercially successful.
434 Lovell, James
Louvet returned to Paris at the start of the French Revolution and began his
political career as a member and later president of the Lombards Section. He was
also a journalist, contributing to the daily Journal de Paris, and in March 1792, he be-
came the editor of La Sentinelle, a newspaper funded by Jean Marie Roland. Elected
to the National Convention by the Loiret department, he sided with the Girondin
faction. In the trial of Louis XVI, he voted for the appeal to the people, and death
with a suspended sentence. After the insurrection of June 2, 1793, he ed Paris for
Normandy to avoid the guillotine. In March 1795, he was reinstated in the Conven-
tion, where he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety, a drafter of
the Constitution of 1795, and a member of the Council of Five Hundred. See also
Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Girondins; Newspapers (French).
FURTHER READING: Rivers, John. Louvet: Revolutionist and Romance Writer. London: Hurst &
Blackett, 1910; Thompson, J. M. Leaders of the French Revolution. London: Blackwell, 1929.
LEIGH WHALEY
Born in Boston in 1737, Lovell attended Harvard University. For 18 years after
his graduation, Lovells life was uneventful, though he did rise to local acclaim as
both a mathematician and a linguist. As a result of his talents as an orator, Lovell
was selected to deliver the rst address commemorating the Boston Massacre on
April 2, 1771. His speech placed him rmly in the rebel camp, and when the ght-
ing started in 1775, the British closed his school. At this time, Lovell acted as a spy
for the patriot cause and was brought on charges for this activity and taken to Hali-
fax, Nova Scotia.
Upon his release from British captivity, Lovell returned to Boston. In recogni-
tion of his past dedication and sacrice for the Patriot cause, Boston elected Lovell
to the Second Continental Congress, where he took his seat on February 4, 1777.
Lovell served in the Congress until 1782. During his tenure with that body, Lovells
skills with language, specically French, were put to use in the Committee of For-
eign Affairs. He often interviewed newly arrived French ofcers in search of com-
mands for the Continental Army. On this topic, Lovell agreed with Washington that
the number of foreign ofcers in Continental units was already too high.
Still, on a number of other key issues, Lovell disagreed quite profoundly with
Washington. As a result, Lovell became a staunch supporter of Horatio Gates and
may even have participated in the Conway Cabal, an attempt to remove Washington
from command of the army. He was reportedly involved in several other schemes,
all revolving around securing a position as one of the emissaries to France.
His duties in public life took their toll, and Lovell left the Continental Congress in
1782, thereafter holding a number of local government posts in Massachusetts. He
was appointed customs collector for Massachusetts in 1788 and chief naval ofcer
for Boston and Charlestown in 1789. He died in 1814.
FURTHER READING: Shipton, Clifford K. James Lovell. In Sibleys Harvard Graduates.
Vol. 14. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1968.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
Loyalists 435
A South Carolina politician during the colonial through early national periods,
Rawlins Lowndes was born on the Caribbean island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts) to
a prominent planter family and immigrated to Charleston when his father, Charles
Lowndes, ran into nancial problems. His nancial woes deepened when Charles
Lowndes committed suicide in 1736. Rawlins Lowndes became the ward of Rob-
ert Hall, South Carolinas provost marshal (chief law enforcement ofcial), which
placed Lowndes in a de facto apprenticeship. Lowndes became provost marshal
in 1745 and was elected representative to the Commons House of Assembly from
St. Pauls Parish in 1749. After serving on a number of high-prole committees,
Lowndes relinquished his ofces and sailed to Britain to improve his health, educa-
tion, and social graces in 1754.
In late 1755, he returned to South Carolina to take his position as a leading
member of the colonys aristocracy. During the French and Indian War (17561763),
Lowndes chaired a number of House committees involved in nancing the colonys
war effort. Lowndes was elected Speaker of the House in 1763. In 1765 he over-
saw the selection of the colonys delegates to the Stamp Act Congress. As the cri-
sis worsened, Lowndes was maneuvered out of the speakership for his moderate
views. However, he was appointed chief judge as royal administration broke down.
In 1772 he was again elected Speaker of the House and led the assembly in reign-
ing in the power of the executive branch. In 1774 and 1775 Lowndes was elected
to the revolutionary General Committee, the Provincial Congress, and the Council
of Safety. After helping design South Carolinas constitution, Lowndes became the
states second president in 1778. After the fall of Charleston, Lowndes accepted
British protection and was forced to petition the state to restore his citizenship after
the war. In 1787 he was elected to the General Assembly, where Lowndes led the
states opposition to the United States Constitution and was the only low-country
Anti-Federalist. His nal public ofce was that of intendant (mayor) of Charleston.
See also Constitutions, American State.
FURTHER READING: Vipperman, Carl J. The Rise of Rawlins Lowndes, 17211800. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1978.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
Loyalists
Loyalists, also known as Tories, Kings Men, and royalists, were British North
American colonists who before and during the American Revolutionary War
(17751783) argued for, fought for, or otherwise believed that the 13 American
colonies should remain part of Britain. The colonists who argued for, fought for,
or believed in the American Revolution were called revolutionaries, Whigs, Rebels,
Congress Men, Americans, and Patriots (the name favored by the American revo-
lutionaries). Though most Loyalists joined the Patriots in criticizing British actions
and sanctions such as the 1765 Stamp Act and 1774 Coercive Acts (known as the
Intolerable Acts in the colonies), the Loyalists believed that peaceful protests and
working through the established British colonial governmental system provided the
colonies more stability, security, and economic advantage than did independence.
436 Loyalists
Some Loyalists also asserted that rebellion against the law of God and the ruler God
had placed over the colonists, George III, was simply wrong.
Loyalists accounted for 2033 percent of the revolutionary-era American colonial
population of 2.5 to 3 million, or 500,000 to a million people. The lower number is
generally accepted as more accurate. The higher number is based on John Adamss
more rhetorical estimate that one-third of the colonists were Loyalists, one-third
were Patriots, and one-third were neutral. Neutrality was permitted, and most of
Canada remained neutral throughout the war.
Loyalists spanned the geographical, ethnic, occupational, and economic spec-
tra. Though they were spread throughout the colonies, Loyalists did not compose
the majority in any colony. They were most numerous in New Yorkwhere they
comprised almost 50 percent of the populationPennsylvania, and portions of the
South, especially the Georgia backcountry, Virginia, and the Carolinas, while they
were least represented in New England. Though colonists of German descent com-
posed the largest ethnic group (28%) within the Loyalist ranks, perhaps due in part
to the pacicism of some German religious sects and the kings German lineage,
other heritages were also represented, among them colonists from Scotland (23%),
England (18%), Ireland (12%), Holland (8%), France (5%), Wales (4%), and, at
2 percent each, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden. Most British colonial ofcials
and Anglicans (members of the Church of England), both parishioners and clergy,
remained loyal to the Crown, as did the Quakers, some Native Americans, and many
indentured servants and black slaves and colonists who were promised freedom in
return for their loyalty. Like the Patriots, the Loyalists counted in their number
farmers, backwoodsmen, artisans, shopkeepers, wealthy merchants in the cities, and
large landholders.
Though the British controlled the major cities, such as New York City and
Long Island (17761783), Boston (17751776), Philadelphia (1777), Savannah
(17781783), and Charleston (17801782), or at least at various times portions of
them, 8095 percent of the population lived in areas controlled by Patriot state
governments. The British withdrew all their colonial governors during the war, save
for in coastal Georgia (17791782). The British war plan assumed that Loyalist com-
munities and leaders throughout the colonies would remain politically active and
that a large Loyalist military force would be raised to supplement the British regu-
lars in the conict. Neither hope materialized. Loyalists who actively supported or
fought for the Crown after the war began in 1775 were treated as traitors by their fel-
low colonists. The Loyalist Benedict Arnolds name became synonymous with being
a traitor. Many other Loyalists simply abandoned their property and ed.
The total number of Loyalist soldiers and militiamen who fought for or with
British forces during the course of the war did not exceed 50,000. Approximately
19,000 of these Loyalists joined the British Army, forming 50 units divided into
312 companies. The largest contingent of Loyalist soldiers and militiamen, num-
bering between 15,000 and 23,000, came from New York.
Some Loyalists began to ee the colonies as early 1774, with the major exodus
beginning in March 1776. In total, 70,000100,000, or 34 percent of the Revo-
lutionary Warera British North American colonial population, eventually ed.
Notable among these were Benjamin Franklins illegitimate son William Franklin
(17311813), the last colonial governor of New Jersey, and the prominent colonial
portraitist John Singleton Copley (17381815). William Franklins departure so
Loyalists 437
strained his relationship with his father that the elder Franklin left nothing of his
estate to his son.
The wealthiest Loyalists, some 7,000, ed to Britain. Approximately 46,000 Loy-
alists ed to Canada, of which 30,00032,000 initially went to Nova Scotia. Nova
Scotia proved inhospitable to most of the Loyalists, especially the black Loyalists,
who by 1784 numbered 3,000, and approximately a third of whom emigrated to
Sierra Leone by 1792. Approximately 14,00016,000 of the immigrant Loyalists
moved from Nova Scotia to colonize New Brunswick, which was carved from Nova
Scotia for them in 1784 by Sir Thomas Carleton. Approximately 10,000 of the Loy-
alists were given 200 acres of land each to settle in the Kingston and Niagara area
of Quebecs Eastern Townships, in what is today Ontario (then Upper Canada).
Both Ontario and New Brunswick were thus created as refuges for the Loyalists. An
unknown number of Iroquois and other Native American Loyalists, perhaps in the
thousands, also settled in Canada, with some of the Iroquois forming the nucleus of
what would eventually develop into Canadas largest First Nations reserve, the Six
Nations of the Grand River.
Approximately 17,000 Loyalists from the Carolinas and Georgia, some with
their slaves, ed to the British colonies in the Caribbean (Bermuda; the Bahamas,
Abaco, Eleuthera, and Exuma; the Turks and Caicos Islands; Jamaica; Dominica;
and St. Lucia). Others ed to British-controlled Florida, while some went as far
south as Brazil.
Despite many hardships, most Loyalistsbetween 300,000 and 400,000 is the
generally accepted numberremained in America through the Revolution. The
sanctions imposed on Loyalists varied among the 13 revolutionary state legislatures
as did the severity of local sanctions and the treatment of Loyalists and their families.
Samuel Seaburys colonial ministry as an Anglican priest effectively ended after his
Loyalist activities led to his arrest (November 1775) and six weeks imprisonment in
New Haven, Connecticut. The revolutionary state legislatures and the Continental
Congress passed laws forbidding Loyalists from holding public ofce, and conscat-
ing or heavily taxing Loyalist property. Some Loyalists were not allowed to liquidate
or sell their property, and some were not allowed to sue their debtors. Others were
denied the ability to practice their professions as physicians, lawyers, or educators,
and most were denied the right to vote. William Smith (17271803), an Aberdeen-
born teacher and leading American educator, Anglican/Episcopal clergyman, and
author, was suspected of being a Loyalist sympathizer during the American Revo-
lutionary War because of his views on the use of the state military forces and his
marriage to Rebecca Moore, the daughter of Loyalist William Moore (17351793).
Smith was the rst provost (17551779; 17891791) of one of the University of
Pennsylvanias precursor institutions (Academy and College of Philadelphia) and
served on the colleges board of trustees (secretary, 176490; president, 179091).
When the revolutionary legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania revoked
the colleges charter (1779) and formed a new college, the University of the State
of Pennsylvania, Smith was not appointed to the board or made provost of the new
institution.
Many Loyalists were imprisoned for varying periods of time, and some were
publicly humiliated (e.g., tarred and feathered). Some Loyalists were physically at-
tacked, and a small but unknown number were killed by mobs. Two Loyalists are
known to have been ofcially executed in Philadelphia during September 1775,
438 Loyalists
and in October 1775 the Second Continental Congress authorized the arrest of any
Loyalist deemed dangerous to the liberties of America.
Some Loyalists chose to leave after the end of the Revolution in 1783, and a small
percentage of those who had ed returned. Some of the states continued to deny
Loyalists the right to vote and continued to encumber their rights, property, and
livelihoods, though circumstances greatly improved when the United States Con-
stitution was adopted in 1789, the same year that William Smith was returned to his
position as provost. Seabury was elected the rst Episcopal bishop of Connecticut
and Rhode Island (1783) despite his infamous pre-revolutionary pro-British pam-
phlets entitled Farmers Letters.
In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War and charged
Congress with the restoration of any Loyalist property that had been conscated. The
enforcement of this restoration was mixed. The heirs of prominent Loyalists such as
Pennsylvanias William Penn and Marylands George Calvert received appropriate
compensation for their lost property. However, Loyalists in other areas of the coun-
try did not fare as well. The property holdings of many Loyalists in the Carolinas and
in New York had already been subdivided into smaller properties, and few of them
received any compensation. The British continued to seek adequate compensation
or outright restoration of conscated Loyalist properties and made it an issue when
the Jay Treaty, which sought to resolve issues remaining after the Treaty of Paris, was
negotiated in 1794. The British tried again to resolve the issue in 1796 by agreeing
to withdraw from its forts on the Ohio frontier, but the Americans reneged on the
agreement after the British withdrew.
Those Loyalists who swore allegiance to the Crown before the Treaty of Paris
were designated United Empire Loyalists, and their descendants were given the
right to afx the initials U. E. to their names. The United Empire Loyalists became
prominent in Canada, and their immigration formed the foundation of the English-
speaking Canadian population that predominates in Canada outside Quebec. All
remaining state and federal laws encumbering the former Loyalists were removed
following the War of 1812.
FURTHER READING: Baldwin, David. Revolution, War, and the Loyalists. Calgary, AB: Weigl
Educational Association, 2003; Brown, Wallace. The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the
American Revolution. New York: William Morrow, 1973; Brown, Wallace. The Kings Friends: The
Composition and Motives of the American Loyalist Claimants. Providence, RI: Brown University
Press, 1965; Nelson, William H. The American Tory. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971; Sabine,
Lorenzo. Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution. Westminster, MD: Heritage
Books, 1998; Van Tyne, Claude Halstead. The Loyalists in the American Revolution. Park Forest,
IL: University Press of the Pacic, 2004; Wallace, W. Stewart. The United Empire Loyalists. Kila,
MT: Kessinger, 2004.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
REVOLUTIONS AND NEW
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
REVOLUTIONS AND NEW
Volume 2 MZ
Edited by Gregory Fremont -Barnes
Greenwood Press
Westport, Connecticut London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of the age of political revolutions and new
ideologies, 1760 1815 / edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 9780313334467 (v.1 : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0313334463 (v.1 : alk. paper)
[etc.]
1. World politicsTo 1900Encyclopedias. 2. EuropePolitics and
government18th centuryEncyclopedias. 3. EuropePolitics and
government1789 1815Encyclopedias. 4. RevolutionsHistory
Encyclopedias. 5. Antislavery movementsHistoryEncyclopedias.
I. Fremont-Barnes, Gregory.
D295.E53 2007
909.703dc22 2007018269
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 2007 by Gregory Fremont-Barnes
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007018269
ISBN-13: 978 0 313 33445 0 (set)
ISBN-10: 0 313 33445 5
ISBN-13: 978 0 313 33446 7 (vol. 1)
ISBN-10: 0 313 33446 3
ISBN-13: 978 0 313 33447 4 (vol. 2)
ISBN-10: 0 313 334471
First published in 2007
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Volume 1
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
List of Entries xxi
List of Primary Documents xxvii
Guide to Related Topics xxix
Chronology for the Age of Political Revolutions
and New Ideologies, 1760 1815 xxxvii
Maps xliii
The Encyclopedia, AL 1438
Volume 2
List of Entries vii
List of Primary Documents xiii
Guide to Related Topics xv
Maps xxiii
The Encyclopedia, MZ 439784
vi Contents
Bibliography 815
Index 839
LIST OF ENTRIES
Abolitionists
LAccusateur Public
Adams, John (1735 1826)
Adams, Samuel (17221803)
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia (17771825)
(1775 1781)
(1789 1792)
Anarchists
Ancien Rgime
Anti-Clericalism
Anti-Jacobin
Comte d (17571836)
Assembly of the Known and Veriable Rep-
resentatives of the French Nation
(17921795)
Austria
LAutel de la Patrie
Babeuf, Franois-Noel (1760 1797)
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand (1755 1841)
(1755 1829)
Barr, Isaac (1726 1802)
Batavian Republic (1795 1806)
Belgium
Bertier de Sauvigny, Louis-Benige-Franois
(17371789)
Marquis de (1744 1818)
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicholas
(1756 1819)
Blackstone, Sir William (1723 1780)
Bland, Richard (1710 1776)
Comte (1756 1826)
Bolvar, Simn (1783 1830)
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte
de (1754 1840)
Brissotins
Britain
Bull, William (1710 1791)
Burke, Edmund (1729 1797)
Butler, John (1728 1796)
(1760 1794)
Cachet, Lettres de
Cadoudal, Georges (17711804)
viii List of Entries
Cahiers de Dolances
(1753 1824)
Cambon, Pierre-Joseph (1756 1820)
Canada
Carroll, Charles (17371832)
(1729 1796)
Chase, Samuel (17411811)
(1708 1778)
Chouans
Cisalpine Republic (17971802)
Citizen
Citizenship
Civic Oaths
Civil Code
Cockades
Concordat (1801)
Caritat, Marquis de (1743 1794)
Connecticut
Connolly, John (1750 c. 1798)
(United States, 1787)
Consulate (1799 1804)
Continental Army
(17681793)
Cordeliers Club
(1735 1813)
Currency Act (1764)
Danton, Georges-Jacques (1759 1794)
David, Jacques-Louis (17481825)
of Taking Up Arms (1775)
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen (1789)
Desmoulins, Camille (1760 1794)
Diderot, Denis (1713 1784)
The Directory (1795 1799)
Duane, James (1733 1797)
Duer, William (1743 1799)
(1739 1817)
Duport, Adrien (1759 1798)
Dutch Revolutions (1780 1848)
Emigrs
LEncyclopdie (Diderot and dAlembert,
17511765)
Enghien, Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-
Cond, Duc d (17721804)
Enlightenment
Equality
Estates-General
The Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison,
and Jay; 17871788)
Feuillants
List of Entries ix
Fiefs
First Consul
First Estate
Fouch, Joseph (1763 1820)
(1746 1795)
Fox, Charles James (1749 1806)
France
Francis II, Emperor of Austria (17681835)
Franklin, Benjamin (1706 1790)
(17121786)
Gallicanism
Galloway, Joseph (c. 17311803)
(1763 1834)
Gens de Couleur
George III, King of Great Britain
(17381820)
Georgia
Girondins
Goddard, Mary Katherine (17381816)
La Grande Chambre
Guadeloupe
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace (17381814)
Guillotine
Hamilton, Alexander (1755 1804)
Hbertistes
(1770 1831)
Henry, Patrick (1736 1799)
(1759 1794)
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel (1753 1811)
Hispaniola
(1723 1789)
Hopkinson, Francis (1739 1791)
Htel des Invalides
Idologues
India
Ireland
Isnard, Henri Maximin (17581825)
Italy
Jacobins
Jamaica
Jansenism
Jay, John (1745 1829)
Jeanbon Saint-Andr, Andr (1749 1813)
Jefferson, Thomas (1743 1826)
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
(17411790)
Josephine, Empress of France (1763 1814)
Journes
Juries
(1766 1826)
Kentucky
King, Rufus (1755 1827)
Lacombe, Claire, (1765 c. 1798)
Motier, Marquis de (17571834)
La Lanterne
de (17511830)
Lameth, Alexandre-Thodore-Victor,
Comte de (1760 1829)
(1753 1827)
Comte de (17721794)
x List of Entries
(1739 1824)
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Gui (1754 1794)
Lee, Arthur (1740 1792)
Lon, Pauline (. 1793 1794)
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
(17471792)
Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis Michel
(1760 1793)
(17421792)
Leve en Masse
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert (1746 1825)
Lindet, Robert-Thomas (1743 1823)
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri (1736 1794)
(1770 1828)
Livingston, Philip (1716 1778)
Livingston, William (1723 1790)
Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles
(17271794)
London Corresponding Society (LCS)
(17921799)
Louis XVI, King of France (1754 1793)
Louis XVII, King of France (1785 1795)
Louis XVIII, King of France (1755 1824)
(1760 1797)
Loyalists
Mackintosh, Sir James (1765 1832)
Maillard, Stanislas Marie (1763 1794)
Mainmorte
Lamoignon de (17211794)
Mallet du Pan, Jacques (1749 1800)
Malouet, Pierre Victor (1740 1814)
(1755 1793)
Maryland
Mason, George (1725 1792)
Massachusetts
Maury, Jean-Sifrin (1746 1817)
Maximum
McKean, Thomas (1734 1817)
Mricourt, Anne-Josphe Throigne de
(17621817)
(1754 1838)
(17621833)
Metternich, Klemens von (1773 1859)
Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte
de (1749 1791)
Baron de le Brede et de (1689 1755)
Marc, Comte de (1745 1792)
Mounier, Jean Joseph (1758 1806)
The Mountain
Muir, Thomas (1765 1799)
(17271796)
(17321809)
Naples, Kingdom of
Napoleon I (1769 1821)
Napoleonic Wars (1803 1815)
National Assembly
National Guard
Nationalism
Navigation Acts
Nelson, Thomas, Jr. (1738 1789)
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Newspapers (French)
Nobility
Non - Importation Acts
North Carolina
List of Entries xi
The Northwest
Notables
October Days (1789)
Ogden, James (17181802)
Orlans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d
(17471793)
Thought on
Owen, Robert (17711858)
Paca, William (1740 1799)
Pamphlets (French)
Paoli, Pasquale (1725 1807)
Papacy
Parlements
Parliament
Patrie en Danger
Patriotism
Pennsylvania
Philosophes
Physiocrats
Pinckney, Thomas (1750 1828)
Pitt, William (the Younger) (1759 1806)
Pius VII, Pope (17421823)
The Plain
Thought on
Polish Revolts (17681772, 1794)
Pownall, Thomas (17721805)
Price, Richard (1723 1791)
Primary Assemblies
Privileges
Pugachev Rebellion (1773 1775)
Quebec Act (1774)
(1743 1793)
Randolph, Edmund (1753 1813)
Reign of Terror (1793 1794)
Religion
Republicanism
Revenue Act (1766)
Revere, Paul (1735 1818)
Revolution
Rhode Island
Rivington, James (1724 1802)
Isidore (17581794)
Marquess of (1730 1782)
Roland, Marie-Jeanne Philipon (1754 1793)
(1734 1793)
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul (1763 1845)
Rule of Law
Rush, Benjamin (1746 1813)
Thought on
Rutledge, Edward (1749 1800)
Rutledge, John (1739 1800)
(17671794)
Saint-Simonism
Salons
Sans-Culottes
(1759 1805)
Seabury, Samuel (1729 1796)
Second Estate
Senate
(1748 1833)
xii List of Entries
Smith, Adam (1723 1790)
Smith, William (1728 1793)
Sons of Liberty
South Carolina
Spain
Spence, Thomas (1750 1814)
Stal, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker,
Madame de (1766 1817)
Stamp Act (1765)
Suffrage (American)
Suffrage (French)
Sugar Act (1764)
(1745 1838)
Tea Act (1773)
Thermidorians
Third Estate
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805 1859)
Tone, Theobald Wolfe (1763 1798)
Tories
Toussaint lOuverture (1743 1803)
Townshend, Charles (1725 1767)
Trumbull, Jonathan (1710 1785)
Tryon, William (1729 1788)
LAulne (17271781)
Ultramontanism
Ultras
Vendan Rebellion (1793 1796)
(1719 1787)
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien (1753 1793)
Virginia
Washington, George (17321799)
Whigs
White Terror (1815 1816)
Wilberforce, William (1759 1833)
Wilkes, John (1725 1797)
Wilson, James (17421798)
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759 1797)
Women (American)
Women (French)
Wyvill, Christopher (17381822)
Young, Thomas (17311777)
LIST OF PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
4. Circular Letter of the Boston Committee of Correspondence (May 13, 1774)
5. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress (October 14, 1774)
7. Tennis Court Oath ( June 20, 1789)
9. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (August 26, 1789)
11. Decree Abolishing Hereditary Nobility and Titles ( June 19, 1790)
13. Decree for the Maintenance of Public Order ( June 21, 1791)
14. Decree Upon the Oath of Allegiance ( June 22, 1791)
16. Brunswick Manifesto ( July 25, 1792)
20. Decree upon Religious Toleration (December 8, 1793; 18 Frimaire, Year II)
GUIDE TO RELATED TOPICS
Austria
Austria
Francis II
Joseph II
Leopold II
Metternich, Clemens Lothar Wenzel,
Count
Battles
Lexington and Concord, Actions at
Valmy, Battle of
Waterloo, Battle of
Yorktown, Capitulation at
Britain and Ireland
Barr, Isaac
Britain
Burke, Edmund
Cobbett, William
Eden, Sir Robert
Emmet, Robert
Enlightenment
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward
Flood, Henry
Fox, Charles James
Gage, Thomas
Grattan, Henry
Hume, David
India
Juries
Locke, John
London Corresponding Society
Lowndes, Rawlins
Mackintosh, Sir James
Muir, Thomas
Navigation Acts
Owen, Robert
Paine, Thomas
Parliament
Pitt, William (the Younger)
Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth,
Charles, Marquess of
Smith, Adam
Tone, Theobald Wolfe
Tories
Whigs
Wilkes, John
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Colonial America / United States
Adams, Abigail
Adams, John
Adams, Samuel
Albany Plan of Union
American Revolution
xvi Guide to Related Topics
Bland, Richard
Boston Massacre
Boston Port Act
Boston Tea Party
Bull, William
Butler, John
Campbell, Lord William
Carroll, Charles
Cartwright, John
Chase, Samuel
Church, Benjamin
Coercive Acts
Combination Acts
Common Sense (Paine)
Connolly, John
Continental Army
Continental Association
Currency Act
Declaration of Independence
of Taking Up Arms
Declaratory Act
Dickinson, John
Drayton, William Henry
Duane, James
Duer, William
Dulany, Daniel, Jr.
Dyer, Eliphalet
Eden, Robert
Ellery, William
English Militia Act
The Federalist Papers
Franco-American Alliance
Franklin, Benjamin
Franklin, William
Gage, Thomas
Galloway, Joseph
George III
Georgia
Goddard, Mary Katherine
Godwin, William
Golden Hill, Riot at
Hamilton, Alexander
Hancock, John
Henry, Patrick
Hopkins, Stephen
Hopkinson, Francis
Huntington, Samuel
Hutchinson, Thomas
Jay, John
Jefferson, Thomas
Juries
King, Rufus
Lee, Arthur
Lee, Richard Henry
Livingston, Philip
Livingston, William
Lovell, James
Lowndes, Rawlins
Loyalists
Madison, James
Martin, Josiah
Maryland
Mason, George
Massachusetts
McKean, Thomas
McKinly, John
Mecklenburg Declaration
Morris, Gouverneur
Murray, Judith Sargent
Nelson, Thomas
New England Restraining Act
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
The Northwest
Ogden, James
Olive Branch Petition
Paca, William
Paine, Robert Treat
Paine, Thomas
Parliament
Paterson, William
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney, Thomas
Pownall, Thomas
Price, Richard
Priestley, Joseph
Prohibitory Act
Quartering Act
Guide to Related Topics xvii
Quebec Act
Quincy, Josiah
Randolph, Edmund
Randolph, Peyton
Rankin, William
Revenue Act
Revere, Paul
Rivington, James
Rush, Benjamin
Rutledge, Edward
Rutledge, John
Seabury, Samuel
Sherman, Roger
Signers of the Declaration of
Independence
Solemn League and Covenant
Sons of Liberty
South Carolina
Spence, Thomas
Stamp Act
Stamp Act Congress
Stockton, Richard
Suffolk Resolves
Suffrage (American)
Sugar Act
Tea Act
Townshend, Charles
Townshend Acts
Trumbull, Jonathan
Tryon, William
Virginia
Virginia Resolves
Washington, George
Wilson, James
Women (American)
Wright, James
Wyvill, Christopher
Yates, Abraham
Young, Thomas
France
Abolition of the Monarchy
LAccusateur Public
Anarchists
Ancien Rgime
Anti-Clericalism
Anti-Jacobin
Comte d
LAutel de la Patrie
Babeuf, Franois-Noel
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand
Barnave, Antoine
Bastille, Fall of the
Bertier de Sauvigny Louis-Benige-Franois
Marquis de
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicolas
Comte
Vicomte de
Brissot de Warville, Jean-Pierre
Brissotins
Cachet, Lettres de
Cadoudal, Georges
Cahiers de Dolances
Cambon, Pierre-Joseph
Camus, Armand Gaston
Carnot, Lazare
Carrier, Jean-Baptiste
Chapeliers Law
Chaumette, Pierre Gaspard
Chnier, Marie-Joseph-Blaise
La Chouannerie
Chouans
Citizen
Civic Oaths
Civil Code
Clubs (French)
Cockades
Collot dHerbois, Jean Marie
Concordat
Caritat, Marquis de
xviii Guide to Related Topics
Consulate
Cordeliers Club
Couthon, Georges Auguste
Danton, Georges-Jacques
David, Jacques-Louis
the Citizen
Le Dfenseur de la Constitution
Desmoulins, Camille
The Directory
Ducos, Pierre-Roger
Duport, Adrien
Edict of Versailles
Emigrs
L Encyclopdie
Bourbon-Cond, Duc d
Enlightenment
Estates-General
Etranger, Conspiration de l
Fte de lEtre Suprme
Feuillants
Fiefs
First Consul
First Estate
Fouch, Joseph
Fouquier -Tinville, Antoine Quentin
French Revolution
Frron, Louis-Stanislas
Gens de Couleur
Gensonn, Armand
Girondins
La Grande Chambre
Grgoire, Henri
Guadet, Marguerite-Elie
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace
Guillotine
Hanriot, Franois
Hbert, Jacques
Hbertistes
Hostages, Law of
Htel des Invalides
Idologues
Isnard, Henri Maximin
Jacobins
Jeanbon, Saint-Andr, Andr
Journes
Lacombe, Claire
Motier, Marquis de
La Lanterne
Lally-Tollendal, Tromphime-Grard,
Marquis de
Lameth, Alexandre-Theodor-Victor,
Comte de
Comte de
Law of Suspects
Law of 22 Prairial
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Gui
Lon, Pauline
Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, Louis Michel
Leve en Masse
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert
Lindet, Robert-Thomas
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri
Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles de
Louis XVI
Louis XVII
Louis XVIII
Maillard, Stanislas Marie
Mainmorte
Malesherbes, Chrtien-Guillaume de
Lamoignon de
Mallet du Pan, Jacques
Malouet, Pierre Victor
Marat, Jean-Paul
Marie Antoinette
Maury, Jean-Sifrin
Maximum
Mricourt, Ann Josphe Throigne de
Michaud, Joseph Franois
Comte de
Guide to Related Topics xix
Marc, Comte de
Mounier, Jean Joseph
The Mountain
Napoleon I
National Assembly
National Convention
National Guard
Necker, Jacques
Newspapers (French)
Nobility
Notables
October Days
Orange, Commission of
Orlans, Louis Philippe, Joseph, Duc d
Pamphlets (French)
Parlements
Patrie en Dange r
Peltier, Jean-Gabriel
Ption de Villeneuve, Jrme
Philosophes
Physiocrats
The Plain
Prairial Insurrection
Prieur de la Marne
Primary Assemblies
Privileges
Reign of Terror
Republicanism
Revolution
Isidore de
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul
Saint-Simonism
Salons
Sans-Culottes
Second Estate
September Massacres
Stal, Anne-Louis Germaine Necker,
Madame de
Suffrage (French)
Tallien, Jean Lambert
Tennis Court Oath
Thermidorian Reaction
Thermidorians
Third Estate
LAulne
Ultramontanism
Ultras
Valmy, Battle of
Varennes, Flight to
Vendan Rebellion
Vendmiaire, Rising of
Vergniaud, Pierre -Victurnien
White Terror
Women (French)
Legislation: Colonial America
Coercive Acts
Combination Acts
Currency Act
Declaratory Act
English Militia Act
Navigation Acts
Prohibitory Act
Quartering Act
Quebec Act
Revenue Act
Stamp Act
Townshend Acts
National Leaders
Bolvar, Simn
Francis II
George III
Joseph II, Emperor
Josephine, Empress
Leopold II, Emperor
Louis XVI
Louis XVIII
Marie Antoinette
Napoleon I
xx Guide to Related Topics
Marquess of
Washington, George
Nations and Regions
Austria
Batavian Republic
Belgium
Britain
Canada
Cisalpine Republic
France
Guadeloupe
Hispaniola
India
Ireland
Italy, Impact of Revolutionary Ideas on
Jamaica
Naples, Kingdom of
Thought on
Parthenopean Republic
Thought on
Polish Constitution
Polish Revolts
Prussia and Germany, Impact of Revolu-
tionary Thought on
Spain, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Poland
Thought on
Polish Constitution
Polish Revolts
Political Institutions, Parties,
Clubs, and Factions
Articles of Confederation
Brissotins
Clubs (French)
Congress, United States
Consulate
The Directory
Estates-General
Feuillants
First Estate
Girondins
House of Representatives
Idologues
Jacobins
The Mountain
National Assembly
National Convention
Parlements
Parliament
The Plain
Primary Assemblies
Revolution
Sans-Culottes
Second Estate
Senate
Thermidorians
Third Estate
Tories
Ultras
Whigs
Political Thought, Concepts, and
Thinkers
Anarchists
Anti-Clericalism
Burke, Edmund
Citizen
Citizenship
Diderot, Denis
LEncyclopdie
Enlightenment
Equality
Gallicanism
Guide to Related Topics xxi
Hume, David
Idologues
Jansenism
Kant, Immanuel
Locke, John
Nationalism
Patriotism
Philosophes
Physiocrats
Republicanism
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Rule of Law
Saint-Simonism
Suffrage (American)
Suffrage (French)
Ultramontanism
Voltaire, Franois Marie
Prussia and Germany
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
Frederick II (the Great)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Kant, Immanuel
Religion and Religious Affairs
Anti-Clericalism
Concordat
Fte de lEtre Suprme
Papacy
Pius VI, Pope
Pius VII, Pope
Religion
Revolutions and Revolutionaries
(Other than France and America)
Bolvar, Simn
Dutch Revolution
Haitian Revolution
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel
Mexican Revolution
Paoli, Pasquale
Pugachev Rebellion
San Martn, Jos de
Russia
Catherine II, Empress
Pugachev Rebellion
Thought on
Slavery
Abolitionists
Haitian Revolution
Hispaniola
States of the United States
Connecticut
Georgia
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Virginia
MAPS
M
Mackintosh, Sir James (17651832)
Born the son of a Scottish army ofcer, James Mackintosh declared himself a
Whig while still a schoolboy, and he remained one until his death. A graduate of
Kings College, Aberdeen, he later graduated with degrees in medicine from the
University of Edinburgh and in law from the Middle Temple in London. A great ad-
mirer of Cicero, he was a graceful writer and speaker, and a very sociable man who
belonged to a succession of leading literary, debating, and social clubs wherever he
lived. He had a wide range of friends and acquaintances who shared his reforming
aims and liberal opinions. From 1788 he began a long career in journalism, writ-
ing over many years for leading newspapers and reviews. He wrote on politics, sup-
porting the Whig case in Parliament; defending the liberty of the press; attacking
slavery, capital punishment, and cruelty to animals; and showing sympathy for the
United States in the War of 1812, Latin American claims for independence, and the
rights of French Canadians.
In April 1791 he published Vindiciae Gallicae: A Defence of the French Revolution and
Its English Admirers in response to Edmund Burkes Reections on the Revolution in
France. It is regarded as second only to Thomas Paines Rights of Man as a response to
Burke. In it, Mackintosh provided moderate reformers with an eloquent statement
of the need for reform in Britain as well as in France. It did more than Paines work
to expose the weaknesses in Burkes arguments and evidence. More moderate than
Paine, Mackintosh expressed his desire to avert revolution by reform. A visit to
France after the September Massacres of 1792 led to his gradual disillusionment
with the French Revolution. Mackintosh wrote a favorable review of Burkes rst
two Letters on a Regicide Peace, and in late 1796, he visited Burkes home to express
his veneration for Burkes general principles. He also expressed his admiration
for Burke in A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations (1799) and in
lectures at the Inns of Court in 1799 and 1800.
Mackintosh was attacked for his apostasy, but he was never a democrat but rather a
moderate, liberal reformer. At the end of 1803 he was appointed a judge in Bombay
and was knighted before he sailed for India. He served in Bombay from 1804 to 1811,
440 Madison, James
trying to reform the police, the penal law, and the prison system. He resisted impos-
ing the death penalty as much as possible, and he tried to treat all men the same,
whatever their race or status. From 1813 to his death he served in Parliament as a
Whig MP, actively supporting a host of liberal causes. He was a committed supporter
of both Catholic emancipation and the great but moderate parliamentary reform bills
of 18311832. In 1818 he was appointed professor of law and general politics at the
East India Company College, Haileybury, and he retained his interest in a wide range
of intellectual pursuits. He produced a Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy
(1830), which was critical of utilitarianism and stressed the primacy of conscience. In
1829 he started a History of England, to be published in parts in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia.
He wrote four volumes but failed to complete the project before he died in 1832. His
extensive notes were passed on to T. B. Macaulay, who drew on them heavily for his
own famous History of England. See also Latin American Revolutions; Whigs.
FURTHER READING: Haakonssen, Knud. The Science of a Legislator in James Mackintoshs
Moral Philosophy. History of Political Thought 5 (1984): 24580; Mackintosh, Robert J. Memoirs
of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh. 2 vols. Boston, 1853; OLeary, Patrick. Sir
James Mackintosh: The Whig Cicero. Aberdeen, UK: Mercat Press, 1989.
H. T. DICKINSON
James Madison, the oldest of ten children of a wealthy landowning family, was born
on March 16, 1751 in Port Conway, Virginia. One of the most inuential members of
the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he was instrumental in securing the call for
the meeting in Philadelphia and in winning ratication of the charter of government
it produced. In the proceedings, Madison advocated the Virginia Plan, which served
as the outline for the nal document. The young nationalists proposal called for
a popularly elected two-house, or bicameral, national legislature; a chief executive
elected by the legislature; and a national judiciary. After considerable debate and
compromise, much of which was recorded in Madisons notes, the Constitution was
approved by the convention, and he threw himself into the battle for ratication by
the states. To help win approval of the pivotal state of New York, Madison, John Jay,
and Alexander Hamilton published articles supporting the United States Constitution
in New York newspapers. These essays are considered collectively one of the greatest
works of political thought, the Federalist Papers, of which Madison wrote 26.
In his essays, most notably numbers 10 and 51, Madison contended that the Con-
stitution was a vast improvement over the ineffectual Articles of Confederation,
partly because it would have a dual source of sovereignty, giving it a federal and
national character. Like the Articles of Confederation, the federal character would
be derived from the states and reected in a senate representing states. But unlike
the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution would allow a national character
to be derived from the people and reected in the lower legislative house elected
directly by the people. Accordingly, the new government would gain authority from
the states and the people and authority to act upon the states and the people.
Madison asserted that a republicin which the peoples wishes are rened and en-
lightened by the collective wisdom and consultation of their gathered representatives,
and that benets from the foremost protection against abuse of power, the people
Madison, James 441
themselvesis the most advanced form of governance. Therefore, without faith in
the good in man, a republic is impossible. He contended, nevertheless, that the Con-
stitution improved on the republican concept by not placing too much trust in man
and therefore providing what he called the auxiliary precautions of the separation
of powers and intricate checks and balances. These precautions, he argued, honestly
recognized and made good use of human nature by channeling the ambition of of-
ceholders in each branch of government to check the encroaching power of the
other branches. In other words, ambition would be used to control ambition.
Madison maintained that the purpose of government is to protect the right to own
property. Yet the principle danger to property rights is factions, often formed because
of the varying sources and levels of property, and used to further agendas that are
sometimes opposed to the interests and rights of others and the common good.
He believed that the impulse to form factions is in human nature and will always exist
in a free society. Since the only way to end factionalism is to end freedom, the goal of
a country valuing liberty must be to inuence its effects. Madison concluded that the
check on an oppressive or self-interested minority faction would be democracy itself,
employed to vote down the minority. The check on a majority faction would be the
size of the new nation, or what he termed the extended republic.
Madison challenged the belief of many, including Montesquieu, that only a small
republic could be successful. Under this orthodoxy, for democracy to work, the peo-
ple must have close inuence on government and be united in their general views
and interestsfeatures only achievable within a small nation. Accordingly, many
opposed to the new Constitution argued that it would be best to divide America into
three or four smaller republics to achieve unity of interest, geography, and thought.
Madison contended the opposite. He responded that the very problem with the ill-
fated ancient republics was that they were too small and thus too easily dominated
by a majority united by self-interest and inclined to oppress minorities and eventu-
ally destroy democracy itself. Madison stated that the United States had found the
solution to the problem of republics by making it difcult, if not impossible, for an
oppressive majority to be forged due to the countrys extensive size and the corre-
sponding complexity of interests or factions.
Madison further maintained that in any republic a determined and long-standing
majority would eventually achieve its aims, no matter how unjust they may be. Yet
under the Constitution, in a large United States of many interests, governing ma-
jorities, motivated by anything other than the common good, would be rare and
short lived, if formed at all. This would be due to the presence of a multitude of in-
terests, differing modes of selection of representatives and other ofcers, and their
staggered terms of ofce of differing lengths. Madison asserted that an oppressive
majority, perhaps fueled by public passions of the moment, would most likely lose
momentum or disintegrate as passions cooled or other interests divided its ranks
with time. This disintegration would take place before any momentary majority
could secure control of all the separate branches of government due to the built-in
delays or pauses of the system. And even before the collapse of such a majority, any
branch of government falling under its dominance would be subject to the checks
of the other independent and uninfected branches.
Furthermore, if an ill-motivated legislative majority were formed, it would be sub-
ject to the hindrance of a bicameral legislature and, in a large republic, would have
difculty preserving its unity to the extent that its more extreme proposals would
442 Maillard, Stanislas Marie
not suffer the moderating inuence of compromise required because of the wide
diversity of interests composing the majority. Accordingly, Madison believed that
the Constitution magnied the benets of a large republic through its structural
tendency to prevent, control, moderate, and break dangerous majorities.
An expansive republic offered other advantages, according to Madison. It would
have a large and diverse legislature that would develop a national perspective tran-
scending unique and petty local concerns, the assemblys membership would be
drawn from a larger pool of talent, and representatives would be elected from such
large districts that the buying of votes or other electoral corruptions would be in-
hibited. And if an oppressive faction should seize a state or region, it would be
incapable of projecting its destructive inuence outward across a large republic of
many interests but would be contained and subject to the remedial inuences and
pressures of the rest of the multi-interested and uncorrupted nation.
Madison believed that the proposed governmental framework was the best protec-
tion for individual liberties. Therefore, during the ratication campaign, he originally
opposed the inclusion of a declaration of specied rights as unnecessary and perilous
to rights not listed. Yet he and other Federalist leaders compromised, and as a leading
member of the rst Congress, Madison crafted and introduced the Bill of Rights.
Finally, in the Federalist Papers, Madison predicted the reverence the Constitu-
tion would gain over time and the resulting benets of national unity, stability, and
adherence to the rule of law. Although in his later political life he joined his friend
Thomas Jefferson in asserting the rights of states, Madison happily saw a nationalist
spirit engulf the United States during his presidency (18091817), particularly fol-
lowing the War of 1812. Sadly, however, he lived to see this unity fade and his nation
descend into a bitter sectionalism he strongly denounced. See also Republicanism.
FURTHER READING: Ketcham, Ralph. James Madison: A Biography. Charlottesville: University
of Virginia Press, 2002; Madison, James. James Madison: Writings. New York: Library of America,
1999; Matthews, Richard K. If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason.
Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995; Miller, William Lee. The Business of May Next: James
Madison and the Founding. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992.
RUSSELL FOWLER
Maillard, Stanislas Marie (17631794)
Stanislas Maillard was a central participant in many of the key events of the French
Revolution during both its moderate and radical phases. During the attack on the
Bastille in July 1789, Maillard was, by some accounts, the man who negotiated his
way along a plank laid across the moat of the fortress, retrieving a written offer
of capitulation from the Bastilles governor. One man fell to his death attempting
to traverse the plank before Maillard purportedly succeeded. Although it remains
unclear whether it was actually Maillard who accomplished this, he nonetheless at-
tained fame because of it.
Maillard again emerged at the center of revolutionary events during the wom-
ens march to Versailles in October 1789. As a bread riot was erupting in Paris on
the morning of October 5, Maillardas a trusted hero of the Bastilleallegedly
suggested to the protesters that they take their grievances directly to the government.
Maillard led a column of thousands of women to Versailles, where he gained an
audience with the National Assembly, while a small group of women likewise spoke
with Louis XVI. Both the king and the legislature promised to endeavor to supply
Paris with sufcient quantities of food, and Maillard returned to Paris to deliver
their statements in that regard to city ofcials.
Later, Maillard played a prominent role in the September Massacres of 1792, in
which imprisoned alleged enemies of the Revolution were murdered in a concerted
assault upon various prisons. At the Abbaye, a seventeenth-century military prison
in Paris, Maillard presided over a hastily assembled tribunal that determined the
guilt or innocence of the accused in cursory hearings. Maillaird was arrested during
the Reign of Terror but was not among the thousands executed on the guillotine,
for he died of tuberculosis in 1794.
FURTHER READING: Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. New York: Random
House, 2002; Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution. New York: Quill, 1999.
ADAM C. STANLEY
Mainmorte
Mainmorte refers to a type of land used in ancien rgime Europe, in particular
the status of land held by the church and other institutions, rather than private
ownership.
As the church is a corporate body that continues to exist as its members come
and go, it never dies, and the land that it holds is virtually lost to the market of sale
and resale, as if it were held by a dead hand (main morte). This land was thus not
only exempt from taxation and feudal dues but was also a source of deprivation
to the local economy (on average, 610% of land in a locality was exempt). On a
human level, moreover, the inhabitants of such lands continued to be subject to the
same unchanging rules that had been in place since the Middle Ages. Described
as mainmortable, such people represented the last vestiges of serfdom in western
Europe: they were unable to sell their property without paying heavy feudal duties
and were unable to pass on their property to their kin unless their heirs were direct
descendants, and already living on the site.
Mainmorte was therefore one of the rst targets singled out for abolition by re-
formers in eighteenth-century France. As early as 1749, a royal edict required autho-
rization by Parlement for the acquisition of property by the clergy and prohibited
testamentary bequests to them. Similar legislation was passed in Spain, where the
practice was even more widespread. In the 1770s, Voltaire himself led the crusade
against the institution in the eastern provinces of France, where it was most preva-
lent (estimated to take place in about one-third of all villages). The Physiocrats saw
it as one of the worst blocks to the importation of capitalist practices to agriculture,
as a system in which change was next to impossible. In 1779, Louis XVI abolished
the practice in lands owned by the crown and strongly encouraged the nobility to
do the same all across France.
FURTHER READING: Baur, Grard. Property. In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Michel
Delon. Vol. II. Translated by Philip Stewart and Gwen Wells. Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn, 2001;
Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 15891789. Vol. 1.
Translated by Brian Pearce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
Mainmorte 443
444 Malesherbes, Chrtien Guillaume de Lamoignon de
Malesherbes, Chrtien Guillaume de Lamoignon de (17211794)
Born into a prominent family and trained as a lawyer, Malasherbes succeeded
his father as president of the cour des aides in the Parlement of Paris in 1850. He was
later appointed director of the press, the nations censor, under his father, who had
become chancellor of France. Malasherbes liberal policies and sympathetic attitude
toward literary gures such as Diderot allowed for publication of the Encyclopdie.
A reformer, Malasherbes attempted to introduce reforms under the reigns of
Louis XV and Louis XVI. In 1771, he was exiled to his country estate for opposing
the dissolution of the Parlement. With the accession of Louis XVI, he was recalled
and made minister of state for the royal household. During his nine months in of-
ce Malasherbes devoted considerable energy toward reform of the police. His ef-
forts did much to limit the use of lettres de cachet, sealed communications from the
king that allowed for imprisonment or exile without appeals to the courts. Malasher-
bes protest of the cours des aides of 1775, which offered sharp criticism of the king, is
considered to be among the most important documents of the ancien rgime.
In 1776, disappointed over the failure of the reform program proposed by his
friend A.R.J. Turgot, the comptroller general of nances, Malasherbes resigned his
post. Over the following decade he worked in defense of the civil rights of Protes-
tants and Jews in France before retiring from political life in 1788.
In December 1792, Malasherbes voluntarily ended his asylum and, upon his re-
quest, was appointed, along with Franois Tronchet and Raymond Desze, to the de-
fense of Louis XVI at his trial before the National Convention. In December 1793,
he was arrested as a royalist, along with his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.
On April 23, 1794, Malesherbes was executed by guillotine, having previously been
subjected to the sight of the executions of his children and grandchildren. See also
Parlements.
JEFF SHANTZ
Mallet du Pan, Jacques (17491800)
Mallet du Pan was a Swiss-born political journalist and publicist who clashed with
Napoleon Bonaparte. This is how many contemporary compatriots remembered
Mallet du Pan. Many historians and writers argued that the clash with Napoleon
left Mallet an embittered man. Views of Mallets legacy and stature range from the
highest accolades for being one of Frances most noted journalists (Carla Hesse)
to perceptions of the quality of his publications as pompuous, empty and hollow
(Immanuel Kant).
Mallet was born on November 5, 1749, in Celigny, close to Geneva, the son of
Etienne Mallet, an exemplary and talented Protestant minister, and his wife, Hlne
Rillet. Fleeing from French religious strife and persecution, the majority of the migrs
of Celigny adhered to the Christian beliefs of the Genevan French migr John Cal-
vin. Calvins doctrine of hard work, learningin both the arts and sciencesand the
notion that material wealth was a reward from God found favor with the Mallet fam-
ily. Throughout his childhood years, Mallet adhered to Calvins beliefs.
Mallet du Pan, Jacques 445
Despite their aristocratic genealogy and heritage, Etiennes household income,
according to their grandson, did not exceed 300 a year. The young Mallet lost his fa-
ther at the age of 12. Fortunately, all was not lost for him. Mallet was schooled at the
famous College of Geneva, founded by Calvin. At the age of 15, Mallet graduated to
the University Class, where, thanks to a superior quality of mind, he excelled in phi-
losophy and law. From 1767 to 1770, Mallet witnessed the outbreak of political and
social unrest in Geneva by militant Genevan natifs, sons of inhabitants who for gen-
erations had been deprived of all political privileges in the city. The morality under-
pinning these natifs protests, his love of liberty and respect for justice, would haunt
Mallet, with the result that, at the age of 20, Mallet became a democratic agitator by
writing a pamphlet that instantly became the gospel of the Genevan natifs. Unknow-
ingly, Mallet had turned a corner in his life. Impressed by his early writings, Voltaire,
the most powerful inuence on European thought, invited Mallet to Ferney.
Philosophical and religious questions, more than those of a political nature, were
uppermost in Voltaires mind. In politics, Mallet argued, Voltaire was but a at-
terer. Voltaire did not hide his rejection of Christianity and his hatred of priests
and the sacrament of the mass from Mallet, dAlembert, and Condorcet. Thanks to
the generosity and inuence of Voltaire, the young Mallet secured a professorship
in history and literature at the University of Hesse-Kassel in Germany in 1772. On
April 8, 1772, he delivered his inaugural address, The Inuence of the Philosophy
on the Arts, at the university.
On many levels, Voltaire was pleased to note how passionately the young Celigny
lion imitated him, especially in Mallets questioning of certain ideas and practices
of the Christian Church. In a letter addressed to Voltaire in 1772, Mallet wrote
that I shall exhaust all the feeble enlightenment that I owe to you in eradicating
the work of St. Boniface, the eight-century missionary who Christianized Germany.
Moreover, during the height of the French Revolution, Mallet would immerse him-
self in the satanic doctrines of Joseph de Maistre, a well-known Martinist. Yet his
grandson believed that Mallets principles kept him from becoming a convert to the
ideas of the Encyclopedists, to which Voltaire may have hoped to attract him.
Mallet stayed little more than a year at Hesse-Kassel. At the age of 25, he broke
with aristocratic tradition when he married 18-year-old Franoise Vallier, daughter
of Franois Gedeon Vallier. Initially the marriage did not carry the approval of his
fathers family, who would have rather seen him marrying a woman of a superior
class. Still, Mallet was happy: he and his young bride shared a love for the per-
forming arts and for leisure tried their hands at performing some French plays,
one being the Gageure imprvue of Sedaine. In 1775 Mallet published an essay en-
titled Doutes sur lloquence an attack on the political and economic regimes of
northern Europe. Like his 1771 debut work, the essay had one signicant result: it
brought him into contact with Simon-Henry Linquet, one of the most prominent
gures in France during this era.
For the next two years Mallet assisted Linquet in the production of the Annales
politques, civiles et littraires du XVIIIe sicle. Mallet managed the Swiss version and
contributed much valuable matter, especially on economic subjects. Mallet held
Jacques Neckers nancial administration in high regard, but the professional
partnership between Linquet and Mallet was doomed. As a result, Mallet had no
alternative but to try his hand at his own publication, entitled Mmoires historiques.
Rumors of secret British support and that he was a British spymaster surfaced.
446 Mallet du Pan, Jacques
At this time Mallet incorporated his Mmoires historiques with the Mercure de France,
a famous Parisian gazette and literacy magazine that had been founded by the writer
Jean Donneau de Vis in 1672.
Mallet designated himself a contemporary historian and continued to appeal
to the conscience of his readers with such works as his discussion of the hypo-
critical treatment of European Jews. Mallet set out to justify the Inquisition along
with a new indictment of Galileo, claiming that Galileo had been condemned not
for being a good (Copernican) astronomer but for being a bad theologian who
tried to support astronomical propositions with biblical statements. The French
nobles took little, if any interest, in Galileo. Rather, they were hungry to know more
about court life under Louis XVI. Mallet moved intimately within court circles in
general and the humanitarian-spirited king and his Austrian-born queen, Marie
Antoinette, in particular. What Voltaire succeeded in achieving at the court of the
Prussian king, Frederick II, might have served as a stimulus for Mallets visits to
the palace of Versailles. Indeed, Mallet was popular at court, where he regularly
interacted with royal ministers. Mallet also seems to have had restricted access to
the king and queen.
In 1782, Mallets debut essay of 1771 came back to haunt him. In April 1782 an
almost bloodless revolution took place in Geneva when an armed mob threw the
senatorial party and their associates into prison and set about ransacking the city.
These events disillusioned Mallet with republican governments and taught him a
lesson in democracy.
What Mallet failed to nd in Linquet he found in Charles-Joseph Panckoucke,
a writer and publisher who offered Mallet the editorship of the Journal historique
et politique de Genve. Mallet would tirelessly manage this publication for the next
10 years, visiting prisons and institutions of all kinds. Mallet marveled at the politi-
cal challenges of his journal. He set out popularizing Adam Smiths theory of free
trade. Mallet labeled Smith the most profound and philosophical of all the meta-
physical writers who have dealt with economic matters. He applauded the growth
of religious tolerance in Europe.
Mallets admiration for Britain in general and her political system in particular was
evident. Mallet chose Britain as the place of education for his eldest son, John Lewis.
During the 1780s Mallet continued to press the French government into accepting
the offer made by British prime minister William Pitt the Younger of a treaty that
would require France to forfeit important scal policies. Unashamedly, the Swiss-
born Mallet put the nearly bankrupt and politically vulnerable France at the mercy
of Britains free-trade policies. To add salt to the wound, most European banking
houses, led by the Swiss, promptly refused credit to the cash-stricken French govern-
ment. Louis XVI had no alternative but to sign the Anglo-French treaty commercial
treaty. The British trade war began almost immediately: they dumped cheap British
manufactures on the French market and cut off the supply of vital Spanish wool.
Mallet and the Mercure did not go uncensored. Indeed, the French government
continued to exercise strict controls over all pf Mallets published political opin-
ions. Within a few months of the French Revolution, the abb Auger, a government
censor, cut up one of Mallets manuscripts and suppressed his remarks on political
affairs in Holland. Under the comte de Montmorin, who succeeded Vergennes as
foreign minister, Mallets position became even more difcult.
Malouet, Pierre Victor 447
With the return of fellow Genevan Jacques Necker as the new minister of nance
at the end of 1788, Mallet could reposition himself. Necker and Mallet conspired
against the spread of Benjamin Franklins American economic and constitutional
ideas. In January 1789, as Franklins supporters prepared to introduce the United
States Constitution to France, Mallet, in an article that would see Voltaire reeling
with joy, highlighted Britains turbulent history, not least the period of the Civil War,
and suggested that France might face a similar future.
Throughout the French Revolution, Mallet propagated his royalist sentiments.
After Easter 1791, at a time when Louis XVIs safety at the Tuileries was entrusted
to the Swiss Guard and the tone of the French radical press was growing ever more
hostile and suspicious, Mallet was instructed by the king to visit Frankfurt to secure
the sympathy and intervention of royalist German states. From Germany, Mallet
was to travel to Switzerland and then to Brussels. However, Mallets missions proved
fruitless, and Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793.
Mallet was relentless in his efforts to describe precisely how events developed after
the death of the king. He published a number of anti-revolutionary pamphlets, and
a ruthless attack on Bonaparte and the Directory led to his exile to Bern in 1797. In
1798 he moved to London, where he founded the Mercure Britannique. He died at Rich-
mond, Surrey, on May 10, 1800. His wife was pensioned by the British government.
FURTHER READING: Collison, Robert. Encyclopaedias: Their History throughout the Ages. 2nd
ed. New York: Hafner, 1966; Darton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History
of the Encyclopdie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; Du Pan, Bernard. Jacques
Mallet du Pan and the French Revolution. London, 1902; Grant, G., and W. Temperley. A History
of Western Europe, 17891905. London: Longman, 1984; Legg, L. G. Wickham. Select Documents
Illustrative of the History of the French Revolution. Vol. 2. London, 1905; Palmer, R. R. The Coming
of the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947; Tocqueville, Alexis de.
The Old Regime and the French Revolution. London: Doubleday, 1955.
RAYMOND ANTHONY VAN DIEMEL
Malouet, Pierre Victor (17401814)
Pierre Victor Malouet was a prominent supporter of moderate monarchism dur-
ing the French Revolution. Born in Rioms, Malouet began a career in royal admin-
istration in 1758 and held posts in the colonies before becoming naval intendant at
Toulon in 1781. He was elected a representative of the Third Estate to the Estates-
General in 1789 and favored reforms to rationalize institutions and abolish aristo-
cratic privilege under a strong monarchy. As one of the monarchiens in the National
Assembly, Malouet supported the constitutional proposals of Jean Joseph Mounier
calling for a royal veto and a two-house legislature. In 1790, he founded the Club
des Impartiaux to identify the cause of monarchy with the Revolution. Malouet
opposed the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, fearing disorder in the colo-
nies and harm to Frances economy. He ed to England after August 10, 1792, but
his moderation was unpopular with many migrs. Malouet returned to France in
1801, held administrative posts under Napoleon, and became minister of marine in
May 1814 under the restored Louis XVIII but served less than four months before
his death.
448 Marat, Jean-Paul
FURTHER READING: Grifths, Robert. Pierre-Victor Malouet and the Monarchiens in
the French Revolution and Counter-Revolution. PhD thesis, University of British Columbia,
1975; Hampson, Norman. Prelude to Terror: The Constituent Assembly and the Failure of Consensus,
17891791. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
WILLIAM S. CORMACK
Manseld, Earl of
See Murray, David, Earl of Manseld
A prominent French revolutionary, journalist, and scientist, Jean-Paul Marat was
born to a family of Sardinian descent at Boudry, near Neuchtel, Switzerland, on
April 13, 1742. His father, Giovanni Marra, was a local physician who ed his native
Sardinia because of his Protestant faith and took up residence in Neuchtel. Young
Marat was the eldest of three sonsone brother pursued a career as a watchmaker
in Geneva, while the youngest sibling, David, immigrated to Russia, where, under
the title of chevalier de Boudry, he worked as a private tutor and taught French at
the Imperial Lyce.
Despite his weak and sensitive disposition, Marat excelled in classical studies and
pursued a career in medicine, which he studied at the University of Bordeaux. He
honed his skills in optics and electricity and later traveled to Paris, where he earned
a reputation for curing eye diseases. After traveling to Amsterdam, Marat visited
London, where he settled and opened a practice. Among his many acquaintances
was Benjamin Franklin, with whom Marat conducted optical experiments. He con-
tinued to travel frequently, visiting Ireland, Scotland and France. While in Lon-
don, he published his rst major book, A Philosophical Essay on Man (17721773), in
which he discussed the relation between body and mind and demonstrated his wide
knowledge of classical literature as well as contemporary works of French, German,
Italian, and Spanish writers. He criticized Claude Adrien Helvtius, a prominent
French philosophe, for his claim that knowledge of science was unnecessary for
a philosopher. Marats criticism drew a response from Voltaire, who wrote a sharp
critique of Marats work. Undaunted, in 1774 Marat published his new work, The
Chains of Slavery, in which he voiced his criticism of the British government. In 1775,
he was given an honorary medical degree from the University of St. Andrews. In
1777, Marat was hired as a physician to the guards of the comte dArtois, who was
brother to Louis XVI and later became King Charles X. Over the next 10 years,
Marat practiced medicine and wrote a number of treatises on medical subjects, in-
cluding eye diseases, as well as on optics and electricity. The French Royal Academy
of Sciences praised his Rcherches physiques sur llectricit and awarded him a prize for
his Mmoires sur llectricit mdicale in 1783.
In 1787, Marat retired from the comte dArtois employment and pursued a pri-
vate practice. He completed a new translation of Newtons Opticks (1787) and wrote
Mmoires acadmiques, ou nouvelles dcouvertes sur la lumire (1788), which explained
new discoveries about light. Some historians argue that Marats failure to be elected
to the Royal Academy of Sciences had a negative effect on him and caused him to
imagine enemies around him and to challenge the established order.
Marat, Jean-Paul 449
Marat followed the political events unfolding in France in 17871788 and gradu-
ally became actively involved in them. In early 1789, he published Offrande la
Patrie, the rst of his many political pamphlets, in which he denounced govern-
ment corruption and urged unity among the people in his cause. In the rst part of
his pamphlet, Marat argued that the monarchy was still capable of solving existing
problems and criticized those advocating the British system of government. How-
ever, in a supplement printed several months later, he expressed more critical and
radical ideas. He continued to produce political works throughout the summer of
1789 and was among the mob that stormed the Bastille fortress on July 14. He pub-
lished one issue of Le Moniteur Patriote and pamphlets entitled La Constitution and
Plan de legislation criminelle, which revealed his political ideas based on Jean-Jacques
Rousseaus works. On September 8, 1789, Marat began publishing a new journal
entitled Le Publiciste Parisien, which carried his favorite epigram, Vitam impendre Vero
(Spend Life in the Cause of Truth). One week later, the journal title was changed to
LAmi du Peuple, a name that became a nom de guerre for Marat.
LAmi de Peuple proved to be a successful and inuential publication, turning
Marat into an inuential voice that advocated radical democratic measures. His
journal sought to comment on almost every event, and its size varied according on
the circumstances of the moment. Marat was not a powerful speaker like Georges
Jean Paul Marat. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
450 Marat, Jean-Paul
Danton, but he was very eloquent with a quill in hand, writing in a language and
style that was accessible to common people. Marat refused to join any party but
rather remained always suspicious of whoever was in power. To him, the governing
bureaucracies were inherently opposed to the popular interest that Marat sought to
protect. Claiming to be reecting the opinions of the sans-culottes, he launched vit-
riolic attacks against the Constituent Assembly, ministers, the Parisian municipality,
and anyone else he suspected. He called for preventive measures against aristocrats,
whom he suspected of plotting to subvert the Revolution. In October, he claimed
that the royal court was a nest of counterrevolutionary intrigue and urged Pari-
sians to march on Versailles. His agitation contributed to the events of the October
Days (October 56, 1789), when the Parisian mob attacked the Versailles palace and
forced the royal family to move to Paris.
As Marats popularity increased, the government sought to undermine his repu-
tation by circulating spurious issues of his journal, which were excessively gory and
travestied in content. Following his attack on Jacques Necker and some members
of the Paris Commune, Marat was denounced in October 1789 and went into hiding
for a month. Despite persecution, he continued his critique of the government, was
denounced in January 1790, and narrowly escaped arrest by eeing to London.
In the safety of the British capital, Marat continued writing his pamphlets, attack-
ing various political gures, and after returning to Paris in May 1790, he produced
several issues of his popular journal. He warned against the aristocratic migrs who
were scheming to suppress the monarchy and declared to his readers that ve or six
hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom, and happiness.
In August 1790, after the suppression of a naval mutiny at Nancy, Marat attacked the
reputation of Louis XVI himself. Nevertheless, Marat still believed in the principle
of a constitutional monarchy and was reluctant to embrace republican idealsuntil
the royal familys failed ight to Varennes in June 1791 made him change his mind.
He declared that the king was unworthy of holding the throne and denounced the
National Assembly for refusing to depose him.
In response to Marats continuing barrage of criticism, the Assembly outlawed
his paper and requested his arrest, forcing Marat into hiding in the summer of
1791. In September the ofce of LAmi du Peuple was ransacked, and two months
later Marat ed to London once more, where he produced his two-volume work
Ecole du citoyen. In April 1792, the Cordeliers Club invited him to return to Paris,
where he resumed printing his journal after four months suspension. He also mar-
ried Simonne Evrard, the sister-in-law of Jean Antoine Corne, the typographer of
LAmi du Peuple.
With the start of the war in the spring of 1792, Marat found himself at odds with
the governing Girondin party, which he criticized in his journal. In May 1792, Marat
was denounced in the Assembly and was forced to go into hiding. Unable to publish
LAmi du Peuple, Marat instead produced a series of pamphlets welcoming the events
of August 10, when the monarchy was overthrown. The next day, he came out of
hiding and resumed publication of his journal. In early September, he became a
member of the Committee of Public Safety and the Commune of Paris. Despite
various claims, he seems to have had no direct connection with the infamous the
September Massacres, when summary executions took place in various Parisian
prisons. However, his radical rhetoric certainly shaped public opinion at the time.
In October, Marat was elected to the National Convention, where he sided with the
Marat, Jean-Paul 451
Montagnard deputies. He suspended publication of LAmi du Peuple and instead
commenced a new venture, the Journal de la Rpublique Franaise.
As a deputy to the Convention, Marat proposed several reforms, including
shorter terms of military service and a graduated income tax. Enjoying support in
the streets of Paris, he quickly became one of the leading Montagnard deputies.
His work, however, was overshadowed by his antagonism with the Girondin party.
The trial and eventual execution of Louis XVI only increased the rift between the
Montagnards and Girondins. Marat likened the kings execution to a religious fes-
tival and believed the event would terrorize the enemies of the Revolution and em-
bolden the genuine patriots.
Throughout the winter and spring of 1793, Marat fought bitterly with the Giron-
dins, whom he believed to be false patriots and covert enemies of republicanism. He
accused them of siding with suspect generals, capitalists, speculators, monopolists,
and merchants of luxury, whom Marat despised. The Girondins accused him of
inammatory rhetoric and demanded his trial by the revolutionary tribunals. How-
ever, in his much-publicized trial in April 1793, Marat was acquitted on all charges
and returned to the Convention with even greater popular support.
This was the climax of his career. In April, he was elected president of the Jacobin
Club. Between May 31 and June 2, Marat played an important role in the Montag-
nard insurrection that resulted in the expulsion of the Girondin deputies from the
Convention. However, a worsening of the skin disease that he had contracted during
his numerous hidings in the Parisian underworld forced him to remain at home,
where he sought to alleviate the discomfort by taking regular hot baths. It was while
sitting in his bathtub on July 13, 1793, that Marat received a young woman named
Charlotte Corday who claimed to have compromising information on the Girondin
deputies. Corday was in fact a Girondin supporter and held Marat responsible for
recent events. Upon entering the bathroom, she stabbed him in the chest. At her
trial two days later, she proudly announced, I killed one man to save 100,000.
Remarkably, Marats assassination became his apotheosis, proved to be a rallying
cause for the Jacobins, and turned Marat into a martyr for the revolutionary cause.
The Jacobins used his state funeral, choreographed by the famous French painter
and fellow Montagnard deputy Jacques-Louis David, to great advantage to create a
cult gure of Marat. David also produced his famous painting of Marat lying dead in
his bathtub. Prints depicting his assassination were popular throughout France. The
assassination seemingly validated the Jacobin claims about traitors within the very
bosom of the nation, where, it was claimed, they posed a far more insidious threat
than the foreign foe. Marats body was rst buried in the Couvent des Cordeliers but
was later transferred to the Panthon. In the wave of outcry against Marats murder,
some towns changed their names to honor him, while Montmartre in Paris became
Mont Marat. The infamous dechristianization campaigns saw Marat converted into
a quasi saint whose busts often replaced religious statues and crucixes in former
churches and whose bloody shirt was likened to a holy shroud. Marats popular-
ity, however, waned after the Thermidorian Reaction of 1795, when the Jacobin
dictatorship was overthrown. In February 1795, Marats cofn was removed from
the Panthon and buried in the cemetery of the Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.
Numerous busts and sculptures of him were destroyed.
Marats name and legacy were and still are hotly debated. To some, he is a radi-
cal revolutionary who thirsted for the blood of traitors. To others, he was a true
452 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
champion of the people. Suspicious and irritable, excitable and sensitive, Marat was
a good-natured and educated man in private but had a violent public persona and
often attacked with exceptional violence. See also The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Conner, Clifford D. Jean Paul Marat: Scientist and Revolutionary. Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997; Coquard, Olivier. Jean-Paul Marat. Paris: Fayard, 1993;
Gottschalk, Louis R. Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1967; Marat, Jean-Paul. uvres politiques, 17891793. Brussels: Pole nord, 19891995.
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (17551793)
A member of the Austrian imperial family, Marie Antoinette was queen of France
during the French Revolution and thus became the scapegoat for the revolutionary
events that enveloped French during the reign of her husband, Louis XVI.
Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, the fteenth child and eighth daughter of Em-
peror Francis Stephen and Maria Theresa, empress of the Holy Roman Empire,
was born on November 2, 1755, at the Hofburg palace in Vienna. The pretty petite
archduchess was known as Antoine within the family circle. Although she felt closest
to her mother, she only saw the busy empress for a few minutes every week. She was
brought up in her own ve rooms at the palace of Schnbrunn. Her father died on
August 18, 1765, when she was nine years old. This plunged the empress into grief
and automatically made Antoines eldest brother, Joseph, co-emperor, though the
family was never the same.
The empress wanted her daughters to shine at court events and never to express
fear. Antoines education was focused on manners, docility, and submission. She
learned to dance, play the harp, and enjoy music and the ne arts in early child-
hood. Although spontaneous, she grew up to be gentle, innocent, dependent, and
inclined to timidity, especially when surrounded by intellectuals. Her inadequate
upbringing would serve her badly.
A politically arranged marriage of one of Maria Theresas daughters was a condi-
tion of the Austro-French Treaty of Versailles, signed on May 1, 1756; consequently
Antoine was to marry the future Louis XVI. As the marriage arrangements were
being nalized, Maria Theresa suddenly realized the shortcomings of Antoines
education and hastily attempted to rectify this deciency. At age 14, Antoine un-
derwent rigorous training in the arts of being a queen, which allowed her to gain a
polished graciousness, to learn the history of France, to write legibly, and to improve
her French language skills. Her tutor was amazed at her good judgment in their
history discussions. She was also inculcated with her mothers absolutist ideals.
After a proxy marriage on April 21, Antoine left Austria. On the way to Paris, on
a neutral island on the Rhine, she was divested of all her Austrian accoutrements.
She was dressed in French garments and gained a completely new French identity
and a new nameMarie Antoinette. She met the timid, shy, and clumsy 15-year-old
Louis for the rst time on May 16 and became dauphine when she married him on
May 16, 1770. Louis had an inferiority complex that would never abate, and she was
the strong partner in the marriage. Louis was well meaning but weak and lacked
drive and initiative; he preferred hunting and forging above all other pursuits, in-
cluding his marriage. He also told by his advisors never to trust Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France 453
completely. Even though the couple were amiable and they learned to care for one
another, the marriage remained unconsummated for seven years due to Louiss
sexual inadequacies.
Although a grace period followed her marriage, it only took three months for
Marie Antoinette to become unpopular at court, mostly because she was Austrian
and consequently deemed a foreigner and an enemy, and thus not trustworthy. Con-
sequently, she was exposed to character assassination through a variety of calumnies,
slanders, and defamations that would continue until her death. Marie Antoinettes
most serious enemy at court was the uncouth and common Madame du Barry, mis-
tress of Louis XV, whom Marie Antoinette detested. Du Barry publicly castigated
Marie Antoinette over minor details.
During this unhappy time in her marriage, the teenage Marie Antoinette occu-
pied herself with the same opulent lifestyle that previous members of the French
royal family members had enjoyed. Having grown up at the Austrian court, she had
no idea of the costs or the values of goods. Marie Antoinette felt trapped perform-
ing endless royal appearances, enduring the innitesimal details and the stultifying
centuries-old etiquette of the court. She decided to be herself rather than a conven-
tional dauphine. To escape from the tedium, she mixed with a risqu crowd known
as the Queens Secret Society, an association that further damaged her image. She
continued to suffer from salacious gossip and lurid tales about her alleged depraved
sexual behavior; the stories spread throughout France and damaged the prestige of
the monarchy.
Louis XV died of smallpox at Versailles on May 10, 1774. He left a legacy of in-
surmountable and complex political, social, and nancial problems that required
serious reform. France had lost the Seven Years War (17561763), a conict that
had cost the treasury millions of livres. Much of its empire vanished as a result of the
Treaty of Paris. The situation was exacerbated because the clergy and the nobility
were exempt from paying taxes, leaving France nancially dependent on the poor
working class.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were crowned at Rheims on June 17 1774. The
people were ecstatic and envisaged a new era. However, Louis was only 20 years old
and unsuited to the monarchy. His interests focused on his own simple pleasures,
and although he cared about his subjects, he proved himself totally incapable of
dealing with the fundamental problems facing France. The peasants resented their
heavy tax burden and the excessive spending of the court. Anne-Robert-Jacques
Turgot, a trained economist and minister of nance, tried to implement some radi-
cal reformsthe abolition of feudal privileges constituting one such reformbut
the nobles balked at the suggestion. He was dismissed and replaced by Jacques
Necker in October 1776. Marie Antoinette was 500,000 livres in debt by this time;
indeed, most members of the royal family were heavily in debt at this time. In 1778
Louis began to provide nancial aid to the American colonists in their war of inde-
pendence from Britain, but France did not gain anything by it apart from helping
to divest its traditional enemy of its 13 colonies in North America. The treasury was
soon drained.
Once Louiss impotence was resolved, Marie Antoinette had four children within
six years. Marie Thrse Charlotte, known as Madame Royale, was born on Decem-
ber 19, 1778. On October 22, 1781, she gave birth to the dauphin, Louis Joseph;
Louis Charles, duc de Normandie, on March 27, 1785; and Sophie Hlne Batrice
on July 9, 1786. Once Marie Antoinette became a mother, she focused most of her
energy on her children. This resulted in a noticeable decline in the lavishness that
had characterized her youth. She no longer bought jewelry or wore elaborate wigs.
Nevertheless, her household consisted of 500 people who jealously guarded their
little empires. Despite the marked decrease in her social activities Marie Antoinette
was known as the Austrian she-wolf. Slander about her spread, and scandalous
stories were freely invented, many of them believed.
Her reputation was already at a low ebb when she was unjustly implicated in the
swindle known as the Diamond Necklace Affair. Cardinal de Rohan was the Grand
Almoner, but Marie Antoinette had distanced herself from him because he had run
afoul of the Austrian court during her youth. Rohan had a rococo diamond neck-
lace of 2,800 carats and 657 brilliants that had been made with Du Barry in mind,
but Louis XV had died in the meantime. On behalf of the jewelers, he delivered it
to Marie Antoinette, despite the fact that she had not ordered it and had previously
declined to buy it several times. Rohan took the lead in the swindle. In the presence
of Louis, Marie Antoinette, and several court ofcials, he insisted on receiving the
rst payment. He later declared that he had been duped by Jeanne St. Remey, who
had deceived him about Marie Antoinettes interest in the necklace. Rohan was
arrested. However, the people believed that Marie Antoinette, whose passion for
diamonds was undeniable, must have been aware of the plot all along. Rohan went
to trial in May 1786 but was acquitted by the Parisian Parlement on May 31, 1786.
Jeanne St. Remey was found guilty and imprisoned. The beleaguered Marie Antoi-
nette received a major blow to her integrity from the affair and never recovered her
reputation.
In 1781, Necker resigned and was replaced by controller general of nances
Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who asked for approval to reform French nances,
as the country was bankrupt. He believed the nobles rejection of any nancial
reform was the major problem facing France. The Assembly of Notables met on
February 22, 1787, and rejected the nancial reforms. Calonne resigned and was
replaced by Cardinal Lomnie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse. Despite the
lack of deep systemic nancial changes, Louis felt sorry for himself and let down,
not only by his ministers but also by his uncooperative subjects. He conded in
Marie Antoinette and received her sympathy. The Notables insisted on summon-
ing the Estates-General, resulting in the dissolution of the Assembly by Brienne on
May 25, 1787.
Louis was unable to face this crisis as a leader. While Marie Antoinette was much
more intelligent than her husband, she had no leadership qualities and no concept
of change, especially regarding monarchical privileges, and was entirely devoid of
political expertise. Like Louis, she believed that the ministers were responsible for
the crisis and that they had failed to do their jobs. The ministers had to see her
directly because the frightened Louis could not cope. The populace accused her of
meddling, calling her Madam Decit.
Marie Antoinettes personal life troubled her considerably. Baby Sophie had
failed to thrive and died on June 19, 1787. Marie Antoinette went into seclusion at
Trianon. The dauphin was also seriously ill, with a malformed spine, and could not
enjoy a normal childhood. The queens lengthy friendship with a Swedish count,
Hans Axel von Fersen, encouraged a considerable amount of gossip. They often
went riding together and developed a friendship that gave her a respite from her
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France 455
troubles. She was accused of an adulterous affair with him and of lesbian affairs with
her friends at court.
Marie Antoinette was often given children, who were raised in her household
from her personal budget. To economize, she reduced her entourage and house-
hold by 200 staff to lower her household expenses. This offended those who lost
their positions. Marie Antoinette discontinued holding balls and large dinners.
She ordered her used gowns to be mended rather than ordering new gowns. Her
slippers were resoled. While her personal economies affected her household, they
made little difference in the overall budget crisis.
Brienne could not obtain consensus from the Paris Parlement to the reforms.
Ministers resigned. It was obvious new mechanisms of governance were required.
However, in August 1787 Louis banished the Paris Parlement, hoping it would be-
come compliant. Instead this initiated major protests. The Parisians hated Brienne
and looked toward the shallow and undisciplined Louis Philippe, the duc dOrlans,
as their spokesman.
As usual, Louis was plodding, vacillating, fearful, and obstinate. In November
1787 Louis summoned the Paris Parlement to Versailles. He addressed them in his
royal nery and asked them to approve a loan of 40 million livres so that France
could continue to function and avoid bankruptcy. A seven-hour debate resulted in
no clear answers, and he stormed out without ofcially ending the Royal Session. He
exiled Orlans. Louis withdrew into passivity and failed to take any initiative. Con-
sequently Marie Antoinette was forced to meet with her advisor, Florimond Claude,
the comte de Mercy-Argenteau, and together they decided to recall Necker as con-
troller general. Necker found some funds to help France continue functioning.
However, no long-range plan was implemented, mostly because Marie Antoinette
lacked the expertise to make systemic changes. Her total and unqualied belief in
absolutist monarchy also stood in the way of any major reform at a time of changing
ideological thought.
The winter of 17881789 was especially cold, so people remained in their homes.
The Seine froze up, preventing all goods from entering Paris. A shortage of grain
exacerbated the situation, famine was looming, and the price of bread increased.
Although Louis and Necker made grain available to the poor, at huge expense to
the treasury, the people were more appreciative when Orlans sold his paintings
to supply food. Marie Antoinettes effortsher contributions to many charitable
endeavors from her own household fundswere ignored.
The royal couple wished to increase the amount of deputies to the Third Estate.
Louis asked the deputies to indicate their grievances in order to be prepared for
the convocation of the Estates-General. The rst session of the Estates-General was
held on May 5, 1789. Since he was incapable of deriving new ideas, Marie Antoinette
wrote his speech advocating the obedience required to an absolute monarchy. She
had wanted the Estates-General to meet far outside Paris, but he paid no attention
to her suggestion. Instead Louis took Neckers advice, and the session was held
at Versailles. When he addressed the 1,200 deputies, Louis discarded her speech.
These points clearly indicate that she had little inuence over his decisions.
The dauphins increasingly poor health preoccupied Marie Antoinette, and her
motherly duties now took precedence. The youngsters deformed body eventually
crushed his lungs and he died on June 3, 1789. He was buried at Saint Denis among
his royal ancestors.
The Third Estate renamed itself the National Assembly. Louis nally asserted
himself on June 18 and wished to hold a special royal session of the Estates-General.
Since the meeting hall was not ready, it was held at the tennis court. The deputies
vowed to continue meeting despite Louis orders to the contrary. Necker resigned.
The First and Second Estates ocked to the National Assembly, whereupon all the
deputies were ordered by Louis to join the National Assembly. Marie Antoinette,
always an absolutist, was upset that Louis forgot his royal role, his dynastic heritage,
and failed to imprison the deputies when his own family was placed in danger. Louis
remained immobile. Everyone knew that revolution threatened.
On July 14 a huge, unruly crowd stormed the Bastille, a fourteenth-century
prison and military fortress that had become a military warehouse and was sup-
posedly lled with hundreds of prisoners subjected to torture. The Swiss Guards
who protected the Bastille were quickly overpowered and killed with horrendous
ferocity. Only seven prisoners were found and released. The capture of the Bastille
became a powerful symbol deemed an act of liberty against a tyrannical monarchy.
Many members of the royal family left France after the fall of the Bastille, but Louis
insisted his people would not harm him; Marie Antoinette would not leave without
Louis. All royal authority was lost.
On October 5, 1789, some 6,000 angry Parisians, mostly women, marched from
the Htel de Ville to Versailles, ready to kill the queen, whom they held responsible
for the rise in bread prices and whom they generally blamed for all of Frances
troubles. The National Guard, commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette, was to
guarantee the familys safety. Some members of the crowd carried axes, cudgels,
and knives; they murdered two guardsmen and displayed their severed heads on
poles. The royal couple went onto the balcony, where a dignied Marie Antoinette
curtsied to the crowd, who were impressed with her lack of fear. The royal family was
taken to Paris and imprisoned in the Tuileries, a dilapidated former palace nearly
in ruin. Freedom of the press exacerbated the slander already associated with Marie
Antoinettes character; she was denounced as the enemy of the people, a Judas who
would betray France to the Austrians. The rumor was spread that Emperor Joseph II
would send his army to invade France.
On June 20, 1791 the royal family escaped and nearly crossed the border but
were caught at Varrennes when Louis face was recognized. They were returned to
Paris by the National Guard. A new constitution was promulgated in 1791. Although
Marie Antoinette was contemptuous of the idea of a constitutional monarchy, Louis
had no choice but to swear loyalty to it. Fear of a royalist backlash was strengthened
by the publication on July 25, 1792, of the Brunswick Manifesto, issued by the Duke
of Brunswick on behalf of Austria and Prussia, which were not at war with France,
which threatened the Parisians with extreme vengeance if the royal family were
harmed. It also threatened the French people with strong punishment if the Prus-
sian and imperial armies were deed. Brunswick also demanded the restoration of
the monarchy. French people understood the manifesto to mean that Louis and
Marie Antoinette had colluded with the duke.
Louis was formally arrested on August 12, 1792. Prison life at the Tuileries was
horrendous. The family was besieged by the violent fury of the Parisian crowds, and
no one defended them during the September Massacres. The horric slaughter
included the decapitation of Marie Antoinettes friend the Princesse de Lamballe.
The royal family was moved to the Temple. The Legislative Assembly met on Sep-
Martin, Josiah 457
tember 20 and declared France a republic on September 21. On September 22 the
Assembly became the Convention, and France was jubilant when her forces invaded
Belgium. While Louis fell ill in the Temple, Marie Antoinette nursed him back to
health. He occupied himself with reading and teaching his son Latin. Louis was put
on trial on December 11, 1792, and found guilty of high treason. He was guillotined
on January 21, 1793. Marie Antoinette was devastated but never held Louis respon-
sible for the familys circumstances.
Marie Antoinette was separated from her children, whom she never saw again,
and moved to the Conciergerie as prisoner 280. She was charged on August 2, 1793,
with being an enemy of the Revolution and conspiring against France. Despite her
degrading circumstances, she never lost her dignity and never let her royal compo-
sure desert her. Likely suffering from the early stages of cancer, she endured severe
menstrual bleeding and suffered from severe privation, including lack of blankets
and light. Her alleged crimes ranged from bankrupting France and threatening its se-
curity with plots that involved Joseph II to starving the French people and massacring
Parisians. The court had no documentation to prove the charges against her. She won
the courtroom crowd over to her side when she denied the accusation of committing
incest with her son. When the two-day trial ended with a guilty verdict, Marie Antoi-
nette was not surprised. On October 16 she was conveyed to her execution under the
most humiliating circumstances for a queen: in a cart, with her hands bound behind
her back. Although only 38 years old, she gladly welcomed her death. Her head and
body were placed together with those of her husband in a local cemetery. Madame
Royale witnessed the removal of her parents corpses and their reburial at Saint Denis
on January 21, 1815. See also First Estate; Second Estate; Tennis Court Oath.
FURTHER READING: Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: A True Story of Revolution,
Revenge and DNA. New York: St. Martins Press, 2002; Cronin, Vincent. Louis and Antoinette.
New York: William Morrow, 1974; Erickson, Carolly. To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette.
New York: William Morrow, 1994; Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Toronto:
Doubleday, 2001; Hibbert, Christopher. The French Revolution. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin,
1982; Moore, Stanley. The Fatal Friendship: Marie Antoinette, Count Fersen and the Flight to Varrennes.
New York: Doubleday, 1972; Zweig, Stefan. Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Ordinary Woman.
Paris: Editions B. Grasset, 1933.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Born in Antigua, in the West Indies, one of 23 children of a British colonel sta-
tioned there, Josiah Martin entered the British Army in 1757. In 1769, Martin sold
his commission as lieutenant colonel in order to move into a civil appointment as
royal governor of North Carolina, a post he assumed in 1771. Among his early ac-
tions was the continuing repression of the Regulator uprising, a process begun by
his predecessor, William Tryon. His actions in putting down the revolt were seen
as even handed and won him some acceptance in the colony. As the colonial crisis
worsened, Martin tried to keep North Carolina in the imperial fold. He requested
arms and munitions from General Thomas Gage in Boston. He likewise called upon
local Loyalists to come out in support of the Crown. Eventually, he was forced to ee
North Carolina by the Whigs in the state. His efforts at keeping North Carolina in
458 Maryland
the British Empire led to the rising of Loyalists, which was crushed at the Battle of
Moores Creek Bridge on February 27, 1775.
Martin returned to the Carolinas in 1779 with the expedition led by General
Charles Cornwallis. He served the British general as a volunteer during his cam-
paign until poor health forced Martin to leave Cornwallis at Wilmington, North
Carolina, in April 1781. Martin continued to draw his salary as royal governor until
October 1783. Poor health kept him from serving in any new posts. He died in
London in 1786.
FURTHER READING: Butler, Lindley S. North Carolina and the Coming of the Revolution,
17631776. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1976; Lee, Wayne E.
Crowds and Soldier in Revolutionary North Carolina. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
Maryland
While some colonies such as Massachusetts were leaders in the independence
movement, ambivalence characterized Marylands actions during the American
Revolution. At no time did Maryland attempt to establish a position of leadership.
The state did, however, participate in initiatives that eventually led to the Constitu-
tional Convention.
The Sons of Liberty were active in Baltimore and organized opposition to the
Stamp Act and other parliamentary legislation. Other issues, however, took pre-
cedence and drew attention. Maryland was a proprietary colony. As chief propri-
etors, the Calverts wielded enormous inuence over every facet of colonial life.
Thus, a great deal of energy and political capital were spent in attempting to curb
their inuence. Although Maryland participated in the First Continental Congress,
its commitment to independence was questioned. Marylands delegates were not
instructed to vote for independence until June 28, 1776. Thomas Jefferson had ex-
pressed concern as to what Maryland would produce, and John Adams commented
that no one knew which way Maryland would decide on an issue. Later, when the
Articles of Confederation were drawn up, Maryland did not adopt them until 1781,
the last state to do so.
Maryland and Virginia helped to start a precedent that would eventually become
the process that led to the drafting of the United States Constitution. Because of
similarities in their concerns about rivers and access in the Chesapeake region, del-
egates from both states met at the home of George Washington in 1785 to draw
up agreements concerning access and trade. The result encouraged some political
thinkers to believe that all the states might join together to replace the Articles.
Maryland ratied the United States Constitution in 1788 by an almost 61 majority
vote. Washington himself had personally lobbied (or meddled, as he described it)
to encourage the documents ratication there. See also American Revolutionary
War; Carroll, Charles; Committees of Correspondence; Constitutions, American
State; Galloway, Joseph; Paca, William.
FURTHER READING: Brugger, Robert J. Maryland, a Middle Temperament, 16341980. Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988; Burnard, Trevor. Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland
Elite, 16911776. New York: Routledge, 2002.
ROBERT N. STACY
Massachusetts 459
Mason, George (17251792)
George Mason was a Virginia planter who served before the American Revolution
as a magistrate and a member of Virginias House of Burgesses. He became a leader
of the Patriot forces in Virginia and drew up the Virginia Declaration of Rights in
1776. This document inuenced the Declaration of Independence and became a
model for the later Bill of Rights. Mason continued to serve in the Virginia legis-
lature throughout the Revolution. Throughout his career, he was a correspondent
and alternately a difcult ally and an opponent of other Virginia planter-statesmen,
including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
Mason retired from statewide politics after the war but was an active and vocal
delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He refused to sign the nal doc-
ument, citing the lack of a bill of rights and what he claimed was the excessive power
of the federal judiciary and executive over the legislature and the states. (Mason
consistently viewed an overpowerful executive as the greatest threat to republican
government.) He strongly opposed the creation of the District of Columbia, sug-
gesting that it might become a haven for criminals, and was also frustrated by the
Conventions willingness to allow the importation of slaves for 20 years, despite
the fact that he was a slaveholder himself. After the Convention, Mason contin-
ued to oppose the United States Constitution both as a writer in his memorandum
Objections to this Constitution of Government and as a politician in the Virginia
Ratication Convention. The adoption of a bill of rights did not fully reconcile
Mason to the Constitution, and he retired to his estate at Gunston Hall, declining
an offer to serve Virginia in the United States Senate in 1790. See also Slavery and
the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Broadwater, Jeff. George Mason, Forgotten Founder. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2006.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
Massachusetts
Of all of Britains colonies in the years before the American Revolution, one
of the oldest, most vocal, and most politically developed was the colony of Mas-
sachusetts. In the 1760s and 1770s, Massachusetts, which then included the area
that would become the state of Maine in 1820, provided the most articulate and
consistent leadership toward independence. Leading the opposition to the Stamp
Act, the colony was also the site of some of the earliest and most dramatic inci-
dents leading to the Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston
Tea Party, and the rst battles of the Revolution. The Boston Port Act, the Coer-
cive Acts, and the New England Restraining Act were all enacted to punish Mas-
sachusetts for its political activity. Participating in the Stamp Act Congress as well
as the First and Second Continental Congresses, its representatives were active and
articulate. Finally, it was a rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786 that under-
scored the weakness of the Articles of Confederation, which helped to lend a sense
of urgency to measures that would replace the Confederation with a new system of
government.
The population exhibited a high degree of literacy and a history of political and
religious activism and a tradition of dissent. The rst Massachusetts settlers had
460 Massachusetts
arrived in 1620, establishing Plymouth Colony. Three years later, with the settlement
of Boston, the colony of Massachusetts Bay came into existence. These two were
combined by the Crown into one colony in 1691. While there were some differences
between Plymouth (sometimes referred to as the Old Colony) and Massachusetts
Bay, the real fault line lay not between these two formerly separate entities, but
between the communities on the coast and those in the interior as the colony
expanded.
Massachusetts then began to display many of the same political, geographic, and
economic divisions that existed in the other colonies. Distance was part of the rea-
son but there were cultural and economic factors as well. The western communities
along the Connecticut River were not only far from Boston but had been settled
principally by people from the colony of Connecticut. Thus, there was a different
focus in those settlements. The differences showed themselves in various ways, in-
cluding ideas of safety and welfare. As early as King Philips War in the 1670s, there
was a serious plan to create a stockade to protect Boston, leaving the outer com-
munities to fend for themselves. As time passed, these differences became more
centered on specic issues, often economic. In addition, there was disagreement
over degrees of representation. Attitudes hardened between east and west, although
not to the extent that existed among the colonies. In other words, while there was
serious disagreement, there was never an armed group from the western commu-
nities opposed to the colonys ruling elites, as occurred in other colonies. That
remained true until after the Revolution. Prior to the Revolution, the greatest base
of pro- British support was in the central and western parts of the colony, especially
in centers such as Worcester and Springeld.
Contention and political activity were not only a function of regional differences.
Massachusetts had rst been settled by dissenters who relied heavily upon the Bible
to inform much of their thought. That dependence on the Bible was the product
of, as well as the impetus for, a very high degree of literacy. That literacy, in turn,
encouraged discussion on many issues. Factionalism and politics in the town meet-
ings and between towns and the colonial government became a staple part of Mas-
sachusetts life. Although the ideal of towns being Peaceable Kingdoms was the
model, this seldom occurred and towns often became divided, with new towns being
formed out of the original town boundaries. The town of Marlborough evolved into
the towns of Marlborough, Westborough, Southborough, and Westborough in the
years before the Revolution. According to some historians, the Salem witch trials of
the previous century had been the result of political conict between the port of
Salem Town and the interior Salem Village. It was a natural progression from local
issues to issues touching the colony to questions of how the British Empire should
be run in relation to its colonies.
From 1763 on, the views toward home rule, taxes, and the sense of rights began
to complicate and deepen the already existing divisions as Parliament began to
search for ways to pay for the recently concluded Seven Years War. In 1764, Par-
liament passed the Sugar Act as a means of collecting revenue. The response was
the Braintree Instructions, drafted by John Adams. The Instructions stated that the
Sugar Act was to be opposed because there had been no colonial representation in
the decision making. It was eventually adopted by other Massachusetts towns.
Then, the Stamp Act was passed by Parliament on March 22, 1765, and would
take effect one year later. The gap in time between enactment and the date it would
Massachusetts 461
start gave opposing parties in the colonies the opportunity to sharpen the debate
and rouse wide-ranging opposition. Discontent and agitation against the Stamp Act
existed in some measure in all the colonies. It was, however, perhaps greater in Mas-
sachusetts than anywhere else. Further, those opposed to the act in Massachusetts
successfully agitated beyond their immediate area, spreading opposition to other
colonies, culminating in the Stamp Act Congress that took place in New York in
October of that year in New York City.
Before the Stamp Act Congress convened, local opposition to the act was marked
not only by the increased frequency of opposition but increased violence as well.
In August 1765, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinsons house in Boston was
destroyed, as was the home of a stamp tax ofcial. Hutchinson had actually opposed
the act, but as lieutenant governor, he was seen as an agent of the Crown enforcing
a law that was violently opposed.
The Stamp Act was repealed and was soon replaced with the Townshend Acts,
which sought to raise revenue by taxing imports. These acts, while opposed every-
where, were most violently opposed in Massachusetts. While all but the taxes on
tea would eventually be repealed, Boston had become such an active center of dis-
content that in 1768 that troops were sent to keep order in the city. In this same
year, the Massachusetts House of Representatives drafted a protest against the Town-
shend Acts, known as the Massachusetts Circular Letter, which was sent to other
colonies on the strong suggestion of John Adams.
The repeal of most of the duties did not bring peace. Resentment at the presence
of British soldiers in Boston eventually resulted in the Boston Massacre, an alter-
cation in the streets of Boston, where several Americans were killed. In 1772 the
Crown decided that the salaries of governors and judges would no longer be paid
by the colony, but directly by the Crown. This action removed all accountability of
these ofcials to the colony and was strongly opposed.
It was that same year that the committees of correspondence, a Massachusetts
innovation, began to spread throughout the colonies. The original Committee of
Correspondence had been organized by Samuel Adams with the intent of spread-
ing news and shaping opinion. Within a very short time this network would have a
signicant political effect throughout the colonies.
On December 16, men dressed as Indians boarded ships in Boston Harbor loaded
with tea that could not leave the harbor until the tea tax was paid. They smashed
the chests and dumped the tea overboard. The British response came in the form
of the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston Harbor beginning June 1, 1774. Boston
port would remain closed until the East India Company was reimbursed for its losses
from the Tea Party.
In 1774 there was also a great deal of antigovernment activity in the western
and central parts of Massachusetts, particularly in Springeld and Worcester, even
though there was generally greater support for the Crown in that region. Courts
were closed as a result, making the act of governing more difcult for Hutchinsons
replacement, General Thomas Gage.
The Port Act was followed in close succession by other parliamentary legislation
aimed specically at punishing Massachusetts. Labeled collectively as the Coercive
Acts, these included the Administration of Justice Act (royal ofcials being tried for
capital crimes were to be taken to Britain and not tried in Massachusetts), the Massa-
chusetts Government Act (which revoked the charter of 1692), and the Quartering
462 Massachusetts
Act. These acts were the immediate cause for the calling of the First Continental
Congress, held in Philadelphia in September 1774.
The situation was very tense and it seemed that it would not take a great deal to
begin an armed conict. In September of that year, there was a rumor that Gage
had ordered his forces to shell the city of Boston. Militia units from all over New
England left their homes and marched on Boston. When it became known that the
alarm was false, they returned home. Estimates of the number of men that partici-
pated in this movement vary, but the actual turnout to meet this perceived emer-
gency was large enough (perhaps as many as 30,000 men) to let both the British and
Americans know that a signicant response could be mounted to any British action.
That so many men could mobilize so quickly with a single objective gives an idea of
how close both parties seemed to war.
In April 1775, the rst battles of the American Revolutionary War were fought in
Massachusetts. British troops from Boston marched into nearby Middlesex County
to conscate stores of arms that the local militias had been collecting. The result was
the ghting at Lexington and Concord and the pursuit of the British into Boston
by local militia units that put Boston under siege. In June 1775, the British attacked
American positions in Charlestown, across the river from Boston, and defeated the
Americans at what was subsequently known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was in
Cambridge and in the lines surrounding Boston that George Washington took com-
mand of and formed what would become the Continental Army. The British gar-
rison evacuated Boston in March 1776, and the center of military conict moved
south, never to return to Massachusetts, which would see no more ghting for the
rest of the war. Throughout the conict, however, Massachusetts provided not only
logistical support but troops in what was commonly referred to as the Massachusetts
Line of the Continental Army.
In providing supplies for the army and through trade and privateering, Massa-
chusetts prospered during the war. There was, however, a split in the state between
those doing well from the conict and those who did not, and this split ran rather
sharply between the ports and the interior, east and west. That disparity would play
a most critical part in politics after the conclusion of the war.
In a state so politically aware and, in many respects, so divided over the question
of who would rule at home, it is no surprise that Massachusetts did not draft a state
constitution until 1778. Further, this constitution, with revisions largely made by
John Adams in the following year, was not approved until 1780. Property qualica-
tions for voting and holding ofce were among the most controversial issues. As
might be expected, this economic-based question about the exercise of political
power reected the economic state of east versus west, with one region doing signi-
cantly better than the other. The Massachusetts constitution was nally approved in
1780 by a very narrow margin. Although there had been much compromise, many
still believed that the property qualications were still too high. In other, more
subtle ways, the westerners felt excluded from the political process and that their
participation was not desired by a government dominated by the eastern communi-
ties. The failure of Massachusetts to provide adequate travel expenses for western
representatives traveling to Boston was seen as further proof that their opinions and
participation were not valued.
Signicantly, unlike the constitutions of many colonies, the Massachusetts con-
stitution created a powerful executive branch. That distinction would be critical
Massachusetts 463
when the government faced a major crisis in the mid-1780s. John Hancock, the rst
to sign the Declaration of Independence, became the rst Massachusetts governor
under the new constitution.
In 1786, a few years after the adoption of the state constitution and the end of the
Revolution, Massachusetts was the scene of a dramatic display of civil disorder. The
Hampshire County Rebellion, more often known as Shayss Rebellion, underscored
not only regional differences but also the potentially bitter conict between the
haves and have-nots. Further, it showed how those differences could play out when
the government was not strong enough to impose order.
In the years after the Revolution, Massachusetts, as well as other colonies, was
undergoing a great deal of nancial distress. While this was true throughout the
state, it was particularly true in the western portion, where farmers were often on
a subsistence level and often heavily in debt. In 1786, a convention was held in the
town of Hateld, which drew up a list of complaints, mostly economic but also hav-
ing to do with the judiciary that was to be sent to Boston. Opposition to the courts
spread and western farmers began to coalesce as a group under the leadership of an
ex-army ofcer, Daniel Shays. They began to occupy local courthouses to stop the
proceedings against farmers being prosecuted for debt. The militia was called out to
keep these courts functioning but so far there had been no armed confrontation.
A second convention was called later on in the same year by these disaffected
farmers in which they essentially declared war against the state government. Again
court houses were occupied and the court sessions prevented from taking place.
The militia was once again called out and in January 1787 was sent from Boston
to Worcester in central Massachusetts, and then farther west. The rst real conict
occurred on January 25, when three of Shayss men were killed. Shortly after, Shays
himself surrendered. Although there was some small-scale ghting afterward, the
rebellion effectively ended.
The state government had been shaken and the lessons led people to fear what
would happen under the weak Articles of Confederation. Many western towns could
not afford to send delegates to the sessions to ratify the Constitution. This tipped
the scales in favor of ratication because the sentiment in western Massachusetts
was very much against adopting the United States Constitution. When combined
with eastern Massachusetts opposition (including Elbridge Gerry, who had been a
delegate to the Constitutional Convention), it seemed that Massachusetts might not
ratify the Constitution.
That it was ratied was largely due to the efforts of Samuel Adams, who had
lob bied very hard for ratication, and John Hancock and a proposal known as the
Massachusetts Compromise. The compromise stipulated that there would be amend-
ments to the Constitution to mitigate the perceived concentration of power by the
central government. With this agreement, Massachusetts ratied the Constitution on
February 6, 1788. See also Adams, Abigail; Chase, Samuel; Church, Benjamin; Consti-
tutions, American State; Continental Congress, First; Continental Congress, Second;
Continental Association; King, Rufus; Loyalists; Navigation Acts; Non-Importation
Agreements; Proclamation of 1763; Quincy, Josiah; Sons of Liberty; Whigs.
FURTHER READING: Bourne, Russell. Cradle of Violence: How Bostons Waterfront Mobs Ignited
the American Revolution. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006; Brown, Robert Eldon.
Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 16911780. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
464 Massachusetts Government Act
University Press, 1955; Dufour, Ronald P. Modernization in Colonial Massachusetts, 16301763.
New York: Garland, 1987; Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Reveres Ride. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994; Gross, Robert A. The Minutemen and Their World. New York: Hill and
Wang, 2001; Labaree, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party. Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1979; Pencak, William. Americas Burke: The Mind of Thomas Hutchinson. Washington,
DC: University Press of America, 1982; Richards, Leonard L. Shayss Rebellion: The American
Revolutions Final Battle. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002; Shy, John W.
Toward Lexington; the Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965; Tyler, John W. Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants
and the Advent of the American Revolution. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986;
Walmsley, Andrew S. Thomas Hutchinson and the Origins of the American Revolution. New York:
New York University Press, 1999; Young, Alfred F. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory
and the American Revolution. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999; Zobel, Hiller B. The Boston Massacre.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.
ROBERT N. STACY
The Massachusetts Government Act (enacted May 20, 1774; effective August 1,
1774, for an indenite period) was one of ve acts Parliament drafted during the
spring of 1774 collectively known in Britain as the Coercive Acts, and in its Ameri-
can colonies as the Intolerable Acts. The act followed a decade of resistance in
Massachusetts that had been punctuated by riots against the Stamp Act (1765) and
the Townshend Acts (1768). The Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) prompted
Parliament to draft the Massachusetts Government Act, which seized control of Mas-
sachusettss provincial and local government.
Until August 1774, Massachusettss 1691 charter had granted its constituents
greater political autonomy than enjoyed by Britains other American colonies. The
Massachusetts Government Act revoked those passages of the 1691 charter that re-
garded the colonys self-governance, including the General Courts (elected leg-
islature) authority to appoint the governors councilors. This enabled the royally
appointed governor to appoint councilors who would support imperial policy rather
than obstruct it (as had become the norm in the preceding decade) and placed
this aspect of provincial governance on a par with that of the other colonies. In
response, spontaneous crowds formed throughout Massachusetts and forced many
of these mandamus councilors to publicly renounce their appointments. Some
of the mandamus councilors ed to Boston, where they were protected by the Brit-
ish Army. Continued provincial opposition, however, persuaded General Thomas
Gage, governor of Massachusetts, that he could not convene his council lest it incite
further violence.
The Massachusetts Government Act also shifted the authority to appoint all
provincial magistrates from the General Court to the royal governor, who did not
require the consent of his council. Further, juries would no longer be elected by
provincials but would instead be selected by Crown-appointed sheriffs. Massachu-
setts provincials objected to these changes because they believed the provinces of-
cers would no longer feel obliged to act in a manner consistent with the interests
of local constituents.
Finally, the Massachusetts Government Act severely restricted the latitude of
each towns selectmen to call town meetings. Historically, this forum had provided
Maury, Jean-Sifrin 465
Massachusetts provincials a venue for direct democracy. During the preceding de-
cade, however, the towns had expanded their agendas from the discussion of local
issues to debating and passing resolutions regarding the relative merit of imperial
policies. Parliament interpreted this as an abuse of the 1691 charters provision for
town meetings.
Of all the Coercive Acts, the Massachusetts Government Act was most responsible
for mobilizing support for the revolutionary movement in Massachusettss two west-
ern countiesBerkshire and Hampshire. Before the Coercive Acts were imposed,
this more recently settled area had largely ignored provincial Whigs resistance to
Parliaments taxation measures. With the Massachusetts Government Act, though,
Parliament revoked the provinces authority to govern itself. This directly affected
every Massachusetts resident and proved to be more effective than the efforts of
Samuel Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence to secure province-
wide and intercolonial support for the revolutionary movement. See also Commit-
tees of Correspondence.
FURTHER READING: Pencak, William. War, Politics, and Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts.
Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981; Raphael, Ray. The First American Revolution: Before
Lexington and Concord. New York: New Press, 2002; Reid, John Philip. Constitutional History of
the American Revolution. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
Maury, Jean-Sifrin (17461817)
Prior to the French Revolution, Maury had won acclaim as a preacher and writer,
most notably for his elegy on Fnelon and a panegyric on Saint Louis as well as his
Lent sermon before Louis XVI in 1781. In 1789, Maury was elected a member of the
Estates-General by the clergy of Prrone. He soon showed himself to among the wit-
tiest and most vigorous and defenders of the ancien rgime. The nobility and clergy
found in Maury a persistent adversary for Mirabeau. His reputation as a defender
of the church and the king was ensured through his vocal stance in the Constituent
Assembly against the alienation of the property of the church.
In 1792, Pope Pius VI called Maury to Rome, where he was named archbishop of
Nicaea. In 1794 he was named a cardinal. With the invasion of Italy in 1796, Maury
ed to Venice. In 1800 he returned to Rome to serve at the papal court as ambas-
sador of the exiled Louis XVIII in the conclave that elected Pius VII.
In 1804, Maury wrote to Napoleon to congratulate him for restoring religion to
France. He returned to France in 1806 and in 1810 was made archbishop of Paris.
When ordered by the pope to surrender his ofce, Maury refused. In 1814, after
the fall of Napoleon, Maury was suspended by the pope and returned to Rome,
where he was imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo for six months for disobeying
papal orders. Following his release, he reconciled with Pius VII and his position as
cardinal was restored. The time in prison had left Maury in ill health, however, and
on May 10, 1817, he died.
JEFF SHANTZ
466 Maximum
Maximum
Maximum refers to a law passed on September 29, 1793, during the radical
phase of the French Revolution, also known as the Reign of Terror. The law es-
tablished price ceilings on various necessary and eventually secondary goods. In-
cluded in the necessary items on which the Maximum set prices were bread, wheat,
and eventually meat. The Thermidorian Reaction and the fall of the Jacobins from
power led to the dismantling of many of the more radical policies, the Maximum
among them.
By 1793, France had endured years of bad harvests dating back to 1788. The
poor harvests in turn led to shortages of grain, causing a steep rise in the price of
bread, the principal staple food for the bulk of the French people. While the harvest
of 1793 certainly constituted a major improvement over those of past years, yields
were not consistently high in all the departments. In the cities, especially Paris,
there arose grave concerns among the members of the working class segment of
the populace that the government would provide them with enough our for their
daily ration of bread. Conversely, there also existed a great fear that hoarders and
speculators in this commodity would articially drive up prices. Accordingly, the
people began to exert pressure on the government.
This pressure bore fruit on September 29, 1793, when the government enacted the
Law of the Maximum. The law set the maximum price for various grains at the low-
est price at which those respective grains stood between January 1 and May 1, 1793.
In addition, these prices were to be reduced by increments until September 1, 1793,
with a ne imposed on anyone who bought or sold grain above these prices. Likewise,
anyone caught destroying grain during the period of dearth would suffer the death
penalty. Thus, prices were xed under the law in an attempt to give relief to urban
dwellers and to allow for the safe supply of the army.
Another effect of this law was the removal of the middlemen from the gain trade,
as now the people could buy directly from farmers, with the grain sold in the cen-
tral marketplaces of the cities. Though the authorities made a concerted attempt to
impose the legislation in practice, it proved impossible to do so. At the same time,
denunciations for hoarding became a means for the people to exact vengeance for
past slights, real or imagined. But with the fall of the Jacobins from power, and the
dismantling of the apparatus of the Terror, the Maximum was eventually revoked in
December 1794.
The Maximum stands as one of the rst attempts at a government-controlled
economy of the modern era and has been linked by some historians to the socialist
strain of the French Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution. New York:
Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1981; Soboul, Albert. The French Revolution, 17871799. Translated
by Alan Forrest and Colin Jones. New York: Vintage, 1975.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
McKean, Thomas (17341817)
Thomas McKean (pronounced McKain) was an American lawyer who was a
signatory of the Declaration of Independence and the second president of the U.S.
Congress under the Articles of Confederation.
McKinly, John 467
Born on March 19, 1734, at New London Township, Chester County, Pennsylva-
nia, McKean was the son of a local tavern keeper, who, along with his mother, had
come to Pennsylvania from Ireland when they were children. McKean attended the
New London Academy of Rev. Francis Allison and then went to New Castle, Dela-
ware, to study law. He was admitted to the bar in the lower counties (Delaware), and
in Pennsylvania, becoming the deputy attorney general for Sussex County in Dela-
ware. Soon afterward, he became a member of the general assembly of the lower
counties, its speaker, and then judge on the court of common pleas.
Politically, McKean was a member of the Country Party, which was dominated by
Ulster-Scots and was keen on independence from Britain. Serving in the Stamp Act
Congress of 1765, he then represented Delaware in the First and Second Continen-
tal Congresses. McKean urged Delaware congressmen to vote for independence. It
was McKean who managed to persuade Caesar Rodney to ride over from Delaware
to take part in the vote and give those in favor of independence a majority among
the delegates from Delaware. In the famous painting by John Trumbull of the pre-
sentation of the Declaration of Independence to Congress, McKean is shown sec-
ond from the right.
As the president of the Continental Congress that functioned during the Ameri-
can Revolutionary War, he was the rst person ever referred to as president of the
United States in an ofcial document. It was during his term in ofce that the Brit-
ish under Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.
From 1777 until 1799 McKean was chief justice of Pennsylvania, during which
time he was regularly criticized for controversial decisions. However, he did much to
establish an independent judiciary in the United States. Indeed, 10 years before the
U.S. Supreme Court established its doctrine of judicial review, McKean argued that
courts could strike down laws they felt were unconstitutional.
A member of the convention of Pennsylvania, he took part in the ratication of
the United States Constitution and was governor of Pennsylvania from December 17,
1799, until December 20, 1808. During that period he tried to increase the powers
of the executive arm of government. He also managed to extend free education to
all children in the state. However, McKean was not as progressive with respect to the
rights of women or slaves.
In 1804, McKean County in Pennsylvania was formed, and in the War of 1812
he was active in urging people in Pennsylvania to enlist to ght the British. He
spent his retirement writing, having made a small fortune through real estate and
investments. He died in Philadelphia on June 24, 1817, and was buried at the First
Presbyterian Church Cemetery before his body, in 1843, was moved to Laurel Hill
Cemetery, also in Philadelphia. See also Continental Congress, First; Continental
Congress, Second; Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
FURTHER READING: Coleman, John M. Thomas McKean: Forgotten Leader of the Revolution.
Rockaway, NJ: American Faculty Press, 1984; Rowe, G. S. Thomas McKean: The Shaping of an
American Republicanism. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1978.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
An American physician and politician from Delaware, John McKinly, the only chief
executive of Delaware born overseas, was the rst elected president of Delaware.
468 Mecklenburg Declaration
Born on February 21, 1721, in Ireland, his parents were Ulster-Scots who mi-
grated to Wilmington, Delaware, in 1742. Five years later, McKinly was commissioned
a lieutenant in the New Castle County militia and fought during the French and In-
dian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years War), which lasted from 1756 until
1763. He was involved in building defenses at the site of Fort Christina.
A devout Presbyterian, McKinly became an adherent of the Country Party faction
of Delaware politics. As such he gradually came to oppose British rule and became
active in politics. He was sheriff of New Castle County from 1757 until 1760, and also
chief burgess of Wilmington in 17581761, 17661769, 17701773, and 17741776.
He also served in the Delaware legislature for New Castle from 1771 until 1775.
In 1776 when Delaware elected its rst House of Assembly, McKinly was elected
by New Castle County and was then chosen by the assembly to be the Speaker. In
the following year, as Delawares rst chief magistrate, he faced a Loyalist insurrec-
tion and then was captured after the British, fresh from their victory at the Battle
of Brandywine, took Wilmington. McKinly was held a prisoner on a ship in the
Delaware River. He was later taken to Flatbush, New York, and was nally exchanged
for William Franklin, the pro-British governor of New Jersey (and son of Benjamin
Franklin).
Returning to Wilmington, McKinly built an extremely successful medical practice.
Much of his attention was occupied by his work on the Delaware Medical Society,
which he co-founded in 1793, and the Academy of Newark (later the University of
Delaware). He subsidized the salaries of some teachers there and sponsored a num-
ber of students. He died on August 21, 1796, at Wilmington. He had married Jenny
Richardson, the daughter of a local Quaker miller. They had no children.
FURTHER READING: Rowe, G. S. The Travail of John McKinly, First President of Dela-
ware. Delaware History 17 (1976): 2136.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
The Mecklenburg Declaration, also known as the Mecklenburg Resolves and
Charlotte Town Resolves, was a series of 20 resolutions passed by a committee in
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on May 31, 1775. However, there is one tech-
nical difference between the terms. The Mecklenburg Declaration refers to an ac-
tual declaration of independence by the county, while the Mecklenburg Resolves
refers to a series of resolutions that may or may not have included a direct act of
declaring independence from Britain. Despite the controversy, the various resolu-
tions passed by Mecklenburg County illustrate that anti-British sentiment existed in
the backcountry of the southern colonies as well as in New England.
Mecklenburg County passed the resolutions after receiving news of the clash be-
tween colonists and British troops at Lexington and Concord. Considerable con-
troversy over the existence and exact content of the Mecklenburg Declaration has
existed since the nineteenth century and erupted into a major academic debate at
the opening of the twentieth century. It is generally agreed that the Mecklenburg
Committee of Safety met on May 31, 1775, and passed a series of resolutions that
included voiding all laws issued by the British government, suspending the actions
of royal military and civil ofcials, arresting all royal ofcials who continued to carry
Mricourt, Anne-Josphe Throigne de 469
out their duties as appointed by the British government, and calling for greater
cooperation among the colonies and the forming of provincial congresses. In 1819,
a claim emerged that the Committee of Safety also met on May 20, 1775, and passed a
county declaration of independence from Britain. However, documentary evidence
to prove the assertion did not exist, since the records of the original meeting were
destroyed in a re in 1800. Participants to the event who were still living in the early
nineteenth century offered claims and counterclaims to a declaration of indepen-
dence. Regardless of whether an actual declaration of independence existed, the
various resolutions were forwarded to the North Carolina delegation at the Second
Continental Congress. Although not presented publicly to the Congress, many claim
that they were privately circulated among some of Americas Founding Fathers. See
also Declaration of Independence; Virginia Resolves.
FURTHER READING: McNitt, V. V. Chain of Error and the Mecklenburg Declaration of Indepen-
dence. Palmer, MA: Hampden Hills Press, 1960.
TERRY M. MAYS
Mricourt, Anne-Josphe Throigne de (17621817)
Anne-Josphe Throigne de Mricourt was a feminist who played an important
role in the French Revolution. She was born Anne-Josphe Terwagne in Marcourt,
Belgium. At rst, she led the life of a part-time courtesan in Paris, London, and Rome,
but upon her return to Paris in 1789, she became interested in revolutionary ideals.
Dressed in masculine attire, she attended daily sessions of the National Assem-
bly, and her apartment became a salon attracting members of the Constituante. In
January 1790, she created the Society of the Friends of Law, which, though lasting
only three months, afforded her some notoriety. Because she demanded freedom
for Jews, women, and the press, she became a target of vicious attacks from the
royalists.
Wrongly suspected of having participated in the violent October Days, and fear-
ing arrest, she returned to Marcourt in August. In January 1791, she was kidnapped
by the Austrians and jailed on suspicion of spying for France. Freed in August, she
had to remain in Vienna, but in October, after meeting with Emperor Leopold II,
she regained her full liberty.
In January 1792, she returned triumphantly to Paris and became an ally of Jean-
Pierre Brissot de Warville. On August 10, she incited and led a crowd to murder
members of the royalist press. In 1793, she composed an anonymous pamphlet call-
ing for the creation of all-women battalions, and for peace inside France, but war
against aristocrats and foreign armies.
On May 13, 1793, a group of female extremists accused Throigne de Mricourt
of being a moderate, accosted her, and beat her soundly. After this public humilia-
tion, her role in the Revolution ended and she started showing signs of madness. In
the spring of 1794, she was jailed until September for being a friend of Brissot and
for making suspicious remarks. In 1795, she was locked in a mental hospital, never
to be released. She died in La Salptrire Hospital on June 8, 1817.
FURTHER READING: Roudinesco, Elisabeth. Throigne de Mricourt. London: Verso, 1991.
GUY-DAVID TOUBIANA
470 Merlin, Philippe-Antoine, Comte
Merlin, Philippe-Antoine, Comte (17541838)
Philippe-Antoine, the comte Merlin, was a French politician and lawyer during
the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. He supported the abolition of feu-
dal and seigniorial rights and reformed the French justice system. While he received
honors from Napoleons government, Merlin ran afoul of Bourbon authorities dur-
ing the Restoration as a result of his vote in favor of Louis XVIs execution more
than 20 years earlier.
Merlin was born in Arleux, Nord, to a wealthy family in 1754. He studied at the
College of Douai and was admitted to the bar in the Parlement of Flanders in 1775.
During his career, Merlin contributed to important legal compilations. In April
1789, the bailliage of Douai elected Merlin as a representative of the Third Estate in
the Estates-General.
From 1789 to 1791, Merlin served in the National Assembly. He attacked the
privileges of the nobility under the ancien rgime and presented reports on ma-
norialism and the notion of redistribution with compensation. Merlin advocated
legislation abolishing the practice of primogeniture to secure equal distributions of
inheritance for relatives of the same degree, and for men and women. From 1791
to 1792, Merlin served as president of the criminal tribune for the department of
Nord, later serving as the regions representative in the National Convention. Dur-
ing the kings trial, Merlin voted in favor of execution. In September 1793, he con-
tributed to the elaboration of the Law of Suspects.
Following the demise of Maximilien Robespierre during the Thermidorian Reac-
tion, Merlin became president of the National Convention and, in 1795, became a
member of the Committee of Public Safety. He worked to prevent radical groups
from gathering power and convinced the committee to close the Jacobin Clubs
on the grounds that it was an administrative, rather than a legislative, measure.
Merlin encouraged the Girondins readmission to the Convention and curbed the
right to insurrection. In 1794, he had been commissioned to report on the civil
and criminal legislation of France. After an 18-month investigation, he developed a
code, based on the penal code of 1791, abolishing conscation, branding, and life
imprisonment. Later, under the Directory, Merlin declined a seat in the Legislative
Assembly to serve as minister of justice and minister of the general police. Following
the coup dtat of Fructidor (September 4, 1797), Merlin was elected member of
the Directory, serving presidential terms in 1798 and 1799. Merlin resigned his seat
amidst accusations of corruption.
Although he did not participate in the coup dtat of Brumaire (November 910,
1799), Merlin prospered through his position as deputy commissar in the tribunal
of appeals (1801) and later as procureur gnral in the Court of Appeals (1804). In
1806, Merlin was named a councilor of state for life. Napoleon granted Merlin the
Legion of Honor and bestowed upon him the dignity of count in 1810. Merlin fell
out of favor following Napoleons demise, but during the emperors brief return
during the Hundred Days (MarchJune 1815), Merlin resumed his former status.
Following the second Bourbon restoration after Waterloo, Merlin, proscribed as
a regicide, ed France. In exile, he published some legal works. He returned fol-
lowing the 1830 revolution, which overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. Merlin died
in Paris in 1838.
FURTHER READING: Andress, David. The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary
France. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005; Bergeron, Louis. France Under Napoleon.
Translated by Robert R. Palmer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981; Cobb, Richard.
The French and Their Revolution: Selected Writings. Edited by David Gilmour. New York: New
Press, 1999; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. 2nd ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002; Popkin, Jeremy. A Short History of the French Revolution. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006.
ERIC MARTONE
Merlin de Thionville, Antoine Christophe (17621833)
A legislator during the French Revolution, Antoine Christophe Merlin was born
on September 13, 1762, in Thionville in northeastern France. The son of a procureur,
he was later called Merlin de Thionville to distinguish him from Philippe-Antoine
Merlin de Douai, who was a French politician during the same period.
Antoine Christophe Merlin studied theology and then went into the law, becom-
ing an attorney at Metz in the east of France, close to the border of Luxembourg,
in 1788. Two years later he was elected to run the Thionville municipality and
then represented Moselle in the Legislative Assembly in Paris. It was there that,
on October 23, 1791, that he argued in favor of the establishment of a committee
of surveillance. This was approved, and Merlin became a member of the commit-
tee. In that position, he proposed that the property of all migrs be seized by the
French revolutionary government. He also supported war with Austria. There was
an attempt to have him arrested soon afterward, but it failed. He was active in the
meute (riot) on June 20, 1792. By August, Merlin de Thionville, observing that the
French Republic was under threat of subversion by migrs, argued that their wives
or children should be seized as hostages.
After being elected to the National Convention, Merlin supported the execution
of Louis XVI, but a commission in the French army stopped him from attending
the trial. His task at the time was to defend Mainz, which had declared itself a re-
public and was then attacked, and eventually occupied, by the Prussians. Merlin was
credited with acting with great bravery during the siege. On his return to Paris, he
was involved in the machinations that followed the overthrow of Maximilien Robes-
pierre, and he served on the Council of Five Hundred, which operated under the
Directory. Merlin took part in the coup dtat of 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797)
and urged for the deportation of some parliamentarians. He left the council in 1798
and took up a position as director general of posts and then was involved in the
French army in Italy. When the Consulate was proclaimed in 1799, Merlin went into
retirement. He died on September 14, 1833.
FURTHER READING: Patrick, Alison. The Men of the First French Republic: Political Alignments in
the National Convention of 1792. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Metternich, Klemens von (17731859)
A conservative Austrian statesman, Count Klems von Metternich restored Austria
as a leading European power in the post-Napoleonic era and led the Congress of
Vienna, which restored the Old Order of conservative politics that would govern
Europe until 1848.
Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich-Winneberg was born at Co-
blenz, in the Rhineland, on May 15, 1773. He was the second child and rst son
Metternich, Klemens von 471
472 Metternich, Klemens von
of Count Franz Georg Karl von Metternich, an envoy of the court of Vienna at
Coblenz, and his wife, Maria Beatrix, who was born Countess von Kageneck. The
vain young Metternich received an extremely conservative upbringing and educa-
tion from his mother, who homeschooled him and taught him French and German.
Religious instruction was provided by Abb Bertrand. A private tutor, John Freder-
ick Simon, entered the household in 1784; he had taught in a school established by
Johann Bernard Basedow and introduced Metternich to physical education, which
he continued throughout his life.
The family believed Catholicism was the foundation for order. Metternich main-
tained a superior attitude toward the lower classes and carried the arrogance of his
conservative views throughout his life. He read philosophy at the University of Stras-
bourg at age 15. Metternich remained immune to the revolutionary spirit that was
rampant not only in Strasbourg but throughout Europe. He moved to the Univer-
sity of Mainz, where he studied diplomacy and law, and learned that a stable social
equilibrium was required for good government. Metternich also traveled to Britain
on a special mission and socialized with the upper echelons of British society. He
was enthusiastically accepted, for his tall physique, exquisite manners, and conver-
sational ability appear to have pleased most of those he met.
The French Revolution had a profoundly traumatic effect on Metternich. His he-
reditary estates were conscated, and the family lost its impressive annual income.
Metternich thrived on the conservative institutions that traditionally governed so-
ciety; thus, the excesses of the Revolution turned his world upside down. He rmly
opposed liberal ideas and devoted himself to the reduction of the Jacobin threat
wherever and however he could. In short, Metternich spent his entire life trying to
reverse the principles of libert, equalit, and fraternit and maintain Austrias position
as a leading power in Europe.
Metternichs mother arranged a marriage for him with 19-year-old Maria Eleonora
von Kaunitz, whose grandfather was the highly inuential Austrian chancellor Count
Wenzel von Kaunitz. The marriage took place on September 27, 1795, and brought
him vast wealth. The couple had seven children: Marie, Francis Charles, Clement,
Francis Victor, Clementine, Leontine, and Hermin. The rst ve children preceded
their father in death. Metternich had numerous affairs throughout the course of his
marriage. One affair resulted in the birth of an illegitimate daughter, also named
Clementine. Caroline Murat, Napoleons sister, was one of his mistresses.
Metternichs innate diplomatic skills were soon recognized by highly placed of-
cials in the Habsburg court. He represented the Westphalian College of Counts at
the Congress of Rastatt in 1797, a task that bored him. He became Austrian ambas-
sador to Saxony, residing in Dresden in 1800, and his distinguished service brought
him the elevated position of ambassador to the Prussian court in Berlin in 1803.
The French emperor, Napoleon I, was at the height of his power when he re-
quested that Metternich be appointed ambassador to France in 1806. Metternich
loathed Napoleons growing inuence and inwardly deemed the emperor an ambi-
tious upstart. Although Metternich accepted the position, he maintained a strong
personal hatred for Napoleon, who had conscated his holdings and workers in
1796. Yet Metternich dealt admirably with Napoleons repeated threats against Aus-
tria. He managed to uphold Austrian interests while Napoleon pushed those of
France. However, the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, with
Francis II maintaining his throne as Emperor Francis I of Austria.
Metternich, Klemens von 473
Metternichs lengthy audience with Napoleon at Saint-Cloud on August 15, 1808,
gave the Austrian a clear understanding of Napoleons grandiose ambitions. He did
not yield to the emperor, who was exasperated by Metternichs utter indifference.
Francis had great respect for Metternichs diplomatic skills and appointed him minis-
ter of state in August 1809, and jointly as minister of imperial affairs and of foreign af-
fairs in October 1809. By this time Metternich considered himself infallible, and those
who opposed him sometimes found him brusque and terse. Nevertheless, he would
retain his position as foreign minister until 1848an impressive period of tenure.
In 1809, war broke out between France and Austria. Vienna was captured by
the French in May, but Napoleon suffered a defeat at the hands of the Austrians a
few days later at the Battle of Aspern-Essling, though their subsequent loss at the
Battle of Wagram in early July obliged them to sue for peace. Metternich became
a prisoner of state but was released a few months later. Peace was declared and
completed on October 14 with the humiliating Treaty of Schnbrunn, by which
Austria was forced to cede extensive territories.
Metternich saw a positive outcome from the humiliation. Napoleon wanted to
remarry after divorcing Empress Josephine. Although several princesses refused
Napoleons marriage proposals, Metternich arranged the marriage of Franciss
daughter, Archduchess Marie Louise, to Napoleon, who desperately wanted a link
to a legitimate royal dynasty. They married on March 11, 1810. The couple soon had
a son, who was named the king of Rome. The marriage was also the basis of an alli-
ance between France and Austria, which was soon directed against Russia.
In 1812 Metternich signed a treaty with Napoleon, who was preparing to invade
Russia; he promised Napoleon military assistance in exchange for some territorial
concessions for Austria, should he be victorious. Meanwhile, Metternich also se-
cretly negotiated with Britain, Russia, and Prussia on the possibility of establishing a
new coalition against France. Following Napoleons horrendous retreat from Russia
in 1812, Metternich, who had secretly rearmed Austria during the spring of 1813,
withdrew from the alliance and prepared to join the Fourth Coalition. Metternich
and Napoleon met at a lengthy audience in Dresden on June 26. Metternich offered
Napoleon humiliating and ultimately insulting proposals that the French emperor
could only refuse. The meeting resulted in a stalemate, with war against France only
a matter of time. By early 1814 Metternich realized that any type of peace with Na-
poleon would be unattainable. In lieu of a negotiated peace with the emperor, Met-
ternich supported a Bourbon restoration, with the throne offered to Louis XVIII,
the younger brother of the guillotined king, Louis XVI.
This policy shift led to Metternichs close contact with Viscount Castlereagh, the
British foreign secretary, as well as other important British political and military
gures. Castlereagh and Metternich negotiated the alliance of Austria, Prussia, Rus-
sia, and Britain that led to Napoleons nal downfall and the conclusion of the
Treaty of Paris in April 1814. Later that year, the Congress of Viennaa gathering
of diplomats and European heads of statemet to solve the political and territorial
problems created by the two decades of war. France was treated fairly, for the victors
had no desire to cripple her.
The reactionary Metternich was the foremost negotiator at the Congress of
Vienna, which continued until June 1815. His goal was to reverse the lingering
after effects of the French Revolution and recreate the Old Order. He accom-
plished his goal, in conjunction with Castlereagh, by creating the Kingdom of the
474 Metternich, Klemens von
Netherlands, composed of Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Austria would
control Lombardy-Venetia; Prussia received territories, Britain received various
overseas possessions once held by the French or their allies; the Papal States re-
verted to the papacy; Sweden and Norway were united; Finland was granted to Rus-
sia; Switzerland regained its independence; France, Tuscany, Naples, Spain, and
various parts of Italy were restored under legitimate monarchs; and Jews received
extended rights. By the shifting of frontiers, particularly along the frontiers with
France, the balance of power was restored.
Metternich made an enemy of Russian Tsar Alexander I, who wished to create a
Kingdom of Poland under Russias aegis and to undo the partitions of Poland. Met-
ternich, Castlereagh, and the Prussian chancellor Karl von Hardenberg opposed this
proposition, known as the Polish-Saxon Question. On January 3, 1815, Metter nich,
together with Castlereagh and the French representative, Prince Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand, concluded a treaty of alliance intended to prevent Prussian annexation
of the whole of Saxony. Ultimately parts of Poland were granted to Prussia and to
Russia. Austria lost the Polish territories it had gained from an earlier partition.
The Congress of Vienna also gave life to what became known as the Congress
System, by which the Great Powers agreed to meet at specic intervals to discuss
European affairs of mutual concern. Ultimately it meant that Austria, Prussia, and
Russia agreed to quash all nationalist movements. The British and French never
entirely supported the Congress System. Although the parties met numerous times
between 1815 and 1822, the Congress System eventually failed due to a result of
clashing political differences between the various Great Powers.
Metternich was also instrumental in reorganizing Germany. Some 38 German
states, with Austria exercising considerable inuence over them, agreed to form
a Germanic Confederation. Metternich wanted to establish a similar arrangement
in Italy, but that never materialized. Tuscany, however, was reappropriated and the
kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia was created under the aegis of the Austrian Empire.
When Joachim Murat, Napoleons brother-in-law attempted to assert Napless inde-
pendence, Metternich crushed the movement and restored a Bourbon monarch on
the throne.
Metternich also subscribed to the Holy Alliance, an agreement among Austria,
Russia, and Prussia based on an initiative brought forward by Tsar Alexander at
Vienna on September 26, 1815. The purpose of the Holy Alliance was to prevent
revolutionary fervor and liberal tendencies from inuencing European politics, in
short, as a bulwark of the old social order. Only the Vatican, Britain, and the Ot-
toman Empire refused to join the Holy Alliance, which represented a reactionary
cause that Metternich dominated. Ultimately it amounted to very little because na-
tional self-interest always proved paramount. Further conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1818, Troppau in 1820, Laibach in 1821, and Verona in 1822 solidied Metter-
nichs goal of creating a conservative Europe.
Metternich continued to play an active part in Austrian and wider European
affairs down to the revolutions of 1848. Although revered by some and vilied by
others, he became known as the Coachman of Europe as a result of his masterly dip-
lomatic skills and gave his name to the Age of Metternich (18151848). Although
his main objective was to halt the spread of liberalism and nationalism, in which he
failed, he held it in check for four decades.
Mexican Revolution 475
FURTHER READING: De Bertier de Sauvigny, G. A. Metternich and His Times. London:
Darton, Logman & Todd, 1962; Fichtner, Paulla Sutter. The Habsburg Empire: From Dynasticism
to Multinationalism. Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1997; Kissinger, Henry. A World Restored: Europe After
Napoleon. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1973; Nicolson, Harold. The Congress of Vienna. New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1946; Palmer, Alan. Metternich. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1972; Taylor, Alan J. P. The Habsburg Monarchy, 18091918: A History of the Austrian Empire and
Austria Hungary. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
The conditions that gave rise to Mexican independence found their origin in
the political and economic changes in Europe and its American colonies during
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since its inception, the colonial
government of Mexicothen known as New Spainreected four distinct social
classes. Dominant were the peninsulares, those individuals born in Spain, who held
most of the leadership positions in the church and government through various
arrangements with the Spanish crown. Second were the Mexican-born criollos,
those of European descent, who largely controlled the colonys commercial and
economic life. Mestizos, people of mixed race, represented a large working class of
artisans, farmers, soldiers, and small businessmen, while Indians, the descendants
of Mexicos original inhabitants, occupied the fourth and lowest level of the social
scale. Together, they formed a population base of some seven million people.
By the end of the eighteenth century, problems relating to social position and
political and economic standing had spawned a growing sense of restlessness in the
people of New Spain. The local criollo elite, for example, resented the patronizing
attitude and monopoly on appointed ofces maintained by the peninsulares, as well
as the commercial restrictions imposed by imperial regulations. Mestizos felt similar
hostilities, as well as resentments over racism among criollos and peninsulares. In-
dians were resentful due to their poverty and the rampant racism directed toward
them by the other social classes in New Spain. Adding to the unrest was the matter
of the Napoleonic Wars, which only served to further divert the attention of Spain
from its North American colony, therein leaving a political vacuum in Mexico and a
corresponding increase in dissatisfaction with colonial rule from the non-peninsulare
population. When Napoleons armies occupied Spain in March 1808, forced Fer-
dinand VII from the Spanish throne, and crowned Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleons
brother, king of Spain, the criollos seized the opportunity to move toward auton-
omy. In July 1808, they presented their petition to the viceroy of New Spain, Jos de
Iturrigaray.
The criollo appeal was surprisingly conservative; it requested that the viceroy as-
sume leadership of a juntaa temporary, provisional governing bodycomposed
of himself, the archbishop of Mexico, and representatives from the army, Mexico
City, and the principal families, and that criollos be afforded equality with the pen-
insulares. The implicit assumption was that the junta would come into existence
due solely to the temporary absence of royal leadership from Spain and would step
down when the king was restored to the throne. But rather than call the junta,
Viceroy Iturrigaray instead convoked an assembly of representatives in Mexico
476 Mexican Revolution
City. A contentious atmosphere dominated the meeting, and arguments arose as
to whether Mexico would recognize Bonaparte in Spain or establish a junta in New
Spain acting in the name of Ferdinand VII. The peninsulares also began to fear that,
with criollo support, Iturrigaray might even attempt to install himself as king of an
independent Mexico. Motivated by the acrimonious debate and Iturrigarays criollo
sympathies, the peninsulares decided to act.
On the night of September 15, 1808, a select group of peninsulares launched an
armed attack on the viceroys palace, arrested Iturrigaray, and shipped him to Spain.
Pedro de Garibay, an elder peninsulare statesman and retired eld marshal, assumed
control of the government pending the arrival of the new viceroy. But while the drift
toward criollo domination over the government was, at least for the time being, sup-
pressed, this rst violent overthrow of a viceroy in New Spains history had profound
repercussions on the countrys struggle for autonomy in that it was to be the rst of
several events that began to erode the legitimacy of royal authority. A case in point
is that of Garibay himself. Elderly, lacking energy, and having lived more than half
his life in Mexico, he was regarded by many as more criollo than peninsulare. Soon
the same peninsulares who had placed Garibay in power replaced him with Francisco
Javier de Lizana y Beaumont, whom they believed was more sympathetic to their
worldview.
But even while experiencing a series of reprisals at the hands of the peninsulare -
controlled central administration, the criollos continued to plan the establishment
of a government of their own. They formed literary societies and correspondence
clubs and sent emissaries to the provinces and principal cities to spread their ideas
among the people. Among these clubs were those at Queretaro and Dolores. The
president of the latter was the parish priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who took the
matter in hand so passionately that he persuaded many of his predominantly Indian
parishioners to plot independence and had arms prepared for their use. Having
grown up on a hacienda where his father acted as superintendent in place of the
absentee owner, Hidalgo had always had sympathy for the illiterate and unskilled
Indian workers who provided the eld labor. His father, a poor criollo in a society of
poorer Indians and mestizos, worked to ensure his three sons would rise above his
own modest station in life. All attended college, and Miguel and an older brother
entered the ranks of the clergy, while the third brother studied law.
In Queretaro, Hidalgo met Captain Ignacio Allende, a revolutionary Creole
thinker in the Spanish army. Although both favored revolution, their visions differed
considerably. Allendes image of the revolt was that of himself riding at the head of
a triumphant rebel army of trained royalist soldiers who had defected from the
provincial regiments. Upper-class criollos, Allende anticipated, would ock to join
an openly anti-Spanish crusade. Hidalgo, on the other hand, envisioned machete-
wielding Indians overthrowing the Spaniards and chose to ignore the possibility
that the formation of such an Indian army would likely alienate most propertied
criollos, thus degrading the revolutions potential. Nevertheless, by the spring of
1810, Allende and Hidalgo agreed to coordinate and to foment in an uprising for
December of that year.
But in the early morning hours of September 16, 1810, a courier brought Hi-
dalgo and Allende the news that their secretly planned revolt had in fact become
public knowledge. On the previous day, one of their co-conspirators had panicked
and divulged the arrangements they were making for the December uprising. The
Mexican Revolution 477
messenger advised them to ee before the peninsulares arranged for them to be
hanged for treason. Hidalgo, sensing that they must act at once, rang the bell of his
church to summon his parishioners. However, instead of celebrating mass for the
assembled crowd of Indians, he told them that this was their opportunity to ght
for independence. The parishioners enthusiastically followed Hidalgo, and addi-
tional bands of Indians arrived from the countryside to join Hidalgos army of inde-
pendence, which, as it advanced, swelled in numbers, soon reaching some 30,000
insurgents who were primarily armed with spears, machetes, and other homemade
weapons. At the head of the revolutionary army, Hidalgo waved the banner of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, one of Mexicos holy symbols, to further inspire his followers.
City after city in the state of Guanajuato fell into Hidalgos hands, for the attacks
came so suddenly that no one was prepared to resist. Moreover, Indians continued
to join the standard of the Virgin of Guadalupe. But, shouting the battle cry, Death
to all Spaniards, the Indians soon failed to discriminate between criollos and pen-
insular Spaniards, thus turning what had begun as a civil war between criollos and
peninsulares into a race war between Indians and whites. Since his only aim was inde-
pendence and the return of the lands to the Indians, Hidalgo had no wish to bring
about this indiscriminate slaughter of the whites and tried in vain to control his
army. Instead, he found himself swept along by the will of his followers.
From Guanajuato, Hidalgos forces marched on to Mexico City after capturing
the towns of Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, and Valladolid. On October 30, 1810, they
encountered resistance at Monte de las Cruces, and despite a victory, Hidalgo lost
momentum and failed to take Mexico City. After a few additional minor victories,
in March 1811 the insurgents were ambushed and taken prisoner in Monclova. Ex-
communicated by an ecclesiastical court, Hidalgo was then found guilty of treason.
He and his compatriots were beheaded, and their heads were placed on pikes on
the granary walls in Guanajuato to serve as a reminder of the consequences of trea-
sonous behavior.
After the death of Hidalgo, Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon assumed leadership of
the revolutionary movement. A priest who had studied under Hidalgo and had
been among the rst to join the revolution, Morelos took charge of the political
and military aspects of the insurrection and planned a strategic move to encircle
Mexico City and to cut communications to the coastal areas. In June 1813, Morelos
called together a national congress of representatives from all the provinces, which
met at Chilpancingo to discuss the future of Mexico as an independent nation. The
major points included in the document prepared by the congress were popular sov-
ereignty, universal male suffrage, the adoption of Roman Catholicism as the ofcial
religion, abolition of slavery and forced labor, and an end to government monopo-
lies and corporal punishment. Yet despite initial successes by Moreloss forces, the
colonial authorities broke the siege of Mexico City after six months, captured posi-
tions in the surrounding areas, and nally invaded Chilpancingo. In 1815, Morelos
was captured, tried, and executed.
From 1815 to 1821, most of the ghting by those seeking independence from
Spain was conducted by isolated guerrilla bands. These bands produced two insur-
gent leadersManuel Felix Fernandez in Puebla and Vicente Guerrero in Oaxaca
but after 10 years of civil war and the death of two of its founders, by early 1820 the
independence movement had reached a stalemate with government forces. In De-
cember 1820, in what was supposed to be the nal government campaign against
478 Mexican Revolution
the guerrillas, Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca sent a force led by a royalist criollo of-
cer, Agustn de Iturbide, to defeat Guerreros army in Oaxaca. Iturbide, a native of
Valladolid, had gained renown for the zeal with which he persecuted Hidalgo and
Moreloss rebels during the early independence struggle. A favorite of the Mexican
church hierarchy, Iturbide appeared to be the personication of conservative crio-
llo values. And while he was indeed devoutly religious and committed to the defense
of property rights and social privileges, privately he was also disgruntled by his lack
of promotion and wealth.
Iturbides assignment to the Oaxaca expedition unexpectedly coincided with a
successful military coup dtat in Spain against the monarchy of Ferdinand VII, who
had been restored to the Spanish throne in 1814. To resolve their differences, the
leaders of the coup had compelled a reluctant Ferdinand to sign the liberal Consti-
tution of 1812. When news of the liberal charter reached the colony, Iturbide saw
in it an opportunity for the criollos to gain control of Mexico, and after an initial
clash with Guerreros forces, Iturbide switched allegiances and invited the rebel
leader to meet and discuss a doctrine that would support a renewed struggle for
independence.
With Guerreros counsel, on February 24, 1821, Iturbide promulgated the Plan
de Iguala, which proclaimed three principles, or guarantees, for Mexicos indepen-
dence from Spain: Mexico would be an independent monarchy governed by the
transplanted King Ferdinand or some other conservative European prince, criollos
and peninsulares would henceforth enjoy equal rights and privileges, and the Roman
Catholic Church would retain its privileges and religious monopoly. Politically, the
proposal was so broadly based that it pleased both patriots and loyalists, while the
goal of independence and the protection of Roman Catholicism largely brought
together all remaining factions.
After convincing his own soldiers to accept the principles, Iturbide then per-
suaded Guerreros forces to support the new conservative independence move-
ment. A new military force, the Army of the Three Guarantees, was then placed
under Iturbides command to enforce the Plan of Iguala. Iturbides army was soon
joined by rebel forces from all over Mexico, and when an insurgent victory became
certain, the viceroy resigned.
On August 24, 1821, near Vera Cruz, Juan de ODonoju, a representative of the
Spanish crown, and Agustin de Iturbide signed the Treaty of Cordoba, giving Mexico
its independence from Spain. Riding a wave of popularity, on July 21, 1822, Iturbide
and his imperial court traveled to the National Cathedral in Mexico City, where he
was crowned Agustin I, emperor of Mexico. See also Latin American Revolutions.
FURTHER READING: Anna, Timothy E. The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1978; Cary, Diana Serra. Failed First Step Toward Mexican
Independence. Military History 17 (2000): 3441; Hamill, Hugh M. The Hidalgo Revolt: Prelude
to Mexican Independence. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966; Hasbrouk, Alfred.
The Movements for Independence in Mexico and Central America. In Colonial Hispanic
America, ed. A. Curtis Wilgus. Washington, DC: George Washington University Press, 1936;
Kinsbruner, Jay. Independence in Spanish America: Civil Wars, Revolutions, and Underdevelopment.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994; Kirkwood, Burton. The History of Mexico.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
BRETT F. WOODS
Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de 479
An important French editor and historian, Joseph Franois Michaud was born on
June 19, 1767, at Albens, Savoy. He was educated at Bourg-en-Bresse and then took
up work as a writer in Lyon. He was quickly critical of the French Revolution and
in 1791 went to Paris, where, at great risk to his life, he edited several journals that
supported the royalist cause. Five years later he became editor of La Quotidienne and
was subsequently arrested. However, he managed to escape and was sentenced to
death in absentia.
With the establishment of the Directory, Michaud returned to editing La Quo-
tidienne but ran into trouble when the Consulate took over from the Directory.
Michauds sympathies with the French royalist cause led to his arrest and subse-
quent imprisonment in 1800. He then moved from journalism to writing several
books. With his brother and two friends, in 1806, he wrote Biographie moderne ou
dictionnaire des hommes qui se sont fait un nom en Europe, depuis 1789 (Modern Bi-
ography, or a Dictionary of Men Who Have Made Their Name in Europe since
1789). Five years later he completed his rst volume of the history of the Crusades.
With the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, Michaud returned to work on La
Quotidienne.
Michauds books met with some success. One, Histoire des quinze semaines ou le
dernier rgne de Bonaparte (History of Fifteen Weeks, or the Last Reign of Bonaparte) went
through 27 editions. Elected to the French Academy, he was also made an of-
cer in the Legion of Honor. In 18301831, he went to Syria and Egypt to collect
information for his history of the Crusades, a work that was not published until a
year after his death, when it appeared in six volumes. Michaud died on Septem-
ber 30, 1839.
FURTHER READING: Bordeaux, Henry. Voyageurs dOrient. Paris: Les petit-ls de Plon at
Nourrit, 1926.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de (17491791)
Honor-Gabriel de Mirabeau featured prominently in the early years of the
French Revolution as men of noble birth participated in the efforts of the Third Es-
tate as it became the National Assembly. As much as anyone, he wished for an end to
inherited privilege in all its guises, and he dreamed of a revolution that would make
all French people truly free. He equally hoped that the French monarchy could be
saved through the passage of a constitution that would protect the people and elicit
the best from a strong executive. His Enlightenment faith in education and the pos-
sibility of reforming society by altering the political system guided his thought and
actions during the Revolution.
Born to the noted Physiocrat Victor Riqueti, the Marquis de Mirabeau, the au-
thor of the best-selling LAmi des hommes (1756), which called upon the French gov-
ernment to undertake a program of economic improvement, Honor-Gabriel grew
up among thinkers such as Franois Quesnay. Even though he later criticized the
Physiocrats quite sharply, he nonetheless appreciated their emphasis on the moral
and economic value of work; he shared their opposition to unearned privilege. The
480 Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de
brief inuence of the Physiocrats on the French crown, effected through the minis-
try of Turgot, came to an abrupt end in 1776, but that did not terminate the interest
of the male members of the Mirabeau family in politics, economics, philosophy,
history, and the social problems of the day.
By age ve, Honor-Gabriels intelligence had become well known among Pari-
sian elites. The facial disgurement caused by childhood smallpox meant that he
would likely not receive praise for his appearance, though it hindered neither his
career as a revolutionary nor his ability to attract female companionship. While
his father separated from his mother and formed a household with his mistress,
Honor-Gabriel went to a Paris academy run by the abb Choquart, where he re-
ceived an excellent education with a fairly broad scope.
In the decades prior to the French Revolution, Mirabeau managed to spend im-
mense quantities of money and fell deeply into debt. His marriage in 1772 to a
well-born heiress provided him with his rst excuse for proigacy, but he continued
to nd it difcult to live within his means, and he never discharged his personal
bankruptcy, declared when he was 25. His father hoped to impose discipline on his
son at various points, usually by having Honor-Gabriel arrested under lettres de
cachet meant to preempt attempts by government ofcials or fellow nobles to have
him arrested.
Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau. Courtesy of Alexander Mika-
beridze.
Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de 481
While detained at the Chteau dIf in 1774, Mirabeau wrote his rst treatise, Essai
sur le despotisme. In this text, he revealed his inclination to seek concrete, practical
reforms rather than to indulge in vague fantasy. Unlike Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he
preferred mans nature in society to that characteristic of man in a supposed state of
nature, since he believed that society was formed as a consequence of an individuals
conscious acceptance of an authority who would serve his interests. The king, accord-
ing to Mirabeau, enjoyed his position so that he could enact the mandate given by his
people: to serve their interests as individuals and as a collective. If, however, he came
to forget that his power originated with his people, then he was likely to become a
despot. Foreseeing the consequences of misrule in mid-eighteenth-century France,
he warned the new king, Louis XVI, that if you make men conscious of their chains,
if you insanely devour the riches your insatiable tyranny has seized from them, they
will remember that they are stronger and more numerous than you, and that you
have only as much power as they choose to give you. Mirabeau recommended wide-
spread education and freedom as the keys to ensuring that the people could resist
despotic tendencies in their king, just as the king needed a similar education to train
him to control the despotic potential latent in every human being from birth.
In between causing various scandals, such as running away to Amsterdam with
the teenage wife of an extremely elderly nobleman, and spending time under arrest
at Vincennes in 1780, Mirabeau honed his skills as a journalist and read abundantly
in history, economics, politics, and law. In 1782, he published Des letters de cachet, a
denunciation of a law that lacked general consent. His wife Emilie, with whom he
had little in common and who had been unfaithful to him, won an absolute separa-
tion by exploiting personal connections and manipulating the corrupt parlement
in Aix. Meanwhile, people of the town had come to identify with Mirabeau as a con-
sequence of his dazzling oratory in his own defense and his engagement in a battle
against privilege akin to their own. The end of his marriage capped off decades dur-
ing which he steadily lost status, wealth, and reputation. He had, in many respects,
become an outsider to the privileged society into which he had been born.
Mirabeau spent some time in Neuchtel, then under Prussian control, where he
met with various Genevan dissidents whose revolutionary hopes had been frustrated.
His subsequent time in Britain did little to alter his opinions about the country: he re-
mained a determined Francophile and rejected everything but the beef in Brighton,
the beauty of the farms in the Home Counties, and the stability of the British govern-
ment. He continued to struggle for a living as a journalist and translator, though he
started to earn a reputation following his return to Paris in 1785. In his articles, he
drew attention to the nancial problems that ultimately crushed the French state.
His understanding of economics allowed him to explain the deep roots of the obvi-
ous crisis. In order to get their talented critic out of the country, the French govern-
ment employed Mirabeau as a secret correspondent in Berlin, where Frederick the
Greats successor, Frederick William II, remained a somewhat unknown entity.
As soon as he returned again to Paris in January 1787, Mirabeau reentered the
journalistic and political fray against the kings ministers Calonne and, later, Necker.
He watched the new minister Lomnie de Brienne vainly struggle to control the
Paris Parlement, and he refused the offer of a job, preferring obscurity . . . until
an orderly state of affairs emerges from the tumult we are in now, and until some
great revolution compels every responsible citizen to raise his voice. This revolution
cannot be delayed. As much as he disliked the obvious despotic inclinations of the
482 Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de
Paris Parlement, he also criticized the king for his unwillingness to summon the
Estates-General.
In May 1788, Mirabeau anonymously published the important Rponse aux alarmes
des bons citoyens, in which he averred that the parlements did not defend the peo-
ples interests, given that the people had no voice in them. He advised citizens to
focus their hopes on the upcoming meeting of the Estates-General, conceded to by
the king in August and set for 1789. Mirabeau wanted the Estates-General to tackle
an agenda that included consent to taxation and loans, the establishment of civil lib-
erty, and a provision to ensure regular assemblies. These would all rest on a precise
declaration of national rights, in which he included the end of absolutism and
the defense of liberty. Despite his dislike of privilege, he did not embrace republi-
canism: the French would enjoy liberty only if they had both a constitution and a
monarch, he believed.
Mirabeaus Rponse preceded similar pamphlets by men such as the abb Sieys
and helped the public to comprehend the potential import of the Estates-General
and of the Third Estate in particular. Yet his monarchism irritated the radicals,
who favored a republic, while his suggestions about the power of the people wor-
ried conservatives. His blend of democratic monarchism puzzled many of his col-
leagues and ultimately made him unsuited for a long-term leadership role during
the Revolution.
Mirabeau turned to the people in order to attend the Estates-General. His father
refused to yield the efs that entitled him to a place in the Second Estate. Honor-
Gabriel determined to wage an election campaign in Aix and Marseilles. In both
cities, he received great acclamation, much to the dismay of the local nobility, which
attempted to prevent him from acquiring a seat in the Second Estate because he did
not actually own any property. Mirabeau responded in print, pondering the nature of
representative government and rejecting the notion that the right of election should
belong only to property owners. He warned the nobles, Take care, do not disdain
the people who are the producers of everything, who have only to remain immobile
to become formidable. Yet the famine and food shortages in Provence did not in-
cline the people toward passive resistance, and violence broke out in various cities
of the region as the elections approached. Mirabeau came to the aid of the citizens
of Marseilles as vigilante groups began to form against the rioters. He organized the
rst civil militia in France from a number of dock workers. With the violence tempo-
rarily calmed, Mirabeau distributed a pamphlet explaining the causes of high prices
and proposing a reasonable price that all shopkeepers should maintain during the
crisis. He provided a similar service in Aix. The nobility blamed Mirabeau for causing
the riots, but this did not stop him being chosen representative from both Aix and
Marseilles; he declined the latter, though he lived up to his promise to support their
interests in the National Assembly. As he left Provence for Paris, supporters crowded
around his carriage in each village. He had become the Friend of the People.
In the early days of the Estates-General, he attempted to keep the Third Es-
tate unied so that it could act as a single focus for public opinion. To that end,
he avoided afliating himself with any particular faction or tendency. He created
the Journal des Etats-Gnraux (later renamed Lettres du comte de Mirabeau) to publi-
cize the cause of the Third Estate and gather support for its reconstitution as the
National Assembly. Within the Assembly, though, his noble birth, his writings, and
his enormous personal popularity made him suspect among many of his fellow
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et de 483
deputies. Further, his enemies spread a libelous characterization of Mirabeau as
venal and in the pay of the crown. His effectiveness as a revolutionary was ultimately
limited mainly by the combination of a determined preference for a constitutional
monarchy over a republic and a strong sympathy for the popular demonstrations
that became common in the streets of Paris in the early 1790s. He worried only that
these movements would inspire counterrevolutionary activity in response.
In the year and a half prior to his death, Mirabeau led the committee that pro-
duced a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Although
vehemently criticized when initially introduced, the draft became the basis for the
rst version of the declaration, which was adopted by the National Assembly. Con-
servatives labeled Mirabeau an atheist after he pushed for the abolition of tithes, as
a form of privilege, in favor of state compensation for clergy. He was a member of
both the Jacobin Club and the Socit de 89, the group of moderates who had split
from the Jacobins in 1790; he became president of the former group in Novem-
ber 1790. Although he disliked Maximilien Robespierres demagogic tendencies,
he shared his opposition to the principle that distinguished between active and
passive citizens based upon property ownership. Mirabeau was also a founding
member of the Socit des Amis des Noirs, which sought the abolition of slavery in
all French-controlled territories.
In December 1791, Mirabeau published Aperu de la situation en France et des moy-
ens de concilier la libert publique avec lautorit royale. This pamphlet represented his
last effort to convince his fellow Assembly members and the public that the king
could play a vital role in defending public liberty. His inuence steadily declined as
the Revolution grew more radical. Yet he never stopped hoping that the Revolution
would provide for a constitutional government, for a just and compassionate soci-
ety, for protection of the poor against the wealthy, and for peace. His death, due to
natural causes, on April 1, 1791, may have protected him both from disappointment
and from the guillotine.
FURTHER READING: Furet, Franois. Interpreting the French Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981; Grindon, Oliver John Welch. Mirabeau: A Study of a Democratic Monarchist.
Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1968; Hall, Evelyn Beatrice. The Life of Mirabeau. New
York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1912; Luttrell, Barbara. Mirabeau. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
MELANIE A. BAILEY
Monarchy
See Abolition of the Monarchy (France)
Montagnards
See The Mountain
Baron de le Brede et de (16891755)
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et de Montesquieu, was born on
January 18, 1689, at the castle of La Brede, near Bordeaux. He was the son of
484 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et de
Jacques de Secondat and Marie Franoise de Pesnel. His father was a soldier and
of long noble ancestry. His mother inherited the barony of La Brede, but she died
when Montesquieu was only seven.
In 1700, Montesquieu entered the Oratorian College de Juilly at Meaux, where
he received a classical education. In 1705 he went to Bordeaux to study law. In 1708
he was admitted to the bar before the Bordeaux Parlement, which was at the time
one of the most venerated in the country. The Bordeaux Parlement has been one
of the agencies that had enabled the French monarchy to outmaneuver the church
and the feudal nobility. It seats were acquired by hereditary right, which enabled it
to act with more independence than the successive French kings had wished. This
air of independence was imparted to Montesquieu during his experience serving
the Bordeaux Parlement.
From 1708 to 1713, Montesquieu continued his legal education in Paris. His
negative experiences led to a rejection of the Parisian lifestyle. In 1715 he mar-
ried a wealthy Protestant, Jeanne de Lartigue. That same year he was elected to the
Academy of Bordeaux. In 1716 he inherited the barony of Montesquieu and the
presidency of the Bordeaux Parlement from his uncle Jean-Baptiste. The presidency
was essentially the post of chief justice of a local court. In this role for some years he
championed provincial rights against the centralized power of the king. However, in
1721, uninterested in the routine of legal practice, he sold his ofce as president of
the Bordeaux Parlement. He was now wealthy enough that he could afford to study
the law as a social phenomenon and to give up its active practice.
In 1721, despite warnings against publishing, Montesquieu anonymously pub-
lished on a Dutch press, with a ctional imprint attributed to Pierre Martineau, The
Persian Letters (Les lettres persanes), which was an immediate and sensational success.
However, because it was a clandestinely published anonymous book, it was to have
a complicated publication history. It would sell steadily for the remainder of the
eighteenth century.
Montesquieus authorship of The Persian Letters was soon revealed. It gained him
public acclaim and made him some highly placed enemies. He soon made frequent
trips to Paris salons, where he mixed with admiring supporters. However, others were
outraged by the book. Cardinal Andr Fleury was angered enough by the book that
he successfully blocked Montesquieus induction into the French Academy until 1728.
Problems connected with the book would continue to arise for the rest of his life.
The Persian Letters reected Montesquieus reading of travel literature, such as
Johann Chardin, Voyage en Perse, and works of ction from the Middle East such
as The Thousand and One Nights. The book pretended to be a collection of letters
written by two Persian travelers, Usbek and Rica, to family and friends back in Per-
sia. In some places the letters were spiced with titillating sexual innuendos about
life in a Persian harem. This gave a sensual quality to the severe social criticism
of Europe and France that was the motivation for the book. The book was actu-
ally making use of perceived Persian innocence and wonder as a mirror for a witty
criticism of the corruptions that Montesquieu found obnoxious. The weaknesses of
the Persians were, in fact, meant to be those of Europeans, as well.
In 1729, Montesquieu began a series of journeys in search of liberty. After trav-
els in Italy, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe, Montesquieu went to Brit-
ain, where he discovered the sort of liberty he was seeking. In Britain he was well
received not only as a nobleman, but because his literary fame had preceded him.
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et de 485
For two years he was feted and celebrated. He was elected to the Royal Society and
was given extensive tours of Britain and guided explanations of its system of govern-
ment. It was at this time that he began to develop his ideas on the separation of
powers as a solution to the problem of despotic government.
In 1731 Montesquieu returned to Bordeaux. He began a lengthy study of the
history of the Roman Republic and its subsequent empire. In 1734 he published
Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur of Rome and Its Decline (Considrations sur
les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence). The book was not a history in
the sense of a narrative story. Instead Montesquieu was trying to discover the natu-
ral causes for historical events. Montesquieu wrote that Rome had risen to power
because its martial qualities had made its citizen virtuous. In addition it contained
institutions that were exible enough to change so that political and social abuses
could be corrected. On the other hand, Rome failed because it allowed imperialism
to corrupt its basic virtues.
Fourteen years later (1748), Montesquieu published his monumental work, The
Spirit of the Laws (De lesprit des lois). The book presents Montesquieus views on the
environment and social relationships. The Spirit of the Laws is one of the greatest
books in the history of political theory and jurisprudence, exercising enormous in-
uence on historical method and sociology. However, it was to gain from the Jesuits,
the philosophes, and others a mixture of opposition and support. Scholars have
differed greatly in their interpretations of Montesquieus organizational scheme for
The Spirit of the Laws. Some have found a rigid order, while others have found none.
Despite its apparent lack of a clear structure, which makes it difcult to reduce to an
orderly interpretation, it was read widely in the eighteenth century.
The Laws is divided into 33 books (livres) of chapter length beginning with a short
book about laws in general. For Montesquieu the spirit of the law lay in the origin
and development of the law through custom. This included the development of
the meaning of legal terms, rules, and the adoption of laws. After discussing gen-
eral matters, Montesquieu used Books IIVIII to address numerous issues and laws
regarding monarchy, republics, and despotism and their relationship, sumptuary
legislation, problems of luxury, and the condition of women. In Books XI and X
he discussed the laws of war and defense. These laws recognize the army and navy
as means for the protection of the individuals. Book XI discusses the protection
of individuals and the meaning of political liberty, including the form known in
England. Books XIIXIII discuss domestic security, protection of property, justice,
courts, public nances, and taxes.
Books XIVXIX discuss the concept of space and its relationship to government.
Montesquieu wrestled with two problems rst noted by Plato and Aristotle. The
problems of space and of numbers had to be met by every government. Not every
type of government was capable of ruling beyond a certain size territory, nor be-
yond a certain size population. The principal form that had historically ruled great
numbers of people in vast territories was the empire. However, great empires, while
providing peace, economic opportunity and security, and other benets did not
provide liberty, which was Montesquieus goal.
Books XXXXV discuss economics and religion. Montesquieu, in Book XX, re-
views the laws related to commerce and povertyhow these differ in various legal
systems and among different persons, such as merchants or noblesand the impact
they have upon them and they upon the political system. In Books XXIXXV he
486 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et de
discusses the impact of the natural environment on commerce and links this to the
impact of money, usury, wars, and political changes. His discussion of religious laws
and practices and their impact upon civil laws and practices covers a wide range of
historical examples.
In Books XXVIIXXXI Montesquieu discusses a number of matters dealing
with the founding of political institutions, the Roman law of succession, and other
matters. He then discusses the origin and development of French civil laws. The
discussion reveals his lengthy study of Roman history because the discussion is en-
tirely focused on the Roman roots of French laws, which were in Montesquieus
day composed of a mosaic of conicting systems. Montesquieu then discusses the
development of law among the Franks versus the Germans. His discussion of trial by
combat and its relationship to duels is quite extensive. He nishes with discussions
of French feudalism and an explanation on how laws are made. After the publica-
tion of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu, whose eyesight was failing him, retired to
La Brede. He died on February 10, 1755, during a trip to Paris.
Montesquieus political discussions essentially focused upon the issue of the re-
lationship of the individual to the state. For Montesquieu the question was how to
achieve a balance between order and liberty. For him, the local judge from Bor-
deaux, the threat of monarchial absolutism was real; a solution to the problem had
to be found. He determined that the kind of political system that employed the
separation of powers as existed in Britain proved to be an important mechanism for
reducing the coercion inherent in the state.
Apart from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu was the most important French
political philosopher in the eighteenth century. His study of government to satisfy a
love of liberty provided materials that were used to bring liberty to millions in both
Europe and the Americas. For Montesquieu the key to liberty lay in the separation
of powers. In Book XI, section 4, he states that political liberty can be found only in
moderate governments.
In section 6 of Book XI, he discusses separation of powers, that is, the division
of government into three branches with legislative, executive, and judicial powers
only. He describes this as he thought he had found it in the laws of England. He
concludes Book XI with a mild rebuke to James Harrington, who in Oceana had
discussed the separation of powers, for being too utopian.
Montesquieus ideas had a major impact in France, but also a lasting impact in
the United States. To the Americans who wrote the United States Constitution,
Montesquieu was an important source of political wisdom. In section 5 of Book XI
of The Spirit of the Laws, he had observed in passing that the central responsibility of
all governments, the protection of persons and property, was always accompanied by
additional ends such as expanding dominion (Rome), war (Sparta), or religion (an-
cient Israel). To Montesquieu, each government desired this additional goal. The
authors of the American Constitution chose political liberty as the American goal.
Indeed, Montesquieus work had a profound inuence on the those who drew
up the U.S. Constitution. The Federalist Papers, a series of 85 newspaper articles,
were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. Published in
a New York City newspaper, they persuaded the people of New York to ratify the
Constitution. Montesquieus ideas are discussed in three articles. In Federalist nos. 9
and 43 his ideas are used to expound the idea of a federal union.
The most famous of Montesquieus political ideas that inuenced the U.S. Con-
stitution were those bearing on the separation of powers. Montesquieus conception
Morris, Gouverneur 487
of the separation of powers as rened by the Framers of the Constitution is embod-
ied in the Legislative Article (Article 1), the Executive Article (Article 2), and the
Judicial Article (Article 3), as well as institutionally in the Congress, the presidency,
and the judiciary. His views are discussed at length in Federalist no. 47.
FURTHER READING: Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1951; Courtney, Cecil Patrick. Montesquieu and Burke. Oxford: Blackwell & Mott,
1963; Montesquieu, Baron de. Cahiers, 17161755. Edited by Bernard Graset. Paris:
Grasset, 1941; Montesquieu, Baron de. Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and the
Decadence of the Romans. Translated by Jehu Baker. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1894; Montesquieu, Baron de. The Spirit of the Laws. Translated by Thomas Nugent. New
York: Hafner, 1965; Montesquieu, Baron de. The Persian Letters. Translated by George Healy.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational, 1964; Sabine, George H. A History of Political Theory.
3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1961; Shackleton, Robert. Montesquieu:
A Critical Biography. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
ANDREW J. WASKEY
Montmorin de Saint Hrem, Armand Marc, Comte de (17451792)
A prominent French politician, Armand Marc, the comte de Montmorin de Saint
Hrem, was from the cadet branch of a noble family from Auvergne.
Montmorin was born on October 13, 1745, in Paris. He became a gentleman-in-
waiting to the dauphin (later Louis XVI) and in 1777 was appointed ambassador
to Madrid. At the court of King Charles III, he helped persuade Spain to enter the
American Revolutionary War. After such a successful posting, he was recalled to
become governor of Brittany. In 1787 Louis XVI named him as the successor of
Charles Gravier, the comte de Vergennes, at the ministry of foreign affairs.
Montmorin became a close friend and political ally of Mirabeau and strove hard
to try to work out a compromise between the ardent royalists and the revolutionar-
ies. He tried to persuade Louis XVI to accept the inevitability of change but failed.
After Mirabeau died in April 1791, Montmorin was placed in a difcult position
when the royal family ed to Varennes, where they were captured and brought back
to Paris. He did not know of the escape attempt but there was always suspicion de-
spite his being cleared by an investigative committee of the National Assembly. After
the event, he continued to serve as an adviser to Louis XVI. In June 1792 ofcials
seized his papers but could nd no incriminating material in them. He was, how-
ever, denounced and ed. Captured and brought before the Legislative Assembly,
he was taken to the Abbaye, where he died in the September Massacres. His distant
cousin Louis Victor Henri, Marquis de Montmorin de Saint Hrem, leader of the
senior branch of the family, was also killed in the same massacres.
FURTHER READING: Correspondence of the Comte de Moustier with the Comte de
Montmorin. American Historical Journal 8, no. 4 (1903): 70933.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
An American politician, Gouverneur Morris served as a delegate to the Second
Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention and later as minister
plenipotentiary to France.
488 Mounier, Jean Joseph
Born in New York City to a wealthy couple, Lewis Morris Jr. and his second wife,
Sarah Gouverneur, Morris inherited not only wealth and privilege, but also a tradi-
tion of service to the state; his father was a judge of the court of vice admiralty, his
grandfather, governor of New Jersey; and his mother, the daughter of the Speaker
of the New York Assembly. He attended the Academy of Philadelphia and Kings
College (now Columbia) and was admitted to the bar in 1771. Because he was the
youngest of three sons, his inheritance was limited. As a young man he was tall,
handsome, self-assured, and a gifted, if somewhat verbose, speaker.
When the American Revolution broke out, Morris initially urged compromise
with the British but soon joined the Patriot cause. In 1775, he was elected to the
New York Provincial Congress, where he advocated the issuance of a paper currency
and the abolition of slavery. An enthusiastic supporter of George Washington, he
served in the Continental Congress (17771779). Thrown from a coach in 1780,
Morris had to have his leg amputated below the knee and replaced with an oak
limb, a feature that became his trademark. Robert Morris (no relation), then su-
perintendent of nance, appointed him his assistant from 1781 to 1785. As such,
Gouverneur Morris urged the adoption of a decimal system and of the terms cent
and dollar, essentially the basis of the American nancial system.
He continued his career as a businessman, buying property and investing in
companies before his election in December 1786 to the Constitutional Convention,
where he defended the principles of both property ownership and civil rights and
argued for an independent executive. A skilled writer, he served on the commit-
tee that drafted the United States Constitution. In 1788, Morris traveled to Europe
on business and while there was appointed minister plenipotentiary to France
(17921794). During this time mobs invaded his home, and ofcials searched his
mail and arrested him twice. Morris, who detested the French Revolution and the
carnage of the Reign of Terror, was eventually recalled.
In 1798, he returned to the United States and reentered politics, serving as a
senator from New York (18001803). He later supported the Louisiana Purchase
(1803), championed plans for an Erie Canal, and opposed the War of 1812. He
married Anne Cary Randolph late in1809 and died seven years later. See also Slavery
and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: De Conde, Alexander. Entangling Alliance: Politics and Diplomacy under
George Washington. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1958; Mintz, Max M. Gouverneur
Morris and the American Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970; Morris,
Gouverneur. The Diary and Letters. 2 vols. Edited by Anne Cary Morris. 1888. Reprint, New
York: Da Capo Press, 1970; Morris, Gouverneur. A Diary of the French Revolution. Edited by
Beatrix Cary Davenport. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1939; Roosevelt, Theodore. Gouverneur
Morris. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1888.
Mounier, Jean Joseph (17581806)
French revolutionary and statesman, Mounier was born to a merchant family
in Grenoble. He initially dreamed of a military career but his non-noble origins
presented a major obstacle to this pursuit. Instead, young Mounier chose to study
law at the Collge Royal Dauphin and the University of Orange, receiving the
Mounier, Jean Joseph 489
bachelor of law in 1776. In 1779, he was admitted as an advocate at Grenoble and,
in 1783, purchased the ofce of juge royal, one of the two criminal judgeships of
his province. Over the next ve years, he studied politics and English institutions,
of which he became a profound admirer. In 1788, he participated in the meetings
of the Estates of Dauphin at Grenoble, Vizille, and Romans, where he served as a
secretary of the Assembly of the provincial Estates-General of Dauphin province,
drafting the cahiers of grievances and enhancing his political reputation. After
the king summoned the Estates-General, Mounier was elected deputy of the Third
Estate from the Dauphin in January 1789 and published Nouvelles observations sur
les Etats- Gnraux de France, in which he criticized the ancient constitution and the
procedures of the Estates-General, and campaigned for more powers to be granted
to the new deputies.
As the Estates-General gathered at Versailles in May 1789, Mounier played a
prominent role in the ongoing dispute over the issue of voting and was in favor of
the union of the Third Estate with the two privileged orders, the First Estate and
the Second Estate. On June 17, the Third Estate made the bold move of declaring
itself the National Assembly. Three days later, when the deputies of the Third Estate
gathered for a regular meeting, they found the doors of their assigned meeting
hall closed and guarded by royal troops, a sign of King Louis XVIs resolution to
use force to dissolve the seditious estate. As the deputies moved to a nearby empty
hall, which was often used to play tennis and was known as jeu de paume (tennis
court), some of them called for moving the Third Estate to Paris, where the popu-
lation would defend them from any actions on the part of the crown. However,
Mounier eloquently opposed this motion and instead proposed staying at Versailles
and swearing an oath not to separate until a new constitution for the kingdom was
accepted. As a result, the famous Tennis Court Oath was pledged by the deputies.
On June 23, Mounier was among the few who protested against King Louis XVI at
the sance royale. He took active part in the work of the Constituent Assembly and
was elected to the rst Constitutional Committee, where he proposed establishing
a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislative brancha system similar to
that of the British.
On September 28, 1789, Mounier was elected president of the Constituent As-
sembly and served as a leader of liberal monarchists. After the events of October
56, 1789, he disapproved of the treatment of the king and clashed with more radi-
cal deputies. In protest, he resigned both as president and deputy and returned to
Dauphin, where he published an exposition of his conduct, Expos de la conduite
de Mounier dans lAssemble nationale et des motifs de son retour en Dauphin, which was
critical of the radical tendencies he observed in Paris. His conduct, however, branded
him as a traitor to the revolutionary cause, and Mounier was forced to seek refuge
in Switzerland in 1790. He remained in exile for the next decade, publishing several
works concerning revolutionary events in France, among them Appel au tribunal de
lopinion publique sur le dcret rendu par lAssemble nationale le 3 octobre 1790 (1792), Re-
cherches sur les causes qui ont empech les Franais de devenir libres (1792), and Adolphe ou
principles lmentaires de politique et rsultats de la plus cruelle des experiences (1795).
In 1793, Mounier traveled to London, where the British government offered him
a lucrative position and salary in Canada, which he refused, as he still entertained
the hope of returning to France. In 1795, with Switzerland in the midst of revolu-
tionary upheaval, Mounier retired to Germany, where he was sheltered by the Duke
490 The Mountain
of Weimar and established a school for young noblemen at the castle of Belvedere.
While staying here, he produced De l inuence attribue aux philosophes, aux francs-
maons et aux illumins sur la Rvolution franaise, which was published in Tubingen
in 1801.
After General Napoleon Bonapartes coup of 18 Brumaire (November 910,
1799), Mounier was included in the amnesty of migrs and returned to France in
1801. First Consul Bonaparte named him a prefect of the department of Ille-et-
Vilaine in 1803, and Mounier reorganized and directed this department for the next
three years. In 1804, Mounier was appointed to the Senate and then, in 1805, made
a councilor of state. However, already in poor health, he died at the age of 48 in
Paris on January 26, 1806. See also Cahiers de Dolances.
FURTHER READING: Egret, Jean. La rvolution des notables, Mounier et les monarchiens 1789.
Forlag: Armand Colin, 1950; Lanzac de Laborie, Lon de. Un royaliste libral en 1789. Paris:
E. Plon, Nourrit et cie. 1887; Robert, Adolphe, Edgar Bourloton, and Gaston Cougny, eds.
Dictionnaire des parlementaires franais. Paris: Bourloton, 18891891.
The Mountain
The name the Mountain (La Montagne) was given to a political group of radi-
cal left-wing deputies during the French Revolution who sat on the highest benches
in the Mange, where the National Convention met in 17921795; its members
were known as the Montagnards. The Mountain emerged as a radical group known
for its democratic ideals in the fall of 1792 and opposed the moderate Girondin
deputies in the Convention. In 17911792, many future Girondin and Montag-
nard deputies belonged to the Jacobin Club but became split in the subsequent
disagreement between Jacques-Pierre Brissot and Maximilien Robespierre. The
support base for the Mountain was among the sans-culottes (radical elements of
the poorer classes) of Paris, as well as the petty bourgeoisie, who welcomed radical
changes. Despite consisting of about a third of the 749 deputies of the Convention,
the Montagnards exercised a dominating inuence over many moderate deputies,
jointly known as the Plain or Marshes, and had close connections with the Paris
Commune.
In the Convention, the Mountain was engaged in a bitter ght with the Giron-
din faction, which initially controlled the government from September 1792 to
June 1793. This conict proved to be a driving force behind many events of the
Revolution, including the trial and execution of King Louis XVI. The Mountain
proved successful in the end and overthrew the Girondins in the insurrection of
May 31 to June 2, 1793. It then dominated the Convention and effectively con-
trolled the French revolutionary government for the next year, a period sometimes
referred to as the Montagnard Dictatorship. The Montagnards temperament was
democratic, and they drafted the Constitution of 1793, which was the most demo-
cratic constitution at the time. The Mountain also implemented radical policies to
stabilize the country in the midst of civil strife and foreign invasions. They employed
terrorist measures widely to ght political enemies and perceived counterrevolu-
tionary activities and established strict state control of the economy through the
Law of the Maximum, which beneted the poor. To ght the very real threat of
Muir, Thomas 491
foreign invasion, the Montagnard government declared the leve en masse that trans-
formed the nature of military conict and helped turn the tide of the war.
Nevertheless, these policies, especially the use of terror, backred by early 1794,
when a series of intra-Montagnard conicts took place. The spring of 1794 saw the
fall and execution of the Hbertiste and Dantonist factions as Robespierre became
more isolated and conspicuous, insisting on a continuation of the Reign of Terror.
By June 1794, the Mountain, never a solid block, disintegrated and collapsed in
the coup of 9

Thermidor, or the Thermidorian Reaction. Following this coup, the
Mountain itself ceased to be an inuential political force. The Jacobin Club was
closed in November 1794, and the Montagnards were purged from the Conven-
tion, where the remaining deputies organized a minority faction known as the crte
(crest). The Germinal-Prairial uprisings in April to May 1795 were the last powerful
show of force by the former Montagnards, and they were suppressed and perse-
cuted throughout the country. Nevertheless, some Montagnards made a successful
comeback during the period of the Directory, though their brief neo-Jacobin re-
vival in 1799 ended with the coup of the 18 Brumaire and the establishment of the
Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte. See also Constitutions, French Revolution-
ary; Danton, Georges-Jacques; French Revolutionary Wars; Hbert, Jacques; Hber-
tistes; Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Bouloiseau, Marc. The Jacobin Republic 17921794. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1983; Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Lefebvre, George. The French Revolution. Translated
by John Hall Stewart and James Friguglietti. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press,
19621964.
Muir, Thomas (17651799)
Muir, the son of a devout Presbyterian father who was a hop merchant and grocer,
was born in Glasgow. He started reading law at Glasgow University but transferred
to Edinburgh University after getting into trouble for urging university reform. He
was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in November 1787 and soon built up a
successful legal practice in Edinburgh, though he sometimes waived his fees when
pleading for poor clients. He sat in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
as an elder and supported the more popular evangelical party. In late 1792, inspired
by events in France, he helped found the Scottish Association of the Friends of
the People in Edinburgh. He became a vice president, promoted reform societies
elsewhere in Scotland, and made contact with leading United Irishmen.
At a convention of reformers held in Edinburgh on December 1113, 1792,
to promote a petition for parliamentary reform, he supported reform, read out
a printed address from the Society of United Irishmen, and called for reformers
throughout the British Isles to support similar conventions. On January 2, 1793,
Muir was arrested on a charge of sedition, but released on bail. He went to London
to meet Whig leaders and then on to France, where he arrived too late to remon-
strate against the execution of Louis XVI. When war broke out in February 1793,
he was unable to return home. He eventually took an American ship bound for
492 Murray, David, Earl of Manseld
Baltimore but left it at Belfast and returned to Scotland to stand trial. His trial on
August 30 was before the harsh judge Lord Braxeld. He unwisely chose to defend
himself, which he did with spirit, vigor, and dignity, but, in a trial that was far from
impartial, he was convicted and sentenced the next day to be transported. He was
imprisoned for some months in a prison hulk on the River Thames, which badly af-
fected his health, before sailing to Australia on May 2, 1794, with three other politi-
cal prisoners convicted by the Scottish courts.
Muir was not incarcerated in Australia but was allowed to buy a small farm. In
February 1796 he was picked up off shore by an American trading ship that took
him to Nootka Sound on the Pacic coast of North America. He made his way down
to California, crossed Mexico, and reached Havana, where he was imprisoned for
a time. Taking a Spanish ship, he crossed the Atlantic, but off Cadiz, this ship was
attacked and captured by two Royal Navy warships on April 26, 1797. During the
battle, a ying splinter removed Muirs eye and part of his cheek, leaving him heav-
ily bloodied and severely disgured. Not recognizing him, the British sent him on
shore with the rest of the wounded. The Cadiz authorities promptly imprisoned
him, but efforts made by the Directory in France secured his release in September.
Muir set off for France, reaching Paris in December, and was welcomed by govern-
ment ofcials. In poor health and in nancial difculties, he was involved in petty
intrigues, wrote some essays for De Bonnevilles Le Bien Inform, and met Thomas
Paine and various British exiles, including several United Irishmen. He dropped
out of sight in September 1798, and his death was recorded in Le Moniteur in late
January 1799. See also Whigs.
FURTHER READING: Bewley, Christina. Muir of Huntershill. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983; MacMillan, Hector. Handful of Rogues: Thomas Muirs Enemies of the People. Glendariel,
UK: Argyll Books, 2005.
H. T. DICKINSON
Murray, David, Earl of Manseld (17271796)
David Murray, seventh viscount Stormont and second earl of Manseld, was
a British diplomat and Northern secretary of state during the second half of the
American Revolution, from 1779 to 1782.
Born in Scotland, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and largely owed
his career to the inuence of his uncle William Murray, rst earl of Manseld, who
became lord chief justice of England. Manseld secured Stormonts rst appoint-
ment to Saxony-Poland, then jointly ruled by Augustus III, in 1755. His marriage to
a Saxon aristocrat in 1759 afforded Stormont entry into the Habsburg family circle
when he was appointed ambassador to Vienna in 1763.
Largely responsible for the Anglo-Austrian rapprochement after the Seven Years
War (17561763), his long-standing regard for Stanislaw Poniatowski, elected king
of Poland in 1764, led Stormont to publicly oppose the rst partition of Poland in
1772. Failing to prevent Austrian involvement, Stormont nonetheless attempted to
mobilize British public opinion against partition by sponsoring John Lind to pub-
lish Letters concerning the Present State of Poland, in 1773. Appointed ambassador to
Paris in 1776, Stormont unsuccessfully attempted to prevent French involvement in
Murray, Judith Sargent 493
the American Revolutionary War, and in October 1779 he was appointed secretary
of state for the Northern Department.
Stormont was undoubtedly intelligent, diligent, and vastly experienced, but he
proved to be rather rigid in his outlook and clung to the old system of diplomacy
in a rapidly changing world. While rm in protecting British interests during the
American Revolution, his Anglocentric vision, especially over neutral trading rights,
not only helped provoke the Anglo-Dutch War of 1780 but also alienated Catherine II
of Russia, who played a leading role in the creation of the League of Armed Neutral-
ity in 1780. Leaving ofce with the fall of the Lord North ministry in March 1782,
Stormont was later an important supporter of William Pitt the Younger. Stormont
supported his countrys participation in the war against revolutionary France that
began in 1793 and returned to ofce as lord president of the Council, which he
held until his death in Brighton in 1796. See also Franco-American Alliance; French
Revolutionary Wars; Poland, Partitions of.
FURTHER READING: Horn, D. B. British Public Opinion and the First Partition of Poland.
Edinburgh, UK: Oliver and Boyd, 1945; Scott, H. M. British Foreign Policy in the Age of American
Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
RORY T. CORNISH
Murray, John, Earl of Dunmore (17321809)
In 1769, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, was appointed governor of New
York and, in 1772, governor of Virginia. During his tenure as governor of Virginia
he helped initiate a war against the Ohio Valley Indians. He also recruited a regi-
ment of slaves to oppose Whigs in the early stages of the War of Independence. It
is unclear whether the conict with the Ohio Indians, known as Dunmores War,
was motivated by a desire to distract Virginians revolutionary politics or a genuine
interest in expanding the colony. It ended with a disadvantageous peace for the
colony in the autumn of 1774.
When armed deance of the mother country began in 1775, Dunmore raised
and led several loyalist units. On November 7, 1775, Dunmore proclaimed freedom
to all slaves who took up arms in support of the king. His proclamation led to the
creation of the Royal Ethiopians, a unit consisting of freed slaves who, in the event,
achieved little militarily. Dunmore returned to Britain for a brief time before taking
up his post as royal governor of the Bahamas, which he lled from 1787 to 1796. He
died at Ramsgate in May 1809. See also American Revolution; American Revolution-
ary War; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Hintzen, William. The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley (17691794).
Manchester, CT: Precision Shooting, 1999.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
Judith Sargent Murray is regarded as Americas rst feminist. She was born in
1751 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She married John Stevens in 1769. Both she
and her husband strongly supported the American Revolutionary War. In 1784, she
494 Murray, Judith Sargent
began to write poems and essays. Her husband died in 1786. She and her family had
a long-standing friendship with the Reverend John Murray, a Universalist. After her
husband died, she converted to Universalism, and in 1788 she married John Mur-
ray. They had a daughter named Julia in 1791.
She continued to write poetry, essays, and plays and became a regular contribu-
tor to Massachusetts Magazine in the 1780s. She published an essay entitled On the
Equality of the Sexes in 1790. In the essay, Murray championed equality for women.
The essay compared the intellectual abilities of men and women and concluded
that while men were superior to women in regard to reason and judgment, this was
simply because men were permitted to obtain an education, while women were not.
In other essays, she supported the education of women, as well as greater economic
autonomy and political participation for women.
Owing to her writings, she is considered to be the earliest public feminist in
America. A collection of Murrays essays was published in 1798 in book form under
the title The Gleaner. Many prominent people, including George Washington and
John Adams, read her book. Following the death of her second husband, she edited
and published his sermons, letters, and autobiography. Murray was a frequent letter
writer herself. She seemed to understand the importance of leaving behind a writ-
ten historical record, so at the age of 23, she started copying her letters to family and
friends into books. Murray copied over 2,500 letters, creating an important record
of eighteenth-century America. Judith Sargent Murray died in 1820.
FURTHER READING: Smith, Bonnie Hurd. The Letters I Left Behind: Judith Sargent Murray
Papers. Salem, MA: Curious Traveller Press, 2004.
GENE C. GERARD
N
Naples, Kingdom of
The Kingdom of Naples was formed after the division of the Kingdom of Sic-
ily in 1282. During its long history, the Kingdom of Naples had come under the
governance of the French, the Spanish, and, from 1714 after the Treaty of Rastatt,
Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire. However, in the decades following the
French Revolution, the Kingdom of Naples was subject to much instability, and
from 1798 to 1816 the territory was governed by a succession of leaders with af-
liations with the Spanish and British monarchy, as well as to Revolutionary and
Napoleonic France.
In 1798, the Bourbon dynasty led by Ferdinand VI was overthrown and replaced
by the French-led Parthenopean Republic, although in 1799 Bourbon rule was
reestablished thanks to the intervention of British forces. Ferdinand VI remained
in power until 1806, when the French invaded the south of Italy and reshaped
the political landscape of the peninsula. Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleons brother,
was installed as king of Naples, although upon his crowning as king of Spain, he
was replaced in 1808 by Joachim Murat, one of Napoleons marshals. Murats grip
over Naples was rmly maintained in the succeeding years, although following the
Battle of Leipzig in 1813, he switched allegiance from the French to the Austrian
cause to save his throne. However, during the Hundred Days (March to June 1815),
Murat deserted his Austrian allies and reverted back to the French side, in an at-
tempt to strength his rule within Italy. His defeat, however, at the Battle of Tolen-
tino on May 23, 1815, led to his removal from power in Naples. His successor, the
restored Bourbon king Ferdinand VI, in the following year merged the Neapolitan
mainland possessions with that of Sicily, thus forming the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies.
FURTHER READING: Croce, Benedetto. History of the Kingdom of Naples. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1972.
IAN MORLEY
496 Napoleon I
Napoleon I (17691821)
Napoleon I, emperor of France, whose full name was Napoleon Bonaparte, is
generally acclaimed as one of the greatest military leaders of all time. He changed
the face of warfare forever, but his political legacy was equally important and helped
shape the modern world. He is often dismissed as a precursor to Stalin and Hitler
by his critics or hailed by his admirers as a enlightened liberator. Neither polarized
view does complete justice to the emperor, his effect on the political stage, and his
air for administration. As Max Sewell, among others, noted, Napoleons achieve-
ments lay in his ability to dovetail the achievements of the French Revolution with
the needs of a country torn apart by war and internecine strife. His involvement
in the codication of the law, which resulted in the Civil Code of 1804, which en-
dures to this day, embodied Frances social changes and gave the country a much-
needed element of stability.
He also formed an uneasy peace with the Catholic Church under the Concordat,
making it subordinate to the state, and allowing religion to exert a steadying inu-
ence on society. Philip Dwyer calls Napoleon a consolidator who managed to rein
in the Revolution by helping eliminate the factionalism that had split France asun-
der. He facilitated a rapprochement with Catholics, royalists, and migrs; codied
the aforementioned laws; and introduced monetary reforms (such as the creation
of the Bank of France in 1800) in a bid to develop the socioeconomic and political
stability that the country so badly needed. As Tulard said, The only way in which
the Revolution could be brought to a close was through an alliance of the bour-
geoisie and the peasantry around one or another principle. The man was found:
Bonaparte.
The emperor set stable government above much else, as his admiration for Max-
imilien Robespierre, the Revolutions arch ideologue, shows. His afnity with the
revolutionary disciple stemmed not from a liking for the former lawyers zeal or
modus operandi but from a desire for strong government. Englund shows the in-
congruity of the link between the two men and their shared vision for a strong,
unied France: The rst Emperor of the French is generally regarded as the last
word in pragmatic governance and the French Revolutions great stier, while the
Incorruptible is construed as its most advanced avatar, a Jacobin illumine who put
ideology ahead of everything.
To achieve a strong government, Napoleon also strengthened a massive adminis-
trative and judicial apparatus, which ensured that all roads guratively led to Paris.
The highly centralized system of appointed ofcials (prefects, subprefects, mayors,
and judges) took the onus away from the people who been such a prominent (and
fearful) part of the Revolution. The elite, from which Napoleon sprang, was simul-
taneously strengthened by these changes. As Dwyer points out, despite his early
irtations with Jacobinism, Napoleon was not a true revolutionary. As an ancien
rgime noble, he had a noblemans contempt for that nebulous concept, the peo-
ple. Wealth and property, therefore, were an integral part of the Empire, although
they did not totally eclipse the Revolutions meritocracy, which left some careers
and positions open to talent. To ensure the smooth operation of the state and its
branches, the emperors pragmatic, conciliatory approach extended to landown-
ers, government ofcials, professionals, and businessmen. In 1808, he even went so
far as to create a new tier of notables supposedly based on merit in contrast to the
Napoleon I 497
ancien rgimes emphasis on birth and privilege. However, more than one-fth of
the Napoleonic nobility were made up of remnants of the Old Regime. The Legion
dHonneur was created in 1802 to reward servants of the state. Napoleon wanted
to form entire echelons of society, which remained entirely devoted to him and the
Empire.
Considering Napoleons reputation among some historians as a dictator and pre-
cursor of Hitler, it is little surprise that he also used repression to consolidate society
and state in the aftermath of the Revolution. The period when Napoleon became
First Consul for life in 1802 coincided with a time when, according to Dwyer, tradi-
tional methods of repression were used on an unprecedented scale to restore order
in large areas of endemic lawlessness so that more modern methods of surveillance,
policing, and control could maintain order thereafter. However, it is worth noting
that repression was on the rise well before Napoleon took power. In 1799, some
40 percent of the country was under the control of generals who could and did
use extreme methods to stie unrest. Napoleon used the army to instill order at the
point of a bayonet and continued the Directorys strategy of using military, extra-
judicial measures, especially in the rebellious countryside. In 1801, Napoleon resur-
rected Special Tribunals, with civil and military judges, which had been a feature of
the Reign of Terror and, indeed, they became a central part of his criminal justice
framework.
But the Napoleonic regime largely adhered to the rule of law, and comparisons
to Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia are somewhat spurious. Repression during this
period was also not restricted solely to the Napoleonic regime, although he, as leader
of an authoritarian state, made his own ambitions synonymous with those of France.
As Sewell makes clear, almost all the European states reected the egos of their
monarchs, and few of them were intent on fostering democracy, limiting their bor-
ders, or improving civil rights. Nations were not averse to pursuing their own agen-
das, satisfying their ambitions, expanding their borders, and increasing their control
over the populace.
Considering Napoleons reputation as one of historys foremost military leaders,
it comes as little surprise that his rule led to a general militarization of society. He
was primarily a soldier, not a statesman, so the advent of the Legion dHonneur was
just one aspect of a much wider phenomenon. The demands of Napoleons war
machine were far reaching and added the woes of requisitioning and conscription
to the scars left by the Revolution. Bonapartes ascent to power came through the
army, and it was arguably with the military that he felt most comfortable. As Forrest
shows, it was almost inevitable that the military should play such a prominent social
and political role, considering not only Napoleons background but the fact that the
country was almost continually at war.
In a style similar to the army, the country was run in a linear, hierarchical fashion.
The state was highly centralist, with a clear chain of command in which, Dwyer says,
everyone reported up to the ministries and the ministers in turn reported to Na-
poleon. Little was left to local consultation. Napoleons educational policy, based
on the lyces and the University of France, was also geared toward the military and
creating the next generation of technocrats.
In the beginning, the quest for la gloire had an unmistakable attraction for many,
but as the depredations of years of war took their toll, this quickly dimmed. The
bourgeoisie could secure an exemption for their sons, but poorer sections of society
498 Napoleon I
were not so lucky. In 1809, after the brief war against Austria, as many as 100,000
men were pardoned for failing to take part in the campaign.
Bonaparte emerged as more of a pragmatist than an idealist. Despite his attempts
to rewrite history during his exile on St. Helena, his reputation remains open to
interpretation. He is often blamed for the wars that bear his name, as critics argue
that he should have prevented conict through negotiation and persuasion and
more subtle diplomacy. However, the Revolution had set off cataclysmic changes
that aggravated centuries-old rivalries. Napoleons use of war as a continuation
of politics by other means la Clausewitz was not necessarily unique, nor was his
single-minded determination to defend and enrich the state of France. It was often
successful, something his Bourbon forebears may have envied.
Napoleons downfall is well documented and his ego, perceived megalomania,
and contempt for political institutions and democracy are often cited as lying at the
heart of his hubris. However, as Sewell points out, this theorizing with the lucidity of
hindsight is perhaps too straightforward: If Bonaparte was indeed unique, and ex-
pected to accomplish deeds other men could only dream of, would he not need an
ego as large as his ambitions? Achieving democracy in France and peace for Europe
is not a task for a modest man, so was Napoleons ambition simply a sin because it
pursued goals we disapprove of, or that it pursued those goals using methods we
disapprove of ?
Napoleon would probably enjoy a better historical and political reputation had he
perished before 1804. He would possibly have been remembered as a representative
of the armed wing of the Enlightenment. His eventual denouement, including factors
such as the disastrous Continental System, the division of Europe among his trou-
blesome siblings, and the adoption of de facto monarchical garb, has tarnished his
legacy. Even his staunchest advocate would not argue that he was placid, pure, mod-
est, democratic, and a peacemaker, but he is nonetheless interesting and important
for that. He holds a special place in the collective political consciousness, especially in
France. For all his aws, he was a political and military genius but was still human.
Today, much of the legal structure of the nations that Napoleon helped to dene
are based on the precepts laid down in his Civil Code. Considered to be his greatest
legacy, Napoleons Civil Code ensured the spread of the ideals of the French Revo-
lution long after the end of his rule. But it was through the image he presented of
himself that the people of Europe found a symbol of revolutionary change. Debate
still rages about Napoleon and the period of his rule. Students of the period should
avoid seeing the politics of the era as a monolithic whole. Bonaparte was many
things to many people: Jacobin, republican, reformer, consolidator, liberal, and des-
pot. Few gures can claim such a diverse legacy.
The historiography of Napoleon has been subject to huge differences in interpre-
tation. Anglo-Saxon authors, on the whole, have been more prone to point out his
dark side and that of the regime. Some have argued that the country changed less
between 1800 and 1825 that it did between 1795 and 1800. Napoleons life, career,
and politics were fascinating but deceptively multifaceted. Two things remain clear:
rst, his inuence is difcult to underestimate. His wars and conquests, particularly
in Italy and Germany, fuelled the nascent passions of nationalism and exacerbated
a Franco-German enmity, which was to have enormous ramications for Europe
and the world. He changed the map of Europe and swept away a plethora of feudal
duchies and principalities. Unlike the totalitarian rulers of more recent times and
Napoleonic Wars 499
despite the bloodshed and war carried out in his name, Napoleon is still acclaimed
for his political and legislative feats. Secondly, the controversy over what Napoleon
meant for Europe and the world will continue to rage as it has done for the last
200 years. In a world where politics has been largely sanitized, his legacy assumes
even greater signicance and is undoubtedly very much alive today.
FURTHER READING: Dwyer, Philip G., ed. Napoleon and Europe. London: Longman, 2001;
Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. New York: Scribner, 2004; Tulard, Jean. Napoleon: The
Myth of the Saviour. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984; Wilson-Smith, Timothy. Napoleon:
Man of War, Man of Peace. London: Constable, 2002.
WEB SITE: Sewell, Max. What Kind of Leader Was Napoleon Bonaparte? Napoleon Series.org.
http://www.napoleonseries.org/faq/leader.cfm.
STEPHEN STEWART
Napoleonic Wars (18031815)
The Napoleonic Wars comprise a series of campaigns fought between 1803 and
1815, and, in every case, pitting France and her allies against various shifting alli-
ances involving one or more of Europes great powers, including Britain, Austria,
Russia, and Prussia, and lesser nations.
The War of the Third Coalition, 1805
Following the signature of the Treaty of Amiens between Britain and France in
March 1802, the decade-long French Revolutionary Wars came to an end with a
tenuous 14-month period of peace. French territorial annexations made during
what amounted to an armistice, in addition to Britains refusal to evacuate Malta,
led to a renewal of hostilities in May 1803. The French prepared to invade Britain by
assembling an army of 160,000 men along the Channel coast, to be transported by a
otilla of at-bottomed boats built for the purpose. The British, meanwhile, in the
absence of any continental allies, conned themselves to blockading French ports
and persuading through an active diplomatic campaign to win the support of the
Great Powers against the perceived Napoleonic menace. Through the inspiration of
her prime minister, William Pitt, Britain managed rst to secure the aid of Russia,
and then Austria and Sweden, over the course of 1805.
Aware of the formation of a coalition against him, Napoleon broke up his invasion
camp at Boulogne in August and rapidly marched his army to the Danube, thus avert-
ing for Britain the threat of invasion for the remainder of the year. Britains security
was effectively conrmed when on October 21 Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson deci-
sively defeated the Franco-Spanish eet at Trafalgar, leaving the Royal Navy supreme
at sea for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars. On land, however, Napoleon broke
the power of the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz, in Moravia, on December 2,
forcing Francis II of Austria to withdrawn from the Third Coalition and obliging
Tsar Alexander I to withdraw with his troops to the east. By the Treaty of Pressburg,
Austria ceded substantial territories in Germany and Italy to France and her allies.
The War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806 1807
The following summer, Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine,
a conglomeration of German satellite states from which he could recruit soldiers
and nd a ready market for French goods. Such interference in German affairs,
500 Napoleonic Wars
including the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire, became a particular source
of annoyance to Prussia, whose king, Frederick William II, had remained neutral
during the campaign of 1805. When Prussia took the eld in October 1806, she
had promised support from Russia, though it would be some time before the tsars
troops could reach the theater of operations in Saxony, while Austria was still pros-
trate from her defeat at Austerlitz and the annexations that followed. The Prussian
army, still organized and trained in the fashion of Frederick the Great, proved itself
incapable of meeting the demands of the new form of warfare to which the Revolu-
tionary and Napoleonic eras had given birth and crumbled in two simultaneous bat-
tles, Jena and Auerstdt, fought on October 14. Thereafter, the French conducted a
masterly campaign of pursuit, rounding up the scattered remnants of the Prussian
army, seizing the principal fortresses, and pushing on into Poland to confront the
Russians, whom Napoleon fought to a bloody standstill at Eylau on February 8, 1807,
before defeating them comprehensively at Friedland on June 14. By the subsequent
treaties of Tilsit, concluded with Russia and Prussia on July 7 and 9, respectively, Na-
poleon effectively divided the Continent into spheres of inuence between himself
and Alexander, with Prussia drastically reduced in size and population and con-
signed to the status of a second-rate power.
The Peninsular War, 1807 1814
Having vanquished the major powers of Europe, with a single notable exception,
Napoleon turned his attention to the defeat of Britain. Without a navy capable of
opposing that of his principal remaining opponent, the emperor adopted a strategy
of economic strangulation, known as the Continental System, already in place since
the winter of 1806, by which he would enforce a ban on all trade between Britain
and the Continent. In order to ensure the total exclusion of British goods from
European markets, Napoleon resolved to control the entire continental coastline,
whether through occupation, the cooperation of his allies, or compulsion. Thus, as
Portugal, one of Britains oldest trading partners, refused to comply, the French duly
marched through friendly Spain and invaded the defenseless country in November
1807, partly with a view to seizing the Portuguese eet, which, however, escaped
to Brazil. To ensure complete control over Iberia, the French used the pretext of
guarding the coasts of Spain to occupy her ally in March 1808, soon thereafter forc-
ing the king and his son to abdicate. On May 2 rebellion broke out in Madrid, while
a general insurrection rapidly spread across the country. Despite initial setbacks,
including the capitulation of a French army of 20,000 men at Bailen on July 19, the
invaders soon established control of most of the country.
The British responded by dispatching an expeditionary force under Sir John
Moore to Portugal in the autumn of 1808. After a British victory at Vimeiro on
August 21, the French in Portugal agreed to the Convention of Cintra, which led
to their evacuation of the country. This was a comparatively minor setback, how-
ever, for over 100,000 troops remained in Spain, and it became the task of Sir John
Moore to march on Madrid. In November, however, Napoleon entered Spain at
the head of 200,000 men to lead the campaign in person. Moore, unable to resist
such numbers, conducted a horrendous retreat through bitter winter conditions
to Corunna, on the northwest coast of Spain, in late December. Barely holding off
the French, Moores army was evacuated by the Royal Navy, though Moore died
in the ghting at Corunna on January 16, 1809. Elsewhere, the French consistently
Napoleonic Wars 501
defeated the various ill-equipped and badly led Spanish forces sent against them,
while guerrilla operations sprouted across Iberia, destroying small French detach-
ments, intercepting scouts and messengers, and harassing convoys. A largely unseen
aspect of the conict, it would eventually account for over 100,000 French casual-
ties. The war would also be distinguished by a series of dreadful sieges, among
these the epic defense of Saragossa, where between December 1808 and February
1809 the defenders grimly held out until disease and starvation forced them to
capitulate.
In March 1809, the French invaded Portugal for a second time, though they
were again driven out after the Battle of Oporto on March 29, thanks to the im-
aginative strategy of the new British commander in Portugal, Sir Arthur Wellesley
(later the Duke of Wellington). Wellesley now took the offensive and crossed the
frontier into Spain, supported by the guerrillas, but less so by the Spanish regulars.
At Talavera on July 28, Wellesley fought a drawn battle, though the French withdrew
into central Spain as a result. The Spanish lost badly at Ocaa on November 19,
while Wellington assumed a defensive posture in 1810, secretly constructing a line
of redoubts and entrenchments across Portugal meant to protect Lisbon, the vital
point of entry for British reinforcements and supplies, and known as the Lines of
Torres Vedras. The French invaded Portugal again in July 1810 and confronted
Wellington at Busaco on September 27, only to be repulsed by disciplined re from
British infantry deployed on a ridge. In the wake of the battle, Wellington withdrew
behind the Lines of Torres Vedras, which the French probed and found impregna-
ble. Finding his troops unable to live off the devastated countryside in front of the
Lines, Marshal Massna nally withdrew his exhausted and semi-starved army back
into Spain in November. In 1811, operations centered around the strategic bor-
der fortresses of Almeida, blockaded by the Anglo-Portuguese, and Badajoz, under
siege by a British force under Marshal Beresford. Wellington brought the French to
a standstill at Fuentes de Ooro on May 5, and Beresford narrowly defeated Marshal
Soult at Albuera on the May 16, but the remainder of the year remained relatively
uneventful.
His army now reorganized, well supplied, and experienced, Wellington nally
took the offensive at the beginning of 1812, when he besieged and stormed, at
very heavy cost to his dauntless infantry, the fortress towns of Cuidad Rodrigo on
January 19, and Badajoz on April 19. He then advanced into the heart of Spain,
where he decisively defeated Marshal Marmont at Salamanca on July 22 and en-
tered Madrid on August 12. Still, Wellington had shown himself to be clumsy in his
conduct of siege warfare, and while he took Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz by the
sheer determination of his troops, he failed to repeat these successes at Burgos in
November.
In the campaign of 1813, Wellington, now in supreme command of Spanish, as
well as Anglo-Portuguese forces, assumed the offensive, forcing the French to aban-
don Madrid and decisively defeating them on June 21 at Vitoria, where their rout
was so complete that they retired over the Pyrenees. The Anglo-Portuguese followed
up their success by engaging Soult along the frontier at Sorauren in late July and at
the rivers Nivelle and Nive in November and December, respectively. The campaign
of 1814 in southern France opened in February, when Wellington drove back Soult
at Orthez on February 27 before capturing Toulouse on April 10, several days after
Napoleon had already abdicated in Paris, far to the north.
502 Napoleonic Wars
Naval Operations, 1806 1815
The war at sea did not come to an end even after the overwhelming British vic-
tory at Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. Thereafter, the Royal Navy would perform
an indispensable service supplying Anglo-Portuguese, and later Spanish, forces in
the Iberian Peninsula between 1808 and 1814. Undramatic though blockade duty
might be, this was a service of vital importance patiently carried out by the navy
against the major French ports. The navy also seized enemy shipping and provided
transport and supply for various military expeditions dispatched to capture the co-
lonial possessions of France and her allies. Only months after Trafalgar, the Royal
Navy transported troops to the Dutch possession in southern Africa known as Cape
Colony, which fell in January 1806. The following month a squadron under Sir John
Duckworth destroyed the French West Indian squadron off Santo Domingo in the
West Indies, and in 18061807 the navy conveyed troops to Buenos Aires, in Spanish
South America. The navy also conducted raids against Calabria, on the Italian coast,
and against Boulogne, in June and October 1806, respectively. Major operations also
took place at the Dardanelles against Turkey in February and March 1807, and at Co-
penhagen in September of that year. Large-scale amphibious landings were made on
the Dutch island of Walcheren in July 1809 as a diversion during Napoleons opera-
tions against Austria, while various colonies fell by virtue of British naval power, such
as Martinique and Santo Domingo in 1809, and Guadeloupe and Mauritius in 1810.
The War of the Fifth Coalition, 1809
Stung by, yet recovered from, its defeat of 1805, Austria prepared to renew the
contest with Napoleon in 1809. The emperor wisely left Spain to gather his forces
in Germany for a campaign he planned to pursue along the Danube. In the spring
the Austrians invaded Bavaria but were forced back at Abensberg on April 1819,
and again at three actions in rapid successionLandshut, Eggmhl, and Ratisbon.
On May 12 the French entered Vienna before crossing the Danube and ghting a
bitterly contested engagement on May 2122 at Aspern-Essling, where Napoleon
suffered his rst defeat and was obliged to withdraw back across the river to lick his
wounds. He was not ready to recross until July, when, in a massive battle on July 5
and 6, he inicted heavy casualties on the Austrians, who requested an armistice
on July 10. By the Treaty of Schnbrunn, concluded on October 14, the Habsburgs
ceded over 30,000 square miles of territory to France and her allies and agreed to
join the Continental System.
The Russian Campaign, 1812
In the years following the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, Russia gradually separated itself
from the French sphere, for it harbored three particular grievances: its economy
was struggling as a result of its embargo against Britain; it suspected Napoleon of
wishing to resurrect an independent Polish state out of the Duchy of Warsaw, the
French satellite then situated on Russias western border; and it resented Napole-
ons failure to support Russias bid to defeat the Ottoman Empire in a war that had
begun in 1806. Britain, always keen to secure continental allies, made peace with
Russia in June 1812, as did Turkey, thus freeing Alexander to confront the inevitable
backlash from Napoleon.
The emperor, furious at Russias deance, particularly with respect to its fail-
ure to enforce the Continental System, assembled an army of over a half-million
Napoleonic Wars 503
men in the spring of 1812 and on June 22 crossed the river Niemen. The great
distances to be covered, the heat, and the horrendous logistical problems encoun-
tered by Napoleons Grande Arme took a heavy toll on this massive though almost
unmanageably large force, over half of which consisted of troops from states allied
to France. The Russians offered stubborn resistance at Smolensk on August 17, at
Valutino two days later, and most impressively on September 7 at Borodino, where
Napoleon launched a series of massive frontal attacks against prepared positions,
suffering almost 30,000 casualties while inicting over 40,000 on the Russians. By
the time Napoleon entered Moscow on September 14, his army was down to less
than half its original strength and was exhausted by the long march into the Russian
interior. Worse still, much of the capital burned down during the rst days of oc-
cupation, Alexander unexpectedly refused to negotiate with the invaders, and after
wasting weeks in possession of a city whose supplies would not outlast the winter, Na-
poleon made the fateful decision to retreat west in October. Elements of the Grande
Arme fought the Russians at various points, sometimes with success, but winter
proved its greatest enemy and was rendered all the worse by constant Cossack forays
and harassment from enraged peasants. The once mighty Grande Arme gradually
dissolved into a straggling column of frostbitten fugitives and a few ad hoc ght-
ing units just capable of offering limited resistance to the increasingly bold attacks
conducted by the pursuing Russian army, cautious though it was. Napoleons army
suffered almost complete catastrophe when, at the crossing of the Berezina River in
late November, tens of thousands of its troops and civilian camp followers were left
stranded on the right bank of the river when the bridge collapsed, consigning them
to the mercy of a vengeful enemy. Finally, at the end of December, the last remnants
of the shattered army reached safety in East Prussia and the Duchy of Warsaw.
The Campaign in Germany, 1813
Taking advantage of Napoleons irreparable losses in Russia, Prussia defected
from its half-hearted alliance with France and opened a campaign in Germany, sup-
ported by the numerically superior Russians, who were prepared to prosecute the
war all the way to Paris. By April, however, Napoleon had partially rebuilt his forces
to a strength of 200,000albeit largely conscripttroops with little in the way of bat-
tleeld experience or cavalry. Such was his reputation for martial prowess that the
emperor could still inspire his menyoung and ill equipped though they wereto
victory. At Ltzen on May 2, and again at Bautzen on May 2021, he defeated the
Russians and Prussians, though the exhausted state of his men and the absence of
a cavalry rendered pursuit, so much a feature of past Napoleonic victories, impos-
sible. Numbers, moreover, were never on the emperors side; Napoleon could never
hope to eld armies to match the strength of the Allies, and after an armistice be-
tween June and August, France had to confront an enlarged coalitionthe Sixth
with Austrias military weight thrown in. While with his military genius increasingly
taxed but still undimmed, Napoleon could inict a limited defeat on the Allies at
Dresden on August 26 27, three of his subordinates were nevertheless drubbed at
Grossbeeren (August 23), at the river Katzbach (August 26), and at Kulm (August
2930), thereby effectively negating their emperors victory. Marshal Ney, the hero
of the retreat from Moscow, was also badly mauled at Dennewitz on September 6,
though the decisive encounter of the campaign would not come until the follow-
ing month, between October 16 and 19, at Leipzig, where over a half-million men
504 Napoleonic Wars
fought in the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars. The French were driven from
the city, their German allies defected to the Allies, and the Napoleonic occupation
of Europe east of the Rhine collapsed.
The Campaign in France, 1814
While 100,000 French troops were ghting Wellington in the south of France, the
Allies main effort was in the east of the country, where three major armiesunder
the Prussian commander, Field Marshal von Blcher; the Austrian commander-in-
chief, Prince Schwarzenberg (to whose headquarters were attached the tsar and the
king of Prussia); and the crown prince of Sweden, Bernadottewere converging on
Paris. Napoleon beat his opponents at La Rothire and Brienne in late January, and
again in a series of remarkable engagements between February 10 and 14, where
he drubbed the Prussians at Champaubert, Montmirail, Chteau-Thierry, and Vau-
champs, but the emperor simply could not be everywhere at once, and his subor-
dinates could not match his tactical ingenuity. At Craonne, on March 7, Napoleon
defeated a Russian corps, and the Prussians again at Laon on March 910, and at
Rheims on March 13. Nevertheless, these mostly constituted small-scale victories,
and superior enemy numbers began to tell.
After Allied successes at Arcis-sur-Aube on March 2021 and La-Fre-Champe-
noise on March 25, the French were unable to halt the advance on their capital,
which the Allies attacked at Montmartre on March 30. Paris, its defenses neglected
and its troops outnumbered, surrendered, and the Allies entered the following day.
Losing the support of his marshals, who refused to ght on in a hopeless struggle,
Napoleon abdicated on April 6 (unconditionally so on the eleventh) and agreed to
live on the island of Elba, in the Mediterranean. The Allies restored the Bourbons
to the French throne, with Louis XVIII, brother of the guillotined Louis XVI, as
king. By the Treaty of Paris, France accepted a reduction of her frontiers to those of
1792 and recognized the sovereignty of the states resurrected or newly constructed
out of the former Napoleonic Empire.
The Waterloo Campaign, 1815
Disillusioned with his life of exile on Elba, Napoleon left the island on March 1,
1815, and made for the south of France. He reached Paris on March 20 and resumed
control of the country, with the whole of the army and most of the populace support-
ing his restoration to power. The Allied monarchs, in the meantime, declared the
emperor an outlaw and pledged to defeat him. Forces supplied by all the major states
began marching on France, though only the Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies then
situated in Belgium were within immediate striking distance, the former under the
Wellington and the latter under Blcher. Napoleon, however, sought to preempt his
opponents and crossed the frontier to confront the Anglo-Allies at Quatre Bras, and
the Prussians at Ligny, both battles taking place on June 16. The Anglo-Allies were
driven off and established themselves around Mont St. Jean, just south of Brussels,
while the Prussians, more seriously defeated, retreated to the village of Wavre, about
12 miles east of Wellingtons position. Detaching a corps to follow the Prussians
and contain them at Wavre, Napoleon then sought to destroy Wellingtons force
at Waterloo on June 18. A combination of unimaginative French tactics, stalwart
resistance from the Anglo-Allied troops, and the intervention of elements of the
Prussian army that had disengaged themselves from the simultaneous ghting at
National Assembly 505
Wavre to aid Wellington led to the rout of the French army and Napoleons second
abdication.
Napoleon surrendered himself to British authorities and was exiled on the re-
mote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821. By the second
Treaty of Paris, concluded on November 20, 1815, an indemnity of 700 million
francs was imposed on France, an Allied army of occupation was to remain in
place until full payment was made, and the French borders were reduced to those
of 1790.
FURTHER READING: Chandler, David. The Campaigns of Napoleon. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1995; Connelly, Owen. Blundering to Glory: Napoleons Military Campaigns. New York:
Scholarly Resources, 1999; Esdaile, Charles. The Peninsular War: A New History. London: Penguin,
2003; Esdaile, Charles. The Wars of Napoleon. London: Longman, 1995; Esposito, Vincent J., and
John R. Elting. A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars. NewYork: AMS, 1978; Fisher,
Todd. The Napoleonic Wars. Vol. 1: The Rise of the Emperor, 18051807. Oxford: Osprey, 2001;
Fisher, Todd. The Napoleonic Wars. Vol. 2: The Empires Fight Back, 18081812. Oxford: Osprey,
2001; Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars. 3 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2006; Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Napoleonic
Wars. Vol. 3: The Peninsular War, 18071814. Oxford: Osprey, 2002; Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The
Napoleonic Wars. Vol. 4: The Fall of the French Empire, 18131815. Oxford: Osprey, 2002; Fremont-
Barnes, Gregory. Trafalgar 1805: Nelsons Crowning Triumph. Oxford: Osprey, 2005; Gates, David.
The Napoleonic Wars, 18031815. London: Arnold, 1997; Glover, Michael. The Peninsular War,
18071814: A Concise Military History. London: Penguin, 2001; Glover, Michael. Warfare in the Age
of Bonaparte. London: Pen and Sword, 2003; Horne, Alistair. Napoleon: Master of Europe, 1805
1807. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979; Lawford, James. Napoleon: The Last Campaigns,
181315. New York: Crown, 1977; Rothenberg, Gunther. The Napoleonic Wars. London: Cassell,
2000; Zamoyski, Adam. 1812: Napoleons Fatal March on Moscow. London: HarperCollins, 2004.
National Assembly
The National Assembly was the name adopted by the government of revolution-
ary France created on June 17, 1789, during the meeting of the Estates-General.
It governed France in an increasingly tense relationship with King Louis XVI until
July 9, 1789. The Assembly thus presided over the rst phase of the French Revolu-
tion and set in motion numerous legal and administrative changes. These modica-
tions were not enacted by the Assembly, which remained in session for less than a
month. Still, the National Assembly laid the ideological foundations that made the
reforms possible for later governments of the Revolution, many of which remain to
the present day. A number of these early reforms were administrative in nature and,
when they came to economics, showed distinct support for the capital segments in
society, the investors and entrepreneurs. For these reasons, the period that began
under the National Assembly is often referred to as the Administration of the Bour-
geoisie phase of the Revolution. Likewise, it was under the National Assembly that
a fundamental shift in the perception of government and its legitimacy occurred
without which it is doubtful that the remainder of the Revolution would have pos-
sessed the character it did. During this time, many of the leaders who would go on
to achieve fame or infamy during the more radical phases of the Revolution had
their rst experiences in national government.
506 National Assembly
As previously stated, the National Assembly came into being on June 17, 1789,
when, at a prearranged signal, members of the First (clergy) and Second (nobility)
Estates joined with members of the Third Estate (commoners) in meeting in the
Estates-General at Versailles. This symbolic act created a new government that per-
ceived itself as deriving much of the legitimacy for its actions from the people rather
than from the monarchy. The new government, which considered itself much more
representative of the nation as a whole, adopted the new title of National Assembly
at the behest of the abb Sieys to signify this fact. The formation of the National
Assembly can be read as an answer to the call Sieys made in his pamphlet What Is
the Third Estate? The new government quickly began to discuss sweeping reforms in
the state apparatus of France. For instance, one of the Assemblys rst actions was
to revoke all the taxes passed under the monarchy, which they regarded as illegal.
Shortly thereafter, they reimposed these taxes on their own authority. At the same
time, they consolidated the public debts and began to search for a means of paying
them off. The motivations behind these actions on the part of the National Assem-
bly fell in line with the notion that the basis of rule was not the monarchy but rather
the people, whom the Assembly represented. These actions began to alarm many
of the more conservative elements at the kings court. Soon after the Assemblys
creation, its members found themselves locked out of their usual meeting place in
the palace compound at Versailles. They began meeting in the nearby royal tennis
court, where the members swore an oath not to disband until they had written a
constitution for France. The so-called Tennis Court Oath occurred on June 20. Ini-
tially, the king felt forced in the interim to accept the decrees of the revolutionaries
while he sought an alternative solution.
While Louis XVI seemed at rst caught off guard by the actions of the legislative
body, he quickly regrouped. Still, his attempts to curb the reforming agenda of
the body seemed to only exacerbate an already-difcult situation. For instance, on
June 23 the king gave a speech to the body in which he agreed to support some gov-
ernmental reforms. At the same time, he pushed forward the notion that the social
hierarchy should remain intact, and thus the various estates should meet separately,
and not as a single group. The reason behind this was that it was felt that if the
estates continued to meet separately, the more conservative elements among the
clergy and nobility would support the crown against radicals of common birth. It
is signicant that in this early phase of the Revolution, there were members of the
First and Second Estates who recognized the necessity for reform as well. The call
on the part of the king for the maintenance of the status quo has often been seen
by historians as a means of controlling the Assembly and suppressing the forces of
change then sweeping across France.
To some extent, there are grounds for the assertion that the king was attempt-
ing to oppose the transforming forces at work within France. It is clear that during
this period he was falling more under the sway of conservative voices in the court
at Versailles. It was these conservatives who were responsible for the kings order
that summoned troops to the outskirts of the capital in the summer of 1789. The
concentration of troops, and the rumors as to their real purpose, set underway the
series of events that eventually led to the storming of the Bastille on July 14. In addi-
tion, these conservative advisers were the same voices that urged the king to dismiss
the reformist minister of nance, Jacques Necker. A number of the more liberal
members of the Third Estate saw Necker as an important voice for reform among
National Assembly 507
the kings close advisers. Thus, his dismissal was perceived by many as a clear sign of
a coming conservative backlash from the throne.
Each of the kings attempts, real or perceived, at suppressing the reforms being
discussed in the National Assembly seemed to have the opposite of the intended
effect. Instead of drawing strength away from the body, it gained them the support
of more members of the nobility and clergy who had at rst refused to join it. All
these growing tensions would come to a head in the late summer and early fall of
1789 with the rst major involvement of the people of Paris over the course of the
Revolution.
Finally, on July 9, 1789, the members of the National Assembly voted to change
their name to the National Constituent Assembly. While membership in the body
remained essentially unaltered with the change in designation, the perceived mis-
sion of the body did. Their main focus became the writing of a constitution for
France. This has led to some controversy among historians as to when the tenure of
the National Assembly truly came to a close. For the purposes of this entry, the date
of July 9, 1789, will stand.
It is unsurprising that a government that lasted for less than a month has left lit-
tle in the way of concrete accomplishments on which to judge it. Still, it is for the
ideology of government, much derived from the Enlightenment thinkers, that the
National Assembly is remembered. The most signicant idea that the members ex-
pounded was that the government derives its legitimacyits right to governfrom
the people rather than from the monarch. This concept stood as a profound depar-
ture from the notions of contemporary European political thought. In addition, the
National Assembly remained in session and managed to avoid being disbanded. It
therefore set a precedent for later bodies to draw upon. It is, therefore, fair to assert
that the National Assembly set the stage for what is commonly referred to by histori-
ans as the legislative phase of the Revolution, and possibly even the Reign of Terror
as well. Likewise, the Assembly served as a training ground in which the leaders of
the later stages of the Revolution gained their rst valuable experiences in govern-
ment at the national level. Among those who were introduced to national politics
through their service in the National Assembly were Georges Danton, the comte de
Mirabeau, Maximilien Robespierre, and the abb Sieys. These men, and numerous
others of less note, gained valuable experience during their tenure in the National
Assembly. A number of these men would put this knowledge to use in the later, more
radical, stages of the Revolution, and in the case of Sieys in particular, down to the
formation of the Consulate. By the same token, many of the men who rst served
France in the National Assembly would not survive the Revolution, falling victim to
the Reign of Terror. It can be said, then, that the National Assembly set the stage and
answered the casting call for the great drama that became the French Revolution. See
also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; First Estate; Second Estate.
FURTHER READING: Forrest, Alan. The French Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995; Furet,
Franois. La Rvolution en dbat. Paris, Gallimard, 1999; Popkin, Jeremy D. A Short History of
the French Revolution. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006; Soboul, Albert. The French
Revolution, 17871799: From the Fall of the Bastille to Napoleon. Translated by Alan Forrest
and Colin Jones. New York: Vintage, 1975; Tackett, Timothy. Becoming a Revolutionary: The
Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (17891790).
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
508 National Convention
National Constituent Assembly
See Constituent Assembly
The National Convention was the title taken by the government that ruled France
between September 21, 1792, and October 26, 1795. It produced two constitutions
during its tenure in power, one in 1793 and the other in 1795. The Convention
came to power shortly after the overthrow of the monarchy under the government
of the Legislative Assembly. Since the removal of Louis XVI from power created a
vacuum in the executive branch of the government, the National Convention es-
sentially combined both the legislative and executive functions. While in power, the
National Convention guided France through the most radical phases of the Revolu-
tion, including the period known as the Reign of Terror. Simultaneously, the gov-
ernment took on the role of guiding the French war effort. France was then at war
with a coalition comprised of Austria, Britain, and Prussia, among others. The com-
bination of directing the war and continuing the reforms of the Revolution led the
National Convention to enact a variety of changes that profoundly affected France
at the time and continue to inuence revolutionary movements to the present day.
The chief work of the Convention fell into three broad categories: government, the
war effort, and social reform.
To carry out its governing tasks effectively, the Convention dispersed its various
responsibilities among a number of committees. Out of these, the Committee of
General Security and the Committee of Public Safety came to overshadow the rest,
both in their importance and in the scope of their power. The Committee of Public
Safety soon became the more powerful of the two agencies. The Convention in-
vested its executive authority in the Committee of Public Safety, which was subject
to renewal by the full Convention on a monthly basis.
Among the legal issues the Convention had to contend with was the fate of
Louis XVI. The king was charged with treason under the Legislative Assembly.
Now, the National Convention had to decide how to proceed in prosecuting the
charge. The kings trial began before the Convention on December 11, 1792. Be-
tween January 16 and 18, 1793, the Convention deliberated on his fate. While there
existed serious internal division within the governing body regarding the destiny
of the former monarch, the members eventually decided in favor of execution. Of-
cials imposed the penalty on January 21, 1793, when the executioner guillotined
citizen Louis Capet in Paris. Later that same year, on October 16, the kings wife,
Marie Antoinette, would follow her husband to the scaffold.
In addition to the fate of the royal family, other problems existed within France as
well. One of the most pressing of these encompassed a series of antigovernment up-
risings. The leading factors driving these revolts were dislike of the conscription of
men to ght the war and the efforts of the revolutionaries to dechristianize France.
The Convention dealt with insurrections by sending some of its members, called
representatives on mission, to the affected areas with special powers delegated to
take necessary actions on the spot. The rst representatives were dispatched on
March 9, 1793. They were aided in their efforts by revolutionary tribunals, which
had been established in August 1792. These bodies possessed special powers that
National Convention 509
superseded many of the guarantees contained in the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen. For instance, they could try anyone suspected of betraying
the Revolution, with no appeal to their decisions. In addition, on September 17 the
Convention passed the Law of Suspects, a decree making the conviction of people
on charges of working against the Revolution much easier to obtain. The various
measures enacted in order to safeguard the Revolution from internal dissent came
to be known as the Reign of Terror. A great deal of the concern in the Convention
over treason stemmed from the fact that France was at war at this time, a point that
will be discussed in greater detail below. In order to maintain internal order and
prosecute the war, the government expanded and centralized its powers over the
entire nation. The Constitution of 1793 enshrined many of the centralizing poli-
cies of the Convention. This document was very radical in the type of government
it devised for France. Due to the stresses of the war, however, the Constitution of
1793 was never implemented, and on October 10 the revolutionary government was
declared in power only until the return of peace.
The war brought with it a greater emphasis on the supply of both the armies in
the eld and the urban centers of France. Thus, on September 29, 1793, the Con-
vention introduced the Maximum on grain and fodder. This set price limits on a
number of basic necessities. The Maximum came as a result of an alliance between
the Jacobins and the working people of Paris known as the sans-culottes. The com-
bination of these two groups, which often held contradictory political objectives,
allowed the Jacobins to force legislation through the legislative branch.
At its high point, the Convention achieved a greater degree of consolidation of
power than had ever been the case under the monarchy. This began to unravel with
the fall of Robespierre from power on July 27, 1794, a date known as the Thermi-
dorian Reaction for the month of the revolutionary calendar in which it took place.
After Robespierre and his supporters were out of power, the government eventually
removed the sans-culottes from an active role in politics. The period from July 1794 to
October 1795 stood as one in which the Revolution took a more conservative turn.
In addition, these 15 months witnessed the reversal of much of the more sweeping
social legislation of the earlier radical period. As a result of the conservative reac-
tion, the Convention passed the Constitution of 1795, adopted on August 22. Many
historians attribute at least a part of the relaxation of radicalism to the success of
the revolutionary armies.
The Convention inherited a country at war. While the Republic declared under
the Legislative Assembly had managed to beat back an invasion by a combined Aus-
trian and Prussian force after the great turning point at the decisive Battle of Valmy
(September 21, 1793), the country still remained in danger. Still, even after this
victory, the symbolic value of which far outweighed events in the eld, the Con-
vention had to defend France with an army that was itself undergoing profound
internal transformations. Many of the veteran ofcers from the nobility were leaving
France and there were numerous new levies joining the army. If these difculties
were not pressing enough, there were sizeable insurrections in several areas within
France, and a number of the other European powers were joining in what would
later be known as the War of the First Coalition (17921797). As a result of these
circumstances, the Convention and its various committees directed much of their
energy at the war effort. A great deal of the burden for the direction of the military
capabilities of the Republic fell to the Committee of Public Safety, and especially to
510 National Convention
Lazare Carnot. Carnot played a major role in mobilizing the resources of the nation
behind the defense of France to an unprecedented degree.
Though the French people had already attested to their support for the Revolu-
tion through the assembling of various groups of volunteers beginning in 1791, by
1793 the people had lost some of their patriotic ardor. This led the Convention to
call for a draft in March of that year. While some additional troops were raised in
this fashion, an unintended result came in the Vendan rebellion. The region of the
Vende would be dominated by a bloody insurgency for some time to come.
The notion of a true national draft came into play on August 23, 1793, with the
leve en masse. The leve involved a call by the government for the entire nation to
take some role in the war effortfrom soldiering to provisioning. All the resources
of the nation were thus dedicated to the prosecution of the war effort. Such a mas-
sive commitment was very different from that exercised by other contemporary Eu-
ropean states. Therefore, revolutionary France is often credited with being the rst
nation to approach what is referred to as a total war footing. By the same token, this
allowed France to eld a much larger army than any of its enemies.
Even with the number of troops yielded by the leve en masse, there remained the
need to train them to serve as an effective ghting force. This project came to ab-
sorb much of the energy of the Convention, as well as its committees. The Conven-
tion nally solved the difculty with the introduction of the amalgame. This action
combined elements of the old royal army with units of revolutionary volunteers.
The result was a powerful combination of revolutionary zeal and discipline. The
army that emerged from these transformations began to push back the enemies
of France from its borders, and even to live off occupied territories. Still, the vast
scope of the war imposed drastic internal changes on France as well. These trans-
formations, which were implemented by the Convention, were broad in scope and
profound in intent.
The area in which the Convention most profoundly affected France was cer-
tainly society. While the reforms the body enacted were all repealed in the later
years of the Revolution and under the Empire of Napoleon, they have since re-
ceived a great deal of scrutiny from various historians as examples of early at-
tempts to transform a society. Many of the changes implemented by this body were
extremely radical in nature, though they did fall in line with many of the tenets
of the Enlightenment. For example, the Convention approved the revolutionary
Calendar on November 24, 1793. The new method of tracking time replaced the
older church-based calendar for a period. Under the revolutionary reckoning,
there were 12 months of 20 days each. All the months were named after various
seasonal conditions. Each month, in turn, was composed of three 10-day weeks
known as decadi. Five days were added at the end of each calendar year. In essence,
the new calendar endeavored to impose the rationality of the Enlightenment on
the organization of everyday life to an extraordinarily profound degree. The end
result came in the form of a drastic alteration of the manner in which people or-
dered their temporal lives, if only for a short duration. Likewise, the Convention
attempted to give the people of France a new religion in the Cult of the Supreme
Being.
The Cult of the Supreme Being constituted a state-sponsored religion. In addi-
tion, it stood as a continuation and radicalization of the struggle with the Catholic
Church that began with the seizure of church lands of November 2, 1789. The cult
National Guard 511
attempted to mold a new religion for France, one modeled after the Enlightenment
concept of deism. Ironically, one of the chief opponents of early dechristianization
efforts, Maximilien Robespierre, became one of the strongest advocates of the cult.
The fullest expression of the cult came with the Festival of the Supreme Being held
in the Temple of Reason, the name given to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris
on June 8, 1794. Robespierre presided over this event, and the chief architect of the
festival was Jacques-Louis David. The majority of the French people never accepted
this new belief system, and it essentially ended with the fall of Robespierre and the
other radical Jacobins.
Finally, the Convention led France through a truly tumultuous period of the
Revolution. Under its direction, the Revolution progressed in such a way as to
transform virtually all aspects of French life, if only for a short duration. Much
of this work of transformation was done on a purely ad hoc basis, however, as the
Convention seemed perpetually on the move from one crisis to the next. Still,
the Convention achieved an unprecedented level of centralization in regard to
government power. This centralized state has often been seen as a model for later
regimes. It also mobilized the resources of the nation for the effective prosecution
of the war effort to a degree not achieved before. In this regard, the efforts of the
Convention have been seen by some historians as marking the beginning of total
war. While the effort never yielded results solid enough to really justify this asser-
tion, the fact remains that prior to revolutionary France, no states in the modern
world had even attempted to produce such a concentration of manpower and
materiel. Likewise, while the efforts of the government to transform society were
met with markedly less success than government reforms or military mobilization,
the reforms attempted in the social realm certainly inuenced later revolutionary
thinkers. The Convention encompassed a truly radical approach to the govern-
ment of Franceone with profound consequences not only for contemporaries,
but for later generations as well. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Guil-
lotine.
FURTHER READING: Bouloiseau, Marc. The Jacobin Republic 1792 1794. Translated by Jonathan
Mandelbaum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983; Furet, Franois. La Rvolution
en dbat. Paris: Gallimard, 1999; Lynn, John A. The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and
Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France. 17911794. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996;
Ozuf, Mona. Festivals and the French Revolution. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1988; Palmer, R. R. The Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the
French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941; Popkin, Jeremy D. A Short
History of the French Revolution. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006; Soboul,
Albert. The French Revolution 17811799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon. Translated
by Alan Forrest and Colin Jones. New York: Vintage, 1975.
JAMES R. MCINTYRE
National Guard
Created during to the political crisis of 1789, the National Guard developed as
a confederation of citizen-soldier units that policed local communities during the
French Revolution. The impetus to create such a force emerged during the events
of July 1789, when it became clear to municipal leaders that some form of check
on popular violence was necessary to secure law and order. Amidst growing popular
512 Nationalism
agitation and the reluctance of the royal French Guard to re on the Paris crowds,
Nicolas de Bonneville proposed the formation of the traditional Bourgeois Guard,
reviving the medieval right of the local community to control its own security and
policing. The National Guard would replace the bands of armed citizens, members
of the French Guard, and regular army deserters who were forming a spontaneous
citizen militia within Paris. The electors of Paris voted to establish such a citizen
guard, and the Marquis de Lafayette was nominated to lead the Parisian National
Guard. Over the next few months, National Guard units were formed in provincial
towns under the control of the new municipal governments, with the same mandate
to maintain order, property, and public safety.
The National Guard played a signicant role in minimizing the volatile situa-
tion of 1789 and it was a central part of the municipal revolution. The creation
of the National Guard secured the new municipal authorities and provided a force
that could defend both the local government and the revolutionary changes being
instituted. It became the responsibility of the National Guard to protect grain ship-
ments from brigands, maintain order at the markets and major public spaces, and
disarm the bands of armed citizenry who threatened to destabilize the work of both
the municipal government and the National Assembly. In addition to its everyday
policing duties, the National Guard actively participated in revolutionary politics,
exemplied by its participation in the October Days and the so-called massacre at
the Champ de Mars in July 1791.
While its primary task was the restoration of law and order, the National Guard
emerged as an important civic institution, and membership in the Guard was cen-
tral to the experience of citizenship that was developing within the new political
community being forged by the Revolution. Theoretically open to all male citizens
between 20 and 50, the National Guard established a series of exclusions that lim-
ited membership further, making it an important institution dening who could
exercise the power of citizenship and who could not.
Through the years of 1790 and 1791, Lafayette and the National Assembly worked
to centralize the National Guard, dening its national structure and organization.
This work culminated in the decrees of July 28 and September 29, 1791, where de-
nitive regulations were established for the National Guard. See also Bastille, Fall of
the; Cockades.
FURTHER READING: Clifford, Dale. The National Guard and the Parisian Community,
17891790. French Historical Studies 16, no. 4 (1990): 84978; Gottschalk, Louis, and Margaret
Maddox. Lafayette in the French Revolution through the October Days. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1969.
BRODIE RICHARDS
Nationalism
Nationalism is the belief that every nation is a unique cultural and political com-
munity, usually seen as united by a common history and language, and that each
such nation should have autonomous control over its own territorial state. Accord-
ing to nationalist belief, a nation gives to its members a shared sense of identity and
purpose. In the revolutionary era, this sense of collective destiny inspired demo-
cratic uprisings against old aristocracies but also fueled patriotic passions in bloody
wars between nations. Hence the age of nationalism that began in the eighteenth
Nationalism 513
century led to a series of powerful political movements that transformed the politics
of Europe and its colonies.
The Development of Nationalism in the West
Before the eighteenth century, Europeans saw themselves as united not by na-
tionalism but by religion. Under the Catholic Church, before the Reformation, all
people were seen as members of a single universal civilization united under God,
which kings and queens governed regionally only by divine right. After the Protes-
tant Reformation came the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
between and within European states. In the understanding of the time, these were
conicts not between national peoples but between defenders of religious factions.
With the fracturing of political unity under God, a series of ideological changes
began that would lead to new concepts of each people as a unique social whole. The
regional states that had developed under Christian monarchs eventually came to be
seen as the homelands of national peoples.
By the eighteenth century, a range of factors had led to the breakdown of the
theory of the divine right of kings and queens and the rise of a new era known as
the Enlightenment. The new scientic age produced the belief that earthly events
were ruled by natural forces rather than by Gods direct will. With science came the
optimism that humans had the power to control their conditions of life. The belief
in human autonomy led to new theories of political legitimacy that emphasized the
consent of the people. According to social contract theories, political society was
based on an agreement in which the people at once united themselves into states
and delegated power to their rulers. While religion in the eighteenth century was still
central to social life, it was increasingly separated from politics. The growing distinc-
tion between the state and civil society encouraged a search for new understandings
of the principles, apart from pure authority, that governed the development of each
society.
Various theories of each people as a distinct social whole began to emerge. The
philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, like Adam Smith and David Hume, em-
phasized the history of each culture as a process of increasing civilization. In France,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that new political societies should be founded on
the united will of the people, to which all citizens would owe their highest alle-
giance and from which they would receive a new common identity. In Germany,
Immanuel Kant developed Rousseaus idea of liberty into a doctrine of autonomous
self-determination. Other German writers like Johann Herder and Johann Goethe
contributed to the romantic notion that each people is dened by creative activities
like folk songs and stories. In contrast to the conservative Scottish understanding
of culture as a set of customs and morals, the romantics saw it as based on language
and the expressive arts. Meanwhile, those who followed Rousseau and Kant envi-
sioned new societies based on collective self-determination. Born of these various
sources, nationalism is a hybrid ideology that in its fully modern form combines a
retrospective traditionalism with a prospective desire for communal autonomy.
The earliest political movements that displayed elements of modern national-
ism, a label that began to be used in English only at the end of the eighteenth
century, were led by groups who believed themselves to be oppressed by illegitimate
political authorities. Hence nationalist sentiments arise in reaction to established
powers and are driven by perceptions of historical grievances. In this partial sense,
514 Nationalism
the English Civil War in seventeenth century was an early nationalistic uprising in
the name of historical English freedoms, though this idea was dominated by the re-
ligious understandings of the time. Only in the eighteenth century did revolutions
occur not in the name of God but in the name of the united people. The rst major
movements that produced or were driven by recognizably nationalistic sentiments
occurred in America with the rejection of British colonial power and in France in
the democratic revolt against its own aristocracy.
We the People: Nationalism and the American Founding
The American Revolution began as a tax revolt by colonists who saw themselves
as unrepresented members of the British Empire, but it ended with independence
and the establishment of a new national identity. In the years between the Decla-
ration of Independence in 1776, with its Lockean philosophy of universal human
rights, and the United States Constitution of 1787, with its opening reference to a
particular peopleWe the People of the United StatesAmericans began to unite
themselves as a modern nation. The question of a national government in the early
years was contentious. On one side were the Anti-Federalists, who resisted the cen-
tralization of authority, and on the other were the Federalists, who believed national
institutions were needed for mutual protection and future prosperity. The Federal-
ists won this argument with the ratication of the Constitution in 1789, an event
that marked the institutionalization of the founding myth of the American people.
The uniqueness of American nationalism is that its myth of the people was an ef-
fect rather than a cause of revolution. Because their social origins were British, the
new American people had the ideology of the revolution in place of historical cul-
ture as the source of their distinctiveness as a people. The American foundational
myth is the belief in universal freedom and equality, which they understood in Lock-
ean terms as the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The
American Revolutionary War had been fought in the name of these rights, and so
the Revolution itself became the mythic historical event for the American national
self-understanding.
In short, the American national myth was founded both on a central idea, the
ideology of Lockean individualism, and a formative event, the Revolutionary War
fought in the name of that ideal. American nationalism combined strong liberal
individualism with an equally strong communal republicanism. The unlikely com-
bination proved effective: Americans were historically united as a culture by their
belief in equality and individualism, for which they fought their founding war. This
hybrid nationalism allowed modern America to become at once individualistic and
communally patriotic. The strength of American national sentiments demonstrates
the power of shared beliefs to unite a political community, even when those beliefs
are individualistic and liberal.
The Nationalism of the French Revolution
While the Americans were debating the ratication of their constitution, France
was in its pre-revolutionary period. In 1789, the French Revolution broke out in full
with an attempt to establish a new secular egalitarian nation. Its founding docu-
ment, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, was adopted by
the Constituent Assembly in August of that year. Although several of its 17 articles
dealt with the rights and freedoms of individuals, the declaration gave overriding
Nationalism 515
power to the nation itself as the ultimate guarantor of those rights: The source of
all sovereignty lies essentially in the Nation. No corporate body, no individual may
exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from it. All citizens had the
right to participate in the creation of law, but no one had real freedom from it; even
the freedom of expression and opinion were to be limited by law. Hence the overall
effect of the declaration was to establish the French nation itself as the source of all
legitimate power, including the power of law by the people over the people.
Where the American founding documents reected the Lockean theory of in-
dividual liberty, the French declaration was animated by Rousseaus philosophy of
communal empowerment. In earlier centuries, sovereignty was a purely religious
concept, but with Rousseaus idea of the general will, which the declaration named
explicitly as the true source of law, sovereignty became a secular notion belonging to
the nation. In effect, Rousseau replaced Gods will with the general will of the peo-
ple as the power that should govern social life. By taking this idea as foundational,
the French Revolution became the original exemplar of the form of nationalism
based on communal unity through the sharing of law-giving power.
Rousseau had argued that all individuals, to join the collective power of the gen-
eral will, must abandon their selsh interests and give their highest allegiance to
the community. But this did not mean allegiance to the state; instead, the general
will was to be a source of power outside of and superior to the administration of
government. Thus, this form of nationalism is not statism, at least not in its original
theory. Instead, it is a movement of the people, for whom the political apparatus of
the state is to be a subordinate tool. However, as a communal conception of power
based on unied sovereignty, nationalism of this sort is ideologically anti-liberal and
anti-individualistic. While both of the great eighteenth-century revolutions, Ameri-
can and French, had tried to balance individual rights and freedoms with a strong
sense of national belonging, only the French movement did so by trying to remake
individuals into a new whole. Only in France were old titles abolished in favor of
the new honoric, Citizen, to symbolize the creation of this new national identity
through a total social revolution.
Nationalism in the Napoleonic Era
While the American nation was born of revolt against a colonial power and France
overthrew a domestic regime, elsewhere in Europe nationalism arose as a reaction
to a foreign invader. The French Revolution led to the reign of Napoleon Bona-
parte, who had used the new French nationalist sentiments to raise support for his
military conquests. The reaction of those who were subjected to his advances pro-
duced another phase of early European nationalism, the leading exemplar of which
was in Germany. With German nationalism came special emphasis on shared history
and cultural creativity as central to the ideology in its emerging modern form.
Germany in the eighteenth century was disunited and beset by a sense of cultural
inferiority compared to the more developed regions of Europe. French military ad-
vances at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries had
a dual effect in Germany, as in other regions. On one hand, the invaders introduced
reforming trends in politics and government in accord with French ideas. On the
other, the French were foreigners who enforced their decrees with military might.
In reaction, Germans sought their own reforming ideals in the works of those like
Herder and Goethe who emphasized the historical uniqueness of the German Volk.
516 Navigation Acts
Where America had the Lockean myth of the Revolution and France had the
sovereignty of the general will, German nationalists had their Volksgeist, the unique
spirit of the historical German people. Their nationalism was based on the romantic
rejection of the universalism of the Enlightenment in favor of the belief that each
people has its own self-created cultural identity. This is the ideology of nationalism
in its full modern formthe desire for liberation and sovereignty of a people united
by its unique history of cultural creativity. Nationalism in this form would be taken
up in later generations who similarly saw themselves as unique.
FURTHER READING: Cobban, Alfred. The Nation State and National Self-Determination. New
York: Crowell, 1969; Greenfeld, Liah. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992; Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America. 2nd ed. San
Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1991; Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism. 3rd ed. London: Hutchinson:
1966; Kohn, Hans. Nationalism, Its Meaning and History. Rev. ed. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand,
1965; Lipset, Seymour Martin. The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative
Perspective. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.
BORIS DEWEIL
Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts were a series of decrees imposed by Britain that precipitated
discontent among the 13 American colonies. English custom practices dating from
1651 were originally drafted with Dutch shipping in mind, but afterward the acts
of 1707 restricted trade with the American colonies. The policy of mercantilism
fostered the growth of British trade and shipping at the cost of the colonies. The
British, like other European colonial powers, subscribed to the view that colonies
existed for the benet of the mother country. A favorable balance of trade was main-
tained for the colonial power by the export of a greater volume of nished goods to
the colonies than that of imported raw materials.
The Molasses Act of 1733 levied prohibitive duties on the export of molasses
and sugar from the French West Indies to the American colonies, which had to
buy more costly British West Indian sugar. Molasses, or liquid sugar, was an essen-
tial ingredient in preparing rum, and Boston merchants were particularly hard
hit. As a result, rampant smuggling occurred with the connivance of custom of-
cials, thus rendering the Navigation Acts effective. The ministry of George Gren-
ville (17631765), seeking to diminish the large national debt accrued as a result
of Seven Years War (1756 1763) while simultaneously trying to raise revenue to
defray the cost of protecting the American colonies against French attack, began
to take effective measures against smuggling. The ensuing checks on contraband
trade resulted in a great loss for the merchants of New England. In the late 1750s,
New England purchased commodities with a value of 6 million from money made
by smuggling. The seizure of ships by customs ofcials and the Royal Navy led
to further discontentment. Although ship-building activities increased due to the
Navigation Acts, the manufacturing sector languished in the colonies. The acts
became another factor in alienating the colonies in the years leading up to the
American Revolution. In 1849, following a policy of laissez-faire, the Navigation
Acts, which had given British shipping a monopoly over home ports for a century
and a half, were repealed.
Necker, Jacques 517
FURTHER READING: Dickerson, Oliver M. The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution.
New York: Octagon Books, 1978; Harper, Lawrence A. The English Navigation Laws: A Seventeenth-
Century Experiment in Social Engineering. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
Necker, the Swiss-born French statesman, reformer, and director general of -
nance under Louis XVI, was born in Geneva and began his career in banking. He
proved himself a talented banker and, by the 1760s, had become a very wealthy man
through his banking and speculative activities. He married Suzanne Curchod, with
whom he had a daughter, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, the future Madame de
Stal, in 1766. Over the next decade, Necker made a fortune in brilliant speculations
in the Indies Company as well as through protable loans to various governments.
He moved to Paris, where he became involved in nancial and literary works while
his wife hosted one of the popular salons. A neo-Colbertiste, he opposed the eco-
nomic theories of the Physiocrats, publishing Rponse au Mmoire de M. labb Morellet
sur la Compagnie des Indes in 1769 and winning the prize of the Acadmie Franaise
for a defense of state corporatism with his essay Eloge de Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1773.
In 1775, he produced Essai sur la lgislation et le commerce des grains, in which he criti-
cized the free-trade policies of chief Physiocrat Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot.
When Turgot was dismissed in 1776, Necker, although a Protestant, was appointed
director of the treasury and then the director general of nance. Necker launched
a series of reforms aimed at curbing the French decit and reorganizing the econ-
omy, although these fell short of those of Turgot. Neckers policy of borrowing to
fund French involvement in the American Revolutionary War further burdened the
French economy and drove it closer to bankruptcy. His reforms were strongly re-
sented and opposed by the nobility, including Queen Marie Antoinette herself, as well
as by nancial companies that stood to lose commercial privileges in their respective
spheres. He famously published the rst public accounting of the state nances in
Compte rendu au roi in 1781. Facing a vehement pamphlet campaign in 17801781,
Necker unsuccessfully sought royal support and resigned on May 19, 1781.
During the next seven years, Necker pursued his private business affairs and pub-
lished various works, including Trait de ladministration de la France (1784). He was
very critical of his successor, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, and after a bitter public
confrontation with the minister, he was banned from Paris in 1787. Necker never-
theless made his comeback a year later when he was again appointed director gen-
eral of nance on August 25, 1788, and made minister of state two days later. With
the French monarchy in partial bankruptcy and beset by aristocratic opposition,
Necker faced an uphill battle and sought to introduce far-reaching reforms with the
help of the Estates-General, which was to be convened in May 1789. Thus, Neckers
foremost preoccupation in the rst half of his tenure was making arrangements for
the meeting of the Estates-General. He played an important role in the kings deci-
sion to double the representation of the Third Estate, which, Necker believed, was
necessary for the establishment of a truly representative assembly. However, he failed
to resolve the problems associated with the method of voting, and his conict with
the privileged classesand especially the hard-liners in the royal familyeventually
518 Nelson, Thomas, Jr.
led to his dismissal by the king on July 11, 1789. Yet this event ignited the July up-
rising in Paris, which resulted in the fall of the Bastille on July 14. Under popular
pressure, Louis XVI recalled Necker for his third tenure as the minister of nance
(July 29, 1789September 8, 1790).
A liberal but not a democrat, Necker struggled in a new political scene in which
he faced opponents on both the Right and the Left. Although the National Assembly
praised him in July 1789, the relations between the minister and the Assembly quickly
deteriorated due to differences of opinion on various political and economic re-
forms. On September 8, 1790, Necker announced his resignation and ed France to
Switzerland. He spent the rest of his life at his estate at Coppet Commugny, near Ge-
neva, where he wrote some of his last worksSur ladministration de M. Necker (1791),
Du pouvoir excutif dans le grands Etats (1792), De la Rvolution franaise (1796 1797,
3 volumes), and Dernires vues de politique et de nance (1802)before his death on
April 9, 1804.
FURTHER READING: Bredin, Jean-Denis. Une singulire famille: Jacques Necker, Suzanne Necker
et Germaine de Stal. Paris: Fayard, 1999; Egret, Jean. Necker: Ministre de Louis XVI, 1776 1790.
Paris: Librairie Honor Champion, 1975; Harris, Robert D. Necker and the Revolution of 1789.
Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986.
Nelson, Thomas, Jr. (17381789)
Thomas Nelson was a Virginia politician, a signer of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, and governor of Virginia (1781). Thomas Nelson Jr., the oldest son of
prominent planter-merchant William and Elizabeth Burwell Nelson, was born in
Yorktown. In 1753 Nelson attended a private school at Hackney, north of London.
Although he never graduated, Nelson attended Christs College, Cambridge. He
returned to Virginia in 1761 and was immediately elected to the House of Burgesses
and made a justice of the peace and colonel in the county militia. In 1769 Nelson
joined the Virginia Association, which demanded repeal of the Townshend Acts.
In 1774 Nelson joined another association that protested the Coercive Acts and
called on the colonies to send delegates to a Continental Congress. He attended
the Virginia Convention to elect delegates to the First Continental Congress. He was
elected chairman of the York County Committee of Safety.
In 1775 Nelson took part in the second and third Virginia Conventions, which
reorganized the colonys militia. Nelson was commissioned a colonel in command
of the second regiment. However, he resigned his command when he was elected
to the Second Continental Congress. In 1776 Nelson returned to Virginia in time
to take part in another provincial convention. Nelson presented a resolution call-
ing for a declaration of independence, which the convention ratied in a modied
form. He returned to Congress with the resolution, which Richard Henry Lee pre-
sented. While working in a committee to draft a confederation, Nelson signed the
Declaration of Independence. On a temporary break from Congress, Nelson was
elected to the House of Delegates, the successor of the House of Burgesses. In 1777
Nelsons health deteriorated and he resigned from Congress. Hardly recovered,
he was appointed brigadier general in command of the Virginia militia. He faced
daunting problems of recruiting, retaining, and supplying the troops. The House of
Netherlands, United Kingdom of the 519
Delegates sent Nelson back to the Continental Congress in late 1778. However, by
April 1779, his declining health again prompted him to leave Congress. By June he
was back in the House of Delegates, attempting to secure funds for the war effort. In
1780 Nelson commanded the militia against two British invasion forces, including
one under Benedict Arnold.
In 1781, the struggle intensied when Lord Cornwallis invaded the state, and
Virginia forces were reinforced by the Marquis de Lafayette. At the height of Corn-
walliss offensive in June 1781, in which the legislature and Governor Thomas Jef-
ferson were forced to ee, the legislature chose Nelson as governor and gave him
emergency powers that combined civilian and military authority. In September, Nel-
son took command of the militia around Yorktown and directed the artillery to re
on his own house as Cornwalliss probable headquarters. At the conclusion of the
siege, Nelsons health again collapsed and he resigned the governorship. He was
elected to the House of Delegates and resumed his service in the York County Court
in 1782, but his activity was much curtailed. In 1787 he served on a committee that
selected Virginias delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Nelson did not sup-
port the resulting document. He was chosen to attend Virginias ratifying conven-
tion, but his rapidly declining health prevented further public service.
FURTHER READING: Evans, Emory G. Thomas Nelson of Yorktown: Revolutionary Virginian.
Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1975.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
The United Kingdom of the Netherlands was a new country created at the Con-
gress of Vienna that incorporated the 17 historical provinces of the Low Countries
under the leadership of King William I (reigned 18131840), a descendent of Wil-
liam of Orange. The unication was short lived, though many of the political re-
forms remain in effect in the modern Netherlands.
The 17 provinces of the Low Countries, once united under the Burgundian
dukes, had been split by the Dutch Revolt in the late sixteenth century. The north-
ern and southern regions had gone their separate ways politically, with the south
remaining under Spanish (and later Austrian) control and the north becoming
an independent republic. Nationalist Dutch historians have described the split as
tragic because it separated ethnically and linguistically similar peoples.
They would once again have a chance at unication in the nineteenth century.
After a period of French occupation under Napoleon, representatives of the Dutch
republic made plans to turn their country into a constitutional monarchy, under
Williams leadership, in 1813. At the Congress of Vienna, however, the British in
particular were interested in strengthening the northwestern corner of Europe
against future French expansionism. With Williams encouragement, they proposed
the creation of a United Kingdom of the Netherlands that would incorporate the
former Dutch republic and the Austrian Netherlands into a single monarchy. The
British agreed to return the Dutch colonial possessions (including various West In-
dian islands, Surinam, Ceylon, and the Dutch East Indies) to the new state, further
strengthening it. The province of Luxembourg was also ceded to the new kingdom,
despite Prussian claims to the territory.
520 New England Restraining Act
One of Williams supporters, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, drew up a constitu-
tion for the new state in 1815. In order to make the central government as strong
as possible, the government was unitary, rather than federal, and supported by a
bicameral legislature similar to Britains. The Estates-General, as the legislature was
known, called for an equal number of representatives from all 16 of the original
provinces, including Luxembourg. The Estates would meet at the capital, which was
originally designated as Amsterdam but instead moved between Brussels and The
Hague. Universal suffrage and proportional representation, legacies from the Dutch
Revolution, were also continued and expanded to apply to the southern provinces.
Some Dutch historians have suggested that the experiment was doomed to failure
because political unication did not take into account historical and cultural differ-
ences between the north and the south.
These differences did lead to squabbles, especially over religion and nance. In
1830, the southern provinces revolted against Williams rule. He attempted to sup-
press the movement through force but was ultimately unsuccessful, and the new
state of Belgium declared its independence. Reluctantly, William recognized the
new countrys independence in 1839 and, as a consequence, resigned his ofce in
frustration in 1840. The northern provinces retained the title of United Kingdom of
the Netherlands and the revised constitution adopted in 1848 remains the constitu-
tion of the modern Netherlands.
FURTHER READING: Kossman, E. H. The Low Countries, 17801940. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1978; Newton, Gerald. The Netherlands: An Historical and Cultural Survey, 17951977.
London: Ernest Benn, 1978.
LAURA CRUZ
The New England Restraining Act was a measure that was originally aimed at
punishing Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New
York but was soon expanded to include Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Vir-
ginia, and South Carolina. Despite its title and original target, the act was retalia-
tion for the fact that the First Continental Congress had convened, the Continental
Association had come into existence, and a boycott of British goods had been an-
nounced.
The act, which Parliament passed in March 1775, stated that as of July 1, 1775,
New England merchants could trade only with Britain and the British West Indies.
All other trade was prohibited. A further provision stated that starting July 20, 1775,
New England ships would not be able to sh in North Atlantic shing areas. This
last provision would adversely affect the New England shing economy, which de-
pended so greatly upon access to this area. The act was open ended in that it would
remain in force until the colonies recognized Parliaments authority. It is difcult to
judge what the effect of this act might have been had it been put into force. By the
time word was received in America, the colonies were already in armed rebellion.
See also Non-Importation Agreements; Quincy, Josiah.
FURTHER READING: Labaree, Benjamin W. Colonial Massachusetts: A History. Millwood,
NY: KTO Press, 1979; MacDonald, William. Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of
American History, 1606 1775. New York: Macmillan, 1899; McFarland, Philip James. The Brave
New Jersey 521
Bostonians: Hutchinson, Franklin, Quincy, and the Coming of the American Revolution. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1998.
ROBERT N. STACY
New Hampshire
Although a small colony, New Hampshire comprised three distinct regions. The
rst was on the seacoast and had the largest population. To the south was the Mer-
rimack River Valley, and to the west was the Connecticut River Valley and the Hamp-
shire Grants region (which eventually became Vermont).
New Hampshire did not send a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 but
showed signicant agreement with the general tide of dissatisfaction. Acts of Parlia-
ment during these years and denial of access to the forests (pine trees and the land
they sat on were off-limits until harvested for the Royal Navy) solidied opposition.
The Sons of Liberty was organized and active. In 1773 the colonys Assembly met
without the royal governors permission to send aid to the closed port of Boston.
A convention of the towns convened in 1775 formally suggested that the Conti-
nental Congress consider the issue of independence. Later this convention became
a Provincial Congress with two houses but no executive branch.
New Hampshire declared itself a state in September 1776 and two years later
adopted the Articles of Confederation. After the war, economic distress affected
its rural population: almost at the same time as Shayss Rebellion in Massachusetts
(1786), a similar demonstration among New Hampshire farmers took place.
New Hampshire sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention, but they ar-
rived late and did not participate in all the debates. When the Constitution was sent
to the states for ratication, opposition had formed in the state. The vote on ratica-
tion was delayed, but in 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the
United States Constitution by a vote of 57 to 46, thus bringing the United States into
existence. See also American Revolution; American Revolutionary War; Boston Port
Act; Constitutions, American State; New England Restraining Act.
FURTHER READING: Daniell, Jere R. Colonial New Hampshire: A History. Millwood, NY: KTO
Press, 1981; Morison, Elizabeth Forbes. New Hampshire: A Bicentennial History. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1976; Penrose, Charles. Colonial Life in Maritime New Hampshire. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1940.
ROBERT N. STACY
New Jersey
New Jerseys geography had much to do with its central role as the site of a great
deal of military action in the American Revolutionary War. The colonys political,
economic, religious, and demographic divisions and its particular set of problems
shaped its contributions to the development of the United States Constitution.
Originally two proprietorships, East and West Jersey were combined under a royal
governor in 1702, an arrangement that lasted for over 60 yearsalthough in the years
just preceding the American Revolution, New Jersey still showed signs that these two
areas had not been well integrated and the differences were not only centered on
geography. Religiously, there were three divisions. As might be expected in the west,
522 New York
which bordered on Pennsylvania, the population was predominantly Quaker. The
east, populated in large part by immigrants from Connecticut, was Anglican, and in
the center, in the Trenton and Princeton area, Presbyterians formed the majority.
Of all the religious groups in this divided state, the Presbyterians eventually came
out most strongly for independence.
Economics constituted another division and one that would affect New Jersey
into the 1780s. At the end of the Seven Years War (1756 1763), New Jersey was
heavily in debt and so were many of its people. The divisions between those who
owed money and those who were owed led to strong support for paper money (al-
ways favored by debtors because of inevitable ination) to replace hard currency.
At the same time, claims to land based on the very early proprietary grants were
a major problem and not only took up time but consumed a great deal of politi-
cal capital. Combined with individual claims, there was a border dispute with the
colony of New York that was not resolved until just before the ghting broke out.
Governor William Franklin (son of Benjamin Franklin) is rightly credited with keep-
ing his colonys involvement in the patriot cause at a comparatively low level.
This could not last forever, however. The Stamp Act and other means of gather-
ing revenue compounded New Jerseys nancial difculties. New Jersey sent del-
egates to the Stamp Act Congress and the First Continental Congress. It also formed
its own legislature in 1775 and passed a state constitution in 1776. Yet New Jersey
proceeded cautiously, and even after it had sent delegates to the Continental Con-
gress, it sent cautious peace feelers to the British government in late 1775.
New Jerseys divisions regarding the Revolution were not as signicant as they
were in other states. Despite the fact that half of the state may have been Loyalist,
there was no civil war as was the case in other states. William Livingston, the gover-
nor of the state, also had a strong inuence over events, although as in most other
states, New Jerseys constitution severely limited the powers of the executive.
New Jersey strongly supported the replacement of the Articles of Confederation
with a strong central government. The experience of spiraling debt and the fear
of larger states, such as New York, prompted this response. New Jersey pushed a
plan (the New Jersey Plan) that would guarantee the rights of the smaller states.
Although not totally adopted, part of its content was incorporated into the United
States Constitution. New Jersey ratied the Constitution unanimously. See also Amer-
ican Revolution; Constitutions, American State; Continental Association; Continen-
tal Congress, Second; Loyalists; Stockton, Richard.
FURTHER READING: Gerlach, Larry R. Prologue to Independence: New Jersey in the Coming of the
American Revolution. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976; McCormick, Richard
Patrick. New Jersey from Colony to State, 16091789. Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1981;
Pomfret, John Edwin. Colonial New Jersey: A History. New York: Scribner, 1973.
ROBERT N. STACY
New York
New York has always been a central part of the American experience, not only geo-
graphically, but also politically. It was at the forefront of American political thought
throughout the colonial, revolutionary, confederation, and constitutional periods.
Dominance of the states lands by Iroquois chiefs, Dutch merchants and colonists,
New York 523
Britain royal governors, and nally American Patriots gave New York a variety of
powerful cultures and a wide range of political views. Economic growth throughout
the period, barring the devastation of the American Revolutionary War, only aug-
mented New Yorks political importance, which has continued down to today.
By the 1760s, Iroquois inuence upon New Yorks lands had been steadily dimin-
ished over the years of colonialism as a result of disease, conict, and dwindling
fur hunts. However, they remained an important force within the region, able to
resist European control, often trying to benet from the conict between Britain
and France during the last of the French and Indian War, which lasted from 1754
to 1763.
Iroquois power stemmed from its rather advanced form of governance, known
as the Iroquois Confederacy, which is thought to have dated from around 1570. By
1760, the Iroquois Confederacy consisted of six tribes or nations: the Mohawk, One-
ida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. Although originally founded as a
confederation of ve nations, the Tuscarora, who had ed conict in the Carolinas,
joined the confederation in 1722. Known to this day as the Iroquois, the Six Nations
called themselves the Haudenosaunee people, loosely translated as the people of the
long house.
Political power within the confederacy was based upon an oral adhesion treaty
and was held by 50 chiefs, also known as sachems, who made up a grand council.
Each of the six participating nations received an assigned number of seats on the
grand council. Chiefs were usually selected by the elder women in each of the na-
tions settlements. Being named to the grand council was seen as a great honor
that bestowed the power to direct and to coordinate the confederacys actions. Oc-
casionally, chiefs were removed from the grand council as punishment, but removal
and replacement powers remained in the hands of the elder women from the pro-
spective settlements.
The confederacy organized power and responsibilities among its members. Al-
most all important decisions required unanimous consent, resulting in a slow-
moving and highly contentious political process. Nonetheless, the confederacy
stopped in-ghting and allowed the nations to better resist European colonization.
However, confederacy chiefs refused to consider giving full rights to tribes that did
not speak an Iroquoian-based language into the alliance. In order to join, non-
Iroquoian tribes were required to relinquish all authority to the grand council. The
Iroquois Confederacy, although weakened by the 1760s, remained in control of the
upstate New York fur trade and retained their position on New Yorks lands.
Dutch traders and colonists were the rst Europeans to interact extensively with
the Iroquois. Following Henry Hudsons exploration of the Hudson River in 1609,
Dutch settlements were established at Fort Orange, current-day Albany, in 1621, and
at Fort Amsterdam, on Manhattan Island, in 1624. The New Netherlands colony was
not the top priority of Dutch colonizers and traders, who preferred the higher prot
potentials of the Caribbean and Spice Islands. At the time of the British acquisition
of the New Netherlands in 1664, there were only 8,000 settlers in the entire region,
then dened as the area between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers.
The British were quick to recognize the New Netherlands economic potential,
renaming the colony New York and reestablishing it as a royal colony. Although
Dutch control was short lived, certain principles of the Dutch colonial government
remained in effect well after the colonys acquisition by the English. Out of the
524 New York
8,000 colonists estimated to live in the colony in 1664, roughly one-third were of
Dutch descent. At the time, claims were made that over 18 different languages were
spoken on Manhattan Island alone. Under tolerant Dutch control, many English,
Germans, French, Swedes, Jews, Africans, and Scots settled in the colony.
Religious toleration was the most important principle that the colony of New
York inherited from its former Dutch administration. The New Netherlands colony
had become a haven from religious persecution, just like the Netherlands in Eu-
rope. When Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant tried to enforce his dislike of Jews
and Quakers, the people of Flushing, on Long Island, issued a declaration in 1657,
which became known as the Flushing Remonstrance. It stated the peoples protest
against the governor and became the rst declaration of religious tolerance by any
group of citizens in American history.
Over time, New Yorks colonial assembly, which had been reinstated following
the downfall of James II in 1688, accumulated numerous and widespread powers.
By 1760, New York colonists had signicant powers of self-government. By power of
the purse, or the ability to approve the spending of government money and to levy
taxes, the colonial assembly was able to slowly expand its power, taking it from the
royal governor. Although the colonists still considered themselves to be part of the
British Empire, the development and increased powers of self-government started
to make them all economically prosperous and uniquely American.
An even more extensive self-government proposal was put forward by Benjamin
Franklin at the Albany Congress of 1754. Representatives of seven colonies met in
Albany, New York, in order to discuss pan-colonial military strategy and to negoti-
ate with the still-powerful Iroquois Confederacy. The Congress was not considered
a success at the time; the Iroquois left with wagon loads of gifts but did not con-
sent to any ofcial agreements. Franklins plan, which called for a central colonial
government to be located in Philadelphia and aimed to coordinate defense, was
not accepted. Many viewed Franklins so-called Albany Plan of Union as too radical
and unnecessary. Nevertheless, lengthy debates were held concerning Franklins
proposals, some of which may have laid the foundation for the union established
between the colonies at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.
Once British military superiority guaranteed the demise of the French Empire
in North America, New Yorks reliance upon the British military for protection
against foreign armies diminished signicantly. Coupled with the issuance of the
Proclamation of 1763, which forbade European settlement beyond the Appalachian
Mountains and trade with Native Americans without a license, New Yorks fur traders,
westward-looking settlers, and land speculators became infuriated with the British
authorities. In fact, many simply ignored the proclamation.
As a result, colonists continued to pour into Iroquois lands. In order to calm the
Iroquois fears, Sir William Johnson, a trusted friend of the Iroquois and a hero of
the French and Indian War, organized a conference at Fort Stanwix, near present-
day Rome, New York, in 1768. More than 2,000 Native Americans attended, and a
treaty clarifying the border between colonial settlement and Native American terri-
tory was signed, although it too was ignored by advancing colonists.
The mid-1760s were lled with growing colonial unrest in New York. In 1764,
Forsey v. Cunningham caused unrest and suspicion throughout the colony. Waddel
Cunningham had been found guilty of assaulting Thomas Forsey on a street in New
York City by a colonial jury. Forsey was awarded 1,500, but Cunningham appealed
New York 525
the verdict to royal governor Cadwallader Colden and his council. Coldens review
of the appeal sparked concern and unrest throughout the colony, as local lawyers
and judges criticized Colden for even rethinking the jurys ruling, which had been
made under English common law. Although the governors council refused to allow
him to review the verdict, Coldens actions created a scandal that aroused suspicion
and distrust.
The year 1764 also saw the passage of the Sugar Act, which replaced the Molasses
Act of 1733. Although it was technically more liberal than the preceding legisla-
tion, merchants and colonists alike were upset because it was actually enforced.
The Sugar Act reduced the duty on foreign molasses, forbade the importation of
any rum that was not distilled within the British Empire, and set tax rates on other
goods from the sugar islands that were under foreign control. Reaction to the act
was quick, beginning with protests to the Board of Trade. Then, the colonial assem-
bly sent letters to the Crown and Parliament, denouncing the right of Parliament to
tax New Yorks citizens without their consent or representation in Parliament itself.
In response to the Sugar Act, calls were made by some prominent business people
to ban the importation of British goods and to develop manufacturing industries
within the colony itself in order to reduce dependence upon Britain.
The Sugar Act failed to raise the projected income, and Parliament responded
with the Stamp Act of 1765. Extensive preparations were made by the colonists to
prevent enforcement of the act; even the government ofcial assigned to enforce it
resigned, citing threats on himself and his family. Beginning on October 7, 1765, the
Stamp Act Congress, organized by the General Court of Massachusetts, met in New
York City for about two weeks. The Congress published an angry denunciation of the
act. Soon after, the Sons of Liberty, an organization that advocated confrontation
and independence, began to gain strength in New York. By March 1766, American
boycotts had severely disrupted British trade revenues and the Stamp Act was re-
voked.
In response, Parliament passed the repressive Townsend Acts. One of the acts,
the New York Restraining Act, was particularly upsetting to New York residents. It
required proper barracks and supplies for British troops stationed at British general
Gages New York headquarters to be furnished by the colonial assembly before it
could be allowed to meet again. New York complied, but only after the colonial as-
sembly was suspended temporarily. New York merchants once again answered calls
made by the growing Sons of Liberty group and announced another boycott of Brit-
ish goods, starting in late August 1768.
The Townsend Acts were soon repealed in April 1770, only to be replaced by the
Tea Act, passed by Parliament in May 1773. In April 1774, a group of New York colo-
nists held their own version of the Boston Tea Party in New Yorks harbor, boarding
the cargo ship London and throwing 18 crates of tea into the water. In response to
these insubordinate actions, Parliament passed the punishing Coercive Acts (also
known as the Intolerable Acts). By January 1774, a new committee of correspond-
ence was established in New York; this one operated independent of the colonial
assembly. This committee called for a meeting to be hosted in New York City for
representatives of all the colonies on May 15, 1774, but it was decided that the meet-
ing would be held in Philadelphia.
As the colonies began to follow the road to revolution, New York fully partici-
pated in the Continental Congresses, convening temporary Provincial Congresses
526 New York
in order to nominate representatives when the colonial assembly refused to do so
after the boycott outcome of the First Continental Congress. By October 1775, New
Yorks royal governor, William Tryon, ed after the majority of British troops were
moved from New York City to Boston. New Yorks Third Provincial Congress decided
to favor rapprochement with Britain, even after the outbreak of military hostilities.
It was a position that harmed the position of New Yorks delegates at the Conti-
nental Congress in Philadelphia, where they were not allowed to speak in favor of
independence, and that alarmed other Patriots, including John Adams.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed, New Yorks delegates re-
frained from following suit and did not sign. Instead, a newly elected Fourth Pro-
vincial Congress met in White Plains, New York, on July 9, 1776, and hurriedly
approved the Declaration. Next, they renamed themselves the Convention of Rep-
resentatives of the State of New York. Around the same time, British commander Sir
William Howe began his invasion of New York, the most damaged state during the
Revolutionary War.
The states constitution was approved in 1777, establishing a government very
similar to that of its colonial predecessor. It was made up of an elected bicameral
legislature with an assembly and a senate. It called for a governor to enforce the leg-
islatures law, but the position had much less power than those of the royal colonial
governors. Lastly, a court system was established to rule on the laws passed by the
legislature. The constitution also guaranteed trial by jury, separation of church and
state, and freedom of religion.
The state legislature met for the rst time in September 1777 in Kingston, New
York, but was forced to ee in the face of an invading British army led by General
Henry Clinton. Luckily, New Yorks newly elected governor, George Clinton, was a
very able leader, regrouping the government in Schenectady, New York, organizing
a militia, and furnishing supplies. Throughout the war, New York was faced with a
strong British military presence in New York City and Native American raids along
the frontier. Financial problems were not as severe in New York as they were in other
colonies, since the legislature conscated and sold many lands previously owned by
Loyalists.
Once independence was secured and the faults of the government formed by
the Articles of Confederation were exposed, New York participated in the Constitu-
tional Convention in Philadelphia. Although three delegates were sent, only Alexan-
der Hamilton was in favor of a stronger national government, aligning himself with
the Federalist group. His two colleagues, Robert Yates and John Lansing, aligned
themselves with the Anti-Federalist group. Following the publication of the United
States Constitution, New York began its battle for ratication.
Many New Yorkers feared a strong central government and liked the Confederation
government, which was headquartered in New York City, but the addition of the Bill
of Rights persuaded many to vote in favor of the stronger union. A ratication con-
vention was called; the Anti-Federalists, led by Clinton, won 46 seats, while the Feder-
alists, led by Hamilton, won only 19 seats.

The ratication debate raged; passage of
the Constitution was ensured by New Hampshires approval on June 21, 1788, which
left New York temporarily outside the new and stronger union. On June 26, the con-
vention, meeting in Poughkeepsie, voted in favor, becoming the eleventh state to
ratify. As the new government was formed, George Washington selected Hamilton as
secretary of the treasury and John Jay as chief justice of the United States. Both men
Newspapers (American) 527
were from New York, and Hamilton, born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, became
responsible for the success of the new union.
Hamiltons success sparked dislike from Aaron Burr, against whom Hamiltons
party campaigned in the presidential elections, then in the elections for governor
of New York. Feeling slighted by Hamilton, Burr challenged him to a duel and de-
feated him on July 11, 1804, wounding and ultimately killing him the next day. In
response, the people of New York never supported Burr as they had in the past.
By 1812, ongoing disputes with Britain led to the reopening of hostilities between
the two countries. New York once again proved to be a major battleground of the
war, specically along the border with Ontario and Quebec. New Yorks Governor
Daniel Tompkins pressured the states legislature for more money for the war in
order to form a better militia and to protect the states frontier. With his lead, New
York was once again able to repulse a British invasion via Lake Champlain. Soon
after, with the states security guaranteed and the war ended, New Yorkers returned
their attention to development and economic progress, leading ultimately to the
states transportation revolution and construction of the Erie Canal. See also Ameri-
can Revolution; Constitutions, American State; Continental Congress, Second.
FURTHER READING: Ellis, David, James A. Frost, and William B. Fink. New York: The Empire
State. 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980; Holst, Arthur. The State of New
York. In The Uniting States, ed. Benjamin F. Shearer. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004;
Klein, Milton M., ed. The Empire State: A History of New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2001.
ARTHUR HOLST
Between 1760 and 1815, American newspapers were strongly inuenced by
journalistic traditions in Europe. During the colonial period, rules concerning the
press in the colonies were subject to British control, and in order to secure political
stability, colonial authorities felt compelled to strongly limit freedom of the press.
After independence, however, American newspapers would come to symbolize one
of the highest forms of free expression in the world.
The historical origins of the American press demonstrate how long the road to
journalistic independence was. Early newspapers were published only sporadically,
though their encouraging sales demonstrated a market for consumption. Benjamin
Harriss Publick Occurences, Both Foreign and Domestick was produced in 1690, though
it was soon banned by the disapproving British governor of Massachusetts. Even
in the late seventeenth century, the free word was perceived as a threat by the au-
thorities. The rst ofcial newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, was printed in Boston,
in 1704. Its task was to collect and proliferate news from Britain that until then
had been communicated in other forms. In 1719 it was renamed the Boston Gazette.
The New-England Courant in 1721 was the rst independent American newspaper, in
the sense that it escaped immediate British control. The production of newspapers
also expanded to other cities. William Bradfords New-York Gazette, rst published in
1725, was the rst newspaper in New York City.
The establishment of a new nation provided conditions for the development of
American newspapers. The absence of municipal ofces led to an enormous rise in
528 Newspapers (French)
the importance of newspaper headquarters as places for the exchange of informa-
tion. Newspapers created an extremely vibrant political environment that helped
encourage a market for political debate, though newspapers inevitably sided with
one political party or another. For instance, Thomas Jefferson and the early Repub-
licans were supported by the Philadelphia Aurora, whereas Alexander Hamilton, a
Federalist, was supported by the Gazette of the United States until 1818. Many regional
urban newspapers found enough support to enable newspapers to increase produc-
tion by abandoning weekly in favor of daily issues. This was partly possible due to the
development of several technical innovations in the early nineteenth century, which
also led to a reduction in retail prices. Businesses soon recognized the potential of
newspapers for reaching a wide readership, such that advertisements began to form
a substantial part American newspapers, bringing further revenue to their publish-
ers and causing a proliferation of new publications.
In 1791, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guaranteed free-
dom of the press and, in the years that followed, supported the development of what
was probably the most liberal national press of its time. The fact that many Ameri-
cans were political refugees from Europe stimulated the market for unfettered in-
formation and furthered the need for an exchange of views in public fora. As both
readers and contributors, the American public strongly supported the circulation of
newspapers, though the press remained divided on political lines for a considerable
period of time. The rst newspaper to claim political independence, the New York
Herald, did so in 1835. This policy may be seen as the cornerstone in the develop-
ment of the standards of a free press in modern terms. During this period, the task
of a professional journalist developed and was further rened, according to the in-
creased need for information, comment, and opinion, and the growing number of
copies produced. By this time not only had it become impossible for a publisher to
write, edit, and print a newspaper by himself, but the demand for reliable informa-
tion required a new, higher standard. See also Newspapers (French).
FURTHER READING: Habermas, Jrgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity, 1992.
CHRISTIAN KUHN
Newspapers (French)
The development of the French press mirrors the genesis of the bourgeois citi-
zenry. Of all the different media included in the term press, newspapers in particu-
lar became a medium of the new ideologies that developed and evolved in France in
the decades from 1760 until 1815. Some Dutch newspapers, known as corantos (cur-
rents of news) were translated into French as early as 1620. Many others newspapers
did not develop into a professional form until modern times. The Nouvelles Ordinaires
de Divers Endroits was a project of private book traders but was removed from the
market and replaced by the ofcial La Gazette. As early as 1777, Le Journal de Paris was
circulated in France on a daily basis. A truly popular press, however, did not develop
until the founding of La Presse in 1836, with a circulation of about 20,000 copies,
a relatively modest number by modern standards. Until that time, the market of
French newspapers was structured by ofcial organs like Napoleons Le Moniteur Uni-
versel. French newspapers were subject to governmental control. Censorship ensured
Newspapers (French) 529
that newspapers could not become an institution that provided news, information,
and opinion independently of the interests of the monarchy. The French Revolution
certainly triggered a rapid and extremely vibrant development of newspapers, but
this high peak could not be sustained over a long period of time. Only a few of the
years after 1789 experienced a lively press with regard to newspapers. Many of these
were newly founded and short lived. Nevertheless, they proved their critical poten-
tial during these years, albeit with their inuence largely conned to Paris.
The core ideological element behind news at this time was the ideal of the public
sphere, a liberal concept that suggested (and still suggests today) equality among all
thinking women and men. Newspapers were supposed to serve this end, although
the free exchange of well-grounded opinion in the public sphere was, during the
nineteenth century, increasingly blocked by commercialization of the press by ad-
vertisements. A free press seems to have been a model and an objective rather than
the description of a social reality. Nevertheless, French newspapers were remarkably
successful during the decades from 1760 to 1815.
One way to describe the development of French newspapers is to analyze how they
were produced, who could have access to them, and how their ow of information in-
terfered with other spheres of communication like private conversation or the public
political discourse. Apart from some news sheets that were printed before about 1750,
the main driving force of French discourse came in the form of coffeehouses, pri-
vate salons, and even bourgeois households, which became places for the exchange
of different views on diverse topics. In the eighteenth century, the history of French
newspapers was closely connected to literature and its critical discussion, rather than
to the realm of big business. Originally, literary scholars and writers discussed recent
novels, plays, and works of art. In the salons, art was discussed, and ideas were soon
put into print. Prominent gures of Enlightenment philosophy, like dAlembert and
Diderot, were frequent visitors to these independent institutions, where newspapers
could not only be read but also proliferated. Due to the substantial cost of these
weekly publications, their content was passed on to others in conversation as well
as circulated in handwritten copies. Although this may seem to have damaged the
publishers economic interests, in fact this practice actually stimulated the market
for newspapers.
The development of French newspapers is closely linked to the decline of the
aristocratic court during the second half of the eighteenth century. Quite in con-
trast to earlier news sheets, which conned themselves to the strict reporting of
events, newspapers commented on political matters. Producing a newspaper was
therefore not so much a form of business as an instrument for the psychological
emancipation of the bourgeoisie. Through the dissemination of news, the sphere of
the literate and informed urban public would gradually replace the arcane sphere
of the nobility at court. The production of newspapers was triggered by the reading
public, fuelled by individuals in correspondence with one another. These media, in
turn, provided information and stimulated further publications. Such reports mark
a more convincing beginning to the development of French newspapers than the
earlier business news sheets.
As purveyors of information, newspapers soon exceeded the circle of the sa-
lons, for private views could be sent to the editors of newspapers. Technical in-
novations also played a prominent role in the proliferation of French newspapers.
Cellulose paper in rolls could be produced by the new Fourdrinier machine, and
530 Nobility
automatization of the printing process helped accelerate newspaper production
and render it less expensive. During the eighteenth century, producing a newspa-
per often required that the printer himself assume the tasks of nancing, writing,
editing, printing, and possibly even selling the newspaper. Over time, however, the
journalists profession changed radically, developing as a response to the growing
importance of newspapers in society. See also Newspapers (American).
FURTHER READING: Darnton, Robert, and Daniel Roche, eds. Revolution in Print: The Press
in France, 17751800. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989; Gough,
Hugh. The Newspaper Press and the French Revolution. London: Routledge, 1998; Melton, James
Van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001.
CHRISTIAN KUHN
Nobility
The concept of nobility in Europe can be traced back to the ancient world: the
Latin word nobilitas could indicate either the qualities of being known or nota-
ble, or membership in the highest rank of society. Similarly, in early modern Eu-
rope, the term noble could dene someone either as possessing noble attributes
(honor, valor, duty) or as belonging to a socially and legally dened upper class. In
theory, anyone who belonged to the noble portion of society should also possess the
appropriate noble characteristics. The dominant theme of the European nobility
was not uniformity of character, however, but great diversity.
Denitions
Even before the Roman era, nobility was primarily dened by blood. It was a
status that was inherited. Membership was not open to just anyone. In the Middle
Ages, the nobility formed the backbone of the warrior class. As European society
divided itself to perform the daily tasks required for survival in a harsh world, the
clerics prayed, the nobles fought, and the rest worked the land. Concepts of nobility
were thus tied inextricably to military service and the military values of dedication,
bravery, and skill with a sword. An early mark distinguishing a nobleman from any-
one else was the most valuable possession of the battleeld, the horse. This gave rise
to terms that originally indicated ownership of a horse: equerry and esquire, both
from the Latin equus, horse.
As chief defenders of the countryside, medieval nobles were thus of the high-
est importance to kings and princes (themselves usually referred to as the premier
noblemen of the kingdom). Privileges were accorded to the kings ghting force to
enable them to prepare themselves for warfare, through training and the purchase
of equipment. Taxation was thus from an early stage something that had to be paid
by the mass of the people, not by the warrior nobles. For the same reasons, or out of
gratitude for victories won, princes also gave their nobles land, as well as a share in
the governance of the kingdom through seigniorial justice and the holding of local
or state ofces. Local lords would take care of judging many of the local disputes,
leaving the more serious or complex cases to the kings justice. Their titles lent them
the prestige required to sit in judgment over their neighbors. Their wealth deterred
them from all but the greatest bribery and freed them from the time required run-
ning a farm or working a trade.
Nobility 531
Princes also saw the nobles as their natural counselors and companions. They
appointed them to ofces in their government and as their representatives in the
countryside. Over time many of these positions became hereditary (such as the of-
ce of count, originally a regional administrator or governor of a county), and the
system of titles was created. In most European countries these followed a similar
hierarchy, from barons at the bottom, through viscounts and counts, to dukes and
princes at the top. A baron was usually the term used for the basic landowning and
justice-wielding nobleman, though there were variantsin England, a baron was
someone who had been ofcially summoned to counsel the king (the origin of
Parliament), while in France it was more generally someone who possessed more
than two or three seigneuries, or lordships. A count and a viscount were much
more honored members of the kings inner circle and held a greater number of
lordships. A title that was added later was that of duke, the military leader (from
Latin dux, leader); these were great magnates who rivaled the king in wealth and
power (in Germany, they were in fact territorial rulers). The title of marquis was
also added later, originally deriving from a count with extra powers to govern a fron-
tier, or march (from which the title, from the Italian, marchese). The English called
these Marcher Lords but began to adopt the title marquis from the French in the
seventeenth century, often Anglicizing it to marquess. By this time, these titles
had ceased to serve their original administrative or military functions and served
primarily as a means of distinguishing rank and honors. Those at the top, dukes
and marquesses, enjoyed close proximity to the king and thus beneted from the
ofces, military commissions, and pensions that were theirs to distribute, not to
mention bribes and kickbacks from those eager to get a word in the kings ear.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw several shifts of this sort in the de-
nitions and conceptualizations of the nobility. Monarchs were less content to have
their armies composed of mostly independent military forces owned and trained
by noblemen, and thus dependent on their loyalty and whim. Thus the role of the
noble was transformed into that of a servant, rather than a counselor and com-
panion of the prince. The nobles position in the military hierarchy remained the
dominant characteristic of the group, but it was much more tightly controlled. As
warfare became increasingly expensive because of technology, nobles also had to
rely more exclusively on the monarch for assistance in maintaining their status.
Status was measured in wealth and in patronage potential. Keeping up appearances
was crucial for the maintenance of at least the ction that there was something
superior about a nobleman and his family, and thus their position of privilege and
authority within their local communities. This was expensive and required clothing,
horses, carriages, servants, estate managers, houses in town and country, and so
on. Privileges from taxation thus became far more important than they had been
in previous centuries. Denitions of exclusivity of membership in the noble orders
also now became preeminent as a means of protecting these privileges. Whereas
it had usually been fairly simple for a man who displayed noble virtues on the bat-
tleeld to enter the ranks of the nobility, it was now essential to have lineage. True
nobles were expected to have family associations with the monarchy and the mili-
tary reaching back several generations. In France, for example, ordinances from the
mid-sixteenth century required nobles to prove their descent from people bearing
noble titles in the year 1400 or before. Exclusivity was variable: in Germany, sons and
daughters who wished to enter certain monasteries or take up posts in the imperial
532 Nobility
(i.e., the Holy Roman Empire) government were required to produce the infamous
16 quarters (all 16 of ones great-great-grandparents had to be noble); in England,
it was much less rigid.
The nal addition in the composition of the nobility came aboutin France at
leastfrom the desire of the monarch to reduce his dependence on an ancient,
semi-independent military aristocracy and to reclaim the function of administer-
ing justice at every level. The most eminent judges in the country were lured into a
greater support of the king by the prize of noble status, with both its connotations
of honor and its scal advantages (that is, exemption from most taxation). Thus
was born the noblesse de robe, the judiciary nobles who were marked out by their long
robes of court, as opposed to the noblesse dpe, the nobles of the sword. As the two
most inuential portions of French society, these two groups frequently loathed
each other socially but often worked together by necessity. Moreover, sons of the
ancient nobility usually were in need of the wealth that the daughters of judicial
nobles could often supply. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the divide
between these two groups had considerably narrowed.
Yet nobility remained quite diverse. In addition to such variances in origin
and function, there were, most notably, differences in wealth. Some had wealth
based entirely in urban trades, as in parts of Italy and Provence, while others re-
mained tied to the land, as in Britain and Scandinavia. The greatest landowners in
Poland and Russia owned estates the size of an English county, while some of the
simple hidalgos in Spain owned nothing at all but their noble status. Some were
highly educated; others could barely sign their names. Even dening numbers is
difcult, for historians as well as contemporaries; estimates for the number of no-
bles in eighteenth-century France range widely between 100,000 and 500,000.
The Role of the Nobility in the Enlightenment and Age of Revolutions
By the eighteenth century, the nobilities of Europe were generally secure in their
place at the top of the social and political hierarchy: they were exempt from most
taxation, they owned most of the land, and they dominated the ranks of the ofces
of state, the judiciary, the military, and the church as well. There was not a strong
antagonism between the privileged nobility and the growing numbers of wealthy
bankers, guildsmen, and lawyers (later termed the middle class, or the bourgeoisie).
Rather there was a generally accepted goal of advancement into this position of priv-
ilege for oneself. Parlementaires (members of the various parlements) in France in
particular seemed to be evenly mixed between arguing against noble privilege and
trying to acquire it for themselves. Success in business or law anywhere in Europe
could mean catching the favor of a powerful courtier or the monarch himself, and
an advancewhether slow or spectacularfor oneself and ones family into the
ranks of the nobility. In France, this trend could be seen in particular in the ranks
of the government nanciers, who themselves began to be ennobled by monarchs
always short on cash. Social mobility may have been limited, but it was not closed.
Nevertheless, several of the main characteristics of the nobility came under seri-
ous criticism by writers of the eighteenth century. Fiscal and social privileges based
on birth alone may have rankled some (although these were fully sanctioned, it
seemed, by the church and scripture). Rather, it was practices such as the selling of
noble ofces to the highest bidder, the strict regulation of primogeniture and entail
by aristocratic families, and the persistence of feudal systems of land management
Nobility 533
like seigneurial dues and mainmorte that truly formed the basis of eighteenth-century
criticism of the ancien rgime. By making positions within the government, the judi-
ciary, and the military all commodities to be bought and sold, rather than obtained
by merit or skill, society was seen as stagnating, and the closed nature of the govern-
ing class allowing in very little new blood. It was the monopoly of power held by the
nobles, rather than the institution of nobility itself, that was primarily under attack.
The military was derided for allowing its highest commands to be controlled exclu-
sively by a limited set of families, whose sons may or may not have been the most
talented commanders available. Almost all the top judiciary positions in the country
were held by a few interrelated noble families, and the price of purchase for these
posts was kept well out of reach of all but the wealthiest aspiring socialites. Land-
owning practices in many countries limited inheritance of vast estates to the eldest
son only, which was generally good for the family as a whole but stied the free
circulation of land and economic growth and disadvantaged younger sons, who,
because of their noble status, were unwilling (or even unable in some countries
due to laws restricting noble occupations) to take up employment in trade. These
became the indolent and idle who were mercilessly mocked by anti-noble writers
of the period. Some criticized the views held by many noblemen of themselves as a
separate cultural or even racial category with inherited values as either bad bio-
logical reasoning or simply untrue.
But again, diversity is the key. Many nobles were active promoters of industry and
trade. They were patrons of the arts, as well as members of academic organizations
and literary salons. Some were rm believers in reform, from agriculture to poli-
tics, including some at the very top, like King Frederick II of Prussia and Emperor
Joseph II of Austria. There is a paradox in the very fact that the same writers who
criticized and ridiculed the nobility were also those who relied on it for their patron-
age and support, not just nancially, but also in readership. Nobles were patrons of
the philosophes, and collectors of libraries. One of the most prominent critics of
the noble lifestyle was a nobleman himself, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de
Montesquieu, whose satire, Les lettres persanes (1721), mocked not the nobility in gen-
eral, but those qualities generally held by society to be damnable: indolence, pride,
artice, frivolity, and so forth. Most of these were seen to be defaults of those who
spent their time at court in the luxury of the kings entourage, trapped by the whims
of fashion (and its exorbitant costs) and vanity. Ordinary noblemen living on their
estates in the countryside did not necessarily associate themselves with that lifestyle.
They would have rmly supported the values of back-to-the-land literary protago-
nists like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry Fielding, and Johann Goethe.
In the view of many reformers in Europe, this was the key to the issue. The mon-
archy and its noble favorites had lost touch with the countryside and its residents,
not just the peasantry, but artisans and local nobles as well. In their minds, this
distance undermined the foundations of what the nobility had originally stood for,
as the element of society set apart to look after the safety of the common people.
This issue was illustrated plainly in France with the assembly of the Estates-General
in May 1789, at which many nobles openly supported the rights of the Third Es-
tate (the non-nobles) to be represented in the governance of the kingdom in true
proportion to their numbers, rather than on an equivalent footing with the much-
smaller clergy and the nobility. The Revolution surpassed the goals of most of its
initial supporters, however, in rst abolishing and then slaughtering the nobility in
534 Non-Importation Acts
their thousands in the early years of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, 25 years
later, many of the old noble families had survived, their fortunes more-or-less intact.
Their ofcial privileged position in the state was removed, but informal authority re-
mained, both in society and government, and would do so well into the nineteenth
century.
FURTHER READING: Chaussinand-Nogaret, Guy. The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century:
From Feudalism to Enlightenment. Translated by William Doyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985; Descimon, Robert. Orders and Classes. In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed.
Michel Delon. Vol. 2. Translated by Philip Stewart and Gwen Wells. Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn,
2001; Dewald, Jonathan. The European Nobility, 14001800. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996; Lukowski, Jerzy. The European Nobility in the Eighteenth Century. Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave, 2003; Scott, H. M., ed. The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
2 vols. London: Longman, 1995; Smith, Jay, and Jean Quniart. Aristocracy. In Encyclopedia
of the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Alan Kors. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
The non-importation acts were agreements among American merchants not to
purchase or import British goods in retaliation for various political and/or eco-
nomic restrictions enacted by Parliament against the American colonies. Major
non-importation acts emerged to counter the Stamp Act of 1765 and later the
Townshend Acts of 1767. Other colonies adopted their own non-importation acts,
and in 1774 the First Continental Congress passed a non-importation act, known as
the Continental Association, that covered all the colonies.
The rst non-importation acts emerged as early as 1765, when Americans op-
posed the imposition of the Stamp Act on the colonies. Groups referred to as the
Sons of Liberty enforced a boycott of goods covered under the Stamp Act. New York
City passed the New York Merchants Non-Importation Agreement on October 31,
1765. The agreement noted the opposition of city merchants to the Stamp Act and
their demand for its repeal. The merchants agreed unanimously not to purchase
any British goods after January 1, 1766, unless the British removed the taxes applied
by the Stamp Act. The refusal of Americans to purchase imports bearing Stamp Act
taxes made a tremendous impact on British merchants, who successfully petitioned
their government for its repeal.
Boston enacted the rst major non-importation act after the repeal of the Stamp
Act in response to the British passage of the Townshend Acts, which placed new
taxes on lead, paint, paper, glass, and tea. Bostons merchants approved the Boston
Non-Importation Agreement on August 1, 1768. The merchants agreed to promote
local industry and frugality to discourage the purchase of imported goods. They also
pledged not to import any goods in the fall of 1768 that had already been ordered
from Britain. Rather than canceling orders, the non-importation act envisioned a
one-year protest from January 1, 1769 to January 1, 1770. During this period, the
merchants would boycott British goods other than salt, coal, sh hooks, shing line,
hemp, duck, bar lead and shot, wool cards, and card wire. The document specically
targeted many of the items listed in the Townshend Acts. The merchants pledged to
uphold the boycott until the British government repealed the Townshend Acts, and
the Sons of Liberty opted to enforce the non-importation agreement.
North, Frederick North, Lord 535
The merchants of Charleston, South Carolina, enacted their own antiTownshend
Acts non-importation agreement on July 22, 1769. The Charleston document proved
to be one of the most detailed non-importation acts written prior to the American
Revolution. Charlestons merchants agreed to boycott the same products banned
in Boston but also added slaves and wine. The Charleston agreement clearly stated
that any merchant who refused to abide by the act should face a boycott by local
residents. The impact of the various non-importation agreements helped to force
the British to repeal the Townshend Acts on April 12, 1770. See also Boston Port Act;
Boston Tea Party; Stamp Act Congress.
FURTHER READING: Conser, Walter H., Ronald McCarthy, David Toscano, and Gene Sharp,
eds. Resistance, Politics, and the American Struggle for Independence, 17651775. Boulder, CO:
Lynne Reinner, 1986.
TERRY M. MAYS
British prime minister from 1770 to 1782, Lord Norths irresolute leadership
contributed to his nations loss in the American Revolution. North was the son of
Lady Lucy Montagu and Francis North, the rst earl of Guilford and the governor
to Prince George, the future King George III. Young Frederick was educated at Eton
and Trinity College, Oxford. After completing the obligatory grand tour in Europe,
North married Anne Speke, the daughter of a wealthy Somerset landowner.
At the age of 22, North was elected to represent Banbury in Parliament, which he
would do for the next 26 years. The rst two years of his service were lackluster, and
he did not even deliver his rst speech until two-and-half years after being elected.
In 1759, his distant relative, and the serving prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle,
appointed him a junior lord of the treasury, an ofce North held until 1765, serving
under William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham; the Duke of Newcastle; the Earl of
Bute; and George Grenville. In 1763, North was chosen as the Commons manager
against John Wilkes and succeeded in removing Wilkess parliamentary privilege. In
1766, after Lord Rockinghams rst ministry collapsed, North was made a member
of the Privy Council and served as paymaster general under the Duke of Grafton.
In the fall of 1767, he was appointed chancellor of the exchequer. Three years later,
King George III asked North to form his own ministry as prime minister, in which
capacity he served until 1782.
Earlier in his career, North had supported the Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act
(1765), and the Townshend Acts (1767) to generate revenue to compensate for the
nancial costs Britain had incurred during the Seven Years War (1756 1763). De-
spite a hostile reaction to the acts in the British colonies in North America, North,
after becoming prime minister, retained these acts to reduce the national debt. Since
Britain was at peace from 1763, he reduced spending on the armed forces but in
doing so exposed himself to the Oppositions charges that he was weakening the
nations defenses, not least in the reduction in spending on the Royal Navy.
One of Norths rst challenges came in 1772 when he faced a crisis over the Falk-
land Islands. Spain claimed these south Atlantic islands and demanded the expulsion
of the British inhabitants. The reductions made in the Royal Navy budget and an
accidental re that destroyed the Portsmouth dockyards placed Britain in a difcult
536 North, Frederick North, Lord
position in which to ght a war. North instead chose a peaceful solution and negoti-
ated with the Spanish king, Charles III, reaching a settlement that allowed Britain to
retain the Falklands.
Less successful was Norths attempt to reform the governments relations with
the East India Company. Abuses by company ofcials in India and inated stocks in
Britain led him to propose measures to rescue the East India Company from bank-
ruptcy, which would have affected the British economy. North argued that tea was
a luxury item and therefore should be properly taxed to reduce the national debt.
The Tea Act (1773) called for a monopolistic arrangement in the tea trade between
the American colonies and the East India Company. Norths second measure, the
Loan Act, required the East India Company to use its prots to pay outstanding
debts before making other expenditures. The third measure, the Regulating Act,
provided for government approval of the appointments of the companys gover-
nor-general and its council members, thus increasing the degree of government
supervision over the company.
Norths Tea Act caused a erce reaction in the colonies, where many opposed the
tea monopoly. Some viewed the import duty as a tax that Britain was using to assert
its authority over the colonies as well as an attempt by North to use the colonies to
alleviate Britains economic problems. In response to his Tea Act, the Sons of Liberty
organized the famous Boston Tea Party to prevent the collection of the tea tax. North
underestimated the determination and power of the colonists and chose to respond
with rigidity and resolve. His Coercive Acts (1774) sought to make an example of the
colony of Massachusetts, but instead they produced bitterness and resentment. By
the time the government issued a Proclamation of Rebellion in August 1775, Norths
ministry was divided over the use of force in subduing the colonies, which limited
Norths actions. The prime minister had to maintain amity among his ministers and
defend his policies and budgets amid escalating conict in North America.
North nevertheless faced the war with the colonies halfheartedly and was easily
depressed by the reverses suffered by British arms. When General John Burgoyne
was defeated at Saratoga, he declared his willingness to resign if such action would
bring peace. North effectively left many decisions on managing the conict to his
ministers, principally the Earl of Sandwich, who served as rst lord of the admiralty,
and Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for America. In early 1778, North
supported the formation of the Carlisle Peace Commission that was dispatched to
America to offer the colonists a peaceful resolution to the conict. However, the
commissions work was undermined from the very beginning, since, due to mis-
communication among Norths ministers, British troops were ordered to withdraw
from Philadelphia, which only increased the colonists resolve to ght and reject the
commissions offer.
Throughout 17781780, North was troubled by political matters at home and
abroad. In 1778, the Catholic Relief Act was passed to allow Roman Catholics to own
property, inherit land, and serve in the army. However, it caused a violent Protestant
response, known as the Gordon Riots, in 1780, which further weakened the govern-
ment. North also faced difculties in Ireland, where complaints were made in 1779
about restrictions on Irish trade. He made several requests to resign, but the king
persuaded him to remain. The loss of Norths youngest child only increased his de-
spair and made him an indecisive and reluctant leader. His ministry consequently
became more divided and unable to address the countrys immediate problems.
North Carolina 537
The British defeat at Yorktown in October 1781 spelled the end for Norths
ministry, and in March 1782, he insisted on resigning. His government was replaced
by the ministry of the Earl of Rockingham, who died in July. After the Earl of Shel-
burne negotiated with the victorious American colonists, North returned to ofce
in April 1783, when he became home secretary in a coalition government under the
nominal leadership of the Duke of Portland. The Portland ministry managed to sign
the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War, but it also hastened
the governments demise. In December 1783, it was replaced by the rst ministry of
William Pitt the Younger, while Lord North joined the Opposition. He retained his
seat in the House of Commons for the next seven years. In 1790, he succeeded his fa-
ther as the second earl of Guilford and joined the House of Lords. However, his
health rapidly deteriorated, and he became nearly blind before dying in London on
August 5, 1792. He was buried at All Saints Church in Wroxton, Oxfordshire, near
his family estate of Wroxton Abbey.
Lord Norths legacy is still debated, but whatever his achievements and failings,
he is remembered as the prime minister who lost the American colonies. An experi-
enced and astute politician, he is often portrayed as a mediocre prime minister who
appeared to lack the condence so necessary in the high position that he held. His
decision to adopt stern policies respecting the colonies clearly proved detrimental
in the end. However, he did display considerable skill in avoiding factional entangle-
ments within his ministry and in Parliament and was known for his ability to speak
eloquently and succinctly.
FURTHER READING: Buttereld, Herbert. Lord North and the People, 1779 80. London: G. Bell
& Sons, 1949; Christie, Ian R. The End of Norths Ministry, 17801782. London: Macmillan,
1958; Donne, W. Bodham, ed. The Correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North, 1768
to 1783. Vols. 1 and 2. New York: Da Capo, 1971; Scott, H. M. British Foreign Policy in the Age of
the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; Smith, Charles Daniel. The
Early Career of Lord North the Prime Minister. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University
Press, 1979; Thomas, Peter. Lord North. New York: St. Martins Press, 1976; Valentine, Alan.
Lord North. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967; Whiteley, Peter. Lord North: The
Prime Minister Who Lost America. London: Hambledon, 1996.
North Carolina
North Carolina presents an excellent example of the premise that the American
Revolution was not only a question of home rule but of who would rule at home.
The colony was divided along a geographical fault line between east and west. Each
possessed different economic and political characteristics. In the years before the
Revolution, these differences, as much as any opposition to the Crown, became the
focus of political activity.
Western farmers were separated by a signicant distance from the east, where
the richer farmers and merchants were located, and found their political strength
outweighed. Aside from the disparity in political power, economics was quite im-
portant, especially when new means were employed in the 1760s to gather taxes.
Aside from the fact that much of this revenue apparently stayed in the hands of
those who collected it, innovations in revenue collecting made life more difcult for
the westerners. Earlier there had been some exibility in the timing of the payments
or payment in goods rather than cash had been allowed. This was now no longer
the case. Thus, a form of self-government meant to regulate their own affairs took
shape, and these activists, known as Regulators, became a signicant force (a similar
group of Regulators existed in South Carolina as well).
The Regulators rebellion was broken after the militia under Governor William
Tryon defeated them in the Battle of Allamance Creek in June 1771. Six of the lead-
ers were hanged. The irony of these events lay in the fact that many outside observ-
ers (such as Josiah Quincy) had come to believe that these farmers were ghting
against British oppression. In fact, the eastern elites who supported suppression of
the Regulators were also the parties that were the most vocal in their opposition to
the Crown.
At the same time as these events in the west, opposition to acts of Parliament
was growing. North Carolina did not participate in the Stamp Act Congress (the
Assembly was not in session at the time) but Governor Tryons offer to pay the tax
himself for the colony did not pacify the situation. Josiah Martin succeeded Tryon
in 1771 and from the beginning had a contentious relationship with the Assembly.
His difculties were not solely based on opposition to British policy. Martin, as he
came to know the area, found himself in sympathy with many of the westerners who
had supported the Regulators.
North Carolina sent delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses
and approved a state constitution in 1776. Several signicant battles (including
Guilford Court House) were fought in North Carolina, and the west did not over-
whelmingly support one side or another. The end of major campaigning in 1781 did
not bring a halt to the ghting: the west became the focus of a real and brutal civil
war until the cessation of the conict in 1783.
After the war, North Carolina adopted the Articles of Confederation, and in 1788
the state voted against the United States Constitution, though it ratied it the fol-
lowing year when it became known that a bill of rights would be attached. See also
American Revolutionary War; Constitutions, American State; Continental Congress,
First; Continental Congress, Second; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Kars, Marjoleine. Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in
Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002; Lee,
Wayne E. Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and
War. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.
ROBERT N. STACY
The Northwest
This region, alternatively known as the Old Northwest or the Ohio Valley, was
bounded to the north by the Great Lakes, to the west by the Mississippi River, and to
the east by the Ohio River. It covered the present-day states of Indiana, Illinois, Mich-
igan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and part of Minnesota. From the mid-eighteenth through
the early nineteenth centuries, abundant fur resources and fertile soil placed the
Northwest in the path of imperial ambitions, inspiring wars and political maneuver-
ing between Britain, France, the United States, and the Native Americans.
France was the rst European power to lay claim to the region, establishing forts
and posts for the fur trade in the seventeenth century. In the charters of her Atlantic
538 The Northwest
Notables 539
colonies, Britain nominally claimed the land as well. In practice, European control
of the region was tenuous, which allowed the Iroquois Confederacy to manipulate
imperial rivalries to maintain power in the Ohio Valley. The strategy kept the region
relatively peaceful until the mid-eighteenth century, when George II granted the
Ohio Company a royal charter to extend settlements into the Northwest. In 1754,
a dispute over the territory erupted into war between France and Britain, and each
sides Indian allies.
The Seven Years War (17561763) initiated a 40-year effort to subjugate the
Northwest to British control. The French relinquished their claim in the Treaty of
Paris (1763), but the Native American inhabitants naturally remained, and conicts
with settlers arose immediately. Specically, Pontiacs Rebellion brought a state
of terror to the western borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter,
Parliament passed the Proclamation of 1763, a largely ineffectual attempt to gain
control over the Northwest by limiting settlement west of the Appalachians. The
proclamation highlighted a growing schism between the British Empire and her
American colonies.
The British ceded the territory to the United States at the close of the American
Revolutionary War in 1783. From 1781 to 1785, seven of the states that still main-
tained claims to the land (by virtue of their colonial charters) were persuaded to
surrender them to the federal government. Like the British 20 years earlier, the
Americans attempted to exercise their authority over the still largely unsettled land.
Congress introduced the Land Ordinance of 1785 as a system to divide and sell pub-
lic land. Pressure from a land speculation rm, the Ohio Company of Associates,
prompted Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a measure to extend
governance into the region by allowing new states to be carved from the territory.
Nevertheless, Native Americans living in the region continued to claim the land.
As Americans pushed into the territory in the 1780s and 1790s, the Britishwho
had never fully withdrawnassisted and in some cases fomented Indian resistance.
The United States fought a series of battles with the confederated tribes led by Te-
cumseh of the Shawnee, culminating in an American victory at the Battle of Fallen
Timbers (1794) and the passage of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). As a result,
waves of American settlers began emigrating. But conict among the Americans,
Native Americans, and the British remained, contributing to the deteriorating rela-
tions that brought about the War of 1812. The results of that conict conrmed
American control of the Northwest, from which the British were permanently ex-
pelled, and facilitated a longer process of Indian removal.
FURTHER READING: Cayton, Andrew R. L., and Stuart D. Hobbs, eds. The Center of a Great
Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early American Republic. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005;
Hinderaker, Eric. Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673 1800. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
ROBERT LEE
Notables
The Notables were persons belonging mainly to the clergy and nobility under the
ancien rgime in France. The king nominated the Notables, who were intendants
(in charge of regional taxation), members of parlements (law courts), members of
540 Notables
provincial estates, councilors of state, members of corporations, mayors, members
of the noblesse de robe (magisterial nobility) and the noblesse dpee (nobility of the
sword), and others. The Marquis de Lafayette, a prominent gure in the American
Revolutionary War and in the French Revolution, and Etienne Charles de Lomnie
de Brienne, the nance minister in 17871788, numbered among many important
Notables. The Notables did not have any common plan of action, apart from that
of guarding their political and nancial privilegeshence, they became a favorite
target of Parisian cartoonists and pamphleteers.
Louis XVI called upon the Assembly of Notables to facilitate the smooth passage
of his scal reforms, but the assembly proved to be a chaotic body divided by diver-
gent views. Indeed, the Notables were only united when they talked of the despot-
ism of government ministers, including the nance minister, Charles Alexander
de Calonne, whose rst proposal the Notables rejected in their opening meeting
on February 22, 1787. The Assembly was dissolved on May 25, when Calonnes suc-
cessor, Brienne, met similar opposition from the Notables. The Notables convened
their nal meeting in November 1788. See also Assembly of Notables.
FURTHER READING: Beck, Thomas D., and Martha W. Beck. French Notables: Reections of
Industrialization and Regionalism. New York: P. Lang, 1987; Furet, Franois. The French Revolution,
17701815. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
O
October Days (1789)
One of the important events of the early stages of the French Revolution, the
October Days refers to the womens march to Versailles and the resulting reloca-
tion of the royal family to Paris. Following the tumultuous events of July 1789, the
National Constituent Assembly adopted a series of decrees aimed at reforming the
state. In August, the Assembly abolished the feudal remnants in French society,
adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and produced
a draft of the rst written constitution. The fast pace of change and the nature of
the political reforms that limited royal power led King Louis XVI to withhold his
acceptance of these reforms. The Assembly was also divided into various feuding
factions, some of which sought support from political groups in Paris.
In September, the king was approached with a suggestion to move the Assembly
farther from Paris to prevent any outside inuence on the legislature. The king
refused but ordered additional troops to Versailles. Many royalist soldiers favored
the use of force to expel the National Assembly, and during a fete at the palace in
the presence of the king and queen on October 1, the soldiers desecrated the revo-
lutionary symbol, the tricolor cockade. A seemingly triing incident, it was suitably
embellished by rumors that spread through the capital and provoked a massive re-
sponse. In his newspaper, LAmi du Peuple, Jean-Paul Marat published a letter calling
for all patriotic citizens to take up arms, as royal soldiers had shown themselves to
be both debauched and hostile to the people and the Revolution. At the same time,
Camille Desmoulins renewed the call for the king to be removed from the corrupt-
ing inuence of the court.
The most pressing issue, however, was that of food. Despite numerous decrees
and the publication of political pamphlets, economic change was slow in making
itself felt, and grain remained in short supply. The price of bread, the staple diet for
Parisians, continued to increase, pushing many citizens to the edge of starvation.
Rumors claimed the hunger was a result of a conspiracy, as a revolutionary activ-
ist named Fournier noted in his memoirs: The detestable aristocratic and royalist
horde had plotted to submit the nation to slavery by starvation and saw no other way
to force this nation to renounce its plans for conquering its liberty.
542 October Days
On October 5, several hundred women staged a protest against the food short-
age and high prices of bread in front of the Htel de Ville, threatening to lynch the
municipal leaders. They were joined by demonstrators outraged by the cockade
trampling affair, which, many believed, demonstrated royal contempt for the As-
sembly. As the crowd grew to several thousand, some agitators suggested marching
on Versailles to present their grievances and retrieve the royal family. As a result,
some 10,000 women and men, many of them armed with sticks, pikes, and knives,
set off in the rain for the royal palace. The idea to march to Versailles was not spon-
taneous, nor did it originate with the demonstrating women. It had in fact been
under discussion since late August in radical political circles in Paris, which had now
found an opportunity to put it in effect. The Marquis de Lafayette, the commander
of the Paris National Guard, initially tried to pacify the crowd and his troops, which
were in a state of near mutiny, but, as he claimed afterward, after being threatened
with hanging, he agreed to lead his units to Versailles.
Meanwhile, the king was engaged in his daily round of hunting while the Na-
tional Constituent Assembly was discussing the news of royal soldiers desecrating
the cockade and the kings continued refusal to approve new legislation. Upon re-
ceiving the news of the approach of women marchers, the court held a council but
arrived at no decision. Around 4 p.m., as the Assembly prepared to demand the
royal acceptance of its acts, the rst women marchers, led by Stanislas Maillard, the
famed conqueror of the Bastille, reached Versailles and were presented in front of
the Assembly, where they voiced their complaints. They were then escorted to the
royal palace, where Louis XVI assured them that they would receive help.
Although this rst group of women seemed to be placated, the arrival of several
thousand more armed women and men only increased the tension. Lafayette as-
sured the royal family of his help and arrived with his troops around midnight. How-
ever, many National Guardsmen sympathized with the crowd, and their reliability
was suspect. In this tense situation, the royal family was advised to retreat to Ram-
bouillet, but the king refused to leave the palace. Late that evening, he informed
the Assembly of his unconditional acceptance of its decrees, effectively signaling the
transfer of authority from the executive to the legislative body.
During a night of festivity, the cold, tired, and wet crowd invaded the Assem-
bly, where some conservative and clerical members were harassed. On the morning
of October 6, the mob then discovered an open gate leading into the palace and
rushed toward the apartment of Queen Marie Antoinette; several bodyguards were
killed and injured as they tried to protect the queen, who managed to escape via
a private staircase to the kings bedroom. Although the National Guard restored
order, the mob remained agitated and threatened the royal family, lling the air
with cries of Le Roi Paris! Lafayette informed the royal family that the only way
to calm the crowd was for the king to agree to move to the capital. Later that morn-
ing, Louis appeared on the balcony to mollify the crowd and agreed to move to Paris
on condition that he would be accompanied by the queen and his family. The royal
family, surrounded by thousands of marchers, duly left Versailles at about noon.
The October Days had a dramatic inuence on the subsequent course of events.
The invasion of the palace by the crowd constituted a major blow to crown author-
ity. With the kings move to Paris, the power of the previously Versailles-based mon-
archy had come to an end. The National Constituent Assembly followed the king to
Paris on October 19, and, thereafter, the king, his advisers, and the entire Assembly
Ogden, James 543
effectively became hostages of radical Parisian crowds, who began to play an im-
portant role in the political events of the Revolution. It represented the rst, but
not the last, instance when the direct intervention of the Parisian masses affected
national politics. Royalist factions and other elements sympathetic to the king lost
their power as they became overwhelmed by the power of a radical, often hostile,
populace. On the other hand, radical left-wing factions beneted greatly from these
events as they gained the kings acceptance of their reforms. Lafayette emerged as
the hero of these events by preventing bloodshed and protecting the royal family.
The duc dOrlans was suspected of exploiting the mob for his own benet, as a
result of which he was informally exiled from France and later prosecuted for his
role in the October Days. The October Days are also noteworthy for the substantial
number of women who participated in the march on Versailles. Their active role in
this event led to attempts to limit womens involvement in politics and direct them
back into a passive role. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Pamphlets
(French); Women (French).
FURTHER READING: Aulard, F.-A., ed. Mmoires secrets de Fournier lAmricain. Paris, 1890;
Ferrires, Charles Elie. Mmoires du Marquis de Ferrires. Paris: Baudouin Frres, 1821; Godineau,
Dominique. The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1998; Levy, Darline Gay, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and
Mary Durham Johnson, eds. and trans. Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789 1795. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1979. Pernoud, Georges, and Sabine Flaissier. The French Revolution
Translated by Richard Graves. New York: Capricorn Books, 1970.
Ogden, James (1718 1802)
James Ogden was an English writer who rst distinguished himself as a poet and
later as a composer of prose. He was born in Manchester, one of at least three chil-
dren born to parents whose identities remain unknown. Much of Ogdens early life
and career are obscure. It appears that family connections led to his early employ-
ment as a fustian shearer in the Manchester cotton industry. Ogden then traveled to
the Continent, visiting France, the Netherlands, and Germany, where he witnessed
the Battle of Dettingen in 1743. Upon returning to Britain, Ogden was employed as
a schoolmaster in Manchester, but by 1772, he had returned to his former vocation
as a fustian shearer. By this time, Ogden had produced several poetic works. His rst
publicationsAn Epistle on Poetical Composition, a reverential Christian composition
entitled On the Crucixion and Resurrection, and The British Lion Rousd, or, Acts of the
British Worthies, a Poem in Nine Booksappeared in 1762. By the time Ogden came to
compose the last work, his literary reputation seems to have been established: The
British Lion Rousd was published by subvention of six hundred subscribers.
Despite his emerging reputation, Ogden waited until 1774 to publish his next po-
etic piece, entitled A Poem, on the Museum, at Alkrington, Belonging to Ashton Lever, and 14
more years to produce Poem, Moral, Philosophical and Religious, in Which Is Considered the
Nature of Man (1788). The latter composition, published anonymously, is considered
his most signicant poem and advocated domestic economic reform as the means for
providing all the women of Manchester with good husbands. In its stanzas, in which
Ogden promoted the abolition of the slave trade, are the inuences of the Enlighten-
ment. This work was followed by The Revolution, an Epic Poem (1790), which is a heroic
544 Olive Branch Petition
portrait of William III, and Archery; a Poem (1793), arguably his most enigmatic piece.
Ogden had served in the Manchester archery society, and Archery was a curious mix of
passionate expression of his favored sport and lyrical waxing on agriculture.
In 1797, Ogden issued Emanuel, or, Paradise Regained: An Epic Poem, and in 1800
his last poetic composition, entitled Sans Culotte and Jacobine, an Hudibrastic Poem, was
published by his son, William Ogden (1753 1822). This was an anti-reform piece
that rejected calls for political reform, specically the representation of Manchester
in Parliament. As a writer of prose, Ogden produced just two works: A Description of
Manchester, published anonymously in 1783 (reissued in 1887 as Manchester a Hun-
dred Years Ago), and A Concise Narrative of All the Actions, in Which the British Forces Were
Engaged, during the Present War, on the Continent of Europe (1797). Ogden died on Au-
gust 13, 1802, in Manchester. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Davis, Michael T. James Ogden. In Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; [Ogden, James]. Manchester a Hundred Years
Ago: Being a Reprint of a Description of Manchester by a Native of the Town. Edited by W.E.A. Axon.
Manchester, 1887.
MICHAEL T. DAVIS
Old Northwest
See The Northwest
The Olive Branch Petition was the Second Continental Congresss nal dip-
lomatic effort to resolve the political tension that had persisted for more than a
decade between Britain and its American colonies. John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania
delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote the Olive Branch Petition in June 1775.
By then, military hostilities had already commenced with the actions at Lexington
and Concord and at Bunker Hill, and General George Washington had just assumed
command of New Englands militia forces in the ongoing siege of Boston. Still,
many provincial Americans believed it was only Parliament and the British govern-
ments ministersnot George IIIthat had become corrupt and were responsible
for the imperial policies that oppressed the colonies.
The sentiments expressed by Dickinson in the Olive Branch Petition showed this
optimism. Among its numerous statements, the petition afrmed the colonies con-
tinued loyalty and affection for the king, expressed their desire for reconciliation,
requested immediate repeal of the Coercive Acts, and pleaded with the Crown to
intercede and mediate the colonies differences with Parliament.
Most of the Continental Congresss 46 delegates who signed the petition believed
it was a futile effort but signed the petition out of their enormous respect for Dick-
insons demonstrated legal expertise and integrity. The Congress addressed the
petition to George III to eliminate doubt regarding the kings attitude toward his
American colonies. Many in the Congress hoped that if the king rejected the peti-
tion, it would increase popular support for independence.
George III refused to even receive the Olive Branch Petition. Instead, on Au-
gust 23, 1775, he proclaimed the colonies to be in rebellion and urged for every
Orlans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d 545
effort to be made to suppress such rebellion, and bring the traitors to justice. The
kings rejection of the petition, coupled with the January 1776 publication of Thomas
Paines Common Sense, persuaded many provincial Americans that the only way to pro-
tect the rights they believed Parliament sought to deny them was to declare their inde-
pendence from Britain. The Olive Branch Petition is therefore regarded as a critical
step toward the Continental Congresss declaration of American independence.
FURTHER READING: Flower, Milton Embick. John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983; Grant, Alfred. Our American Brethren:
A History of Letters in the British Press during the American Revolution, 1775 1781. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 1995.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
The Commission of Orange came into being on May 10, 1794, and operated
from June 19 to August 4 of that year. Its existence and rules of procedure indicated
that the Reign of Terror had become increasingly stringent in its denition of guilt
and in terms of the imposition of punishment.
Revolutionary tribunals had previously operated in a decentralized fashion. Set
up by members of the National Convention, they included members of the Com-
mittee of Public Safety, and in their role as representatives on mission, they would
dispense revolutionary justice. By the spring of 1794, however, it was thought that
all these trials should be conducted in Paris, where the political atmosphere was
considered to be suitably radical. There were two exceptions due to the practical
difculties of transporting prisoners from these sites to Paris. The rst was Arras,
the hometown of Maximilien Robespierre; the second was the city of Orange, in
southern France.
The Commission of Orange operated under a set of rules personally devised by
Robespierre. The commission would have ve judges with no jury. The only crime to
be tried was whether a suspected individual was an enemy of the Revolution. There
would be no written presentation; the burden of proof was constituted by whatever
statements would allow any person who was both reasonable and a friend of lib-
erty to determine guilt or innocence.
In the course of its existence, the commission condemned 432 people to death,
including women and boys, although 100 of these subsequently had their sentences
reduced. See also Juries; Law of Suspects.
France. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of
the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
ROBERT N. STACY
Orlans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d (1747 1793)
Louis Philippe Joseph, duc dOrlans, was a member of a cadet branch of the
French royal house of Bourbon. Known as Philippe Egalit, he supported the French
Revolution and voted for the execution of his cousin, Louis XVI.
546 Ottoman Empire, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Orlans was born in 1747. He bore the title duc de Montpensier until 1752, when
he became the duc de Chartres. He succeeded his father as duc dOrlans in 1785.
Orlans was disliked at the French court and traveled frequently to Britain, where
he befriended the Prince of Wales (later George IV) and grew fond of the British
political system.
After squandering his fortune, Orlans built shops in the gardens of his Paris-
ian residence to rebuild his nances. The gardens became a center for the lower
classes. During the conicts between Louis XVI and the nobility over Frances nan-
cial situation, Orlans became leader of a group of malcontents in the Assembly of
Notables. He was exiled after making a subversive speech in one of the parlements.
Orlans served as deputy in the Estates-General and was among the liberal nobles
who joined the Third Estate in June 1789. He was blamed for disturbances in Paris
at the outbreak of the French Revolution, and in 1789 1790, he accepted a mission
to Britain. He was later suspected by both French royalists and republicans of co-
vertly plotting to make himself constitutional monarch of France.
In 1791, Orlans joined the Jacobins. After exchanging his aristocratic title for
Citizen galit, he served in the National Convention. He allied himself with the
Mountain and voted for Louis XVIs execution. Orlans was arrested after his eldest
son, Louis-Philippe, deserted to counterrevolutionary forces abroad. Orlans was
guillotined in November 1793 during the Reign of Terror. Louis-Philippe became
the French king following the July Revolution in 1830.
FURTHER READING: Scudder, Evarts Seelye. Prince of the Blood. London: Collins, 1937.
ERIC MARTONE
Ottoman Empire, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
At the time of the French Revolution, the Ottoman Empire had not yet be-
come the sick man of Europe but was far from the powerful and fearsome entity
whose armies had reached the outskirts of Vienna a hundred years before. From
the late seventeenth century on, the borders of the Ottoman Empire began to
steadily contract. Although its inuence was diminishing along with the area under
its control, it remained a force that Europeans had to enter into their political and
diplomatic considerations.
The sultan during this time was Selim III (ruled 1789 1807), and while his reign
began with his presiding over territorial losses to the Russians, he understood that
some changes would have to be made to hold off further decline. He had, even
before his reign, made contact with some European leaders and from 1786 on had
been in regular contact with Louis XVI. When he became sultan in 1789, he asked
for and received French ofcers to advise his army (one of those originally sched-
uled to go was Napoleon Bonaparte).
Beyond receiving advisors, however, Selim made other changes, particularly in
the analysis and decision-making process of determining policy. In 1791 he and
a selected group of advisors performed what might now be called a requirements
analysis to determine what was needed to improve both the civil government and
the military. The result was a program known as the New Order, a set of reforms
that focused primarily on improving military operations, with secondary emphasis
on other government administration.
All this time, Selim asked for and continued to receive aid from France. In 1793,
he requested assistance and advisors from the Committee of Public Safety. They
responded, with the hope that the Turks could possibly open up a second front
against the Russians and the Austrians. This did not happen, however, and in fact
France went to war with Turkey when it sent Napoleon to invade Egypt in 1798. After
occupying Alexandria, the French moved north; Selims answer was to declare a jihad.
The French were eventually defeated in 1799 in Syria by the Ottomans (with British
assistance, as the Ottomans were part of the Second Coalition against France).
The effects of the French Revolution on the Ottoman Empire are difcult to
characterize and quantify. At rst, the anti-Christian nature of the French Revolu-
tion appealed to the Turks, who saw that it could be of help without compromising
their beliefs. In time, however, the Revolutions secularism horried them. Con-
sidering the number of sultans who were routinely assassinated, the execution of
Louis XVI probably had a much smaller impact in Turkey than in other states. The
inuence of new military practices developed on the battleelds of Europe and
the presence of the French in the Middle East due to events shaped by the French
Revolutionary Wars in Europe was considerable.
Among the Ottoman Empires varied peoples, the Jews and Muslims were the
least affected by revolutionary ideology. For Christians the effect was more substan-
tial. It is difcult, however, to identify a signicant cause-and-effect relationship be-
tween the ideals of the Revolution and the Greek and other revolts in the Balkans,
which were to accelerate the pace at which the empire began to break up.
Selim himself was deposed in 1807 and executed the following year as a result
of conict with the conservative Janissaries. In time, however, the reforms would
take hold and be accompanied by signicant changes. Eighteen years after Selims
death, it was the turn of the Janissaries. On what was called the Auspicious Night,
they were massacred, as a result of which more thorough reforms could take place.
FURTHER READING: Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002; Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700 1922. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000; Zrcher, Erik J. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
ROBERT N. STACY
Owen, Robert (1771 1858)
Robert Owen was an industrialist, social reformer, philanthropist, philosopher,
and visionary who dreamed of forming a lasting communitarian society. Sometimes
called the father of British socialism, his revolutionary experiments in creating
these socialist societies failed to last for substantial periods of time; nevertheless,
his inuence was great and many radical architects of community building followed
his lead.
The son of a saddle maker, Owen grew up in humble circumstances in Wales. He
received only a modicum of education, completing his schoolwork at age nine. He
became a worker in a drapery shop, and later, while still a teenager, he was elevated
to the position of manager of a cotton mill in Manchester, where he quickly became
nancially successful. He met and married the daughter of the owner of the most
prominent Scottish mill, known as New Lanark, of which he later became manager
and part owner. By age 28, Owen had become immensely wealthy and well known
Owen, Robert 547
548 Owen, Robert
throughout Britain. He desired to turn New Lanark into a model community by
providing the employees of the mill and their families with higher salaries and bet-
ter working conditions than other mills in the area. In addition, he had homes built
for the employees and provided free education for the children of the community.
He became a social reformer in his advocacy for workers and the poor and envi-
sioned a society in which there was cooperative ownership. His ideas were rejected
by many but accepted by others who decided to use his ideas of socialism by de-
veloping communities of this type. Owens followers became known as the Owen-
ites. Agricultural and education-oriented Owenite communities such as Orbiston
(in Scotland), Ralahine (in Ireland), and later Queenwood (in Hampshire), a set-
tlement endorsed by Owen himself, were formed. These socialist experiments all
failed to sustain themselves for an appreciable period of time; Orbison lasted from
1825 to 1827, Ralahine lasted from 1831 to 1833, and Queenwood was only in exis-
tence from 1839 to 1845. Other communities of this type carrying Owens name, if
not his endorsement, were also developed.
Owen also formed a community in America in 1825 in New Harmony, Indiana.
New Harmony was bought from another communitarian, George Rapp, and, like
the other communes based on Owens principles, took education as its main con-
cern. This experiment failed to last more than two years, but many other attempts
were made by others to form Owenite communities in America.
Owen expressed his ideas in numerous widely read works such as The New View of
Society and The Book of the New Moral World. He died in 1858 in Wales. Owens sons
assisted with their fathers socialist experiments in America and remained in the
country. Robert Dale Owen (18011877) became a member of the Indiana House
of Representatives and was a well-respected writer and visionary in his own right.
David Dale Owen (1807 1860) became a geologist for the U.S. government, and
Richard Owen (1810 1890) became a university professor.
FURTHER READING: Fried, Albert, and Ronald Saunders. Socialist Thought: A Documentary
History. New York: Doubleday, 1964; Pollard, Sidney, and John Salt. Robert Owen, Prophet of the
Poor: Essays in Honour of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell
LEONARD A. STEVERSON
P
Paca, William (1740 1799)
William Paca, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, was born
in Maryland in 1740. Having been well educated in Philadelphia, he moved to An-
napolis in 1759 and two years later entered the legal profession. He rose to promi-
nence campaigning with Samuel Chase, another lawyer, for the repeal of the Stamp
Act of 1765. The following year Paca entered public ofce at city level and he was
elected to the provincial assembly in 1767.
In 1774, Paca was elected to the First Continental Congress. His rich wife, whom
he had married in 1763, died that year, and he subsequently fathered at least two
illegitimate children. Paca married again in 1777. His second wife died in 1780, and
Paca inherited a fortune from her, too.
Paca was rst appointed a federal judge in 1780. He was elected state governor
in 1782, and during his time in ofce he grappled with major economic difculties,
focused on the needs of war veterans, promoted university education, and hosted
an important sitting of the federal congress. The Treaty of Paris was ratied in An-
napolis in 1784.
Because he believed it failed to protect individual freedom and states rights suf-
ciently, Paca resisted the federal constitution that replaced the Articles of Confed-
eration of 1781. As a delegate to his states ratication convention alongside Chase
in 1788, he drafted many amendments, but they were not passed. He continued to
press the case for a bill of rights, which was nally adopted in 1791. Two years ear-
lier Paca had joined the bench of the United States District Court for the district of
Maryland at the invitation of George Washington. He died at Wye Hall, the mansion
he had built for himself, in 1799.
FURTHER READING: Stiverson, Gregory A., and Phebe R. Jacobsen. William Paca: A Biog raphy.
Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1976.
JAMES INGLIS
550 Paine, Robert Treat
Robert Treat Paine, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, was
born in 1731 in Boston, Massachusetts. He developed an unusually learned mind
and graduated from Harvard College in 1749. The collapse of his familys mercan-
tile business ended his hitherto comfortable existence, and before nally entering
the legal profession, Paine resorted to making a living by teaching, whaling, and
preaching. He relocated his practice to Taunton in 1761. Paine raised a large family,
having married in 1770.
In the Boston Massacre trials that year he appeared for the prosecution along-
side Samuel Quincy and made a mixed impression on John Adams, a defense lawyer
and future president. Paine was elected to the provincial assembly three years later,
and in 1774 he accompanied Adams to the First Continental Congress. Paine, on
entering the Second Continental Congress the following year, was placed on bodies
charged with attending to some of the most pressing concerns of a nation at war,
including the manufacture of gunpowder. Paine did not share the enthusiasm for
independence of some of the other Massachusetts representatives, though he prag-
matically embraced the cause when his provinces collective view moved decisively
in that direction.
Paine was appointed his states attorney general in 1777, and in this capacity he
prosecuted the perpetrators of Shayss Rebellion, which broke out 10 years later.
Failing to receive a much-longed-for federal judicial appointment, he became an
associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1790. To his
chagrin, however, the ofce of Massachusetts chief justice eluded him. Deafness
forced Paine to resign in 1804. He died in 1814 at the grand residence of the former
governor William Shirley that Paine had acquired in 1780 when he had returned to
live in Boston. In 1780 Paine had also become a founding member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
FURTHER READING: Bickham, Troy O. Paine, Robert Treat. In Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. Vol. 42. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Hanson, Edward W. Paine, Robert
Treat. In American National Biography. Vol. 16. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
JAMES INGLIS
Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, the only son of a Quaker stay maker and ten-
ant farmer. He received only a basic education up to the age of 12 and he achieved
little worldly success in his rst 37 years of life. He held a variety of jobs as a stay
maker, a privateer, a schoolteacher, and a shopkeeper but in none was he a suc-
cess. He was twice married: his rst wife died young in childbirth in 1760, and he
separated formally from his second wife in 1774. He was interested in political is-
sues and political debates, but this initially proved his undoing. Having once been
dismissed as an excise ofcer (in August 1765), he wrote his rst political pamphlet,
The Case of the Ofcers of Excise, in 1772, four years after being reinstated. He pro-
duced his pamphlet and a petition to press the government to improve the pay and
conditions of the ofcers of excise. His reward was to be dismissed from the service
in April 1774. In October 1774, with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Frank-
lin, he sailed for America and a new life.
Paine, Thomas 551
Paine arrived in Philadelphia at the end of November 1774 and quite soon there-
after was offered the editorship of the newly established Pennsylvania Magazine. He
contributed several essays himself, including one attacking slavery. This helped him
meet Benjamin Rush and enter politics in Philadelphia. With the colonists contem-
plating independence from Britain with some trepidation, Rush encouraged Paine
to write a pamphlet encouraging the colonists to take the plunge. In January 1776,
Paine produced Common Sense, which became the most widely distributed pamphlet
during the American Revolution. Paines short pamphlet made no attempt to re-
hearse the colonists grievances since the early 1760s. Instead, he made a frontal as-
sault on the British constitution, attacking its monarchical, aristocratic, and corrupt
features, and advising the colonists that there could be no satisfactory compromise
with Britain. He inspired his readers to believe that they had the ability to win any
war with Britain, and he urged them to seek complete independence. He believed
that America could become the asylum of liberty, and he insisted that the cause
of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Paine maintained that
to achieve good government, humankinds natural rights to life, liberty, and prop-
erty must be safeguarded under civil government. Legitimate governments must
be based on consent and on the sovereignty of the people, and the peoples rights
should be enshrined in a written constitution. While he was not very specic about
what kind of civil government he would favor, Paine clearly admired a system of
government that was rational, simple, natural, and cheap. His pamphlet was written
in a highly accessible style that made little use of references to other works, complex
sentence structure, or abstruse words. Its success was unparalleled. It was widely dis-
tributed throughout all the colonies, was reviewed and commented upon in many
newspapers, and produced many critical and favorable comments.
During the American Revolutionary War, Paine performed a variety of services
for his adopted country. He was for a time an aide-de-camp to General Nathanael
Greene and a eld correspondent reporting on American actions. He was an ob-
server at Valley Forge, where Washingtons army spent a very difcult winter in
17771778. He was appointed secretary to Congresss committee on foreign affairs,
and he was much involved in the efforts to raise arms and supplies from France. He
was engaged in a lengthy and rancorous press campaign against Silas Deane, who
had been sent to France to secure French arms and supplies but was condemned by
Paine as self-serving. Paine himself sailed for France, at his own expense, in Febru-
ary 1781, to help procure substantial nancial assistance from that country. Paines
greatest contribution to the war effort, however, was made through his pen. He wrote
an inspiring series of essays, The American Crisis, to stiffen American resolve when
its forces faced their most serious crises. He admitted in his rst essay that These
are the times that try mens souls, but he urged the Americans to stand rm and to
continue the struggle since he was condent that success would be ultimately theirs.
He insisted that the Americans were ghting for universal principles of liberty: for
the natural rights of all men, the sovereignty of the people, representative democ-
racy, and a republican government that would reject monarchy and aristocracy. He
also wrote to promote the establishment of the Bank of North America, to urge the
states to levy higher rates of taxation to help the war effort, and for western lands to
become the property of the federal government so that they could become a source
of funds. He wrote a separate pamphlet to defend the war against the charge by the
abb Raynal that it arose solely out of a dispute over taxation.
552 Paine, Thomas
When the war ended, Paine sought some recompense for his various efforts. He
eventually received some money from Congress and from the Pennsylvania assem-
bly, and a small farm from the New York assembly. It did not satisfy him. In 1786
he published his Dissertation on Government, the Affairs of the Bank, and Paper Money,
in which he defended the Bank of North America, supported the independence
of nancial institutions, opposed efforts to repeal the banks charter, and warned
of the dangers of paper money. Although he had campaigned to give the federal
government greater powers, Paine played no part in the debates on the new United
States Constitution in the late 1780s. Paine instead became preoccupied with his
plans to design a single-span iron bridge that could be used to cross wide rivers.
Discouraged with the response to his plans in Pennsylvania, Paine set sail for France
in April 1787. His efforts in France and Britain to promote his iron bridge proved
very expensive and to no avail.
Paine became closely interested in the French Revolution, which broke out in
1789, and he was entrusted by the Marquis de Lafayette to convey the key of the
Bastille to President George Washington. When Edmund Burkes Reections on the
Revolution in France appeared in November 1790, Paine quickly responded with the
rst volume of his Rights of Man on March 16, 1791. Paines pamphlet was an im-
mediate success with radical opinion in Britain, and it was soon reprinted in cheap
editions across the British Isles. Paine attacked Burkes emphasis on prescription
and denied that any decision in the past, such as the Revolution Settlement of 1689,
could bind future generations to the end of time. He abandoned the traditional
radical appeal in Britain to the ancient constitution and to the historic rights of En-
glishmen. Instead, he insisted that every age must be free to act for itself and that
civil governments ought to be based on the sovereignty of the people and the uni-
versal, natural, and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. He advocated a
republican form of government and a representative democracy in which the natu-
ral rights of all men would be converted into civil liberties. All men were born equal
and they all had an equal right not just to participate in the original creation of civil
government but to play an active role in politics thereafter.
In February 1792, Paine produced the second volume of Rights of Man. In this,
he praised the American example, repeated his attacks on monarchy and aris-
tocracy, and insisted that governments should be created by conventions of the
people. He praised mans natural sociability, and he supported commerce and free
trade. He maintained that civil society could do more for all its citizens than any
individual could do for himself. He insisted that all governments had a responsi-
bility for their poorer citizens. He condemned the extravagance of royal courts
and the enormous waste of money on aggressive wars. He believed that a radically
reformed government could reduce the tax burden on the poor and that taxes
on inherited wealth could provide a national fund that could be used to nance a
system of social welfare including child allowances, marriage and maternity grants,
and old age pensions. Volume 2 of Rights of Man had an even greater impact on
popular radical societies in Britain and it greatly alarmed the government and the
propertied elite.
In June 1792, Paine was indicted for sedition but was not immediately brought
to trial. He continued writing radical tracts, including his Letter Addressed to the Ad-
dressers of the Late Proclamation, in which he claried his support for universal man-
hood suffrage and called for a British convention to promote a radical reform of
Paine, Thomas 553
Parliament. On September 13, Paine left London and was subsequently declared
an outlaw. He was welcomed in Calais, where the citizens elected him as their rep-
resentative in the new National Convention. Paine was not a great success in the
Convention, as he spoke little French and his views were far less violent than those
of the rising Jacobins. He was arrested on December 27, 1793, and imprisoned in
the Luxembourg prison until November 4, 1794. He narrowly escaped death and
was seriously ill during his imprisonment. He owed his release much to the efforts
of James Monroe, the American ambassador to France.
Shortly before his arrest, Paine wrote the rst part of The Age of Reason. On his
release he began work on part 2, which he completed in August 1795. The Age of
Reason is an uncompromising attack on Christianity and organized religion. In this
deist manifesto, Paine stressed that nature was the only form of divine revelation
and that the Bible was riddled with errors, exaggerations, and contradictions. He
condemned much of the Old Testament as incredible and immoral, and he chal-
lenged the accuracy of the New Testament. He condemned many Christian beliefs
as based on superstition and he rejected the claim that Christ was the Son of God.
He regarded the clergy as self-interested and all Christian churches as the agents
of oppressive governments. He did believe in one God or in an afterlife, and he
supported the toleration of all religions provided they had no political power.
The Age of Reason sold in vast numbers and went through numerous editions in
the United States, where it caused great offence and seriously damaged Paines
reputation.
Paine no longer played a prominent role in French politics, though he did ad-
vocate a French invasion of England and of Ireland. He remained very active as a
writer, however. His Dissertation on the First Principles of Government (1795) offered a
clear summary of his mature views on government. His Agrarian Justice (1796) con-
demned the division of society into rich and poor. Rejecting as impractical both the
forcible conscation and the common ownership of land, he argued that the rich
should be taxed in order to provide a national fund that would grant 15 to every
person at the age of 21 and a pension of 10 per annum to all persons reaching the
age of 50. In Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance (1796), he predicted that
the rapid growth of Britains national debt in recent years would lead to a complete
collapse of the system that sustained Britains war effort. In his Letter to Washington
(1796), Paine vented his resentment at not receiving enough American help to
secure his prompt release from prison. He cast doubt on all Washingtons abilities
and actions, even his military service during the late war. This pamphlet further
tarnished Paines reputation in America.
After several attempts to leave France for the United States, Paine took the op-
portunity of the peace treaty of 1802 (Amiens) to sail for Baltimore. For the next
year or two, Paine wrote a number of political essays, particularly To the Citizens of
the United States (1802 1803), in support of President Thomas Jefferson and in op-
position to the Federalists. Jefferson was probably more hurt than assisted by Paines
support, but he did not cast him aside. From 1804, however, Paines health grew
worse, his drinking increased, and his nances were in complete disarray. He died
in Greenwich Village on June 8, 1809, and was buried on his farm in New Rochelle.
Only a handful of people attended his burial. In 1819 William Cobbett dug up his
bones and took them back to England, and there they disappeared. See also Conti-
nental Congress, Second.
554 Pamphlets (American)
FURTHER READING: Aldridge, A. Owen. Thomas Paines American Ideology. Newark: Uni-
versity of Delaware Press, 1984; Ayer, A. J. Thomas Paine. London: Secker & Warburg, 1988;
Claeys, Gregory. Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989;
Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005;
Fruchtman, Jack, Jr. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows,
1994; Hawke, David Freeman. Paine. New York: Harper & Row, 1974; Kaye, Harvey J. Thomas
Paine and the Promise of America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005; Keane, John. Tom Paine:
A Political Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995; Philp, Mark. Paine. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
H. T. DICKINSON
One of the most extraordinary expressions of the intellectual and political culture
of early America is the prodigious burst of pamphlet literature published through-
out the colonies in the decades leading up to the American Revolution. A dispro-
portionate amount of the political discourse surrounding the American Revolution
took place in the form of pamphlets, small booklets formed by folding and stitching
together two to ve sheets of broadside printers paper, and sold unbound to the
public for a shilling or two. Although pamphlets ranged from only a few pages up
to 80 pages or more, the typical length for the political pamphlet of the revolution-
ary era was 10 to 50 pages, or 5,000 to 25,000 words. The development of this genre
throughout the colonies gave rise to the creation of something resembling a mod-
ern public sphere in which political ideas, intellectual debates, and public opinion
could form and circulate throughout the colonies.
Because pamphlets were cheap, easy to produce on small printing presses, and
exible in size and distribution, they proliferated in the era preceding the Revo-
lution. It is estimated that more than 400 pamphlets dealing just with relations
between Britain and the American colonies were published between 1750 and
1776, and more than 1,500 by 1783.
Pamphleteers attempted to re-create in the American context an English genre
of political writing whose best-known and most articulate exemplars were writers
like Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Joseph Addison. Although American au-
thors mimicked the style and tone of their more artful English predecessors, the
general level of American pamphlets tended to be strident, heavy handed, and
eclectic in comparison to the accomplishments of the master essayists of England.
Some of the leading thinkers of the revolutionary generation expressed their views
in the form of published pamphlets notably, Thomas Jeffersons A Summary View
of the Rights of British America (1774) and John Adamss Thoughts on Government
(1776). However, most pamphleteers were undistinguished lawyers, ministers,
planters, merchants, and printers who published episodically whenever political
events moved them and as a supplement to their regular trade or profession. With
the possible exception of William Livingston of New York, publisher of the Inde-
pendent Reector, there were few professional pamphleteers in the colonies who
were artful or industrious enough to earn a full-time living from their political
writing alone.
Historian Bernard Bailyn, whose scholarship has done so much to call atten-
tion to this rich and variegated pamphlet literature, distinguishes three broad
Pamphlets (American) 555
categories of American pamphlets. The rst and largest group took the form of
immediate responses to particular events and crises of the era, such as the Stamp
Act, the Townshend Acts, the Boston Tea Party, and the rst meeting of the Con-
tinental Congress. The second group consisted of an extended series of personal
exchanges, sometimes polemical, in which one or more individuals would respond
directly to views expressed in earlier pamphlets. A third category included ritual
and liturgical pamphlets published annually in commemoration of important po-
litical dates such as Thanksgiving, major elections, the repeal of the Stamp Act, and
the Boston Tea Party.
Arguably the most inuential example of this pamphlet literature is Thomas
Paines Common Sense, published in January 1776. This pamphlet alone elicited re-
joinders from several Tory pamphleteers like James Chalmers and Charles Inglis
as well as from fellow defenders of the revolutionary cause like John Adams, who
nonetheless disagreed with the religious and philosophical premises upon which
Paines argument was grounded. Standing out vividly from the mass of undistin-
guished pamphlets that were either amateurish in style or parochial in subject mat-
ter, Paines pamphlet is clearly the single most brilliant pamphlet written during the
American Revolution. Common Sense reportedly sold more than 120,000 copies in
three months, and more than 500,000 copies within the year following its publica-
tion. It was credited by contemporaneous thinkers like Benjamin Rush and Ben-
jamin Franklin with single-handedly turning the tide of American public opinion
toward the cause of American independence. In this pamphlet Paine argues for the
naturalness of human equality, and the illegitimacy of traditional authority, most no-
tably that of the British monarchy, and marshals a variety of principled and practical
reasons why the Americans must break from British rule. Because the Americans are
now a distinctive people formed by their experience together on a new continent, it
is wrong for them to continue to submit to a government so far removed from their
own republican temper and national interests.
The systematic study of this pamphlet literature in the 1960s by historians Ber-
nard Bailyn and Gordon Wood sparked several rounds of scholarly debates about the
intellectual origins of American political thought. Taking issue with the traditional
Lockean liberal explanation of the American Revolution set forth by Louis Hartz,
these and subsequent revisionist scholars identied a conceptually distinguishable
tradition of classical republicanism, or civic humanism, emphasizing the classical
language of virtue, the public good, and civic participation. American pamphle-
teers appealed to classical republican sources like Plutarch, Livy, and Cicero nearly
as often as they invoked Enlightenment philosophers like Locke, Montesquieu, and
Hutcheson; English legal thinkers like Blackstone and Coke; and the Bible and
other traditional religious sources. In general, however, the run-of-the-mill Ameri-
can pamphlet seems to have cited intellectual authorities indiscriminately and
sometimes even inaccurately.
The genre of pamphleteering continued in the post-revolutionary era as a way of
dealing with the practicalities of establishing a new government, especially with the
debates surrounding the ratication of a new United States Constitution in 1787
1788. Although the Federalist essays and many of the best-known exchanges with
Anti-Federalist critics of the Constitution took place in newspapers, these exchanges
were frequently reprinted and circulated in pamphlet form throughout the states.
See also The Federalist Papers.
556 Pamphlets (French)
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967; Bailyn, Bernard, ed. Pamphlets
of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1965; Hartz,
Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955; Lutz, Donald. The
Relative Inuence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth Century American Political
Thought. American Political Science Review 78 (March 1984): 189 97; Paine, Thomas. Common
Sense. Edited by Isaac Kramnick. New York: Penguin, 1986; Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the
American Republic, 1776 1787. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.
RICHARD BOYD
Pamphlets (French)
French pamphlets were powerful political instruments during the eighteenth and
the nineteenth centuries. The pamphlet was a short publication focusing largely on a
very particular contemporary issue or on a limited number of issues. It used to be pro-
duced unofcially and was meant to inuence public opinion and stimulate action.
The pamphlet was an individual text that had its own unity and independence.
It usually had no binding, nor was it big enough to constitute a volume in itself. It
was not a genre, but rather a channel of communication. Polymorphous and ag-
gressive, the pamphlet was characterized by its tone, which was often angry and
provocative. The pamphlet was meant to inuence public opinion by shock and
passion, not primarily by informing the reader. However, it could also rely on or aim
at disclosing important information. Its author was anonymous; the idea may often
have belonged to one person, but the wording was usually the work of a marginal
hack writer. The pamphlet was often poorly printed on illegal printing presses and
its distribution was clandestine. Cheap and disposable, it was often considered un-
trustworthy and deceitful. Addictive, but certainly not a wasted read, the pamphlet
was full of vitality and zest, and the slanderous form of the pamphlet functioned like
gossip in a small community. The pamphlets promiscuity converted it into a very
insidious means of trafcking information, inside knowledge, and rumors.
The pamphlet played an important role in the public sphere of Western cul-
ture. Competing with the male-dominated clubs and coffeehouses, the traditional
venues for the exchange of ideas, pamphlets proliferated and clearly showed the
expanding power of public opinion beyond the realm of merely the street crowd
or pub-goers. French pamphlets predated the inuential periodicals of the mod-
ern age, and it is signicant that the circulation of pamphlets in France depended
not only on the discontented bourgeoisie or on marginalized elements of society,
but also on wealthy and afuent members of the nobility who felt their ambitions
to have gone unfullled. Some of the scurrilous pamphlets directed against Marie
Antoinette, for instance, are documented as having originated from within court
circles. Most pre-revolutionary pamphleteering was not the product of oppressed
intellectuals but rather was the expression of the aspirations and tensions of the elite,
who tried to manipulate public opinion to its own benet while also unknowingly
grooming it for revolution. The work of Pierre Jacques Le Maitre was such a case.
During the 1770s and 1780s, pamphlet campaigns directed against ministers or
important court gures were extremely common, perhaps the most notable example
being the affair involving Cardinal de Rohan and the notorious diamond necklace,
discussed in Les Philippiques (The Philippics) by Lagrange-Chancel. Jacques Necker
Paoli, Pasquale 557
and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot were both popular targets of the pamphleteers.
Neckers famous pamphlet against Turgots policies on the regulation of the grain
trade is but one well-known example. Women also participated in the exchange
of ideas via the pamphlet, either as targets of such publications or more usually as
consumers of them. In the former respect, Voltaires 1768 pamphlet, Femmes, soyez
soumises vos maris! (Women, Be Submissive to Your Spouses!) is noteworthy for its dis-
cussion of womens political marginalization.
French pamphleteering became particularly important after July 5, 1788, when
Louis XVI issued a decree calling for information on the procedure for convoking
the Estates-General. The response was the famous pamphlet Quest-ce que le Tiers Etat?
(What Is the Third Estate?) by the abb Sieys, who author questioned whether the
Third Estate could act in the name of the nation without regard to the objections of
the privileged orders or the king. Gabriel-Honor Mirabeau and his adherents also
wrote a number of aggressive pamphlets on controversial affairs of the 1780s.
Although the Revolution initially supported freedom of expression, in March
1793 censorship was introduced. Both the Jacobins then and Napoleon a decade
later tried to domesticate the press. Yet in spite of these limitations, pamphleteering
ourished. All the important economic, military, political, and religious issues of the
day were addressed by Camille Desmoulins, Mirabeau, Jean-Pierre Brissot, and Jean-
Paul Marat, the great pampleteers of the Revolution. Thereafter, Chateaubriand, Paul
Louis Courrier, Barthlemy and Mry, Alphonse Karr, Barbier, Cormenin, and Veuil-
lot as well as Proudhon would continue this tradition. Among the most important
pamphlets were Jean-Baptiste Salavilles De lorganisation dun tat monarchique (On the
Organization of a Monarchical State) and his Le tout est-il plus grand que la partie? (Is the
Whole Greater than Its Parts?), as well as Lopinion de M. de Cazals sur le renvoi des ministres,
prononce dans la sance de lAssemble nationale de 19 octobre 1790 (The Opinion of Mr. de
Cazals about Firing Ministers, Delivered at the Meeting of the National Assembly on October 19,
1790). An interesting right-wing royalist pamphlet criticizing the National Assemblys
religious policy was entitled Principes de la foi sur le gouvernement de l glise, en opposition
avec la constitution civile du clerg (Principles of Faith on the Governing of the Church, in Oppo-
sition to the Civilian Constitution of the Clergy). During the Napoleonic period, two pam-
phlets of particular note were Les adieux Bonaparte (Farewell to Bonaparte) and Fruits de
l arbre de la libert franaise (Fruits of the French Freedom). See also Pamphlets (American).
FURTHER READING: Chisick, Harvey. Pamphlets and Journalism in the Early French Rev-
olution: The Ofce of the Ami du Roi of the Abb Royou as a Center of Royalist Prop-
aganda. French Historical Studies 15, no. 4 (Autumn 1988): 623 45; Darnton, Robert. The
Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982;
Greenlaw, Ralph W. Pamphlet Literature in France during the Period of the Aristocratic
Revolt (17871788). Journal of Modern History 29, no. 4 (December 1957): 349 54; Popkin,
Jeremy. Pamphlet Journalism at the End of the Old Regime. Eighteenth-Century Studies 22,
no. 3 (Spring 1989): 351 67.
MICHAELA MUDURE
Paoli, Pasquale (17251807)
Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican statesman responsible for leading Corsica to inde-
pendence from Genoese rule, was the son of Giacinto Paoli, who led a failed Corsi-
can revolt against Genoa in 1735 1739. Escaping Genoese reprisals, Pasquale Paoli
558 Paoli, Pasquale
went to Naples, where he studied at the military academy and received a commission
in the Neapolitan cavalry, which was mainly composed of Corsican exiles. In 1755,
he led a successful uprising against Genoese rule and gained independence for the
island. Guided by the principles of the Enlightenment, Paoli drafted a constitution
and established the most democratic government in all of Europe. He implemented
a wide range of reforms aimed at transforming the island, including the prohibition
of the practice of vendetta, the encouragement of commerce, and the establish-
ment of schools and a university at Corte. His ideas and policies gained much sup-
port from prominent philosophes, including Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
who famously praised Corsica in his Social Contract. However, Paolis achievements
were threatened when Genoa sold the island to France in 1768. Fighting the invad-
ing French army, Paoli was defeated at Pontenuovo on May 9, 1769, and ed to Brit-
ain, where he lived for the next 20 years. He gradually became a symbol for many
Corsican patriots, including the young Napoleon Bonaparte.
The French Revolution became a turning point for Paoli, who was invited to
Paris and celebrated as a hero by the National Assembly. King Louis XVI granted
him the rank of lieutenant general and appointed to command forces in Corsica.
Paolis return to Corsica in July 1790 was widely celebrated on the island, where he
was known as the father of the Corsican nation. Paoli presided over the consulta
(assembly) for the next couple of years but became disillusioned with revolutionary
Pasquale de Paoli. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Papacy 559
excesses and broke away from France. He clashed with the pro-French factions,
notably the Bonapartes, whom he ordered to be arrested, and, with British naval
support, expelled the French in 1794. He then offered Corsica to King George III
of Britain, who established an Anglo-Corsican viceroyalty on the island. This proved
to be a major mistake for Paoli, since Sir Gilbert Elliot, the British viceroy on the
island, soon shunned him and forced him out of government. Disappointed, Paoli
retired to Britain in 1795, where he received a British government pension. He lived
long enough to see Corsica become one of the departments of France and to wit-
ness the meteoric rise of his former opponent, Napoleon. He died after a short ill-
ness at the age of 82 in London on February 5, 1807, and was buried in the Catholic
cemetery of St. Pancras. A cenotaph was erected in his memory on the south aisle of
Westminster Abbey. Some 80 years after his death, his remains were exhumed and
returned to Corsica.
FURTHER READING: Bartoli, M. Pasquale Paoli: Pre de la patrie corse. Paris: Albatros, 1974;
Lee, R. Alton. Pasquale Paoli: Fighter for Freedom. Emporia: Kansas State Teachers College, 1961;
Thrasher, Peter Adam. Pasquale Paoli: An Enlightened Hero, 17251807. Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1970.
Papacy
From period 1760 to 1815, the see of Rome confronted numerous challenges to
its authority and prestige, culminating in the detainment of two supreme pontiffs
(Pius VI and Pius VII) by the French state. Romes response to the ideological and
political developments of the age serves as a useful barometer of contemporary
conservative attitudes. If the papacy can be said to have suffered mightily during this
period, however, it also demonstrated considerable resilience: by 1815 it was emerg-
ing as one of the foci of a new alliance between throne and altar that was perceived
as a bulwark against future revolutionary outbursts.
1750 1775: Benedict XIV, Clement XIII, and Clement XIV
In 1750, Benedict XIV (r. 1740 1758) had been pope for 10 years after being
elected by one of the longest papal conclaves in history. Of all the eighteenth-
century popes, he enjoyed the most cordial relationship with both the syndics of
the Enlightenment and the advocates of centralized political power. As a manifestly
scholarly pope and one who devised more liberal rules for the Index of Prohib-
ited Books he even won praise from Frederick II, David Hume, and Voltaire.
Benedict also secured concordats with the increasingly absolutist governments of
Naples (1741) and Spain (1753). Much was lost through such policies: in Spain,
for instance, the concordat ceded some 12,000 ecclesiastical appointments to the
monarchy, allowing the papacy the right to appoint a mere 52 clerics. Nonetheless,
while Benedicts engagement with contemporary philosophical and political devel-
opments was, at best, uneasy, his ponticate can still be seen as something of a calm
before the storm of the later eighteenth century.
His two successors, Clement XIII (r. 1758 1769) and Clement XIV (r. 1769 1774)
were destined to live through more troublesome times. Both reigns were dominated
by the issue of the Jesuits suppression, a process that served as the focus for many
of the important ideological and political debates of the age.
560 Papacy
Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus had long endured a stormy relationship
with many of the national governments of Europe. While its missionary and educa-
tional achievements could not be gainsaid, the society (a supranational organiza-
tion with an allegedly excessive loyalty to Rome) was often perceived as a threat to
local political and ecclesiological interests. During the ponticates of Clement XIII
and Clement XIV, these trends came to a head with the banishment of the Jesuits
from various European countries (Portugal in 1759; France in 1764; Spain in 1767)
and the worldwide suppression of the order, by papal at, in 1773.
The destruction of the Jesuits has often been portrayed as a triumph of Enlight-
enment ideology: this was certainly a notion pedaled by men such as Denis Diderot
and Jean Le Rond dAlembert. In fact, the suppression should primarily be seen as
a political rather than an ideological phenomenon. In Portugal, the destruction of
the Jesuits was largely the work of Joseph Is chief minister, the Marquis of Pombal,
and should be regarded as part of his wider campaign to strike down rival sources
of power and authority. In France, most of the credit for the Jesuits demise can
be given to the small but inuential Jansenist party within the Paris Parlement. In
Spain, the regalist agenda of Charles III and his ministers a determination to
control all aspects of Spanish political and religious life is the most convincing
explanation for the societys fate. In all these countries, the self-styled champions
of Enlightenment rejoiced at the Jesuits downfall, but in truth, they only played a
negligible role in bringing it about.
Throughout the crisis, the papacy found itself in an almost impossible situation.
While inevitably invested in preserving one of the churchs most illustrious, if con-
troversial, orders, the papacy was also fearful of offending the great powers of Eu-
rope. Those Bourbon powers applied enormous pressure on the papacy to carry
through the total destruction of the order dispatching countless bullish ambas-
sadors to Rome and, at one point, even invading papal territory during a dispute
over ecclesiastical rights in Parma. Clement XIV prevaricated for as long as possible,
but once Maria Theresa of Austria signaled that she would do nothing to oppose
the suppression, the die was cast. With the papal brief Dominus ac Redemptor of Au-
gust 16, 1773, the Society of Jesus was blotted out. Clement commented that it was
if I have cut off my right hand.
1755 1799: Pius VI and the French Revolution
The destruction of the Jesuits was a mere prelude to the turmoil witnessed by
the next incumbent of the Holy Ofce, Pius VI (r. 1775 1799): the pope who was
obliged to steer the bark of Peter through the era of the French Revolution. Even
during the early part of his ponticate, the political trends that had brought about
the events of 1773 continued to gain momentum. Austria provides the best exam-
ple. Here, in 1780, the emperor Joseph II, freed from the checks and restraints
of co-rule with his mother, Maria Theresa, embarked upon a reformist campaign
that shattered the churchs cultural and educational role. Seminaries, now replete
with liberalized curricula, came under state control, church services were purged of
what Joseph deemed overly superstitious elements, and scores of convents and mon-
asteries were suppressed. A toleration edict gave Lutherans, Calvinists, and mem-
bers of the Orthodox churches the right to freedom of worship, and the Catholic
Churchs traditional role as censor and intellectual watchdog was all but eliminated.
In Josephs brave new Austria, the state was to dominate church affairs, and the
Papacy 561
pope was to have little authority and even less prestige. When Pius visited Vienna in
1782, both Joseph and his chancellor Baron Kaunitz treated him with strained and
grudging politeness that bordered on contempt.
The next two decades would bring far worse indignities. The detailed chronology of
the French Revolution (including its assault on traditional religious worship) is dealt
with elsewhere in this volume. Sufce it to say, Rome stood aghast from the outset. It
took a head-on challenge to papal authority to nudge the papacy into direct action,
however. This arrived with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed by the French
Constituent Assembly in July 1790. It transformed the French religious landscape by
reorganizing the countrys diocesan structure to conform to the recently erected net-
work of regional departments, and it insisted that all bishops and priests would now
be elected by the citizenry citizens of non-Catholic allegiance included. To many
Catholics, this seemed to turn clerics into little more than salaried civil servants.
Alongside these measures, all members of the clergy were now expected to take
an oath of loyalty to the new constitution. This was all a huge affront to papal power
in France, and it split the French church asunder, with a majority of the clergy refus-
ing to accept the Civil Constitution or to take the requisite oaths.
The papacys response was predictable but perhaps surprisingly sluggish. Pius
had written privately to Louix XVI in protest as soon as the Civil Constitution was
enacted. News of his protest was, astutely, suppressed. But it was not until the rst
constitutional bishops began to be elected that Pius offered a denitive public con-
demnation. In the spring of 1791 the pope ordered all those who had taken oaths
of loyalty to recant and subsequently declared the Civil Constitution utterly illegiti-
mate. Over the coming months, clerical opponents of the constitution (who now
risked imprisonment or banishment) came to be regarded as suspicious or even
treacherous in the popular revolutionary imagination. In September 1792, with
Prussian troops perilously close to Paris and with anxiety running riot in the capital,
mobs massacred dozens of imprisoned priests.
The remainder of the decade would only see a further deterioration in relations be-
tween France and Rome. As France went further down the road of dechristianization
snufng out the entire Christian calendar, inaugurating cults of Reason and the
Supreme Being the papacy was powerless to act. Pius was once more curiously slow
to lend his support to the military coalition raised against France, but this did not
deter Napoleon Bonapartes army from invading papal territories in 1796. To retain
control of Rome, the pope agreed to a debilitating armistice the terms of which cost
the Vatican a colossal nancial indemnity and the loss of many priceless works of art.
Things only worsened with the return of French armies in 1798. A Roman Republic
was established and Pius, perceived as a far-too-obvious focus of counterrevolutionary
insurgency, was deported to France, where he died, incarcerated, in 1799.
1800 1815: Pius VII and Catholic Revivalism
The next pope, Pius VII, began his reign with a more conciliatory attitude. Ear-
lier in life, he had even gone so far as to suggest that Catholicism was not necessarily
incompatible with the fashionable ideological nostrums of the age. He conceded
that the restoration of the Bourbon monarchies was not a prerequisite of workable
relations between Rome and states such as France and negotiated the Concordat
of 1801 with Bonapartes regime. To regain inuence over the new constitutional
church in France, Rome accepted the loss of a great deal. It accepted that the
562 Parlements
churchs former lands were lost forever, it accepted that clerics were now salaried
civil servants overseen by a ministry of cults, it accepted the new freedoms recently
extended to Protestants and Jews, and it accepted that clerics should take oaths of
loyalty to the government.
All told, it was an admission of weakness on the part of the papacy, a position that
was further highlighted when France unilaterally added its own organic articles to
the terms of the Concordat of 1802. No papal bulls or papal legates were to be al-
lowed into the country without governmental approval. The nal humiliation came
with Bonapartes coronation as Emperor Napoleon I in December 1804. Brooking
all tradition, Bonaparte placed the imperial crown on his own head and left Pius
with the subsidiary role of anointing Frances new emperor and his consort. Many
people, realizing what was afoot, had advised Pius not to attend the proceedings.
He had ignored their advice, and the papacys reputation undoubtedly suffered as a
result. That said, to have refused any role in the coronation would likely have been
politically disastrous. Such was the frustrating lot of the papacy in 1804.
In the coming years, Piuss attitude toward the revolutionary regimes hardened,
and he issued numerous condemnations and excommunications. None of this could
prevent Napoleon from ruling the Italian political roost, however, and when he ap-
pointed his brother Joseph ruler of Naples a papal ef Pius could do nothing. In
1808 the French armies returned once more and occupied the city of Rome. Piuss ful-
minations were roundly ignored, and he was forcibly relocated to Savona on the Ital-
ian Riviera, where he endured a period of almost total isolation, and where his efforts
to undermine Napoleons episcopal appointments had precious little effect. In June
1812, Pius was unceremoniously dispatched to Fontainebleau, where, desperately ill,
he agreed to (and later recanted) yet further concessions to Napoleons regime.
The tide of history began to turn, however. Napoleon was obliged to abdicate rst
in 1814, and then again in 1815 after the Hundred Days. The Congress of Vienna
restored the Papal States, Pius returned triumphantly to Rome in 1814, and, in
that same year, the Society of Jesus was restored a hugely symbolic event. For the
remainder of his papal reign, which lies beyond the scope of this volume, Pius en-
deavored, however imperfectly, to restore the papacys much-dented authority. The
next century would witness the papacys attempts to (according to the sympathies of
the incumbent pope and the Catholic constituency he encountered) understand,
denounce, or revise the ideological residue of Europes revolutionary era. See also
Calendar, French Revolutionary.
FURTHER READING: Bradley, J., and Van Kley, D., eds. Religion and Politics in Enlightenment
Europe. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001; Chadwick, O. The Popes and
European Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981; Duffy, E. Saints and Sinners:
A History of the Popes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997; Van Kley, D. The Jansenists
and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757 1765. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1975; Wright, J. The Suppression of the Society of Jesus. In The Cambridge Companion to the
Jesuits, ed. T. Worcester. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
JONATHAN WRIGHT
Parlements
Under the ancien rgime, parlements constituted Frances chief courts of ap-
peal. The parlements were initially an administrative weapon created by the crown
Parliament 563
to contain the ambitions of the nobility. Machiavelli praised the parlements as the
most important institution of one of the best-governed kingdoms of his time, be-
cause they curbed the insolence of the nobles and safeguarded the king against
them by favoring the weak. The Parlement of Paris claimed jurisdiction over the
whole of the kingdom, but the development and growth of the French absolutist
state brought with it the establishment of provincial courts with regional jurisdic-
tion. Parlements and provincial supreme councils with much the same function
were established as early as 1443 in Toulouse and as late as 1768 in Corsica.
During the Fronde (16481653) the parlements attempted to provide an institu-
tional check on the growing authority of the crown. In the eighteenth century they
degenerated into bastions of political reaction. They constituted a hereditary mag-
istracy in which tenure of ofce was saleable and whose occupants routinely med-
dled in purely political matters. The parlements were nonetheless mindful of their
independence of the crown. In 1771, Louis XV attempted to centralize authority
by abolishing the parlements and replacing them with law courts with no jurisdic-
tion in policy. Louis XVI sought to appease the provincial nobility by restoring the
parlements in 1774 yet soon found himself in direct conict with them over new
taxes to pay for the cost of the Seven Years War (1756 1763). In 1787 and 1788, the
Parlement of Paris led the provincial parlements in opposing the scal reforms of
Archbishop Lomnie de Brienne by arguing that only the Estates-General had the
authority to raise taxes.
The parlements were among the rst institutional victims of the French Revolu-
tion of 1789. Created to buttress the crown against the nobility, their resistance to
royal prerogative did little to diminish their reputation among the wealthy mer-
chants and entrepreneurs of the Third Estate as palaces of privilege.
FURTHER READING: Stone, Bailey. The French Parlements and the Crisis of the Old Regime.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Parliament
Parliament, the legislative body of Britain, gradually evolved from the late thir-
teenth century into a powerful legislature that could both limit and strengthen the
monarch and the executive. There were major disputes between Crown and Parlia-
ment in the seventeenth century, but after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 1689, it
was recognized that the monarch could not govern effectively without the nancial
support and the political backing of Parliament. From 1689 onward Parliament
met for several months every year in order to pass new laws, raise taxes, guarantee
the repayment of government loans, debate major issues of foreign and domestic
affairs, respond to pressure from outside Parliament, and hold royal ministers to
account. In 1707, the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh agreed to be incorporated
into the English parliament at Westminster, and in 1800 the Irish parliament in
Dublin agreed to do the same. On January 1, 1801, the imperial parliament of the
United Kingdom came into being.
By the mid-eighteenth century it was widely accepted that Britain was governed
by a limited or parliamentary monarchy and that the sovereign authority in the
state rested with the combined legislature made up of the monarch, the House of
564 Parliament
Lords, and the House of Commons (that is, the king-in-Parliament). The inuential
constitutional lawyer William Blackstone claimed in the 1760s that this sovereign
legislature was absolute, omnipotent, and irresistible. It could pass or repeal any
law or any tax. There was some resistance to this notion within Britain, and it ulti-
mately provoked the American colonies into a successful rebellion, but it was very
rmly entrenched by 1815 and not seriously challenged again until the late twen-
tieth century. Although the royal veto was never formally abolished, it was never
used after 1708, and hence, thereafter, the monarch had to appoint ministers who
could manage Parliament so that the laws and taxes desired by the executive were
passed by both houses of Parliament.
Parliament was composed of two legislative chambers. The House of Lords in-
cluded all the English peers (from barons to dukes) who were prepared to take the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy (Catholic peers refused to do so), all 26 bishops
of the Church of England, and the royal judges who could offer advice but could
not vote. After 1707 the Scots peers were able to elect 16 of their number at the
time of each general election to represent them in the following parliament. After
1800 the Irish peers elected 28 of their number (for life) and the bishops elected 4
of their number (in rotation at succeeding general elections) to sit in the House of
Lords. The membership of the upper chamber was much larger by the early nine-
teenth century than it had been a century earlier. Most royal ministers sat in this
chamber, and it remained a powerful debating chamber with considerable status
and inuence throughout this period.
The House of Commons had become the more important chamber by the mid-
eighteenth century because it initiated all taxes and its nancial decisions went un-
challenged by the Lords. Long-serving prime ministers (such as Lord North and
William Pitt the Younger) sat in the Commons because their expertise in nancial
matters was vital to their political success. A prime minister who sat in the Lords
(such as the long-serving Lord Liverpool) needed an able chancellor of the exche-
quer to guide the governments nancial measures through the House of Com-
mons. The House of Commons was regarded as the democratic element in Britains
mixed government and balanced constitution because it was an elected chamber
held to represent the people. Its members, however, were elected by only a small
minority of the population those adult males who possessed the necessary (and
varied) propertied franchise in the different constituencies. Over the period 1760
1830, perhaps between 250,000 and 350,000 men might have possessed the right to
vote. They elected 80 members of Parliament (MPs) for the English counties, 409
for the English boroughs, 24 for Wales, 45 for Scotland and, after 1800, 100 for Ire-
land, making 658 MPs in the Commons in all.
In both houses of Parliament political reputations were often gained or lost ac-
cording to the debating talents of the most active members. Many ordinary mem-
bers of both houses were lax in their attendance, but when they did appear in the
chamber they were open to persuasion. They could be swayed by the quality of the
arguments presented either by government spokesmen or by their opponents. Both
chambers were organized as adversarial assemblies, with the government supporters
sitting facing their political opponents across the central aisle, and in both cases,
with their own supporters ranged behind them. All the leading politicians of the
day were noted orators. The procedures of both houses were similar. For a bill to
become an act, it had to pass through the same procedure in both chambers: a rst
Parliament 565
reading, a second reading, a fuller debate at the committee stage, and a nal third
reading. Government legislation largely involved nancial matters, questions of law
and order, and the affairs of war and peace, with the occasional act concerning
constitutional and religious issues. Ministers did not pursue national economic and
social programs. Most legislation was carried through by private or local acts dealing
with such issues as enclosures; road and canal building; and street cleaning, light-
ing, and policing. These measures were usually rst put forward in the House of
Commons by ordinary members who had a personal or local interest in the matter.
The kings ministers could not govern the country without the support of both
houses of Parliament, and they particularly needed the taxes voted by the House
of Commons. Although appointed and dismissed by the king (and hence always
dependent on royal favor), ministers could not survive long in ofce unless they
could manage Parliament in the interests of the executive. They could use their
own inuence and talents to win support, but they also relied on the distribution
of Crown patronage to win over men in both chambers. The Crown could appoint
peers and bishops; promote men in the civil, military, naval, ecclesiastical, and ju-
dicial establishments, confer various honors; and reward men with places and pen-
sions. This patronage could usually ensure a majority in the House of Lords for the
kings ministers. In the House of Commons, Crown patronage was never enough to
achieve a government majority. It was moreover increasingly resented and steadily
reduced beginning in the early 1780s. In 1780 John Dunnings famous motion that
The inuence of the crown has increased, is increasing and ought to be dimin-
ished secured majority support. Thereafter, partly as a result of the political desire
to make the House of Commons more independent of Crown inuence and partly
to reduce wasteful government expense on rewards, favors, sinecures, and pensions,
Crown patronage was steadily reduced. It inuenced only a few dozen MPs by 1815
and was reduced even further by 1830.
Since Crown patronage was never enough to guarantee a government majority
in Parliament, particularly in the House of Commons, royal ministers had to devise
other means to win support in both chambers. One obvious tactic was to pursue pol-
icies that a majority of peers or MPs could support by choice, but, not surprisingly,
this proved difcult in an age of revolution and of prolonged warfare. In the early
decades of this period, leading politicians, competing for royal favor and Crown of-
ce, formed groups and connections (or factions, as they were pejoratively called)
to build up political alliances in ofce or in opposition. It was difcult to build up
large parties based on issues of principle or dened programs because most men
in both houses of Parliament shared many political attitudes. This situation gradu-
ally changed, however, as the American Revolution, then the French Revolution,
the major problems created by prolonged war, and increasing industrialization and
urbanization divided Parliament into larger political groupings held together by dif-
fering ideologies and competing policies. By the late eighteenth century there were
two major parties: the more conservative Tories, led by William Pitt, and the more
liberal Whigs, led by Charles James Fox. By 1815 most peers and MPs enlisted under
these party banners, and few were truly independent of party afliations.
FURTHER READING: Brooke, John. The House of Commons 1754 1790: Introductory Survey.
London: Oxford University Press, 1968; Cannon, John. Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of
Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984; Dickinson, H. T,
ed. A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002; Dickinson, H. T., ed.
566 Parthenopean Republic
Constitutional Documents of the United Kingdom, 1782 1835. Munich: Saur, 2005; Goldsworthy,
Jeffrey. The Sovereignty of Parliament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999; Lambert, Sheila. Bills
and Acts: Legislative Procedure in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1971; Thomas, P.D.G. The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971; Turberville, A. S. The House of Lords in the Age of Reform, 1784 1837. London:
Faber, 1958.
H. T. DICKINSON
The Parthenopean Republic was a state established in Naples in January 1799
by French revolutionary forces under General Championnet and liberal Nea-
politans, many from the intelligentsia, following the ight of the Bourbon king,
Ferdinand IV (later Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies). The name derived from Par-
thenope, the ancient name of Naples.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Neapolitan liberals corresponded
with French patriotic societies, and local Masonic lodges were converted into anti-
monarchist Jacobin Clubs. In 1798, Ferdinand joined the Second Coalition against
France. Unable to halt the advancing French army, Naples fell and Ferdinand es-
caped to Sicily.
In February 1799, Cardinal Ruffo counterattacked in Calabria with royalist troops
known as Sanfedisti. By June, royalists recaptured Naples, largely due to military set-
backs suffered by the French army in northern Italy and their subsequent evacua-
tion of Naples in May. A British eet under Nelson also assisted royalist Neapolitans,
who overthrew the republic and restored Ferdinand to the throne. The king carried
out brutal reprisals against former revolutionaries, thus bringing the Enlightenment
in Naples to a bloody close. See also French Revolutionary Wars; Italy, Impact of
Revolutionary Ideas on.
FURTHER READING: Di Scala, Spencer M. Italy: From Revolution to Republic, 1700 to the Present.
3rd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004.
ERIC MARTONE
William Paterson was a New Jersey jurist, a delegate to the United States Consti-
tutional Convention of 1787, and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States from 1793 to 1806. The son of a shopkeeper, he was born in Ireland
and emigrated with his parents to New Jersey in 1747. A graduate of the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton), he was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1768 and
was an early opponent of British imperial policy. A 1775 delegate to the New Jersey
Provincial Congress, Paterson was appointed the states attorney general in 1776, a
position he occupied until 1783. In a state divided by civil war, Paterson successfully
maintained the legal system, and his prominence led to his appointment as a del-
egate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Paterson believed the Articles of Confederation were weak, but he remained
attached to the notion of equal state representation in Congress. An opponent of
James Madisons Virginia Plan, Paterson was the main author of the New Jersey
Plan, which he introduced to the Convention in June 1787. The smaller states wish
to preserve its equal representation in Congress nearly disrupted the Convention,
but Paterson willingly served on the Grand Committee that drafted the Connecticut
Plan. This proposed that the lower house be based upon proportional representa-
tion but that each state would be equally represented in the Senate. Paterson was
happy with this compromise and became an ardent supporter for the ratication of
the new constitution.
As a senator to the rst United States Senate, Paterson played a crucial role in
the drafting of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which created the federal judiciary sys-
tem. From 1790 to 1793 he served as governor of New Jersey, and in March 1793
President George Washington appointed Paterson to the Supreme Court. A staunch
Federalist, Paterson championed the powers of the federal government over state
law, and he attracted the hatred of many Republicans for presiding over a number
of trials as a circuit judge regarding the Whiskey Rebellion and the later prosecu-
tion of Congressman Matthew Lyon for sedition in 1798. Paterson concurred in the
landmark decision of Marbury vs. Madison (1803), which enunciated the doctrine of
federal judicial review. Paterson died in Albany, New York, in 1806. See also American
Revolutionary War; Constitutions, American State; Jefferson, Thomas; United States
Constitution.
FURTHER READING: OConnor, John E. William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman, 17451806.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979; Wood, Gertrude. William Paterson of New
Jersey, 1745 1806. Fair Lawn, NJ: Fair Lawn Press, 1933.
RORY T. CORNISH
Patrie en Danger
Patrie en danger (the nation in danger) was a state of national emergency declared
by the French Legislative Assembly on July 11, 1792, at the behest of the Girondin
political faction. The Girondins, a group of moderate republicans, had declared war
on Austria (soon joined by Prussia) on April 21, 1792. The French army, stripped of
many of its most qualied ofcers by emigration, was unprepared for war. By June
the war had become a disaster. A Prussian army was on the road to Paris, where the
crowds were in ferment. In response, the Legislative Assembly declared a state of
emergency; all government institutions (both national and local) were ordered to
remain in session for the duration of the emergency and ordered to raise and arm
volunteers. Citizens were ordered to wear the tricolor cockade on pain of arrest. It
was within the context of this state of emergency that the government, known as the
National Convention, would undertake a far-reaching reorganization of the French
armed forces in 1793, including what arguably constituted the rst modern form
conscription, the leve en masse. See also French Revolution; French Revolutionary
Wars; Reign of Terror.
FURTHER READING: Forrest, Alan. La patrie en danger: The French Revolution and the
First Leve en Masse. In People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French
Revolution, ed. Daniel Moran and Arthur Waldron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
Patrie en Danger 567
568 Patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is the notion that love of ones country is virtuous, conducive to civil
cohesion and the cultivation of a spirit of liberty, and inimical to corruption and
factionalism. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, patriotism was
often politically radical and qualitatively very different from late nineteenth-century
nationalism. In contrast to the xenophobic jingoism common to Europe after the
Napoleonic Wars, patriotic sentiment was not necessarily anti-cosmopolitan in spirit
but instead served as a vehicle for creating a sense of community, either in veiled
criticism of dynastic corruption or open opposition to monarchical despotism.
The patriotic ideal of community often recalled the Greek polis or Roman patria.
It was utilitarian, practical, and liberal and concerned with asserting individual
rights against tyranny yet often carried with it a sense of seless service on the part
of free men to their political community. To the participants and enthusiasts of the
Boston Tea Party, an evenings vandalism of the sort that prompted Samuel John-
son to dub patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, the action was a collective act
of free men asserting their natural rights against tyranny. At its most extreme, the
cosmopolitan conceit of patriotism in revolutionary America is captured in Thomas
Jeffersons argument that the American Revolution was for all humankind. Ameri-
can nationhood was based not on common origin but rather on the fact that its
citizens were of one heart and one mind and its invention was to be the rst step
toward a republican millennium in which self-governing peoples around the world
would join in peaceful and prosperous union.
In the case of France, the identication of a revolutionary cause with classical ideals
of patriotic devotion was even more self-conscious and self-indulgent. The revolu-
tionary generation found stirring role models from the Roman Republic, such as
Junius Brutus, who had executed his own sons for their involvement in a royalist plot,
and in the incorruptible Scipio Africanus, who conquered Carthage. The virtues, real
and imagined, of republican antiquity assumed a central place in the cultural con-
struction of citizenship. Admiration of classical republicanism tended to reinforce the
revolutionaries prevailing notions of the sources of corruption (luxury and greed)
and the pillars of virtue (frugality and fraternity). The most spectacular expression
both of the patriotic spirit of the 1780s and of the gathering fervor of revolution was
Jacques-Louis Davids Oath of the Horatii, with its celebration of masculine determina-
tion in martial self-sacrice. The outstretched arms of the gures in the painting
later became the standard gesture for taking a revolutionary oath. Simon Schama has
noted that the painting presaged a good deal of the near future even as it depicted
an idealized past. Whereas public virtue had been hitherto nursed in the bosom of a
tender family, it had now been weaned to an attitude of brutal deance.
FURTHER READING: Onuf, Peter S. Jeffersons Empire: The Language of American Nationhood.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the
French Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1989.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Jean-Gabriel Peltier, a prolic anti-revolutionary journalist during the French
Revolution, was born into a wealthy family in Nantes. Peltier moved to Paris in the
Pennsylvania 569
mid-1780s and struggled in the banking business before coming to prominence as
an opponent of the Revolution. As editor of the satirical Actes des Aptres (Acts of the
Apostles), which began publication in November 1789 and continued until diminish-
ing readership led to bankruptcy in 1792, Peltier became a leading counterrevolu-
tionary gure.
Following the execution of Louis XVI in August 1792 and the subsequent repres-
sion of royalist opposition, Peltier ed to London, where he continued to criticize
the Revolution. Despite moments of nancial comfort earned from subscriptions to
his journals and occasional subsidies from various European governments, Peltier
still often struggled with debt and legal problems namely, a libel conviction for his
attacks against Napoleon. Nonetheless, Peltier continued to condemn the Revolu-
tion in print. After the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Peltier returned to
France, where he died in 1825 in difcult nancial straits.
FURTHER READING: Burrows, Simon. French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792
1814. Suffolk, UK: Royal Historical Society, 2000; Murray, William James. The Right-Wing Press
in the French Revolution: 1789 1792. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press for the Royal
ADAM C. STANLEY
Pennsylvania
From the Seven Years War (1756 1763) through the American Revolution and
after, the colony founded by William Penn in 1681 was awash in political change. In
The Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania during the bitter winter of 17771778.
Library of Congress.
570 Pennsylvania
the second half of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania transformed from a Quaker
province loyal to the Crown into a theater of French and British imperial rivalry, a
hotbed of colonial protest, and a political center in the emerging United States.
The outbreak of the Seven Years War (known in America as the French and
Indian War, where it began two years earlier than in Europe), a result of competing
British and French land claims, ended a long period of peace in Pennsylvania. The
French had been constructing Fort Duquesne (in present-day Pittsburgh) at the
junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, a location crucial to controlling
the Old Northwest. A skirmish at Jumonvilles Glen in western Pennsylvania quickly
transformed into a transcontinental war. French and Indian attacks ravaged the
Pennsylvania frontier, and the long-standing Quaker leadership weathered intense
criticism for its pacism. The so-called Holy Experiment came to an end when seven
Quakers resigned from the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1756.
Britains victory in 1763 led to new tensions in the colonies. Indians living in the
Ohio Valley continued to resist British control after the French withdrawal. Pon-
tiacs Rebellion sowed fear across western Pennsylvania and Virginia and brought
violent retaliation from groups like the Paxton Boys, who raided a Conestoga
Indian village near Lancaster. Parliament tried to reduce Anglo-Indian violence
through the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited settlement west of the Ap-
palachians. The law angered many colonists who felt they had a right to western
land, especially the largely Scots-Irish and German communities on Pennsylvanias
war-torn frontier.
The cost of defending the colonies prompted Parliament to pass a series of laws
to raise revenue in America. Many members of Pennsylvanias Quaker and Propri-
etary parties viewed the new laws as hostile to their traditional liberties; they joined
a growing movement in opposition to royal policies, whose subscribers came to be
known across the colonies as Whigs. In response to the Stamp Act (1765), Whigs
in Pennsylvania supported a mob that violently intimidated Philadelphias stamp
distributor. They also sent John Dickinson to the Stamp Act Congress, where he
drafted the meetings resolutions. When Parliament issued the Townshend Acts
(1767), Dickinson penned the rst major colonial opposition in a widely reprinted
series of letters. To thwart the Tea Act (1773), a Philadelphia committee com-
pelled the local tea agents to resign. After Parliament enacted the Coercive Acts
(1774), American Whigs organized the rst meeting of the Continental Congress
in Philadelphia.
Philadelphias location in the middle of the eastern seaboard and status as the
largest colonial city made it a hub for the budding rebellion. In 1774, the Conti-
nental Congress sanctioned a boycott and the organization of colonial associations.
Pennsylvanias Provisional Congress met in 1775 and established the Philadelphia
Committee of Correspondence, an extralegal body that circumvented the authority
of the pro-British Pennsylvania Assembly. Throughout the Revolution, Philadelphia
remained the home of the Continental Congress, with the State House (later re-
named Independence Hall) providing the backdrop for the signing of the Declara-
tion of Independence and the passage of the Articles of Confederation. Thomas
Paines publication of Common Sense in Philadelphia, American losses at the Battle
of Brandywine, and George Washingtons encampment at Valley Forge helped in-
spire the edgling American identity. Pennsylvanians were also among the wars
leaders: Anthony Wayne commanded the Pennsylvania line, Robert Morris served as
Pennsylvania 571
the superintendent of nance, and Benjamin Franklin the most famous American
of his day helped negotiate the Franco-American alliance (1778) and the Treaty
of Paris (1783).
During the war, Pennsylvania grappled with fundamental questions of political,
religious, and personal liberty. In 1776, the radical Constitutionalist Party used its
control of the Pennsylvania legislature to adopt a state constitution permitting uni-
versal white male suffrage and requiring a loyalty oath. The widening electorate
marked a progression of democratic ideology. But the oath, an attempt to reign in
the states many Loyalists and neutrals, like the Quakers, Moravians, and Mennon-
ites (whose religious doctrines proscribed political oaths), limited religious free-
dom in the historically tolerant colony. The legislature also confronted the issue
of human bondage, passing the rst American antislavery law on March 1, 1780.
The Constitutionalists failed economic program, however, propelled the Federal-
ists, who favored a stronger national government managed by well-born leaders, to
power with the election of Dickinson to Pennsylvanias presidency in 1782.
Federalist control of Pennsylvania gured prominently in the shaping of the
United States government. The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation as a
blueprint for a nation prompted the meeting of the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia in 1787. The leaders of Pennsylvanias delegation, Benjamin Franklin
and Gouverneur Morris, played key roles in the debates that produced the United
States Constitution in September 1787. Three months later, over the objections of
the Anti-Federalists, who preferred greater local autonomy, the state became the
second to ratify the new government. In 1790, Pennsylvania adopted a revised state
constitution based on the federal model, and Philadelphia became the nations
temporary capital.
Not all of Pennsylvanias inhabitants approved of the expansion of federal
power. For Native Americans, American independence brought new encroach-
ments on their territory; violence between settlers and Indians menaced Pennsyl-
vanias frontier until the Treaty of Greenville (1795) ended ghting in the Ohio
Valley. The Federalist vision also met with intense internal opposition in the 1790s,
especially from those who identied with the Democratic-Republicans (political
descendants of the Anti-Federalists). Pennsylvanias rural citizens mounted the
Whiskey Rebellion (1794) and Friess Rebellion (1798 1799), both in response
to federal taxation. These events tested the authority of the national government,
which cowed the resisters with the United States Army. The trials that resulted
helped dene the federal-state relationship in the United States and narrowed
the American denition of treason, signicantly widening the permissible range
of political dissent.
Combined with unpopular national policies, the failed uprisings in Pennsylvania
eroded the Federalists popularity. A Democratic-Republican majority arose during
the election of 1800, the same year the capital moved to Washington, D.C. By 1808,
several Republican factions were vying for control, a shift that illuminated a sig-
nicant ideological change that had taken place over the previous 50 years. By the
early nineteenth century, Pennsylvanians largely rejected the idea of an American
aristocracy, discarding the deferential politics practiced by the British and preferred
by the Federalists in favor of a government that allowed common and middling men
to supervise their own interests. See also Constitutions, American State; Slavery and
the Slave Trade.
572 Ption de Villeneuve, Jrme
FURTHER READING: Klein, Philip S., and Ari Hoogenboom. A History of Pennsylvania.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980; Miller, Randall M., and William
Pencak, eds. Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth. University Park: Pennsylvania State
ROBERT LEE
Jrme Ption de Villeneuve was the son of an attorney at the local bailiwick of
Chartres. His father was the local presiding judge. He took great care in providing
his son with a good classical education from the Collge des Oratoriens in Vendme
and the Collge de Chartres, where Ption met his future colleague and friend Jean-
Pierre Brissot. Following in his fathers footsteps, he was a lawyer by age 25 and, by
1789, had risen to the position of subdelegate to the intendant of Chartres.
Clearly inuenced by Enlightenment ideas, Ption began writing radical propa-
ganda in the early 1780s. His rst work, Les lois civiles (1782), attacked not only
the current state of the law in France, but an entire society. In it, he demanded a
transformation of the French legal system, including the election of judges and the
abolition of the venality of ofces. He approved of divorce in his second book, Essai
sur le mariage (1785). Ptions treatise, Avis au Franais (1788), was a virulent con-
demnation of every institution of the Old Regime. Like his earlier works, it ercely
denounced the institutions of the Old Regime but this time went much further in
that it set out the plan for a regenerated society.
Ption was elected the rst of two deputies to the Estates-General on March 20,
1789. A prominent deputy in the National Assembly, he was a member of ve com-
mittees: Editorial, Constitution, Avignon, Revision of the Constitution, and Re-
search. He was secretary twice (1789 and 1791) and president once (1790). Ption
signed the Tennis Court Oath and was one of the deputies assigned to accompany
the royal family back to Paris after they were captured at Varennes. He formed
part of the extreme Left, always a tiny minority of the Assembly, with Maximilien
Robespierre and Franois Buzot. They insisted on the right of the sovereign people
to assert its authority, even against the will of the Assembly. Ption was also an active
and prominent member of the Jacobin Club.
Active in municipal politics between 1791 and 1792, Ption was elected mayor
of Paris on November 11, 1791, replacing the Marquis de Lafayette. Suspended
from his functions after the armed demonstration of June 20, 1792, Ption was enor-
mously popular with the Parisian people, receiving a thunderous ovation on Bastille
Day 1792. During the insurrection of August 9 10, Ption and his deputy, Manuel,
were the only members of the former Paris Commune who remained at their posts.
Elected deputy to the National Convention from Eure-et-Loire, Ption was the
rst president of the National Convention, receiving 235 out of 253 votes. Ption sat
with the Girondin faction and became increasingly critical of Robespierre and the
more radical Mountain. During the trial of Louis XVI, he voted for the referendum,
for death but with reprieve. Expelled from the Convention on June 2, Ption ed
to Caen, where he unsuccessfully tried to foment a federalist uprising. With his col-
league Buzot, he escaped to Saint-Emilion in the Gironde, where they committed
suicide. Their bodies were found on June 18, 1794, partially eaten by wolves. See also
French Revolution; Girondins; Jacobins.
Philosophes 573
FURTHER READING: Lemay, Edna Hindie. Ption de Villeneuve, Jrme. In Dictionnaire
des Constituents 1789 1791 L-Y. Oxford and Paris: Voltaire Foundation & Universitas;
Whaley, Leigh. Made to Practise Virtue in a Republic: Jrme Ption: A Pre-Revolutionary
Radical Advocate. In Consortium on Revolutionary Europe: Selected Papers, 1995, ed. Bernard A.
Cook et al. Tallahassee, FL: Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, Florida State
University, 1995.
LEIGH WHALEY
Philippe Egalit
See Orlans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d
Philosophes
Alternately acclaimed and vilied for their presumed role in fomenting the stir-
rings of discontent that culminated in the French Revolution, the philosophes have
lately received acquittal from historians who have focused on immediate political,
economic, scal, and social crises as the causes for the Revolution. After all, these
historians have argued, relatively few members of elected assemblies or other im-
portant revolutionary bodies actually owned copies of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus The
Social Contract. Yet even if the philosophes should neither bear blame nor enjoy
credit for causing the Revolution, they did indeed contribute to the circulation of
new ideas, the popularization of critical reasoning, and the spread of a willingness
both to question tradition and to propose alternatives.
The label of philosophe may describe a range of individuals who participated
in the intellectual and cultural activities grouped together as the Enlightenment.
Writing in French, men such as Denis Diderot, Jean dAlembert, the Marquis de
Condorcet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Julien Offroy de La Mettrie, and Baron
dHolbach shared a penchant for analyzing their culture and for recommending
an assortment of changes that would augment human happiness on earth. They
did not agree about the nature or existence of God, but they almost all rejected
the hierarchy and worldly power of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, they pre-
ferred a more individualized form of religious experience. They did not all adopt
an optimistic conception of human nature, but almost all put enormous stock in the
value of education and the effects of society on the development of the individual.
They pondered what characterized human nature and recommended ways to elicit
the most positive responses from it. They varied in their value judgments about the
technological and aesthetic trends of their day. On the other hand, they concurred
in the belief that science (whether applied or theoretical) and art exercised impor-
tant inuences on their culture.
In their philosophical writings, many of them exploited literary devices such as
man imagined in a state of nature (possibly in some supposedly real New World
or Pacic island setting) or a utopian society of the future. The literary proclivi-
ties of the philosophes tend to render them less philosophically rigorous in the eyes
of scholars. On the other hand, the accessibility of their texts made it feasible for
other best-selling writers of the literary underground to distill their ideas and adopt
their critical stance. Thus, the philosophes indirectly reached even readers of por-
nography and popular adventure stories. In effect, the French revolutionaries did
574 Philosophes
not need to have read the texts published by La Mettrie or Rousseau, though many
probably were familiar with his extremely popular books Julie and Emile, for such
philosophes to have inuenced their attitudes.
The critical reasoning deployed by philosophes Diderot, dAlembert, and others
involved in the creation of the Encyclopdie had political effects because it entailed
an assertion of intellectual authority by individuals not afliated with church or
Crown. Educated subjects of the French king had appropriated the power to ac-
cept or reject any age-old custom or contemporary more that seemed to transgress
reason. The philosophes could exploit the steadily growing book, pamphlet, and
periodical presses of the eighteenth century to communicate with the public. Of-
cial censorship hindered but could not entirely prevent the acquisition of forbid-
den books published in countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands. Hence,
philosophes could pen trenchant criticisms of the church and anticipate that their
words might nd at least a small audience, even if they risked imprisonment by
doing so. Ultimately, censorship did not prevent the philosophes from setting the
intellectual tone of the eighteenth century.
Their interrogations of contemporary attitudes and practices revealed the
extent to which eighteenth-century French society was a human product. Their
knowledge whether acquired directly or, more typically, through reading of
other societies with quite different mores furthered their appreciation for the
weight of culture upon the individual. For many, what they believed to be nature
was superior to culture or, at least, to their own culture. When they contemplated
the aws in the religious practices of their day, such writers tended to conclude
that only a naturalistic religion one in which all precepts stemmed from nature
and enlightened self-interest could provide spiritual sustenance while eliminat-
ing any cause for conict.
The philosophes almost uniformly condemned the dogmatic religion advocated
by the Roman Catholic Church, and many subscribed to some form of deism. This
suited men who could not explain the universe except as the product of God yet
wished to believe that misery and injustice had human causes and, thus, human
solutions. In general, their texts advocated tolerance and rejected fanaticism, as ex-
emplied by Voltaires Treatise on Tolerance and Candide. Most of the many trials faced
by Candide in his journey around the world stemmed from mans ill-treatment of
his fellow men, often as a consequence of fanatical religious belief or an inability to
accept cultural difference. Voltaire rejected any interpretation of Christianity that
involved predestination, pessimism, the Incarnation, or a vengeful God. Rather, he
believed that the true, remote nature of God would become apparent in a society
that operated according to a combination of individual self-interest and benevo-
lence. Rousseau, on the other hand, suggested that God revealed himself through
nature and reason. He dismissed revelation, though he himself ascribed to the di-
vinity of Christ. He recommended that the leaders of a republic promulgate a civil
religion based upon principles such as the existence of God, Providence, sanctity
of contract and laws, intolerance only of the intolerant.
The Encyclopdie, edited by Diderot and dAlembert, is thought by many to encap-
sulate the achievements, interests, and attitudes of the philosophes. The array of ar-
ticles in the Encyclopdie evidence their authors fascination with historical treatments
of subjects related to Christianity, the church, mythology, and morality. The deploy-
ment of this historical perspective enabled contributors to indicate the extent to
Philosophes 575
which eighteenth-century practices deviated from those of previous generations. By
tracing the history of various bibles and gospels, the philosophes indicated the need
to use critical judgment when considering religious truths. Articles also discussed
artisanal activities, such as porcelain making and printing; ethical concerns, such as
adultery and pride; and legal or juridical concepts, such as freedom of conscience.
In its 32 volumes (21 of text, 11 of illustrations) published over more than two de-
cades, the Encyclopdie features 70,000 articles. They were written, according to the
title page, by a society of men of letters, who collectively hoped to gather and
spread the knowledge necessary to change how people typically acted and thought.
Authors typically considered to be the leading lights among the philosophes, such as
Voltaire, the Marquis de Condillac, Rousseau, and Charles de Montesquieu, not to
mention Diderot and dAlembert themselves, contributed articles. The controversy
over the books perceived anti-clericalism and atheism, not necessarily borne out by
the entire volume, helped it to sell copies, even though it was ofcially banned.
Women did not often publish philosophical works in the eighteenth century, but
they did facilitate the work of the philosophes. As salonnires, Julie de Lespinasse,
Madame de Geoffrin, Suzanne Necker, and other rened, wealthy women facilitated
debate and invited their guests to read selections from their work. They created an
environment in which men with strong convictions could discuss their ideas and
gain publicity for forthcoming publications. In the years leading up to the Revolu-
tion, such salons became a haven for political debates.
Some individuals both wrote and helped others to promulgate their works. Paul-
Henri Thiry, Baron dHolbach, not only contributed articles to the Encyclopdie on
chemistry and geology, but he also provided a forum for most of the important
thinkers and writers who passed through Paris in the mid-eighteenth century. His
weekly salons and his patronage encouraged Diderot, the abb Raynal, and Claude-
Adrien Helvtius, among many others, to express their radical opinions in print.
His activity as an intermediary between French intellectuals and foreign visitors with
philosophical leanings, including David Hume, contributed to the energy of debate
during the Enlightenment and fostered some of its more politically and religiously
radical notions. Holbach appeared in Rousseaus La nouvelle Helose in the guise of a
virtuous atheist. However, Holbach actually published his own controversial books,
in which he elaborated his materialist philosophy, anonymously.
Holbachs utilitarian ethics, whereby one acts virtuously solely for the sake of
happiness and according to which the state exists essentially to promote general
happiness, formed the basis of an implicit critique of the existing regime and a
possible argument in favor of revolution. The philosophes typically agreed with the
essence of those ethical principles, emphasizing the extent to which people could
create their own happiness by following their inclinations toward generosity and
empathy. Etienne de Condillac and Helvtius both accounted for human activity by
analyzing the interaction between the body and its environment. They argued that
all human faculties arose from our physiology, and they dismissed the hypothesis
that humans differ from animals due to their possession of a soul. Stripped of its
religious or spiritual sense, anxiety became a neurological response to a perceived
threat in the environment that spurred people to action. La Mettrie went so far as to
describe man as a machine and undertook a natural history of the soul. Such
thoroughgoing materialism was hardly widespread or enthusiastically received by
the public, however: the furor provoked by La Mattries assertions that the farce
576 Physiocrats
of life was nished at death prompted him to leave Paris in favor of the Netherlands
and then Prussia, where Frederick II appointed him court reader and allowed him
to continue his medical practice.
Some of the philosophes attempted to practice what they preached. Voltaire has
earned acclaim as possibly the rst public intellectual for his involvement in efforts
to reverse an unjust verdict against Jean Callas and to raise awareness of aws in the
French judicial system. Helvtius worked for several years as a tax farmer until he
earned a fortune sufcient for him to retire to the countryside, where he engaged in
efforts to help the poor, improve agriculture, and encourage industry.
Whether they tackled happiness or anxiety, politics or religion, art or nature,
the philosophes approached their topics from the perspective of humans and life
in this world. Happiness, they tended to suggest, stemmed from using reason to
control ones passions, living in the countryside surrounded by friends and civilized
pleasures, and making good use of ones time. By questioning the suitability of tra-
ditional behaviors and established institutions for promoting happiness in this life,
philosophes created an environment propitious for revolutionary aspirations and
for revolution itself.
FURTHER READING: Church, William Farr, ed. The Inuence of the Enlightenment on the
French Revolution: Creative, Disastrous, or Non-Existent? Boston: Heath, 1964; Darnton, Robert.
The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995; Goodman,
Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1994; Mornet, Daniel. French Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Translated by
Lawrence M. Levin. New York: Prentice Hall, 1929; Roche, Daniel. France in the Enlightenment.
Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
MELANIE A. BAILEY
Physiocrats
A controversial group of (largely) French scholars known to their contemporar-
ies as the Economistes, the Physiocrats advanced a novel approach to understanding
human economic activity, stressing the unique productivity of agriculture, the ben-
ets of free trade, and the value of a simplied tax assessment and collection. In this
way, they posed a forceful challenge to ancien rgime mercantilist practices yet also
championed the cause of enlightened absolute monarchy, the backing of which was
necessary for realizing the reforms advocated by the movement. Inspired chiey by
the French court physician Franois Quesnay (1694 1774), Physiocracy ourished
in the 1760s, attracting the support of notable luminaries such as Victor Mirabeau
(1715 1789), Pierre-Paul Mercier de la Rivire (1719 1801), and Pierre-Samuel Du
Pont de Nemours (1739 1817).
Physiocratic ideals partly underlay the economic reforms implemented by Anne-
Robert-Jacques Turgot (17271781) during his tenure as controller general of -
nances from 1774 to 1776. The death of Quesnay in 1774, savage attacks by able
writers like Ferdinando Galiani (1728 1787), and persistent crises following
the liberalization of the grain trade in 1763 1764 all contributed to the decline of
the movement by the mid-1770s.
Drawing upon his medical expertise, Quesnay believed that the regularities and
physical functions operative in the natural world disclosed a natural order (ordre
naturel) that existed independently of human convention (ordre positif ). He and his
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth 577
followers advocated Physiocracy (rule of nature) as a means of harmonizing
human society with this natural order, claiming that careful investigation of the
latter revealed principles of wise government, which, if followed, would ensure a se-
cure supply of food, raw materials, and wealth. Physiocratic doctrine prioritized ag-
ricultural production, maintaining that economic productivity derived solely from
natural powers, the products of which generated a surplus of value over the human
labor deployed. Furthermore, it asserted that only a policy of free trade would en-
able a society to prosper in accordance with the natural order. Consequently, the
Physiocrats criticized mercantilist policies that regulated trade and sought to aug-
ment industry and stockpile precious metals at the expense of landed ventures. In
1758, Quesnay illustrated the basic points of Physiocracy in the form of a Tableau
conomique, or economic table, showing the centrality of agricultural production
and depicting abstractly the ow of goods and revenue derived from it throughout
the various classes of society. Modied in successive years, Quesnays Tableau helped
the Physiocrats advance their positions and is considered to be an important mile-
stone in the development of scientic economics.
The Physiocrats advocated abolishing the complicated system of privileges, cus-
toms duties, trade barriers, and state regulation that characterized the economic
practices of the ancien rgime. They proposed simplifying taxation by reducing it
to the collection of a single tax on the net income of land (impt unique). Despite
the radical nature of these proposals, the Physiocrats were not revolutionaries, but
philosophes possessing a strong faith in the capacity of enlightened government
to realize rational reform for the sake of economic well-being. While Physiocratic
reforms proved difcult to implement in practice, the ideals they championed per-
sisted as inuential legacies in the areas of economic science, free trade, and ra-
tional reform.
FURTHER READING: Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. The Origins of Physiocracy. Ithaca: NY: Cornell
University Press, 1976; Meek, Ronald. The Economics of Physiocracy: Essays and Translations.
London: Allen and Unwin, 1962.
RICHARD BOWLER
A South Carolina politician during the colonial and early national periods fa-
mous for his role during the XYZ Affair of 1797 1798, Pinckney was the rst son
of Charles (a planter) and Eliza Lucas Pinckney. In 1753 the family moved to Lon-
don when Charles was named South Carolinas colonial agent. In 1764 Charles
Cotesworth graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, and completed his study of
law at Londons Middle Temple. In 1769 Pinckney passed the bar, returned to
South Carolina, and was elected to the Commons House of Assembly. During the
imperial crisis, Pinckney joined the Patriot cause. In 1775 the Provincial Congress
elected Pinckney a captain in the First South Carolina Regiment. In 1776 he took
part in the successful defense of Charleston and was promoted to colonel. Follow-
ing a temporary stint on George Washingtons staff, he served in a failed attack
on St. Augustine and in the unsuccessful defenses of Savannah and Charleston.
Pinckney was imprisoned after the fall of Charleston; he was exchanged in 1782
and promoted to general.
578 Pinckney, Thomas
After the war, Pinckney returned to the state legislature, which selected him as
a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. At the convention, Pinckney helped
negotiate the compromises over the eventual abolition of the slave trade, and the
structure of and representation for the national legislature. Pinckney defended the
United States Constitution in South Carolina. After declining numerous offers for
national ofce from President Washington, Pinckney accepted the post of minister
to France in 1796, though the French refused to accept his commission. In 1797
Pinckney was named head of a three-man commission to France. The mission cul-
minated in the XYZ Affair, in which the French demanded a bribe to continue nego-
tiations, which Pinckney refused. President John Adams appointed Pinckney major
general responsible for defending the South during the Quasi-War with France.
Pinckney was an unsuccessful Federalist vice-presidential candidate in 1800, and the
partys presidential candidate in the elections of 1804 and 1808. See also American
Revolutionary War; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Zahniser, Marvin R. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Founding Father. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
Pinckney, Thomas (1750 1828)
A South Carolina politician during the colonial and early national periods who
negotiated Pinckneys Treaty (1795) with Spain, Pinckney was the second son of
Charles (a planter) and Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Like his older brother, Charles Cotes-
worth Pinckney, Thomas graduated from Oxford and the Middle Temple. He re-
turned to South Carolina in 1774 and was admitted to the bar. Early in the American
Revolution, Pinckney became a captain in his brothers regiment and served as a
major in a failed attack on St. Augustine and the defenses of St. Augustine and
Charleston. In 1780 he was wounded at the Battle of Camden, captured, and held
prisoner for a year. From 1787 to 1789 he served two terms as governor of South
Carolina and was sent as one of the states delegates to the Constitutional Conven-
tion. In May 1788 he was elected president of the states ratifying convention. In
1791 President George Washington named Pinckney minister plenipotentiary to
Britain. In 1795, as envoy extraordinary to Spain, he negotiated Pinckneys Treaty
(the Treaty of San Lorenzo), which allowed Americans to use New Orleans as a
transshipment point (thus giving unfettered access to the Mississippi) and settled
the boundary between the United States and Spanish territories in the Southeast.
In 1796, Pinckney was an unsuccessful Federalist candidate for vice president. In
17971801 he was a representative to Congress. During the War of 1812, Pinckney
served as a major general.
FURTHER READING: Williams, Frances Leigh. A Founding Family: The Pinckneys of South
Carolina. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
Pitt, William (the Elder)
See Chatham, Pitt, William (the Elder), Earl of
Pitt, William (the Younger) 579
Pitt, William (the Younger) (1759 1806)
Born on May 28, 1759, at the height of the Seven Years War (17561763), Pitt was
the second son of William Pitt the Elder, later Earl of Chatham. The younger Pitt
was a sickly child, but intelligent and well tutored, and showed particular aptitude in
mathematics and the classics. For his university study he was sent to Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge, and was called to the bar shortly after his father died in 1778. In Janu-
ary 1781, at the age of only 21, Pitt was elected to Parliament, where he immediately
demonstrated a gift for oratory. He generally supported the faction led by Lord
Shelburne but like many of his colleagues maintained a certain independence in
politics in an age when clearly dened parties had yet to emerge in Britain. He was
prominent among those members of the Commons who advocated parliamentary
reform, particularly with respect to the proper representation of boroughs based on
the number of actual voters, which they contained.
In July 1782, at the age of only 23, Pitt became, on Shelburnes invitation, chan-
cellor of the exchequer and the governments leader in the House of Commons. His
period in government was, however, short lived, for Shelburne left ofce in Febru-
ary 1783 as a result of his ministrys proposals for peace with the 13 former colonies
as the American Revolutionary War was winding down. When George III requested
that Pitt form a government, Pitt refused; instead, Lord North and Charles James
Fox formed a coalition, which collapsed much to the kings satisfaction, as he
hated Fox in December over Foxs bill on the reform of the East India Company.
Pitt, still only 24, now entered ofce as prime minister (technically, rst lord of
the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, as the title prime minister was not
yet in common use). Pitt, however, was not in a strong position, for he possessed
few reliable political adherents with whom to ll cabinet posts and enjoyed only a
modicum of support in the House of Commons. Still, he managed to win over many
independent members whom the Foxite faction had itself hoped to attract, and in
the general election of 1785 Pitt soundly beat all opposition.
The fact that Pitt would remain in ofce for the next 16 years is testimony to his
steadfastness and popularity in Parliament. He immediately set to tackling the prob-
lem of the national debt, which had accumulated as a result of the war in America.
Through new taxation schemes and the reform of the Sinking Fund in 1786, the
young prime minister placed the nations nances in order, though these measures
would within a decade be overturned by the massive cost of waging war with France
beginning in 1793. In foreign affairs, Pitt sought to recover Britains prominent dip-
lomatic position in Europe after the loss of the American colonies. With respect to
government policy on India in view of changed circumstances in the Empire, here-
after Britains greatest colonial asset Pitt disarmed the attacks launched by Fox and
Edmund Burke in the House of Commons by the surprising expedient of taking
their side. Political fortune did not always turn in Pitts favor, however; after three
failed attempts to introduce parliamentary reform the last effort coming in April
1785 Pitt abandoned the issue altogether. He also took up the cause against slavery,
supporting the efforts of his friend William Wilberforce. Here, too, he would not live
long enough to see the dividends of his work. Still, by the end of the decade Pitt had
established a virtually unchallenged supremacy in the Commons, with the sole dan-
ger arising out of the kings temporary bout of mental illness in 1788. If the king had
been found incapable of carrying on, his son, George, Prince of Wales, was to have
580 Pitt, William (the Younger)
served as regent a disturbing prospect for Pitt, for the Prince was a close friend of
Fox and would certainly have replaced Pitt with a Whig government.
While in its initial stages, the French Revolution was viewed by Pitt as likely to
preoccupy France with its own internal matters for many years to come and con-
sequently was unlikely to disturb British pursuits abroad in fact the growing radi-
calism of the Revolution and the threat it posed to its neighbors led Pitt toward
confrontation with France by the end of 1792. Specically, the revolutionaries
declared promise of aid to those seeking to overthrow their monarchical regimes
and the presence of French troops both in Belgium and the Rhineland rendered
conict inevitable. Because Pitt believed quite erroneously that revolution
abroad would spell inevitable revolution at home, he led a concerted campaign
against radical movements, stamping out political dissent and ordering the arrest
of many members of the more radically inclined reform organizations. But if the
prime minister could contain his domestic foes, he failed to subdue those abroad,
for, in marked contrast to his illustrious father, he proved a poor strategist, fritter-
ing away troops in peripheral operations that, with a few notable exceptions, did
little to benet Britains allies, all of whom eventually broke away from the alliances
carefully constructed by British diplomats. Despite heavy subsidy payments to Brit-
ains continental allies, Pitt could not engineer military victories on their behalf,
and they nearly all sought separate treaties of peace with France, while Britain
remained protected by the Channel and the Royal Navy. In particular, Prussia and
Spain left the First Coalition in 1795, while Austria abandoned it in 1797.
Pitt easily won the 1796 general election and for the remainder of the decade
stood in the political ascendant, enjoying the kings condence and the respect, if
not the affection, of the nation. The war took a great nancial toll on the treasury,
and in 1797 the Bank of England could no longer offer cash payments, obliging
Pitt to introduce an income tax the following year. The fortunes of war shifted
to a limited extent in 1798 as a result of Admiral Nelsons defeat of the French
in the Mediterranean, and by early the following year very much with Pitts
inspiration Britain had constructed a Second Coalition, which included Austria,
Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. A major British military expedition in 1801
expelled the French from Egypt, but in Europe Napoleon had already triumphed
over Austria the previous year, obliging Britain to seek a disadvantageous peace
at Amiens, the negotiations of which were undertaken by Henry Addington, who
succeeded to ofce in February 1801 after Pitt resigned.
Paradoxically, despite the poor military showing of the two coalitions that he had
largely constructed and nanced, Pitt did not leave ofce over the failure of his
war policy, but rather over the thorny question of Catholic emancipation. Govern-
ment posts, the ofcer corps of the army, and parliamentary seats were all barred
to Roman Catholics, to whom the franchise had only been extended as recently as
1793. Violent agitation and unrest in various forms had become an increasing fea-
ture of Irish politics in the 1790s, and in 1798, actual rebellion, backed by military
assistance from France, broke out. While the revolt in Ireland was suppressed
indeed, brutally so by government authorities and the army, Pitt believed that the
best way of preventing civil war was the creation of a formal union between Britain
and Ireland, with their respective parliaments joined as one at Westminster. In ad-
dition to this and the central point on which he fell afoul of the king Pitt advo-
cated full emancipation for Catholics. Despite Pitts insistence that their numbers
Pitt, William (the Younger) 581
in Parliament would be too few to challenge the Protestant ascendancy, the king
bitterly opposed the idea of emancipation as part of any scheme of Union. Pitt
promised not to raise the issue again, but when in the wake of the Union in January
1801 he and his ministers again sought to bring forward Catholic emancipation, the
king considered himself betrayed, and Pitt resigned the following month.
Pitt supported Addingtons ministry, particularly with respect to the negotiations,
which, after nine years of conict, brought peace between Britain and France at
Amiens in March 1802. Nevertheless, as the terms gradually revealed themselves to
be considerably more favorable to French interests, both in strategic and commer-
cial terms, Pitt increasingly distanced himself from the new government. Indeed, in
1803 1804 Pitt and many of his former political allies, including Lord Grenville and
Henry Dundas, criticized Addingtons policies, particularly his conduct of the war.
The government could not sustain itself under the increasing weight of parlia-
mentary opposition, and by May 1804 Pitt was back in Downing Street, albeit unable
to recruit into his cabinet the broad cross-section of supporters that he desired
and consequently the government he did construct lacked much of the available
talent. In particular, no proper coalition composed of the most able members of the
Tory and Whig factions was possible without Fox, whom the king steadfastly refused
to admit to government. Yet without Fox, Grenville would not take his place in the
cabinet. Anxious to bolster his agging support in the Commons, Pitt reconciled
with Addington and persuaded him to join the government at the beginning of
1805. Yet even this addition of strength could not save Pitt from a nancial scandal
that ruined the reputation of his friend Dundas, who was forced from ofce in the
summer of 1805 by parliamentary accusations of the malversation of government of
funds charges later found to be unsubstantiated, but not until after Pitts death.
This constituted a severe, though not fatal, blow to the prime ministers credibil-
ity, yet in the same year he made great strides in organizing a Third Coalition against
France, which included Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Moreover, his governments
naval strategy implemented by a rst-rate ghting force and led by the countrys
greatest admiral utterly foiled Napoleons plans for an invasion of Britain when
Nelson decisively defeated the Franco-Spanish eet at Trafalgar on October 21.
Still, Pitts determined efforts to contain French territorial ambitions was largely un-
done in a day, when the French emperor defeated the Austrians and Russians at the
Battle of Austerlitz on December 2. The collapse of the Third Coalition hastened
the rapid decline of Pitts health largely attributable to years of heavy drinking and
overwork and he died in January 1806, at the age of 46.
Pitt is best remembered as a brilliant orator and a determined opponent of
French imperialism. In his personal life, he had few friends, woefully neglected his
personal nances (and consequently died heavily in debt, which a grateful Parliament
honored), and threw himself entirely into his work to the neglect of all other mat-
ters. He showed little ability in formulating strategy and has been heavily criticized by
historians for his overzealous prosecution of those thought to have been in sympathy
with Jacobinism when in fact they merely embraced the more moderate principles of
the French Revolution. Yet his devotion to public service, and his success in reform-
ing both the nations nances and in altering for the better Britains governance
of India, is difcult to challenge. While on the domestic front Pitt failed to secure
parliamentary reform or push through Catholic emancipation, his foreign policy led
to the construction of three coalitions against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
582 Pius VI, Pope
Therein lies perhaps his greatest legacy: the spirit of resistance he embodied during
the greatest period of national emergency prior to the twentieth century.
FURTHER READING: Derry, John. Politics in the Age of Fox, Pitt, and Liverpool: Continuity and
Transformation. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990; Duffy, Michael. The Younger Pitt. New York:
Longman, 2000; Ehrman, John. The Younger Pitt: The Consuming Struggle. London: Constable,
1996; Ehrman, John. The Younger Pitt: The Reluctant Transition. London: Constable, 1986;
Ehrman, John. The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim. New York: Dutton, 1969; Hague, William.
William Pitt the Younger. London: HarperCollins, 2004; Jarrett, Derek. Pitt the Younger. New York:
Scribner, 1974; Mori, Jennifer. William Pitt and the French Revolution, 1785 1795. Edinburgh, UK:
Keele University Press, 1997; Reilly, Robin. William Pitt the Younger. New York: Putnam, 1979;
Turner, Michael. Pitt the Younger: A Life. London: Hambledon and London, 2002.
Pope Pius VI (r. 1775 1799), Giovanni Angelo Braschi, attempted to maintain
papal jurisdiction over the French church before, during, and after the French Rev-
olution and died in captivity after the French decimated the papal administration
and authority of the Roman church by imprisoning him at Valence, France, until
he died. He was Benedict XIVs secretary, the treasurer of the Apostolic Chamber
(1766), and a cardinal (1773) before ascending to the papacy.
Pius did not challenge the suppression of the Jesuits but did challenge ecclesias-
tical Gallicanisms assertions that the authority of ecumenical councils superseded
papal authority, the pope was fallible, and all bishops were apostolic successors.
Pius failed to forestall the Holy Roman emperor Joseph IIs reforms (Edict of Tol-
eration, 1781) restricting papal authority by dissolving monasteries, tolerating non-
Catholic practices, redrawing diocesan boundaries, placing the seminaries under
the control of the state, and limiting festivals.
Pius further weakened papal authority by allowing the emperor to nominate im-
perial bishops (1784) and by failing to respond to the conscation of church assets
prior to the French Revolution. France responded to Piuss belated rejection (1791)
of the Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) along with his
suspensions of priests who accepted them and his protest against the execution of
Louis XVI by annexing the papal territories of Avignon and Venaissin.
Piuss acceptance of the Treaty of Tolentino (1797), which ended Napoleons
invasion of Italy, cost the Vatican the territories of Avignon, Venaissin, Ferrara, Bo-
logna, and the Romagna; 15 million francs; and numerous works of art. The French
eventually occupied Rome (1798 1799), declared a Roman Republic, deported the
Curia, and imprisoned Pius. See also Gallicanism; Pius VII, Pope.
FURTHER READING: Olf, Lillian Browne. Their Name Is Pius; Portraits of Five Great Modern
Popes. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1941.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Pius VII, Pope (1742 1823)
Pope Pius VII (r. 1800 23), Luigi Barnaba Gregorio Chiaramonti, succeeded in
partially restoring papal authority over the French church lost under Pius VI after
Poland, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on 583
the French Revolution. He negotiated the Concordat of 1801, the terms of which
required the pope to renounce claims to secularized ecclesiastical properties, re-
organize the French dioceses, and require the resignation of the remaining bish-
ops while Napoleons government agreed to acknowledge Roman Catholicism as
Frances primary religion.
Pius protested the French appendix of the Concordat (Organic Articles, 1802)
making papal jurisdiction contingent on the consent of the French government and
attempted (1804) to have the appendices amended, but Napoleon, by then Emperor
Napoleon I, sought more control over the French church. Diplomatic relations be-
tween the Papal States and France were terminated and France eventually annexed
the Papal States (1809) after occupying Rome (1808). Pius was imprisoned (1809)
after excommunicating the occupiers and was forced to sign a degrading concordat
(1813) that he abrogated two months later. Napoleon released Pius (1814) after
Frances military fortunes waned.
Once restored to the papacy on the revival of the Pontical States (Congress of
Vienna, 1814 1815), Pius canceled French occupational mandates, abrogated the
Organic Articles in negotiations with Louis XVIII after Napoleons fall, restored the
Jesuits (suppressed since 1773), reestablished the Congregation for the Propaga-
tion of the Faith (1817), restricted the pro-French Carbonari, reinstituted the Inqui-
sition, reinvigorated relationships with the German states and Austria (1817 1821),
condemned the Protestant Bible Societies, recognized the new Latin American
states, and stood rm against anti-Catholic laws enacted by Spains Ferdinand VII.
Pius also increased the number of dioceses in the United States (1808).
FURTHER READING: Anderson, Robin. Pope Pius VII, 1800 1823: His Life, Times, and Struggle
with Napoleon in the Aftermath of the French Revolution. Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 2000; Olf, Lillian
Browne. Their Name Is Pius; Portraits of Five Great Modern Popes. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1941.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
The Plain
The Plain, Marais in French, is the name given by historians of the French Rev-
olution to a nebulous group of uncommitted deputies aligned with neither the
Mountain nor the Girondins in the French National Convention. Bertrand Barre
de Vieuzac is often considered to be the Plains leading orator, though he drifted
toward the Mountain over time. Members of the Plain were characterized by incon-
sistent voting records and a generally centrist attitude toward revolutionary politics.
See also Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Reilly, Benjamin. Polling the Opinions: A Reexamination of Mountain,
Plain, and Gironde in the National Convention. Social Science History 28 (2004): 53 73.
BENJAMIN REILLY
Poland, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was strongly inuenced by the thought of
the Enlightenment. Starting in the 1760s, numerous publications in the spirit of the
Age of Reason were published, a reform of educational system was carried out (from
primary schools through universities), and serious debates concerning the reform of
584 Poland, Partitions of
the Polish-Lithuanian political system were initiated. Hindered by various obstacles
such as outside interference (partitions) and domestic opposition from a large group
of privileged nobles, reformers nevertheless implemented fundamental changes to
Polish society during the four-year session of the parliament (1788 1792, referred to
as the Four Years Parliament). The most important reforms culminated in the con-
stitution issued on May 3, 1791. Unfortunately, due to the opposition of a group of
Polish nobles (who formed the Confederation of Targowica) backed by Catherine II
and Russian troops, the constitution was abolished and Poland was partitioned for
the second time (1793), to be wiped off the map of Europe two years later.
Since 1788 Poland had witnessed considerable activity on the part of a group
of extremely radical social and political activists. They were active during the Four
Years Parliament and later during the Russian intervention, but also after the parti-
tions. Since their ideas and activities were inspired by the French Revolution, their
political adherents referred them to as Jacobins.
In 1791, the Association of Friends of the Governing Constitution was organized,
which stressed the need for further social reforms, in particular the granting of
rights to the burghers. Prince Adam Czartoryski, Hugo Koataj, and Ignacy Potocki
were among its 200 members.
The Association of Friends of National Insurrection formed in 1794 was much
more radical and closer to its French Jacobin model. In May and June 1794, the
group inspired demonstrations in Warsaw, which resulted in the public executions
of traitors to the fatherland. When the Kosciuszko Insurrection was coming to its
end, radical Jacobins were taken to the military criminal court, which pronounced
death sentences on many prisoners. Jacobins were also active in Lithuania, where
one of the most radical of them was Jakub Jasinski, a poet and a soldier.
Polish Jacobins proclaimed the radical French ideas of equality and brotherhood,
regardless of social background, race, and religion. They demanded full rights for
the burghers, the enfranchisement of peasants, and even the forming of a repub-
lic in the place of a monarchy. Among the best-known Polish Jacobins were Jakub
Jasinski, Jzef Zajaczek, Jan Alojzy Orchowski, and Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski.
After the third partition in 1795, many Jacobins remained active in conspiracies at
home or emigrated. Their radical social programs invariably included a demand for
Polands independence. See also Poland, Partitions of; Polish Constitution; Polish
Revolts.
FURTHER READING: Lesniodorski, Boguslaw. Polscy Jakobini. Karta z dziejw insurekcji 1794
roku. Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1960.
JAKUB BASISTA
In three territorial divisions carried out by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, Poland-
Lithuania, one of the largest European states, with an area of about 735,000 square
kilometers in 1772, was progressively reduced until, after the nal partition, it
ceased to exist.
The Polish-Lithuanian state was politically weak and subject to foreign (mostly
Russian) interference. Attempts to heal the situation through reforms after the
1764 election as well as the military Confederation of Bar, organized by a group
Polish Constitution 585
of nobles directed against the king, Stanisaw August Poniatowski added to the
confusion. A determination arose among Polands neighbors to end the critical situ-
ation through some form of interference in Polands affairs.
The rst partition was carried out when Russia was at war with Turkey (since
1768) and Polish-Lithuanian territories disturbed by the confederates of Bar. Fear-
ful of Russias expansion and the domestic chaos in Poland, Austria threatened
to become involved. In the end it was Prussias initiative, which sought to avoid a
deepening of the crisis, that resulted in a Russo-Prussian agreement for the parti-
tioning of Poland in 1771, to which the Austrian empress, Maria Theresa, gave her
consent. Consequently, on August 5, 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed a
treaty that partitioned Poland. The treaty was ratied by the Polish parliament on
September 30, 1773. Poland lost almost 30 percent of its area and over 30 percent
of its population. Russia received Belarus and Livonia, and Prussia took Royal Prus-
sia (without Gdansk), while Austria received southern Poland (the area south of
the river Vistula), shortly thereafter known as Galicia.
On May 3, 1791, Poland-Lithuania adopted a new liberal constitution, which
promised a strong, well-organized state. The Russian empress, Catherine II, could
not accept this. Providing support to a group of Polish magnates opposed to the
new constitution, Catherine helped them form the Confederation of Targowica
(May 14, 1792) and sent Russian forces into Poland. The resulting Russo-Polish war
ended in a Prusso-Russian agreement on a second partition. On January 23, 1793,
Russia and Prussia agreed on formal arrangements, which were conrmed by the
Polish parliament in the summer. Poland lost 40 percent of its pre-partition territory
and almost 30 percent of its population. Russia annexed the remnants of Belarus
and western Ukraine, including Podolia and part of Volhynia. For her part, Prussia
absorbed Great Poland, part of Mazovia, Gdansk, and Torun.
In response to the second partition, a national uprising under the leadership of
Tadeusz Kosciuszko broke out in March 1794 and lasted for eight months until it was
suppressed by Russian forces. In an agreement of October 24, 1795, Russia, Prussia,
and Austria divided the rest of Poland-Lithuania, though on this occasion there was
no Polish parliament to conrm the division. In this third partition, Russia acquired
Courland, most of Lithuania, and the rest of Volhynian Ukraine, and Prussia re-
ceived the rest of Mazovia with Warsaw, and part of Lithuania, while Austria acquired
the rest of Little Poland to the northeast in the direction of the River Bug.
As a result of the partitions, Poland-Lithuania was wiped off the map of Europe.
Russia received 63.75 percent of its territory and 5.5 million inhabitants, Prussia
received 18.27 percent of Polands territory and 2.6 million people, and Austria
gained 17.57 percent of Polands territory and 4.2 new subjects. See also Poland, Im-
pact of Revolutionary Thought on; Polish Constitution; Polish Revolts.
FURTHER READING: Lukowski, Jerzy. The Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795. London:
Longman, 1999.
JAKUB BASISTA
On May 3, 1791, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament accepted a document entitled
Ustawa Rzadowa (The Governmental Act), which became the rst Polish constitution.
586 Polish Revolts
The parliament had been in session since 1788 and is known in history as the Four
Years Parliament or the Great Parliament.
The May 3 constitution consists of an introduction and 11 articles. Together with
several acts passed earlier by the parliament, it introduced a new, modernized politi-
cal system devoid of the negative phenomena of the existing political system.
The text of the constitution is clear and systematic, reecting the political
thought of the Age of Reason. Articles 14 refer to the Catholic religion and the
clergy (1), the nobility (2), cities and burghers, (3) and the peasantry (4). The next
four articles (58) are devoted to the political system of Poland-Lithuania (the gov-
ernment, executive, legislative, and judicial powers). The last three articles discuss
regency, education of royal children, and military forces.
The constitution, although based on the ideas of the Enlightenment, is not as
democratic and radical as the earlier American and later French constitutions.
Although a signicant change in the granting of equal rights to all citizens took
place, the new constitution retained certain privileges and class divisions in Polish-
Lithuanian society.
The new political system was based on Montesquieus division of power, which
separated the executive power of the monarch from the legislative prerogatives of
the parliament and independent courts. The legislative power of the monarch was
weakened, while the executive became stronger. The executive was to be controlled
and limited by a group of ministers.
The notorious Liberum veto, which allowed a single deputy to break the proceed-
ings of any parliament, was abolished. The general election of the king by the no-
bles was replaced by hereditary monarchy, and the crown was offered to the Vettin
dynasty of Saxony. Parliamentary rights were limited to those nobles who possessed
real property, and a limited number of burghers were to sit in the new parliament.
The new constitution and accompanying laws changed the system of local adminis-
tration and the tax system and introduced a standing army.
The May 3 constitution limited the omnipotent power of the Polish-Lithuanian
nobility in favor of government ofcials and the monarch, converting the country
from what some historians describe as a state of anarchy into a well-ordered state.
The strengthening of political power was hard to accept for some Polish nobles and
Polands neighbors. Catherine II, with a group of Polish nobles, organized them-
selves into the military confederation of Targowica and began a war to prevent the
constitution from being introduced. As a result of the Russo-Polish war, the Consti-
tution of May 3, 1791, was abolished, and in the course of the partitions of 1793 and
1795 the Polish-Lithuanian state was partitioned and wiped off the map of Europe.
See also Poland, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on; Poland, Partitions of; Polish
Revolts.
FURTHER READING: Fiszman, Samuel, ed. Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century
Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
JAKUB BASISTA
Polish Revolts (1768 1772, 1794)
The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed two revolts in the Polish-
Lithuanian territory and a Russo-Polish war fought in an attempt to save Polands
Polish Revolts 587
integrity and a newly issued constitution. The rst revolt, initiated by Polish nobles
in 1768 and known as the Confederation of Bar, lasted for four years and was started
in defense of Polish nobles privileges against Catherine IIs interference into Polish
affairs. The second, known as the Kosciuszko Insurrection, took place in 1794, after
the second partition of Poland. The second of these events cannot be seen as the
offspring of simultaneous revolutionary events in France; indeed, only some pro-
nouncements and declarations of the Kosciuszko revolt bear some resemblance to
the ideas propounded by the French Revolution.
The Confederation of Bar was initiated by a group of nobles in Bar, in Podolia,
on February 29, 1768. A confederation in early modern Poland-Lithuania was a
quasi-formal association of nobles with a clearly dened program usually aimed
at attempting to win some privileges or changes from the monarch. The 1768 Con-
federation of Bar, initially headed by Jzef Puaski and Michal Karpinski, was at
rst limited to Podolia but later extended to other provinces and aimed to opp ose
the privileges and laws affecting dissidents (non-Catholic, mostly Orthodox Poles)
passed by the 1767 1768 parliament. These privileges were issued under pressure
from Catherine II and limited the rights of Polish Catholic nobles. Action was
also directed against the growing level of Russian interference in Polish domes tic
issues.
The confederates of Bar were initially defeated in Bar by Russian forces aided
by King Stanisaw August Poniatowskis troops, but they were joined by numerous
nobles throughout Poland-Lithuania. The confederates received the backing of
France (Colonel Charles Dumouriez was sent to the confederates with money and
advice) and Turkey. In 1770 a group of magnates hostile to the monarch joined the
confederation and declared his dethronement. Two years later confederates even
tried to kidnap the monarch, as a result of which they lost many supporters.
Confederate troops, headed by Kazimierz Puaski (son of Jzef), the future hero
of the American Revolutionary War, scored several local victories and held the for-
tresses of Czestochowa and Lanckorona before nally being forced to surrender on
July 18, 1772. The leaders of the confederation emigrated, while the approximately
6,000 men captured by the Russian army were exiled to Siberia.
The Confederation of Bar never developed an organized, effective army its
struggle was based on an ineffective leve en masse combined with guerrilla war-
fare. The confederations program, albeit conservative and interested in retaining
the nobles privileges, inspired interest in western Europe. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
devoted his Considrations sur le gouvernment de la Pologne, Gabriel Mably his Du gou-
vernement et des lois de la Pologne, and Claude Rulhire his Historie de lanarchie en
Pologne to the aims of civil liberty and national independence as represented by the
confederates.
Following the second partition in 1793, the situation of the rump state of Poland-
Lithuania was extremely difcult. Not only was the size of the state diminished
with a substantial part of Polands economy falling to the Russian and Prussian
hand but the diminished Poland had to sustain a Russian army of occupation of
40,000 men. The occupants economic exploitation resulted in the collapse of many
enterprises, including six Warsaw banks, with the result that the situation between
civilians and the army grew tense and led to a high level of emigration. In the major
cities (Warsaw; Krakow; and Wilno, now Vilnius, Lithuania) conspiratorial organiza-
tions were formed to exert pressure on politicians to start a war on the occupiers.
588 Polish Revolts
When at the end of February 1794 the Russians decided to reduce the size of the
Polish army and arrests were made among the conspirators, a decision was made to
start an uprising.
On March 24, 1794, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a hero of both the American Revolution
and the Russo-Polish war, proclaimed an act of insurrection in Krakow, took chief
command of the military operations, assumed dictatorial powers, and soon estab-
lished an insurgent government called the Supreme National Council. Based on his
American experience, Kosciuszko wanted to conduct his military operations with a
regular army supplemented locally by a peasant and middle-class militia. In order
to raise the necessary army, regular conscription was carried out one infantryman
to be drawn from every 5 households, and one fully equipped cavalry trooper from
every 50 households. By this means, the army was to number 100,000 infantry and
10,000 cavalry.
With about 6,000 men (4,100 regular troops and 2,000 peasant troops), Kosciuszko
left Krakow for Warsaw at the beginning of April. On April 4, Kosciuszkos army de-
feated Russian troops at the Battle of Racawice, an action that became legendary
due to the participation of peasants armed with scythes. Despite the Polish victory,
the way to Warsaw remained blocked.
On April 19, in a military camp in Bosutw, Kosciuszko, seeking to attract more
peasants to his cause, freed all the peasants serving in the army from their feudal ob-
ligations. Two weeks later, on May 7 in Poaniec, the dictator of the uprising issued
a manifesto (Uniwersa Poaniecki) granting personal freedom to all peasants and
promising to diminish substantially their personal obligations to their landlords.
The manifesto also threatened those who would not follow its regulations. The for-
tunes of the insurrection improved greatly when uprisings broke out in Warsaw
(April 17) and in Wilno (April 22). Jakub Jasinski, a radical noble, soldier, and poet,
headed the latter revolt. By the end of April 1794 the revolt involved the entire
Polish territory as it had existed in 1793.
As soon as Warsaw joined the insurrection, a temporary council was formed in
Warsaw. The council, serving as the government, was not as radical as some ex-
pected. Thus, on April 24, the so-called Jacobin Club was formed, which started
to exert strong pressure on the government. As a result, on May 9, several traitors
who took part in the Targowice Confederation were executed. The rebel authori-
ties in Warsaw remained divided politically between the moderates and the radical
Jacobins.
In May, as Kosciuszko was working on strengthening and enlarging the army,
Prussian troops entered Polish territory, leaving the Poles trapped between their
own forces and those of the Russians. In an attempt to stop the union of these two
armies, Kosciuszko left Warsaw and fought unsuccessfully at Szczekociny ( June 6).
Ten days later, on June 15, the Prussians took Krakow. At the same time, the siege
and defense of Warsaw began. The siege lasted for two months, after which the Prus-
sian and Russian troops were obliged to raise the siege in order to ght the rebel
forces in Great Poland, Kujawy, and even Pomerania, as the insurrection spread. On
October 2, Polish forces captured Bydgoszcz and entered Prussia.
Yet this was as much as the Polish forces could achieve. With Russia obtaining a
pledge of neutrality from Turkey on August 8, Austrian troops entered southern
Poland, and the insurrection in Lithuania collapsed with the fall of Wilno on Au-
gust 11. The days of the uprising were numbered.
Political Clubs (French) 589
Kosciuszko tried to raise additional troops, but on October 10, a numerically
superior Russian army beat his 7,000 men after heroic resistance at the Battle of
Maciejowice, where the Polish commander himself was wounded and taken pris-
oner. Thereafter, neither the moderates nor the Jacobins could effectively com-
mand the uprising. Alexander Suvorovs troops attacked Warsaw and on November 4
took the district of Praga, where Russian troops proceeded to massacre thousands
of civilians. Finally, at the Battle of Radoszyce on November 16, the remains of the
insurgent army were dispersed.
Kosciuszkos insurrection had but a feeble chance against the combined Rus-
sian, Prussian, and Austrian troops, and it was only a question of time before it was
put down. The third partition of Poland followed. Without the uprising, a rump
Poland might have survived, but with it, the kingdom was doomed to destruction.
The uprising had great social importance. On one hand, it was the rst national
struggle for the survival of the Polish state. On the other, it inaugurated democratic
changes inspired by the French Revolution within Polish society, which sought
to solve the problem of serfdom. See also Poland, Impact of Revolutionary Thought
on; Poland, Partitions of; Polish Constitution.
FURTHER READING: Gierowski, Jozef. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the XVIIIth
Century: From Anarchy to Well-Organised State. Krakow: Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci, 1996;
Kieniewicz, Stefan, ed. History of Poland. Warsaw: Polish Scientic Publishers, 1979; Lukowski,
Jerzy. The Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795. London: Longman, 1999; Stone, Daniel. The
Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386 1795. Seattle: University of Washington, 2001.
JAKUB BASISTA
French political clubs evolved out of the unshackling of peoples political con-
sciousness generated by the ideas and events leading to the French Revolution, which
effectively ended the ancien rgime. In the absence of ofcial political parties in
France, political clubs became essential to the organization of revolutionary fervor.
The earliest formation of political clubs in France began with the meeting of the
Estates-General in May 1789. Shortly after the opening of the Estates-General to work
toward a constitution, deputies from Brittany formed the Club Breton at Versailles.
The ofcial name of the organization was the Society of Friends of the Constitution
(Socit des Amis de la Constitution). After the club moved to Paris in October,
its members became known as the Jacobins. The Jacobin Club gradually acquired
branches in the provinces and acted as a center for news, propaganda, and action.
By 1793, the Jacobin Club had become the dominant political voice in France,
with some million members, largely respectable lawyers, shopkeepers, and inde-
pendent craftsmen who had time to engage in politics. The clubs early members
included Mirabeau, Siyes, Barnave, Ption, the abb Gregoire, Charles Lam-
eth, the comte de Lameth, Maximilien Robespierre, the duc dAiguillon, and
La Revelliere-Lepeaux. The Jacobin Club also had an Indian ruler, Tipu Sultan,
among its ranks.
The Jacobin Club derived its popular name from the monastery of the Jacobins
(the Parisian name of the Dominicans), where the members held their meetings.
Successively, the club occupied the refectory, the library, and the chapel of the
590 Political Clubs (French)
monastery. The chief purpose of the club was to highlight activities that could help
secure support for the group from elements outside the Legislative Assembly. In af-
liation with the Parisian branch of the club, many patriotic societies were formed
in other French cities. The middle class constituted the largest part of the member-
ship in these societies, which exercised through their journals considerable pres-
sure on the Legislative Assembly.
Once transferred to Paris, the Jacobin Club underwent rapid modications. In
a marked step, the club started expanding by admitting as their members or as-
sociates others besides deputies. On January 18, 1790, Arthur Young, an English-
man, entered the club in this manner. On February 8, the society became formally
constituted on the broader basis through the adoption of the rules drawn up by
Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc dAiguillon, the president.
The objects of the club were dened as, rst, the discussion of the questions to
be decided by the National Assembly; second, working for the establishment and
strengthening of the constitution in accordance with the spirit of the preamble
(i.e., respect for legally constituted authority and the rights of man); and third, cor-
responding with other societies of the same kind.
At the same time, the constitution of the club was adopted. Any member who by
word or action showed that his principles were contrary to those espoused by the
constitution and the rights of man was to be expelled, a rule that later facilitated the
purication of the society through the expulsion of its more moderate elements.
With Article 7, the club decided to admit as associates similar societies from other
parts of France and to maintain with them a regular correspondence. By August
10, 1790, there were already 152 afliated clubs, and by the close of the year the
Jacobins had a network of branches all over France. It was this widespread yet highly
centralized organization that gave to the Jacobin Club its formidable power.
From the beginning, provincial branches were far more democratic; nonetheless,
the leadership was usually in the hands of members of the educated or propertied
classes. Up to the very eve of the republic, the club ostensibly supported the monar-
chy, as it took no part in the petition of July 17, 1790 for the dethronement of King
Louis XVI, nor had it any ofcial share even in the insurrections of June 20 and
August 10, 1792. It only formally recognized the republic on September 21, 1792.
The character and extent of the clubs inuence cannot be gauged by its ofcial
acts alone. Long before it emerged as the principal focus of the Reign of Terror,
its character had been profoundly changed by the secession of its more moderate
elements, some to found the club of 1789, some in 1791 among them Barnave,
the Lameths, Duport, and Bailly to found the Feuillant Club, and some to found
the club monarchique.
The constituency to which the club was henceforth responsible, and from which
it derived its power, was in fact the sans-culottes of Paris cosmopolitans and starv-
ing workpeople who crowded its tribunes. It was to this audience, not primarily
to the members of the club, that the speeches of the orators were addressed and
by its verdict that they were judged. In the earlier stages of the Revolution the mob
had been satised with the ne platitudes of philosophy and the vague promises
of the politicians. But as the chaos in the body politic grew, and with it appalling
material misery, the people began to clamor for the blood of those believed to be
the traitors in ofce, a process that led to the elimination of the moderate elements
from the club. The ascendancy of Marat, and nally of Robespierre, who shared
Pownall, Thomas 591
the suspicions of the populace, gave a voice to their concerns. Finally, they did not
shrink from translating their declarations into action.
After the fall of the monarchy, Robespierre himself symbolized the Jacobin Club;
for tribunes he was the oracle of political wisdom. All others were judged by his
standard. The Jacobin Club was closed after the fall of Robespierre on July 29, 1794,
and some of its members were executed. An attempt was made to reopen the club,
which was joined by many of the enemies of the Thermidorians, but on Novem-
ber 11, 1794, it was denitively closed. Its members and their sympathizers were
scattered among the cafs, where the young aristocrats known as the jeunesse dore
waged a ruthless war of sticks and chairs against them. Nevertheless, the Jacobins
survived, in a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the club of the Pan-
thon, founded on November 25, 1795, and suppressed in the following February.
The last attempt to reorganize Jacobin adherents was in July 1799 and was then
known as the Club du Mange. Barras patronized it, and some 250 members of the
two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members, including many nota-
ble ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called the Journal des Libres, proclaimed
the apotheosis of Robespierre and Babeuf, and attacked the Directory. But public
opinion was now preponderantly moderate or royalist, and the club was violently
attacked in the press and in the streets.
The spread of the Revolution brought political clubs to Holland, Belgium, the
Rhineland, Switzerland, and Italy after 1792. They served as meeting places for
radical patriots and republicans. None survived Napoleons rise to power during
the coup of Brumaire in 1799, and the club as such disappeared from French
politics for half a century. However, the success of the revolution of February 1848
saw a proliferation of political clubs in Paris and the provinces. Politics in 1848 was
inclusive rather than exclusive; it incorporated tradition and modernity simulta-
neously. This mass mobilization accommodated newspapers and clubs along with
songs, folklore, and village fairs and cafs. The gap between intellectuals and the
people was bridged in an unprecedented fashion. Sparked by an acute social and
economic crisis, they served as forums for debate and aroused popular action. But
they were closed in the repression following the workers uprising in June 1848.
Revolutionary clubs remerged simultaneously in Germany, Austria, and Italy but in
1849 suffered the same fate as those in France the previous year. Political clubs re-
appeared in France after the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1870. Ranging
from Blanquist to Jacobin to socialist, all became the focus for debates on politi-
cal, social, and military questions. However, the collapse of the Commune in 1871
brought a nal end to political clubs in France. See also Girondins.
FURTHER READING: Amann, Peter. Revolution and Mass Democracy: The Paris Club Movement
in 1848. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975; Kennedy, M. L. The Jacobin Clubs in
the French Revolution. 2 vols. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000; Woloch, Isser. Jacobin Legacy:
The Democratic Movement under the Directory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.
JITENDRA UTTAM
Pownall, Thomas (1772 1805)
Thomas Pownall was a colonial governor and British politician. Born in Lincoln,
he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and his brother John Pownall, a
592 Prairial Insurrection
long-serving secretary to the Board of Trade, gained for him his rst appointment.
Sent to New York in 1753 as the secretary to the new governor, Sir Danvers Osborn,
Pownall attended the Albany Congress and traveled extensively through America. Ap-
pointed governor of New Jersey in 1755, he later served as governor of Massachu setts
from 1757 to 1759 and was appointed governor of South Carolina in November 1759.
In 1760, however, he decided to return to London to further his political career.
Pownall established his reputation as a colonial expert with the publication of his
Administration of the Colonies (1764), which was well received and went through ve
further extended editions to 1777. Elected to the House of Commons in 1767, he
maintained an extensive correspondence with the popular party in Massachusetts
and was instrumental in the recall of Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Mas-
sachusetts, in 1774. Pownall became a leading spokesman for a policy of concilia-
tion with America. Beginning with the publication of his Principles of Polity in 1752,
Pownall had shown a keen awareness of the laws of nature and the often discordant
inuence economics played in policy formation. He was full of schemes to restore
harmony to the British Empire.
Initially supporting Lord Norths policy of attempting to coerce Massachusetts in
1774, Pownall came to recognize the futility of the war by 1777, and in 1780 he intro-
duced peace proposals into the House of Commons, which would recognize, rather
reluctantly, the independence of the United States. In 1781, he published Memorial
Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe, which predicted how American independence
would break up the old system of European diplomacy and transatlantic trading
patterns. In his 1783 Memorial Addressed to the Sovereigns of America, Pownall, an early
if critical admirer of Adam Smith, predicted the breakup of the Spanish empire in
Latin America and suggested that world peace would be best served by the creation
of a transatlantic political federation based upon free trade. Although respected,
he was often largely ignored. Governor Pownall died in Bath, England, in 1805. See
also Adams, Samuel; Albany Plan of Union; American Revolution; Boston Port Act;
Latin American Revolutions.
FURTHER READING: Guttridge, G. H. Thomas Pownalls The Administration of the Colonies:
The Six Editions. William and Mary Quarterly 26 (1969): 3146; Schultz, John A. Thomas
Pownall: British Defender of American Liberty. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1951.
RORY T. CORNISH
Prairial
See Law of 22 Prairial
The Prairial Insurrection of Year III (May 20 23, 1795) would prove to be among
the last major episodes of popular activism during the French Revolution, due in
part to the National Conventions forceful use of National Guard units, leading
to the arrest of many activists and the execution of several popular leaders. The
spring of 1795 proved restless. In the aftermath of the Thermidorian Reaction, the
government sought to liberate the economy from the controls established by its
Montagnard predecessor. Such changes, most importantly revocation of the law of
Prairial Insurrection 593
the Maximum, created a free market, but with disastrous consequences. Ination
skyrocketed, and the assignat became devaluated in record time, losing 28 percent
of its value in October, another 24 percent in November, 20 percent in December
1794, and 17 percent in January 1795. In some places, the increase in food prices
brought about near-famine conditions. In March 1795, meat was unobtainable in
Paris, while the price of bread increased over 12 times to 16 livres a pound and was
rationed at one to one-and-a-half pounds per head in March. It then fell rapidly to
8, 6, and even 2 ounces over subsequent weeks. As in 1789, bakeries were frequently
raided and ransacked, and merchants were threatened. Economic hardship led to
the revival of radical Hbertiste agitation among the sans-culottes, who called for the
restoration of the Constitution of 1793.
Social discontent boiled over on April 1, 1795 (12 Germinal, Year III), when the
Jacobins unsuccessfully attacked the Tuileries Palace and the Convention. Large
crowds from various sections (Paris was divided into 48 sections or districts) burst
into the hall of the Convention, many shouting, Bread! Bread! while some wore
caps with the slogan Bread and the Constitution of 1793. However, the rebels
were driven out without much difculty by troops under General Pichegru. It was
The death of Fraud during the Prairial Insurrection, an uprising
of the Paris faubourgs against the Directory in May 1795. Courtesy
of Alexander Mikaberidze.
594 Prairial Insurrection
a signicant victory for the Convention, which immediately exploited this occasion
to deport the surviving Jacobin leaders, among them Jean Marie Collot dHerbois,
Jacques Nicholas Billaud-Varenne, Bertrand Barre, and Marc-Guillaume Vadier.
As economic conditions continued to worsen, discontent in Paris and other
large cities increased and the government turned to repression to keep agita-
tion under control. However, it failed to prevent an armed uprising that began
on 1 Prairial (May 22, 1795). Like the Germinal riots, the new uprising started in
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where armed crowds gathered in the morning and
quickly advanced against the Convention. Although their rst attack was repelled,
the rebels attacked again around 3:30 p.m. and, after overpowering the guards,
rushed into the hall of the Convention. There, amidst confusion and uproar, the
deputy Jean-Bertrand Fraud was killed and his head paraded on a pike in front
of the deputies. The Convention president, Boissy dAnglas, did not dissolve the
meeting and instead continued the session until late evening. As in Germinal,
the main demands of the insurgents included better economic conditions and
the enforcement of the Jacobin constitution of 1793. Breaking government ranks,
some Montagnard deputies supported the uprising and adopted legislation releas-
ing the militants arrested after the Germinal riots, restoring sectional assemblies,
establishing an extraordinary food council, and sanctioning searches of houses
of suspected hoarders. However, the insurgents acted disjointedly, as they lacked
good leadership.
Despite initial concessions, the government responded with ruthless efciency.
The jeunesse dore (gilded youth), a parallel militia recruited from the ranks of
minor ofcials and small shopkeepers who opposed the sans-culottes and Jacobins,
was immediately summoned from their homes. National Guard units were quickly
assembled in the capital and the Convention was cleared during the night. On 2
Prairial, government troops clashed with the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which was
supported by other sections as well. However, the rebels failed to incite a general
uprising in the capital and allowed their last chance of success slip through their
ngers. On 3 Prairial, General Menou led some 20,000 men into the capital and
seized control of the mutinous neighborhoods, chiey the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
which surrendered after being surrounded and threatened with bombardment and
starvation. The government immediately ordered the shooting without trial of any-
one captured carrying arms, as well as those wearing Jacobin symbols other than
the cockade. Almost all the members of the old Committee of Public Safety, except
for Lazare Carnot, and Montagnard deputies, who supported the uprising, were
arrested, among them Jean-Michel Du Roy, Philippe Rhl, Charles-Gilbert Romme,
Claude-Alexandre Goujon, Franois-Joseph Duquesnoy, Pierre Bourbotte, and
Pierre-Amable Soubrany. Known as the Prairial Martyrs, the deputies were quickly
tried, and as they were leaving the courtroom, the condemned men passed around a
knife and stabbed themselves to death. Still, Du Roy, Soubrany, and Bourbotte were
taken, bleeding, to the scaffold and executed on the guillotine. In the weeks after
the uprising, dozens more Jacobins were arrested, and some 30 of them executed
while others were imprisoned. The Prairial unrest was not limited to Paris alone, and
a similar, albeit smaller, uprising took place in the provinces as well. They were all
suppressed as the more conservative provinces became apprehensive about the pos-
sibility of the country again falling under the dictatorship of the Jacobins. The White
Terror swept through many regions and the provincial jeunesse dore was especially
Price, Richard 595
active in repressions in Bordeaux, Nantes, Avignon, Marseilles, and Le Havre, where
dozens of Jacobins were executed and many more arrested and imprisoned.
The Prairial uprising was the largest and most powerful Montagnard uprising that
the Thermidorian government faced, and its success would certainly have changed
the course of the Revolution. This was the rst time since 1789 that a government
succeeded in putting down a popular uprising and that the army was used as a
mechanism of suppression. Its suppression represented the triumph of the men of
Thermidor, who went on to establish the Directory. The National Guard was care-
fully purged of men suspected of Jacobin sympathies, and workers were barred from
joining the Jacobin Club. A new police infrastructure was created for better control
of the sections. Provisions were made for the removal of the Convention to Chlons
in the event of future threats. In August 1795, as a direct result of Prairial and in
order to secure it power, the Convention decreed that instead of free elections for
the new Corps Lgislatif, two-thirds of both the councils of the Ancients and of the
Five Hundred must, the rst year, be members of the existing Convention. The
Prairial insurrection signaled the end of the cohesive Jacobin party, although its ele-
ments would survive until 1799. As Lefebvre remarked, This date should mark the
end of the Revolution: its mainspring had been broken. With the Left in tatters,
the Convention, and later the Directory, would be at the mercy of the Right and
the muscadins (royalist sympathizers), while the jeunesse dore, previously a useful
auxiliary militia, developed into a powerful force that no longer served to offset a
rival force and presented a new threat. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary;
Council of Five Hundred; Hbertistes; Legislative Assembly.
FURTHER READING: Furet, Franois, and Denis Richet. La Rvolution franaise. Paris:
Hachette-Pluriel, 1986; Gendron, Franois. The Gilded Youth of Thermidor. Montreal: McGill-
Queens University Press, 1993; Lefebvre, Georges. Le Directoire. Paris: Armand Colin, 1946;
Lefebvre, Georges. Les thermidoriens. Paris: Armand Colin, 1937.
ALEXANDRE MIKABERIDZE
Price, Richard (1723 1791)
Born the son of a Dissenting minister in south Wales, Price was educated by Dis-
senting ministers in Wales and in London and became a Dissenting minister himself
in and around London. He gained fame and notoriety because of the range of his
intellectual accomplishments and the depth of his commitment to religious, civil, and
political liberty. He made many famous friends, including Lord Shelburne, Joseph
Priestley, and Benjamin Franklin, and conducted a prolonged correspondence with
leading American and French intellectuals and reformers. His defense of liberty led to
offers of both American and French citizenship. Prices mathematical writings helped
insurance companies to calculate life expectancy and to assess premiums to be paid
for annuities and advised the government how to raise loans on favorable terms and to
reduce the national debt. In his writings on moral philosophy (particularly A Review of
the Principal Questions and Difculties in Morals in 1758), he stressed the importance of
reason and sought to erect a universal moral system resting on truth and reason.
Price believed that moral law existed independent of man and could be under-
stood by human reason, and that once perceived, it was the duty of man to seek to
follow its dictates. He stressed the importance of education, integrity, and effort
596 Priestley, Joseph
so that men would do their best to observe this moral law. He accepted that men
were not perfect, but he believed in the indenite progress of human understand-
ing and ability. In religion, Price was weaned away from the strict Calvinism of his
father. He became an Arian and rejected the divinity of Christ, predestination, and
eternal damnation but still accepted general and particular providence. He insisted
that men must be allowed to follow their conscience in their religious beliefs and
practices; these should never be subject to any political or ecclesiastical authority.
He opposed the idea of a state church and he supported campaigns for religious
liberty, including the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts.
Prices moral philosophy and religious opinions greatly inuenced his political at-
titudes. He admired John Lockes political writings and promoted natural rights, the
sovereignty of the people, and the right of resistance. In Britain, he supported the
Glorious Revolution, the Hanoverian succession, and Britains mixed government
and balanced constitution. But he was increasingly concerned about the growth of
the executive, the misuse of patronage, the increased national debt, and the size of
the standing army. While never a republican or a complete democrat, he supported
parliamentary reform and was ready to extend the franchise to any man who had
the rationality, independence, and integrity to use it wisely. During the American
Revolution he wrote Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776) and Additional
Observations (1777). In these famous tracts he attacked the doctrine of parliamen-
tary sovereignty, the British efforts to tax the American colonies, and all the British
legislation on America from the Stamp Act to the Coercive Acts. He believed it was
the British who had driven the Americans to rebel. He did not want to see an inde-
pendent America, and he supported a loose Atlantic confederation, but he could
not accept that Britain had the right to impose its authority on the colonies.
After the American Revolutionary War, he produced his Observations on the Impor-
tance of the American Revolution (1784), which praised the United States as an asylum
of liberty and for rejecting aristocracy and a state church. But he warned against
the dangers of luxury and corruption and condemned slavery. Critical of the an-
cien rgime in France, Price welcomed the French Revolution. He praised early
developments extravagantly in his address to the Revolution Society in London on
November 4, 1789. Published as A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, this address
was subject to a vitriolic and undeserved attack in Burkes Reections on the Revolution
in France. Price was never a rash revolutionary, and he was not aware that the French
Revolution would turn bloody and violent. He died before it did so.
FURTHER READING: Cone, Carl B. Torchbearer of Freedom: The Inuence of Richard Price
on Eighteenth-Century Thought. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1952; Dickinson,
H. T. Richard Price on Reason and Revolution. In Religious Identities in Britain 1660
1832, ed. William Gibson and Robert Ingram. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005; Laboucheix,
Henri. Richard Price as Moral Philosopher and Political Theorist. Translated by Sylvia and David
Raphael. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution, 1982; Thomas, D. O. The
Honest Mind: The Thought and Work of Richard Price. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
H. T. DICKINSON
The great English chemist and philosopher Joseph Priestley was a passionate
political and religious radical. He came from a family of Protestant Dissenters
Prieur de la Marne 597
opposed to the established Church of England and served as a Dissenting minister
and schoolmaster. His most important political book, An Essay on the First Principles
of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty (1768), built on
the tradition of John Locke to distinguish between civil and political liberty. Civil
liberty meant the right of individuals to be unhindered by government in their lives
and was more important to Priestley than political liberty or the power to serve in
ofce or to elect to ofce.
In 1773 he was hired as a librarian and tutor in the household of William Petty,
Earl of Shelburne, a statesman and a supporter, like Priestley himself, of concilia-
tion with the American colonists. (Priestley was also a friend of Benjamin Franklin
and shared his scientic interests.) Priestley wrote political pamphlets, such as Ad-
dress to Protestant Dissenters on the Approaching Election (1774), opposing religious dis-
crimination and British oppression of the American colonists.
Priestley became a Unitarian, denying Jesuss divinity although continuing to
believe him to be the Messiah, a technically illegal view. He was also a millenar-
ian, interpreting the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon as signs of the
forthcoming apocalypse. The reaction against the French Revolution in Britain
made Priestleys intellectual and political radicalism increasingly dangerous. In
1791 a conservative Church and King mob, tacitly supported by local magistrates
and Church of England clergy, attacked his dwelling in Birmingham. Priestley emi-
grated with his family to the United States in 1794.
FURTHER READING: Schoeld, R. E. The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and
Work from 1773 to 1804. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
Pierre-Louis Prieur is referred to as Prieur de la Marne in order to distinguish
him from another member of the Committee of Public Safety who shared the same
last name (Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois, referred to as Prieur de la Cte-DOr).
A practicing lawyer before the French Revolution, Prieur de la Marne was one of
the original representatives to the rst meeting of the Estates-General. He soon
distinguished himself by his passionate speeches against the monarchy and the Old
Regime; he voted for the death of Louis XVI. In July 1794, Prieur became a member
of the Committee of Public Safety. Like the other members, he often acted as a rep-
resentative on mission, principally to western France. Here, at the port of Brest, he
was active in managing the town and the naval base, and giving direction to French
eet commanders. In the fall he directed actions against the anti-republican forces
in the Vendan rebellion.
In December 1793, he established what became one the most extreme courts
at Nantes. At one time this court condemned 2,905 people, many of whom were
executed by being placed on barges that were then sunk. In May 1794, he returned
to Brest to govern the city; he was there during the Thermidorian Reaction and was
immediately removed from the committee, although he remained a representa-
tive on mission. In 1795, he participated in an attempted revolt by fellow Jacobins
against the Directory, which failed, and went into hiding. After an amnesty, he went
into private practice and did not participate in politics, although he did accept
598 Primary Assemblies
Napoleon. With Napoleons defeat in 1815 at Waterloo, Prieur was forced to go into
exile in Belgium, where he died in 1827. See also National Assembly.
France. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006; Cormack, William S. Revolution and Political
Conict in the French Navy, 1789 1794. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Palmer,
R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2005; Secher, Reynald. A French Genocide: The Vende. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
ROBERT N. STACY
Primary Assemblies
Elections above the local level were conducted on a two-tier basis during the
French Revolution. All adult male citizens who fullled the basic requirement for
the franchise were eligible to attend primary assemblies, which met on seven occa-
sions, in 1790, 1791, 1792, 1795, 1797, 1798, and 1799. The broad electorate was
invited to assemble at the chefs-lieux of some 3,000 cantons, where they chose second-
degree electors entrusted with the election of district and departmental personnel,
as well as national deputies. This process of indirect election was partly inspired by
a concern to balance number and reason, by which most voters were excluded
from the more important decisions. The electors acted as a counterweight to an
extremely wide suffrage, because they were generally recruited from among the
more wealthy citizens.
The subordinate role played by the primary assemblies, not to mention the dis-
tance to be traveled by rural inhabitants to vote in the chef-lieu, inhibited participa-
tion. By 1799, average turnout was little more than 10 percent, yet in 1790 it had
reached 50, and in 1797, some 25 percent. These assemblies thus involved millions
of Frenchmen during the 1790s and acted as signicant schools of citizenship, a
function graphically illustrated by two constitutional votes taken in 1793 and 1795,
when discussion on the proposed texts took place.
FURTHER READING: Aberdam, Serge, et al. Voter, lire pendant la Rvolution franaise,
1789: Guide pour la recherche. 2nd ed. Paris: Editions du Comit des Travaux Historiques
et Scientiques, 2006; Crook, Malcolm. Elections in the French Revolution, 1789 1799: An
Apprenticeship in Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Gueniffey, Patrice.
Le nombre et la raison. La Rvolution franaise et les elections. Paris: Editions de lEcole des hautes
tudes en sciences sociales, 1993.
MALCOLM CROOK
Privileges
All across Europe, privilege was one of the hallmarks of the ancien rgime and
was a primary means of dividing people into social orders rather than economic
classes. All nobles, for example, were exempt from most taxation, whether they
were extremely rich or extremely poor. It was the entrenchment of privilege, chiey
pertaining to the clergy and nobles, but also to judicial and nancial elites, that
necessitated not just reform but revolution in France. The refusal of the privileged
elements of society to compromise with the needs of society as a whole caused the
Privileges 599
termination of their privileges, and very nearly their complete destruction. But priv-
ilege was not always seen as a negative drain on the community.
The source of this system was the creation of feudalism in the early Middle Ages,
in which members of society were divided into orders for the benet of the entire
community: those who prayed, those who defended, and those who labored. In
return for the rst two services (eternal salvation and protection from banditry and
barbarian invasions), the third group worked the elds and provided sustenance
for the whole community. As the state developed into an autonomous entity of its
own (whether monarchical or republican) and took over the defense of the entire
community, it became necessary to generate revenues through taxation to support
troops and build walls, castles, roads, and so forth. Those praying for the safety of
the community were unable to feed themselves, and those who maintained them-
selves in ghting conditions (and required expensive items like horses and armor)
paid with their lives. Thus the burden of taxation fell completely on the third order,
the laborers.
Privilege over the course of the early modern period transformed, however, into
a means by which the richer orders (the clergy and the nobility) maintained their
control of most of the countrys resources and prevented most of the rest of the
population from rising through the social hierarchy. This varied across Europe from
countries where the privileges were extensive, such as France, to those in which so-
cial mobility was much more uid, like England. In France, not only did medieval
privilege continue well into the early modern era, but it increased in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, partly as a reaction against the increasing upward
mobility of the middle classes. Not only were nobles exempt from most (but not
all) taxation, but they had exclusive access to certain ofces in the government,
exclusive access to the monarch (the font of most privileges), and, from the mid-
eighteenth century, a near-total monopoly on ofcer ranks in the army as well as to
the elite military academies. As the military served as one of the easiest routes for
social advancement in ancien rgime France, this was a severe blow to the aspira-
tions of the families of lawyers and merchants, as well as a contributing factor in the
decline of the effectiveness of the French army in the eighteenth century.
Privileges for nobles in most of Europe included symbolic honors (the rights to
own and display heraldry, to appear at court wearing a sword, and precedence in
public processions), useful rights (exemptions from taxation and labor services, mo-
nopolies on public facilities like mills), occupational preferences (for ecclesiastical
or military posts or positions at court), and judicial privileges (ranging from having
cases heard in superior courts, nes rather than prison sentences, and execution
by decapitation rather than hanging). These varied from country to country. One
of the rst things to be abolished during the French Revolution was the system of
hereditary privilege, by decree of August 4, 1789.
From Feudalism to Enlightenment. Translated by William Doyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985; Descimon, Robert. Orders and Classes. In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment,
ed. Michel Delon. Translated by Philip Stewart and Gwen Wells. 2 vols. Chicago: Fitzroy-
Dearborn, 2001; Dewald, Jonathan. The European Nobility, 1400 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996; Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy,
1589 1789. Vol. 1. Translated by Brian Pearce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
JONATHAN SPANGLER
600 Proclamation of 1763
Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763 in response to the challenges of gov-
erning the territory in the Old Northwest. At the close of the Seven Years War
(1756 1763), the French relinquished their claims to the Ohio Valley, leaving the
Indian inhabitants to contend with eager American settlers. In the summer of 1763,
Pontiac, an Ottowa chief, led a rebellion against white settlers, prompting the dec-
laration of the royal proclamation.
The proclamation was meant to strengthen control of the enlarged British Em-
pire. Its most important measure was a proscription on colonial settlement west of
an imaginary line down the Appalachian Mountains. The edict reserved the lands
west of the line for Native Americans, expressly forbidding either private individuals
or colonial governments from negotiating cessions. In addition, the proclamation
restricted commerce and travel in the western region to licensed traders. Parlia-
ment framed these measures as safeguards against Native American aggression, but
they were also meant to limit provocations by colonists. The proclamation also cre-
ated four new colonies in the acquired territory: Quebec, Grenada, East Florida,
and West Florida. French colonists remained in Quebec, which presented the Brit-
ish administration with the task of protecting French religious and property rights
secured by the Treaty of Paris (1763).
The law was difcult to enforce. Many colonists resented the proclamation and
continued to emigrate to the Northwest; recent settlers refused to leave. Further-
more, land grants to veterans of the Seven Years War and existing colonial charters
extending to the Pacic Ocean created legal loopholes for land speculation. The proc-
lamation did produce revenue, and it remained in effect, albeit with some changes,
until 1776. Although a genuine attempt to manage relations between the British and
Native Americans, the proclamation contributed to the rift between the British Em-
pire and the American colonies that eventually led to the American Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Alden, John Richard. John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier:
A Study of Indian Relations, War, Trade, and Land Problems in the Southern Wilderness, 1754 1775.
New York: Gordian, 1966; Cashin, Edward J. Governor Henry Ellis and the Transformation of
British North America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
ROBERT LEE
Enacted by Parliament at the outset of the American Revolution, the Prohibi-
tory Act greatly inuenced the debate over independence at the Second Continen-
tal Congress. After the actions at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental
Congress met on May 10, 1775, to decide whether the interests of the colonies
would best be served by remaining a part of the British Empire. In the spring of
1775, many colonists remained undecided about the proper course of action: inde-
pendence or reconciliation with Britain. Samuel Adams and other radicals favored
independence, while moderates such as John Dickinson favored reconciliation. Pur-
suing a middle course, the Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition one last
attempt at reconciliation.
The Crown rejected the petition and in August 1775 issued a proclamation de-
claring the colonies to be in rebellion. On December 22, 1775, Parliament adopted
Prussia and Germany, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on 601
the Prohibitory Act, a retaliatory measure that closed colonial ports to overseas trade
and authorized the seizure of American ships at sea. The Prohibitory Act ended any
chance for reconciliation between the colonists and the Crown. The Declaration of
Independence was the ultimate response of the Continental Congress to the Pro-
hibitory Act.
FURTHER READING: Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution,
1763 1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982; Morgan, Edmund. The Birth of the
Republic, 1763 1789. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956; Wood, Gordon. The American
Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library Chronicles, 2003.
BRIAN W. REFFORD
Prussia and Germany, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
The French Revolution not only inuenced political and social relations in
France; it transformed all of Europe. Revolutionary events and French expansion
brought about new political awareness not only in France but also in neighboring
countries. For the German states, the year 1789 started a series of events that eventu-
ally brought about the redistribution of territories and the secularization of church
principalities and property and transformed the government and political struc-
tures of the Holy Roman Empire. These changes, together with Prussias defeat in
1806 1807, forced the introduction of political and social reforms and a signicant
shift in thinking about society and politics.
At the outset, all but the most conservative German writers and intellectuals
viewed the French Revolution in a benevolent light. By 1789, German intellectu-
als considered the decadence of the French aristocracy and the court, the pressing
nancial situation, and the burden of taxes indications of a crisis within the French
state. By that time, modern political theory, including the contract theory of govern-
ment, ideas of popular sovereignty, and Rousseaus doctrine of the general will, was
exemplied in the ideology of the new American republic and was well known to
German intellectuals. Very few German observers doubted the right of the French
people to a better form of government. In the early stages of the Revolution, many
German observers tended to believe that the events would spread the Enlighten-
ment, religious tolerance, and ideas of liberty and equality and establish a efcient
system of political organization. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen (1789) put into words aspirations concerning these new ideals and gave
people a new sense of dignity. The Constitution of 1791 seemed to be a model docu-
ment of the Enlightenment. Those Germans who sympathized with the Revolution
were generally enthusiastic about the establishment of the constitutional monarchy
that the French established in September 1791.
For the great majority of Germans, French politics became a main preoccupa-
tion. Germany was littered with pamphlets, articles, and odes. A plethora of travel
accounts, journals, treatises, pamphlets, and poems about freedom, equality, and
fraternity was published daily. German writers and publishers perceived a vast de-
mand for news from and about France. Translations of French books, journals, and
political pamphlets were not enough to satisfy the demands of the German reader-
ship. A number of writers actually moved to France and sent home rsthand reports.
Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746 1818), a proponent of the Enlightenment and
602 Prussia and Germany, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
educator, wrote his Briefe aus Paris zur Zeit der Revolution geschrieben, rst published
in Braunschweigisches Journal in the form of letters addressed to the editor, and then
republished as a book in 1790. Campe arrived in Paris soon after the storming of
the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and devoted considerable time to the description and
analysis of the event and its aftermath.
Positive and negative implications of current events were continuously discussed,
and there was considerable debate about the different views on the Revolution, as
exemplied in Edmund Burkes Reections on the Revolution in France (1790) and
Thomas Paines Rights of Man (1791). The journals of J. W. von Archenholtz (1741
1812) and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733 1811) declared their approval of the
events, and the crowded salons of the Berlin hostesses Henriette Herz (1764 1847)
and Rahel Levin (1777 1833) were buzzing with excitement. Georg Wilhelm Hegel
(1770 1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775 1854) declaimed
the principles of 1789 at Tbingen and hoped to plant a liberty tree there, while
Johann Georg Kerner (1770 1812) burned his familys patent of nobility on the an-
niversary of the destruction of the Bastille. Hlderlin wrote a Hymn to Humanity, and
leading intellectuals, including Kant, Fichte, Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, Wieland,
Tieck, and Jean Paul expressed similar sentiments.
The inuence of the French Revolution was particularly strong in Brunswick,
Hamburg, and the Rhineland. During the rst months of the Revolution, there was
considerable excitement among the peasants in several German states. Uprisings
occurred in Saxony and Silesia, in Mecklenburg, Trier, and Speyer. Participants in
peasant disturbances demanded the return of old rights to use the meadows and
woods that were taken by the feudal seigneurs and often refused to provide feudal
services. Sporadic outbreaks also occurred in several Free Cities. Since the discon-
tent was mainly based on the notion of the old right, not the revolutionary declara-
tions, it seems that Revolution only intensied chronic discontent.
With the development of events during the Revolution, German states were
ooded with emigrants eeing from the French and Mainz republics. Johann Wolf-
gang von Goethes Conversations of German Emigrants (1795) contains an analysis of
the political and ideological situation in which the migrs found themselves. In the
Conversations, an aristocratic family is described escaping the French revolutionary
army in 1793 from their lands on the left bank of the Rhine to their property on the
right bank. The family members represent the whole political spectrum of the time,
from Karl, a cousin who is an enthusiastic advocate of the Revolution, to the old
privy councilor ardently defending the ancien rgime. The defeat of the republic
in Mainz increased political argument, leading both Karl and the privy councilor
to advocate terror as a way of achieving their revolutionary and reactionary aims.
In general, the activities of migrs in the German states made them the unwilling
champions of the Revolution. This, combined with the activities of French propa-
ganda, with its headquarters in Strasbourg, supported the idea of equality and the
dislike of the privileges of the nobles and made German intellectuals support the
Revolution as a vehicle of reform after all previous less radical attempts had failed.
The great majority of Germans empathizing with the French Revolution re-
jected the idea of revolution in Germany. Wieland was optimistic that Germany
could not be fully receptive to French ideas because Germany was in a better state
than pre-revolutionary France. Many were simply skeptical about Germans political
maturity. Scientist and author Georg Forster (1754 1794), for instance, even after
committing himself to the revolution in Mainz, emphasized that the Germans were
not yet ready for a revolution. Instead, he believed that the German rulers should
learn from the French example and actively promote reforms and improvements.
In fact, the truly radical Jakobiners were a distinctly small group in Germany, while
the term was broadly used by German conservatives to refer to those who were in
any way sympathetic to the French Revolution, extending later to embrace all advo-
cates of social change.
Many intellectuals who applauded the French Revolution but rejected the idea of
a revolution in Germany felt that Germany had already had its revolution in the Ref-
ormation. Those Germans who idealized the values of the Lutheran Reformation
believed that the principles of the Catholic Church clashed with the intellectual val-
ues propagated by the leaders of the French Enlightenment. The issue of freedom of
thought and religious tolerance was one of the most pressing concerns of German
observers (especially to German Protestants) early in the Revolution, and the role
of the Catholic Church in French national life was closely scrutinized. Every indica-
tion of the weakening of the Catholic Church in France, including the conscation
of church lands, was widely approved of. German intellectuals followed the debates
of the National Assembly about the role of the church in France with intense in-
terest and applauded the reforms that were introduced. The developments in the
northern German states in the 1780s had predisposed German observers of the
Revolution to concentrate their attention on the treatment of religion. A religious
edict introduced to Prussia was causing considerable controversy at precisely the
same time revolutionary events were unraveling in Paris. Tolerance and freedom of
thought and religious choice had been burning issues in Prussia since the accession
of Frederick William II in August 1786. Frederick William, under the inuence of
J. C. Woellner (1732 1800) and Rudolf von Bischoffwerder (17411803), was known
for his strong interest in Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, and theosophy, which led
Berlin intellectuals like Friedrich Nicolai to raise an alarm in the Berlinische Monatss-
chrift throughout 1785 over a supposed conspiracy of former Jesuits (formally dis-
solved in 1773) to inltrate Protestant territories under the guise of secret societies.
Frederick Williams Religious Edict of July 1788, the replacement of Enlightenment-
minded ofcials, and the sharpened Censorship Edict of December 1788 raised even
more concerns about the direction ofcial policies in Prussia were taking.
With few exceptions, the courts and cabinets of Germany looked at revolution-
ary events with suspicion from the start. Many government circles propagated ideas
about a revolutionary world conspiracy led by Illuminati and/or Freemasons. Al-
though the Order of the Illuminati, a secret society organized at the Bavarian Uni-
versity of Ingolstadt in 1776, was suppressed by Bavarian authorities in 1785, various
conspiracy theories assigned it an important role in the French Revolution. It was
presumed that Masonic lodges, secret organizations popular with German intellec-
tuals and the bourgeoisie, were being inltrated by the Illuminati and Jacobins to
be used for the destruction of order in the German states.
Another group that was frequently condemned was the German Jacobins, who
welcomed French soldiers into the Rhineland from 1792 and supported the French
administration there for a time. The Jacobin Club played a vital role in declaring
Mainz a republic in 1792 1793 under the protection of French troops. Georg Forster,
the most prominent member of the Mainz Jacobin Club, went to Paris in March 1793
as a delegate of the Rhenish Republic organized on the left bank. Nominated vice
president of the provisional administration and a deputy of the Rhineland German
National Convention, Forster petitioned the French National Convention for the an-
nexation of the left bank territories to the French Republic. The short-lived republic
in Mainz ended in the middle of 1793 when the Prussian army occupied the city.
Although the Mainz Jacobin Club had a relatively large membership, those Jacobins
who regarded revolution by force in Germany as a necessity constituted an insigni-
cant minority. However, a hysterical fear that the Jacobins were scheming and plot-
ting in Germany only intensied with the development of the Revolution in France.
On the sympathetic side, there existed a large body of writings that sought to
explain the principal concepts of French revolutionary ideology, the French Consti-
tution of 1791, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in an at-
tempt to relate these concepts to accepted notions of human or natural rights, while
denying that the assertion of those rights represented an unlawful rebellion against
a hereditary sovereign. On the conservative side, critics of revolutionary ideas con-
sidered the French (and their German sympathizers) radicals, dangerous for their
religious and moral teachings, and eager to limit the traditional rights and duties
of sovereigns and religious authorities. To counteract the spread of revolutionary
values, conservatives advocated strict enforcement of censorship regulations that,
eventually, prepared the way for a tighter control of political writing and commen-
tary over the course of the 1790s.
There were also a number of German observers, especially in territories such as
Brunswick, Danish-controlled Schleswig, and Holstein, Prussia, and the northern
Imperial Free Cities, who considered themselves already to be living under better
and more modern political conditions than the Revolution was ever likely to bring
about in France. Their interest in the Revolution was primarily a disinterested one
the view of a spectator. In the early stages of the German analysis of the Revolution,
the idea of spectatorship became an important one. Before the beginning of the
wars between the German states and the French Republic, there was a certain feel-
ing of safety in Germany. The Revolution was a peculiarly French concern. In the
beginning, many Germans were spectators uninvolved directly in events though
emotionally and intellectually touched by them. In this vein, Wieland identied the
French Revolution as the greatest and the most fascinating of all dramas ever being
played out on earth. In 1798, Immanuel Kant published his treatise The Contest of the
Faculties, in which he wondered what historical events or experiences would allow
the conclusion that humankind possesses a moral aptitude and that progress in
general leads to better conditions. In his view, this event could not be a revolution
itself but the way of thinking of the spectators, which becomes evident in the revo-
lutionary drama of great transformations. Thus, the importance lies not in repeating
the experiment, but in the participation of the spectators who are not involved in
the spectacle themselves.
Whether observing, empathizing, or criticizing revolutionary events as they un-
folded, views on the Revolution grew more and more somber. The German public
was shocked by the excesses of the French Revolution, especially the execution of
the king, and apprehensive about the possibility of their repetition in Germany.
The Reign of Terror marked a turning point in the Revolutions effect on Germany.
Many leading intellectuals, like Klopstock and Wieland, turned away from the Revo-
lution. In his Phenomenology of Mind (1806), Hegel identied Jacobin terror with
the hour of death. Edmund Burkes Reections on the French Revolution and Friedrich
von Gentzs (1764 1832) translation of that book crystallized anti-revolutionary
thinking in German states. The scale of the violence and the high death toll were
staggering, and the political implications of the abolition of monarchy were hardly
conceivable.
After the outbreak of war between revolutionary France and the German states
it was difcult for Germans to distinguish between their views on the Revolution
and their views on the war. French insistence on annexing German territories in
the Rhineland and on extending the so-called natural frontiers of the country
(the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees), combined with French military successes,
caused the initial enchantment with the Republic to fade away. The French decision
not to limit themselves to defending the achievements of the Revolution, but rather
to pursue a policy of aggressive territorial expansion at the expense of the Ger-
mans, inevitably created a negative public image in Germany. Two concrete causes
of friction between the new France and the old Europe arose over the abolition of
the feudal rights of German princes on the left bank of the Rhine and the harbor-
ing of French migrs in German states. The war that had begun in 1792 between
France and the German states was extensively discussed in the press. The public
was eager not only to hear the news but also to debate the decisions made by their
respective governments. However, despite the rise in anti-French sentiment, there
was no enthusiasm for war against France until 1813. The Peace of Basel in 1795
was welcomed by Germans, but friction began when France abolished feudal and
ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the German lands in Alsace. Prussia joined the anti-
French coalition, led by Austria, in 1792 but was defeated at the battles of Valmy
and Jemappes.
Many considered the Napoleonic Wars to be a direct continuation of the French
Revolutionary Wars, so that the struggle against the Revolution became the source
of emerging national feeling in Germany. Although it could be argued that Ger-
man nationalism existed long before 1789, it was the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars that started transforming German cultural nationalism into po-
litical nationalism. Concurrent with the military struggle against Revolutionary and
Napoleonic France, leading German intellectuals, including Lessing, Klopstock,
Hamman, and Herder, provided a solid foundation for a nationalist literature and
a nationalist system of education, thus freeing German thought from French mod-
els. Ultimately, the experience of the Revolution became a prerequisite for the aes-
thetic theories and great works of art of German classicism and romanticism. The
notion of art as a means of attaining the unity of the individual and of humankind
in the works of Schiller, Novalis, and Hlderin was a reaction to fragmentation and
violence in society and politics. In their declaration of the autonomy of art, art was
equated with philosophical reason and sociopolitical activity due to its ability to ex-
ercise a humanizing social effect. In its autonomous essence, art could act as an ideal
and model for mans self-determination. This new denition of art was exemplied
by Friedrich Schiller in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794), a funda-
mental text on the theory of aesthetics. Drafted as an alternative to political revolu-
tion, it was built on the revolutionary postulates of freedom, self-determination, and
humanity. According to Schiller, under existing social conditions, it was aesthetic
experience, not a revolutionary experience akin to the French Revolution, that
could liberate man in the fullness of his moral character. Improvements in politi-
cal life could follow from man regaining his integrity and freedom in the aesthetic
condition. This freedom is not equated with political freedom but rather facilitates
it. While Schiller called the aesthetic condition the second creator of humankind,
Goethe regarded his claim as an excessive demand on aesthetic elements and clas-
sied it as aesthetic Jacobinism.
Another consequence of political events in France in general and revolutionary
ideology in particular was the introduction into Germany of new terminology, sym-
bols, and principles, including those of political and legal freedoms and national
unity. New terms of political jargon came to symbolize these changes. An important
part of German political vocabulary derives from the political language of the era
of the French Revolution. The concept of the division of the political spectrum into
Left and Right; the concepts of citizenship, representation of the people, majority,
minority, and aristocracy; and the words monarchist, democrat, demagogy,
reaction, and propaganda were all introduced. A large number of dictionaries
of revolutionary language were published to reect these changes in vocabulary.
Thus, by 1795, the word patriot had come to signify not the ardent lover of father-
land, but an opponent of abuse of the old constitution, and later came to signify
an opponent of monarchy. The new French symbols of political struggle were also
introduced in Germany. In the early stages, cockades were worn, liberty trees were
planted (as reected, for instance, in Goethes sketch Landscape with the Tree of Lib-
erty), and revolutionary clubs were founded.
The combined inuence of the revolutionary ideas of 1789 and the wars that fol-
lowed produced several concrete results in Germany. First, the political framework
of the country changed. The reaction to the Revolution rendered German society
very political and brought about a splitting and a polarization of society into various
political and ideological factions, though such a tendency could also be seen before
1789. Second, the weakness the Holy Roman Empire demonstrated in the war, the
fall of Prussia, and the disintegration of the Ecclesiastical Electorate clearly revealed
that the German states needed to be reformed. Following Germans disappointment
with the course of the French Revolution and the lack of reform from above in the
German states after 1793, another opportunity for the realization of the reformist
objectives arose after the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. The war with
Napoleon gave further impetus for reform. In a way, the Napoleonic reforms intro-
duced into the states of the Confederation of the Rhine, together with the earlier
reforms of the revolutionary period, became a model for Prussias extensive post-
1807 reforms that guaranteed equality before the law, freedom of the individual,
property rights, the independence of the judiciary, the abolition of serfdom, and
open access to public ofce. Thus, Prussias renaissance after its military debacle of
1806 may be considered an indirect consequence of the principles promulgated by
FURTHER READING: Blanning, T.C.W. The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and
Resistance in the Rhineland 1792 1802. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984; Gooch, G. P.
Germany and the French Revolution. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966; Kurtz, Gerhard. Germany
and the French Revolution. Bonn: Inter Nationes, 1989; Saine, Thomas P. Black Bread White
Bread: German Intellectuals and the French Revolution. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics,
and Culture 36. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1988; Trger, Claus, ed. Die Franzsische
Revolution im Spiegel der deutschen Literatur. Leipzig: P. Reclam, 1975.
NATALIE BAYER
Pugachev Rebellion 607
Pugachev Rebellion (1773 1775)
The Pugachev rebellion was the greatest peasant rebellion in eighteenth-century
Russia. The leader of the uprising, a Don Cossack, Emilian Ivanovich Pugachev
(c. 1742 1775) assembled a diverse group of Cossacks, peasants, serfs, Ural mine
workers, ethnic minorities, and religious dissidents dissatised with heavy taxation
and military recruitment, the disruption of the traditional foundations of society,
the tightening of state regulations, and the curtailing of local political autonomy.
The spontaneous outbreak of disaffected elements grew into a rebellion aimed at
changing the social and political foundations of society.
During the rst phase of the revolt, in the fall and winter of 1773 1774, Pugachev
led the attack on Orenburg, the seat of government authority in the Ural Mountain
region, though the rebels soon had to retreat to the mountains. The second phase
began in the late spring of 1774, when after amassing an army of followers, Pugachev
took several fortresses in the Volga valley, including Kazan, by which time the rebels
had established an imitation of the imperial court, complete with a government
and a regular army. With the uprising at its height, Tsarina Catherine II redirected
some troops from the war with Turkey to the Urals. The rebels were pushed into
the mountains, where Pugachev was captured. Without its leader, who was publicly
executed in Moscow in 1775, the uprising dissipated.
Claiming to be Tsar Peter III (1728 1762) and to have escaped death in Cather-
ines plot of 1762, Pugachev projected himself as an ideal ruler. While he granted
only temporary relief from serfdom, taxation, and recruitment, he endeavored to
establish a simple society where the ruler represented a father to his people. Puga-
chev aspired to limit the mediating power of the nobility and to restore the natural
bond between the tsar and the people.
FURTHER READING: Alexander, John T. Autocratic Politics in a National Crisis: The Imperial
Russian Government and Pugachevs Revolt, 1773 1775. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1969; Raeff, Marc. Pugachevs Rebellion. In Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe,
ed. Robert Forster and Jack P. Greene. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.
NATALIE BAYER
Q
The Quartering Act was passed by Parliament in 1765 and was intended to offset
the cost of housing British troops in the North American colonies in the years fol-
lowing the close of the French and Indian War (1754 1763). The provisions called
for soldiers to be housed in barracks and provided basic provisions, including bed-
ding, cooking utensils, and a daily ration of cider . The initial act was amended in
1766 to include unoccupied buildings, inns, and taverns as potential billets for Brit-
ish regulars. The underlying motivation of this parliamentary action was to mini-
mize outlays and to discern colonial reactions to indirect taxation.
The colonial leaders resented this infringement on their basic rights and reg-
istered their concerns with British ofcials. On a philosophical level, colonists op-
posed the act because their views were not considered and because they feared
standing armies during periods of peace. On a practical level, the quartering of
soldiers placed a nancial burden on the colonies, albeit a relatively minor one,
and compromised the privacy of many colonists. The opposition to this legislation
was particularly strong in New York, where the British commander in North Amer-
ica was headquartered with a sizable contingent of soldiers. The New York Assembly
announced in 1766 that it would only pay a fraction of the cost of housing troops,
and Parliament promptly suspended the legislature and declared the Assemblys ac-
tions null and void. While tensions did eventually subside, the quartering of soldiers
was a source of tension throughout the decade prior to the American Revolution.
A major component of the Coercive Acts of 1774 was an amendment to the Quar-
tering Act, which allowed soldiers to be housed in occupied dwellings. The quar-
tering of troops was listed as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence and
motivated the passage of the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution.
FURTHER READING: Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coer-
cive Acts of 1774. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973; Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution:
The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760 1790. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
JAMES T. CARROLL
610 Quebec Act
Quebec Act (1774)
An act of Parliament considered by the rebellious 13 colonies to be one of the
Coercive Acts contributing to the mounting case in favor of independence from
Britain. Assuming that they would gain access to new territory to their west, the colo-
nists had cooperated with Britains successful efforts to eliminate French control of
Canada and Louisiana in the French and Indian Wars (1754 1763). The Proclama-
tion of 1763, however, halted settlement beyond the Appalachians, whereupon the
Quebec Act gave administration of the Ohio Valley to Canada by extending the
boundaries of Quebec to the Ohio River in the south and to the Mississippi River
in the west.
The acts purpose was twofold. First, Britain wanted to reconstitute the former
French Empire in North America by restoring its economic unity through the in-
tegration of the area of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes
with Quebec in such a way as to project British authority into the interior of North
America beyond the Appalachians. Second, the act was designed to put Britains
relationship with its new French-speaking and Catholic subjects in Quebec on an
amicable basis. In addition to new territory, the act therefore guaranteed to Quebec
its seigneurial system of land tenure and civil law and conrmed the rights of the
Roman Catholic Church in Canada, including the right to control of education.
The act halted 50 years of expansion of the American colonies and cut off the
Crowns American subjects from territories to which they felt entitled after having
aided Britain in expelling French power from North America. Additionally, Britain
was now in principle establishing Roman Catholicism in the Ohio Valley . It con-
rmed the suspicions of the rebellious American colonies that the Crown sought to
thwart their westward expansion even as it told the more militantly Protestant among
them that George III tended toward popery and would surrender vast territory to
a social and political system they regarded as a feudal tyranny in order to do so.
FURTHER READING: Alden, John. A History of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf,
1969; Mackesy, Piers. The War for America, 1775 1778. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1964; Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the American People. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965; Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York:
Vintage, 1991.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Josiah Quincys place in history would be more prominent today had he lived
longer . Although he was an important gure in Massachusetts, what is most impor-
tant in considering his legacy are his travels to the other colonies. In traveling as
far south as the Carolinas, Quincy gave a face and a personal presence to the ideas
emerging from Massachusetts.
Under the name Hyperion, Quincy wrote papers and articles that dened and
supported opposition to Parliaments legislation. With John Adams, he defended
the British soldiers tried for killing civilians in the Boston Massacre of March 1770.
Although none of the Patriots believed the soldiers to be innocent, it was thought
necessary to provide the defendants with the best courtroom defense possible to
avoid accusations that justice could not function in Massachusetts.
Quincy, Josiah 611
In 1773 Quincy traveled to other colonies, meeting with local political leaders.
Because most, if not all, of their knowledge of events in New England derived from
correspondence, pamphlets, and newspapers, these personal meetings helped to
create a feeling of common cause among different regions.
In 1774, Quincy wrote and published Observations on the Act of Parliament,
commonly called the Boston Port Bill, with Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing
Armies. Advocating a pact among the colonies to oppose British policies, it was
printed and distributed throughout the colonies as well as in Britain. Later that
year he sailed to Britain, where he met with Benjamin Franklin and sympathetic
Whig leaders and advocated American rights. Leaving Britain in March 1775, he
died at sea just offshore from Massachusetts. See also Boston Port Act; Coercive Acts;
Navigation Acts; Whigs.
FURTHER READING: McFarland, Philip James. The Brave Bostonians: Hutchinson, Franklin,
Quincy, and the Coming of the American Revolution. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998; Quincy,
Josiah. Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy . New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.
ROBERT N. STACY
R
Rabaut de Saint Etienne, Jean Paul (17431793)
A prominent French revolutionary, Jean Paul Rabaut de Saint Etienne (also
spelled Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, or Rabaut or Rabaud de Saint-Etienne) was born to
a Protestant family in Nmes. He followed his fathers footsteps in becoming a pas-
tor. He was educated at the Lausanne seminary in 17631765 and was ordained as
a pastor in 1764. Serving as a Protestant pastor in Toulouse and Nmes, he worked
energetically to secure civil rights for Protestants, which Louis XVI granted in 1787.
After writing Lettres sur lhistoire primitive de la Grce, he gained national prominence
and was elected as a representative of the Third Estate of Nmes and Beaucaire to
the Estates-General in 1789. He participated in the debates leading to the Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, was elected a member of the
committee for drafting the constitution, and was elected president of the National
Assembly (March 1527, 1790), despite protests among the nobles and Roman
Catholic clergy, who opposed his demands for equal rights for Protestants.
In 1791, Rabaut de Saint Etienne worked on the framing of the constitution of
that year and edited the Chronique de Paris and the Moniteur Universel. To publicize
his views, he also published the Feuille villageoise. He was elected administrator of the
dpartement of Gard in September 1791 but chose to remain in Paris. In 1792, he was
elected to the National Convention as a deputy for the dpartement of Aube and sat
among the Girondins at the trial of Louis XVI, where he voted for the detention,
and later for the delay, of the kings execution. In late May 1793, he served as a
member of the Committee of Public Safety to ensure the security of the Girondin-
controlled government but failed to prevent the Jacobin coup on June 2, 1793. He
was put on the list of the Girondin deputies subject to arrest and went into hiding
in Versailles and Paris for the next few months. He was arrested and guillotined
on December 5, 1793. Rabaut de Saint Etienne was the elder brother of Jacques-
Antoine Rabaut, dit Rabaut-Pommier, deputy of the National Convention. See also
French Revolution; Jacobins; Reign of Terror.
614 Randolph, Edmund
FURTHER READING: Dartique, J. A. Rabaut St-Etienne lAssemblee Constituante. Paris,
1903; Dupont, Andr. Rabaut de Saint-Etienne. Strasbourg: Editions Oberlin, 1946; Rabaut
de Saint Etienne, Jean-Paul. uvres. Paris: Laisn frres, 1826; Robert, Adolphe, Edgar
Bourloton, and Gaston Cougny, eds. Dictionnaire des parlementaires franais. Paris: Bourloton,
18891891.
Randolph, Edmund (17531813)
Edmund Randolph was born on August 10, 1753, into a prominent Williamsburg,
Virginia, family that was very closely associated with colonial politics in Virginia and
the movement for independence. His father was the attorney general of Virginia,
and his uncle served as the rst president of the First Continental Congress. He
attended the College of William and Mary and read law under the tutelage of his
fathera partnership that endured until the two men split over the issue of inde-
pendence. His father afrmed his Loyalist perspective and left for Britain when war
broke out, while Edmund committed himself to the cause of revolution and sought
out a commission in the Continental Army.
During the American Revolutionary War, Randolph made a very favorable im-
pression on General George Washington, who in 1775 invited him to be his aide-
de-camp, a position reserved for men devoted to both the revolutionary cause and
to Washington personally. In 1776 Randolph served as delegate to the Virginia Con-
vention and was chosen as the attorney general of the newly independent Common-
wealth of Virginia. He was elected to the Second Continental Congress in 1779 and
was governor of Virginia between 1786 and 1788.
Randolphs most important contribution to the early republic came at the Con-
stitutional Convention in 1787. With signicant assistance from James Madison,
Randolph drafted and presented the Virginia Plan, which proposed scrapping the
Articles of Confederation and forming a national legislature based on state popu-
lation. This proposalsometimes called the Randolph Planengendered intense
debate and serious divisions in the Constitutional Convention yet provided an es-
sential framework for the nascent federal constitution. The Connecticut Compro-
mise, which called for a bicameral legislature in which the Senate would defend the
interests of the individual states and the House of Representatives would reect
the interests of the general population, borrowed heavily from Randolphs plan.
Concerns over the lack of checks and balances prompted Randolphs refusal to give
his approval for the United States Constitution, yet he encouraged Virginia to ratify
the instrument.
In spite of his misgivings regarding the power of the federal government, Ran-
dolph served as the rst attorney general and second secretary of state during Presi-
dent Washingtons administration. He resigned as secretary of state in August 1795
amid speculation fueled by France that he was soliciting bribes. He returned to the
practice of law and defended Aaron Burr during his trial for treason in 1807. He
died in Millwood, Virginia, on September 13, 1813.
FURTHER READING: Reardon, John. Edmund Randolph: A Biography. New York: Macmillan,
1975.
JAMES T. CARROLL
Randolph, Peyton 615
Peyton Randolph was a leading gure in colonial politics and was elected as
the rst president of the First Continental Congress in 1774 but died before the
adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Randolph was born to a wealthy and
prominent family in Williamsburg, Virginia, on September 21, 1721. He graduated
from the College of William and Mary and studied law in London, where he was
admitted to the bar in 1743. Randolph returned to Virginia and established a law
practice, but in 1748, through his fathers inuence, Randolph was appointed the
kings attorney (attorney general) for the colony. He was also elected a member of
the House of Burgesses. Randolph gained fame throughout the colonies in 1751
when he claimed that the Toleration Act, which applied to religion, did not apply to
the colonies. Randolph also led opposition to a fee imposed by the royal governor
of Virginia on land transactions and secured the removal of the tax during a mission
to London in 1754. Infuriated, the governor suspended Randolph, but the govern-
ment in London ordered his reinstatement.
Randolph became a close condant of George Washington, and he was both a
friend and cousin to Thomas Jefferson. He had a series of very public disagree-
ments with Patrick Henry. Randolph personied the older, conservative colonial
elite, while Henry and his counterparts were more radical. Nonetheless, in 1760,
Randolph approved Henrys appeal following the rejection of his law license. In
1764, Randolph chaired the committee that crafted the response of the Burgesses
to the Stamp Act, though he opposed the series of amendments offered by Henry,
known as the Virginia Stamp Act Resolution (ve of Henrys seven amendments
were adopted by the legislature).
Although he favored settlement of the outstanding disputes between the colo-
nies and Britain, Randolph gradually came to favor independence. In 1766, he was
elected Speaker of the Burgesses and resigned as kings attorney. Randolph contin-
ued to serve as a counterweight to the more impetuous Henry, but both increasingly
worked to garner support for more autonomy for the colonies. Randolph supported
Henrys proposed measures to oppose the Townshend Acts. In 1769, the Burgesses
were dissolved by the governor because of their opposition to restrictive trade regu-
lations.
In May 1773, Randolph became the chair of the Virginia Committee of Cor-
respondence, and he chaired the Virginia Convention the following year. The
Convention appointed Randolph as one of its delegates to the First Continental
Congress in Philadelphia. The Congress unanimously elected Randolph as its presi-
dent. The position was largely ceremonial, but the election of Randolph was seen as
a unifying gesture among the colonies. He served from September 5 to October 21,
1774. Randolph then resigned but returned to Virginia to serve again as Speaker.
He was elected to the Second Continental Congress, and again elected president
on May 10, 1775, but again only served a brief period (less than one month) due
to ill health. Randolph died in Philadelphia on October 22, 1775. See also Adams,
John; American Revolution; Boston Port Act; Boston Tea Party; Committees of Cor-
respondence; Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms; De-
claratory Act; Randolph, Edmund; Virginia Resolves.
FURTHER READING: Daniels, Jonathan. 1972. The Randolphs of Virginia. Garden City,
NJ: Doubleday, 1972; Henderson, H. James. Party Politics in the Continental Congress.
616 Rankin, William
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974; Reardon, John. Peyton Randolph, 17211775: One Who Presided.
Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1982.
TOM LANSFORD
William Rankin was a Pennsylvania landowner and militia colonel who secretly
passed information to British headquarters for ve years during the American Revo-
lution. After eeing across British lines, he served as an advisor to Sir Henry Clinton
and died in exile in Britain.
William Rankin was a member of a prominent family in western Pennsylvania.
In 1776, he served in the Continental Congress but broke with American Patriots
over the Declaration of Independence. He secretly offered his services to the British
that year. The British instructed him to pass on intelligence but were too cautious
to approve Rankins more audacious schemes, especially after a 1778 plot to seize a
magazine failed and Rankin came under suspicion.
As the war continued, Rankin languished on the Pennsylvania frontier, closely
watched by his superiors and neighbors. Rankin was not idle; he built a formidable
force of at least 1,800 Loyalist spies and agents. Rankin reported to General Clinton
that he had as many as 8,000 men ready to rise up and seize forts along the western
frontier. Clinton could not spare the men to assist a rising in western Pennsylvania,
however, and Rankin decided not to risk his men without British support.
Suspicion caught up with Rankin in March 1781, when he was arrested. He man-
aged to escape and ed to British-occupied New York. He became an ofcer on Clin-
tons staff and devised a number of new plots, including the seizure of Philadelphia
by a ying column and the establishment of a Loyalist refuge in the upper South.
Clinton decided this idea had merit and divided his forces to hold coastal Virginia.
This decision led indirectly to the capture of Cornwalliss army at Yorktown.
In 1783, Rankin followed the evacuating British Army to Britain and his estate
was seized by the U.S. government. Rankin received a generous pension from the
British government and died in England in 1830. See also Continental Congress,
Second; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Burgess Shenstone, Susan. So Obstinately Loyal: James Moody, 1744 1809.
Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000; Clinton, Henry. The American Rebellion: Sir
Henry Clintons Narrative of His Campaigns, 1775 1782, with an Appendix of Original Documents.
Edited by William B. Willcox. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1954; Van Doren, Carl.
Secret History of the American Revolution. New York: Viking, 1941.
JAMES L. ERWIN
Reign of Terror (17931794)
The phrase Reign of Terror refers to the most violent episode of the French
Revolution, which took place from the summer of 1793 to the summer of 1794.
That period of brutal repression is principally associated with the gure of Maximil-
ien Robespierre, the most prominent member of the Committee of Public Safety.
Ideologically, the Reign of Terror shows how principles of democracy, freedom, and
virtue can be dangerously taken to the extreme to justify totalitarianism and the
suspension of civil liberties.
Reign of Terror 617
The Reign of Terror did not start on a specic date in summer 1793. In the ab-
sence of any salient event such as a political coup, historians have proposed different
dates to mark the beginning of the Terror. Many have adopted the date of Septem-
ber 17, 1793, when the National Convention (the legislative assembly) passed the
Law of Suspects authorizing the charging of all alleged counterrevolutionaries with
vaguely dened crimes against liberty. Some historians tend to prefer the date of
September 5, 1793, when the Convention ofcially adopted terror as its national
policy (the phrase to make terror the order of the day is often quoted in that
respect, though it is not clear who coined it). Other scholars favor the earlier date
of June 2, as the arrest of Girondin deputies (including Jean-Pierre Brissot) pre-
gured the deleterious way the Jacobin republic was to deal with all its opponents.
Other symbolic dates include July 13 (assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, who was
soon to become a patriotic martyr), July 27 (when Robespierre joined the Commit-
tee of Public Safety), and even October 16 (the beheading of Marie Antoinette, nine
months after Louis XVI). In any case, the end of the Reign of Terror can be more
precisely pinpointed: July 27, 1794 (arrest of Robespierre and other key terrorists
such as Saint-Just and Couthon), and July 2830 (execution of over 100 supporters
of Robespierre in Paris), marking the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction.
The key characteristics of the Reign of Terror include a state of emergency in
which violence was justied to protect the young Republic, with a well-organized
terrorist apparatus nationwide, resulting in many arrests, nes, imprisonments, and
sentences to death. Historians concur that during these 10 to 12 months, up to a
half-million people were imprisoned for political crimes. Revolutionary courts and
tribunals sent over 16,000 men and women to the guillotine, and over 40,000 were
executed without trial or died in prison awaiting trial. If one includes the 200,000
deaths from the Vendan rebellion, the total number of deaths due to the Terror is
over 250,000. With the exception of the Vende and parts of Brittany, the Terror was
predominantly an urban phenomenon; besides Paris, the cities most affected were
Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon. The systematic repression of all perceived enemies
of the Republic was made possible by a government highly centralized around the
Committee of Public Safety.
Set up in April 1793, the Committee of Public Safety has become closely associ-
ated with the Reign of Terror, as it imposed terror as the national policy in order to
safeguard the legacy of the Revolution. This group of 12 men is sometimes referred
to as the Commission of Twelve. They all originated from the French petty bour-
geoisie, and their average age of 38 years, the youngest member, Louis de Saint-Just,
being only 26. This unique political organization within the Jacobin republic was es-
sential to the mechanisms whereby the Terror spread across France with systems of
arrests, show trials, and public executions. The Committee of Public Safety operated
as an executive government responsible for the implementation of the laws passed
by the Convention. Two other institutions, the Committee of General Security (re-
sponsible for the surveillance of the police force) and the insurrectionary Paris
Commune (whose military power was supported by the sans-culottes and by a Paris-
ian revolutionary army from September 1793 onward) initially competed with it.
The law of December 4, 1793 (14 Frimaire, Year II, in the French revolution-
ary calendar, hence its name, the Law of Frimaire), reorganized the revolutionary
government, and by spring 1794, the Committee of Public Safety had substantially
strengthened its authority and was leading the country and the policy of terror.
Through an original system of collective decision making, shared responsibility, and
618 Reign of Terror
condential debates, the 12 members of the committeeBertrand Barre (1755
1841); Jean Nicolas (sometimes Jacques Nicolas) Billaud-Varenne (1756 1819);
Lazare Carnot (17531823), Jean Marie Collot dHerbois (1750?1796); Georges
Couthon (1755? 1794), Marie Jean Hrault de Schelles (17591794); Robert
Lindet (1743?1825); Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois, also known as Prieur de
la Cte-dOr) (17631832); Pierre-Louis Prieur, also known as Prieur de la Marne
(1756 1827); Maximilien Robespierre (17581794); Andr Jeanbon Saint-Andr
(17491813); and Louis Antoine Lon de Saint-Just (17671794), who was nick-
named the Archangel of Terrorco-led a quasi-dictatorial regime. With different
areas of expertise, different personalities, and different interests, the 12 men were
hardly ever together in Paris at the same time; some were often away on mission in
the provinces, supervising the local implementations of the Terror through watch
committees as well as the regional enforcement of the continuously new laws and
decrees originating from the Paris-based Convention. Although Robespierre did
not formally occupy any leadership role on the Committee of Public Safety, he was
its de facto gurehead. He was often the committees spokesman at the Convention,
at the Jacobin Club, and at the Paris Commune; he was also the key ideological force
behind the Terror: while other committee members (such as Carnot and Collot)
were men of action, Robespierre was rather a man of rhetoric and a thinker and was
mainly responsible for the ideology behind the Terror.
Ideologically, the Reign of Terror did not follow any preplanned or prewritten po-
litical strategy: it was rather a continuous creation through the pragmatic application
of the principles of the Enlightenment in a context of national chaos and anarchy,
whilst the young French Republic was threatened both internally and externally. The
writings of Rousseau (especially The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right, 1762),
and to a lesser extent those of Voltaire and Montesquieu, were a particular inspiration
to Robespierre, who took their concepts of liberty, individual rights, and democracy
to the extreme, turning them into an ideology of terror. He was only 35 and had had
limited experience in public ofce and with political responsibilities when his execu-
tive position on the Committee of Public Safety gave him the power and authority
to turn his theoretical ideas into reality. He used terror as the process to create his
utopia, a truly democratic society where virtue, equality, and freedom would reign.
From his perspective, terror was necessary in order to ensure the eventual triumph
of revolutionary ideals and the implementation of a morally united patriotic commu-
nity. Both as a theory and as a practice, terror was inevitable and laudable. Extreme
measures of repression, purges, bloodshed, and autocratic control were justied by
the long-term public good and the supreme need to preserve the heritage of the
Revolution and to ascertain the demise of the ancien rgime: the end justied the
means. Robespierre gradually conceptualized the notion of terror, referring to it in
several speeches and texts: Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, in-
exible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle
as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our countrys
most urgent needs. Robespierre often associated terror with virtue, the two being
inseparable: If the aim of popular government in peacetime is virtue, then the aim of
popular government in a time of Revolution is virtue and terror at one and the same
time: virtue without terror is disastrous, terror without virtue is impotent. Such state-
ments provide an insight into Robespierres thinking and into the ideology of terror
he developed and implemented through the Committee of Public Safety.
Reign of Terror 619
There is more to the Reign of Terror than its well-known excessive repression.
Other aspects need to be considered in order to appreciate the political ambition
of that failed yet original ideology, especially with regard to economics and religion.
With regard to economics, the Terror initially occurred during a troubled period of
food shortages and food riots. A range of measures were taken, such as the creation
of public granaries. Price control was the strategy advocated by the Committee of
Public Safety: on September 29, 1793, the Convention passed a Law of General Max-
imum on the price of food, including bread, wine, cider, meat, sh, fruit, vegetables,
and honey, as well as the price of goods such as wool, leather, cloth, soap, steel, and
copper. Hoarders and speculators were arrested, ned, and even guillotined. These
economic restrictions also included wage control, which shows a clear attempt by
the state to try to control and stabilize the economy. Although it was never fully im-
plemented, the Terror was underpinned by a program of redistribution of wealth;
the Ventse Decrees of February 26 and March 3, 1794 (8 13 Ventse, Year II),
were written in that spirit: eliminating pauperism and ensuring some welfare for
all were parts of the socioeconomic goals of the Terror. With regard to religion,
one may distinguish between two phases: rst, a brutal dechristianization (in au-
tumn 1793), and second, an attempt at creating a new revolutionary religion (in
spring 1794). The rst years of the Revolution had already been marked by a strong
anti-clericalism, and under the Terror this phenomenon intensied, with the loot-
ing of religious buildings, more deportation of priests or forced marriages, and
even symbolic actions such as the removal of the word Saint from street names, as
well as the desecration of the royal tombs at Saint-Denis. It is not possible in a few
weeks to erase centuries of Catholic tradition though, especially in rural areas. The
Committee of Public Safety realized that this policy would not rally national support
but would lead to even more anarchy, so a change of direction was taken. Instead of
eradicating religion across France and imposing atheism by force with little chance
of success, Robespierre proposed a new cult to replace Christianity: the revolution-
ary eradication of the Catholic cult would take place through the cult of the Su-
preme Being. It was not a godless cult of reason, but rather a monotheist belief in
a godhead who was watching over France and would help the Revolution triumph
over its enemies. The cult of the Supreme Being was declared the state religion,
and on June 8, 1794 (20 Prairial, Year II), the nation celebrated the rst ofcial
Festival of the Supreme Being, orchestrated in Paris by the French artist Jacques-
Louis David. This new religion only lasted a few months, as it never gained popular
support, but it shows how ideological the Terror wasa vast enterprise of social and
moral regeneration that aimed to create a new culture and even a new society.
Fiercely chasing and eliminating all apparent opponents was the method that
enabled the Terror to carry on for almost a year, until even its gureheads found
themselves outlawed and eliminated. The Terror fed on ghts: military ghts
(against the Chouans in the Vende, or against the coalition armies of Prussia and
Austria on the northeastern borders of France, or against Britain with the siege of
Toulon on the Mediterranean coast), civic ghts (with national agents and repre-
sentatives from the Convention sent to the provinces with the power to remove and
condemn local administrative chiefs), and ideological ghts (even against previ-
ous friends and allies such as Georges Danton and the Indulgents, who suddenly
appeared too moderate, or Jacques Hbert and his supporters, who became too
extreme). Under the pretext of protecting national security, crushing all types of
620 Reign of Terror
resistance and opposition was the motto and the tenet of the Terror. Following the
military victories of the autumn of 1793the Battle of Hondschoote on Septem-
ber 8, the defeat of the Austrian army at the Battle of Wattignies on October 16,
and the French victory against the British at Toulon in December)the Terror
focused its energy internally in the spring and summer of 1794, resulting in an
increase in the number of condemnations and executions. France was then living
in an overwhelming climate of threat and suspicion: it was said that even owers in
a womans hair could be a secret sign for possible conspirators. Although some re-
gions were more affected than others, all over the country anyone could be arrested
and suspected of being an enemy of the Revolution. Trials were swift and the guil-
lotine was often used, especially in Paris. Its most important excesses took place in
the last months of the Reign of Terror, as emblematized by the arrest of Danton on
March 30, 1794 (10 Germinal, Year II). After a rapid trial over the following days,
during which Danton was removed from the courtroom and unable to defend him-
self, he was found guilty on April 5 and guillotined a few hours later (16 Germinal).
Two months later, the draconian law of June 10, 1794 (22 Prairial, Year II, hence the
Law of 22 Prairial), streamlined the operations of the revolutionary tribunals and
took legal procedures to the extreme: suspects lost the right to a lawyer and could
be convicted even in the absence of any material proof. The Law of Prairial, which
started a period called the Great Terror, is emblematic of the way the Terror was
starting to self-destruct, having lost touch not only with the masses, but also with
common sense and all rationality. Declining support from the population and from
its representatives at the Convention, disillusion, moroseness, growing hostility, divi-
sions, and internal tensions within the Committee of Public Safety all explain the
paradoxical end of the Terror in July 1794, when Robespierre himself became a
victim of the system he had designed and put in place. Following a conspiracy at the
Convention, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon were declared enemies of the
Republic on July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, Year II); they were arrested and guillotined
the following day, without trial, in the pure style of the Terror.
As the bloodiest episode of the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror ended
abruptly with the execution of Robespierre and over 100 Robespierrists. A few days
later, the Law of Prairial was repealed, and within a few weeks, the whole machin-
ery of the Terror was dismantled. The Convention explicitly signaled a political
move into a different direction, yet the so-called Thermidorian Reaction could not
avoid a phenomenon of repression very reminiscent of the Terror itself. Hundreds
of Jacobins and previous proponents of the Terror were arrested and executed.
During this White Terror of the Year III (September 1794 September 1795),
the terrorists of the previous few months became the new targets; it was a form
of revenge on the part of all the previous suspects, now released from prison, and
many royalists. Violence followed violence, and anti-Jacobin terror replaced the
Reign of Terror, whilst Jacobin became a term of opprobrium. Sporadic attacks
across France lasted about a year until the formal demise of the Convention as a
republican institution on September 26, 1795, when the Constitution of the Year
III took effect, installing the Directory with the rst bicameral legislature in French
history, which started a new political era. The ideological heritage of the Reign of
Terror is still controversial: it has been interpreted in several ways because of its
intrinsic contradictions. In 17931794, the fear of a counterrevolution and the
fear of invasion by foreign monarchist powers created the frenzied paranoia of
Religion 621
the governing bodies and the terrorist chaos that ensued. The state-sanctioned
violence was paradoxically accompanied by a concern for humanitarianism, as em-
blematized by the decree on the abolition of slavery in the French colonies on
August 23, 1793, and by the plans to redistribute to the poor the belongings of po-
litical prisoners. One can also see the beginnings of modern interventionism and
socialism with social reforms, a new tradition of parliamentary democracy, and the
separation of church and state, although all this occurred within a repressive and
highly centralized government that pregured twentieth-century totalitarian re-
gimes (hence the frequent comparisons of Robespierre to Stalin and Hitler). The
Reign of Terror arguably saved the French Revolution from disintegration, yet its
extreme intransigence could only lead to self-destruction. It is mainly remembered
for its violence and arbitrary executions, which is why, from an etymological view-
point, the terms terror and terrorist took on the meaning and connotations
they still carry today.
Abacus, 2005; Baker, K . M., ed. The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political
Culture: The Terror. London: Pergamon, 1987; Bouloiseau, M. The Jacobin Republic, 17921794.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984; Feher, F. The Frozen Revolution: An Essay on
Jacobinism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Gough, H. The Terror in the French
Revolution. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998; Kerr, W. B. Reign of Terror, 1793 1794.
London: Porcupine Press, 1985; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French
Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; Scurr, R. Fatal Purity: Robespierre
and the French Revolution. London: Chatto and Windus, 2006; Wright, D. G. Revolution and
Terror in France 1789 95. London: Longman, 1991.
L. L. LOMIN
Religion
Religion in the revolutionary era of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries was perceived in two primary ways: as a positive force for change and as a
target for elimination by anti-clerical reformers.
In America, nearly all the Founding Fathers believed traditional religion to be
helpful in the development of the new nation. While some, like Virginias Thomas
Jefferson, had become increasingly deistic in their beliefs, meaning they denied
divine revelation and limited their faith to that of a Supreme Being, most, if not
orthodox themselves, were respectful of the masses faith. Evidence for this is found
in the overwhelming number of references to the scriptures and Christian tradition
in the writings of the Founding Fathers. A study conducted recently showed that of
the 3,154 different citations found in their collected writings, 34 percent came from
scripture, whereas only 300 came from Enlightenment gures like Montesquieu,
William Blackstone, John Locke, and David Hume.
Traditional Christian faith, therefore, was not only a narrative backdrop for the
founding of the American republic; it was also believed to be a primary source of
virtue for the average citizen. John Adams articulated this clearly when he wrote,
It would be better to turn back to the gods of the Greeks than to endure a gov-
ernment of atheists. In Europe, however, where the dominant intellectual force
of the eighteenth century was the anti-clerical French Enlightenment philosopher
Voltaire, institutional religion was about to enter a period of rapid decline. Though
622 Religion
Voltaire believed religious observance to be integral to the human identity and the
health of the nation, his followers did not.
Part of the problem for the institutional churches and the papacy in Europe was
the close ties to government held by church leaders. While the church would often
claim that its welfare and the peoples were synonymous, many critics argued that
the churchs welfare was more closely tied to the maintenance of monarchies and
the various despots than to the peoples. Despite the somewhat spurious motives
of the clergy, however, the masses remained faithful in their religious faith.
The revolutionary leaders, however, were not so patient with and sympathetic
to the interests of the institutional church. In France, soon after the Revolutions
launch, dechristianization became an integral part of the revolutionary National
Assemblys agenda. The anti-clerical measures began with the National Assemblys
passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, on August 26,
1789. This legislation included the provision that No body nor individual may
exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation. As many
Frenchmen considered the pope a foreign power, this article was designed to mini-
mize his inuence in the nation.
The next assault on Christendom came with the expropriation of church proper-
ties in late 1789 (under the guise of paying off national debts). When hardly a cry
came from the papacy or the clerics, however, the revolutionary leaders were em-
boldened in their efforts, and so, on July 12, 1790, a systematic eradication of cleri-
cal inuence began in France with the legislation known as the Civil Constitution
of the Clergy. This measure placed Frances Catholic Church under state control
and made the ministers state employees. To make matters worse, on November 27,
1790, the Assembly prompted a civil war within the church by requiring an oath of
allegiance from the clergy to the constitution.
The revolutionary leadership, however, was not content with mere dechristiani-
zation. In November 1793, they attempted to replace traditional faith with their
own state-sponsored cult of Reason, the celebration of which included the des-
ecration of the cathedral at Notre Dame. The nations mostly observant Catholic
populace, however, did not respond kindly to the ridicule and denigration of their
church.
Sensing an emerging backlash against the National Assembly, Maximilien
Robespierre decided to soften the leaderships image by creating the cult of the
Supreme Being. Through a series of deistic rites and rituals, Robespierre attempted
to inspire religious enthusiasm and patriotic morality in the state-sponsored Feast of
the Supreme Being, held in June 1794. His efforts were for naught however, as the
cult of the Supreme Being died with him the following month.
Anti-clericalism was not limited to the French Revolution, though it was most
devastating there. This is not to say that religion died in Europe with the Revolution
in France. It did not. There were some successful revivals and reformation move-
ments in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Within Catholicism, there were sev-
eral isolated revivals in addition to the ultramontanist movement, the most famous
of which was the Oxford Movement of the 1830s, which produced one of the great
Catholic thinkers of the last 200 years, John Henry Newman. Within Protestantism,
there were also several revival movements, some of which were reform oriented, like
the antislavery efforts of William Wilberforce, and others that were prophecy ori-
ented, like John Nelson Darbys Plymouth Brethren. Despite these varying efforts,
Representatives on Mission 623
however, the institutional church in Europe has yet to recover from the seculariza-
tion of the revolutionary era.
On the other hand, in America, the various mainstream denominations experi-
enced a great deal of growth throughout the nineteenth century. Through a combi-
nation of evangelical efforts and ecclesiastic-inspired social reforms, the American
church remained a vibrant force for many years. Only recently has European revolu-
tionary secularism and anti-clericalism been widespread. Through a rapid dechris-
tianization of American schools and universities, and the governmental assumption
of welfare duties, the church in America, like the church in Europe, continues to
struggle for relevance and inuence. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary;
Ultramontanism.
FURTHER READING: Johnson, Paul. A History of Christianity. New York: Atheneum, 1977;
Noll, Mark A. Turning Points, Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Books, 1997; Novak, Michael. On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the
American Founding. New York: Encounter Books, 2002.
PETER R. MCGUIRE
Members of the National Convention were dispatched to the departments as
soon as it assembled in September 1792. Yet it was the decree of March 9, 1793,
that created the unique system of representatives on mission, dividing the country
into groups of departments and assigning deputies to each. Others were sent to the
armed forces, like Louis Saint-Just, who went to the Arme du Nord or Jeanbon
Saint-Andr, who went to the navy, while yet others were entrusted with the task of
supervising new means of making gunpowder. At any one time over 100 deputies
might be absent from the Convention on mission, playing their part in a system
that lasted until October 1795. Unlike intendants before them, or prefects later,
they were representatives of the people on temporary assignments, not permanent
administrators. In order to overcome the difculty of enforcing the law on uncoop-
erative or recalcitrant local authorities, however, they were given broad emergency
powers. For their part they were tremendously energetic, not to say sometimes vio-
lent in their conduct, but they played a key role in ensuring the survival of the em-
battled Republic during its period of great crisis in the mid-1790s.
Representatives had a largely free hand to issue their own decrees as well as to
suspend existing laws, though they had to work with people on the ground as well
as keeping in touch with Paris. Indeed, the best way to understand them is to read
the proclamations and reports they regularly submitted to the Committee of Public
Safety. They were empowered to requisition resources for the war effort as well as
levy taxes, dismiss elected ofcials, and appoint replacements. Most controversially,
they were given powers of arrest and the authority to condemn guilty parties to
death. Even after the passage of the law of 14 Frimaire, Year II (December 4, 1793),
which attempted to impose some order on the various measures that had grown
up with the revolutionary government during the past nine months, some repre-
sentatives continued to act in a more independent fashion. Their reluctance to
return to the Convention when summoned to do so was in some cases out of fear
of being held to account for corrupt or excessive practices, though many of these
624 Representatives on Mission
republican proconsuls were loath to abandon the inuence they exercised over the
localities.
In many parts of the country they were simply emissaries for the Revolution, fre-
quently expressing surprise at the ignorance they encountered. Clearly they were
concerned to establish personnel who would continue after they had moved on,
so typically, they would commence with a visit to the Jacobin Club of a major town.
There they would seek intelligence to help shape their policy and choice of person-
nel. Unreliable local administrations were purged, and more humble individuals
were often appointed to ofce, partly for political reasons, but also because wealth-
ier inhabitants had become increasingly unwilling to serve. Since representatives
were nominated by the Committee of Public Safety, then approved by deputies in
the National Convention, it is no surprise that they largely reected the dominant
political tendency. Most of the 400 deputies who went on mission were regicides,
and half of them may be classed as Montagnards, but the teams in which they
traveled might well have been mixed in terms of afliation.
Those dispatched to rebellious areas like the west or the Midi had little choice but
to concentrate on breaking resistance to the Republic. This was achieved through
military forcein the Vende or at Lyon or Toulonfollowed by severe repression.
Establishing tribunals and overseeing executions seems to have enthused some rep-
resentatives, such as Jean Marie Collot dHerbois at Lyon and Louis-Stanislas Frron
at Toulon, who exulted in the liquidation of hundreds of enemies of the people.
There is no doubt that even though they were faced with desperate circumstances,
some reprsentants vastly exceeded their punitive brief. Jean-Baptiste Carrier, who
drowned more than 2,000 prisoners from the Vende in the freezing waters of the
Loire in January 1794 is a classic case in point; he would later pay for his crime with
his own life, at the hands of fellow deputies a year later. Claude Javogues pursued a
personal vendetta in his native Montbrison. The closure of churches and defrock-
ing of priests that characterized dechristianization was often the work of representa-
tives, especially if they were former priests like Joseph Fouch.
As the machinery of the Terror was gradually dismantled after the fall of Max-
imilien Robespierre in Thermidor ( July 1794), representatives continued to be sent
on mission for another year. Their political composition, however, altered consider-
ably, and it was now the turn of moderate deputies from the Plain, or survivors of
the Girondin purge lately readmitted to the Convention, to generally supervise the
pursuit of former terrorists in their devastated departments. Some of these reprsent-
ants gained as notorious a reputation as their Montagnard predecessors, among
them Henri Isnard, who, confronted with a Jacobin uprising at Toulon in May and
June 1795, urged opponents who lacked weapons to dig up your fathers bones and
use them to exterminate this horde of brigands.
Yet a myth has grown up around these roving deputies. They were by no means
just bloody agents of the Terror, as the exaggerated attention accorded to certain ex-
treme cases would suggest. Many of them engaged in constructive measures aimed
at improving education and welfare, as well as ensuring compliance with existing
legislation, not least in the quieter departments where the political pressure was
rather less intense, and violence rare. In the Isre, for instance, a department on
the eastern frontier, defensive measures were extremely important, but reprsentants
like Deydier and Petitjean proceeded calmly. Intervention from the center overrid-
ing the decentralized regime that had marked the early years of the Revolution had
Republicanism 625
become essential for the infant Republic, not least in a context of foreign war and
internal instability. Without the indefatigable efforts of the representatives on mis-
sion, the Republic would surely have come to grief in the Year II. See also Girondins;
Jacobins; The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Aulard, Franois Victor Alphonse, ed. Recueil des actes du Comit de salut
publi avec la correspondance ofcielle des reprsentants en mission. 28 vols. Paris, 18891962; Biard,
Michel. Missionnaires de la Rpublique: Les reprsentants du peuple en mission (17931795). Paris:
Editions du Comit des Travaux Historiques et Scientiques, 2002; Gross, Jean-Pierre. Fair
Shares for All: Jacobin Egalitarianism in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997;
Lucas, Colin. The Structure of the Terror: The Example of Javogues and the Loire. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1973; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of Terror in the French Revolution.
MALCOLM CROOK
Republicanism
Throughout early modern Europe and into the eighteenth century, republican-
ism developed as a potent political ideology that challenged the political norms
expressed within monarchical structures. In contrast to the monarchical system,
where the king exercised personal authority over his subjects and ruled his king-
dom as a personal possession, republicanism revived the norms and concepts of
antiquity, arguing that government was the common business (res publica) of the
citizens that governs according to the common good. Republicanism emerged as
an oppositional political discourse that rejected the theory of absolutism and the
divine right of kings and looked to secure the freedom of the citizen within a con-
stitutional framework that included representative institutions. Republicanism was
rst and foremost a theory of political liberty. Secondly, republicanism articulated
a theory of government and a moral theory of citizenship that aimed to dene the
institutions and conditions necessary for the experience of liberty.
Republicanism grew out of the practical experience of the Italian city-states of
the late Middle Ages. It was out of the fteenth-century city-states such as Florence,
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, where there were no kings or princes, only citizens who
lived by common laws and statutes, although only a minority had the full privileges
of citizenship, that Italian jurists, historians, and political theorists developed the
basic tenets of a republican theory of liberty, government, and citizenship. They
theorized about their practical situation by appealing to the republics of antiquity
for political values and drawing from a wide body of ancient texts: the philoso-
phy of Plato and Aristotle, the political and moral writings of Cicero and Seneca,
and the Roman histories of Livy and Tacitus, to name the most prominent. From
Italy, largely owing to the work of Machiavelli, republican discourse spread to the
political culture of many European nations. It became a central part of the po-
litical struggles in seventeenth century England, including the English republic of
1649, and a potent force in the revolutionary struggles of the late eighteenth cen-
tury, when both the American and French revolutions culminated in the project
of founding a new republic. The experience of revolution transformed the early
modern discourse of republicanism, marking a transition to a modern revolution-
ary republicanism that would play an important part in nineteenth-century political
struggles, especially in France.
626 Republicanism
Republicanism begins with a theory of freedom as nondomination. For repub-
licanism, the experience of freedom means the absence of domination by the will
of others. The republican does not live, as Romans said, in potestate domini (in the
power of a master.) According to republican theory, freedom required the political
status and political institutions that could prevent the arbitrary will of another from
imposing itself upon the citizen. This view of freedom conditioned the opposition
to monarchy, where the arbitrary will of the king was a constant presence within the
political community, even if the king acted benevolently toward his subjects. In con-
trast, republicanism emphasized the rule of law insofar as it argued that whatever
interference or restraint the citizen was forced to accept must be dictated by the
laws that citizens have given themselves through their participation within free in-
stitutions. Drawing on Roman sources, republicanism emphasized the importance
of law as an expression of freedom, and a republic was dened as a government
where the law was more powerful than any individual. In this sense, republicanism
drew a central distinction between being subject to domination and being subject
to restraint, and what it rejected about the monarchical structures of early modern
Europe was the absence of free institutions and the rule of law.
The problem of government was central to its theory of freedom, and republi-
canism sought to dene the sort of government that could secure the experience
of nondomination. Republicanism was a theory of representative self-government,
where government was organized according to constitutional limitations. Republi-
can theorists argued that government was necessary for the experience of freedom,
but it was also a danger that, without check, could threaten to dominate the citizen.
This led republicanism to favor a theory of a mixed constitution, whereby the vari-
ous institutions of government would check and balance the power of one another.
For republicanism, the best government is one that combines the three classical
forms of governancethe rule of one (monarchy), the rule of the few (aristocracy),
and the rule of many (democracy). This was expressed by a theory of a balance of
powers within the sovereign body, whereby the legislature, deliberative, and execu-
tive powers check the power of each other while enabling different interests to be
represented within constituted bodies. The classic model of the republican theory
of mixed government was exemplied by the Republic of Venice, and the theory
served as the basis for the system of republican government created by the American
Revolution. In contrast to the classical practice, the revolutionary republicanism
of the French Revolution rejected the theory of mixed constitution, and drawing
largely on the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the revolutionaries dened the Re-
public as one and indivisible. According to this view, sovereignty could not be
divided among different powers, and the Republic that was created in 1792 rejected
the classic view of mixed government. This was a signicant departure from early
modern republicanism, and it exemplies one of the ways that the French Revolu-
tion developed a distinctive vision of republican government.
While republicanism emphasized the centrality of freedom, it combined with this
concern for freedom a moral discourse about citizenship. In a republic, according
to republican theory, a citizen is free, but he has the duty to care for his freedom
and to care for the republic. Republicanism emphasized the value of civic virtue
and the necessity of a political way of life that would enable the citizen to lead a
virtuous life. Furthermore, politics is theorized as a central component of living a
full and good life. The republic is dened not merely as an assemblage of political
Revenue Act 627
institutions, but as a moral community. By participating in the life of this commu-
nity, the citizen is able to realize his full potential for a full and good life. Republican
discourse emphasized that the common good of the republic required the citizen
to perform certain duties and services, and it demanded that citizens place the
needs of the community above their own private interests. As a moral discourse, it
argued that the freedom the republic secured for the citizen came with the moral
commitment to lead a life of virtue, which was the only true preservation of both
the republic and the freedom its institutions enabled. For this reason, republican-
ism was a moral theory of virtue, patriotism, and duty as well as a political theory of
liberty and free government.
The republican theory and practice of the Italian city-states, derived as it was
from Roman sources, was not democratic or egalitarian. It was the experiences of
revolutionary America and France that combined a democratic and egalitarian
discourse with the central republican themes of liberty, law, government, and re-
publican virtue. The experiment of constructing a republic for a large nation, as
opposed to a city-state, forced the revolutionaries to make important innovations
within republican theory. At the same time, by combining a theory of the rights of
man with republican theory, the American and French revolutions produced a dis-
tinctive change that led to the creation of modern republicanism. For this reason,
modern republicanism can place considerable emphasis on the importance of po-
litical participation within democratic institutions and the centrality of equality that
was not expressed within the broader tradition of early modern republicanism. See
also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Hamilton, Alexander; Jacobins; Jefferson,
Thomas; Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat,
Baron de le Brede et de; Paine, Thomas; Robespierre, Maximilien; United States
Constitution.
FURTHER READING: Van Gelderen, Martin, and Quentin Skinner, eds. Republicanism:
A Shared European Heritage. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Viroli,
Maurizio. Republicanism. Translated by Antony Shugaar. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002;
Wootton, David, ed. Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649 1776. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.
BRODIE RICHARDS
Revenue Act (1766)
The Revenue Act of 1766 (also known as the American Trade Act) was a response
by the Marquess of Rockinghams short-lived Whig administration to the outrage
over the Stamp Act and other taxes levied by Parliament in the North American
colonies. The Rockingham government followed a general policy of conciliation
with the colonies while not relinquishing any parliamentary claims to authority.
After repealing the Stamp Act, the government turned its attention to other issues,
which, in turn, also divided the colonists from Britain. One was the high tax on
sugar imported to the colonies from the French islands of the Caribbean in the
form of molasses. This tax, more strictly enforced since the passage of the Sugar Act
in 1764, was borne by the powerful American rum industry and supported by British
West India sugar planters. In return for concessions relating to inter-island trade in
the Caribbean, the West India planters acquiesced in a reduction and remodeling
628 Revere, Paul
of the tax. The Revenue Act, passed into law on June 6, 1766, reduced the duty on
molasses from three pennies to the gallon to one penny. It also applied the duty to
both foreign molasses and molasses from the British Empire. Since this modica-
tion rendered the sugar tax a pure revenue-raising device, rather than as a means of
forcing colonists to buy British sugar, the tax was an effective moneymaker for the
government and aroused little opposition in America.
FURTHER READING: Langford, Paul. The First Rockingham Administration, 1765 1766.
London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
Revere, Paul (17351818)
Paul Revere, a multitalented Boston artisan, was recognized by contemporaries
for his work as a silversmith and engraver but is best known today as one of two mes-
sengers dispatched by Dr. Joseph Warren the night of April 18, 1775, to alert John
Hancock and Sam Adams that the British intended to arrest them and put them
on trial in Britain for treason. Born in Boston, Revere was the eldest of seven children
of Paul Revere (originally Apollus Rivoire, born in France in 1702) and Deborah
Hichborn. Upon leaving Bostons North Grammar School, Revere apprenticed with
his father to learn the gold- and silversmith trade. He married twice: to Sarah Orne
in 1757 (d. 1773), and then ve months after Ornes death to Rachael Walker.
During the Seven Years War, Revere served in a New England militia expedition
to Canada organized to seize (French-controlled) Crown Point. But after waiting
six months at Fort William Henry on Lake George, the expedition was abandoned
and never saw military action. Following this conict, Revere returned to Boston
and worked as a silversmith. In the late 1760s he expanded his vocational repertoire
to include creating engraving plates used to produce printed illustrations. Reveres
engravings captured on paper signicant episodes of the revolutionary movement.
His engraving of the March 5, 1770, Boston Massacre distorted actual events but was
enormously successful as a piece of Whig propaganda.
Revere was a staunch Whig and ardent Patriot, but as an artisan he was never
included in the inner circle of Massachusetts Whigs or elected to public ofce. He
did serve on subcommittees of the Boston Committee of Correspondence and was
a member of most of Bostons Whig-leaning social clubs, including the North End
Caucus and the Sons of Liberty. As a Son of Liberty, Revere participated in the Bos-
ton Tea Party on December 16, 1773.
Reveres skill as a dentist introduced him to Dr. Joseph Warren, who, along with
Sam Adams and John Hancock, led Bostons Whigs. This contact led to Reveres
now-celebrated role as a hired messenger. He frequently carried dispatches be-
tween Massachusettss Provincial Congress and the First Continental Congress but
also carried the Suffolk Resolves to the Continental Congress in September 1774.
On April 18, 1775, Warren dispatched Revere (along with William Dawes) to alert
Hancock and Adams in Lexington that he believed the British intended to arrest
them for treason and send them to London for trial. Reveres ride was dramatized
by Longfellow in the poem The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, published in Tales
of the Wayside Inn (1863). After Revere delivered Warrens message, he continued
toward Concord but was quickly captured and briey detained by a small British
Revolutionary Committees of the French Revolution 629
detachment. Though released as soon as the rst shots were heard at Lexington,
Revere did not return to Boston for fear of being arrested for treason. He remained
with his family in Charlestown until the siege of Boston ended with the departure of
the British for Nova Scotia in March 1776.
During the American Revolutionary War, Revere printed currency for both the
Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the Continental Congress, established a
gunpowder mill, and served as a lieutenant colonel in the militia stationed at Fort
William on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. Following the war, he established a foun-
dry in Bostons North End that cast bells and cannon as well as supplied the copper
work for the frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides) and the copper plates for Robert
Fultons rst steamboat. Revere was also instrumental in organizing the Massachu-
setts Charitable Mechanic Association, an organization of laborers that predated
the rst organized labor unions of the mid-nineteenth century. See also Boston Port
Act; Lexington and Concord, Actions at; Tea Act.
FURTHER READING: Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Reveres Ride. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994; Triber, Jayne E. A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1998.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
Revolutionary Committees of the French Revolution
Although they predate the Reign of Terror by several months, the revolution-
ary committees of the French Revolution were probably its most ubiquitous instru-
ment. The rst committees were the spontaneous creation of a few communes
across France during the fall of 1792 (most notably in Paris) in response to the fears
generated by the disastrous course of the war with Austria. Their anomalous and
quasi-legal position was claried and legalized on March 21, 1793, by the National
Convention. Every commune was henceforth required to set up a committee in
each city section and to periodically renew its membership through elections. Ini-
tially, they were responsible only for registering and monitoring foreigners, but the
denition of foreigner was amorphous enough that most suspects were, in fact,
Frenchmen who came from outside the local community and were thus foreigners
only in the broadest sense. By the fall of 1793 many municipal and departmental
governments had begun to delegate portions of their authority to the committees
and thus saw their tasks dramatically augmented. Among these new assignments
were not only the supervision of foreigners but also suspects in general, the issuance
of certicates of civism and residence, censorship of the mail, and the enforced
observation of the dcade (the new 10-day week, which took the place of the 7-day
week). These functions gave them a unique perspective on the activities of resident
foreigners as well as every city resident as denunciations began to accumulate on the
desks of the committees.
Despite the clear requirements of the law, most communes failed to create com-
mittees until the fall of 1793, when various representatives from the National Con-
vention were sent out to the departments to organize a response to the civil war.
The representatives on mission created committees wherever they went in order to
both identify and arrest suspects but also to assist efforts in organizing the war ef-
fort. These appointed committees outnumbered elected committees in most places,
630 Revolutionary Tribunals
and their assiduity often depended upon the activities of the representatives and the
tasks they were charged with; the Conventions attempts to create a uniform system
of committees was never achieved, as not only did some communes fail to create any
committees (and were never visited by a representative), but the powers allocated to
and assumed by existing ones were quite disparate. Some communes elected com-
mittees that met only to formally acknowledge receipt of the new laws from Paris,
discuss mundane issues, and adjourn, while others tried very hard to peer into as
many private matters in their communities as they possibly could, whether such
invasions were legal or not.
The committees were provided with various tools by the Convention, including a
national standard, which dened suspects on September 17, 1793, and was known
popularly as the Law of Suspects. The committees were empowered to identify peo-
ple who satised the terms of the law, arrest them (using the National Guard or local
gendarmes), and hold them until the war ended. The law, which was intentionally
vague, permitted the committees to seize a wide range of people who were not able
to sufciently prove their favorable opinion of the Revolution. Most of the suspects
arrested under the Law of Suspects were either ex-nobles or clergy, groups that were
generally assumed to harbor a serious antipathy toward the Revolution. The com-
mittees lost their reason for existence after the French began winning the war and
civil war, and the overthrow of Maximilien Robespierre led most to begin wrapping
up their activities and releasing their suspects. See also Committee of Public Safety.
FURTHER READING: Sirich, J. B. The Revolutionary Committees in the Departments of France,
17931794. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943.
LEE BAKER
The revolutionary tribunals were established as political courts for trying and
executing anyone deemed to be an enemy of the Republicespecially supporters
of the monarchybut quickly became instruments of broad terror, overseeing the
execution of tens of thousands of people from all social backgrounds. Almost 200
tribunals oversaw executions throughout France.
The genesis of the revolutionary tribunals can be found in the efforts of Max-
imilien Robespierre, Georges-Jacques Danton, and Jean-Paul Marat to abolish the
monarchy completely and establish and defend France as a republic under the gov-
erning National Convention. Initiated by decree of the Convention in March 1793,
on the recommendation of Danton, the revolutionary tribunals were presented as a
means of defending the Republic during its early stages against the actions of provo-
cateurs, whether in the services of royalists, the church, or foreign powers.
Each revolutionary tribunal was made up of 12 members: a 9-person jury and 3
public prosecutors. Decisions of the tribunals were nal and there were no appeals.
In Paris the revolutionary tribunal was headed by M. J. A Hermann with Antoine
Quentin Fouquier-Tinville serving as public prosecutor.
Political purges not only were directed at counterrevolutionaries, monarchists,
and those who sought alliances with other countries but also came to target political
moderates and even the poor who became frustrated that the Revolution was not
radical enough. Eventually the purview of the revolutionary tribunals was expanded
Rhode Island 631
to such an extent that any criticism of the government could become the basis for
criminal charges. The range of charges that might send an accused individual be-
fore the tribunal became increasingly broad, including such vaguely outlined trans-
gressions as seeking to inspire discouragement, abusing the principles or purity of
revolutionary or republican principles, seeking to mislead opinion, and depraving
morals or corrupting public conscience. Furthermore, every citizen was called upon
to ferret out counterrevolutionaries and required to denounce them immediately
upon identication.
It was not long before Robespierre recognized the strategic political value of the
revolutionary tribunals as a means of dealing with his political opponents and, as
importantly, his rivals among the Jacobins and their allies. The extremes of injustice
carried out under the revolutionary tribunals mirrored the growth of Robespierres
inuence within the Committee of Public Safety. They soon became the primary
mechanism of the Reign of Terror.
On 22 Prairial ( June 10, 1794) Robespierre and his supporters on the Com-
mittee of Public Safety proposed a law to release the revolutionary tribunals from
the control of the Convention. This proposal sought to limit the opportunities
available for the accused to defend themselves, thereby increasing the power of
prosecutors. In addition to preventing the accused from employing defense coun-
sel, the Law of 22 Prairial also dispensed with the hearing of witnesses, except
where this might contribute to the discovery of accomplices. Moral proof became
sufcient to establish guilt. The new law further imposed the death penalty as a
mandatory sentence for anyone found guilty. Over the course of 49 days, between
the laws enactment and the fall of Robespierre, more people, almost 1,400, were
condemned to death under the revolutionary tribunal than had been throughout
the previous year.
The revolutionary tribunals eventually devoured their own, as both founder Dan-
ton and rst prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, found themselves standing accused be-
fore it. The revolutionary tribunal in Paris was abolished on May 31, 1795, almost a
full year after the rise of the Thermidorians and their coup against Robespierre and
the Paris Commune. It might be noted that despite their professed opposition to
the Terror, the Thermidorians saw t to deploy the tribunal toward their own ends.
Abacus, 2005; Fife, Graeme. The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine, France 17921794.
London: Portrait, 2004; Hardman, John. Robespierre: Proles in Power. London: Longman
Ltd, 1999; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; Scurr, Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the
French Revolution. London: Chatto and Windus, 2006.
JEFF SHANTZ
Rhode Island
Rhode Island, like every other American colony, found itself divided into regions
with differing and competing economic, social, and political interests. The two cen-
ters in the colony were the port cities of Providence in the north and Newport in the
south. While the majority of Loyalists were in Newport, they still formed a minority
in that area. When the Stamp Act was introduced in 1765, both cities saw riots and
demonstrations against it.
632 Rivington, James
Before the American Revolution, Rhode Island actually elected its own gover-
nor. His position as executive was weak and subordinated to the Assembly and the
Council. Rhode Island participated in the Continental Congresses and adopted
the Articles of Confederation in 1778. At the conclusion of the war, the state
strongly opposed the ability of the states under the Articles of Confederation to
collect taxes. Within the state there had, however, been some expressed interest
in strengthening the Confederation, but not enough to support a Constitutional
Convention. Rhode Island sent no delegates to Philadelphia in 1787 for the Con-
federation and would not even convene a state convention to ratify the United
States Constitution. Eventually the new United States brought pressure to bear. If
it did not ratify the Constitution, Rhode Island would be treated as a foreign power
in terms of commercial transactions and duties. In 1790, therefore, Rhode Island
gave its ratication. See also American Revolutionary War; Constitutions, American
State; Continental Association; Continental Congress, First; Continental Congress,
Second; New England Restraining Act; Sons of Liberty; Stamp Act Congress.
FURTHER READING: Bishop, Hillman Metcalf. Why Rhode Island Opposed the Federal Constitu-
tion. Providence, RI: n.p., 1950; James, Sydney V. The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island:
A Study of Institutions in Change. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000; James,
Sydney V. Colonial Rhode Island: A History. New York: Scribner, 1975; Millar, John Fitzhugh.
Rhode Island: Forgotten Leader of the Revolutionary Era. Providence: Providence Journal, 1975.
ROBERT N. STACY
Riot at Golden Hill
See Golden Hill, Riot at
Rivington, James (17241802)
James Rivington was a bookseller and printer and the most effective Loyalist news-
paperman during the American Revolution. Born in London, he was a member of
one of Britains most important publishing dynasties, but his own wish to seek easy
prots, a need fuelled by his gambling problem, led to his bankruptcy and immigra-
tion to New York City in 1760. Rivington established bookshops in New York, Bos-
ton, and Philadelphia, and in 1773 he began to publish Rivingtons New York Gazette,
which, due to its excellent editing and news content, established a subscribership
of 3,600 by 1775. During the rising imperial crisis, Rivington initially attempted to
remain politically objective in his paper, a policy that targeted him for Patriot hatred
and increasingly focused his Loyalism.
Rivingtons contribution to the notion of a free press in America is now difcult
to establish. Twice his printing shop at the foot of Wall Street was attacked by the
Sons of Liberty, and nally in January 1776 he returned to London in September
1777, only to return to New York City as the kings printer. Under the protection
of the British garrison, he established the Loyalist Rivingtons New York Loyal Gazette,
which was published from 1777 to 1783. Later renamed the Royal Gazette, this pro-
British paper attacked American leaders, especially Governor William Livingston of
New Jersey, and by successfully coordinating the publishing schedules of the other
city printers, Rivington was able to produce the rst daily newspaper in America. His
Robespierre, Maximilien Franois Marie Isidore 633
often-outlandish stories, such as the assassination of Benjamin Franklin and a report
that Russia was sending Cossacks to America to ght for Britain, led his enemies,
however, to dub his paper Rivingtons Lying Gazette.
Rivingtons later wartime activities remain hard to access. When it became clear
that Britain was losing the war, his attacks on American leaders decreased and even-
tually ceased altogether. In 1783, he refused to leave New York City with other Loyal-
ists, and he renamed his paper Rivingtons New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser.
His property was never seized, nor was he persecuted by his enemies, developments
that have led to speculation that he was, after all, a spy for Washington during the
war. Whatever the truth may be, Rivington never regained his prosperity and after
a long spell in debtors prison died in poverty on July 4, 1802, in New York City. See
also Newspapers (American).
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard, and Hench, John B., eds. The Press and the American
Revolution. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981; Cacy, Catherine S. The Tory and the
Spy: The Double Life of James Rivington. William and Mary Quarterly 16 (1959): 6172.
RORY T. CORNISH
Robespierre, Maximilien Franois Marie Isidore (17581794)
Maximilien Robespierre has achieved notoriety as the arch ideologue of the French
Revolution and the prime instigator of the Reign of Terror. His unswerving devotion
to the cause led to his nickname the Incorruptible. He entered politics at the age
of 31 in 1789 and went on to become one of the foremost revolutionary leaders.
His inuence on the Committee of Public Safety, the ruling executive, ensured the
Jacobin consolidation of his factions power during the bloody years of the Terror.
Robespierre was, paradoxically, a somewhat elusive gure, especially in his later
life. He nally became an almost total recluse who addressed the National Conven-
tion just once in the last two months of his life. It is too simplistic to dismiss Robes-
pierre as a mere dictator who fell on his own sword, although the Committee of
Public Safety was primarily involved in repression. He was an exponent of the bour-
geois Left, which was subject to the bitter factionalism of the time. A man who domi-
nated France during its struggle for modernity, by Thermidor of the revolutionary
calendars Year II (1794), he had fallen victim to the vicissitudes of revolutionary
politics and was executed. Politically, he was a follower of Rousseau and was said
to sleep with a copy of his works under his pillow. Most works about Robespierre
underline his fanaticism and blind faith in the Revolution.
Robespierre was born in Arras, the provincial capital of Artois in the north of
France, and became a lawyer. Contrary to some reports, his family were not de-
scendants of Irish immigrants, as several genealogists have traced his roots back
to the Middle Ages in northern France. Perhaps signicantly for his later develop-
ment, Robespierre was left an orphan at the age of eight and experienced poverty
more than any other revolutionary leader, except possibly Marat. Rud tells us that
There are evident signs in his early writings and pleadings of a deep concern for
greater justice and equity, of a man acutely sensitive to poverty and outraged by the
abuses of power and once convinced that virtue alone was the basis of happiness.
In 1788, he became involved in the debate over how the Estates-General should
be formed. He argued that if previously used methods of election were employed,
634 Robespierre, Maximilien Franois Marie Isidore
the body would be wholly unrepresentative. He had started to make his mark in
politics and was eventually elected fth deputy of the Third Estate of Artois at the
age of 30. It was in the Estates-General and its successor body, the Constituent As-
sembly, that he achieved his reputation as something of a rabble-rouser. He was a
frequent speaker in the Constituent Assembly and made a signicant impression.
He shifted his attentions from the newly formed Assembly to the Society of the
Friends of the Constitution, known as the Jacobin Club, one of many political clubs
that mushroomed in France.
Consisting originally of the Breton deputies but eventually attracting artisans and
shopkeepers, it was here that Robespierre found a receptive audience that would go
on to idolize him. His name rst appears in club records in April 1790, and between
January and September 1791, he took to the oor some 35 times. The prospect of
war was never far away at this time, and the intrigues over the looming conict with
Austria were a major part of Robespierres political development. From October
1791, the leftist group in the new Legislative Assembly, led by Jacques-Pierre Bris-
sot, wanted a peoples war against the monarchies of Europe in order to spread
the principles of the Revolution. The Girondin party was not alone in clamoring
for war: Marie Antoinette hoped that war would restore the authority of the crown.
Robespierre was originally attracted by the pro-war argument, but following Marat
and others, he eventually aligned himself against the hawks. War would benet the
Maximilien Robespierre. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
royalists, he argued, leave France vulnerable to military dictatorship, and threaten
the nascent Revolution itself. These judgments indicate that Robespierre was more
in tune with political realities than he is normally given credit for.
Following the insurrection of August 10, 1792, and the taking of the Tuileries,
Robespierre took his seat on the Commune of Paris, which had overthrown Louis
XVI, as a means to check the political ambitions of the Girondins. The Commune
was glad to have him, purely because of his popularity, his reputation for virtue, and
his inuence over the Jacobin Club and its branches across France. As proof of his
personal popularity, he was later elected rst deputy for Paris to the National Con-
vention, where he was again attacked and vilied by the Girondins, whose federalist
plans he in turn rejected. The Girondins lacked support in many areas, and with the
idea that federalism threatened to divide the country in the face of the enemy, steps
were taken to destroy their inuence.
On July 27, 1793, the Convention elected Robespierre to the new Committee of
Public Safety. It was thought that the country needed strong executive government
to prevent the victory of foreign armies. The solution was found in the Committee
of Public Safety, and the Convention was not long in strengthening its powers. The
Committee of General Security was also created to rule alongside and was given
the management of the internal policing of the country. Georges Couthon and
Louis Saint-Just, acolytes of Robespierre, sustained his policy. Over time, Robes-
pierres maneuverings systematically weakened and removed his opponents from
the committee, enhancing his position, powers, and prestige.
Some have tried to belittle Robespierres role in the Terror, but as he was the
mouthpiece of the new order, it is difcult to exonerate him totally. Georges Danton
is often cited as the prime mover when it came to the Terror, as he was one who felt
it was necessary to resort to extreme measures to keep France united and strong at
home to successfully meet and see off her enemies. Robespierre had an inuential
following and was one of the most popular speakers in the Convention, where his
pronouncements on revolutionary order led many to believe that the Terror was a
means to an end and was indeed necessary, if not inevitable. His perceived integrity
and incorruptibility gave further credibility to the committee.
In 17931794, it became certain that the Hbertiste party must fall, or its opposi-
tion within the committee would make Robespierres own position untenable due
to their signicant inuence in the Commune of Paris. Robespierre had a personal
reason for intensely disliking that party of atheists and sans-culottes, as he was a deist
who believed in the necessity of religious faith of some sort.
Dantons voice of moderation and his rejection of the continued series of sacri-
ces under the guillotine were unacceptable to Robespierre and his followers and
left them open to attack. For Robespierre, Danton and his followers threatened the
Revolution with their reluctance to continue with any means necessary to further
the cause. He reached the conclusion that the end of the Terror would mean the
loss of the impetus to enforce and promote the ideals of Rousseau. Robespierre
abandoned Danton and cooperated in the attacks of the committee on the Danton-
ists and Hbertistes. Both men and their supporters were guillotined.
The fall of the Hbertistes, in particular, served to augment and improve Robes-
pierres patronage and power, bringing the Commune, the National Guard, and most
of the executive commissions under his auspices. But considering the turbulence of
the times, his grasp on power, despite appearances, was always tenuous. The main
636 Robespierre, Maximilien Franois Marie Isidore
threat came from the Parlement, where Dantons comrades were intent on not only
wreaking revenge but implementing his strategy for peace and the end of the revo-
lutionary government.
In May 1794, at Robespierres insistence, the National Convention proclaimed as
an ofcial religion the cult of the Supreme Being, which was based on Rousseaus
theory of deism. This decree antagonized both Roman Catholics and atheists, but
Robespierre still had the powerful backing of the Commune of Paris, and in June
he was elected president of the National Convention. In Paris, Robespierre wanted
to increase the tempo of the Terror. Georges Couthon, an ally in the committee,
proposed the draconian Law of 22 Prairial, which put paid to any semblance of
justice and created a kangaroo court, in effect. As a result of this law, between June
12 and July 28, the day of Robespierres death, no fewer than 1,285 victims perished
by the guillotine in Paris.
Robespierres increasingly aggressive speeches caused many inuential members
of the National Convention and the Jacobin Club to fear for their own safety. A
series of French military victories then made the extreme security measures seem
less imperative, and a conspiracy was formed for the overthrow of Robespierre. On
July 27, 1794, he was barred from speaking at the National Convention and was
placed under arrest. An uprising in his support by soldiers of the Paris Commune
was thwarted, and on July 28 Robespierre died on the guillotine with his close as-
sociates Saint-Just and Couthon, along with 19 other supporters. Eighty more of his
followers were executed the next day.
Robespierre is the only one of the revolutionary leaders of whom it can be
claimed that when he fell from power, the Revolution itself came to an end. Despite
the historical tarnishing of his reputation, there are a number of positive aspects of
his leadership. He was one of the greatest strategists of revolution who set an exam-
ple that would be followed by Marxist-Leninists of subsequent generations. He was
bold in his promotion of novel ideas and has even been directly compared by Rud
to Lenin, with his genius for adapting the teachings of Marx to the circumstances
attending the Russian Revolution of 1917; and, in particular, of his adoption of the
Soviet form of government and of the bold experiment of the New Economic Policy
following the devastation of war and civil war.
Robespierres persistence in communicating his political ideas has also been ap-
plauded. He was not the type of orator to rabble rouse on the streets. His was a
more rened, subtle approach. One contemporary German visitor described him
thus: When he mounts the rostrum, it is not with a studied indifference or exag-
gerated gravity, nor does he rush upon it like Marat; but he is calm, as though he
wished to show from the outset that this is the place, which without challenge, is his
by right.
Robespierre was ever vigilant against any form of recidivism and a slide toward
the tyranny of ancien rgime monarchy. Known as a watchdog of the Revolution,
he stands in stark contrast to Danton, who was eager to slip away to the country for
a peaceful life at the rst opportunity. In a speech of February 1794, he made his
constant quest for vigilance clear:
The rst concern of the legislator must be to strengthen the principles on which the
government is founded. Thus, it is your duty to promote or establish all that tends to
arouse a love of country, to purify matters, to elevate the spirits and to direct human
passions towards the general good. Conversely, you must reject and suppress all that
tends to direct these passions towards a love of self or to arouse infatuation with what is
petty and contempt for what is great. In the system we have created all that is immoral
weakens the body politic, all that corrupts is counter-revolutionary. Weakness, vice,
prejudice are so many sign-posts leading back to monarchy.
Mao and other communist leaders used a similar approach when they empha-
sized the need to purge the party and uproot dangerous vestiges of bourgeois cul-
ture and ideology within the party and the state.
Robespierre is akin to Napoleon in that he can provoke widely divergent views
from historians to this day. He remains a highly controversial gure. His staunch
defenders have a tendency to view most of the measures of the Committee of Public
Safety as necessary for the defense of the Revolution and tend to play down his re-
sponsibility for the bloodshed. Others tend to ignore Robespierre completely, as if
his role was too despicable and tangential to merit a mention.
In Paris he was not understood till he met his audience of fellow disciples of
Rousseau at the Jacobin Club. His fanaticism won him supporters, his singularly
sweet and sympathetic voice gained him hearers, and his upright life attracted the
admiration of all. As matters approached nearer and nearer to the terrible crisis,
he failed, except in the two instances of the question of war and of the kings trial,
to show himself a statesman, for he had not the liberal views and practical instincts
that made Gabriel-Honor Mirabeau and Danton great men. His admission to the
Committee of Public Safety gave him power, which he hoped to use for the estab-
lishment of his favorite theories, and for the same purpose he acquiesced in and
even heightened the horrors of the Reign of Terror. It is here that the fatal mis-
take of allowing a theorist to have power came about: Billaud-Varenne systematized
the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country; Robes-
pierre intensied it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories.
His legacy has been greatest in Marxism. Politicians admired and aped his tactics,
his interpretation of the democratic ideal, and what Hardman calls his sense of
moral superiority. Robespierres characteristics, Hardman maintains, are present
in the militant tendency all over the world: mastery of procedures, invention of a
pompous jargon concerning them, late night votes when all the moderates have
gone home or reversing bad decisions in the morning before they have got up.
The historian Andrew Roberts recently argued that Robespierre and his Jacobin
acolytes were not simply reacting to the Bourbons political idiocies but were ac-
tively trying to create what Robespierre called Virtue, stating: Intimidation without
virtue is disastrous; virtue without intimidation is powerless. Roberts argues:
It was to build a brave new world, and make a denitive break with the pre-1789 past,
that the revolution abolished Sunday and Christianity, creating instead a new calendar
that started at year zero, and a new state religion. It guillotined so many people because
it was a way of cleansing and purifying France, imbuing her with Virtue. Concentration
on the fear of counter-revolution is only half the answer, and the less important half at
that. The revolutionaries were not killing out of paranoia, but because they believed
they were making a better world.
Ending the Terror was not as simple as dispatching the so-called arch terrorists,
and it would be some time before France could enjoy a truly stable government, as
638 Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth, Charles, Marquess of
the Napoleonic era, arguably, merely papered over the cracks left by the Revolution.
With the focus of the world on terrorism as never before, it is doubtful that interest
in Robespierre will wane any time soon. It would appear that his inuence is alive
and well to this day. See also Guillotine; Parlements.
FURTHER READING: Fife, Graeme. The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine, France 17921794.
London: Portrait, 2004; Gallo, Max. Robespierre the Incorruptible: A Psycho-Biography. New York:
Herder and Herder, 1971; Hardman, John. Robespierre: Proles in Power. London: Longman,
1999; Matrat, Jean. Robespierre: On the Tyranny of the Majority. London: Angus & Robertson,
1975; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; Rud, George. Robespierre. London: Collins, 1975; Scurr,
Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. London: Chatto and Windus, 2006.
STEPHEN STEWART
Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth, Charles, Marquess of (17301782)
Born Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second marquess of Rockingham was a pol-
itician and twice prime minister (17651766, 1782) of Britain. The eighth child and
only surviving son of the rst marquess of Rockingham, he was educated at West-
minster School and St. Johns College, Cambridge. He succeeded to his fathers title
in 1750 and took up a seat in the House of Lords the following year. He thereafter
rose to so dominate political life in Yorkshire that the Whig Club in York renamed
itself the Rockingham Club in 1753.
With the accession to the throne of George III in 1760, Rockingham became
critical of the admission of Tories to court ofces from which they had been ex-
cluded under George I and George II and quickly came to share the distrust of
veteran Whig politicians concerning the policies of the new monarch. Due more
to his skill and personal appeal than to any forthright pursuit of power, this parlia-
mentary faction accepted his leadership and was soon commonly referred to as the
Rockinghamite Whigs. Rockingham was appointed rst lord of the treasury under
the premiership of the Duke of Cumberland in July 1765 and became a caretaker
prime minister the following October upon Cumberlands death.
As prime minister, Rockingham inherited the crisis in the American colonies pre-
cipitated by the Stamp Act, a bill Rockingham repealed in March 1766 even as he
passed the Declaratory Act proclaiming the right of Parliament to pass laws bind-
ing on all the colonies. For Rockingham there was an important distinction between
the powers Parliament possessed and those it chose to exercisea distinction lost
on many of his contemporaries in Britain and the American colonies alike. Rocking-
ham was dismissed from the premiership by the king in a quarrel over appointments
and thereafter spent most his life in parliamentary opposition, supporting the claims
of the American colonists that their rights were being usurped by George IIIs gov-
ernment. As early as 1799 Rockingham stated that the colonists should be given
their independence. He was also an advocate of religious toleration and extended
civil liberties for Catholics in England.
In March 1782, the resignation of Lord North forced the king to appoint Rock-
ingham prime minister for the second time. Because the Marquess died on July 1,
1782, his second ministry lasted only 14 weeks. His rst action as prime minister,
nonetheless, had been to acknowledge the existence of the United States.
Roland, Marie-Jeanne Philipon 639
FURTHER READING: Hoffman, R. J. S. The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham, 1730 82.
New York: Fordham University Press, 1973.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Roland, Marie-Jeanne Philipon (1754 1793)
Marie-Jeanne Philipon Roland was a revolutionary activist and the wife of Jean
Marie Roland, minister of the interior. Daughter of a Parisian engraver, and well
educated at home, Madame Roland claimed to have read Plutarch by age seven.
A devotee of Jean-Jacques Rousseau from her youth, Madame Roland actively sup-
ported the French Revolution. When she and her husband arrived in Paris in 1791,
she hosted a political salon in their Paris apartment. Members of this salon included
left-wing deputies of the Assembly such as Maximilien Robespierre, Franois Buzot,
and Jrme Ption in addition to journalist friends Jean-Pierre Brissot and Thomas
Paine. Madame Roland was a regular contributor to Brissots Patriote Franais. Her
anonymous articles appeared under the title Letters from a Roman Lady. Al-
though she could not be a member of the Jacobin Club, Madame Roland was fre-
quently present in the public galleries. Perhaps more politically ambitious than her
husband, Madame Roland assisted her husband in the running of his ministry when
Marie-Jeanne Philipon Roland. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
640 Roland de la Platire, Jean Marie
he was appointed minister of the interior in 1792. She drafted the famous letter to
Louis XVI dated June 10, 1792, that resulted in her husbands dismissal.
Madame Roland was arrested following the uprising of May 31 through June
1793, when her Girondin friends were purged from the Convention. She spent time
in the Abbaye and Saint-Plagie prisons, where she drafted her famous Memoirs in
the months before her execution on November 8, 1793. See also Girondins; Jacobins;
Newspapers (French).
FURTHER READING: May, Gita. Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1970; Roland, Manon. The Memoirs of Madame Roland: A Heroine of the French
Revolution. Edited and translated by Evelyn Shuckburgh. Mount Kisco, NY: Mayer Bell, 1990.
LEIGH WHALEY
Roland de la Platire, Jean Marie (17341793)
Jean Marie Roland de la Platire was a French revolutionary politician and min-
ister of the interior in 1792. Roland was the fth child of a provincial magistrate in
Villefranche-en-Beaujoulais. His mother came from an old noble family. The Rolands
added de la Platire to their name after the family domain of Thizy, where Roland
was born. Four of Rolands brothers were priests, and he was also meant for the church,
but at the age of 18, he entered a commercial business in Nantes, where he worked
until 1754. The following year he began working as an inspector of manufactures.
He met his future wife, Marie-Jeanne Philipon, in 1776 on a business trip to Paris.
They married in February 1780 and began their intellectual partnership. Between
1780 and 1789, the two collaborated on numerous publications concerning eco-
nomics, the most important of which was the Encyclopdie mthodique (17841785,
1790), which was devoted to arts and manufacturing. Roland obtained the post of
inspector of manufactures at Lyon on the eve of the French Revolution.
The elections to the Estates-General sparked Rolands interest in politics. He was
elected a municipal ofcial in Lyon in 1790 and in the same year went to Paris to
negotiate Lyons debt. He also assisted in the founding of the Lyon Jacobin Club.
The Rolands moved to Paris in December 1791, when they began associating
with Jean-Pierre Brissot and his circle. Roland also became a member of the Paris
Jacobin Club. He supported the views of many revolutionaries by collaborating on
their newspapers, such as Brissots Patriote Franais and the Marquis de Condorcets
Chronique du Mois.
Roland was appointed minister of the interior on March 23, 1792, through Bris-
sots inuence. Although an able minister, Roland was dismissed from this post on
June 13, 1792, when Madame Roland drafted a threatening letter, signed by her
husband, pressuring Louis XVI to sign decrees that he had vetoed concerning re-
fractory priests and migrs and the formation of an armed camp around Paris.
After the insurrection of August 10, Roland was reappointed to his post. Although
elected to the National Convention from the department of the Somme, Roland
did not take up his seat but continued as minister of the interior. Roland, under the
inuence of his wife, began attacking Georges Danton. This in turn led Danton to
seek an alliance with Maximilien Robespierre.
On November 20, 1792, Roland found Louis XVIs papers in a secret safe at the
Tuileries. Since he went through the papers without witnesses, he was condemned
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 641
by the Mountain for allying himself with the former monarchy. Although this epi-
sode ended his second ministry and his revolutionary career, he did not resign from
his post until January 23, 1793. Roland ed Paris after the purging of the Girondins
on June 2, 1793, and later committed suicide when he learned of his wifes execu-
tion. See also Jacobins; Roland, Marie-Jeanne Philipon.
FURTHER READING: Bernardin, Edith. Jean-Marie Roland et le ministre de lintrieur (1792
1793). Paris: Socit des tudes Robespierristes, 1964; Le Guin, Charles A. Roland de la
Platire: A Public Servant in the Eighteenth Century. Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society. New ser., 56, pt. 6. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1966.
LEIGH WHALEY
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a French social philosopher whose ideas about poli-
tics and society spread throughout Europe. His writing inuenced a wide range of
people, from philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, to the leaders and supporters of
the French Revolution, to generations of romantics including artists, spiritual seek-
ers, and counterculturists. He also produced important works on the education of
children and the meaning of nature, as well as minor works in music and the arts.
However, Rousseau was also a controversial gure who spent much of his life mov-
ing throughout Europe to avoid political persecution and the problems brought
about by his difcult personal relations. Today, his works remain controversial, espe-
cially among those who believe his ideas about communal self-rule are authoritarian
because they limit individual freedom. However, others see him as trying to recon-
cile personal freedom with communal solidarity.
Life and Background
Rousseau was born in Geneva at a time when it was a Calvinist city-state. His fa-
ther was a watchmaker who, when Rousseau was a youth, was forced to leave Geneva
to avoid personal disputes. His mother had died when he was born, and Rousseau
spent his adolescence unhappily under the care of her family. At 16, he left the city
and was taken in by a somewhat older baroness named Madame de Warens in Savoy,
who later became his lover. In her library, he was able to broaden his reading of
classical and contemporary works in philosophy, history, and politics. Rousseau also
beneted from her tutelage in acquiring the social skills that allowed him to meet
and impress important people throughout his later travels.
In addition to other romantic attachments, Rousseau had a long-term relation-
ship with a servant, Thrse Lavasseur, the daughter of a family that had fallen into
poverty. Rousseau fathered ve children with her, but each was given up to an or-
phanage because, as he declared, he was not suited for parenthood.
In Paris, Rousseau met leading members of the French Enlightenment, the opti-
mistic intellectual movement that emphasized the ability of science to solve all social
problems. Rousseau at rst joined them, contributing to the Encyclopdie, the great
project intended by its creators to be a denitive survey of Enlightenment thought.
However, he later rejected the optimism of the movement, arguing instead that
modern society was a form of entrapment that limited the natural freedom and
goodness with which humans were originally born.
642 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Rousseaus break with the Encyclopedists was not just intellectual. Throughout
his adulthood, his relationships with other thinkers often followed a pattern in which
he sought acceptance at rst but later rejected his new allies. As he aged, he became
increasingly suspicious of the motives and actions of those around him. Many com-
mentators today believe he was clinically paranoid in late adulthood. However, his
nal years were by his own accounts more peaceful, spent in spiritual introspection,
the contemplation of nature, and the writing of autobiographical works.
Major Works
Rousseau rst articulated his reaction against the optimism of the Enlightenment
when he entered an ofcial essay contest on the question of whether new scien-
tic ideas contributed to the advancement of morals. In his later autobiographical
writing, Rousseau reported that this question caused him to have something like
a religious epiphany, a sudden vision of great clarity about the corrupted state of
society and the lost possibilities of human life. His prize-winning essay, Discourse on
the Sciences and the Arts (1750; often called the First Discourse), described the devel-
opment of civilization as a downward spiral in which humans give up their natural
freedom in exchange for supercial comforts and the articial constraints of mo-
dernity. Here Rousseau rst developed his idea that prior to the social problems of
modern life, humans in their original state of nature were happy, prosperous, and
free. While he did not use the term noble savage in any of his works (though he
did refer to the savages of America as happy and simple in the First Discourse),
this phrase has come to summarize Rousseaus belief that humans are naturally
good but become corrupted by modernity.
In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755; also known as the Second Discourse),
Rousseau further developed his ideas about the fall of humanity from its original
state of natural goodness. Civilization develops in stages, and at each stage humans
lose more of their natural freedom. The rst humans lived happily and freely in
conditions of independence from each other. Only when they began to live together
in social groups did problems arise: love turned into jealously, achievement turned
to envy, self-esteem became self-importance. With the development of civil society
came the unnatural institution of private property, which led to the creation of re-
strictive laws and social rules to protect the rich from the poor. In short, the source
of human inequality is social organization. As society becomes more complex, the
people within it increasingly become unhappy, unfree, and unequal.
Although Rousseaus two Discourses expressed a yearning for the lost state of na-
ture, Rousseau did not propose to overthrow modernity and return to the past. In
his best-known book, The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau argued instead for a dif-
ferent kind of revolution, not back to the state of nature but forward to a new form
of society. The human race had outgrown its original condition and could no longer
survive naturally. Instead, the inequalities that arose from civilization could be elimi-
nated with a radically new form of political unitya new social contract based not
on material self-interest but on the united will of the community. If the will of each
individual were to combine into a single great voluntary force, which Rousseau fa-
mously called the General Will, a new form of society could be created. He argued
that the loss of personal liberty that comes from fusing ones private will with that of
the community would be more than offset by the gain of power in the larger entity.
Although later writers objected that the rule of the community inevitably involves
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 643
the rule of some individuals over others, and that individual wills are too disparate
to unite so completely, Rousseau believed that the power of community is much
greater than the sum of its parts. The particular will of every individual is weak, but
the General Will of the community is strong. Only by uniting into a greater power
may individuals nd their true freedom. Rousseau argued that it was only inequality
and self-interest that kept communities apart. By eliminating those unnatural con-
straints, a new community of free wills could be born.
In addition to his political works, Rousseau wrote a well-received popular novel,
La nouvelle Hlose (1761), and a treatise on education written in novel form, Emile
(1762). The latter described the education of a boy meant to develop his innate
potential while maintaining his natural liberty. It also outlined the education of his
future wife, Sophie, but within the limits that Rousseau believed were natural to
women.
In an important section of Emile entitled The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard
Vicar, Rousseau described his own religious beliefs. Although during his travels he
underwent repeated conversions between Protestantism and Catholicism, the Pro-
fession depicts a peculiar form of deism (the belief that Gods will can be discov-
ered in nature rather than in biblical revelation) in which the natural world is ruled
not by the materialistic laws of Newtonian physics but by the spontaneous forces of
growth and self-development.
His later autobiographical works include the Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques (1780),
The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, and The Confessions (17821789).
Inuence on Revolution and Ideology
After Rousseaus death in 1778, events were underway that would culminate in
the French Revolution, in which social and political institutions were overthrown in
an attempt to create a new French republic of equal citizens. Although the Revolu-
tion had a range of social, economic, and political causes, Rousseaus ideas were
widely inuential in stimulating the desire for radical social change. The popular
slogan of the RevolutionLiberty, Equality, and Fraternitymay be seen as an en-
capsulation of his political vision. However, his ideas also had a more troubling in-
uence on those events. In 1793, the Revolution entered its bloodiest phase, known
as the Reign of Terror, during which Robespierres Jacobin party guillotined not
just aristocrats but also earlier revolutionaries and others in the name of the Gen-
eral Will. Today, these events continue to fuel the controversy over whether Rous-
seaus ideas favor liberty or whether his deeper themes are authoritarian and even
totalitarian.
Rousseau was widely inuential among philosophers, including the most famous
thinker of the European Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724 1804), who had a
portrait of the French thinker in his study. Kant was especially interested in Rous-
seaus idea of liberty as self-rule or autonomy. (From the Greek auto- for self and
nomos for law, autonomy literally means the power to give law to oneself.) To be
autonomous, both men agreed, humans must neither by ruled by others nor be gov-
erned solely by the laws of nature. Instead, to be truly free one must have the power
to give ones own dening laws to oneself. Kant tried to show that every autonomous
being should give itself laws that also apply equally to every similarly autonomous
being. By arguing that individual freedom is consistent with universal willinga
form of will even more general than the General WillKant sought to reconcile
644 Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul
individual freedom with communal autonomy. However, Kants philosophy is also
seen by some as implicitly authoritarian.
Among political thinkers and social critics, Rousseau inuenced a wide range of
revolutionary writers, including Karl Marx (18181883), who followed Rousseau in
seeing private property as a key source of social problems. Marxs communism is
one version of a wider family of political-economic theories generally called social-
ism, in which economic equality is the most important prerequisite to social unity.
Like Rousseau, socialists generally believe that the ultimate goal of society is not just
equality but communal autonomythat is, the collective power to give dening
laws to ourselves as a group. Thus, Rousseau can be understood as a precursor to
modern socialism.
Rousseaus beliefs about the natural goodness of humanity also inuenced later
thinkers known as anarchists, such as the Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(18091862) and the Russian Mikhail Bakunin (18141876). Although anarchists
diverge in their beliefs and proposed solutions, most would agree that humans are
naturally virtuous and that vice comes about only from the pernicious inuence of
social institutions and authorities. However, while the themes of natural goodness
and the oppressive nature of social institutions were clearly inuenced by Rous-
seaus two Discourses, not all anarchists would agree with the proposal in The Social
Contract to construct a new form of political authority. Most anarchists would en-
dorse the idea of the General Will only if it could be shown to arise from, and to be
compatible with, the freedom of individuals.
Rousseaus ideas about the spirituality of nature, described in such works as the
Reveries and the Profession, were inuential among later back to nature thinkers
such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) and Henry David Thoreau (18171862).
Similarly, the late modern belief that we nd our true selves when we commune with
nature or become one with the natural world reect Rousseaus naturalism in com-
bination with his holism. Thus he can be seen as the author of a range of todays
environmentalist themes. More generally, he was a founding gure of the romantic
movements among artists and counterculturists who see freedom as creativity and
social spontaneity. See also Jacobins.
FURTHER READING: Bertram, Christopher. Rousseau and the Social Contract. London:
Routledge, 2003; Cranston, Maurice. Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, 17121754. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983; Cranston, Maurice. The Noble Savage:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 17541762. London: Penguin, 1991; Riley, Patrick, ed. The Cambridge
Companion to Rousseau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Wokler, Robert.
Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
BORIS DEWEIL
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul (17631845)
Enthusiastic about the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Pierre-Paul
Royer-Collard subsequently became wary of the popular energies and violence it
had unleashed. During the Bourbon restoration, he used his position in the Cham-
ber of Deputies to support a moderate form of constitutional monarchy rather
than liberal republicanism or ultraroyalism. As a philosopher at the Sorbonne and
as head of the Commission for Public Instruction, he promoted the humanities,
Rule of Law 645
history, and a worldview that rejected the materialism deemed characteristic of the
Enlightenment philosophes.
Born to a family of landowning farmers, he was strongly inuenced by the Catho-
lic piety of his mother and his uncle. He excelled in school and became a lawyer
in Paris, where he joined elite intellectual circles and absorbed the reformist ideas
of the day. In 1790, he was elected to the National Assembly and became assist-
ant secretary for the revolutionary Paris Commune. He distanced himself from the
Revolution as it entered its radical phase in August 1792, however, for he disliked
the destruction and opposed the abolition of the monarchy. From his family home
in Sompuis, he watched the rise and fall of Robespierre.
Royer-Collard returned to public life in 1797 as a member of the Council of Five
Hundred. He earned a reputation as a ne orator for his advocacy of clemency for
migrs and of freedom of religion. He became one of the future kings councilors
in 1799 and worked to promote the accession of Louis XVIII. This did not prevent
him from supporting Napoleon, however, for which Royer-Collard was rewarded in
1811 with the chair in modern philosophy at the Facult de Paris. He switched his
loyalty back to Louis XVIII during the Hundred Days, and the new king made him
head of the Commission for Public Instruction in 1815.
Royer-Collard determinedly fought against the ultraroyalists in the Chamber, and
he became the leader of the Doctrinaire party of royalists who sought to retain the
charter of 1814 and the new constitutional monarchy. By 1820, the Doctrinaires had
become the opposition; Royer-Collard resigned his public functions. He returned
to the Chamber in 1821 and became its president in 1827. In the same year, he was
elected to the Acadmie Franaise. In 1830, he read Address from the 221, which de-
nounced the kings authoritarian proclivities, to Charles X.
Given Royer-Collards desire for a liberal monarch balanced by a parliament, he
found it easy to back Louis-Philippes rise to power. Due to his advancing age, he
exercised no important public functions under the July Monarchy. He retired from
political life in 1842, but he continued to serve as a friend and political inspiration
to French liberals such as Franois Guizot and Alexis de Tocqueville. Royer-Collard
is now best remembered for his efforts to realize a political system that would recon-
cile the need for authority and stability with the peoples desire for liberty.
FURTHER READING: Laski, Harold Joseph. Authority in the Modern State. Hamden, CT:
Archon Books, 1968; Remond, Gabriel. Royer-Collard. New York: Arno Press, 1979; Spuller,
Eugne. Royer-Collard. Paris: Hachette, 1895.
MELANIE A. BAILEY
Rule of Law
The rule of law is the principle that government can exercise authority only in
accordance with written laws that have been adopted through a formal, established
procedure. The purpose of the principle is to safeguard against arbitrary action by
the government.
The concept of rule of law was expressed as far back as Aristotle, who theorized
that the law was a system of rules that were inherently discoverable in the natural
world. The modern concept developed largely in Britain during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries as a counterargument to the principle of the divine right of
646 Rule of Law
kings and, by extension, lesser nobility. The theory of divine right held that the king
was the maker of law, and also above it. He was free to act in any way he saw t, be-
cause he inherently manifested the state and its subjects.
Thus, in the Anglo-American system, the rule of law originally developed as a
guard against tyrannythe unchecked rule of the leader. This protection is, in
practice, far more sweeping than the implications of its originprotection from
an arbitrary or capricious king. As the United States and, later, western Europe
became more democratic, the rule of law began to develop a second meaningthe
protection of the minority from the unfettered exercise of authority by the majority.
In this context, the rule of law works to extend certain minimum protections to the
minority, thereby protecting them from tyranny of the majority.
The concept of rule of law in the twenty-rst century encompasses several more
meanings. Corruption of government ofcials is now considered a major impedi-
ment to a functioning society. Regardless of how fair and progressive a nations
written laws may be, if its citizens must bribe ofcials to gain access to the benets
of those laws, the rule of law has not really been established.
Transparencythe idea that the decision-making process should be open and
visible to the population at largeis becoming an increasingly important aspect of
the rule of law. Government ofcials should not only follow the rules but also show
that the rules were drafted in a fair manner, without undue inuence from those
who stand to benet. It is also increasingly understood that a functioning society
must have strong institutions that are committed to the concept. Strong and inde-
pendent police, investigative, and judicial institutions are necessary to enforce the
rules. In recent years, business and economic interests have expanded the concept
to explicitly include laws affecting commercial relations, such as contract terms and
government regulation of business and nancial markets. These interests maintain
that predictability and consistency in the enforcement of business law is essential
to the expansion of commerce. Their argument is that businesses and individuals
need to know ahead of time how any given law will be enforced and that it will be
enforced consistently in all circumstances, regardless of whether an interested party
is favored by the people in charge of the government. In other words, from a busi-
ness perspective, the application of the rule of law means the government will not
show favorites in either enforcing laws or awarding contracts.
The concept of rule of law does not address the justice or fairness of the laws
themselves, but simply how the legal system establishes and upholds those laws. In
theory, an undemocratic or authoritarian state can exist with the outward forms
of the rule of law. In practice, however, authoritarian governments tend to disre-
gard even the appearance of legality. As a result, the rule of law is considered, at
least in the Atlantic community, a prerequisite, or at least a contemporaneous re-
quirement, for the development of democracy. As such, it has served as a common
basis for human rights discourse with authoritarian states.
There are two ideological arguments against the concept. First, majoritarians ob-
ject to the restrictions on the rights of the majority. Protections of minorities restrict
the rights of the majority. In practice, in dynamic societies consisting of multiple
interest groups, these limitations are constantly subject to modication in the ebb
and ow of democratic politics.
A second objection is that the concept leads to an emphasis on procedure to the
detriment of substantive issues. Put another way, too much focus on how a law is
Rush, Benjamin 647
prepared and how it is enforced can lead to less focus on the substance of that law.
Overemphasis on the procedures required to obtain any given outcome can result
in the system losing sight of whether that outcome is just or appropriate in a moral
and ethical sense. The red tape so often complained of in dealings with governmen-
tal institutions is a manifestation of this problem.
FURTHER READING: Maravall, Jose Maris, ed. Democracy and the Rule of Law. Cambridge
Studies in the Theory of Democracy. London: Cambridge University Press, 2003; Posner,
Richard A. Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003;
Tamanaha, Brian Z. On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory. London: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
JOSEPH ADAMCZYK
Rush, Benjamin (17461813)
Benjamin Rush was a Princeton- (1760) and Edinburgh-educated (MD, 1768) co-
lonial American physician, Patriot, natural philosopher, and educator known as the
father of American psychiatry because his Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the
Diseases of the Mind (1812) was the rst formal exposition of psychiatry in America.
Rush practiced medicine and taught chemistry, the theory and practice of medi-
cine, the institutes of medicine, and clinical medicine at the College of Philadelphia
and the University of Pennsylvania College of Physicians. He published the rst
American textbook in chemistry, entitled Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry,
in 1770 and authored over 65 publications in medicine. Rush was a staff physician at
Pennsylvania Hospital (17831813) and served as the president of the Philadelphia
Medical Society.
As an early proponent of colonial rights and an advocate of American indepen-
dence, Rush assisted Thomas Paine in his writing of Common Sense (1776). He was
a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Congress and drafted a resolution urging
independence (1776) before being elected to the Second Continental Congress,
where he chaired the committee that recommended the Declaration of Indepen-
dence (1776), which he signed. He was critical of the single-house legislative struc-
ture created by the Articles of Confederation (1776), attended the Continental
Congress in Baltimore (1777), was a member of the Pennsylvania state convention
that ratied the United States Constitution (1787), and coauthored with James Wil-
son the Pennsylvania state constitution (1790).
Rush served as surgeon to the Pennsylvania navy (17751776) and was appointed
surgeon general and then physician general of the Middle Department of the Con-
tinental Army (17771778). He treated soldiers at the battles of Trenton, Princeton,
Brandywine, Germantown, and Valley Forge. Though he resigned his position in
the Continental Army due both to a disagreement with his superior (who had the
support of General George Washington) regarding the management of military hos-
pitals and his criticism (1777) of Washingtons prosecution of the Revolutionary
War, he published Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers (1778) and later rec-
ommended health measures for the Lewis and Clark Expedition (18041806). Rush
assisted David Ramsey in writing History of the American Revolution (1789), proposed
a secretary of peace (1793), helped reconcile John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
(18091812), and served as the treasurer of the U.S. Mint (1797) until his death.
648 Rush, Benjamin
Rush is also known as the father of public schools under the Constitution for
his promotion of free public schools for all (On the Mode of Education Proper in a
Republic, 1784), the limited and appropriate use of corporal punishment (Thoughts
upon the Amusements and Punishments Which Are Proper for Schools, 1790), and the use
of the Bible as a public school textbook (A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a School
Book, 1791). Rush was publicly laudatory of the role of women in the American
Revolution and supported their participation in government (1784) and education.
He also helped found ve colleges and universities: the College of Philadelphia
(later the University Pennsylvania), the University of Pennsylvania College of Physi-
cians, the Young Ladies Academy of Philadelphia, Dickinson College, and Franklin
College.
Rush was a noted humanitarian, helping to found the Philadelphia Dispensary
for the Poor (1786) and the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Pub-
lic Prisons (1787), as well as an advocate for the involvement on government in the
economy; for example, he supported funding textile manufacturing in Philadelphia
(1775). When Rushs use of bleeding to treat yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia
during the 1790s was attacked by a paper called Peter Porcupines Gazette, he sued, won
a jury verdict, and distributed the proceeds among Philadelphias poor.
He advocated prison reform (An Inquiry into the Effects of Public Punishment upon
Criminals and upon Society, 1787) and was an early advocate of the abolition of slavery
(An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America upon Slave Keeping,
1773), co-founding, with Benjamin Franklin, Americas rst antislavery society, the
Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of the
Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Rush helped fund the organization with
a gift of 5,200 acres of land in Bedford County. He served as the president of the
national convention of abolition societies in Philadelphia, published To the Free Afri-
cans and Other Free People of Color in the United States (1796), and became the president
of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1803). He also
helped found the rst African church in Philadelphia (St. Thomas; 17911793).
Rush believed that total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco was best for the
health of society and the individual and published extensively on this subject: An In-
quiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors upon the Human Body, and Their Inuence upon
the Happiness of Society (which urged presidential prohibition of the use of alcohol
and urged ministers to preach against its use; 1784); Sermons to Gentlemen upon Tem-
perance and Exercise (1772); Observations upon the Habitual Use of Tobacco upon Health,
Morals, and Property (1798); and An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the
Human Body and Mind (1804).
Rush believed that Christianity was an essential element of the American ethos
and asserted that the United States Constitution was divinely inspired on the level
of the Bible. He recommended a congressional day of thanksgiving and then urged
national days of prayer and fasting at the beginning of the War of 1812. He helped
begin the American Sunday School movement with the founding of the First Day
Society (1790); served as vice president of the Philadelphia Bible Society, which he
founded (1808); and helped publish Americas rst mass-produced Bible (1812).
Rush helped to found the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge
(1768) and, at the combined American Philosophical Society (1769), presented its
annual speech in 1774 (Natural History of Medicine among the Indians of North
America) and served as its vice president (17991800). Among Benjamin Rushs
Russia, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on 649
many honors was a medal awarded him by the king of Prussia (1805) in appre-
ciation of Rushs replies to inquiries concerning yellow fever, and a Yale University
LLD (1812). See also American Revolutionary War; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Barton, David. Benjamin Rush: Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 1999; Brodsky, Alyn. Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician. New
York: Truman Talley Books, 2004.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
For Russia, the eighteenth century started with an introduction to Western sci-
ence, technology, and values undertaken by Peter the Great (16721725). By the
middle of the century, with access to a wide range of ideas and values from western
Europe and having been shaped by Western tastes and manners, the Russian edu-
cated elite had become fully incorporated into the European cultural sphere. At the
end of the century, Russians faced a Europe that was undergoing profound changes
originating in France. Russia itself had changed. The violence of the Pugachev Re-
bellion (17731775) at home and the turn of the French Revolution to the Reign of
Terror led many Russian intellectuals to reject the critical and analytical ideas of the
Enlightenment and invest in romantic moral concerns.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the goal of bringing Russia into Europe was
closely connected with the efforts of the state, especially during the reign of Cather-
ine II, a Russian philosophe on the throne. Catherines taste for everything French
was actively replicated by the educated among Russian society and by the court. No
writer was more widely read in eighteenth-century Russia than Voltaire, and on the
surface, French literary, artistic, and cultural models dominated the Russian scene.
However, French philosophical ideas played a relatively minor role in shaping the
Russian mind. For a small part of the educated elite the introduction to radical-
ism brought from the West was combined with disappointment in the Orthodox
Church in a phenomenon called Voltairianism. Voltairianism can be dened as an
attempt to create a worldview that was not based on the authority of the church but
the autonomy of reason propagated by radical French philosophes. For the major-
ity of Russian intellectuals, Voltaire and the French philosophy were associated with
supercial anti-clericalism and godlessness. The course the revolutionary events in
France took did little to change this perception. The excesses of the Revolution
quickly alienated the sympathies of those few who applauded it in the beginning.
The Russian general public muddled together French philosophy, the Revolution,
and France itself into one and condemned them all. Following the tone set by the
royalist migrs, most Russian contemporaries considered the Revolution a series of
absurd Saturnalia. Even the fashion of the day extolled dresses la reine and hairdos
la counterrevolution over Jacobin hats and cravats.
The court actively propagated and supported the negative perception of the Rev-
olution. The rst mention of revolutionary events in ofcial sources appeared in
the St. Petersburg Gazette in an article on the fall of the Bastille. The events were char-
acterized as absolute madness of freethinking, greed, and godlessness. In the
same newspaper, the storming of the Tuileries palace on August 10, 1792, was asso-
ciated with the fall of Christian Jerusalem. Despite Catherines personal sympathies
650 Russia, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
with French thought, with the onset of the Revolution she rejected many of the
foundational ideas of her philosophe friends. She became strikingly conservative
and increasingly hostile to criticism. Although the empress counted on Russias
geographic remoteness to block the French revolutionary disease from spread-
ing to her empire, she nevertheless established special procedures to preclude the
contamination of Russian society. In August of 1790, all Russian travelers were re-
called from revolutionary Paris. French migrs in Russia were forced to cut all ties
with France. After breaking diplomatic ties with the Republic, Catherine prohibited
ships ying the tricolor from entering Russian ports.
From 1790 to 1796, the two main sources of information emanating from France
and reaching Russia were the ofcially censured articles of the St. Petersburg Gazette
and censured private correspondence. Nevertheless, radical ideas and news about
revolutionary events were able to nd their way in Russia. While Russian society in
general was more interested in French literature and fashion than in French politi-
cal theory, it was well known to the educated public. The transmission of ideas was
not restricted to books. Many young Russian aristocrats were educated by French
teachers and were well traveled. For example, the young Count Stroganov, who was
raised by an ardent French radical, joined the Jacobin Club. Inspired by their free-
thinking friends, the princes Golitzin disregarded Catherines orders and fought on
the streets of Paris in support of the Republic.
Despite intense Russian interest in the revolutionary events occurring far to the
west, revolutionary ideas failed to receive wide reception in Russia. In addition to
a relatively small and vulnerable public sphere, which was not conducive to revolu-
tion, the three essential elements of the French Revolution were lacking in Russia:
a privileged but powerless nobility, an ambitious middle class, and a proprietary
peasantry. Alexander Radishchev (Radischev) (17491802), a prominent forerun-
ner of Russian radical intelligentsia, observed this in his A Journey from St. Petersburg
to Moscow, published anonymously in 1790. Catherine, one of the rst readers of
the Journey, immediately associated the authors ideas with what she called French
fallacies and considered Radishchev a more dangerous rebel than Pugacheva
threat to the very foundations of the state. Criticizing serfdom and autocracy, the
author emphasized popular sovereignty and the rights of people. The Journey re-
volved around two main themes that were at the center of concern for Russian
intellectuals familiar with the English Glorious Revolution, and the American and
French revolutions: constitutionalism and abolitionism. Radishchev, on the other
hand, rather than trying to envision a free society in Russia, relied not on the con-
troversial French model, but on the model of American liberalism. Throughout
the Journey, he praised the legacy of the American Revolution and the foundations
of American society as based on a universal reliance on law, constitution, and self-
government.
Radishchev was condemned to death for his book, but Catherine changed the
verdict to a 10-year period of exile in Siberia. Radishchevs tribunal coincided with
the trial of Nikolai Novikov (17441818), publisher, journalist, and the leader of the
Moscow Freemasons, who fell under suspicion for harboring political designs and
having extensive contacts abroad. Both trials, which involved leading Russian intel-
lectuals, proved shocking, for the defendants ideas violated many of Catherines ear-
lier principles. Her references to Radishchevs infection with French ideas and her
questioning of Novikov over his foreign connections demonstrate that the empress
Rutledge, Edward 651
was frightened by the French Revolution and feared that revolutionary ideology
could spread among the literate Russian nobilityher main pillar of strength.
When Catherine died in 1796, she was succeeded by her son Paul I (1754 1801),
who led the rst Russian military campaigns against revolutionary France (179899).
Paul continued to enforce his mothers measures against the French contamina-
tion, tightened control over travel to and from Russia, established an embargo on all
foreign literature, and even banned the use of such words as citizen and society.
Nevertheless, it was to be Pauls son Alexander I (17771825) who would take a lead-
ing role in defeating Napoleon and returning the Bourbons to power in France.
FURTHER READING: Radishchev, Aleksandr. A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Edited by
Leo Weiner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958; Raeff, Marc. The Enlightenment
in Russia and Russian Thought in the Enlightenment. In The Eighteenth Century in Russia, ed.
J. G. Garrard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973; Raeff, Marc. Origins of the Russian Intelli-
gentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1996; Yarmolinsky,
Avrahm. Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism. New York: Collier Books, 1971.
NATALIE BAYER
Rutledge, Edward (17491800)
A South Carolina politician and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Ed-
ward Rutledge was the youngest son of Dr. John and Sarah Rutledge. He studied law
at the law ofce of his older brother, John Rutledge, and then at Londons Middle
Temple. In 1772, he was admitted to the English bar, and to the South Carolina bar
the following year. In 1774 Rutledge was elected to the First Continental Congress
along with his older brother. In 1775 he was elected to the extralegal Provincial
Congress, which elected him to the Second Continental Congress. By early 1776
Rutledge had apparently begun to support independence, although he opposed a
declaration until a confederation had been adopted. However, for the sake of unity,
Rutledge eventually became the youngest signer of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. He also served as a peace commissioner (along with Benjamin Franklin and
John Adams) that negotiated with General William Howe.
He returned to South Carolina in late 1776 to assume a seat in the General As-
sembly and a captaincy in the Charleston Artillery Company. Rutledge served in a
number of battles in the 1779 campaign to defend Charleston. He was captured
while leaving the besieged city to report to his brother, Governor John Rutledge. Ed-
ward was imprisoned at St. Augustine. He was exchanged in July 1781 and returned
to the state House of Representatives, where he advocated retaliation against Loyal-
ists. During the 1780s Rutledge served in a number of municipal ofces, including
justice of the peace, re master of Charleston, trustee of the College of Charleston,
and eventually major in command of the Charleston artillery. In 1788 he was elected
to the state ratifying convention and chaired a committee to draft proposed amend-
ments to the new United States Constitution. Rutledge turned down appointments
to Congress and the Supreme Court. He was a presidential elector in 1788, 1792,
and 1796. In 1796 he was elected to the state senate. In 1798 the state legislature
elected Rutledge to his nal ofce as governor of South Carolina.
FURTHER READING: Haw, James. John and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1997.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
652 Rutledge, John
Rutledge, John (17391800)
A South Carolina politician during the colonial and early national periods fa-
mous for being the rst president of South Carolina and second chief justice (tem-
porarily) of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Rutledge was the rst son of Dr. John
and Sarah Rutledge. After studying at a local attorneys ofce, John Rutledge was ac-
cepted at Londons Middle Temple in 1754. In 1760 he was admitted to the English
bar. He was admitted to the South Carolina bar and elected to the Commons House
of Assembly the following year. Rutledges rise was rapid; in 1764 he was named the
colonys interim attorney general. He quickly joined the Patriot cause, serving or
chairing a number of committees that championed the cause of the Assembly. The
Assembly elected Rutledge a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 and to the
First Continental Congress in 1774.
In 1775, Rutledge was elected to the extralegal Provincial Congress, which elected
him (with the approval of the Assembly) to the Second Continental Congress.
Rutledge chaired a committee that recommended the colonies move temporarily to
a government based on popular sovereignty. Soon after, Rutledge returned to South
Carolina and was once again elected to the Provincial Congress and the Council
of Safety. As a member of a Provincial Congress committee, Rutledge helped draft
the temporary state constitution. In March 1776 the new General Assembly elected
Rutledge president and commander-in-chief of South Carolina. In March 1778 he
resigned when the General Assembly passed a new, more democratic state consti-
tution. After a stint in the state legislature, Rutledge was elected governor by the
legislature in February 1779, just in time to defend the state from British invasion.
He left Charleston before the citys fall in May 1780 and spent much of the rest of
the war as a governor in exile. Rutledge helped organize resistance in the state, sup-
plying and commissioning partisans like Francis Marion as generals. In August 1781
Rutledge returned to South Carolina with General Nathanael Greenes army and
began to restore the states government. In 1782 Rutledge accepted a seat in the
legislature, which elected him to Congress.
In 1784, Rutledge returned to South Carolina, where the legislature elected him
judge of the Court of Chancery. In 1787, the state legislature selected Rutledge as
a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he served as the chairman of
the committee of detail, charged with organizing and eshing out the resolutions
of the convention. Rutledge defended the United States Constitution in the states
legislature and ratifying convention. In September 1789, Rutledge accepted an
appointment by President George Washington as associate justice of the Supreme
Court. In 1791, Rutledge resigned when the legislature elected him chief justice of
South Carolina. In 1795, President Washington gave him a recess appointment to
chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Although he presided over the court for
one term, the Senate refused to conrm him because of his opposition to the Jay
Treaty and his mental and physical decline. See also Constitutions, American State;
Rutledge, Edward.
FURTHER READING: Haw, James. John and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1997.
ROBERT J. ALDERSON
S
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Lon Florelle de (17671794)
Louis Antoine Saint-Just was a radical deputy in the National Convention, a
Jacobin, and a member of the Committee of Public Safety who played a signicant
role in the founding of the First French Republic and the Reign of Terror. He
exemplied the austere morality of Jacobin politics, combining with this austerity,
tremendous energy, political skill, and devotion to the revolution. Idealistic and
severe, Saint-Justs vision of the Republic and revolutionary politics was grounded
in moral terms, emphasizing the centrality of civic virtue to republican politics. His
speeches and written works emphasized the themes of virtue, purity, and devotion.
His application of these themes to the practical work of founding the Republic
made him a central architect and theorist of the Terror. Relying on his youthful zest
and his oratorical skills, Saint-Just rose from obscurity to become one of the lead-
ing Jacobin deputies. As a member of the Committee of Public Safety, he exercised
considerable inuence and was a key gure in drafting the Constitution of 1793,
purging the Convention, and establishing the revolutionary government. Saint-
Just was a central leader in the Jacobin dictatorship of Year II ( June 1793 June
1794) who, alongside Maximilien Robespierre, was targeted by the Thermidorians
and was guillotined following the Thermidorian Reaction of the Convention.
Saint-Just led a rather unremarkable childhood. Born at Decizes (Nivre), he spent
his childhood at Nampcel (Oise) and Blrancourt (Aisne). His father rose from a
peasant family, through military service, as sergeant of the guard and captain in
the artillery, to settle in Blrancourt, where he owned considerable property, and
died in 1777, leaving a modest inheritance that his mother used to secure her son
an education suitable for the legal profession. Educated at the Oratorian college
of Saint-Nicolas at Soissons, where he studied from 1777 to 1785, he later pursued
legal studies at the Faculty of Law at Reims. Upon completing his courses, he re-
turned to Blrancourt and seemed destined to live the life of a provincial lawyer,
although the publication of a scandalous poem, Organt, and his trips to Paris in 1786
and then again in 1789 suggest that he was seeking something beyond the world of
law and provincial life.
654 Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Lon Florelle de
The outbreak of the French Revolution offered Saint-Just the opportunity to get
involved in local politics. Due to his friendship with the radicals who controlled
the municipal government of Blrancourt, Saint-Just entered the National Guard
as a lieutenant colonel despite the fact he did not meet the scal qualication. In
October 1790, he attempted to gain election as a justice of the peace, although the
law clearly specied that the minimum age was 30, and Saint-Just was only 23. For
the time, Saint-Just was forced to be content with his role in the National Guard and
the inuence he was able to exercise through his friendship with members of the
radical faction in municipal government. Saint-Just made a name for himself in
the defense of peasants in their seigneurial disputes with landowners. He gained
some fame at Blrancourt for defending local peasants against a large landowner,
a former marquis named Grenet. Finally, in 1790, he was selected by the town of
Blrancourt to act as deputy to a departmental meeting organized to decide whether
Laon or Soissons should be the capital for the new department of Aisne. Saint-Just
felt no particular passion for the debate, although he was instructed to plead the
case of Soissons, and he used the opportunity to showcase his oratory skills and pre-
sent himself to a wider audience, obviously with the hopes of preparing for future
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Lon Florelle de 655
electoral success. His activities in local affairs exemplify Saint-Just s strong desire
to bring attention to himself in Paris, and having begun a correspondence with
Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, he actively sought opportunities within his
local setting to distinguish himself as an orator and politician.
In June 1791, Saint-Just published Esprit de la Rvolution et de la constitution de
France. Borrowing heavily from Montesquieu, the book explained the fundamental
principles implicit in the new institutions being created by the Legislative Assembly
and the constitution that was being nalized. The book was part history, celebrating
the actions of the National Assembly, and part political program, examining the
principles of the new political order and suggesting how they should be implemented
into new institutions of civil society. He divided the work into ve books analyzing
the constitution, which he argued exemplied the moderation and balance of pow-
ers that Montesquieu praised, as well as examining what civic institutions were re-
quired as the logical consequences of the constitution. The book presents a clear
indication of the central themes that would preoccupy Saint-Just in his practical
political activities and his other theoretical works. The work consistently proposed
that the Revolution must be moral and not strictly political and argued that the true
objective of the revolutionary assemblies was to guide the people through a moral
regeneration and to build the institutions that would secure this regeneration. The
problem that would face France as it sought to make itself a republic was outlined
with considerable clarity in this work. While Saint-Just consistently lamented the
role of force, and the corruption of natural society through the application of
political force, the books concern for moral regeneration anticipates the Terror,
when the use of force was justied as a necessity to compel the moral transformation
of the citizens of the new republic.
Despite the role he played in local affairs, the early years of the Revolution
proved frustrating for Saint-Just. Not content to be a local politician, he sought
election to the Legislative Assembly in September of 1791. He was 24 at the time,
and the Constitution of 1791 clearly established the age limit for deputies as 25.
Not deterred by the obvious legal barrier, Saint-Just attempted to subvert the rules
of the constitution, disguising his age before the local assembly. When the assembly
asked him to show proof of his age, Saint-Justs deception was made clear and he
was ejected from the meeting. Having failed in his attempt, Saint-Just was unable to
directly participate in the great national crises that the Legislative Assembly faced in
1792: the declaration of war, the invasion from foreign armies, and the overthrow of
King Louis XVI in the revolution of August 10. Saint-Just remained detached from
these events, having given up on direct action, and he spent his time continuing his
activities in the National Guard, although by now relegated to second in command,
and his defense of peasants cases. There can be little doubt that he welcomed the
proclamation of the National Convention as an opportunity to nally settle in Paris
and enter the national political arena. He was now eligible for election, having
turned 25 and having bought sequestered church lands. Saint-Just was elected to
the Convention, entering it as the youngest member, and representing the depart-
ment of Aisne. In the Convention, Saint-Just aligned himself with the Mountain,
frequented the Jacobin Club, and became recognized as one of the leaders of the
radical faction that would come to dominate the Convention.
Saint-Just rst came to national prominence in the National Convention during
the debates over the trial of Louis XVI. Adopting a radical stance far removed from
656 Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Lon Florelle de
the majority opinion of the Convention, Saint-Just argued against the trial. With the
laconic rhetoric that dominated his oratorical style, his speech rejected all the pro-
posals for a trial and argued that the only logical and proper act was to simply con-
demn the king. Arguing that the relationship between the king and the people, and
hence the Convention, was a state of war, Saint-Just proposed that the only solution
was political, not legal, and the Convention had the moral duty, as founders of a
republic, to destroy the king and the monarchy as the rst act of establishing the
Republic. Had the Convention followed his advice, there would have been no trial
for the king, a policy favored by the Jacobins, and Saint-Justs speech became the
leading argument for the Jacobin response to the question of the trial. For the rst
time, the Convention witnessed the severity and incessant moralizing that Saint-Just
applied to political questions, and his extreme radicalism won him the favor of the
Jacobins and rmly established his place among the radicals in the Convention.
On May 30, 1793, Saint-Just was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, and
from that point on he became one of the leading architects of the Terror and the
Jacobin Republic. He spoke often in the Convention, discussing a range of issues,
including subsistence, the army, factions, and policing, and his speeches highlight
the radical program of the Jacobins. After the purge of the Girondins, Saint-Just
became a member of a new constitutional committee and helped draft a new consti-
tution to replace the rst constitution drafted by a Girondin-controlled committee.
Saint-Justs energies were devoted to two principal tasks. As a spokesman for the
Committee of Public Safety, it often fell to Saint-Just to report to the Convention,
before whom his speeches exemplied his radicalism and leadership. Secondly,
Saint-Just took particular interest in military affairs, and his missions to the armies
constitute one of his most important contributions to the Republic.
Saint-Justs oratorical skills were one of his most important contributions to the
Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. On October 10, 1793, Saint-Just
spoke before the Convention, demanding a vigorous reorganization of the govern-
ment, including full civil and military authority for the committee and suspension of
the constitution the Convention had recently enacted. This speech led to the decree
on revolutionary government that rmly secured the dictatorship of the Jacobins
and the Committee of Public Safety. On February 26, 1794, Saint-Just was charged
with the task of presenting the report that justied the Terror and demanded the
conscation of suspects property. Following this report, on March 3, Saint-Just pro-
posed a plan that would involve a census of the poor, an examination of all suspects
held in custody, and a scheme to distribute conscated property to the poor. Saint-
Justs proposal, the Ventse Decrees, was never put into place, but it exemplied
his radicalism and the degree to which the Jacobins were prepared to enact policies
to placate the sans-culottes and retain their support for the Jacobin control of the
Convention. Saint-Just played a key role in the factional struggles of the Conven-
tion. In July 1793 he presented the report on the Girondin faction, which had been
purged from the Convention on June 3. In March 1794, he was again entrusted with
the task of denouncing factions, and following this report, the Convention decreed
the arrest and trial of Jacques Ren Hbert and the Hbertistes. On March 31,
Saint-Just turned his attack to Georges-Jacques Danton and his followers. Saint-Just
played a prominent role in the decision to attack the Hbert and Danton factions,
and he was charged with explaining and justifying the actions of the committee to
the Convention.
Saint-Simonism 657
As a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Saint-Just was twice sent as a
deputy on mission to various armies of the Republic: rst, in mid-October 1793 he
was sent, along with Philippe Le Bas, to the Army of the Rhine in Alsace; second, in
late April 1794, he was sent to the armies on the northern frontier. These missions
to the armies were very important, and they represent the most successful initiatives
that Saint-Just carried out as a member of the Committee of Public Safety. In both in-
stances, he proved himself an effective organizer and an effective mediator between
the common soldiers and the Convention. Saint-Just also exemplied his moral vision
concerning the relationship between the army and the development of moral char-
acter, emphasizing a strict view of discipline and moralization of the soldiers duty
and sacrice for the Republic. At the same time, he applied these moral principles
to the examination of ofcers and local ofcials, relieving them of their positions
upon an examination of their conduct in directing the war effort. In Strasbourg,
Saint-Just showed his willingness to improvise, his conviction that the needs of the
army stood above any local or individual needs and rights, and his ability to organize
the resources available. He imposed demands on wealthy inhabitants, aggressively
reorganized the provisioning of food and supplies, removed incompetent ofcers,
and restored the morale of the soldiers. His efforts on both missions increased the
strength of the army and its effectiveness, and his talents were recognized by the Con-
vention after the armies secured important victories following his missions.
Saint-Just exemplied the Jacobin practice of combining a ruthless devotion
to the Revolution with a stoic moralization of politics. While there is some evi-
dence that he could be kind and gentle to his friends and was, at times, a voice
of moderation and compromise within the Committee of Public Safety, his public
persona was dominated by the young, handsome, energetic, and severe revolutionary
whose laconic and moral austerity made him someone to fear. It is this persona that
dominates the historical representation of him, earning him the nickname the Angel
of Terror. Saint-Just entered national politics in the fall of 1792, and his career as a
deputy was characterized by a period of radicalization and intensication of revo-
lutionary politics. He endorsed the Terror as a means to found the ideal Republic,
and his vision of a virtuous citizenry led him not only to support but also enact some
of the most severe measures of the Terror. In the Thermidorian Reaction, Saint-Just
was attacked as a leading member of the Robespierrist faction and was guillotined
the day after his arrest. His devotion to republican morality was evident in his stoic
acceptance of his arrest and death. He died as he had lived his revolutionary career,
inexibly and austerely, devoted to an ideal of virtue that was terrifying to those who
would not submit to the Jacobin vision of the Republic. See also Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; Republicanism.
FURTHER READING: Bruun, Geoffrey. Saint-Just: Apostle of the Terror. Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1966; Curtis, Eugene Newton. Saint-Just: Colleague of Robespierre. New York: Octagon
Books, 1973; Hampson, Norman. Saint-Just. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
BRODIE RICHARDS
Saint-Simonism
Saint-Simonism refers to the beliefs and practices of a group of French philoso-
phers in the early nineteenth century whose ideas were inuenced by Claude Henri
658 Salons
de Saint-Simon (17601825), one of the originators of French socialism and of a
science of society called positivism. Saint-Simonism began after the death of its
namesake, and though it adhered to the original ideas in some ways, it tended to take
on a life of its own. The groups radical ideas of a social and political reformulation
of society had a great inuence on eighteenth-century Europe.
Saint-Simon had several followers, including Auguste Comte, who would later
become known as the founder of the discipline of sociology; Barthlemy-Prosper
Enfantin; and Saint-Amand Bazard. Enfantin and Bazard became the leaders of the
new movement, though they developed a erce rivalry.
The Saint-Simonians were especially interested in Saint-Simons ideas on religion
that were formulated at the end of his life, although many of their ideas on spiritual-
ity were their own. Under the leadership of Enfantin, the group became something
of a cult, wearing monastic clothing, practicing celibacy, and awaiting the appear-
ance of a female messianic gure whose arrival would herald a world lled with
harmony. Enfantin was sentenced to a year in prison for his beliefs but, upon his
release, returned to the order.
The group also adopted a socialist vision of the world. Especially in the early
years under the guidance of Bazard, the Saint-Simonians opposed laissez-faire
economics and even advocated the elimination of material inheritance. They de-
veloped a doctrine that merged the conservative ideology of order and social hi-
erarchy with the socialist emphasis on utilitarian ideals and communalism. The
group maintained authoritarian ideas as a means to exhibit control over all aspects
of social life; they were, however, opposed to any form of violence to accomplish
this endeavor.
The group recruited several members of the intelligentsia in Europe and became
a major inuence on many key social thinkers, including Comte. Their ideas have
even been described as a moral impetus behind the Industrial Revolution in France.
The Saint-Simonians would later abandon their religious and social ideology, and
many became leaders in industry. They were also instrumental in the completion of
the Suez Canal, a long-held desire of Saint-Simon.
FURTHER READING: Fried, Albert, and Ronald Saunders. Socialist Thought: A Documentary
History. New York: Doubleday, 1964; Iggers, Georg G. The Doctrine of Saint-Simon: An Exposition,
First Year, 1828 1829. Translated with notes and an introduction by Georg G. Iggers. New
York: Schocken, 1972.
Salons
European salons started in the seventeenth century as informal social gatherings
for poetry readings, music, and convivial discussions. Although throughout the eigh-
teenth century the term salon was used to refer only to a reception room, by the
middle of the century, salons had emerged as important social spaces. They be-
came not only the centers of urban social and intellectual life but also the centers
of the Enlightenment.
It was the seriousness and regularity of eighteenth-century salons that distin-
guished them from seventeenth-century salons and other gatherings of the time.
Eighteenth-century salons were central to sociability and intellectual, social, and
San Martn, Jos de 659
cultural practices. They performed social functions, operating as private associa-
tions, communicative centers, and meeting places. In contrast with universities or
academies often associated with the state, salons were private institutions used by
groups of intellectuals for intellectual production and collaboration. Salon-goers
were provided with an opportunity for discussion and learning in a place that val-
ued ideas and fostered their development. Although salons emerged as mainly
literary and philosophic clubs, they cultivated and spread political and social ideas.
The principles of intellectual exchange, production, and equality were discussed
in Enlightenment salons and contributed to the formation of a new ideological
construct of public opinion.
Salons became an institution of Enlightenment not only by developing a new set
of values, but also by applying those values to reality, especially in eroding class bar-
riers. Unlike the leisurely salons of the seventeenth century that granted entry only
to the old aristocracy, eighteenth-century salons were open to men of all religions,
nations, and social strata. Ignoring traditional social taboos, salons, nevertheless,
were exclusive in the sense that they required a formal invitation. Evidence of
weakening social restrictions can also be seen in the leading role played by women
in salons. The hostess, a Paris salonnire, a London bluestocking, or a Prussian or
Jewish hostess in Berlin, a woman of some independent wealth, was the center of her
salon and had inuence over the invitations and the direction her salon took. A fa-
cilitator for socializing, she opened her house to selected members of polite society.
Among the most famous salonnires of the Enlightenment were the Paris hostesses
Madame Geoffrin (Marie Thrse Rodet, 1699 1777), Mademoiselle de Lespinasse,
and Madame Necker (Suzanne Churchod, 1739 94). Voltaire, Montesquieu, Denis
Diderot, A.R.J. Turgot, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon frequented the salon of
Madame Geoffrin, who nancially supported Diderots project of the publication
of the Encyclopdie.
Because French salons were often associated with the development and spread
of revolutionary ideas, after the French Revolution they were suppressed so that
the upper classes could not express their political opinions and concerns. During
the Terror, many Parisian salons moved to other European capitals, along with
emigrating aristocracy. Napoleons rule witnessed the return of the salons as makers
and expressers of public opinion.
FURTHER READING: Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French
Enlightenment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994; Habermas, Jrgen. The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeoisie. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1989; Kale, Steven. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old
Regime to the Revolution of 1848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
NATALIE BAYER
An Argentine soldier and statesman who fought the Spanish and helped achieve
the independence of Argentina (1816), Chile (1818), and Peru (1821), Jos de San
Martn was born on February 25, 1778, at Yapey, in the far north of modern-day
Argentina. His father, Juan de San Martn, was a professional soldier who became
the Spanish colonial administrator of Yapey, a former Jesuit mission in the lands
of the Guaran Indians. His mother, Gregoria Matorras, was also Spanish. When San
660 San Martn, Jos de
Martn was six, the family returned to Spain and the boy attended the Seminary of
Nobles in Madrid from 1785 until 1789.
San Martn started in the military as a cadet in the Murcia infantry regiment and
spent 20 years in the Spanish army. In 1791, he saw action at Oran in modern-day
Algeria and seven years later fought the British, who held him as a prisoner of war
for some months. He was released and fought against the Portuguese in 1801 in
the War of the Oranges and was promoted to captain three years later. In 1808 the
French invaded and occupied Spain, and San Martn took part in the uprisings
against Napoleons forces. San Martn himself was in the Seville junta, which fought
in the name of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, who had been imprisoned by the
French. After the battle of Bailn in 1808, San Martn was raised to the rank of
lieutenant colonel and, after the Battle of Albuera in 1811, was given the command
of the Sagunto Dragoons.
Rather than taking up this post, San Martn received permission to go to Lima, the
capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, and the center of Spanish power in Latin America.
He went to London and then to Buenos Aires, where he arrived on March 9, 1812.
The latter was a city seething with revolutionary ideas. It had been captured by the
British in 1806 and held briey by them. The locals had then ejected the British
but, realizing their newfound power, started a campaign of resistance against the
Spanish. San Martn quickly sympathized with the revolt and in 1812 was put in
charge of raising a corps of grenadiers to defend Buenos Aires from Spanish royalists
based in Lima.
Historians have long debated this change of allegiance on the part of San Martn.
There have been suggestions that it began to change when he was a prisoner of
the British. Argentine nationalist writers see him responding to the yearning for
independence in the land of his birth. British historians emphasize his time in
London and the inuence of revolutionary Spaniards there, including associates
of Francisco de Miranda, as well as several Britons, notably James Duff, the fourth
earl of Fife. It is also probable that during San Martns time in the army preju-
dice against people born in the Americas would have annoyed him, causing him to
identify with the people in Buenos Aires.
Whatever the reason, San Martn proved himself a capable commander. He defeated
the royalists at San Lorenzo on February 3, 1813, and was then sent to Tucumn to
reinforce the army of General Manuel Belgrano. San Martn quickly recognized that
he had to attack Lima. However, the traditional route through Upper Peru (modern-
day Bolivia) was blocked by Spanish troops. Thus he trained his men at Tucumn
and, pretending to be ill, had himself appointed governor of the province of Cuyo on
August 10, 1814. He then went to Mendoza, from where he would lead his men across
the Andes. San Martns plan had been to join up with revolutionary forces in Chile.
However, the Spanish had just managed to retake Chile, causing the Chilean rebel
leader, Bernardo OHiggins, to ee to Mendoza. This delayed the attack.
On July 9, 1816, the United Provinces of La Plata (Argentina) declared its
independence and on August 1 appointed San Martn commander-in-chief of the
Army of the Andes. On January 9, 1817, San Martn and OHiggins led their men
over the Andes. Using subterfuge, the two commanders managed to get the Spanish
to move their forces elsewhere. Sweeping down from the Andes, they defeated
the Spanish at Casas de Chacabuco on February 12, 1817, and entered Santiago,
Chiles capital, in triumph. OHiggins took over ruling Chile, while San Martn
prepared his men for their march on Lima. The Spanish victory at Cancha-Rayada
on March 19, 1818, delayed the attack. However, he defeated the last of the Spanish
royalists at the Battle of Maip on April 5, 1818, and then left for Peru.
By this time San Martn had managed to put together a Chilean navy under Arturo
Prat and gather together some troop ships. In August 1820 these were placed under
the command of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, later the tenth earl of Dundonald, and
they left the port of Valparaso to attack Callao in Peru. They were unable to take the
city but did blockade it while San Martn prepared for his assault on Lima. By this time
the Spanish royalists realized that no reinforcements were coming from Spain, and
they withdrew, allowing San Martn to enter Lima and proclaim the independence
of Peru on July 28, 1821. He was declared the protector of Peru.
While San Martn was liberating the south of South America, Simn Bolvar had
defeated the Spanish in the north. On July 26, 1822, at Guayaquil, in modern-day
Ecuador, the two generals met. There has been much historical and nationalist
speculation about what was discussed. The exact nature of what was said is unknown,
but San Martn returned to Lima disheartened. Some of his troops had been worried
that he might have elevated himself to the status of dictator, but San Martn certainly
harbored no ambitions to assume such a position. He resigned his post as protector
on September 20 and then left for Brussels, where he stayed with his daughter, be-
fore moving to Paris and then Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the south of France, where he
died on August 17, 1850. His body was later brought back to Argentina and is now
interred at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires.
FURTHER READING: Lynch, John. San Martn: Argentine Patriot. London: University of Lon-
don, 2001; Metford, J.C.J. San Martn: the Liberator. Oxford: Blackwell, 1950; Rojas, Ricardo.
San Martn: Knight of the Andes. New York: Cooper Square, 1967.
JUSTIN CORFIELD
Sans-Culottes
The sans-culottes were the predominantly poor and working-class people who
organized politically during the French Revolution. Their name was derived from
their refusal to wear the fashionable knee breeches, or culottes, preferred by the elite
classes. Rejecting the social divisions represented by elite fashion, the sans-culottes
opted for the more functional trousers worn by working people. The sans-culotte
commitment to social equality was also reected in their preference for addressing
each other as citoyen (citizen) rather than monsieur or madame. These choices gave
expression to a radical egalitarianism that characterized sans-culotte political desires
throughout the Revolution.
Rather than a formal political movement, the sans-culottes were street revolutionar-
ies motivated as much by concerns over the price of bread as by political ideology.
They were at the same time, as many have remarked, the engine of the Revolution.
Their popular insurrections, from the storming of the Bastille to the uprisings of
1795, provided much of the force behind the Revolutions most radical demands and
its material successes against the former ruling classes and against the reactionaries.
Central aspects of the sans-culottes social and political outlook included a rm
commitment to social equality and the importance of direct and participatory
democracy open to all people, including the poor and formerly excluded classes. Their
expression of radical republican principles, sometimes called sans-culottism, combined
Sans-Culottes 661
collectivist views on property with a defense of individual freedoms. Despite the popu-
lar conception of sans-culottes as a movement of the working class and the destitute, in
some important ways, both in terms of ideology and in terms of movement composi-
tion, the sans-culottes were a petit bourgeois or artisanal movement. They were not
opposed to private property on principle, for example, but were most concerned with
concentrations of wealth, in the hands of the aristocracy and the emergent bourgeoi-
sie, and with great disparities between rich and poor. They sought to break up large
estates and industrial enterprises and argued that each citizen should be entitled to
one piece of productive property. Theirs was a vision of the nation as properly consist-
ing of small farmers and small shopkeepers.
While the category of sans-culottes included people of various backgrounds,
most notably the extremely poor and casual workers but also more privileged
members such as petty ofcials and teachers, the core of the movement consisted of
poor artisans, trades people, and journeymen. They were craftspeople rather than
members of the professional societies, with skilled crafts such as cabinet making and
wig making as well as arts such as painting, sculpture, and music well represented
among their labors.
Though many were wage earners, the sans-culottes were hardly equivalent to the
proletariat of industrial capitalism, which reects the general lack of labor concen-
tration in French industry at the time, even in the northern industrial districts. Most
were employed in small shops rather than as factory workers. Their numbers also
included many immigrant workers, especially among porters; construction work-
ers; and those who worked various jobs along the riverside, including shipping and
loading.
Most lived under conditions that are best described as wretched in close, crowded
neighborhoods with unsatisfactory shelter. Extreme poverty was prevalent and per-
sistent, as the poor and unemployed numbered nearly as many as those who worked
for wages. It was from these neighborhoods that the most militant sans-culotte activ-
ity emerged. Most notable among the centers of sans-culotte radicalism were the poor
eastern suburbs of Paris, especially the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Faubourg
Saint Michel. It was the people of Saint Antoine who led the assault against the
Bastille during the revolt of July 14, 1789. The popular insurrections sparked by
the sans-culottes, which provide some of the most iconic images of the Revolution,
were in many ways based in the bread riots and uprisings that were a traditional
means of airing grievances among the poor.
Gwyn Williams offers an account of the occupational background of those sans-
culottes who served as commissaires in the comits rvolutionnaires of the Paris sections
during the Revolutions Year II. Noting that these formed the vanguard of revolu-
tionary activity, Williams reports that of the 450 of these militant sans-culottes who
can be placed, more than 60 percent were craftspeople and shopkeepers. Only
10 percent were wage earners, approximately half of whom were domestic servants.
Among craftspeople, the occupations with the most representation were tailors, tim-
ber workers, and furniture makers. The traders included several wine merchants.
This picture is repeated if one looks at the existing records of those who were active
in popular societies and assemblies. Williams suggests that of the 500 participants
who can be traced, artisans and traders once again predominated. The 214 artisans
counted among their numbers shoemakers, builders, furniture makers, hairdress-
ers, and tailors. Among the 80 traders, the most represented were wine makers
662 Sans-Culottes
and grocers. There were almost twice as many wage earners as on the committees,
although servants made up the largest number. Williams also reports that of the 132
councilors of the Commune whose occupations are known, 82 were small manufac-
turers, craftspeople, and traders, while 31 were members of the professions. While
most sans-culottes, and certainly the revolutionaries of the streets, were members of
the poor, the working class, and the lower middle classes, it became popular for
some public ofcials, especially during the Reign of Terror, to identify themselves
as citoyens sans-culottes.
In the popular imagination the sans-culottes are most durably associated with the
violent street insurrections, or journes, that dramatically marked successive stages of
the Revolution. On August 10, 1792, sans-culottes launched an assault on the kings
palace, killing several hundred guards and forcing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
to take refuge in the Legislative Assembly. Only a month later, sans-culottes would play
a leading role in the so-called September Massacres. The September uprisings cul-
minated in the ofcial abolition of the monarchy and establishment of the republic
on September 21 and 22. The most radical elements among various revolutionary
governments owed much to the support of the sans-culottes and their willingness to
take to the streets to defend progressive government proposals against forces of
reaction.
On June 22, 1793, an armed crowd consisting of tens of thousands of sans-culottes
marched on the National Convention to force the arrest of members of the Girondin
faction and their replacement by the more radical Jacobin faction. For a time the
ascendancy of the Jacobins to government control seemed to give a formal political
expression to the social desires of the sans-culottes. The Jacobins, however, were a
bourgeois party, unwilling to pursue the truly radical social aims of the sans-culottes.
After August 10, 1792, military power was held by the insurrectionary Paris Com-
mune, which was closely allied with the sans-culottes, who also led the Ministry of War.
Opposition from the sans-culotte-controlled institutions to the Jacobin-controlled
Committee of Public Safety was of particular concern to Maximilien Robespierre.
The participatory democracy of the sans-culottes was fatally weakened by the Jacobin
government by the end of 1793, under the cover of responding to the emergency
of war. On September 9, the Convention established the revolutionary armies, in
large part to conscate grain from farmers, and sans-culottes made up the bulk of this
force. While relying on the political activities and readiness for armed insurrection
in defense of the Republic that the sans-culottes provided, the Jacobins also feared
the sans-culottes as a spontaneous and unpredictable force, loyal to no political lead-
ership but its own. The Jacobin-controlled Committee of Public Safety shut down
the various political clubs in which the sans-culottes participated.
Segments of the sans-culottes gave their support to the revolutionary extremism
espoused by Jacques-Ren Hbert, publisher of the uproarious publication Pre
Duchesne, which was popular among sans-culottes. Less concerned with issues of prop-
erty and ownership than groups such as the Enrags, the Hbertistes were mobi-
lized largely around the execution of aristocrats and proteers and the abolition of
religion. Hbertistes called for the dechristianization of France and the destruction
of Christian symbols. Robespierre sent Hbert to the guillotine on March 24, 1794.
The most militant and radically democratic expression of sans-culotte desires was
put forward by the Enrags, a street movement that viewed all the political parties, in-
cluding the Jacobins, with deep suspicion. Inuenced by the priest Jacques Roux, who
Sans-Culottes 663
664 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von
ministered to the sans-culottes of Gravilliers, and the journalist Jean Leclerc, the Enrags
undertook a program of direct action and violence in support of a social, not simply
political, revolution. The Enrags, who viewed productive property as a national or
social trust that must be brought under state control, suggest to many commentators
a precursor to modern communist movements. In addition to their commitment to
direct democracy, under sans-culotte control, the Enrags also supported the call for
womens suffrage raised by the Revolutionary Republican Women.
The last vital stirrings of the sans-culottes as a movement with any capacity for a
mass uprising were nally extinguished militarily in the spring of 1795 under the
rule of the reactionary Thermidorians, who had taken power in the coup that over-
threw Robespierre on 9 Thermidor ( July 27, 1794). On April 1 and May 20, 1795,
the sans-culottes once again mobilized behind the dual banners of bread and the
Constitution of 1793 in a desperate attempt to turn back the conservative tide and
address the peoples need for essentials such as our, meat and dairy products, and
fuel. May 20, 1795, represented not only the last popular uprising of the French
Revolution but the death throes of the sans-culotte movement. The insurrection of
1 Prairial saw a group of sans-culottes take over the Convention before being violently
suppressed on the orders of the government. Nearly 150 people were tried by an ex-
traordinary military commission, and 36 condemned to death. Close to 4,000 people
in Paris were arrested and disarmed. Sans-culotte leaders were subjected to ongoing
police harassment, which ended further organizing activities for most of them.
The governments response made clear that the sans-culotte moment of the
Revolution was over. So too was the vision of an egalitarian and cooperative out-
come for the country. By refusing to address even minimally the demands of the
poor, the government was able to weaken the poor peoples movements to such an
extent that they would not reemerge with anything resembling their former vigor
for another generation.
All the same, however, the inuence of the sans-culottes left an important mark on
the future, as numerous revolutionary movements and theorists, as well as organiza-
tions of poor people, have drawn inspiration from their example. In their spontaneous
forms of organization, activist militancy, and commitment to participatory democracy
and radical egalitarianism, the sans-culottes in many ways pregured the emergence of
anarchist movements less than a century later. See also Girondins; Women (French).
FURTHER READING: Kropotkin, Peter. The Great French Revolution. New York: Schocken, 1971;
Rose, R. B. The Making of the Sans-Culottes: Democratic Ideas and Institutions in Paris, 1789 92.
Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1983; Soboul, Albert. The Sans-Culottes. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980; Williams, Gwynn A. Artisans and Sans-Culottes. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1969.
JEFF SHANTZ
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von (1759 1805)
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, German poet, dramatist, and historian,
was one of the greatest German literary gures. He has exercised an extraordinary
inuence from his own time through the twentieth century with his poetry, plays,
and works on art and ethics, aesthetics, history, and education.
Schiller was born in Marbach, Wrttemberg, to the family of a low-ranking mili-
tary ofcer in 1759. He attended a military academy and studied law and medicine.
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von 665
In 1780, Schiller was appointed an army surgeon to a regiment based in Stuttgart.
Unsatised with his medical career in Stuttgart, he turned to writing.
Schillers rst published play was the socially critical The Robbers (1781). An exam-
ple of the Sturm und Drang movement, the play questioned the limits of personal lib-
erty and the law and the nature of moral and political tradition and considered the
psychology of power. The Robbers was successfully performed on stage in Mannheim
in 1782. The Duke of Wrttemberg was outraged by the content of the play, and
Schiller had to ee to Mannheim, where he lived in 1783 1784. Later Schiller lived
in Leipzig and Dresden, nally settling in Weimar in 1787. In 1789, he became
professor of history and philosophy at the University of Jena. By this time, Schiller
was already an established playwright; the author of a classical historical drama,
Don Carlos (1785); and an inuential researcher of the Dutch revolt against Spain
(1788). At Jena, he mainly wrote works on history, such as History of the Thirty-Years
War, and studies on aesthetics, turning from the emotions of the Sturm und Drang
to the moral instruction of German classicism.
It was Schillers friend Goethe who convinced him to return to literary work.
During the period that followed, Schiller composed a whole corpus of historical
dramas, including Wallensteins Camp (1798), The Piccolomini (1799), Wallensteins
Death (1799), Mary Stuart (1800), The Maid of Orleans (1801), and William Tell (1804).
Schiller settled in Weimar, where he collaborated intensely with Goethe. On May 9,
1805, Schiller died at the age of 46.
Schiller is often called the poet of freedom, a philosophizing poet, and a politi-
cizing philosopher, for many of his ethical, lyrical, and educational messages have
politically and morally oriented foundations. Schillers crucial work, Letters upon the
Aesthetic Education of Man, was written during and immediately after the French Rev-
olution and reects Schillers disenchantment with revolution. The bloodshed of
17931794 and the Reign of Terror that followed the revolutionary chaos brought
Schiller to explore the polarity between the moral duty of human rationality and
the compulsion of the bodily nature.
In the Letters, Schiller establishes that a persons self-conscious attention to beauty,
its spiritual absorption, and its consequent realization in behavior can cultivate
ones moral awareness. Aesthetic education creates good citizens, as it makes people
automatically act morally when they are given their freedom, as opposed to hav-
ing violent inclinations, as in the case of the French Revolution. Virtue is under-
stood as a favorable inclination to duty. A person who obtains virtue has a schne
Seele (beautiful soul) and is characterized by the harmony among his sensuousness,
rationality, obligation, and inclination.
Thus, according to Schiller, freedom is possible when there is no conict be-
tween mans sensuous nature and his capacity for reason. Their union is a play
drive (Spieltrieb), which can also be called artistic beauty. In the Letters, Schiller
presents an ideal state as a free union of everyone who is content, where everything
is beautiful. This, Schillers utopia, was, in a twisted way, appropriated by German
nationalists during the Wars of Liberation (1813 1815) and later by Marxists and
fascists. See also Kant, Immanuel; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich.
FURTHER READING: Beiser, Frederick C. Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005; Sharpe, Lesley. Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Sharpe, Lesley. Schillers Aesthetics Essays: Two
Centuries of Criticism. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995; Thomas, Calvin. Life and Works of
666 Seabury, Samuel
Friedrich Schiller. New York: Holt, 1901; Ugrinsky, Alexej, ed. Friedrich von Schiller and the Drama
of Human Existence. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.
NATALIE BAYER
Seabury, Samuel (17291796)
Infamous for his preRevolutionary War pro-British pamphlets entitled the Farmers
Letters, Samuel Seabury was elected the rst Episcopal bishop of Connecticut and
Rhode Island (1783). Seabury was born in Groton, Connecticut; graduated from
Yale (1748); was tutored in theology by his father; and studied medicine for a year
(1752) in Edinburgh before becoming an Anglican priest (1753) and serving par-
ishes in New Jersey and New York.
His three Farmers Letters arguing against American independenceFree Thoughts
on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress, The Congress Canvassed, and
A View of the Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonieswere authored
under the pseudonym of A. W. Farmer (i.e., a Westchester farmer) soon after the As-
sociation of the Continental Congress (October 1774) was named. The 17-year-old
Alexander Hamilton answered the second pamphlet with his own, entitled A Full
Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, from the Calumnies of Their Enemies: In Answer
to a Letter under the Signature of A. W. Farmer (1974). Seaburys third pamphlet was a
response to Hamilton, who answered back with The Farmer Refuted (1775). Seabury
then produced a fourth pamphlet entitled An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province
of New York (1775), again assailing the validity of the Congress and proposing a local
colonial government under the full authority of Parliament, before proceeding to
sign the White Plains protest (April 1775) against all unlawful congresses and com-
mittees.
Seaburys colonial ministry effectively ended after his Loyalist activities led to
his arrest (November 1775) and imprisonment for six weeks in New Haven, Con-
necticut. He eventually made his way (1776) to New York City and the safety of the
British lines, where he practiced medicine and was commissioned a chaplain (1778)
in the Kings American Regiment after the University of Oxford awarded him a DD
in 1777. See also American Revolution; Continental Congress, Second; Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Rowthorn, Anne W. Samuel Seabury: A Bicentennial Biography. Greenwich,
CT: Seabury Press, 1983.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Second Continental Congress
See Continental Congress, Second
Second Estate
The nobility, by tradition those who fought, comprised the Second Estate in
eighteenth-century France. Nobles constituted a privileged order par excellence,
founded on descent, though their scal exemption, which was justied by state ser-
vice, most notably in the armed forces (the so-called blood tax), was by no means
complete. Moreover, the noble estate was rather more open than historians used to
Senate 667
believe, though it is unclear exactly how many nobles there were in 1789: estimates
range between 100,000 and 400,000, but 25,000 noble families is the best guess.
They were rather less reactionary and, above all, much more differentiated than was
once thought. Sword and robe, the military and administrative arms of the nobility,
were far from integrated, but a greater problem concerned the poor nobility, who
had only their titles to distinguish them from ordinary mortals. Tales of nobles from
the more remote regions of France who had to remain in bed while their breeches
were repaired, or who ploughed elds with a sword at their side, may be apocryphal.
They are nonetheless indicative of a society where money and merit were becoming
more important than birth as a criterion of status, and where letters of nobility were
purchased or awarded in increasing numbers.
In this uid context, it is no longer easy to distinguish nobles from the wealthy
bourgeois, especially since the latter sought to invest money in ofce or land in
order to become aristocrats over the course of time, keen to sport the noble particule
as they did so. If there was an aristocratic reaction, then it was directed at this
aspiring noblesse, especially on the part of poorer nobles who had only their lineage
to commend them. Great nobles continued to dominate the command of army and
navy, ministerial ofce and the bishops bench, with the occasional non-noble only
proving the rule. Yet this preponderance was not necessarily deployed in a reaction-
ary fashion but was often expressed in terms of business innovation (despite rules on
derogation), social behavior, and, above all, cultural practice. The nobility partici-
pated strongly in the French Enlightenment. Many of the writers were of noble origin
and much of the audience for their ideas was drawn from the same social group. The
system of elections to the Estates-General in 1789 revealed profound ssures within
an order that was somewhat articially divided from prosperous commoners, and
the cahiers de dolances they drafted reveal plenty of reformist sentiment. However,
among those elected to represent the nobility at Versailles, alongside a liberal mi-
nority inspired by members of the elite like the Marquis de Lafayette or Liancourt
(not to mention Mirabeau, who sat for the Third Estate), there was a majority of
more cautious nobles who hailed from the backwoods and were rather more reluc-
tant to embrace change. By 1789, they were willing to abandon tax exemption, but
social privilege remained a stumbling block. Their obstinacy led not just to the end
of the estate, but also to the abolition of noble titles in 1790. See also First Estate.
From Feudalism to Enlightenment. Trans. William Doyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985; Ford, Franklin L. Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after
Louis XIV. New York: Harper & Row, 1965; Smith, Jay M. Nobility Reimagined: The Patriotic
Nation in Eighteenth-Century France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005; Swann, Julian.
The French Nobility, 1715 1789. In The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, ed. H. M. Scott. Vol. 1. London: Longman, 1995.
MALCOLM CROOK
Senate
The term senate derives from Latin and is employed in reference to the upper
house, or chamber, of a legislative body. With a history dating back to the Roman
era, senates have become fundamental components in the national political
668 September Massacres
decision-making process of many industrialized countries such as the United States
of America, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, and Spain.
Members of a senate, who may be appointed or elected in the system of government,
are known as senators and may be smaller in terms of numbers than members of a
lower house (e.g., National Assembly, House of Assembly, and House of Representa-
tives) of a legislative body. In some nations, most notably the United States, members
of the senate are xed in number per state regardless of that states geographi-
cal size, economic stature, or demographic size. As a consequence, senates are
often criticized within the context of democracies for granting too much importance
within the national political process to regions that are less developed, which often
specically relates to rural places.
In Europe one of the most notable senates is that of France. Established following
the French Revolution (1789), the senate of France (Le Snat, in French) presently
resides in the Luxembourg Palace, in Paris, and consists of about 300 or so elected
members who are voted into positions of authority by tens of thousands of local admin-
istrative councils scattered across all parts of France. Thus the French senate is elected
by both the urban and rural regions of the country. Criticisms of this system still abound
in France due to the bias of the senates composition regarding rural areas.
FURTHER READING: Smith, Paul. A History of the French Senate: The Third Republic 1870 1940.
Ceredigion, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005; Valeur, Robert. French Government and Politics. New
York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1938.
IAN MORLEY
Between September 2 and 7, 1792, about 1,400 prisoners were murdered in Parisian
jails, ostensibly to forestall a prison plot. At least 244 prisoners in provincial jails were
murdered as well after news of the Paris massacres spread. The most important conse-
quence of this rst terror was the fragmentation of the radical movement, which be-
came polarized into Montagnard and Girondin factions in the months that followed.
The September Massacres were originally conceived by radical journalists, most
notably Jean-Paul Marat, who called in the month of August for a purge of conspira-
tors in Pariss swollen prisons. More immediately, the massacres were triggered by
the perilous military situation in the summer of 1792. On September 1, the last
fortress on the way to Paris fell to the forces of the Prussian general, the Duke of
Brunswick, who had threatened to lay waste to the city of Paris in a July 25 manifesto.
Many feared that the advancing Prussians would be assisted by plotters scheming to
break out of Parisian prisons. To prevent this, several hundred radicals from the
sections and volunteer soldiers invaded nine Parisian prisons over the course of six
days and put to death hundreds of refractory priests, counterrevolutionaries, and
common criminals, often without even the pretence of a judicial hearing. The mas-
sacres were regulated and moderated, but not halted, by delegates from the Paris
Commune after September 2.
Although signicant in themselves, the massacres were given additional meaning
by their interplay with an ongoing power struggle between the Legislative Assembly
and the Commune. Fearful of the Communes power, the Legislative Assembly or-
dered the dissolution of the Paris Commune on August 28. In response, Maximilian
Sherman, Roger 669
Robespierre charged Jean-Pierre Brissots faction with treason on September 1, and
the Communes Surveillance Committee, under Marats inuence, issued arrest
warrants for Brissot, Jean Marie Roland, and eight other deputies in the Legislative
Assembly. If justice minister Georges-Jacques Danton had not quashed the arrest
orders, Brissot and his allies might have fallen victim to the September Massacres.
At rst, Brissot and his allies supported the massacres, but when news of the arrest
warrants became known, they changed their view. Claiming that they were under
the knife of Robespierre and Marat, Brissot and his allies launched a political
campaign in both the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention against
the September murderers and their complicit Montagnard allies. Indeed, both
their repeated Girondin calls for a departmental guard and their appeals to the
people during the trial of Louis XVI owe their origin to a desire to contain Parisian
militant radicalism. The Montagnards, in turn, sought to shore up their Parisian
power base by portraying the massacres as a patriotic act. In this way, the Paris mas-
sacres exacerbated the formation of the Girondin and Montagnard factions within
the formerly united radical movement in the French Revolution. See also French
Revolutionary Wars; Girondins; The Mountain.
FURTHER READING: Bluche, Frdric. Septembre 1792: Logiques dun massacre. Paris: Editions
Robert Laffont, 1986; Caron, P. Les massacres de Septembre. Paris, 1935.
BENJAMIN REILLY
Roger Sherman was the only person to sign the Continental Association of 1774,
the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United
Born in Massachusetts, he moved to Connecticut at an early age. He had no
formal education and eventually became a lawyer. He served several terms in the
Connecticut Assembly until 1785. From 1777 to 1779 he served in the Connecti-
cut Council of Safety. Sherman was a member of the Continental Congress from
1774 to 1781. He helped draft both the Declaration of Independence and the Ar-
ticles of Confederation. At the Constitutional Convention, he was one of the most
frequent speakers and was a member of the Committee for Postponed Matters,
a subset of the Convention that resolved issues on which the larger Convention
could not agree.
Sherman was committed to independence and later endorsed the notion of a
central national government. He balanced this view, however, with a well-dened
concern for the rights of states in this new government and a balance of power
between large states such as New York and Pennsylvania and smaller states such
as Connecticut. He opposed an assembly based strictly on population and favored a
senate with equal representation for all states. Sherman also successfully fought
against the demise of the Articles of Confederation before the Constitution had
become a reality. His concern was that the precedent of nullifying the Articles
without a formal substitute in place would make any subsequent governments
vulnerable. Strongly opposing an independent executive, Sherman wanted the
executives powers to be limited. The legislature should choose the executive and
should exercise strong control over that branch. See also American Revolution;
670 Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb
Constitutions, American State; Continental Congress, Second; Signers of the Dec-
laration of Independence.
FURTHER READING: Collier, Christopher. Roger Shermans Connecticut: Yankee Politics and
the American Revolution. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971; Rommel, John G.
Connecticuts Yankee Patriot: Roger Sherman. Hartford: American Revolution Bicentennial Com-
mission of Connecticut, 1980.
ROBERT N. STACY
Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb (17481833)
The abb Sieys helped both to shape the character of the French Revolution at
its outset and to bring about its conclusion. His highly inuential Quest-ce que cest le
Tiers tat? publicized the notion that the desired political reforms could not occur if
the old social structure based upon privilege remained intact. Sieys subsequently
lost much of his inuence, especially during the Reign of Terror, but he regained
it after the demise of Maximilien Robespierre and the creation of the Directory. As
one of the directors, he facilitated the coup dtat that facilitated Napoleons rise to
power; thus, he effectively terminated the Revolution.
Along with other leaders of the Revolution, the abb Sieys emerged from
political obscurity as a result of his response to the crowns nancial crisis and to the
summoning of the Estates-General. His family lacked the noble status that would
have made it easier for him to satisfy his ambitions and to attain a position suitable
for a man of his intellect. As the son of a minor royal ofcial who lived in the small
Provenal town of Frjus, on the Mediterranean coast, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieys was
born in 1748 into a society that was at once accommodating and resistant to social
climbing. Given the large size of his family, its modest means, and his own physical
frailty, a church career seemed the only suitable option.
Even though the young man felt little religious vocation, he entered the Semi-
nary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris in 1765 and also began to take courses in theology
at the Sorbonne. Sieyss lack of enthusiasm for the subject matter might account
for his unimpressive academic record. Mediocre grades did not, however, diminish
his self-condence and determination to improve his social status. He received his
ordination as a priest in 1772 (at age 24) and then his licence in theology in 1774.
In the ancien rgime church, sons of the nobility controlled the bishoprics, as
well as the wealth and power conferred upon the occupant of a see. The acquisition
of a position with an income that would support a comfortable lifestyle required
connections and patronage. Fortunately for Sieys, his father worked determinedly
on his sons behalf and won for him the attention of the abb of Csarge, the
younger son of a marquis. At rst the vicar general of Frjus and then almoner of
the kings oratory in Versailles, Csarge secured for Sieys the job of secretary to
the bishop of Trguier, de Lubersac. Through the joint efforts of his patrons, Sieys
became chaplain to the kings aunt in 1779, the year immediately before her death.
Sieys then followed de Lubersac to Chartres, where the latter had become bishop.
As vicar general of Chartres, Sieys became involved in diocesan affairs. He assumed
the role of canon in 1783 and that of chancellor for the cathedral chapter in 1788.
He was delegate for the Chartres diocese at the Sovereign Chamber of the Clergy
Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb 671
in Paris from 1786 and was chosen representative of the clergy at the provincial
assembly of Orlans in 1788.
Sieys thus enjoyed a considerable improvement in his situation during the
decade or so that followed the completion of his religious studies. In fact, his
success was probably as great as any non-noble without signicant political or social
connections could have achieved in the era. Sieys never forgot that he had at-
tained these positions through patronage alone. He resented that his society almost
compelled him to adopt obsequious manners and to become dependent upon his
social superiors in order to rise to a position that, in a meritocracy, he would have
achieved due to his abilities. Meanwhile, nobles less able than he became bishops
and lived in luxury.
His discontent with the pre-revolutionary French social system resulted largely
from his personal experiences and his personality, though his reading and intellectual
pursuits also contributed to it. While in seminary, he delved into the philosophical
and economic texts of the Enlightenment writers; his notebooks from the time indi-
cate his familiarity with authors such as Condillac, Helvtius, Locke, Quesnay, Mi-
rabeau, and Turgot. He condently tackled the ideas presented by the philosophes
and intended to publish his Letters to the Economists on Their Political and Moral System
(written in 1774) until Turgot lost his position as minister in 1776 and reformist
hopes declined.
Sieys remained silent as an author until 1788, even though he continued to
read and comment upon the latest works in private. Almost all his published writ-
ings appeared in response to particular crises or debates. He evidently craved fame
as a political thinker and actor, not as a writer. In treatises such as the famous What Is
the Third Estate? he displayed a gift for assimilating complex ideas and for thinking
independently.
He also had a talent for recognizing and seizing opportunities. In the context
of intense debates about the form and appropriate voting methods to be adopted
by the upcoming meeting of the Estates-General, Sieys wrote a political pamphlet
entitled Vues sur les moyens dexcution dont les reprsentants de la France pourront disposer
en 1789. His ideas had already grown more radical by the time of its completion, so
he wrote another, An Essay on Privileges (published in late 1788). What Is the Third
Estate? appeared in early 1789. By the start of spring 1789, Sieys was receiving invi-
tations to Paris salons. He joined the Committee of Thirty, which assisted Patriots
with their election campaigns, and became deputy for the Third Estate from Paris.
He arrived at Versailles in late May.
As events unfolded, the suggestions that Sieys had offered in his What Is the
Third Estate? proved immensely insightful. He had advised the delegates from the
Third Estate to separate from the other two groups and to proclaim themselves
the sole representatives of the nation. Since, argued Sieys, the nobility and the
church did not perform any productive labor and thus detracted from the prosper-
ity of France, they were essentially parasitical upon and alien to the body politic of
the nation. If they could not rightfully claim to share the nations interests, then
they should have no part in writing a new constitution or deciding upon funda-
mental reforms. The Third Estate, which comprised all those who did work that
redounded to the public good, should acknowledge that it was everything in France,
whereas the other two estates were nothing.
672 Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb
In practice, Sieys amended his recommendations slightly. He urged the dele-
gates to summon the other orders; all who failed to appear had ceded their power.
The remaining delegates would form a representative assembly. Although the actual
motion simply invited the other delegates, Sieyss proposal carried the day. As he
expected, a number of parish priests recognized the commonality of their interests
with those of the Third Estate and joined the assembly. On June 17, the new body
became the National Assembly, the name that Sieys had proposed in his What Is
the Third Estate?
Sieys enjoyed enormous respect and exercised his greatest inuence in June 1789,
as the National Assembly formed and undertook the basic measures for creating a
new political, juridical, and social system. He won a place on the Committee on the
Constitution and then was chosen by the committee to write the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Although shorn of his philosophical preamble
and several clauses, the essentials of Sieyss draft were accepted in September by
the Assembly.
His prestige then began to decline. His lack of interest in oratory meant that
the Assembly heard little from him in the course of its debates. More signicantly,
Sieys opposed the Assemblys decision in August 1789 to end the clerical tithe. He
could not conceive of the tithe as a privilege akin to those that he had rejected in
his writings. Certainly, his August 10 speech caused his colleagues to wonder at his
apparent hypocrisy.
During the subsequent years of the Revolution, Sieys worked on the rst new
constitution and planned the overhaul of Frances administration that substituted
newly created uniform departments for the old heterogeneous provinces. He
contributed to the reform of the clergy and of the legal system. He remained outside
the intense factional conicts of the National Convention, to which he was elected
in 1792. He supported the execution of Louis XVI, though he was not otherwise
associated with the Montagnards. Sieys made himself rather scarce during the Ter-
ror, which enabled him not only to survive but also to acquire renewed importance
after Robespierres fall from power.
The Terror caused Sieys to advocate a less democratic model of government.
He no longer believed that the French should concentrate power in the legisla-
ture. Instead, they should spread governmental activities across four bodies; the
government (executive) and a constitutional jury would have the greatest power.
Despite his proposals, the Convention chose to create a new republic, known as
the Directory, in 1795. Sieys was elected to the new legislature and was in turn
selected by his colleagues to serve as a director. He refused this honor, however,
since he disliked the new constitution. He returned to power after the Septem-
ber 1797 republican coup, when he became president of the Council of Five
Hundred (the lower legislative house). After a year as ambassador to Prussia, he
joined the Directory in 1799. Then, he abetted the coup that enabled Napoleon
to attain power. Sieys had no inuence over the new leader, but he was appointed
to the senate and then named a count of the Empire. He spent the years of the
Bourbon restoration in Belgium; he returned from exile in 1830 and died three
years later.
In addition to his political activities and contributions to the Revolution, Sieys
extended the tradition of political philosophizing associated with the Enlighten-
ment. Although an admirer of John Locke and of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sieys
Signers of the Declaration of Independence 673
distinguished himself from those philosophers in his conceptualization of modern
democracy. Whereas Rousseau rejected representation as entailing a surrender of
citizenship, Sieys dened citizenship as associated with labor rather than abstract
rights and thought representative democracy entirely suited to the demands of his
time. His grasp of eighteenth-century political economy permitted him to conceive
of the social contract as operating to protect individual liberties and property (in
agreement with Locke). In addition to that rather restrictive purpose, Sieys held
that the social contract facilitated the production of wealth by society. He thought
that all who labor contribute to the general labor; their cooperation within civil
society allows each to maximize his productivity. The Sieysian general labor,
analogous to Rousseaus general will, represents more than the sum of individual
components. Sieys pointed out that subsequent increases in productivity and
wealth require divisions of labor within society. It also necessitates the creation of
an efcient government responsive to the citizenry, ready to organize public works,
and able to supervise production.
Sieys thus joined together social contract theory and political economy. Repre-
sentative democracy became legitimate as the best system by whose means people
could govern themselves and increase their prosperity through a division of labor.
Political labor would require the same degree of specialization as any other task.
Thus, Sieys offered a way to think about the functions of government and its com-
position in the forthcoming era of industrial capitalism. See also Brumaire, Coup
dEtat de; Constitutions, French Revolutionary; The Mountain; Prussia and Ger-
many, Impact of Revolutionary Thought on.
FURTHER READING: Bredin, Jean-Denis. Sieys: La cl de la Rvolution franaise. Paris: Editions
de Fallois, 1988; Forsythe, Murray. Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abb Sieys.
Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1987; Sewell, William H., Jr. A Rhetoric of Bourgeois
Revolution: The Abb Sieys and What Is the Third Estate? Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1994; Thompson, J. M. Leaders of the French Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
MELANIE A. BAILEY
The American Declaration of Independence, which was submitted to the Sec-
ond Continental Congress on July 2, 1776, and approved two days later, was the
handiwork of a group of men with vast experience in the public service. The roster
of signatories of the Declaration represents the best and brightest minds living in
the North American colonies in the eighteenth century. They were well educated
and wealthy and enjoyed international reputations. In fact, their prominence gave
many British parliamentarians cause to argue against further alienation of the
colonies. The status of individuals like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Robert
Morris promoted intense debates in Britain over the efcacy of waging war in North
America.
When the Second Continental Congress was convened on May 10, 1775, it faced
several serious issues, including the logistical challenges of training and equip-
ping an entirely new army to face the veteran forces of Britain and serious internal
dissension over the future of the united colonies. In several colonies, including
Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, delegates abstained from voting
674 Signers of the Declaration of Independence
on pivotal matters, awaited direct consent for their colonial legislatures, and lob-
bied in their states to win support for American independence. Nonetheless, the
Congress appointed a Committee of Five on June 11, 1776, to work on a draft of a
document declaring independence. These members of the committeeThomas
Jefferson of Virginia (appointed chair by virtue of the number of votes he received),
John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin
of Pennsylvania, and Robert Livingston of New Yorkwere the architects of the
document and, with the exception of Robert Livingston, who refused to sign, are
the most prominent signatories. Thomas Jefferson was responsible for drafting and
writing the document and deserves the designation as father of the Declaration of
Independence. He received sound advice from John Adams, who assisted with ideas
and revisions, and Benjamin Franklin, who provided much-needed inspiration
throughout the process. All ve men became prominent leaders at state, federal,
and international levels. More importantly, they produced a document that still
serves as a guide for American idealism and continues to inspire independence
movements around the world.
A total of 56 men signed the Declaration of Independencea large number
afxed their signatures on August 2, 1776, in the Assembly Room of the State
House in Philadelphia; the nal signer afrmed the document on January 18, 1777.
Demographically the signers were relatively youngthe youngest, Edward Rutledge
of South Carolina, was 26, and 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin was the eldestthe vast
majority being lawyers, with a signicant representation of merchants, plantation
owners, and scientists. All were to varying degrees inuenced by the political ideas
of the Enlightenment, especially the works of John Locke. A signicant minority
were opposed to rapid independence from Britain and endorsed patience and
accommodation. For instance, Robert Livingston of New York and John Dickinson
of Pennsylvania made signicant contributions to forming the ideas contained in
the document and drafting the instrument yet refused to sign because of serious
reservations about the implications of the action.
Those men who signed the declaration included future presidents and vice
presidentsThomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Elbridge Gerry. Six of themRoger
Sherman, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson, and
George Reedwere at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and once again afxed
their names to a seminal document in United States history. In terms of the documents
that created the United States, Roger Sherman is the only man to have signed the
Continental Association (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Articles
of Confederation (1777), and the United States Constitution (1787), where he bro-
kered the Connecticut Compromise. Other signers gained notoriety as members of
Congress, justices of the Supreme Court, national nanciers, prominent merchants,
and founders of institutions of higher learning. On a less stellar note, the majority of
the signatories were slave masters, and nearly one-quarter owned large plantations.
A total of 17 served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War,
and 9 made the ultimate sacrice. ThreeGeorge Clymer of Pennsylvania, William
Hooper of North Carolina, and Matthew Thornton of New Hampshireeither
were not members of the Continental Congress when the declaration was drafted or
were absent when it was approved, yet they were allowed to sign.
The heroism and commitment of the signers of the Declaration of Independence
was captured by John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, who
admonished the members to stand united behind the cause and stated bluntly,
There must be no pulling different ways. We must all hang together. Benjamin
Franklin responded, Yes, we must, indeed, hang together, or most assuredly we
shall all hang separately. Legally, the signers of the document were staging an act
of treason against a legitimate government, which would have certainly prompted a
harsh response by Britain had she been victorious. Nonetheless, 56 Patriots signed
the instrument of independence and thereby guaranteed their place in history.
FURTHER READING: Maier, Maier. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence.
JAMES T. CARROLL
Slavery, a social institution governed by either law or by social customs, is the most
absolute involuntary form of human servitude. The practice of slavery has existed
at every level of social development and among all races and peoples, though its
forms and features differ vastly. There is a disagreement among scholars regarding
the denition of slavery, but the term has often been used for a wide range of
institutions, including plantation slavery, forced labor, sweatshop labor, child labor,
semi-voluntary prostitution, paid child adoption, and bride-price marriage. These
diverse forms of slavery are primarily derived from the most recent direct Western
experience with slavery, which has been arbitrarily constructed out of the represen-
tations of that experience in nineteenth-century abolitionist literature.
Slavery in an Historical Context
The practice of slavery dates back to prehistoric times, although its institutional-
ization probably rst occurred in early historical times, when agricultural advances
provided impetus for the formation of organized societies. Slaves were needed for
various specialized functions in these societies and were obtained either through
raids or conquests of other peoples or within the society itself, when some people
sold themselves or their family members to pay debts or were enslaved as punish-
ment for crimes.
The Ancient Period
Slavery was an accepted feature, often essential to the economy and society, of all
ancient civilizations. The ancient Mesopotamian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations
employed slaves, either domestically in homes and shops or in groups for large-scale
construction or agriculture. In order to build royal palaces and monuments, ancient
Egyptians used slaves on a mass scale. The ancient Hebrews also used slaves, but they
were required by religious law to free slaves of their own nationality at certain xed
times. In the more advanced civilizations of pre-Columbian Americafor example,
those of the Aztec, Inca, and Mayaslave labor was also used on a large scale in both
agriculture and warfare.
In the Homeric epics, slavery is the ordinary destiny of prisoners of war. In later
years even Greek philosophers did not consider the condition of slavery morally
objectionable, although Aristotle went so far as to suggest that faithful slaves might
be freed as a reward for loyalty. Roman slavery differed in several important aspects
Slavery and the Slave Trade 675
676 Slavery and the Slave Trade
from that of ancient Greece. With the power to legally exercise control over life and
death, Roman masters commanded more power over their slaves. Slavery was also
far more necessary to the economy and social system of Rome, especially during
the empire, than it had been in Greece. Roman aristocracy needed considerable
numbers of slaves to maintain large city and country homes. Imperial conquests and
long-drawn programs of territorial expansion eventually strained the native Roman
workforce. Thus, great numbers of foreign slaves had to be imported to fulll the
needs of agricultural labor.
The primary way of acquiring slaves was through war; tens of thousands of
captured prisoners of war were brought to Rome as slaves. Other sources of slaves
were debtors, who sold themselves or members of their families into slavery, and per-
sons convicted of serious crimes. Ultimately, greater dependence on the institution
of slavery contributed signicantly to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
The Medieval Period
The medieval period witnessed a slight improvement in the conditions of slaves
but did not see the elimination of the practice of slavery. After the fall of Rome,
during the barbarian invasions that occurred at various times between the fth and
tenth centuries, the ancient institution of slavery was transformed into the generally
less binding system known as serfdom. Islam recognized the institution of slavery
from the beginning, in the seventh century. The Prophet Muhammad urged his
followers to treat slaves kindly, and on the whole, slaves owned by Muslims were
comparatively well treated. Most were employed as domestic servants.
The Modern Period
Conquest, colonization, and imperial domination by European powers in Africa,
North and South America, and parts of Asia provided the impetus for modern
slavery and the slave trade. Portugal, which suffered from a shortage of agricultural
workers, was the rst modern European nation to meet its labor needs by importing
slaves. The Portuguese began the practice in 1444, and by 1460, they were annually
importing 700 to 800 slaves to Portugal from trading posts and forts established
on the African coast, to which the captives were brought by other Africans. Spain
soon followed, but for more than a century Portugal virtually monopolized the
African slave trafc. In addition, Arab traders in North Africa shipped slaves taken
from central Africa to markets in Arabia, Persia, and India.
During the sixteenth century, in tropical Latin America, Spanish colonists were
the rst to force the native population to work the land. The indigenous people,
however, could not survive the harsh conditions of slavery and were nearly wiped
out, in part by exposure to European diseases and the unbearable conditions of
forced labor. To resolve this problem, Africans were then transported to the Spanish
colonies, primarily because it was believed that they could endure forced labor in
the generally more enervating Caribbean and mainland Latin American climates.
England entered the slave trade in the latter half of the sixteenth century, contest-
ing the hitherto monopolized right of the Portuguese to supply slaves to the Span-
ish colonies. Subsequently, France, Holland, Denmark, and the American colonies
entered the trade as competitors. In 1713 the exclusive right to supply the Spanish
colonies with slaves was granted to the British South Sea Company.
The rst African slaves in North America landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619.
Brought by Dutch ships, they were subjected to limited servitudea legalized status
carried by Native American, white, and black servants that preceded the formal
establishment of slavery in most of, if not all, the English colonies in the New World.
The number of slaves imported was initially small, and it did not seem necessary
to dene their legal status. Statutory recognition of slavery, however, occurred in
Massachusetts in 1641, in Connecticut in 1650, and in Virginia in 1661; these stat-
utes mainly concerned fugitive slaves.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, however, with the development of
the plantation system in the southern colonies, the number of Africans imported
as agricultural slave laborers increased greatly, and several northern coastal cities
became centers of the lucrative slave trade. In the northern colonies, slaves were gen-
erally used as domestics and in trade; in the Middle Atlantic colonies they were used
more in agriculture; and in the southern colonies, where plantation agriculture was
the primary occupation, almost all slaves worked on the plantations.
Contrary to popular belief, slaves did have some legal rights, such as support in
old age or sickness, a right to limited religious instruction, and the right to bring suit
and give evidence in special cases. Customs conferred numerous rights, too, such as
private property, marriage, free time, and contractual ability. Brutal treatment such
as mutilation, branding, chaining, and murder were regulated or prohibited by law,
but instances of cruelty were common before the nineteenth century.
Characteristics of Slavery
The institution of slavery exhibited certain common social and cultural attributes
across the New World. Slaves were often cut off from any birthrights they may have
had as members of a community. New slaves were always given new names, and
often ordered to wear special clothes and haircuts. In cultural terms this natal alien-
ation is usually expressed as a form of social death. In legal terms, masters in most
slave-holding societies had the right to kill their slaves with impunity. Even when
laws restricted the masters power to kill a slave, the punishment for doing so was
rarely more than the imposition of a ne. In any case, because all known societies
extended to a master the right to physically punish the slave, it was usually difcult
to disprove a murderous masters claim that a slave had died while undergoing
some legally acceptable punishment.
In no slave society did slaves have legal custody over their spouses or children.
Lack of custodial powers, however, did not mean the absence of stable sexual unions
or families. In most slave-holding societies it was unusual for slaves born in the
household to be sold, although the master generally had the right to do so. Slave
women in all slave societies were powerless against the sexual demands of their
masters. Nonetheless, societies varied considerably in the degree to which legal
restraints were placed on third parties who attempted to rape female slaves.
In no cases were slaves permitted full rights or power to own property; however,
they were allowed to accumulate some material goods, which one could acquire by
working beyond what was demanded by the master. Sometimes masters permitted
slaves to engage in commerce in order to acquire enough money to enable them to
purchase their long-cherished freedom. For this reason, many slave-holding societ-
ies had high rates of manumission.
It is unwise to dene slaves as persons who are part of the property of others. This
is because, in sociological and legal terms, all persons, not only slaves, can be the
objects of proprietorial relations. Slaves were distinguished, rather, by their loss of
power, rights of natality or birth, and honor. Such a denition allows us to identify
more rigorous distinctions between slaves and other categories of dependent or
bonded persons. Serfs differ from slaves, as they are never natally alienated, cut off
from the rights of birth. They belong to communities, usually more clearly than do
their lords, who are often conquering outsiders. They are acknowledged to be full
persons and are in no way regarded as socially dead. They usually have some pro-
prietorial powers, especially over moveable personal property, and they can claim
custodial power over their spouses and children.
The Institution of Slavery in the New World
Slavery emerged in the New World within the context of three major types of
socioeconomic systems: the pure plantation system, the mixed plantation system, and
the colonial settlement system. In the rst type, a small elite group of masters con-
trolled the vast majority of the slave population. The entire economy, in this system,
was based on the slave plantation, where crops were planted for the export market,
rather than for local consumption. Such a system became prominent in northeastern
Brazil; in the Dutch and British colonies of Surinam and Guyana, respectively; and in
its most extreme form, in the British and French islands of the Caribbean.
On the other hand, slavery was simply a supplementary form of labor in a colonial
context, where European settlers and mestizos dominated both politically and de-
mographically. In this system, the institution of slavery played a minor role, existing
in pockets, though in mining, large-scale slavery existed. Thus, by the middle of the
eighteenth century, slavery outside the household had largely disappeared. Except
for Columbia and nineteenth-century Cuba, most of Hispanic America practiced
this type of slavery. In Mexico, slaves were numerous in the silver mines in the early
sixteenth century, but by the middle of the seventeenth century, slavery was on the
wane and was limited mainly to household work and crafts. The same was true in
Peru and in most of the other Spanish New World colonies. A primitive agro-pastoral
household slavery existed in Jamaica, in Cuba until the last third of the eighteenth
century, and in Puerto Rico and the Spanish part of Hispaniola until the early nine-
teenth century. Several British colonies, notably colonial New England and British
Canada, also practiced this type of slavery.
The mixed plantation system lies somewhere between these two socioeconomic
systems. A single-crop plantation shaped the general economy without totally deter-
mining its character. Although most people and farms were not directly connected
with slavery or the plantation system, the interests of the dominant political class
were based on the wealth of the large slave plantations. Classic examples of this type
of slavery can be found in the American South, though Cuba during the nineteenth
century, Columbia, southwestern Brazil during the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, and the Dutch Antilles also adhered to this system.
Seen from an historical and cross-cultural perspective, New World slavery con-
sisted of a unique conjunction of features. Its use of the slave population was strik-
ingly specialized, with its heavy emphasis on the production of sugar and cotton
for the world market. Both masters and slaves came from abroad, from distinctly
different cultures and races, and they constituted from the start two visibly distinct
layers of the population. The slave population occupied a separate stratum at the
bottom of the social scale. This disparity created the popular association of New
World slavery with race. Slaves were completely removed from relations based on
kinship because marriage between masters and slaves was not recognized.
In most other societies, particularly in the simpler ones, slavery operated in a
quite different context. Most societies were indigenous and had deeper roots in the
local sociopolitical milieu. Slaves usually came from nearby areas, sometimes from
within society, and the cultural and biological distances between master and slave
were often small and sometimes nonexistent. These factors reduced the obstacles
to the slaves integration into the host population. Masters sometimes married their
female slaves, and the prevalence of polygamy gave their practice ample scope;
hence, relations based on slavery could overlap with those of kinship. Moreover, the
economic and political systems in which slavery was enmeshed were simpler than
those in the New World, and the use of slaves was less narrowly focused on economic
production. Thus, it can be said that most of the variants of slavery did not exhibit
the three elements that were dominant in the New World: slaves as property and
commodities, their use exclusively as labor; and their lack of freedom.
The Organized Slave Trade
The global reach of the institution of slavery provided ample incentives to traders
to organize trade based not only on commodities but also in human beings. Trading
slaves made much more economic sense than trading goods. Historically, there
have been ve major international slave-trading systems, which operated as nodal
agencies balancing the demand and supply of slaves. For more than 1,000 years,
as part of the trans-Saharan caravan trade, the northern belt of Africa satised
most of the demand for slaves. However, Islamic states, where slaves formed a vital
part of the military and administrative elite, relied heavily on the peoples of the
European-Asiatic steppe. Among the Ottomans, the main source of elite slaves
was the Christian population of their European possessions, including Greeks,
Armenians, and Albanians. The other important trading route was focused on the
Indian Ocean, across which slaves were transported from east Africa to India, China,
and other societies of the Far East.
However, without any doubt, the most extensive of all trading systems, both
in terms of the number of persons traded and the distances and goods involved,
was the Atlantic slave trade. Beginning with the Dutch and Portuguese, followed by
the British, Frenchand to a lesser extent the Danes and the Swedesthe trade
formed a triangular route. Ships left Europe with goods that were traded for slaves
in Africa. From there slaves were taken to the New World, where they were sold for
cash or exchanged for goods, mainly sugar and cotton. The nal leg of the triangle
involved the sale of these commodities in Europe. Overcrowding is often blamed for
the high death rate of slaves in transit, but it now seems that the main determinant
was the length of the voyage. The longer the time spent aboard ship, the greater was
the incidence of disease from contaminated water and spoiled food.
The Abolitionist Movement and the End of the Slave Trade
Abolition movements were rare in the history of slavery. Although the Stoics and
Sophists preached against slavery in ancient Greece, they were more concerned with
the spiritual enslavement of persons to material wants than to physical enslavement
itself. There was no movement to abolish slavery in the Middle Ages. Outside the
Americas, all systems of slavery not eliminated by the European colonial powers
simply petered out during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the
supply of slaves dried up or economic changes eliminated demand.
A combination of intellectual, political, and economic factors accounts for the
nal abolition of slavery. In 1802 the slaves of the French colony of Saint-Domingue
(now Haiti) became the rst slave population to gain freedom, after the only
successful slave revolt in world history. France abolished slavery in its remaining col-
onies in 1848; the British had abolished slavery in the Empire in 1807, and the slave
trade in 1833. In continental Spanish America, Chile led the way with emancipation
in 1823; Mexico followed in 1829. Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil were among the
last New World countries to abolish slavery: Puerto Rico in 1873, Cuba between
1880 and 1886, and Brazil in 1888.
As discussed earlier, the pressure mounted by the abolitionist movement com-
pelled the British to abolish the trade in 1807, the Danes having already done so in
1804. The United Sates followed Britain in 1808, Sweden in 1813, the Netherlands
in 1814, and France in 1818. In continental Spanish America, the abolition of the
trade was partly the result of low demand, partly a result of local independence move-
ments, and partly a response to British pressure. Venezuela and Mexico abolished
the trade in 1810, Chile in 1811, and Argentina in 1812. During the nineteenth cen-
tury, the trade to Spains last remaining colonies in the Caribbean, especially Cuba,
continued, indeed increased. Even a papal ban and the abolition by Spain in 1871
did not put an end to the trafc. In Brazil, as in Cuba, the expansion of slave-grown
crops after 1830in this case coffeeincreased the demand for slaves. In spite of
various treaties with the British, the trade continued until 1880, although it was de-
clared a form of piracy in 1850.
Slavery in the Twentieth Century
An important achievement in the history of slavery was the adoption of the
International Slavery Convention in 1926 by the League of Nations. This convention
called for the suppression and prohibition of the slave trade and the complete
abolition of slavery in all forms. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted
by the United Nations in 1948, reafrmed the principles embodied in the convention.
In 1951 a United Nations committee on slavery reported that the practice of slavery
was declining rapidly, and that only a vestige of slavery remained in a few areas of the
world. Nevertheless, the committee found that forms of servitude similar to slavery af-
fected a large number of people. These types of servitude included forms of serfdom
and peonage, various abuses arising from the adoption of children, and the transfer
in marriage of women without their consent. At the recommendation of the commit-
tee, a conference representing 51 nations was held in Geneva in 1956. The confer-
ence adopted the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave
Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery to supplement the convention
of 1926. The new convention condemned all forms of servitude similar to slavery and
provided for penal sanctions against countries engaged in the slave trade. Any disputes
relating to the convention were to be referred to the International Court of Justice.
FURTHER READING: Anstey, Roger. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760 1810.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1975; Beachey, R. W. The Slave Trade of Eastern
Africa. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976; Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery,
Smith, Adam 681
1776 1848. London: Verso, 1988; Burnside, Madeleine. Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic
Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997; Cooper, William J. The
South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828 1856. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978;
Davidson, Basil. Black Mother: The Years of the African Slave Trade. Boston: Little, Brown, 1961;
Davis, David Brian. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770 1823. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999; Dubois, Laurent. A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation
in the French Caribbean, 1787 1804. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004;
Eltis, David. Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987; Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery.
London: Pan, 2006; Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1999; Lambert, David. White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity during the Age of Abolition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the
British Economy, 1660 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Olexer, Barbara.
The Enslavement of the American Indian. Monroe, NY: Library Research Associates, 1982; Shaw,
Robert B. A Legal History of Slavery in the United States. Potsdam, NY: Northern Press, 1991;
Walvin, James. Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
JITENDRA UTTAM
Smith, Adam (1723 1790)
Although best known for his classic work in political economy, An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith was also a moral
philosopher and social historian. He was born near Edinburgh, Scotland, and taught
at the University of Glasgow, later becoming a tutor for a wealthy family. His friends
included the greatest philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume, as
well as many other leading members of that movement. He was also a friend of the
Anglo-Irish conservative Edmund Burke.
Smiths rst book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), remains important in
the history of ethics. It began with the premise that humans are ruled by their
passions, the natural inclinations with which they were born. Smith sought to an-
swer a problem in moral philosophy created by this theory of human nature: How
can benevolence and altruism arise from the selsh motives of private feelings?
Smith followed Hume in arguing that ones inner feelings can be communicated
to others because we all share the same nature, like musical strings tuned to each
other. Hence we have an inborn capacity for sympathy. Smith went further to de-
velop the idea of the impartial spectator. Each of us, he argued, has a rational
capacity to observe others and ourselves impartially, and this gives us the power of
moral judgment to augment our natural feelings of sympathy.
Smith also followed Hume in arguing that in addition to inborn passions or
inclinations, humans are capable of acquiring second-order passions through
socialization. Much of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is about the historical develop-
ment of such passions as society has evolved over time. This historical method of
tracing social developments also characterized his most famous work, The Wealth
of Nations. It described the stages of economic and social growth, culminating in
modern commercial society. Smith argued that governments ought not to interfere
with this process by imposing economic policies such as tariffs on trade. He also be-
lieved wages and prices should be determined by the laws of market competition.
Both of Smiths best-known books discussed the idea of the invisible hand that
regulates individual behaviors. Smith contended that although humans are driven
682 Smith, William
by their passions, they are also ruled more subtly by institutional rules and proce-
dures. These include the economic laws of market competition, which provide a
regulating mechanism so that private selshness results in the economic betterment
of all. Smith justied the economic inequalities of such a system because he thought
that the poor would also benet from it.
Ideologically, Smith provides an important link between the economic conser-
vatism of laissez-faire capitalism and the social conservatism of traditionalists like
Hume and Burke. Smith believed capitalism is not just based on the incentives of
self-interest but also requires regulating mechanisms. These arise historically as
social institutions and include morality, mores, and laws. Although Smith believed in
incremental social progress, he favored evolution over revolution. Hence, his ideas
are likely to be resisted by those who seek more rapid or radical social change.
FURTHER READING: Heilbroner, Robert L., ed. The Essential Adam Smith. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1986; Raphael, D. D. Adam Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
BORIS DEWEIL
William Smith was an Aberdeen-born teacher and leading American educator,
Anglican/Episcopal clergyman, and author who was suspected of being a Loyalist sym-
pathizer during the American Revolutionary War because of his views on the use of
the state military and his marriage to Rebecca Moore, the daughter of William Moore.
Smith was the rst provost (175579; 178991) of one of the University of Pennsyl-
vanias precursor institutions (Academy and College of Philadelphia), served on the
colleges board of trustees (secretary, 1764 1790; president, 17901791), and founded
Washington College in Maryland, serving as its president from 1782 to 1789.
Smith graduated from the University of Aberdeen (1747); immigrated to the
American colonies in 1751; and, after being ordained by the Church of England
(1754), accepted an appointment to teach natural philosophy, logic, and ethics
(1754 1791) at the Academy and College of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin
Franklin (1749). In 1755 the Academy became the College of Philadelphia, and
Smith was named provost. Smith and Franklin publicly disagreed (1756) over the
content of the colleges curriculum and control of Pennsylvanias provincial military
force. The disagreement over the latter issue was heightened when Smith published
his objections to the military policies of the Pennsylvania provincial assembly. This
led to charges that Smith was a Loyalist sympathizer, and his imprisonment in 1758.
William Moore (1735 1793), later governor of Pennsylvania (178182), but then a
judge and provincial assemblyman, was imprisoned at the same time for the same
reasons. Both Smith and Moore supported measured responses to the Stamp Act
(1765) and favored increased colonial liberties and autonomy, though Smith dis-
couraged any violent response.
Though Smith publicly supported the colonial position in a sermon delivered in
June 1775 to the third battalion of the Pennsylvania Line under the command of
Colonel Lambert Cadwallader, his support of the American Revolution was deemed
too cautious. This cautious support, his earlier political positions, and his being
an Anglican clergyman led the revolutionary legislature of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania to revoke the colleges charter (1779). A new college, the University
Smith, William 683
of the State of Pennsylvania, with a new provost and a new board of trustees, was
created, and the college was diminished in importance. Smith was not appointed to
the board or made provost of the new dominant institution.
Smith moved to Maryland (1779), becoming the rector of the Anglican parish of
Chester and there founded Washington College (chartered by Maryland in June 1782)
with the nancial support of George Washington, who later served on the Washington
College Board of Visitors and Governors (1784 1789). Smith participated in the
Church of Englands Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from
its beginning in Pennsylvania (1776) until the onset of the Revolutionary War. The
society, originally organized in London in 1701, saw Britains North American colo-
nies as its primary mission eld. Smith presided over the May 1783 clergy convention
that organized the American Protestant Episcopal Church and created the diocese
of Maryland. He was elected bishop of the diocese in June 1783, but the general
convention held in 1786 did not recommend him for consecration to the episcopate.
In 1785 1786 he helped create a proposed liturgy for the new denomination known
as the Proposed Book (the American Book of Prayer), but it was never adopted.
Smith returned as the colleges provost when the charter was restored in 1789.
The legislature merged the college and the University of the State of Pennsylvania
into the University of Pennsylvania on September 13, 1791, with a board of trustees
composed of 24 men, 12 from each institution.
Smith received DD degrees from Oxford and Aberdeen in 1759, and from Trinity
College Dublin in 1763, and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in
1768. Most of Smiths sermons, orations, addresses, poems, and other writings have
been published. See also Loyalists.
FURTHER READING: Gegenheimer, Albert Frank. William Smith, Educator and Churchman,
1727 1803. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1943; Jones, Thomas Firth. A Pair
of Lawn Sleeves: A Biography of William Smith (1727 1803). Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1972;
Smith, Horace Wemyss. Life and Correspondence of Reverend William Smith, D.D. Philadelphia:
Ferguson Bros, 1880.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
William Smith was a jurist, historian, and important American Loyalist. Born in New
York City, he graduated from Yale in 1745 and was called to the New York bar in 1750.
With his brother-in-law, William Livingston, he coauthored Laws of New York from the
Year 1691 to 1751, published in 1752. His family alliance with the Livingstons, as well
as his own Presbyterian faith, led him to oppose the establishment of Kings College
(now Columbia University) as an Anglican institution. Although he failed in this en-
deavor, his publication, together with William Livingston and John Morin Scott, of
the Independent Reector from 1753 to 1754 made him a leading Whig advocate in the
province. In 1757, he also published The History of the Province of New York, a highly
partisan attack on what Smith perceived to be an increasingly materialistic society,
one that placed consumption above civil virtue. In the 1760s, his continued defense of
colonial liberties against British regulation earned him the name of Patriotic Billy.
Smiths own success as a wealthy lawyer, his concerns over the increasing vio-
lence of the Sons of Liberty, and his own appointment to the governors council
684 Society of United Irishmen
in 1767, however, increasingly tempered his views, and before the nal imperial
crisis in 1774, Smith attempted to nd a solution to the impasse over taxation and
representation by suggesting a federated empire, one that contained an American
parliament. Consulted by the New York provincial convention of 1776 regarding the
new state constitution, he, nonetheless, repeatedly refused to take the oath to the
new state government. Forced to seek refuge behind British lines in August 1778,
Smith worked hard to reconcile his fellow Americans to the cause of empire while
remaining himself a critic of actual British policy. He worked to further the aims
of the 1778 Carlisle Peace Commission, composed the public address for Benedict
Arnold that explained his own defection, and was a member of the delegation sent
to General George Washington in 1780 in an attempt to save the life of Major John
Andr, a British spy. Appointed chief justice of New York in 1780, he chose to join
the Loyalists who went into exile aboard the departing British eet in 1783.
In London Smith was given a second chance for a public career when he was
appointed chief justice of Quebec in 1785. For the remainder of his life he attempted
to demonstrate the superiority of British political institutions over republican gov-
ernment, and he played a major role in reforming the land and legal systems of
Canada. Smith died in Quebec in December 1793. See also American Revolution;
Constitutions, American State; Livingston, Philip.
FURTHER READING: Calhoun, Robert M., ed. William Smith Jnr.s Alternative to the
American Revolution. William and Mary Quarterly 22 (1965): 105 18; Upton, L.S.F. The Loyal
Whig: William Smith of New York and Quebec. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969.
RORY T. CORNISH
Socit des Amis de la Constitution
See Amis de la Constitution, Socit des
Active in Ireland in the late eighteenth century, the Society of United Irishmen
was a republic organization that sought Irish independence from Britain.
Various factors gave rise to the Society of United Irishmen in the early 1790s.
Advanced Protestant reformers, especially in Ulster, were dissatised with the failure
to achieve parliamentary reform in the 1780s. They were inspired to renew their
efforts to achieve political reforms by the outbreak of the French Revolution in
1789, which showed that an oppressed people, and a Catholic people at that, could
embrace the cause of liberty. The Catholics in Ireland were already campaigning
for further relief from the penal laws, and the Protestant reformer Theobald Wolfe
Tone urged a union of Protestants and Catholics in support of greater political
rights in An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland in September 1791. He and
other Protestant reformers such as William Drennan, Thomas Russell, and Samuel
Neilson were also inuenced by the publication of Thomas Paines natural rights
arguments in his Rights of Man in 1791.
On October 18, 1791, this small group of reformers set up the rst Society of
United Irishmen in Belfast, and this was soon followed by a society along the same
lines in Dublin on November 9. Branches of the United Irishmen soon spread to
Society of United Irishmen 685
other smaller towns, especially in Ulster. The Dublin society was the largest, with
about 400 members, although the average attendance was fewer than 100 mem-
bers. It was dominated by men in the middling ranks of society (professional men
such as lawyers and physicians, and businessmen such as booksellers and printers,
merchants, and manufacturers, especially in the textile trades), but it did include a
few gentlemen. The Belfast United Irishmen were generally of a lower social rank,
with more shopkeepers, small farmers, tradesmen, and artisans. The aims of these
societies were initially vague: to reduce English inuence over Irish affairs, to reform
the system of representation, and to include in this reform Irishmen of all religious
persuasions. It was not until February 1794 that the United Irishmen in Dublin clari-
ed their reform program: universal manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts,
annual parliaments, and the payment of MPs. In clarifying their aims, they lost sup-
port from some of their more prosperous and less radical members. To achieve
their aims the United Irishmen initially employed constitutional tactics: holding
debates, publishing addresses and resolutions, corresponding with other reformers,
and printing their own propaganda (especially in the Northern Star in Belfast).
The growing violence in France and the outbreak of war between Britain and
France produced a powerful conservative reaction against reform. Although it gave
some relief to buy off moderate Catholics, the Irish government sought to suppress the
radical activities of the United Irishmen. The Convention Act of 1793 aimed to sup-
press all societies seeking to alter the establishment in church and state. The discovery
of William Jackson, a French agent who was contacting United Irishmen in Dublin
in early 1794, led leaders like Wolfe Tone to go into exile and William Drennan to
abandon active politics. On May 24, 1794, the government ordered the Dublin society
to disband. After some months in disarray, the United Irishmen were reconstituted in
1795 as a secret oath-based and mass-based conspiracy dedicated to achieving its ends
by force if necessary. Wolfe Tone arrived in France in 1796 in order to enlist French
military support, which led to failed invasion attempts in 1796 and 1798.
Meanwhile, within Ireland, the United Irishmen set up a federation of small
societies (in a vain attempt to avoid detection) that were organized in a pyramid
structure. Elected delegates attended committees at baronial, county, provincial,
and national levels. Alongside this civilian structure was a parallel military struc-
ture with elected ofcers that claimed to have recruited several hundred thousand
armed men by early 1798. These vast numbers were probably exaggerated, but not
by that much, given the large number of men who eventually took up arms in 1798.
The United Irishmen recruited these men by means of propaganda, emissaries, and
the inltration of Masonic lodges and the irregular armed forces. Large numbers
of supporters of the United Irishmens conspiracy were Catholics recruited through
an alliance with the Defenders, a sectarian protest movement that had long been
seeking to defend Catholics from oppression and to improve their social and
economic conditions. To establish an alliance with the Defenders, the United
Irishmen needed to broaden their appeal through a campaign for democratic
political reforms. They had to show some interest in socioeconomic reforms and the
vexed land question and to become even more of a separatist and republican move-
ment. Only by such means could they appeal to the Catholic majority in Ireland and
broaden the social base of their support to include the urban and rural poor. While
the middle-class leaders of the United Irishmen tried to give a political lead, many
of their Defender allies were poorer men much more interested in socioeconomic
686 Solemn League and Covenant
reforms and desirous of recovering land previously conscated from the Catholic
majority. Thus, the United Irishmen changed their composition, their objectives,
and their methods in the mid-1790s. In seeking to enlist the Defenders in order
to become numerically powerful, however, they became prone to divisions along
social, economic, and sectarian lines.
In planning insurrection and in seeking French military support, the United Irish-
men lost the support of moderate reformers and deeply alienated the governing elite
and the militant Protestants in the Orange Order (created in 1795). By seeking mass
recruits, the United Irishmen made it impossible to remain a secret underground
conspiracy. The government soon had an army of spies and informers watching their
every move. The authority of Irish magistrates was increased by the Insurrection Act
of 1796, and the army was used to disarm many of the United Irishmen and Defend-
ers in 1796 1798. This drive against the armed United Irishmen led to hundreds of
arrests, and many of the leaders planning insurrection were arrested in March and
May 1798. When the Irish rebellion broke out, the insurrection was not as well
planned or as coordinated as the United Irishmen had hoped it would be. A series
of quite large and bloody uprisings took place beginning May 23, 1798, but these
were crushed. The United Irishmen strove to give a lead to a political uprising,
but many Catholic rebels were motivated by resentment at the harsh repression
of the authorities and sought socioeconomic and sectarian objectives. The French
arrived in small expeditions, too late and in the wrong locations. Some of the lead-
ing United Irishmen died in the uprising, were executed afterward, or were exiled.
Some leaders tried to argue that they were political moderates who had been unable
to prevent the Catholic Defenders from reacting violently to the harsh repression of
the government, the army, and the Orangemen. They were imprisoned in Scotland
until 1803. The United Irishmen movement totally collapsed, and it was not until
the mid-nineteenth century that they started to become the heroes and martyrs of
Irish republicanism and nationalism.
FURTHER READING: Curtin, Nancy J. The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and
Dublin, 17911798. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; Dickson, David, Daire Keogh, and
Kevin Whelan, eds. The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism, and Rebellion. Dublin, UK:
Lilliput Press, 1993; Elliott, Marianne. Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982; Jacob, Rosamond. The Rise of the United Irishmen,
179194. London: G. G. Harrap, 1937; McDowell, R. B., ed. Proceedings of the Dublin Society of
United Irishmen. Dublin, UK: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1998; Stewart, A.T.Q. A Deeper
Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irishmen. Belfast, UK: Blackstaff Press, 1998; Whelan,
Kevin. Fellowship of Freedom: The United Irishmen and 1798. Cork, UK: Cork University Press, 1998;
Wilson, David A. United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
H. T. DICKINSON
The Solemn League and Covenant of 1774 was a pledge by Bostonians not to import
British goods following the imposition of the Intolerable Acts, known as the Coercive
Acts to the British, by Parliament in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, which took
place on December 13, 1773. The covenant was proposed by Samuel Adams and later
signed by the Boston Committee of Correspondence on June 5, 1774. The Intolerable
Sons of Liberty 687
Acts imposed in 1774 revoked the colonys charter and forbade town meetings (Mas-
sachusetts Government Act; May 20, 1774); closed the port of Boston until reparations
for the Tea Partys damage were paid (Boston Port Act; March 31, 1774); forbade the
trial of British ofcials in colonial courts (Administration of Justice Act; May 20, 1774);
and amended the 1765 Mutiny Act with the Quartering Act ( June 2, 1774), which al-
lowed British soldiers to be quartered not only in commercial and empty buildings
but in private occupied dwellings as well. The unrest anticipated by Parliament when
they dispatched British general Thomas Gage and four regiments to Boston began
to develop as word of the Intolerable Acts reached Massachusetts in the spring and
summer of 1774. Gage arrived in Boston on May 13, 1774, and imposed each of the
Intolerable Acts as soon as he had ofcial notication.
Samuel Adams, after receiving the news of the Boston Port Act on May 10, called for
a May 13 town meeting to consider the appropriate response. The covenant proposed
that all signatories boycott British goods effective on October 1 and stop dealing with
any nonsignatory local merchants by the same time. Some merchants rejected the
covenant, and others proposed a more comprehensive non-importation agreement
involving all 13 colonies. The covenant failed to receive immediate acceptance fol-
lowing its adoption on June 6. Adams and the Committee of Correspondence tried
to enlist the support of other communities by circulating the covenant through
other committees of correspondence in the neighboring towns. Though many of
the towns did not support the covenant, some, such as Westford and Concord, did,
but only with modications.
The covenant was passed at a Boston town meeting in late June. Gage publicly re-
nounced the covenant on June 30, 1774, as traitorous and threatened its backers with
arrest. The First Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia (September 5 October
26, 1774) effectively overrode the covenant when on October 20, 1774, it enacted
the Articles of Association, which united the colonies in boycotting both the impor-
tation of British goods and the exportation of American goods to Britain unless the
Intolerable Acts were not repealed. They were not, and the boycott began in 1775.
FURTHER READING: Alden, John Richard. A History of the American Revolution. New ed.
Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 1989; Grifth, Samuel B. The War for American Independence:
From 1760 to the Surrender at Yorktown in 1781. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976; Irvin,
Benjamin H. Samuel Adams: Son of Liberty, Father of Revolution. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty is the name taken by a wide variety of American patriot
groups in the colonies during the years leading up to the American Revolution.
Originating in New York City and Boston, groups calling themselves Sons of Liberty
emerged throughout the colonies from New England to Georgia. They counted
among their membership such prominent gures as John Adams, Samuel Adams,
and Paul Revere. The Sons of Liberty, while gaining the support of many laborers,
remained a primarily middle-class, often artisanal, movement.
The Sons of Liberty took their name from a 1765 debate in Parliament over the
Stamp Act, a controversial piece of legislation devised to cover some of the costs
688 Sons of Liberty
of maintaining a regular British military presence in the colonies, ostensibly to
guard against incursions by French forces. Isaac Barr, a member of Parliament
who supported the American colonists, rose to rebuke proponents of the Stamp
Act, referring to the Americans as these sons of liberty who would surely oppose
the act.
The Stamp Act, in calling for the issuance of tax stamps on a variety of public
documents, including newspapers, customs forms, and other legal documents and
licenses, was viewed by the printers, lawyers, and shopkeepers who provided the pri-
mary membership in the early Sons of Liberty as a direct attack on their livelihood.
In response to the passing of the Stamp Act, the rst Sons of Liberty groups
issued declarations claiming that they would give their lives to prevent the act from
being enforced. They also promised violence if it was needed to defeat the act. In
this they were true to their word, as violence did indeed mark the actions of the
Sons of Liberty throughout their existence and across the different groups. Actions
included the conscation and burning of ofcial documents and property, vandal-
ism, and the burning in efgy of local tax ofcials. Symbols of British authority such
as the East India Company and the homes of wealthy supporters of the Crown were
targeted, forcing some royal governors into hiding. Actual assaults on individuals
were also carried out with some frequency. Customs ofcers, tax collectors, and
others who publicly expressed loyalty to Britain were subjected to tarring and feath-
ering, while items of class distinction were often stripped from people in the streets
as acts of public humiliation.
Perhaps ironically, the Sons of Liberty openly proclaimed their loyalty to
George III. In their view the real enemy of the colonists was Parliament. The Sons
of Liberty, taking a position that nds echoes in the defense of the United States
Constitution among some contemporary American conservatives, expressed their
allegiance to the English constitution against the intrusions of politicians and
government bureaucrats.
With the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, the Sons of Liberty declined as an
active movement. However, the social networks that had been established allowed
the group to reinvigorate itself quickly to oppose the new regime of duties, covering
a variety of goods, introduced under the Townshend Acts in 1767. The reestablished
Sons of Liberty remained active throughout the period of the American Revolution,
only disbanding in 1783.
There has been much debate over the character of the Sons of Liberty; historical
assessments range from those that view them as patriots to those that identify them
as terrorists, and others that suggest they were both. The success of the movement
is less controversial given the quick repeal of the Stamp Act, the popularity of the
movement, and the adoption of its tactics by a variety of opponents of Britain.
The Sons of Liberty stand as a potent mythic symbol, especially among con-
servative groups, in contemporary America. Organizations ranging from libertar-
ian associations, which seek to uphold the original U.S. Constitution against the
supposed intrusions of politicians and lawmakers, to motorcycle clubs have taken
the Sons of Liberty as their namesake.
FURTHER READING: Brown, Richard D. Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston
Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772 1774. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1970; Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society
in New York, 1760 1790. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981; Nash, Gary B. The
South Carolina 689
Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution.
JEFF SHANTZ
South Carolina
South Carolina, like many states, was divided between Patriots and Loyalists and
between rival political and geographical groupings. The split was so deep that both
political and military events in South Carolina took the shape of a civil war.
There were some similarities with North Carolina, particularly the neglect
that South Carolinas western population felt toward the government in the east.
However, there were signicant differences as well. Eastern South Carolina was
dominated by Charleston, which was not just a city but one of the premier ports on
the eastern coast. It was a true urban center that created a more signicant divide
between east and west than existed to the north. Those who lived in the west were
subsistence farmers, while those in the east were owners of large farms or wealthy
merchants.
In 1761, the wars with the Cherokees were settled and the area was open for set-
tlement. However, whereas there had been problems with Native Americans, there
were now problems with bandits, in whose existence the eastern-dominated colonial
government took no interest. At the same time, all courts were kept in the east, and
none established in the western part of the colony. As a result, South Carolinians in
the west formed bands of Regulators. Unlike those in North Carolina, their role was
to keep order, not to provide an alternative form of government.
Finally, as sentiment against Parliament and favoring independence developed,
that sentiment was borne mostly by easterners, who were predominantly Whigs.
Those who lived in the backcountry did not support the movement toward revolution
as enthusiastically.
South Carolina sent a representative to the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765.
Ten years later, as the debate over perceived wrongs inicted by the British govern-
ment sharpened, a provisional body was established in June 1774 to run the colony.
Later that year delegates were sent to the First Continental Congress and voted to
establish the Continental Association. By January 1775 a full Provincial Congress
had come into being; it was succeeded by a second Provincial Congress called in
November 1775. This Congress drafted a state constitution that was adopted in March
1776. After 1778, most military action in the American Revolutionary War shifted
south, and several campaigns were fought in South Carolina. In 1781, Cornwalliss
march north to Virginia made the area quieter, but there was continued partisan
warfare, especially in the west, until 1783.
South Carolina sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention. When the United
States Constitution was brought to the state for ratication, most Anti-Federalist
sentiment came from the west. As had been the case before the war, westerners were
defeated. South Carolina ratied the Constitution in May 1788 by a vote of two to
one, the eighth state to do so. See also American Revolution; Articles of Confedera-
tion; Constitutions, American State; Continental Congress, Second; Declaration of
Independence; Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth; Pinckney, Thomas; Rutledge, Ed-
ward; Rutledge, John.
690 Spain
FURTHER READING: Bargar, B. D. Royal South Carolina, 1719 1763. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1970; Brown, Richard Maxwell. The South Carolina Regulators.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963; Greene, Jack P., ed. Money, Trade, and Power:
The Evolution of Colonial South Carolina s Plantation Society. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2001; Weir, Robert M. Colonial South Carolina: A History. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1997.
ROBERT N. STACY
Spain
At the outset of the age of revolution in the Atlantic world during the latter half of
the eighteenth century, Spain had already been a declining power for over a century
and a half. From the heights of its imperial glory under the Habsburgs in the six-
teenth century, Spain had been overtaken by the rising powers Britain and France
and even its former colony the Netherlands and fallen to the status of a second-rate
power. Nevertheless, even though Spain had been relegated to a secondary role in
Great Power politics on the European continent itself, the Spanish thronewhich
had passed to the Bourbon line in 1700still controlled an immense empire in the
Americas and was thus still a force to be reckoned with on a global level.
During the height of its imperial majesty, Spain had followed a mostly extractive
policy in its American colonies, using them largely as a source of precious metals to
enlarge the coffers of the Spanish throne, rather than for raw materials to fuel in-
dustrial expansion. Thus, while the Spanish throne grew rich over the course of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it did little to invest this surplus in economic
development either at home or in the colonies. Spains accumulation of metallic
wealthwhile useful for funding wars and the imperial ambitions of the crown
led to ination and eventually caused the bankruptcy of the Spanish crown.
In 1759, King Charles III acceded to the Spanish throne, having previously ruled
Spanish associated regions in Italy. Charles was a reform-minded monarch who was
inuenced to a great extent by the ideas of the Enlightenment popular in France
and elsewhere. Charles attempted to promote rationalist ideas and to rule in what he
saw as the best interests of his people. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church continued
to hold much power and land in Spain at this time, and this led to serious tension
between Charles and the clergy.
At the beginning of the age of revolution, Spain remained a largely rural and
peasant society. While Britain and France had begun to witness a transformation
in economic and social life fuelled by industrialization, Spain remained a largely
backward society nostalgic about its prior glory. However, Charlescognizant of
Spains lagging economyattempted to improve the nations agriculture by mak-
ing the land more productive. Many clergy objected to this, as they thought it would
interfere with their extensive land holdings. In 1766, Spainfollowing the lead of
other European countriesexpelled the Jesuit order.
Despite the clashes between their king and clergy, most Spaniards continued
to revere the church, and the Inquisition remained popular. This religiosity pen-
etrated through most layers of Spanish societymarking a striking difference with
other European countries, where the Enlightenment was creating a public sphere
in which rationalist and deist philosophies were gaining strength. Still, a small
group of enlightened intellectuals did develop in Spain during this period, and
Spain 691
the country did experience some level of economic and cultural revival in the late
eighteenth century.
Under Charless reign, Spain continued to play a part in Europes Great Power
conicts, even as it took a backseat to the dominant powers of France and Spain.
The tenuous situation in Italywhich was divided into several small kingdoms
and territoriescreated constant tensions as Spain sought to defend Bourbon-
controlled possessions from Austrian, French, and British encroachment and to
expand the inuence of their Italian allies.
In the 1760s, Spain participated on the side of its fellow Bourbon kingdom,
France, in the Seven Years War (17561763) with Britain. However, the result of
the war was not favorable for either crown. France lost almost all its American pos-
sessions, while Spain lost Florida and was forced to make concessions to Britain
elsewhere. It did, however, receive Frances former Louisiana territory, bringing
the Spanish Empire to its farthest geographic limit. Still, ination resulting from
the war sparked rioting and growing social discontent, forcing Charles to replace
several key ministers.
In the 1780s, Charles again sent Spain to war with Britain, this time in support of
the American Revolution. While Spains actual military contribution was minimal,
it did receive Florida and Minorca at the Peace of Paris in 1783, and its control of
the Louisiana territory was reafrmed. Still, tensions with the newly founded United
States over the precise boundaries of Florida and navigation of the Mississippi would
continue for several more years.
Charles III died in 1788 and was replaced by his son Charles IV. Charles IV would
attempt to rule in continuity with his fathers policies of enlightened despotism.
However, the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 would eventually lead to a
pan-European war and involve Spain in the horrors of a brutal foreign occupation.
In 1793, Spain joined a coalition of powers opposed to the revolutionary gov-
ernment in France. Charles had particular interest in rescuing his French cousin,
Louis XVI, whom the French revolutionary government had arrested and put on
trial for treason. The execution of Louis particularly angered Charles, who sent a
Spanish army to invade southern France. Nevertheless, the French revolutionary
armies were able to repel the Spanish invasion and begin their own invasion of Cata-
lonia, Navarre, and the Basque country. While the French armies were able to inict
defeats on the Spanish army, their propaganda calling for an insurrection against
Charles IV largely fell on deaf ears. Reeling from the cost of war, Spain sought peace
with the moderate Directory government in France in 1795.
However, in 1796, the Spanish Bourbon governmentfearful of the growing
inuence of Britainapproached the French about forming an alliance. The two
declared war on Britain that same year. The British navy responded by enacting
a commercial blockade, obstructing Spanish trade with its American empire, and
seizing Trinidad and Minorca. In 1802, a peace was signed, but Napoleons rise to
power in France ensured that it would not last long.
In 1803, France and Britain resumed their conict. While Charles tried to keep
Spain neutral, the British grew suspicious of Spain and captured its treasure eet. Spain
responded by declaring war. In 1805, the British navy destroyed a combined Span-
ish and French eet in the celebrated Battle of Trafalgareffectively ending Spains
naval capacity. This defeat provoked panic among Charless ministers, some of whom
wanted to switch sides to avoid the wrath of the British. This led to much intrigue, with
692 Spain
Charless son Ferdinand leading a faction in favor of maintaining the alliance with
Napoleonic France.
In 1807, Napoleonangered by Portugals refusal to honor his Continental System
by trading with Britaindevised a plan with Spain to invade Portugal. In 1808, a large
French army entered Spainsupposedly on its way to invade Portugaland began
to take up positions in fortresses across the country. While many Spanish hoped that
Napoleon would help Ferdinand unseat his less-than-popular rival, Godoywho
served as Charless chief ministerthey resented the French armys actions. Napoleon
also changed the terms of the alliance and demanded Spain grant France territorial
concessions in exchange for Portugal. Godoy responded by putting the country on a
war footing and mobilizing the royal guards. Rumors that the royal family intended to
ee for America gripped Spain, but Ferdinandwho was more positively inclined to-
ward Napoleonrefused to accompany them. Hostile crowds began to form around
the royal palace. Focusing their anger on Godoy, they stormed his quarters, and he
was arrested by royal guards. On March 19, Charles abdicated the crown and was
replaced by his son Ferdinand, who was the Spanish crowds favorite.
However, the French commander in SpainMarshal Muratrefused to rec-
ognize Ferdinand as king until Napoleon approved of the change. Napoleon re-
sponded to the disorder in his supposed ally by dismissing the Bourbon monarchy
altogether and appointing his brother Joseph Bonaparte king of Spain.
While a small circle of Spanish intellectuals and enlightened nobles believed
Joseph might help push Spain along the path of reform, Napoleons actions were
largely condemned by the Spanish people. Josephs rule rested on the presence
of large numbers of French troops in the country, and Ferdinanddespite spend-
ing most of the period in French custodybecame a symbol of Spanish national
resistance to the occupation.
Across Spain, local notables organized committees of resistanceknown as
juntasto ght the French occupiers. Together with the remaining units of the
Spanish army, the juntas inicted several defeats on the French, forcing Napoleon
himself to intervene in Spain with an army of over 300,000 men. Napoleons forces
quickly defeated the Spanish regular army in a series of battles and seized control of
most major cities in the country. Nevertheless, the Spanish populace remained hos-
tile to the French invaders, conducting a guerrilla war against them that began to
constrain Napoleons broader European war strategy. The French responded with
much brutality toward the civilian population, turning the conict into a virtual
state of total warfare, a condition captured in the famous frescoes of the celebrated
Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
To the extent that he could, King Joseph tried to enact the reforms of the revolu-
tionary age in Spain. He abolished the Inquisition and attacked the privileges of the
church. However, the Spanish populace rejected these reforms as attacking their
faith and traditions. Throughout this period, the Spanish resistance movement took
a conservative, even reactionary, tone, with the Spanish seeking to defend the old
Catholic order from the godless French. While the Spanish resistance was strongly
nationalist in tone, it was not the revolutionary nationalism that had been expressed
in the French Revolution, but a backward-looking one based primarily on religion.
Sensing an opportunity to weaken Napoleon on his southern ank, the British
supported the Spanish resistance movement. In 1810, the British invaded Spain
from Portugal, while the guerrillas kept up their harassment of the French army.
Spence, Thomas 693
The British were eventually able to push the French out of Madrid and back toward
their own borders.
Under these conditions of occupation and total warfare, the future of the Span-
ish nation was in doubt. With Ferdinand remaining in French captivity during most
of the war, many Spanish called for the reassembly of the Cortesthe old feudal
legislative bodies that had been stripped of most of their power by the Habsburg and
Bourbon monarchs. In 1812, the Cortes convened in Cadiz. Dominated mostly by
enlightened intellectuals, the Cadiz Cortes drafted a constitution, making Spain the
second nation in the worldand the rst in Europewith a written constitution.
The new constitution embodied many liberal principles such as universal manhood
suffrage and formally ended the Inquisition.
However, following Napoleons defeat in 1814, Ferdinand returned home to
assume the throne. Many nobles, as well as much of the populace at large, rejected
the reform constitution and convinced Ferdinand to scrap it. Leading liberals were
placed under arrest, the Inquisition was revived, and nobles regained many of their
feudal privileges.
Nevertheless, the long and brutal war with France had left Spain reeling. Largely
bankrupt, Ferdinand could do little to resist the movement toward independence
in Spains American empire. By 1825, most of this empire would be effectively
independent from the old mother country. Moreover, at the Congress of Vienna in
1814 that recongured European borders after the Napoleonic Wars, the Great
Powers were largely content to ignore Spanish concernsdespite the key role Span-
ish resistance played in defeating Napoleon.
At the outset of the age of revolution, Spain was already a power on the decline.
Nevertheless, geography and empire dictated that the Spanish nation would play
an important part in the conicts that emerged as a result of revolutionary events
occurring elsewhere during this period. However, Spain did not emerge from these
conicts in a position of greater strength. In contrast, the revolutionary upheaval
of this periodin which Spain reluctantly played a partonly conrmed its status
as an historical also-ran and precipitated the inevitable loss of its massive overseas
empire under the weight of new democratic and representative ideologies. Spain
herself would slip back into familiar social, economic, and political patternsa
state from which it would not fully emerge for more than a century. See also Latin
American Revolutions.
FURTHER READING: Costeloe, Michael P. Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the
Spanish American Revolutions, 1810 1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986;
Hargreaves-Mawdsley, W. N. Spain under the Bourbons, 1700 1833. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1973; Lovett, Gabriel H. Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain.
2 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1965; Lynch, John. Bourbon Spain, 1700 1808.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989; Sperber, Jonathan. Revolutionary Europe, 1780 1850. New
York: Longman, 2000.
MICHAEL F. GRETZ
Spence, Thomas (17501814)
Spence was born into a very poor family in Newcastle upon Tyne and received
little education. He had two unsuccessful marriages and an unsuccessful career as
a teacher. An extreme Presbyterian, he was much inuenced by Rev. James Murray,
694 Stal, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, Madame de
who wrote radical tracts in support of John Wilkes and a defense of the rebellious
American colonies. Spence supported Murray in local political disputes and rst pub-
lished the outlines of his famous Land Plan after giving a lecture on the subject to the
Philosophical Society in Newcastle on November 8, 1775. This caused great offense,
and he was expelled from the society. Increasingly isolated in Newcastle, Spence
moved permanently to London sometime in the late 1780s or early 1790s. By 1792
he was known as a radical bookseller in the capital and a member of the London
Corresponding Society and of more militant radical groups. He wrote a whole series
of pamphlets detailing in different ways his famous Land Plan. His pamphlets in-
cluded The Real Rights of Man (1793), Description of Spensonia (1795), The Constitution
of a Perfect Commonwealth (1798), and The Restorer of Society to Its Natural State (1801).
He also published a periodical, One Penny Worth of Pigs Meat: Lessons for the Swinish
Multitude, between 1793 and 1795.
Despite his clear and vigorous prose, Spences Land Plan has often been misunder-
stood. He did not advocate the nationalization of land by the state. Always opposed
to strong central government, Spence wished to place the land and natural resources
of each parish under the control of a parish corporation elected by universal suffrage
(men and women). Each corporation would rent out its land and resources on an an-
nual basis to the highest bidder. The rent received by the parish corporation would
be used for public needs and amenities: a parish hall, school, library, hospital, local
militia force, and the like. When all these expenses had been met, the remaining
money would be divided equally, every three months, among every man, woman,
and child in the parish. There would therefore be no private owners of property and
no wealthy men, and no one in dire poverty. At the national level, Spence favored a
democratic republic with a legislature elected by universal suffrage and the complete
separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. The national government
would be expected to avoid war and would have no standing army. Spence hoped his
Land Plan could be implemented by reasoned argument and public opinion, but he
was not against using force if the clear majority of the people wished to see the Land
Plan implemented and their desires were resisted.
Spence was arrested at least six times and was twice imprisoned (for seven months
without trial in 1794 and for a year in 1801). He was not easily intimidated, however,
and he continued to promote his Land Plan. In his last years he gathered together
a group of disciples, the Spensonian Philanthropists, who met in local taverns.
Spences last years were spent in obscurity. He died in 1814, but his followers were
involved in the Spa Fields riots of December 2, 1816, and the Cato Street conspiracy
in February 1820. His Land Plan inuenced some of the Chartists in the 1830s.
FURTHER READING: Ashraf, P. M. The Life and Times of Thomas Spence. Newcastle upon Tyne,
UK: Frank Graham, 1983; Chase, Malcolm. The Peoples Farm: English Radical Agrarianism,
1775 1840. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988; Dickinson, H. T., ed. The Political Works
of Thomas Spence. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Avero, 1982; Rudkin, Olive D. Thomas Spence and
His Connections. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966.
H. T. DICKINSON
Stal, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, Madame de (1766 1817)
A prominent French-speaking Swiss literary gure, Anne-Louise Germaine
Necker was the daughter of Jacques Necker, the Swiss banker and the future royal
Stal, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, Madame de 695
director general of nance under Louis XVI, and Suzanne Curchod. As a child,
she demonstrated unusual intellectual prowess and began very early to write.
In her twenties, she published various literary works, notably an anonymously
printed novel, Sophie (1786). She married Baron Erik Magnus Stal von Holstein,
an older gentleman of substantial wealth, in 1786, but the marriage proved to
be unhappy for both of them, although it produced three children. In 1788, she
published Lettres sur le caractre et les crits de Jean-Jacques Rousseau under her own
name and demonstrated her enthusiasm for Rousseauism. She closely followed
events in Paris, where her father struggled to balance French nances and stave
off unrest.
During the French Revolution, Stal initially lived at Coppet on the north shore
of the Lake of Geneva, but in 1793, she traveled to Britain, where she mingled
with the French migr community. She supported a liberal constitutional mon-
archy, publishing a pamphlet entitled Rexions sur le procs de la reine in support
of Queen Marie Antoinette, and condemning the excesses of the Reign of Terror
in De l inuence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. After the fall of
Maximilien Robespierre, she returned to Paris and hosted a prominent salon. She
published several works, including Sur la litrature considr dans ses rapports avec les in-
stitutions sociales (1800), which connected liberty with human perfectibility. In 1797,
she separated from her husband, who died ve years later.
During this period, she was introduced to Napoleon, who initially captivated her,
but their relations quickly became strained. Stal opposed Napoleons increasingly
authoritarian regime and became a renowned hostess of a liberal opposition salon;
her lover, Benjamin Constant, was also critical of Napoleon. In 1802, she published
the rst of her famous novels, Delphine, which introduced the femme incomprise to
French literature but also contained liberal views. On Napoleons orders, Stal was
forced into exile from Paris and was later prevented from entering France alto-
gether. At her estate at Coppet she hosted a salon that became known for its politi-
cal and intellectual discussions. Her writings continued to reect her opposition to
Napoleon. In 1807, she published Corinne ou l Italie, which dealt with the life of an
independent female poet. It was followed in 1810 by De l Allemagne, which described
her experiences in various German cities and praised German culture. Napoleon
resented this book for its attempt to compare German and French culture and had
his police destroy the rst edition of De l Allemagne printed in Paris; the book was
later reprinted in London.
In 18111812, Stal traveled through Russia, Finland, and Sweden, showing
herself to be a staunch opponent of Napoleon and welcoming the news of his
defeat in Russia and subsequent French losses in Germany. In 1814, she supported
General Karl Bernadotte for the French throne but later rallied to the Bourbons.
She was in Paris when Napoleon escaped from Elba, and she ed to her estate at
Coppet. Nevertheless, she supported Benjamin Constants Additional Act, which
liberalized Napoleons government during the Hundred Days. After Napoleons
defeat at Waterloo, Stal returned to France, where she died after suffering a stroke
on July 14, 1817. Her memoirs, Dix annes d exil, were published posthumously in
1821. A political propagandist at times, Madame de Stal was a woman of letters
and one of the rst feminist writers. Above all, she remains one of the most color-
ful personalities of her age. See also Emigrs; Jacobins; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques;
Salons.
696 Stamp Act
FURTHER READING: Fairweather, Maria. Madame de Stal. London: Constable and Robinson,
2006; Herold, J. Christopher. Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stal. New York: Time, 1964.
Stamp Act (1765)
The Stamp Act placed a tax on the American colonies that inspired widespread
political resistance and violent protest. The conclusion of the Seven Years War
(1756 63) left the British Empire with the considerable expense of maintaining an
army in North America. To help defray the costs, prime minister George Grenville
implemented a program of colonial taxation. It was widely assumed in Britain that
Parliament held total legislative power over the American colonies, an outlook that
produced the Sugar Act and Currency Act in 1764, and the controversial Stamp Act in
1765. The colonists, however, claimed that the laws form of direct taxation exceeded
Parliaments authority. The crisis that followed the passage of the Stamp Act called
into question the nature of British sovereignty over the colonies and is generally con-
sidered the initial conict in a series of events leading to the American Revolution.
In February 1765, Grenville asked Parliament to extend a stamp duty, already in
place in Britain, to the colonies. The law would require the use of stamped paper for
over 50 types of public and legal documents, including newspapers, ships papers, cus-
toms forms, and pamphlets. Each was assigned a specic duty, ranging from one half
penny to six pounds. To make the law more palatable to the colonists, the fees would
cover fewer goods and be less expensive than those of their British counterparts. The
wide range of taxable documents and variable fee structure was designed so that the
burden would be shared broadly but would fall most heavily on lawyers, merchants,
and printers. One resident from each colony would be appointed stamp distributor to
administer the law. The money they collected would help pay for colonial defense.
Grenville rst proposed the tax in 1764, but debate over the measure led him
instead to notify the colonies of the proposal and request suggestions for changes.
Until the passage of the Sugar Act, Britain had collected revenues from the colo-
nies by requesting funds from the colonial legislatures, which in turn taxed the
colonists. News of the Sugar Act and the proposed stamp duties resulted in petitions
protesting the measures on economic and political grounds. No colony complied
with Grenvilles request for input, avoiding a de facto concession of Parliaments
right to impose a direct tax. When he came before Parliament in February 1765,
Grenville argued that the costs of defending America and the doctrine of virtual
representation warranted passage of the law. Other advocates claimed a need to as-
sert Britains imperial authority. Parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765,
and expected it to be reluctantly accepted by the colonists.
This was the case until May, when the rst signicant opposition emerged in the
Virginia House of Burgesses. Patrick Henry, who had recently become a member, sub-
mitted seven resolutions denouncing the law. Five were passed, including one repudiat-
ing virtual representation. Although not as bold as they appeared to be in the colonial
presss descriptions, the Virginia Resolves initiated a powerful movement against the
Stamp Act. By the end of the year, eight other colonies had passed similar resolutions.
In the intervening period, the law met with both formal petition and violent dissent.
In June, James Otis, a member of the Massachusetts colonial assembly, proposed
that delegates from all the colonies meet to draft a petition protesting the Stamp
Stamp Act Congress 697
Act. The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October, with 27 delegates from
nine colonies in attendance. Although they acknowledged their subordination to
the Crown, they passed 14 resolutions objecting to the Stamp Act on constitutional
grounds. They claimed that since the colonies had no representation in Parliament,
that body could not legitimately levy taxes upon them. Instead, they argued, that
right should be reserved for the colonial legislatures. Their nal resolution de-
manded the acts repeal.
Violence erupted in Boston in August 1765. A group of tradesmen and shop-
keepers called the Loyal Nine, later renamed the Sons of Liberty, led a mob bent
on intimidating Andrew Oliver, the stamp distributor for Massachusetts. The mob
hanged Oliver in efgy, burned his property, and damaged his house. Oliver pledged
to resign the following day. As the news spread, the Sons of Liberty expanded and
like-minded mobs forced similar resignations across the colonies. By the time of
the ofcial introduction of stamp duties on November 1, there were no longer any
distributors in place. Nor could stamped paper be made available for fear of its
destruction by the mob. From a practical perspective, the law was neutralized.
After November 1, there was widespread, if not unied, deance of the law. Many
courts, printers, and ports closed for a time, but most returned to normal operations
before the Stamp Acts repeal without complying with its requirements. Colonists
frequently criticized the stamp duties in economic terms, claiming that the post-
war depression and the limited amount of hard currency in America made the
Stamp Act unfair. A boycott of British goods proved most effective in motivating
the laws repeal. Starting in New York, merchants from various colonies organized
non-importation agreements at their homeports. Publicity amplied the threat and
began to turn British merchants against the act.
During the summer of 1765, the Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquess of Rock-
ingham, succeeded Grenville as prime minister. As news of violent resistance and
boycott threats ltered back to Britain, it became clear that either the law would
have to be upheld by force or some form of appeasement would have to be made.
The difculty of a military solution and opposition to the law in Parliament, led by
William Pitt, made repeal more pragmatic. But it was feared that simply annulling
the act might be viewed as acquiescing to the mob. Ultimately, Rockinghams
ministry favored a solution that nullied the law on economic grounds but also
reafrmed, through a Declaratory Act, Parliaments complete legislative preroga-
tive. The Stamp Act was ofcially repealed on March 18, 1766. See also Newspapers
(American).
FURTHER READING: Morgan, Edmund S., and Helen M. Morgan. The Stamp Act Crisis:
Prologue to Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995; Thomas, P.D.G.
British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution 1763 1767. New
York: Clarendon Press, 1975.
ROBERT LEE
The Stamp Act Congress, organized to petition for the repeal of the Stamp Act
(1765), constituted the rst joint effort to oppose a British imperial policy in the
American colonies. The Stamp Act required the use of stamped paper for a range
698 Stockton, Richard
of public documents, levying a direct tax on the American colonies. This departed
from Parliaments customary method of requisition, in which the colonial legislatures
were asked to collect and remit funds to Britain. The law inspired a powerful backlash
among the colonists. One of the most important means of protest was the formation
of the Stamp Act Congress, which issued resolutions laying out the colonial view of the
appropriate relationship between the American colonies and the British Empire.
In June 1765, the Massachusetts colonial legislature was in the process of
petitioning the Crown for relief from the Stamp Act. One of its members, James
Otis, suggested that they instead organize an intercolonial meeting to formulate a
unied petition of protest. Circular letters went out, and the Stamp Act Congress
was scheduled to meet in New York. Not every colony responded favorably to the
idea. The governors of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia refused to send del-
egates; New Hampshire did not send any either but later endorsed the resolutions.
In all, 27 delegates from nine colonies came together to discuss the Stamp Act for
two weeks in October 1765.
The most important issue facing the assembly was the constitutionality of a direct
tax. The actual costs of stamp duties were small, but it was feared that they would
set a precedent for internal taxation of the colonies, an authority traditionally af-
forded to the colonial legislatures. A central debate among the delegates was over
the question of whether to reject internal taxation of the colonies while acknowledg-
ing Parliaments right to regulate external trade. Although few denied the latter, the
Congress opted not to explicitly admit that right in their petitionleaving open
the possibility of protesting Parliaments indirect methods of raising revenues, like
the Sugar Act, if they became too onerous.
On October 19, the Congress agreed upon the Declaration of Rights and
Grievances, an assessment of colonists rights and their relationship to the Crown.
Penned chiey by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the 14-point petition adhered to
the doctrine of no taxation without representation made prominent the previous
May by the Virginia Resolves. The Declaration of Rights also argued against the
stamp duties on economic grounds, claiming that limited specie in the colonies
made the tax impractical, and an existing tax burden inherent in the purchase of
British manufactures rendered it unfair. The nal point both called for the repeal
of the Stamp Act and reiterated colonial fealty for the Crown.
The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, the result of a combination of several forms of
violent and nonviolent protest, in which the Stamp Act Congress played a central role.
The Congress also provided the American colonists with organizational experience,
serving as an exercise in coordinating colonial opposition to Parliaments policies.
FURTHER READING: Morgan, Edmund S., and Helen M. Morgan. The Stamp Act Crisis:
Prologue to Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995; Weslager, C. A. The
Stamp Act Congress: With an Exact Copy of the Complete Journal. Newark: University of Delaware
Press, 1976.
ROBERT LEE
Richard Stockton was a New Jersey lawyer and political leader who signed the
Declaration of Independence and, while a member of the Continental Congress,
Suffolk Resolves 699
was captured and mistreated by the British. He was born on October 1, 1730, near
Princeton, New Jersey. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton
University) in 1748 and studied law in Newark under David Ogden before being
admitted to the bar in 1754. He shunned politics and practiced law until traveling to
England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1766 1776.
While in Scotland, Stockton, a trustee at the College of New Jersey, and Ben-
jamin Rush, an American student studying at Edinburgh, convinced the Reverend
John Witherspoon to assume the presidency of the college. Rush later married
Stocktons daughter Julia and joined Stockton in signing the Declaration of Inde-
pendence.
Stockton became a member of the executive council of the province of New Jer-
sey after returning to America in 1768 and sought to reconcile the growing conict
between Britain and her American colonies. He was appointed to the Supreme Court
of New Jersey in 1774 and in December 1774 proposed colonial self-government to
Lord Dartmouth, then the British secretary of state for the colonies. Stockton became
more active in his opposition to British rule and on June 21, 1776, was appointed a
member of the Second Continental Congress by the New Jersey Provincial Congress.
He was defeated in his bid to become the governor of the new state of New Jersey in
August 1776. He then declined an appointment as the states chief justice, desiring to
remain in the Continental Congress, to which he was elected in September 1776.
The British began advancing on his home in September 1776 while he was in-
specting troops of the Continental Army. He ed with his family to Monmouth,
New Jersey, but was captured by the British on November 30, 1776. His home was
ransacked; his estate, Morven, was laid to waste; his library was burned; and his treat-
ment during his imprisonment in New York was so severe that the Congress directed
George Washington to negotiate an exchange.
Stocktons imprisonment left him an invalid and he never recovered physically or
nancially. He died on February 28, 1781. Richard Stockton College of New Jersey,
named in his honor, was founded in 1971 as part of the New Jersey State College
System.
FURTHER READING: Bartelmas, Della Gray. The Signers of the Declaration of Independence:
A Biographical and Genealogical Reference. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003; Ferris, Robert G.,
and Richard E. Morris. Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Arlington, VA: Interpretive
Publications, 1982.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
The Suffolk Resolves were written by Dr. Joseph Warren of Boston (a leader of the
Whigs in Massachusettss General Court) and adopted by the Suffolk County Con-
vention on September 9, 1774. After Parliament imposed the Coercive Acts and the
governor-general, Thomas Gage, rescinded his writs that would have called the Gen-
eral Court into session that September, each of Massachusettss counties held a con-
vention. Warren, writing for a committee of the Suffolk County Convention, drafted
19 resolutions that articulated the countys grievances regarding these events. Like
virtually all other provincial resolutions until George III rejected the Olive Branch
Petition, the Suffolk Resolves reiterated the countys continued allegiance to the
700 Suffrage (American)
Crown. This afrmation was particularly important in Massachusetts because its
residents believed their 1691 charter formed a compact directly between them and
the Crown, to which Parliament was not a party.
The Suffolk Resolves declared that the Coercive Acts violated Massachusetts
provincials natural rights, as well as those protected by the British constitution and
Massachusettss 1691 charter. The Suffolk Resolves also declared unconstitutional
those provisions of the Coercive Acts that usurped powers accorded to Massachusettss
provincial government by the 1691 charter, called for a boycott of all British imports,
and urged all Massachusetts towns to immediately elect new militia ofcers who
supported the revolutionary movement and to begin weekly militia drills so that
they could be prepared should British troops (then in Boston) initiate a conict.
The Suffolk County Convention engaged Paul Revere as a messenger to deliver a
copy of the Suffolk Resolves to the Continental Congress, which was then meeting
in Philadelphia.
The Suffolk Resolves engendered debate and division within the Congress.
Ultimately, members of the Continental Congress concurred with the concerns
expressed in the Suffolk Resolves, endorsed them as an ofcial statement of the
Congress, and urged all the colonies to form non-consumption committees as part
of the Continental Association. See also Continental Congress, Second.
FURTHER READING: Raphael, Ray. The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord.
New York: New Press, 2002.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
Suffrage (American)
Patterns of suffrage in the American colonies reected contemporary restrictions
inherent in English law, and following independence, the United States continued
to limit voting through a variety of measures. Only in the twentieth century was the
franchise extended to minority groups and women.
Restrictions and Voting Rights
In 1430, an English law restricted the right to vote for members of Parliament
to property owners who had land worth 40 shillings per year in rental value, or the
equivalent land value. Each of the American colonies adopted property restrictions
as they formed legislatures and other elected bodies. Most colonies required
possession of land valued at least 50 in order for one to be eligible to vote. In
addition, voting was restricted to free white males over the age of 21. Indentured
servants were not allowed to vote. Some colonies also required religious tests as a
prerequisite for voting.
These requirements were initially retained after the American Revolutionary War.
However, over time, the franchise was gradually extended. Article 1, Section 4, of
the United States Constitution (1789) allowed the states to determine voter eligibil-
ity and to establish rules for conducting elections (Congress was given the authority
to enact legislation that would supersede state regulations). The majority of states
adopted restrictive electoral codes. Ten continued to hold property requirements:
Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, North
Carolina, New York, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. Although it maintained
its property requirements, New Jersey broadened its franchise beyond white males.
In 1790, the state granted the right to vote to all citizens (including women) with
property or wealth equivalent to 50 (in 1807, New Jersey rescinded its relatively lib-
eral electoral policies and excluded everyone but white males from voting). In 1791,
Vermont enacted legislation that extended suffrage to all white males, regardless of
property or wealth. Furthermore, all states discarded religious tests as a qualica-
tion for voting. Voting was conducted in the open without the secret ballot. Voters
were publicly sworn in and announced their vote before the registrars. This practice
continued after the founding of the United States (the secret ballot was not adopted
until the late nineteenth century).
Property requirements were opposed by the newly founded Democratic-
Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson. As the party gained posts in local and
state governments, it worked to overturn voting constraints. As the nineteenth cen-
tury progressed, successive states repealed their property statutes. By 1830, all the
states had removed their property restrictions, and all white male citizens could
vote. In addition, most states allowed noncitizens to vote if they were property own-
ers. The inux of immigrants, especially Irish immigrants, in the nineteenth cen-
tury resulted in xenophobia and restrictions on voting by noncitizens. Nonetheless,
between 1850 and 1890, Congress allowed white male noncitizens in territories such
as the Dakotas, Kansas, Washington, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Wyoming
to vote (in 1875, 22 states and territories granted suffrage to noncitizens).
The Electoral College
Many of the Framers of the Constitution feared the rise of demagogues and were
apprehensive of the ability of ordinary Americans to make educated choices about
candidates. The campaigns of the period, in which alcohol and other inducements
were frequently used to secure votes, undermined condence. In addition, there were
continued concerns about voter fraud. To ensure some degree of control over the
outcome of elections, the Constitution established the Electoral College under Ar-
ticle 2, Section 1.
The Electoral College was comprised of electors who met every four years to cast
votes for the president and vice president. Each state was allowed to choose the man-
ner of selection of electors. Each state chose a number of electors equal to the num-
ber of its congressional representation. The Framers of the Constitution believed
that the electors would serve as a stop-gap measure to prevent ill-suited candidates
from becoming president. The electors were chosen or approved by the legislature.
The electors originally voted for two candidates. After the votes were tallied, the
candidate with the highest vote total became president and the second-place nisher
became vice president. The Twelfth Amendment (1804) altered the system so that
electors chose a slate of both a presidential and vice presidential candidate. The
Constitution also gave the legislatures the authority to elect U.S. senators (in 1913,
the Seventeenth Amendment allowed for the direct election of senators).
Minority Groups and Women
Throughout the early period of American history, most minority groups either
were not allowed to vote or had restrictions placed on their franchise. Following in-
dependence, the southern states continued restrictions against African Americans
and Native Americans voting. Many northern states also limited the suffrage for
Suffrage (American) 701
702 Suffrage (French)
minorities. For instance, in 1821, New York ratied a new state constitution that
dropped property requirements for white males. However, African Americans still
had to have property or wealth of at least $250 for a minimum of one year prior to
the election in order to be able to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) forbade
discrimination in voting based on race, although states continued to limit voting by
minority groups until the 1960s.
Although women were briey granted suffrage in New Jersey, by the early nine-
teenth century, all states forbade women from voting. There were petitions and other
efforts to grant women the franchise, but the modern womens suffrage movement
was not launched until 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention. Women did not gain the
right to vote in the United States until the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. See also
Women (American).
FURTHER READING: Bensel, Richard Franklin. The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth
Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Diamond, Martin. The Electoral College
and the American Idea of Democracy. Washington, DC: AEI, 1977; Keyssar, Alexander. The Right
to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2000; Pole,
Jack Richon. Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic. New
York: St. Martins Press, 1966; Rogers, Donald W., and Christine Scriabine, eds. Voting and the
Spirit of American Democracy: Essays on the History of Voting and Voting Rights in America. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1992.
TOM LANSFORD
Suffrage (French)
Like many aspects of the French Revolution, the suffrage was both complex and
variable, but from rst to last, election to ofce was a key feature of the new regime.
It is reckoned that almost a million posts were up for grabs in the administrative,
judicial, and even ecclesiastical domains, in addition to the election of parliamentary
deputies. There were frequent renewals of personnel, not least in the municipali-
ties, for every town and village was endowed with a mayor and council. It is true that
various electoral systems had operated at the local level under the ancien rgime,
and this diverse practice eventually culminated in kingdom-wide elections to the
Estates-General of 1789. Indeed, the tradition of voting in assemblies rather than on
an individual basis would be retained in the 1790s and beyond. What the Revolution
instituted was a uniform system that applied across the country on a regular basis.
The franchise was, however, a matter for intense debate and development.
At the outset, in 1789, it was decided that the vote would be limited to so-called
active citizens, a category devised by the abb Sieys. These were males at least 25 years
old who paid the equivalent of three days local wages in direct taxation. Some four
million Frenchmen, or roughly 60 percent of adult males, were given the vote, an
extremely generous provision by contemporary standards. In order to accede to the
second-tier departmental assemblies, where the more important posts would be lled,
it was necessary to pay 10 days wages in direct tax. Yet over three million citizens were
still able to cross this higher threshold, though the cost of attending such assemblies
at the departmental level would prove prohibitive for many of them. When these is-
sues were decided in the newly formed National Assembly, relatively few objections
were raised, though Maximilien Robespierre, one of the few dissenters, pointed out
that such restrictions infringed upon the recently enacted Declaration of the Rights
Suffrage (French) 703
of Man and of the Citizen, which stated that all men were equal in rights. Only as
radicalism gathered momentum in 1791 would more pressure be exerted for an
extension of the suffrage to passive citizens (a term little employed in practice),
females as well as poorer adult males. In 1789, dispute focused instead on the silver
mark qualication that was to be demanded of national deputies, a sum of 50 livres a
year in tax, together with ownership of property. This qualication was likely to affect
members of the parliamentary class, and, as one critic put it, such a provision would
have excluded the immortal Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In the event this stipulation was never applied and the limited suffrage enshrined
in the Constitution of 1791 would soon be swept away, along with the monarchy
it prescribed. The female franchise articulated by activists like Olympe de Gouges
found few advocates among established politicians; radicals were especially resistant
to the presence of women in the public sphere. Less well-off males, however, fared
rather better, as the suffrage was extended to all those over 21 years old who enjoyed
an independent existence. Contrary to received wisdom, the removal of scal
requirements from the suffrage in the summer of 1792 did not usher in male democ-
racy, for servants and those dependent on welfare were still not allowed to vote. The
notion of a degree of independence necessary to exercise the franchise, which had
justied the earlier scal threshold, like the exclusion of women and children, still
survived to a residual degree. There were also registration formalities to be fullled,
and in theory at least, only those who had fullled other requirements of citizenship,
such as serving in the National Guard, were entitled to vote. Only in the Constitution
of 1793 was the franchise extended to all adult males regardless of circumstances
(along with a provision for direct elections to parlement), but this document was
never put into effect, despite overwhelming approval in a referendum.
The intervention of emergency government during the Reign of Terror brought
a temporary halt to elections for much of 1793 and 1794. When the electoral process
resumed, it did so according to the Constitution of 1795, in which the suffrage was
once more restricted. The hurdle was low at the primary level of voting, where all
male citizens who paid some sort of direct taxation were able to participate (perhaps
ve million adult males, a larger number than in 1790). However, the reintroduction
of a two-tier procedure for elections above the local level was accompanied by a much
more swinging set of property qualications for second-degree electors, which meant
that little more than a million male citizens could be elected for more than municipal
ofce. Ironically, the constitution itself was approved in a referendum in which the
enlarged electorate of 1792 had participated, though turnout was rather modest, and
it would remain so at elections held during the latter part of the decade.
One novelty in 1795 was a literacy requirement for voters, but its inception was
delayed for 10 years, by which time the constitution had been superseded. Bonaparte
subsequently maintained a broad franchise in an electoral system of sorts that bor-
rowed heavily from the Revolution, after he came to power in 1799 and established
the Consulate. The early 1790s, by contrast, had seen a somewhat limited franchise
but a great deal of electoral activity for those eligible to vote. It can be argued that
many of the poor initially excluded from the franchise were not in a position to
take part, even had they been given the chance to do so. The assembly mechanism
involved several rounds of voting, often spread over a few days, and required a sub-
stantial commitment of time and endeavor. Few of those newly enfranchised in 1792,
for example, appeared at the polls. What was signicant was not only the fact that a
704 Sugar Act
relatively elevated proportion of adult males were able to participate from the start of
the Revolution, at least at the primary level, but that they had so many opportunities
to do so (at Toulon between 1790 and 1792 there were no less than nine elections of
various sorts), and in such an intensive fashion. Even though it was short lived and
Frenchmen had to wait until 1848 to be presented with another comparable oppor-
tunity, the broad suffrage adopted after 1789 did permit a signicant education in
citizenship. See also Constitutions, French Revolutionary; Women (French).
FURTHER READING: Aberdam, Serge, et al., Voter, lire pendant la Rvolution franaise,
1789 1799. Guide pour la recherche. 2nd ed. Paris: Editions du Comit des Travaux Historiques
et Scientiques, 2006; Crook, Malcolm. Elections in the French Revolution, 1789 1799: An
Apprenticeship in Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Gueniffey, Patrice.
Le nombre et la raison. La Rvolution franaise et les lections Paris: Editions de lEcole des hautes
tudes en sciences sociales 1993.
MALCOLM CROOK
Sugar Act (1764)
The British parliaments American Duties Act of 1764, usually referred to as the
Sugar Act, replaced the Molasses Act of 1733. The Molasses Act had taxed American
colonial imports of sugar, molasses, and rum from outside the British Empire to
protect British Caribbean sugar from competition with cheap French colonial sugar.
The act had been easily circumvented, however, by widespread smuggling in every
American port with a distillery for making rum out of molasses. The new act, passed
overwhelmingly in Parliament, lowered the duty on French Caribbean molasses but
heavily taxed coffee, wine, and other luxury goods in order to support the Brit-
ish Army in America. It also contained several measures to improve the honesty
and efciency of the customs service. Customs ofcers were now protected from
suits brought by merchants or shippers protesting illegal seizures. The act also es-
tablished a new vice-admiralty court with jurisdiction over the British colonies in
America as a whole and placed it in the garrison town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where
the judges would be safe from mob intimidation.
The act aroused great resentment among the colonists, particularly in the urban
centers of trade. It was denounced in James Otiss pamphlet, The Rights of the British
Colonies Asserted and Proved, which enunciated the principle of no taxation without
representation. The New York Assembly also asserted that the colonies had the right
to consent to their own taxation in its petition to Parliament against the act, although
Massachusetts, the only other colony to petition, was more moderate, complaining
against its alleged bad effects on trade rather than its violation of colonial rights. See
also American Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of
Empire in British North America, 1754 1766. New York: Knopf, 2000.
WILLIAM E. BURNS
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial branch of the U.S.
federal government. Article 2, Section 1, of the United States Constitution vests the
Supreme Court (United States) 705
judicial power of the United States in one supreme Court. The court consists of
the chief justice and eight associate justices, who are all nominated by the president
and conrmed by the Senate. They are appointed to serve during a term of good
behavior, which until recently meant for life, and leave ofce only upon retire-
ment, resignation, impeachment, or death.
The U.S. Constitution provided for the creation of a Supreme Court and a fed-
eral judiciary system but contained no specic details, which were instead set in the
Judiciary Act of 1789. The act created 13 district courts in major cities, with one
judge in each of them, and three circuit courts to cover the other areas of the east-
ern, middle, and southern United States. The Supreme Court, with a chief justice
and ve associate justices, was established as the only court of appeal. President
George Washington picked John Jay, a New Yorkborn statesman and diplomat, as
the rst chief justice. Among the rst associate justices were John Blair of Virginia,
William Cushing of Massachusetts, James Iredell of North Carolina, John Rutledge
of South Carolina, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who played an active role in
the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.
The rst few years proved disappointing, as appeals from lower courts came
slowly. The Judiciary Act required justices to journey twice a year to distant re-
gions of the country and preside over circuit courts, a duty many of the rst
justices detested and complained about. The rst major case, Chisholm v. Georgia,
came about in 1793, and the Courts decision sent shockwaves through the coun-
try. In 1792 Alexander Chisholm, the executor of the estate of Robert Farquhar
in South Carolina, attempted to sue the state of Georgia in the Supreme Court
over payments due for goods that Farquhar had supplied Georgia during the
American Revolutionary War. The state of Georgia refused to appear before the
court, claiming that it did not have to appear in court to hear a suit against it to
which it did not consent. The Court considered the case anyway and gave its 4 1
decision in favor of the South Carolinians. The decision naturally caused much
controversy, and other states supported the state of Georgia on the issue of states
rights and concerns over potential nancial losses if they were ever forced to
cover wartime obligations. In 1795, the Eleventh Amendment, which forbade any
federal court to try a lawsuit against another state by citizens of another state, was
ratied.
In another important precedent, the Supreme Court declined President Wash-
ingtons request to clarify some questions of international law and treaties, arguing
that under the Constitution they could not share executive powers and duties or
issue advisory opinions. In Glass v. Sloop Betsey (1794), the Supreme Court defended
neutral rights and the national dignity of the United States.
In 1795, Chief Justice Jay was sent on a mission to London to negotiate between
the young United States and Britain. In the resulting Jay Treaty, the British agreed
to vacate the posts they occupied in the Northwest Territory of the United States
and to compensate American ship owners. In return, the Americans pledged to
grant a most favored nation trading status to the British and acquiesced to Britains
anti-French maritime policies. The United States also guaranteed the payment of
private prewar debts owed by Americans to British merchants. A strong opponent
of slavery, John Jay dropped the issue of compensation for slaves, which angered
Southern slave owners. The treaty also failed to end the impressment of American
sailors into the Royal Navy.
706 Supreme Court (United States)
Upon returning home, Jay was elected governor of New York and resigned from
the Supreme Court, where he was replaced by his fellow justice John Rutledge
of South Carolina. However, before Congress conrmed him, Rutledge made a
grave political error when on July 16, 1795, he criticized the treaty that President
Washington and John Jay negotiated with Britain. Although Washington contin-
ued to support his candidacy, Rutledge failed to procure the Senates approval in
December 1795.
In 1796, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut was conrmed as chief justice. One
of the rst cases the Ellsworth Court considered dealt with the Jay Treaty, which
galvanized American society. In Ware v. Hylton, the Court considered British claims
against Americans based on contracts made before the Revolution and according
to which the Jay Treaty required payments. A Virginia statute absolved its citizens
of responsibility if they paid such debts into the state treasury. The Court nullied
this statute and argued that a treaty of the United States must override the law of
any state.
In 18001801, the Supreme Court moved with the rest of the federal government
to a new site on the Potomac River. Simultaneously, amid the bitter election cam-
paign that pitted Federalists against Republicans, Chief Justice Ellsworth, already
ailing, resigned. The newly elected President John Adams nominated his secretary
of state, John Marshall, to the Supreme Court, opening a great era in the history of
the American judiciary.
The longest-serving chief justice in Supreme Court history, Marshall led the Court
for over three decades and played a crucial role in the development of the American
legal system. Marshall served through six presidential administrations ( John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew
Jackson) and remained a stalwart advocate of Federalism, opposing the Jeffersonian
philosophy of government. He greatly contributed to turning the judiciary into an
independent and inuential branch of government. Under his guidance, the Su-
preme Court developed a new procedure of announcing its decisions. Previously,
each justice would author a separate opinion, which Marshall supplemented with a
single opinion of the Court. Marshall wrote this opinion in almost all cases, which
made him the Courts sole and most important mouthpiece. In the rst major case,
Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Marshall Court established the Courts right to exer-
cise judicial review, the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. The
Court made several important decisions relating to Federalism, shaping the balance
of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of
the republic. It repeatedly conrmed the supremacy of federal law over state law and
supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers. In McCulloch v. Maryland
(1819), the Court ruled that states could not tax federal institutions and upheld
congressional authority to create the Second Bank of the United States, even though
the authority to do this was not expressly stated in the Constitution. In Cohens v.
Virginia (1821), the Court declared that the federal judiciary could hear appeals
from decisions of state courts in criminal and civil cases.
FURTHER READING: Brown, William Garrott. The Life of Oliver Ellsworth. New York: Macmillan,
1905; Castro, William R. The Supreme Court in the Early Republic: The Chief Justiceships of John Jay
and Oliver Ellsworth. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995; Hall, Kermit L., ed.
The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005; Irons, Peter. A Peoples History of the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin, 2000;
Symbols (French Revolutionary) 707
Johnson, Herbert A. The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall, 18011835. Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1998; Schwartz, Bernard. A History of the Supreme Court. Oxford: Oxford
Suspects, Law of
See Law of Suspects
Eighteenth-century mass media was primitive but still managed to propagate
symbols to convey the ideas that formed the substance of revolutionary thought.
Paul Reveres 1770 engraving of the Boston Massacre with British troops ring on
innocent civilians portrayed the dangers of British tyranny. It was not, however, the
rst use of symbols to convey a political idea in America.
In 1754 the benets of the Albany Plan of Union were portrayed by the use of a
rattlesnake showing New England as the head, followed by New York and so on until
all the colonies were accounted for. Complemented by the slogan Join or Die,
it was revived 20 years later in this form and as a rattlesnake coiled to strike. This
snake also appeared on ags by itself or accompanied by other symbols (in at least
one case Rhode Islands anchor). Similarly, liberty trees or, in some cases, liberty
poles came to be gathering places where the Sons of Liberty would gather to meet
or take oaths.
Individuals also became symbols. Charles Wilson Peales painting of George
Washington was painted several times, and a copy was presented to Louis XVI. Thus,
Washingtons image conveyed a determined and skillful America with which the
French should ally themselves. Images of Benjamin Franklin reecting his carefully
cultivated image as the natural man were common during Franklins stay in Paris.
Franklin was represented with plain clothing, fur hat, or unpowdered hair by stat-
ues, in engravings, and even on the bottom of chamber pots.
FURTHER READING: Huff, Randall. The Revolutionary War Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2004; Vickers, Anita. The New Nation. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.
ROBERT N. STACY
In attempting to create society anew, legislators and artists in the French Revo-
lution drew on a diverse range of visual sources to express and spread the often-
abstract concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Increasingly, allegory was the
preferred form of expression, as it was particularly suited to the distillation of com-
plex ideas and could be used in a variety of immediately recognizable forms, such
as on letterheads and money. In addition, allegory avoided reference to contempo-
rary events, which often had contentious associations. Antique sources were very
popular, as they were thought to be universal. The fasces used by Roman lectors
represented unity and discipline and were often augmented by an ax symbolizing
708 Symbols (French Revolutionary)
military force, and topped with a bonnet rouge, the ritual headwear of the Parisian
sans-culottes, which was derived from the Phrygian bonnet worn by freed Roman
slaves. Triangles, oating eyes of surveillance, snakes biting their own tails, clasped
hands, and carpenters levels were drawn directly from Masonic symbolism, whilst
oak leaves signied delity, and Gallic cockerels meant vigilance.
Some symbols, such as the tricolor ag, were wholly new inventions, while some,
such as the female gure of Liberty, were partly adapted from Christian iconog-
raphy, and others, such as the cornucopia or anchor, were well-known symbols of
plenty and hope, respectively. These symbols were supplemented by a range of sym-
bolic gures, from William Tell to Brutus, Cornelia to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
symbolic places such as the Bastille, the images of which could be incorporated into
this new symbolic language. Attempting to replace the powerful symbolic order
of absolute monarchy inherited by the counterrevolution, with its white ag and
eur-de-lis, French revolutionary symbols allowed the ideas of the Revolution to
be spread to a wide audience, although it is difcult to determine how clearly their
message was interpreted.
FURTHER READING: Germani, Ian, and Robin Swales, eds. Symbols, Myths and Images of the
French Revolution: Essays in Honour of James A. Leith. Regina, Saskatchewan: Canadian Plains
Research Center, 1998.
RICHARD TAWS
T
Talleyrand-Prigord, Charles Maurice de (17451838)
A French statesman whose career in diplomacy is the most storied of modern
history , Talleyrand was born into the nobility but entered the clergy because a child-
hood injury made him unt for military service. He was made bishop of Autun in
1788 but almost immediately became active in politics. He was elected by the clergy
of Autun to the First Estate and was thereafter active as a liberal deputy in the
National Assembly. Talleyrand rallied early to the French Revolution and even sup-
ported its anti-clerical policy of conscating church property , a decision for which
he was ultimately excommunicated by Rome. Talleyrand nonetheless said the mass
for the Fte de la Fdration in July 1790.
In 1792, he was dispatched to the Court of St. James, where he was unsuccessful
in the attempt to avoid war with Britain. Absence from France was possibly criti-
cal to Talleyrands longevity , because he managed to spend most of the Reign of
Terror in exile either in England or the United States. He objected to the latters
Jay Treaty of 1794 with Britain and was so contemptuous of early American peace
initiatives toward France that he seriously compromised his countrys relations with
the Adams administration in the XYZ Affair. He reemerged at the center of politi-
cal life as foreign minister for the Directory in 1797, a position he retained until
1807. Talleyrand is well known for his advice to diplomats Do not allow yourself
to become excited about your workbut his personal guiding principle was to
avoid the attachment of loyalties. With the comte de Sieys, he helped to plot the
coup that toppled the Directory and brought Napoleon to power as First Consul.
In Napoleons service he then helped to arrange the 1801 Concordat with Rome,
negotiated the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, and played an important part in creating
the Confederation of the Rhine.
Even after dismissing him in 1807, Napoleon sought Talleyrands advice regularly.
Although he participated in the Erfurt Conference of 1808, Talleyrand concluded
that Napoleonic ambition was taking France toward disaster and waited for an op-
portunity to assist the Allies. This came in 1814 when Paris fell and Talleyrand nego-
tiated with Tsar Alexander I; secured the Treaty of Ghent, which brought peace with
710 Tallien, Jean Lambert
the United States; and made the formal announcement of Napoleons deposition.
At the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand played a weak diplomatic hand brilliantly
in securing Allied recognition of defeated France as a Great Power restored to its
borders of 1792. After 1815, Talleyrand went into semiretirement but in 1830 took
a prominent role in bringing Louis Philippe to the throne of the July Monarchy. In
1830 1834, he again served as French ambassador to Britain. Talleyrand managed
to reconcile with the church and insisted on his deathbed on receiving his last rites
as a bishop.
FURTHER READING: Cooper , Duff. Talleyrand. New York: Grove Press, 2001; Dwyer, Philip G.
Talleyrand. New York: Longman, 2002; Rose, J. Holland. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era,
17891815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1935.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Jean Lambert Tallien was nicknamed Man of the Nine in reference to his role
on 9 Thermidor ( July 27) in ending Maximilien Robespierres inuence and the
Reign of Terror.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Prigord, Prince de Bnvent. Cour-
tesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Tea Act 711
In 1791, he created a journal-afche, LAmi des Citoyens, journal fraternel , sponsored
by the Jacobins. After Louis XVIs ight to Varennes, Tallien no longer believed in
the future of the monarchy. In August 1792, he was named secretary of the Paris
Commune. In September , he became the youngest deputy of the National Conven-
tion and voted for the kings execution. He then put down a royalist insurrection in
the west. Back in Paris, he contributed to the Girondins downfall, which resulted in
a rebellion against the Montagnard government in the southwest provinces. Sent to
Bordeaux as proconsul to end this revolt, he resolved it without resorting to armed
conict. There he met his future wife, the Spaniard Thrsia Cabarrus Fontenay ,
one of the most fashionable women of her time.
Suspected of moderatism, Tallien returned to Paris in March 1794 and because
of his revolutionary zeal was elected president of the Convention, where he strongly
opposed Robespierre. After the Law of 22 Prairial, Tallien rallied more support
against the triumvirate of Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, and on 9 Thermidor ,
backed by the majority of deputies, he had Robespierre and his close supporters ar-
rested and guillotined the following day. Elected to the Committee of Public Safety ,
Tallien reorganized the revolutionary tribunals. In July 1795, he was instrumental in
defeating an army of migrs at Quiberon.
In spite of his election to the Council of Five Hundred, Talliens political role
was over. In July 1798, he embarked for Egypt with Napoleon. Disillusioned, Napo-
leon returned to France in 1801 and divorced his wife, Josephine de Beauharnais,
because of her extramarital affairs. In 1804, Tallien was named consul at Alicante
but, stricken by yellow fever , returned to France in 1805. He died in poverty in No-
vember 1820. See also The Mountain; Thermidorian Reaction.
FURTHER READING: Charles-Vallin, Thrse. Tallien. Le mal-aim de la Rvolution. Paris: Jean
Picollec, 1997.
GUY-DAVID TOUBIANA
Tea Act (1773)
Parliament enacted the Tea Act in May 1773 as a means to aid the British East
India Company to avoid bankruptcy. Between 1770 and 1773 provincial Americans
purchase of the companys tea had declined 70 percent. This was a consequence
of the coordinated efforts of non-consumption committees, which had encour-
aged provincials not to buy English tea as a protest against the Townshend tax that
remained on tea (all other Townshend duties were repealed in 1770). The 1773
Tea Act waived the Townshend duty that remained on tea and permitted the East
India Company to avoid paying another duty by selling its tea directly to the Ameri-
can colonies without rst being transported to Britain. These provisions lowered
the costs to the East India Company and enabled it to sell its tea for even less than
the cost at which colonial merchants could purchase it from Dutch smugglers.
Although Parliament believed the colonists would welcome the opportunity to
buy tea less expensively , the colonists believed their purchases had greater implica-
tions. They regarded the agreement between Parliament and the East India Com-
pany as a monopoly that granted an unfair advantage to the company. The act also
provided that the company would appoint a limited number of colonial merchants
as its consignees. This excluded and put most provincial merchants at an economic
712 Tennis Court Oath
disadvantage. Politically , provincials believed their purchase would signal their im-
plicit acceptance of Parliaments sovereignty to tax the colonies. While the colonies
did acknowledge Parliaments supremacy to regulate trade throughout the British
Empire, they denied its right to directly tax them.
When the Tea Act was implemented, the East India Companys ships were turned
away at Philadelphia and New York City before they reached Boston. There, royal
governor Thomas Hutchinson welcomed the ships into Boston Harbor and, despite
provincials protests, refused to permit the ships to depart until their tea was rst
unloaded. Hutchinson was one of the three owners of the mercantile house se-
lected by the East India Company to be the sole distributor of tea in Boston. After
Hutchinson refused to hear provincials protests on December 16, 1773, Samuel
Adams immediately convened a meeting at the Old South Meeting House. From
there, a group of about 150 men dressed as Mohawk Indians journeyed to Grifns
Wharf , where several thousand onlookers silently observed them board the ships
Dartmouth , the Beaver , and the Eleanor and for three hours dump the cargo of 342
chests of tea (valued at 18,000 pounds sterling) into Boston Harbor an act that
came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.
Since there was an unusually low tide, mountains of tea rose above the surface
of the water. Colonists had deemed it imperative to take action that night because
the Dartmouth had arrived on November 28, and the Tea Act stipulated that the tax
must be collected within 20 daysmaking December 17 the deadline. Parliament
responded to the destruction of East India Company property with the Boston Port
Act, which closed the harbor to all commerce.
Provincial Americans had also objected to Parliaments attempt to tax them via
the 1765 Stamp Act and the 1768 Townshend Acts. During the latter , provincial
Americans formed local non-consumption associations that pledged not to pur-
chase imported British manufactures. The success of these associations, though,
depended in large measure upon the willingness of women not to purchase British
importsincluding tea. The consumption of tea, as well as its accoutrements and
ceremony , had grown enormously popular throughout the American colonies by
the 1760s. Following the imposition of the Coercive Acts, the Continental Con-
gress in September 1774 encouraged each colony to renew its non-consumption
associations. Many provincial women supported these associations and signed non-
consumption agreements, which temporarily drew them from their domestic sphere
into the traditionally male public sphere. See also Continental Congress, Second;
Gage, Thomas.
FURTHER READING: Breen, T. H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped
American Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004; Drake, Francis S. Tea Leaves.
Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1970; Labaree, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party. Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1964.
CHRISTINE LAHUE
A formal act of deance of the Third Estate toward the monarchy , and one of
the key moments in the early state of the French Revolution, the Tennis Court Oath
is known in French as the serment du jeu de paume. After the Estates-General was
Tennis Court Oath 713
summoned in May 1789, the Third Estate found itself locked in a stalemate with the
crown, supported by the First and Second Estates, over an important issue of voting.
On June 17, the Third Estate made the bold move of declaring itself the National
Assembly. Three days later , when the deputies of the Third Estate gathered for a
regular meeting, they found the doors of their assigned meeting hall closed and
guarded by royal troops, supposedly to prepare the room for a special royal session
planned for June 22. The deputies, however , understood that the appearance of
troops was a sign of King Louis XVIs resolution to use force to dissolve the seditious
estate.
On the motion of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the members of the Third Estate
moved to a nearby empty hall, which was often used to play tennis and was known as
a jeu de paume (tennis court). At the gathering there, some deputies initially called
for moving the Third Estate to Paris, where the population would defend them
from any actions on the part of the crown. However , Jean Joseph Mounier defeated
this motion and instead proposed staying at Versailles and swearing an oath not to
separate until the constitution of the kingdom was accepted. The rst to take the
The Tennis Court Oath of June 20, 1789. Finding themselves
locked out of their usual meeting hall, the deputies of the Third
Estate adjourned to a nearby tennis court at Versailles where, claim-
ing authority for France, they swore not to dissolve until they had
adopted a national constitution. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
714 Thermidorian Reaction
oath was Jean Sylvain Bailly , who then administered it to other deputies. Overall,
576 deputies swore and signed the oath; only one refused to sign the document
because it had not been approved by the king.
The Tennis Court Oath was a major episode in the early stages of the French
Revolution. While the Estates-General had only been summoned to address the -
nancial woes of France, the Third Estates declaration of the National Assembly and
pledge of the Tennis Court Oath marked the transition of politics to a revolutionary
phase. By their actions, the Third Estate asserted the power attributed to the people
of France on the basis of popular sovereigntya direct challenge to the royal au-
thority. The oath also helped establish a union of the deputies of the Third Estate,
who now had a common goal of reforming the kingdom not only nancially , but
also politically , for they committed themselves to adopting a written constitution for
France. Had the king responded in a more forceful manner and used troops to dis-
solve the Third Estate following the Tennis Court Oath, the course of French, and
indeed European, history would have been dramatically altered. In the event, Louis
XVI chose a less confrontational course, and a week after the Tennis Court Oath,
he ordered the three estates to meet together for the purpose of writing a constitu-
tion, so signaling an early victory for the Third Estate. See also Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; First Estate; Second Estate.
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002; Lefebvre, Georges. The Coming of the French Revolution.
Translated by R. R. Palmer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
The Terror
See Reign of Terror
The Thermidorian Reaction, the conservative revolt against Maximilien Robes-
pierre and the Reign of Terror , was launched on 9 Thermidor in the revolutionary
calendar ( July 27, 1794); it ushered in a period of reaction that saw a return to
power in France of many members of the old bourgeoisie along with the entrench-
ment of the new middle classes. The institution of economic policies that beneted
the bourgeoisie, the restriction of democratic practices and centralization of gov-
ernment authority , and the violent suppression of the poor nally stied the radical
aims of the French Revolution.
Fearing that the Terror was about to claim their own lives, a conspiracy of several
Jacobins and their allies, including leading gures such as Jean Lambert Tallien,
launched something of a preemptive strike, arresting Robespierre and his close as-
sociates, including members of the Committee of Public Safety , on the oor of the
National Convention.
The Thermidorians concerns about the Terror immediately proved to be entirely
opportunisticmore about self-preservation than any principled opposition to po-
litical violence or a commitment to justice. Over the course of its rst two days, the
Reaction guillotined Robespierre and over 100 others, including most of the Paris
Thermidorian Reaction 715
Commune. This marked the beginning of the White Terror against the Revolutions
radicals. In the provinces, especially in the south, openly royalist groups carried out
acts of reprisal against revolutionaries, ranging from individual acts of vigilantism
to wholesale massacres. The Thermidorian Reaction was also marked by substantial
economic crises instigated or worsened by the free-trade policies preferred by the
Thermidorians. Economic regulation was lessened; price controls, implemented in
Year II, were lifted; and ination became rampant. Financial speculation became
the order of the day.
While many among the old bourgeoisie and the new professional classes became
even wealthier through speculation and the effects of ination, the social impact of
economic policies such as the lifting of price controls was devastating for the poor
and working classes and the peasantry. By 1795, the fear of famine became real for
many poor people as the cities experienced shortages in essentials like grain, our ,
and meat. Dairy products and fuel became too expensive for the poor to purchase.
On April 1 and May 20, 1795, the sans-culottes mobilized behind the dual ban-
ners of bread and the Constitution of 1793 in an effort to stop the governments
conservative policies and address their ruinous impact on the lives of poor people.
In early 1795 the last popular uprising of the Revolution saw a group of sans-culottes
take over the Convention before being violently suppressed on the orders of the
government. This marked a signicant turning point in the history of the Revolu-
tion. By refusing to address even minimally the demands of the poor , and respond-
ing only by force, the government signaled as victorious the conservative return to
power and, crucially , irreparably weakened the power of the poor to inuence the
course of politics.
Despite the demands of the poor , the Constitution of 1793 was replaced by a con-
servative constitution in 1795. The Constitution of Year III included among its fea-
tures the payment of taxes as the basis for franchise, thus limiting the right to vote
to the wealthiest male citizens. It also established a ve-man executive Directory to
be chosen by the legislature, which would now be housed in two assemblies, the
Council of Ancients, and the Council of Five Hundred. The Thermidorians consoli-
dated their power in the central government by imposing limits on democracy and
by reserving the power to restrict freedom of the press and freedom of association.
The nal four years of the Thermidorian Reaction were marked by a series of
coups from both the Left and the Right. In May 1796, the revolutionary commu-
nists, led by Babeuf, were arrested before their insurrection was mounted. An at-
tempted coup in September 1796 also ended in failure, with Babeuf condemned to
death. In September 1797, an attempted royalist coup was also defeated. This left
the Directory rmly entrenched in power until November 9, 1799 (18

Brumaire,
Year VIII), when Napoleon launched his successful coup and established the Consu-
late. See also Brumaire, Coup dEtat de; Calendar , French Revolutionary; Constitu-
FURTHER READING: Bienvenue, Richard. The Ninth of Thermidor. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1970; Lefebvre, Georges. The Thermidorians and the Directory: Two Phases of the French
Revolution. New York: Random House, 1964; Mathiez, Albert. After Robespierre: The Thermidorian
Reaction. New York: Knopf , 1931; Woronoff , Denis. The Thermidorean Regime and the Directory:
17941799. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
JEFF SHANTZ
716 Thermidorians
Thermidorians
Although the name Thermidorians is applied to two distinct groups, the groups
had some members in common. In the most immediate sense, Thermidorians were
those individuals who attacked Maximilien Robespierre and his allies on the ninth
day of the month of Thermidor ( July 27, 1794, often called the Thermidorian Reac-
tion) in the second year of the French Revolution. While they might be called mod-
erates in the very loosest sense, almost all these individuals had taken part in the
Reign of Terror. Many of their conditions and assumptions of what was appropriate
had changed, as Robespierres policies now frightened and alienated many of them.
The term is also used to identify the politicians of France who ruled the country up
until the adoption of the Constitution of 1795.
The rst group of Thermidorians were, in essence, plotters who launched a coup
with very concrete objectives centering on self-preservation. Robespierre had always
advocated violence as a means of eliminating those he identied as enemies of the
Revolution. His views hardened even more after two assassination attempts in the
spring of 1794.The most recent laws, particularly the Law of 22 Prairial, created a
situation in which any opinion that did not accord completely with Robespierres
views could be labeled treasonous. Under this law, which Robespierre and another
member of the Committee of Public Safety had drafted, anyone tried for this crime
could expect one of only two results: acquittal or conviction and execution. Because
the number of trials and executions was increasing dramatically , Robespierres re-
moval and the destruction of his faction had now become a matter of survival. For
the main gures in the Thermidor plot, all had been marked to a greater or lesser
extent as Robespierres enemiesa list that seemed to be steadily growing.
These men included two of Robespierres colleagues from the Committee of
Public Safety , Jean Marie Collot dHerbois and Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne.
In addition, there were two highly powerful members of the rival Committee of
General Security: Jean-Pierre Amar and Marc-Alexis Vadier. Finally , the two real
leaders of this group were members of the National Convention who had been quite
prominent both as representatives on mission and on the oor of the Convention,
Jean Lambert Tallien and Joseph Fouch. In the summer of 1794 all were in danger
and saw that if something were not done soon, they would become victims of the
Terror.
As members of the Committee of Public Safety. Collot dHerbois and Billaud-
Varenne themselves had participated in the Terror , approving and carrying out the
policies of the committee both in Paris and on mission to cities outside the capital.
Ironically , although they were instrumental in bringing the Terror to an end, they
were later tried, convicted, and deported to the Caribbean as punishment for terror-
ism. Two members of the Committee of General Security , which often contended
with the Committee of Public Safety for power , were also involved in the plot, and
neither had ever backed away from extreme punishment for perceived enemies of
the state. These men, Amar and Vadier , both had supported policies of the Jacobins
against the Girondins.
One of the leaders of this group was Joseph Fouch, a former professor of phys-
ics who would skillfully survive many twists and turns in the political landscape. An
outspoken egalitarian and opponent of religion, he would become a duke before he
died. He was not averse to using executions to eliminate traitors but actually showed
Third Estate 717
a greater sense of restraint than was considered to be acceptable. After a member of
the Committee of Public Safety , Georges Couthon, departed Lyon in 1793, Fouch
and Collot dHerbois were ordered there to continue the trials and executions.
Their perceived lack of zeal angered Robespierre. Fouch added to Robespierres
enmity by publicly ridiculing the Feast of Reason. His comments led to an argument
between the two of them, and Robespierres response may have convinced Fouch
that he had to act soon. The other leader was Jean Lambert Tallien, who was well
known in the Convention and had even been elected president at one time. He was
no friend of Robespierre and, like many of his colleagues, was able to foresee that
his life could soon be forfeit.
Tension had been building, and on the evening of 8 Thermidor , Collot dHerbois
and Billaud-Varenne entered the Jacobin Club. There they confronted Robespierre
and his two closest collaborators, Couthon and Louis Saint-Just. The conict con-
tinued the next day when Robespierre was attacked by members of the Convention.
Robespierre was prevented from responding because Collot dHerbois was serving
as president of the Convention and would not recognize him, thus banning him
speaking. Discredited and placed under arrest that day (9 Thermidor), Robespierre
and his colleagues were executed the following day.
Many changes occurred following the coup. These included the marginalization
of the Committee of Public Safety , the Committee of General Security , and the rev-
olutionary tribunals. The center of radical activity , the Jacobin Club, was closed, and
the Girondins, who had been suppressed, now returned to power. Several govern-
ment ofcials deeply involved in the Terror were tried and punished. At the same
time that the Jacobins were being suppressed, the counterrevolutionaries who had
hoped to bring back the Old Regime were effectively fought to a standstill. Tallien,
the chief conspirator , was instrumental in defeating a combined British and migr
force at Quiberon Bay in 1795. That same year , this group, which in the larger sense
one may label Thermidorians, drafted the Constitution of 1795, the document that
brought the Directory into existence.
Little, Brown, 2005; Lefebvre, Georges. The Thermidorians and The Directory , Two Phases of the
French Revolution. New York: Random House, 1964; Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of
the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989; Scurr , Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the
French Revolution. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006; Whaley , Leigh Ann. Radicals: Politics and
Republicanism in the French Revolution. Stroud: Sutton, 2000; Woronoff, Denis. The Thermidorean
Regime and the Directory , 17941799. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
ROBERT N. STACY
Third Estate
In ancien rgime France, all who were not classied as clergy or nobles were de
facto members of the Third Estate, which represented roughly 96 percent of the
population. As the abb Sieys memorably put it in responding to the rhetorical
question posed by the title of his pamphlet of January 1789, What Is the Third Estate?,
it was everything yet hitherto had been nothing. He went on to suggest that if the
privileged orders were removed, the country would be better off, since the Tiers tat
contained all that was required to constitute a complete nation yet was restrained
718 Third Estate
from rendering France more ourishing by the constraints imposed upon it. Sieys
went on to demonstrate how the Third Estate could become something by com-
posing a script for the events that would take place at Versailles in June 1789 as the
Estates-General was transformed into a National Assembly.
The overwhelming majority of the Third Estate comprised peasants, who worked
the land in a France that remained predominantly rural and preindustrial. That is
not to say that all peasants were similar , since conditions varied immensely from one
part of this vast country to another. One common factor was their subordination
to some form of seigneurial system that affected most peasants in terms of dues,
services, and deference owed to the local and usually noble lord. This constituted
a source of friction that would erupt in 1789, though it was mainly a product of
rising expectations rather than increasing misery for most rural dwellers. Indeed,
a minority of peasants owned or rented sufcient land to produce a surplus, and
they were prospering in a century during which agricultural prices were gradually
inated, largely as a result of growing population, which historians now think had
reached some 28 million by 1789. The preponderance of France in Europe had a
strong demographic basis and its backbone was the bulk of self-sufcient cultivators
who produced enough in a good year to survive. However , they were susceptible to
uctuations in the harvest, which grew more pronounced from the 1770s onward
and might tip them into dependence on relief or plunge them into debt. Especially
tenuous was the situation of the rising number of landless peasants, who relied on
working for others, seasonal migration, or domestic industry and were forced to
leave their homes in search of employment in times of crisis like the late 1780s.
Much of the manufacturing that did take place in pre-revolutionary France was
based in the countryside, in the form of weaving and forging. The countryside was
also the home of numerous rural artisans who serviced agriculture as farriers or car-
penters. Factories were few and far between, so the mass of urban workers were for
the most part artisans who learned their trade then plied their profession as tailors
or bakers, often selling the wares they made. Beneath them was a growing number
of unskilled laborers, who drifted in from the surrounding countryside in search of
employment, creating a volatile mass in the growing cities, not least in Paris, where
the population had passed the half-million mark by the outbreak of the Revolution.
The towns, which housed perhaps a fth of the French people by that time, were
heavily dependent on external food supplies, and the price of bread was the barom-
eter of public order , as well as the compass by which producers set their fortunes.
High prices meant a sharp fall in the demand for manufactured items, and in such
circumstances, the urban population could unite in demanding a steady supply at
a reasonable cost.
Many nobles lived in towns and resided there for at least part of the year; it is in-
accurate to suppose they were all quartered at Versailles. Yet the urban leaders par
excellence were the bourgeoisie, to borrow a troublesome term from the unfash-
ionable Marxist lexicon. Perhaps middle classes is a more satisfactory label for the
generally prosperous but diverse commercial and professional groups who proted
from the century-long rise in trade, home and overseas, to increase their business
activities or provide customers with their services as doctors and lawyers. The great
seaport cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseille were certainly ourishing, though
so were the inland administrative centers that expanded to meet the rising demand
for goods and services from the countryside. Self-assurance was fostered by their
Tocqueville, Alexis de 719
role as city fathers, presiding over the enlightened cultural atmosphere and the
architectural achievements that characterized the cities, above all Paris, in the years
after 1750.
Yet it would be wrong to regard the bourgeoisie as a discontent revolutionary
group, since most of them continued to look to the nobility for a role model and
they had good cause to fear the mass of the population who threatened disorder
when times were hard. Even Sieys was unwilling to countenance a political role for
the lower classes, his rhetoric about the nation notwithstanding. What mobilized
latent social tensions in the late 1780s was the collapse of the bankrupt monarchy in
a context of economic crisis. The convocation of the Estates-General not only polar-
ized nobles and bourgeois in an unexpected fashion but brought ordinary people
into politics to an unprecedented degree via elections and the drafting of cahiers,
which occurred in the spring of 1789. In the process, the diverse Tiers tat acquired
an identity that it had never possessed before, together with a common enemy in
the shape of the privileged orders. This unity would prove short lived: once the op-
position of nobles and clergy had been overcome, the Third Estate would fragment
and radicals like Jean-Paul Marat would be left to lament the fact that an aristocracy
of birth had merely given way to an aristocracy of wealth. See also First Estate; Second
Estate.
FURTHER READING: Doyle, William, ed. Old Regime France. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001; Jones, Peter M. The Peasantry in the French Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988; Lewis, Gwynne. France, 17151804: Power and the People. London: Longman, 2004;
Sewell, William H. Sewell. A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: Abb Sieys and What Is the Third
Estate? Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994.
MALCOLM CROOK
Tocqueville, Alexis de (18051859)
Alexis de Tocqueville was a French social philosopher , political theorist, and his-
torian. His early works, completed with a friend and colleague, made Tocqueville
famous while still in his twenties. He is best known for describing America at a time
when the country was still in its infancy and characterizing the American character
as something to be seen as unique and intriguing. In addition to writing, he had a
career as a French politician.
Tocqueville was born and raised near Paris. Before he was born, his aristocratic
parents were jailed during the Reign of Terror and were traumatized during their
imprisonment. After their release, they had three sons, all of whom were provided
with emotional and intellectual stimulation. The young Tocqueville was stricken
with many physical maladies as a youth, including migraine headaches and digestive
problems. He was a very bright child and an avid reader of the many books in his
fathers library. A devout Catholic tutor educated him and his brothers. Tocqueville
went on to attend school and later law school in Metz and worked for a short time as
a lawyer and substitute judge. The year after the Revolution of 1830, he and friend
Gustavo de Beaumont were commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior to travel to
the United States for the purpose of studying the American penal system. The two
young mens desire to undertake this mission was probably also due in part to a wish
to leave the precarious social climate of France and possibly a spirit of adventure.
720 Tocqueville, Alexis de
The two traveled in the United States for nine months and, in addition to ob-
serving the penitence-based prisons at Sing Sing and Auburn in New York and the
Quaker-based Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, interviewed a number of
key American political and legal luminaries, including President Andrew Jackson,
former president John Quincy Adams, and Supreme Court justice Joseph Story.
Tocqueville unfortunately missed an opportunity for an interview with key political
scholar James Madison, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers. He and Beau-
mont traversed the North, South, Midwest, and New England and also ventured
into Canada, paying close attention to the cultural aspects of the various regions
through which they traveled. They also noted the similarities and differences be-
tween France and North America.
Tocqueville was intrigued by what he saw as an equalitarian society in America,
and he questioned how far a society could go in achieving equality and still remain
a free society. In his observation of the American way of life, he was impressed by
the decorum and stability of the country. He believed that the American political
system was formed by unique circumstances and that these factors created the
distinct social structure of America; this distinct structure he called the national
character. These traits, and their geographic and historical factors, formed the
democratic and egalitarian social system that he and his colleague, Beaumont,
found so fascinating. Tocqueville, however , observed that not all groups were
treated equally , noting the ill-treatment of African Americans and American Indi-
ans by white society.
The two travelers also recognized the characteristic of American individualitya
tendency for Americans to withdraw socially from others and develop relationships
with family and close friends. Excessive individualism leads to other problems, ac-
cording to Tocqueville, including materialism, spiritual problems, and a tendency
to be easily swayed by public opinion.
When he returned to France, Tocqueville resigned his post as magistrate and,
relying on Beaumont for the majority of the work, completed a volume on the U.S.
penal system entitled On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in
France, which was published in 1833. In this work, in addition to describing Ameri-
can prisons, the authors advocated a similar system in France and recommended
more humane conditions in penal settings. Though Beaumont wrote most of the
work on penology , Tocqueville devoted much of his time to writing about his ob-
servations of American society. These observations culminated in his two-volume
magnum opus Democracy in America (published in 1835 and 1840, respectively). The
book was extremely popular in both Europe and America and detailed the Ameri-
can political system as well as aspects of American culture.
Also in 1835, the now-famous 30-year-old author married Mary Motley , a woman
considered by his family to be beneath them in status. Tocqueville entered French
politics and continued to publish thought-provoking works on political and social
issues. It was, however , very difcult living up to the early success he had when De-
mocracy in America was published.
Tocqueville wanted to understand the reason behind the demise of the aristoc-
racy , probably in part due to his own upbringing and that of his parents. He was also
concerned with social reform, as evidenced by his work on prisons. He was elected
to the French Chamber of Deputies and served in that capacity from 1839 to 1848.
He also served as minister of foreign affairs for a few months in 1849. Tocquevilles
Tone, Theobald Wolfe 721
resistance to the government of the Second Republic landed him in jail for a few
days and ended his days as a politician. He would later comment that he was disap-
pointed in his political career.
In 1856, Tocqueville published his last work, The Old Regime and the Revolution,
considered by some to be a continuation of the question of freedom and democ-
racy developed in Democracy in America. This three-volume work carried a somewhat
more pessimistic tone than its predecessor.
Tocqueville was suffering from tuberculosis in 1858 when he and his wife moved
to Cannes with the hope of his recuperation. However , the following year , he suc-
cumbed to the condition. His work and political thought have been evaluated and
reevaluated by scores of historians, political scientists, philosophers, sociologists,
and reformers ever since
FURTHER READING: Mayer , J. P. Alexis de Tocqueville: A Biographical Study in Political Life.
Gloucester , MA: Smith, 1966; Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry
Reeve with an introduction by Joseph Epstein. New York: Bantam Books, 2000; Zunz, Oliver ,
and Alan S. Kahan. The Tocqueville Reader: A Life in Letters and Politics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
Tone, Theobald Wolfe (17631798)
Theobald Wolfe Tone, usually known simply as Wolfe Tone, was a leading gure
in the Irish independence movement of the late eighteenth century. Born the eldest
son of a coach builder in Dublin, Tone was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and
at the Middle Temple in London. Rash and impetuous, but intelligent, lively , and
sociable, he eloped with a 16-year-old, Matilda Witherington, before he had estab-
lished himself in a career. It proved a happy marriage. Trained as a lawyer , he won
fame as a political propagandist and activist. Initially a supporter of the moderate
reform program of the Irish Whigs (or Patriots), he soon became committed to rad-
ical reform. He wanted parliamentary reform, the end of sectarian divisions within
Ireland, and an end to British inuence over Irish affairs. In 1791, he produced his
most famous pamphlet, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. Addressed to
reform-minded Protestants, it urged Irishmen of all religious persuasions to unite
in support of radical reform. With his close friend Thomas Russell, he drew up the
resolutions of the Society of United Irishmen formed by the Ulster Presbyterian
radicals in Belfast in October 1791. He and Russell set up a similar society in Dublin
in November. Catholic radicals, who had reformed the formerly conservative Catho-
lic Committee to press for Catholic relief, appointed the Protestant Tone as their
agent and secretary. He helped to organize elections to a Catholic Convention to
petition the king for relief, and he accompanied the delegation to London to meet
the king.
The subsequent Catholic Relief Act of 1793 granted the franchise that Protes-
tants had to Irish Catholics but did not allow Catholics to sit in the Irish parliament.
War with France in 1793 led the government to suppress the activities of the United
Irishmen. Tones written radical views were given to a French agent, William Jack-
son, who was then arrested in April 1794. The Irish government preferred to get
rid of Tone rather than prosecute him. He was persuaded to go into exile in the
United States with his young family , though he did not leave until June 1795. By
722 Tories
then the United Irishmen had been suppressed as a constitutional reform society
but were reconstituting themselves as a secret, mass-based revolutionary movement.
Unhappy in America and anxious to promote the radical cause in Ireland, Tone
recrossed the Atlantic and arrived in Paris in February 1796. He urged the French
Directory to send a military force to Ireland, became an ofcer in the French army ,
and won the support of General Hoche. Tone accompanied the French invasion
force, led by Hoche, that reached Bantry Bay in December 1796. The French found
no Irish support there, and battered by storms, the eet limped home with heavy
losses. The French soon had other military priorities, Hoche died in September
1797, and Tones inuence was weakened by the petty intrigues in France of James
Napper Tandy and other United Irishmen.
In June 1798 Tone learned that the United Irishmen had rebelled in Ireland.
The French hastily tried to send military support, but it was too little and too late.
Tone felt duty bound to accompany the small force led by General Hardy. This
force was intercepted at sea off the northern coast of Ireland and Tone was cap-
tured. He was tried by court martial for treason. Although an ofcer in the French
army , he was sentenced to die by hanging rather than by ring squad. To avoid
this fate, he cut his throat and died a few days later , on November 10, 1798. Tone
had kept a journal for many years and had more recently begun his autobiography.
These were published in the United States by his son in 1826. It would be many
years, however , before Tone became the most important inspiration for modern
Irish nationalism and republicanism. His grave at Bodenstown has long been a
place of pilgrimage.
FURTHER READING: Bartlett, Thomas, ed. Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Dublin, UK: Lilliput
Press, 1998; Dunne, Tom. Theobald Wolfe Tone: Colonial Outsider. Cork, UK: Tower Books, 1982;
Elliott, Marianne. Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1989; MacDermot, Frank. Theobald Wolfe Tone and His Times. New York: Macmillan, 1939.
H. T. DICKINSON
Tories
Derived from the Irish word toraidhe , meaning brigand, the term Tory was
originally applied to footloose gentry who in the 1660s preyed on Irish peasants
and petty traders. It then found its way into the English political vernacular as a
pejorative term for the supporters of the Duke of York, subsequently James II, dur-
ing the Exclusion Crisis of 1681. Opponents of the succession of a Catholic heir
to Charles II referred to Tories as Popish thieves of the Crown. It was increas-
ingly used to divide the English political world into Tories and Whigs in place of
Cavaliers and Roundheads and gained broad acceptance as a term for those whose
political loyalties belonged to the church and the king. During the American Revo-
lution, the term was applied generally to any colonial royalist, otherwise known as
Loyalists.
On his accession to the throne, George III pronounced an end to the exclu-
sion of Tories from high ofce, whereupon the Rockinghamite Whigs considered
any enthusiast of either the monarch or his policies to be a Tory. British reaction
to the French Revolution and its excesses helped to redeem Tory values, so that
William Pitt the Younger , Wellington, and Peel were commonly deemed Tories in
Toussaint lOuverture 723
the sense of heroic resistance to violent radicalism. Under Peels leadership in the
1830s, Tories dropped their old designation in favor of the name Conservative,
to denote a party advocating continuous reform through traditional institutions
and the adaptation of the monarchy , aristocracy , and established authority to a
changing society.
Disraeli was the rst Conservative leader to use the label Tory in a positive
spirit and can be considered the inventor of Tory Democracy. This refers to a po-
litical style designed to convince working-class voters that their interests, soberly
contemplated, lay in the reinforcement and piecemeal reform of the institutions
of British government along with the preservation of the traditions of British soci-
ety. To this Tory democracy added the notion that Conservatives governed not in
the aristocratic interest but rather in the interest of the whole nation according to
the aristocratic principle. In domestic affairs this meant that Tories could aspire to
an alliance between the aristocracy and the urban working class against the selsh
designs of middle-class capitalists. In foreign policy its patriotic component held
that Tory democracy was essentially and uniquely English, upholding the liberties
of a free-born people and their Empire against the alien political theories of conti-
nental ideologues and despots. See also Britain.
FURTHER READING: Black, Jeremy. Robert Walpole and the Nature of Politics in Early Eighteenth
Century Britain. London: Macmillan, 1990; Blake, Robert. Disraeli. New York: St. Martins
Press, 1967.
CARL CAVANAGH HODGE
Toussaint lOuverture (17431803)
Toussaint lOuverture was a former slave in the French colony of Saint-Domingue
who became a key gure in the Haitian Revolution and a national hero.
Known as Toussaint Brda most of his life, Toussaint lOuverture was born on
the Brda plantation owned by the comte de No. He was the rst of the Christian
slave Gaou Guinous eight children. As a teenager , Toussaint was promoted to the
position of coachman, one of the more prestigious jobs a slave could obtain, and
was ultimately freed in 1777. He soon married and had two sons.
Toussaints role in the Haitian Revolution came late. In 1790, he did not support
Vincent Og when the latter tried to convince gens de couleur to join his uprising.
Toussaint also did not immediately join the slave uprising of August 1791 led by
Boukman. Yet his participation in the Haitian Revolution would ultimately be a
decisive one. In 1793 Toussaint joined the Spanish forces in Santo Domingo (the
eastern portion of the island of Hispaniola, Saint-Domingue being to the west)
and soon proved to be a capable leader , attracting thousands of troops, including
one Jean-Jacques Dessalines. With his followers, Toussaint won many battles against
French royalists in the north and earned the respect of his Spanish allies. Tous-
saint unsuccessfully tried to convince the Spanish to grant freedom to all slaves, a
move that he thought would facilitate their advance into Saint-Domingue. Upon
hearing of the National Conventions 1794 decree abolishing slavery in all French
colonies, Toussaint and about 4,000 followers abandoned the Spanish cause and
joined French republican troops. This move had the effect of driving the Spanish
armies back across the border into their colony of Santo Domingo, and in 1795
724 Townshend, Charles
Spain signed a treaty with France ceding Santo Domingo. Britain, meanwhile, be-
came preoccupied with its own slave rebellion in Jamaica and pulled out of Saint-
Domingue in 1798.
With foreign enemies now expelled from the colony , Toussaints next task was
to set about rebuilding the infrastructure of Saint-Domingue, which involved re-
turning former slaves to their plantations despite their service to his cause. By 1800
Toussaint was the unofcial ruler of the colony , having either removed French of-
cials or forced their cooperation. Now that he effectively ruled Saint-Domingue,
Toussaint turned his attention to Santo Domingo despite the objections of the
First Consul, Napoleon. Once this was achieved, Toussaint became the islands
self-appointed governor-general for life and drew up a constitution. Yet by this
point, Napoleon had had enough of Toussaints pretensions and made plans to
invade the island, remove Toussaint from power , and return Saint-Domingue to its
former position as a protable French colony. French forces invaded the island in
1802 under General Leclerc, captured Toussaint, and sent him back to France to
be imprisoned at Fort-de-Joux. Rather than publicly execute the leader , Napoleon
instead chose to let him die in prison of cold and starvation. Toussaint died on
April 7, 1803. See also French Revolution; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Geggus, David. Haitian Revolutionary Studies. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2002; James, C.L.R. Black Jacobins: Toussaint l Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1963.
Townshend, Charles (17251767)
The British statesman Charles Townshend was born on August 29, 1725. After
receiving an education in Leiden and Oxford, he entered the House of Commons
as the member from Great Yarmouth in 1747. Although a man of ability and a bril-
liant orator , he lacked foresight in colonial affairs, which would have disastrous
consequences. Beginning his career in government as a member of the Board of
Trade, he held a succession of important posts, including rst lord of the admi-
ralty (1754), secretary at war during part of the Seven Years War (17611762),
president of the Board of Trade, (17631765) and chancellor of the exchequer
(17661767).
Townshends policy of imposing heavy taxes to be applied for the defense of the
American colonies and for the salaries of royal ofcials provoked a furious reaction
from colonists. Resentment already existed due to Townshends efforts to suspend
the New York legislature and to post resident commissioners of customs. The series
of measures known as Townshend Acts (1767) imposed a whole series of import
duties on tea, paper , glass, and paint. Townshend was of the view that the colonists
would not object to such taxes, which would be levied at the ports. He was badly
mistaken, and the merchants of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia all retaliated
with a boycott of British goods. Townshends policies played an important part in
the growing atmosphere of discontent among the American colonists in the decade
prior to the American Revolution. Townshend, himself, however , would not live to
witness the colonists full reaction to his policies, for he died suddenly on Septem-
ber 4, 1767. See also Coercive Acts.
Townshend Acts 725
FURTHER READING: Forster , Cornelius P. The Uncontrolled Chancellor: Charles Townshend and
His American Policy. Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation, 1978; Namier , Lewis,
and John Brooke. Charles Townshend. New York: St. Martins Press, 1964.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures that provoked widespread op-
position in the American colonies and contributed to the campaign for autonomy
that culminated in the American Revolution. The acts imposed taxes on everyday
imported goods such as paper , glass, and tea and instituted changes in the colonial
administration. The measures were named after the chancellor of the exchequer ,
Charles Townshend.
Townshend developed the acts as a means to accomplish several objectives and
overcome problems with the contemporary system of colonial administration. Brit-
ish ofcials in the Americas were paid by the colonial legislatures, and those as-
semblies had withheld salaries on occasion as a means of protesting unpopular
measures. Under the Townshend Acts, colonial ofcials were to be paid directly
by the revenues generated from the taxes. It was believed that this would make the
governors and other ofcers independent of the colonial legislatures and therefore
better able to enforce unpopular laws and taxes. The new revenues were also seen as
a way to offset the cost of British garrisons stationed in the colonies. During debates
on the acts, many in Parliament endorsed the concept that the colonies should pay
for their own defense. Finally , the acts aimed to improve the collection of customs
dues, tariffs, and other taxes throughout the colonies. To do so, a new board of
customs was created in Boston to oversee customs collections and three admiralty
courts were established to prosecute suspected smugglers. These courts operated
without juries. In addition, blank search warrants, known as writs of assistance, were
authorized. These allowed the search and seizure of colonial property and ships
without a magistrates warrant.
The acts created a public furor and helped unite the disparate interests within
the colonies. Merchants, business owners, and farmers opposed the new taxes, while
the political elite perceived the acts as an attack on the legitimate rights of the colo-
nists. A range of means were used to protest. Colonial legislatures and other groups
drafted petitions to Parliament and the king, and an economic boycott was under-
taken throughout the colonies. Smuggling, already widely practiced, became a com-
mon and accepted method to evading the acts. There were also riots and attacks on
individual tax collectors. A growing number of colonists rejected the authority of
Parliament to tax the colonies, unless the 13 colonies were granted representation
in the British legislature.
The economic boycott signicantly affected British commercial rms, who sub-
sequently joined the colonists in opposition to the measures. Faced with opposition
at home and in the colonies, Parliament repealed most of the taxes on March 5,
1770. The tax on tea was left in place since it provided the most revenue and served
as a signal that Parliament maintained the right to tax the colonies. The continuing
tea tax remained relatively uncontroversial until 1773, when the import duty on
British tea was removed in an attempt to entice the colonists to purchase tea from
726 Trumbull, Jonathan
the East India Company. This measure backred and led to renew anti-British senti-
ment. See also Boston Port Act; Boston Tea Party; Committee of Secret Correspon-
dence; Stamp Act; Stamp Act Congress.
FURTHER READING: Butler , Jon. Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; Huff, Randall. The Revolutionary War Era. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2004; Simmons, Richard. The American Colonies: From Settlement to
Independence. New York: McKay , 1976.
TOM LANSFORD
Trumbull, Jonathan (17101785)
Born in eastern Connecticut (which served as the base of his political support),
Jonathan Trumbull went to Harvard to become a minister , though by his early twenties
he had entered the family business. Entering colonial politics at the same time, he was
elected to the Connecticut Assembly in 1733. For the next 50 years, Trumbull served
the colony and later the state as legislator , militia ofcer , judge, and governor.
Trumbull became the assistant governor (1766) and three years later succeeded
as governor of Connecticut, a position he held throughout the American Revolu-
tionary War and after (until 1784). Trumbull was thus the last colonial governor of
Connecticut, and its rst state governor. He was a member of the Connecticut Sons
of Liberty in the years leading up to the Revolution.
Constitutionally , Trumbulls governorship was interesting. As was the case in
many new states, the executive branch was kept deliberately weak by the terms of
the new state constitution. In Trumbulls case, however , this limitation was partly
balanced by a special set of powers granted to manage the war effort. This power
was signicant not only to the state but to the American war effort as a whole. With
the exception of defending itself against British raids in 1777, 1779, and 1781, Con-
necticuts role was primarily that of supplier to the Continental Army. Connecticut
probably provided more than half the supplies, especially of food, that reached
George Washingtons army.
Trumbull was not a political theorist. His major contribution was as an organizer
and manager who provided logistical support for the war effort. He retired from
ofce in 1784, having become increasingly unpopular as the war drew to a close.
There were some accusations that he was personally proting from the war effort
and, despite his support of the Revolution, was more conservative politically than
many in his constituency. He died the following year. See also American Revolution;
Constitutions, American State.
FURTHER READING: Roth, David Morris. Connecticuts War Governor , Jonathan Trumbull.
Chester , CT: Pequot Press, 1974; Weaver , Glenn. Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticuts Merchant
Magistrate, 17101785. Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society , 1956.
ROBERT N. STACY
Tryon, William (17291788)
A career soldier , William Tryon was appointed North Carolinas lieutenant gov-
ernor in 1764 and became governor the following year. Tryon governed a colony
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, Baron de LAulne 727
divided not only by its reaction to Crown policy but also by geographical, social,
and economic factors. North Carolinas western population was isolated and lacked
political power compared with that of the east. It also resented government corrup-
tion, specically the collection by local sheriffs of taxes that never went to the gov-
ernment. This opposition crystallized in the late 1760s in the form of the Regulator
movement, which Tryon smashed in 1771 at the Battle of Alamance Creek.
Immediately after this battle, Tryon moved to New York, where he had been
named royal governor. In New York, he stood not only for the Crowns prerogatives
but for New Yorks claims to the Hampshire grants, a region later to become Ver-
mont. On his return to New York City in 1776, Tryon discovered that his authority was
undermined by Howes imposition of martial law upon his taking control of that city.
As a major general, Tryon led raids into Connecticut in 1777 and 1779. Returning to
Britain in 1780, he was later promoted to lieutenant general and died in 1788.
Tryon was not a philosopher of government, but a practitioner , and was bound
to maintaining the established order. Despite a reputation established during the
Regulator uprising in western North Carolina and his Connecticut raids, he was fair
minded with a sense of justice, as shown by his attempts to resolve some Regulator
grievances even as he was putting down their rebellion. See also American Revolu-
tion; American Revolutionary War.
FURTHER READING: Nelson, Paul David. William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in
British Imperial Service. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990; Tryon, William.
The Correspondence of William Tryon and Other Selected Papers. Raleigh, NC: Division of Archives
and History , Department of Cultural Resources, 19801981.
ROBERT N. STACY
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, Baron de LAulne (17271781)
The mantra of the eighteenth century was the improvement of the political and
social order through a new vision; the French economist Turgot was a notable gure
in this movement, known as the Enlightenment. Turgot was born in Paris on May 10,
1727, to aristocratic parents, Michel-Etienne Turgot and Madeleine Franoise Mar-
tineauand. Having shown a air for writing during his days at the Sorbonne, Turgot
authored numerous treatises on political economy , and his contributions to the
Encyclopdie were praised by various philosophes. Turgot became a government ad-
ministrator in 1752.
An advocate of the principle of laissez faire, laissez passer (live and let live), Turgot
subscribed to the thought of the Physiocrats, led by Franois Quesnay (1694 1774).
This free-market school criticized the prevailing doctrine of mercantilism by which
the state controlled the nations trade.
As the nance minister (17741776), Turgot set an agenda of economic reform
through his six edicts, which called for the abolition of monopolies, the free move-
ment of grain, the slashing of governmental expenditure, improvements to the
taxation system, and other reforms. He was, however , bitterly opposed by vested
interests and resigned in disgust. Turgot devoted the rest of his life to scholarly
pursuits. He died on March 20, 1781, his prophesy that France would experience
radical revolution rather than gradual and peaceful reform proving entirely correct.
See also Ancien Rgime; Louis XVI.
728 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, Baron de LAulne
FURTHER READING: Dakin, Douglas. Turgot and the Ancien Rgime in France. London:
Methuen, 1939; Geoffrey , Treasure. The Making of Modern Europe, 16481780. New York:
Routledge, 2003; Kaplan, Steven L. Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV.
2 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.
PATIT PABAN MISHRA
22 Prairial, Law of
See Law of 22 Prairial
U
Ultramontanism
Ultramontanism was the name bestowed upon nineteenth-century supporters of
a centralized monarchial papacy in the Roman Catholic Church. The name ul tra-
montane (ultra montes) is somewhat xenophobic in origin, in that the French and
the Germans both used it in a derogatory way to refer to the Roman pontiff as a
foreign ruler beyond the mountains.
Revolutionary- era ultramontanism originated in the writings of Robert de
Lamennais (17821854), who sought to replace the discredited movements of
Gallicanism (those French Catholics who sided with the anti-Christian revolutionary
leadership) and their liberal counterparts, the Jansenists (who opposed the Jesuits
and sought state sovereignty over the church).
Repulsed by the anti - clericalism of eighteenth-century revolutionaries (embod ied
in the nationalism of Frances Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the conscation
of church property), Europes Catholic faithful initially believed that Napoleons rise
to power in 1799 and his Concordat of 1801 signaled an end to the scourge of revo-
lution. Their optimism was not long lived however, as his authoritarian regime re-
tained state control of the church and its servants. Such subversion and de ance of
papal authority made the clergy Gallican by law and ultramontane in spirit.
The unifying impetus of the ultramontane movement came with Pius VIIs arrest
by Napoleon in 1808. Piuss open deance of the emperor inspired conservative
Catholics throughout Europe to rally around his anti-state cause. Their enthusiasm
for the pope deepened upon his release from imprisonment in 1814, when he re-
vived the long -banned defenders of the papacy, the Jesuits. Piuss ordeal solidied
ultramontanist convictions in the validity of separating the spheres of church and
state. The ultramontanes believed that the state had authority in temporal matters
alone, and the papacy infallible authority in ecclesiastic matters.
Though in time Lamennais fell out with the church, his movement continued,
spreading throughout Europe during the course of the nineteenth century. In
Britain ultramontane Catholics became increasingly evangelical, while in Ger many,
Catholic faithful openly resisted the antireligious statism of Bismarcks Kulturkampf.
Ultramontanisms greatest triumphs occurred in the second half of the nineteenth
730 Ultras
century with Pius IXs 1864 encyclical, The Syllabus of Errors, and the 1870
declaration by the First Vatican Council of papal infallibility.
Ultimately, ultramontanism did not restore Christianity to its pre-revolutionary
level of inuence in the affairs of state, nor did it enable the church to maintain its
inuence over the masses. While the ultramontanes continue to reenergize many of
the faithful who looked upon the dead clergy of the French Revolution as martyrs
of Enlightenment terror, the churchs position in Europe remains greatly dimin-
ished. See also Abolition of the Catholic Cult; Anti-Clericalism; Religion.
FURTHER READING: Aston, Nigel. Religion and Revolution in France 1780 1804. Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003; Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. New
York: Image Books, 1994; Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997; Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization. Vol. 11. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1975; Johnson, Paul. A History of Christianity. New York: Atheneum, 1977.
PETER R. MCGUIRE
Ultras
The ultras, or ultraroyalists, were aristocratic reactionaries opposed to the ideolo-
gies of the French Revolution. Following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy
in France after the fall of Napoleon in 1814, and again in 1815 following his return
from Elba, an extremist faction of royalists desired the elimination of revolutionary-
era reforms and the purge of Bonapartists. Some of the ultras were migrs, but
most were members of the rural aristocracy. Among the ultras were members of
the Chevaliers de la Foi, a secret society instrumental in bringing about the Res-
toration and the White Terror. Ultras were often militant and inexible, believing
any compromise with the ideals of the French Revolution betrayed their principles
and those of their class. During the reign of Louis XVIII, they turned to the comte
dArtois (later Charles X) as a symbol of hope.
After 1815, the ultras swept the national elections to dominate the Chamber of
Deputies, creating a tensioned relationship among the king, his moderate royal-
ist ministers, and the ultra-dominated Chamber. The ultras supported universal
manhood suffrage under the assumption that the common man was more loyal
to the aristocracy and tradition, while the wealthier bourgeoisie had become cor-
rupted by un-French ideas. In 1816, Louis dissolved the Chamber, paving the way
for more moderates in the legislature. Following the assassination in 1820 of the
duc de Berry, the son of the comte dArtois, the ultras dominated the French
government for much of the decade, falling from power after the July Revolution
of 1830.
FURTHER READING: Davies, Peter. The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present. London:
Routledge, 2002; Higgs, David. Ultra - Royalism in Toulouse. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1973; Skuy, David. Assassination, Politics, and Miracles: France and the Royalist Reaction of
1820. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003.
ERIC MARTONE
United Irishmen
See Society of United Irishmen
United States Constitution 731
United Kingdom of the Netherlands
See Netherlands, United Kingdom of the
United States Congress
See Congress (United States)
The United States Constitution (drafted in 1787 and ratied in 1789) is the oldest
written constitution still in use in the contemporary world. The 1787 Constitution
was the American revolutionaries second try at establishing a workable scheme of
government among the 13 colonies after their war of independence with Britain.
Although the text of the Constitution has undergone signicant revision and
amendment in the three intervening centuries since its adoption, its main concepts
endure. Debates surrounding the strengths and weaknesses of the United States
Constitution have occasioned some of the greatest political theorizing in the Anglo-
American tradition.
Originally motivated by the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation
of 1777, which had united 13 independent colonies into a loose and unwieldy
confederation, representatives from ve states met in Annapolis, Maryland, in
September of 1786 to discuss ways of strengthening the Articles. Realizing that what
was called for was not amendment so much as a major overhaul, the representa-
tives made the decision to invite delegates from each of the 13 states to convene in
May 1787 in Philadelphia to discuss revisions to the Articles. Seventy-four delegates
were chosen by the legislatures of 12 states (Rhode Island declined to participate),
but only fty-ve of these delegates actually bothered to attend the Philadelphia
Convention. Among the participants were such luminaries of the American revolu-
tionary era as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, whose presence served to
give an air of authority to the proceedings. Among those who did the most to shape
the document and inuence the debates were James Madison, Edmund Randolph,
and George Mason from Virginia; Pennsylvanias Gouverneur Morris and James
Wilson; Alexander Hamilton from New York; Elbridge Gerry and Rufus King from
Massachusetts; William Paterson from New Jersey; and Charles Pinckney from Con-
necticut. Noteworthy nonparticipants included John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and
Patrick Henry, who famously complained after the fact that he had smelled a rat.
More than any other single gure, James Madison is acknowledged as the driving
force behind the design and ultimate ratication of the Constitution, even if the Con-
stitution as it evolved through the debates did not conform perfectly to his ideal.
The original charge of the Philadelphia Convention was to revise the Articles of
Confederation, but the decision was quickly made to scrap the awed Articles and
draft an entirely new constitution. The architecture of this new constitution was de-
bated vigorously and exhaustively through the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787.
The nal version was reported to the public on September 17, 1787, and submitted
to the states for ratication. After erce debate in the states, it was approved by the
requisite 9 of 13 states on June 21, 1788, and took effect on March 4, 1789. The Phila-
delphia Convention operated in secrecy, and no ofcial tally of votes or record of the
732 United States Constitution
debates was kept. Virtually all of what is known about the controversies and debates
that shaped the Constitution is drawn from copious notes taken unofcially by James
Madison and recorded each evening after the days debates had ended. These were
rst published posthumously in 1840 as Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention.
Debate among the delegates centered on the following issues. First was the
question of how power was to be balanced between large and small states. Delegates
from small states argued that a scheme of proportional representation based on
population would dilute their inuence. Conversely, large states worried that they
would be disadvantaged vis--vis the small states if each state had equal representation
regardless of its size or population. The Great Compromise was to allocate seats
proportionally in the lower House of Representatives based on the population of
the state in question, with every state, regardless of its size, being guaranteed at
least one representative. The upper legislature or Senate was to be composed of two
senators from each state regardless of its size. The so - called Connecticut Compro-
mise between the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan was crucial to reaching an
equitable balance of power between small and large states. Without this compro-
mise, the Convention would have concluded quickly and in failure.
The second and more daunting controversy was the constitutional status of slav-
ery in the new union. Southern states insisted on guarantees that northern states
would not move to outlaw slavery or the slave trade once the Constitution was ap-
proved, resulting in the 1808 sunset clause inserted in Section 9 of Article 1. Fur-
ther, the original compromise document tacitly condoned the existence of slavery
by providing that each person held in bondage would count for three-fths of a
white citizen for purposes of determining each states population and calculating
representation in the House of Representatives; that slaves from one state could
not be relieved of their servitude by the acts of any other state; and that individuals
held in bondage who escaped to another state must be returned to their rightful
owners. These tacit sanctions of slavery were enough to reassure southerners that
their interests would not be sacriced to the North, but they proved galvanizing in
the nineteenth century. Apologists for slavery pointed to these provisions in sup-
port of a constitutional right to own slaves and the denial of citizenship to blacks,
whereas critics like Abraham Lincoln lamented the practical political necessities
that made the original Constitution a morally awed document.
The third signicant controversy was over the relative balance of power between
the 13 original state governments and the new, more powerful federal government.
Many delegates were wary of concentrating such extensive powers in the hands of a
centralized government. They (and later Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitu-
tions ratication) argued that the new federal government effectively robbed states
and local governments of their most signicant prerogatives and liberties. Other
Federalist defenders of the Constitution such as Alexander Hamilton and James
Madison argued that the failings of the Articles of Confederation demonstrated
clearly that the new nation would never be secure, powerful, and afuent without a
strong centralized government and a vigorous executive power.
More fundamentally, the United States Constitution bears the imprint of dispa-
rate historical precursors and intellectual traditions. As a blueprint of American
government, the Constitution upholds the traditional doctrine of the separation
of powers and checks and balances implicit in the British system and defended
in the writings of William Blackstone, Montesquieu, and other commentators.
This shapes the division of the federal government into executive, legislative, and
judicial branches, each endowed with some unique powers and checks on the other
branches: for example, the presidential power to veto laws passed by Congress,
the senatorial prerogative of presiding over impeachment proceedings against
the president, and the Supreme Courts ability to declare laws unconstitutional.
Following in the tradition of classical liberal thinkers like John Locke and David
Hume, these checks and balances by separate powers or branches are calculated to
secure the fundamental rights of individuals. Likewise, concerns with vigilance and
wariness about centralizing power in any one area bear the imprimatur of classical
republicanism, the determination to prevent corruption and maintain public spir-
itedness. The Constitutions justication of executive power seems to owe some-
thing to the Machiavellian ideal of a vigorous executive, even as the ofce of the
American presidency itself was conceived along the lines of the executive power in
some of the extant state constitutions, particularly that of New York. More generally,
the Framers of the Constitution drew upon the collective wisdom not only of the
British tradition of limited government and the idea of the rights of British subjects
but the uniquely American experience of constitution writing, both successful and
unsuccessful, in the colonies and states.
Vigorous debates over the ratication of the proposed constitution took place
throughout the states after it was unveiled in September 1787. Exchanges between
Federalist supporters of the Constitution and their Anti-Federalist opponents
continued in earnest through the winter and into the following spring of 1788. The
Federalists argued persuasively for a solid and durable union between the states,
which they contended was impossible under the Articles of Confederation, or indeed
any other kind of confederation. Notable Anti-Federalists like Richard Henry Lee,
Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and Melancton Smith objected to the new constitu-
tion on a variety of grounds. They feared that this new centralized government could
easily become tyrannical. They doubted the appropriateness of a single uniform
legislation for parts of the United States as different as Puritan New England and
the slave-owning South. They appealed to the tradition of classical republican-
ism premised on small, face-to-face, self-governing communities and doubted that
republican government could ever successfully be extended to an orbit as large as an
entire continent. They further complained that many of the Constitutions provisions
had an aristocratic or antidemocratic bias. Perhaps the most denitive explication of
the Constitutions rationale responding to these and other criticisms was put forward
by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in their 85 papers authored
under the pseudonym Publius and published in New York newspapers throughout
the fall and winter of 17871788. These were subsequently collected and published
in book form in 1788 as The Federalist in two volumes. The work became an instant
classic and is still widely regarded as the single most authoritative interpretation of
the Constitutions original intent and workings.
The Constitution of 1787 is remarkably unceremonious and concise. While the
preamble speaks broadly of aspirations to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
it is conspicuously devoid of reference to abstract principles or ideals. As originally
drafted and unamended, the United States Constitution consists of seven separate
articles, or sections.
The rst article describes the legislative branch, which consists of a bicameral
legislature or Congress. This Congress is divided between an upper house, or Senate,
composed of two representatives from each of the states, who serve six-year terms, and
a lower House of Representatives, the members of which serve two-year terms and are
elected popularly from districts within each of the states based on population. The
article species the requisite age and qualications for representatives to be elected
to the House and Senate, respectively, as well as the specic powers delegated to each
of the two legislative bodies. These include the power to initiate bills of revenue in
the House, and the power to try impeachments in the Senate. Among those powers
shared by both houses of Congress are the power to borrow money, regulate com-
merce, declare war, and make all laws necessary and proper for the execution of
their appointed tasks.
The second article pertains to the executive power of the president. The powers
of the president consist of the power to serve as commander and chief of the armed
forces, to issue pardons, and to make treaties and appoint ambassadors and judges
with the concurrence of the Senate. The president is entrusted with the executive
authority to uphold and defend the Constitution. Perhaps the most signicant
power outlined is that of vetoing laws passed by Congress, a veto that can be overrid-
den by a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate.
The third article outlines a federal judiciary branch appointed by the president
with the concurrence of the Senate, and entrusted with the power to review laws
passed by the legislative branch. Justices of the Supreme Court hold their positions
for life, subject to good behavior. The article further species the kinds of cases over
which federal courts have jurisdiction: namely, those in which the United States is a
party, those between the United States and other nations, those between different
states, or those between citizens of different states. The crime of treason is also
dened, and it is stipulated that no person can be convicted of treason without the
testimony of two corroborating witnesses or a confession in an open court.
The fourth article describes relations between the states. It provides for full faith
and credit between the ofcial acts of the states and establishes that citizens of one
state are entitled to equal protection by the laws of other states. It also establishes
provisions by which new states can be admitted into the Union and provides for the
federal governments rule over unincorporated territories. The fth article details
the process by which the Constitution might be amended in the future. Amendments
may be passed with a two-thirds majority in both of the houses of Congress and must
be approved by three-fourths of the states in order to take effect. The sixth article
guarantees that the new federal government will assume the debts previously incurred
by the states and under the Articles of Confederation. The seventh article briey out-
lines the process according to which the Constitution itself must be ratied.
The remainder of the text of the Constitution consists of a series of amendments
appended to the original text of the document. The rst 10 amendments are known
collectively as the Bill of Rights. Initially drafted by James Madison in 1789, the Bill
of Rights was part of a compromise worked out between Federalist supporters and
Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution. The condition that these amendments
would be passed immediately was a key point in overcoming opposition to the Con-
stitutions ratication, particularly in divided states like Massachusetts, Virginia, and
New York, which included such conditional language in their ratication instruments.
The American Bill of Rights incorporated ideas from George Masons 1776 Virginia
Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta. Many of
the Constitutions defenders, including Alexander Hamilton, argued not only that
a bill of rights was unnecessary given the strictly delimited powers outlined in the
Constitutions main articles, but that a bill of rights might at some point in the fu-
ture be interpreted to mean that these and only these liberties (and not some others
heretofore unspecied) were secured to the people or the states. Others suspicious
of the new and more extensive powers given to the federal government were only
inclined to support the Constitution with the understanding that a bill of rights would
be immediately appended to it. These rst 10 amendments provide for most of the
securities and civil liberties that citizens of the United States have come to think of
as basic rights and privileges. They were ratied by the requisite three-fourths of the
states and incorporated into the original Constitution on December 15, 1791.
The First Amendment provides for religious liberty and freedom of expression,
prohibiting the establishment of an ofcial religion and guaranteeing free speech,
petition, and assembly, and freedom of the press. The Second Amendment provides
for state militias and a right to keep and bear arms. The Third Amendment prohibits
the government from compelling individuals to quarter soldiers in their private
homes. The Fourth Amendment secures their homes and property from unreason-
able search, seizure, or inspection without probable cause or a legal warrant. The
Fifth Amendment provides legal rights of due process, including grand juries, and
prohibits double jeopardy, forced confessions, or takings. The Sixth Amendment
guarantees defendants a speedy public trial, the right to be confronted by witnesses,
and legal counsel. The Seventh Amendment provides for trial by jury. The Eight
Amendment secures a right of bail and forbids cruel and unusual punishments. The
Ninth Amendment stipulates clearly that the enumeration of these specic rights
does not imply that there are no other signicant rights retained by the people. The
Tenth Amendment species that those powers not specically delegated to the new
federal government are to be retained by the states or the people at large.
Of the subsequent amendments, the following are of the most enduring signi-
cance. The so-called Civil War Amendments (18651870) were originally proposed
to resolve the uncertain constitutional status of freed African American slaves after
the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment
(1865) once and for all unambiguously abolished slavery, which had been tacitly
sanctioned in the original 1787 Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868)
guaranteed citizenship to the newly freed slaves, reversing the Supreme Court
decision of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which had ruled that freed blacks could
never become United States citizens. This amendment also contained several other
provisions whose signicance would grow in light of subsequent legal decisions.
Most notably, it formally established the principle of birthright citizenship ( jus soli)
and made the constitutional liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights enforceable
for the rst time against encroachment by the states. As it has been subsequently
interpreted by the Supreme Court, this provision more than any other has been
credited with once and for all tipping the balance of the United States toward a
strong centralized government and stripping states and localities of many of the
regulatory powers they previously enjoyed. The Fourteenth Amendments provi-
sions of due process and equal protection became important reference points for
civil rights in twentieth-century jurisprudence. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870)
stipulated that freed slaves should be guaranteed the right to vote.
Other major democratizing amendments followed in the twentieth century.
The Sixteenth Amendment (1913) provided for a graduated federal income tax.
The Seventeenth Amendment (1913) transferred the power of electing senators
from the state legislatures to the people of the states at large. The Eighteenth Amend-
ment (1919) prohibited the production, sale, and importation of alcohol (later
repealed by the Twenty-rst Amendment in 1933). The Nineteenth Amendment
nally and only belatedly secured the right to vote for women in 1920. In 1951
the Twenty-second Amendment limited the president to two terms in ofce of four
years each. The Twenty-sixth Amendment secured the right to vote for all citizens
age 18 and older. All told, 27 amendments have been made to the Constitution over
the course of its history. See also Constitutional Convention; Constitutions, American
State; The Federalist Papers; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Bailyn, Bernard, ed. The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and
Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle over Ratication. New York: Library
of America, 1993; Madison, James. Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, as Reported
by James Madison. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987; Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, and
John Jay. The Federalist Papers. London: Penguin, 1987; Thach, Charles. The Creation of the
Presidency, 1775 1789: A Study of Constitutional History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1969.
RICHARD BOYD
United States Supreme Court
See Supreme Court (United States)
V
Fought approximately 100 miles from Paris on September 20, 1792, the Battle
of Valmy ranks low in importance in a strict military sensefor it constituted little
more than a cannonade between the opposing sidesyet had decisive political

repercussions for Europe. As the engagement involved, on one hand, a French
revolutionary force consisting of volunteers and recruits called up by the na-
tion rather than the king and, on the other, the professional forces of an absolutist
regime, Valmy represents a crossroads in military history between the formal style
of warfare practiced by eighteenth-century armies and the more innovative form
adopted by the new armies of revolution.
In September 1792, the French Army of the Center under General Franois
Kellermann linked up with the Army of the North under General Charles
Dumouriez, bringing their combined strength to 36,000 men and 40 guns,
opposed by 34,000 Prussians and 36 guns under the Duke of Brunswick, who
sought to capture Paris and thus end the Revolution and restore the Bourbon
dynasty in France.
After several hours exchange of artillery re and a hesitant Prussian advance,
Brunswick chose to withdraw east, thus providing the French Revolution with a new
lease on life. As the Allies did not enter Paris for another 22 yearsand in the
interim the armies of revolutionary, and later Napoleonic, France would conquer
much of Europe, including the Low Countries, all of Germany, the whole of main-
land Italy, and Switzerlandthe decisive quality ascribed to Valmy is well justied.
See also French Revolutionary Wars.
FURTHER READING: Blanning, T.C.W. The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787 1802. London:
Arnold, 1996; Creasy, Edward. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo.
New York: Dorset, 1987; Fuller, J.F.C. A Military History of the Western World. Vol. 2. New York:
Funk and Wagnalls, 1995.
738 Varennes, Flight to
On June 21, 1791, Louis XVI and his family, disguised as bourgeois travelers,
were stopped in the French border town of Varennes while eeing Paris. The kings
failed attempt at escape from France would eventually exert a powerful destabilizing
inuence on French revolutionary politics.
Louiss decision to ee resulted from his distaste for the Revolution combined
with mounting threats to his family, such as the popular march on Versailles
during the October Days. Louis intended to ee to Frances northeast border
and rendezvous with a sympathetic general. In the end, the plan failed due to
repeated delays as well as the kings ineptness at subterfuge. Indeed, Louis was
recognized in Sainte-Menehould by a postmaster who rode ahead of the kings
procession and organized his detention in Varennes. Soon after, Louis was forced
to return to Paris.
News of Louiss ight stunned most Frenchmen and unleashed a wave of anti-
monarchical, pro-republican sentiment. Portraits of the king disappeared from
Parisian homes and businesses and were replaced by caricatures of Louis the Pig.
Popular Parisian societies like the Cordeliers Club called for Louis to be put on
trial. The National Assembly, however, had nearly nished penning a monarchical
constitution, and consequently most deputies were anxious to keep Louis in power.
Claiming that Louis had been kidnapped, they absolved him from blame, and when
Parisian radicals demonstrated against Louis on the Champs de Mars on July 17,
National Guard troops opened re to disperse the radical mob.
Although popular radicalism was temporarily checked, the kings reputation
never recovered. Following a series of military defeats in 1792, Louis was forcibly
deposed by a popular insurrection on August 10 and was executed ve months later.
In addition, the ight to Varennes exacerbated the mounting climate of paranoia
and distrust that fueled the fratricidal violence of the Reign of Terror. See also Aboli-
tion of the Monarchy; Emigrs; French Revolution; Marie Antoinette.
FURTHER READING: Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
BENJAMIN REILLY
Vendan Rebellion (1793 1796)
The Vendan rebellion was a series of episodic revolts from 1793 to 1796 in
the Vende region in western France against the French revolutionary govern-
ment. The poorly trained Vendan peasants, led predominantly by aristocrats,
scored victories over the National Guard, yet the regular army slaughtered the
rebels, who reverted to guerilla tactics. Such methods invoked atrocities on the
part of the republican army, in turn prompting the rebels to inict cruelties on
government soldiers.
The western French peasantrys hostility emanated from resistance to the clergys
secularization, taxation, and military conscription. The oath of November 1790
forcing clergy to swear allegiance to the government compelled those opposed to the
policy to oppose the Revolution. The church was the uniting force for scattered rural
communities, serving as a social center and symbol of identity. The refusal to accept
Vendmiaire, Rising of 739
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was extreme in insurrectionary regions. A high
proportion of the western clergy originated from the countryside. The constitutional
clergy and government-appointed ofcials were regarded as intruders. Dechristian-
izing efforts in 1793 and 1794 threatened rural cultural continuity. Thus, a cultural
dichotomy developed in western France between anti-clerical, radical urban society
and the more conservative countryside.
Revolutionary reforms did not satisfy peasant grievances and exacerbated the
peasants preexisting hostility to the bourgeoisie in the Vende. Peasants desired an
amelioration of their poverty, reforms to the seigneurial system and the tithe, more
equitable taxation, and the abolition of military service. Seigneurial dues were light
in western France; the pressing matter was the tithe. While suppressed in April 1790,
a December decree allowed its addition to rents, causing tenants to be worse off
than they were under the ancien rgime. Western France had a history of resistance
to conscription, and government efforts to raise 300,000 troops in February 1793
formed the immediate cause of the rebellion, while efforts to supply the army with
rural provisions exacerbated the situation.
Local Vendan anti-revolutionary parties united with outside aristocrats to form a
counterrevolutionary rebellion. Most rebels from the nobility were not fervent royal-
ists, but moderates dissatised with the Revolution. Popular royalism was extremely
different from the form espoused by the migrs. Indeed, some migrs who joined
the peasant rebels were contemptuous of their newly found allies; likewise, many
peasants developed contempt for their new aristocratic supporters.
Following the bicentennial of the French Revolution, debate centered on whether
or not the Vendan rebellion was truly counterrevolutionary. It has been suggested
that the rebellion might be better classied as anti-revolutionary, implying an in-
terpretation of the rebellion, and the counterrevolution as a whole as a regressive
rather than a progressive phenomenon if one argues that the rebellion was directed
against the Revolution and its demands rather than for the restoration of the ancien
rgime. See also La Chouannerie; Chouans; French Revolutionary Wars; La Roche-
jaquelein, Henri Du Vergier, Comte de.
FURTHER READING: Roberts, James. The Counter-Revolution in France, 17871830. London:
Macmillan, 1990; Scher, Reynald. A French Genocide: The Vende. Translated by George
Holoch. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003; Tilly, Charles. The Vende.
ERIC MARTONE
A royalist uprising on 13 Vendmiaire, Year IV (October 5, 1795) was suppressed
by the Convention, with General Napoleon Bonaparte distinguishing himself in the
uprising by his energy and skill in using artillery. The uprising was caused by the heavy-
handed policies of the National Convention, which decreed on August 22 and 30
that two-thirds of the new legislature, for which an election would be soon held, must
be current members of the Convention. Although the law was intended to ensure
the transition between the old and new legislative bodies, it also was an explicit at-
tempt on the part of the Thermidorians to remain in power and to suppress rising
quasi-royalist sentiment and activity.
740 Vendmiaire, Rising of
Ensuing weeks saw growing agitation in the capital as the lower classes suffered
from the high price of bread. Some members of the Paris National Guard began
joining the ranks of the opposition, and there were signs of wavering loyalty
among senior ofcers as well. In early October, General Jacques-Franois Menou
made an unsuccessful attempt to arrest leading agitators, which only exacerbated
the situation. As tensions mounted, the Convention chose Paul Barras to handle the
situation. Barras released some Jacobins from prison to help him stem the royalist
tide and appointed a young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he knew and
respected from Toulon, to command the troops.
Bonapartes role proved to be of great consequence. As the royalist sympathizers
prepared to march on the Tuileries Palace, the seat of the Convention, Bonaparte
brought up artillery during the night of October 4 5 and posted troops around the
palace. The vast crowds advanced on the Tuileries on October 5 but were decimated
by the grapeshot and musket re of Bonapartes troops, who quickly dispersed them.
This was the rst time since the start of the Revolution that a military force was suc-
cessfully employed to repress the Parisian crowds. The uprising secured the power of
the Convention, which was soon after transformed into the Directory. Napoleon won
recognition and eventual promotion to command the army of Italy, which served as
a starting point for his remarkable career. See also French Revolution; Thermidorian
Reaction.
FURTHER READING: Lefebvre, Georges. The Thermidorians and the Directory: Two Phases of
the French Revolution. New York: Random House, 1964; Soboul, Albert. La premire Rpublique,
1792 1804. Paris: Calmann-Lvy, 1968.
The quelling of the royalist rising of thirteenth Vendmiaire, Year IV (October 5, 1795). Courtesy of
Alexander Mikaberidze.
Vergennes, Gravier, Charles, Comte de 741
Vergennes, Gravier, Charles, Comte de (1719 1787)
The comte de Vergennes served as Frances foreign minister from 1774 until
his death in 1787. His support for the rebellion of Britains 13 North American
colonies was crucial for American success. Starting in 1781, Vergennes played a
signicant role in the domestic affairs of France in the position of rst minister to
King Louis XVI.
Vergennes was born in the city of Dijon on December 29, 1719. He followed
numerous ancestors in obtaining an education in law. In 1739, he began his diplomatic
career as an assistant to the French ambassador to Portugal. His prospects of rising to
the top of his profession seemed limited, since top diplomatic posts normally went to
members of the countrys ancient aristocratic families.
Nonetheless, Vergennes emerged as a talented, famously hardworking, and well-
trained diplomat. Years of experience in Germany gave him a solid grounding in
the world of international affairs, and in 1755, he received the crucial position of
envoy to the court of the Ottoman Empire at Constantinople. His long tenure there
appeared to end on a note of failure when he was discharged from his post in 1768.
He had clashed with the aristocratic foreign minister, the duc de Choiseul, over
French policy. Choiseul had also objected to Vergenness marriage to a French
woman of modest social status. His career seemed at an end.
But, in 1771, Vergennes received a new assignment as Frances envoy to Stockholm.
In 1774, Louis XVI, the newly crowned young king, brought him home to serve as
foreign minister. The ensuing collaboration of monarch and foreign minister has
led scholars to question which of the two dominated decision making. At the least,
Vergennes set the range of policy choices for the king and strongly inuenced the
policies adopted.
The outbreak of the American Revolution provided Vergennes with an opportunity
to strike at Britain. He wanted Paris, not London, to be the center of the European
diplomatic community. He likewise considered a new war with Britain inevitable.
Nonetheless, Vergennes followed a cautious policy, providing the Americans only
covert military and nancial assistance for more than two years. Vergennes believed
that France would be best served by a long war between Britain and the rebellious
American colonists, since a quick victory would encourage the victor to strike at
Frances empire. France formally recognized American independence and joined
the war early in 1778.
Vergennes pursued his ambitious foreign policy in the face of criticism that
the French government could not stand the resulting nancial burden. In 1781,
he assumed the informal role of rst minister to the monarch. This gave him a
clearer understanding of the perilous state of French nances. Acting as a moderate
reformer, he tried unsuccessfully to limit expenditures by curbing the powers of
individual government ministers. Vergennes died in Paris on February 13, 1787. See
also American Revolutionary War; Franco-American Alliance.
FURTHER READING: Murphy, Orville T. Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy
in the Age of Revolution: 1719 1787. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982; Price,
Munro. Preserving the Monarchy: The Comte de Vergennes, 1774 1787. Cambridge: Cambridge
NEIL M. HEYMAN
742 Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien (1753 1793)
One of the greatest orators of the French Revolution, Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud,
the son of a purveyor to the Limoges garrison who was ruined by exorbitant grain
prices, was born in Limoges. Initially educated at home by a Jesuit, the abb Roby, he
received a scholarship from Turgot, a family friend, to attend the Collge de Plessis-
Sorbonne in Paris to study philosophy. This was followed up with theological studies
at the Sorbonne, which he gave up for the law. After studying law in Bordeaux, Verg-
niaud was received at the bar in 1781, the same year as Maximilien Robespierre. His
legal career, during which he pleaded cases eloquently and dramatically, was success-
ful. He became one of the leading lawyers of the Bordeaux Parlement.
Vergniauds interest in literaturehe wrote light versewas shared by his future
colleague Gensonn. Vergniaud, Gensonn, and other future Girondin deputies
were members of a Bordeaux literary society, the Muse, which Vergniaud described
as a sort of academy. Although the Muse had as its motto Libert et Egalit, there was
nothing revolutionary about this very respectable Old Regime Club of letters. Its
members were drawn from the elite of this prosperous city: they included wealthy
businessmen, barristers, and judicial ofcers. It was typical of the growing number
of Enlightenment-style groups throughout France, and in the spirit of Enlightened
toleration, both Jews and Protestants were admitted.
Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud. Courtesy of Alexander Mikaberidze.
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien 743
Vergniaud greeted the Revolution with enthusiasm. He was a captain of the local
National Guard regiment, and in 1790, Vergniaud became president of the electoral
assembly of the district of Bordeaux and was later elected to the general council of
the department. He assisted in the foundation of the Bordeaux Jacobin Club with
Marguerite Guadet and Gensonn in 1790.
Vergniaud made an eloquent speech on the death of the comte de Mirabeau at
the Jacobins Club of Bordeaux. Before Varennes, he drafted several circular letters
sent to municipalities throughout France. After Varennes, on July 9, 1791, he sent a
letter to the Constituent Assembly advocating the trial of Louis XVI before the high
court in Paris.
Vergniaud was elected to the Legislative Assembly on August 31, 1791, the fourth
deputy out of 12, with Guadet, Gensonn, and Grangeneuve. He sat on the left.
He delivered his rst speech on October 25 on the subject of the migrs. It was a
rhetorical masterpiece. French historian Aulard has distinguished two periods in
the eloquence of Vergiaud: before and after August 10. Before August 10, he spoke
against the intrigues of the court, while after August 10, he railed against popular
excesses. Vergniaud advocated vigorous measures against the refractory priests. He
supported Jean-Pierre Brissots demand for war against Austria. He was elected
president of the Assembly on October 30.
The themes of Vergniauds state of the nation speech at the Assembly on July 3,
1791the kings continual attempt to undermine the legislatures authority and
Vergniauds suspicion of Louis connections with the counterrevolutionarieswere
repeated by other Jacobin members. Reecting the serious nature of the threats
against the safety of the nation, he concluded his speech with the expression The
fatherland is in danger (La patrie en danger), and he demanded the Assembly
ofcially proclaim it. This was one of the greatest speeches of his career.
Opposed to the preparations for the insurrection of August 10, Vergniaud
became involved in the negotiations with the king, drafting letters to Boze, a court
painter who acted as an intermediary between the Bordeaux deputies and Louis
XVI. The second letter addressed to the king by the Bordeaux deputies was written
by Vergniaud and dated July 29. In it, he warned Louis of the coming insurrection.
Vergniaud advised the king that in light of the present circumstances, the only way
to keep his throne would be to popularize the ministry. He suggested that the king
could appoint to his council four members of the Constituent Assembly.
During the insurrection of August 10, he sat in the presidents chairMerlet,
the president, was absentwhen Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette sought refuge
in the Assembly. Vergniaud proposed the suspension of the king and the summoning
of a National Convention in the midst of the insurrection.
After the September Massacres, he was openly opposed to the Paris Commune
of August 10. The members of this Paris Commune included many future Paris
deputies and future enemies of Vergniaud.
Elected to the National Convention from the department of the Gironde, Vergniaud
sat on the right. He was a leading gure in the Convention until June 2, 1792, when
he was proscribed. Until March 10, when there was an attempted coup against the
Convention, he was one of the more conciliatory deputies, attempting to bring the
two warring factions, the Girondins and the Mountain, together. He was president
of the Convention on January 1024, 1793, when deputies were voting on the fate of
Louis XVI. During the kings trial, Vergniaud voted for the referendum, but for the
744 Vienna, Congress of
death sentence without reprieve. This contrasts with the position taken by many of
his Girondin colleagues. He was absent for the vote on Jean-Paul Marats impeach-
ment on April 14. Once again, Vergniaud was out of step with his Girondin col-
leagues. Marguerite Guadet had introduced the motion to impeach Marat.
Vergniaud was proscribed on June 2, 1793, during the popular uprising that
purged the Convention of a number of deputies. He was placed under house
arrest along with 28 other Girondin leaders. Again, unlike many of his colleagues,
Vergniaud made no attempt to ee Paris. On July 26, he was sent to La Force
prison in Paris. Tried and condemned by the revolutionary tribunal, Vergniaud was
executed on October 31, 1793. See also Jacobins; Parlements; Reign of Terror.
FURTHER READING: Aulard, Franois-Alphonse. Les grands orateurs de la Rvolution
franaise, MirabeauVergniaudDantonRobespierre. Paris: F. Rieder et cie, 1914; Bowers,
Claude G. Pierre Vergniaud: Voice of the French Revolution. New York: Macmillan, 1950; Bredin,
Jean-Denis. Vergniaud ou le genie de la parole. In La Gironde et les Girondins, ed. Franois
Furet and Mona Ozouf. Paris: Editions Payot, 1991; Forrest, Alan. Society and Politics in
Revolutionary Bordeaux. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
LEIGH WHALEY
A major international conference held in the Habsburg capital from September
1814 to June 1815, the Congress of Vienna convened to consider the multifarious
problems connected with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the political
reconstruction of Europe. The principal delegates included Count Metternich from
Austria; Tsar Alexander I of Russia and several advisors; Lord Castlereagh and the
Duke of Wellington for Britain; King Frederick William III and Count Hardenberg
for Prussia; and Talleyrand for France. Most of the important decisions were reached
by the four major victorious powers, though Talleyrand managed to have France
included in much of the process, not least by playing one side against the other
and sowing the seeds of suspicion between states with rival claims. Naturally, practi-
cally every European state, large and small, sent a representative to plead its case
respecting its borders, political claims, and commercial rights.
In the settlement reached on June 9, 1815, the Congress declared the creation
of two new countries: the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to include Holland, Bel-
gium, and Luxembourg, and a German Confederation, to comprise 39 states with
tenuous links to one another and no central governing body. It also created the
kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, to be ruled by the Austrian emperor. Poland was re-
stored, though in a reduced form of its eighteenth-century self, and would be ruled
by Russia. The old dynasties of a number of states were restored: Spain, Naples,
Piedmont, Tuscany, and Modena. The Swiss Confederation was reestablished, and
its permanent neutrality guaranteed. Austrias domains increased as a result of the
annexation of Lombardy-Venetia, Dalmatia, Carniola, Salzburg, and Galicia. Prus-
sia annexed Posen, Danzig, much of the former Kingdom of Saxony, large parts
of former Westphalia, and Swedens possessions in Pomerania. Sweden received
Norway. Britain retained Malta, occupied since 1800; the island of Heligoland in
the North Sea; Cape Colony in southern Africa; Ceylon; Tobago; St. Lucia; and
Mauritius. The Ionian Islands were granted to Britain as a protectorate, which
Virginia 745
remained in effect for nearly 50 years. The Congress also guaranteed the free
navigation of the Rhine and the Meuse; condemned the slave trade; extended the
civil rights of Jews, particularly in Germany; and established the precedent of inter-
national conferences as a diplomatic device in seeking redress and settling disputes
between nations.
FURTHER READING: Alsop, Susan. The Congress Dances. New York: Harper and Row, 1984;
Chapman, Tim. The Congress of Vienna: Origins, Process and Results. London: Routledge, 1998;
Dallas, Gregor. The Final Act: The Roads to Waterloo. New York: Holt, 1997; Ferrero, Guglielmo. The
Reconstruction of Europe: Talleyrand and the Congress of Vienna, 1814 1815. New York: W. W. Norton,
1963; Kissinger, Henry A. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812
22. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000; Nicolson, Harold. The Congress of Vienna: A Study
in Allied Unity: 1812 1822. Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1973; Schroeder, P. W. The Transformation of
European Politics, 1763 1848. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; Webster, Charles. The Congress of
Vienna, 1814 1815. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969.
Virginia
Virginia was the leading state during the American Revolution and provided
much of the military and political leadership for both the independence movement
and the formation of the new nation. George Washington led the Patriot forces
during the American Revolutionary War, while Thomas Jefferson was the main
author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and James Madison was princi-
pally responsible for the United States Constitution (1789). All three Virginians also
served two terms as president of the United States. In what came to be known as the
Virginia Dynasty, four of the rst ve American presidents were from Virginia.
Early History
In the 1580s, a failed attempt was made to create an English colony on the mid-
Atlantic seaboard. The territory was named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth I (popu-
larly known as the Virgin Queen). In 1607, the rst permanent English colony was
established at Jamestown, Virginia, on Chesapeake Bay, by a joint-stock group, the
Virginia Company. The original settlers sought gold and silver but instead found
other resources, including tobacco and cotton. By 1619, Virginia exported more
than 50,000 pounds of tobacco per year. The rise of tobacco and cotton led to the
development of a slave economy; in the 1620s, about 1,000 slaves were imported
annually. By the 1680s, slavery was common and the colonys economy was based on
slavery and indentured servitude. Through the seventeenth century, more than three-
quarters of the colonists in Virginia either were currently or had been in some form
of servitude. The increasing reliance on slave labor during the eighteenth century
led to a dramatic rise in the nonwhite population. By the 1770s, approximately 40
percent of Virginians were black. Nonetheless, like other colonies, Virginia offered
a degree of social mobility unmatched in Europe.
In 1619, the colonists created a legislature, the House of Burgesses. Although the
franchise remained limited throughout the colonial period, there emerged a strong
tradition of democracy and representative government in the colony. Virginia
remained loyal to the monarchy during the English Civil War and was granted
dominion status by Charles II (1630 1685). Virginia was subsequently known as
746 Virginia
the Old Dominion. In 1698, the capital of Virginia was moved from Jamestown to
Williamsburg.
The colony grew rich on tobacco, and a planter elite emerged. The wealthy had
close ties to the mother country and many maintained summer homes in London
and educated their children in Britain. The colony became the largest and wealthiest
of the 13 British colonies in North America. Although the elites maintained a strong
afnity for Britain, the colonial wars of the mid-eighteenth century undermined
condence in Londons administration. During the French and Indian War
(1754 1763), British ofcers ignored advice from, and looked down on, the colo-
nial militias. This undermined condence in the British and their ability to protect
the colony. Following the war, London initiated a series of measures designed to
increase revenues to pay off the debt accumulated during the war.
Virginia and the Prelude to Revolution
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act in an attempt to generate new revenues
by requiring all legal documents and contracts and other printed documents such
as newspapers and even playing cards to bear a stamp indicating that a fee had
been paid. The measure was bitterly opposed by all classes in Virginia. There were
boycotts of the stamps and even attacks on tax collectors. Nevertheless, Virginia did
not send a delegation to the Stamp Act Congress called by Massachusetts in 1765.
Instead, the Burgesses created a committee to draft a response directly from Vir-
ginia to Parliament. The committee included political conservatives such as Peyton
Randolph, who chaired the group, and radicals such as Patrick Henry. The com-
mittee drafted a compromise series of resolutions, the Virginia Resolves, which
helped unite the disparate classes.
The repeal of the Stamp Act was followed by the imposition of the Towns-
hend Acts (1767). The new import duties and enforcement measures were also
met by opposition. Colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts led to the dissolu-
tion of the legislature in 1769. Tensions within the colony were briey reduced
following the appointment of John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, in 1770. Dunmore
led the Virginia militia in a series of campaigns against Native Americans, which
culminated in Lord Dunmores War (1774). The frontier of Virginia moved west-
ward, and Dunmore expanded Virginias claims in the Ohio Valley.
During the war, relations between Dunmore and the legislature deteriorated
quickly. Many accused him of initiating the 1774 conict as a means of depleting
the militia because of his fears of an armed rebellion. Virginia sent a delegation
to the First Continental Congress in 1774. Because of Virginias size and economic
power, those in the other colonies who favored independence sought to bind
the Old Dominion into the growing anti-British coalition. Randolph was elected
president of the Congress (he resigned after a month to return to Virginia to serve
as Speaker of the Burgesses). After the confrontations at Lexington and Concord in
1775, the Second Continental Congress was convened. Randolph was again elected
president but died after a month in ofce.
The new Congress included such luminaries as Virginians Jefferson and Rich-
ard Henry Lee. Washington was chosen to be the military commander of the newly
formed Continental Army. Meanwhile, Lee offered a resolution on independence.
Congress adopted Lees measure and charged Jefferson to draft a declaration of
independence. The resultant Declaration of Independence (1776) declared the
Virginia 747
13 colonies an independent nation, presented a list of grievances against the Crown,
and stated the political principles of the new country.
The Revolutionary War
Dunmore ed Williamsburg in 1775 to his personal estate. He attempted to quell
the growing rebellion, but he only increased anti-British sentiment when he issued
a proclamation in November 1775 that granted freedom to slaves if they joined the
British Army. Several thousand slaves in Virginia joined the British forces. Dunmores
tactic was later used by the British throughout the colonies. Dunmores forces were
defeated at the Battle of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775. The following year
he ed Virginia, which was governed throughout the remainder of the war by an
elected governor and legislature. In 1776, the legislature declared its independence
from Britain and proclaimed itself the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Congress
debated a government for the new country and in 1781 approved the Articles of
Confederation. The Articles created a weak central government in which the states
retained a high degree of sovereignty and the majority of political power.
Virginia emerged as the leader of the southern bloc of delegates in the Congress.
The northern and southern delegations differed over a range of issues, including
strategy, command of the army, and the structure of the government. Patrick Henry
served as the rst governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779. On June 12, 1776, the
legislature unanimously approved the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which con-
tained 16 articles designed to protect individual freedom and liberty (including
freedom of religion and the press, and the right to a jury trial). The declaration also
endorsed the separation of powers as the basis for government. The document was
written by George Mason. The Virginia declaration served as the model for the U.S.
Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Jefferson succeeded Henry as governor. In 1779, Jefferson crafted the Virginia
Statute on Religious Freedom. The document rejected the practice of state-sponsored
religion (including the use of taxes to support the state religion). It also established
the principles of freedom of religious practice. The bill was not adopted until 1786,
but it was the inspiration for the religious freedom components of the First Amend-
ment of the U.S. Constitution.
In 1780, the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond because of Williams-
burgs perceived vulnerability to British attack. The British launched an offensive in
the South under Lord Cornwallis and invaded Virginia in 1781. The British forces
became encircled on the peninsula at Yorktown and Cornwallis surrendered to
Washington on October 19, 1781. The siege of Yorktown was the last major land
action during the Revolutionary War.
Virginia and the New Nation
Following the peace treaty with Britain in 1783, disagreements over the scope
and structure of the national government dominated American and Virginian
politics. In an effort to keep the national government solvent, Virginia and other
frontier states surrendered western territories and claims to the Congress so that
the land could be sold. Lingering territorial disputes created tensions and almost
led to conict between several states. In June 1784, Virginia and Maryland ap-
pointed a joint body, the Mount Vernon Commission, to settle jurisdiction on
the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The two states were able to settle their
748 Virginia
differences and the Virginia government urged the creation of a stronger central
government that could resolve boundary differences and other disputes among
the states.
Continuing nancial difculties and the inability of the government to forge
consensus in other matters led Virginia to join four other states (Delaware, New
Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania) at the Annapolis Convention in 1786. The
delegations met to discuss reforms to the national government but concluded that
more states needed to participate. They called for a follow-up conference the next
year. The Constitutional Convention in 1787 included all the states except Rhode
Island, and there was agreement on the need to create a new constitution.
There were sharp differences among the delegates over whether states should
have equal power in a national legislature or if power should be based on population
size (thereby giving larger states more inuence). A compromise was proposed by
the Virginians (known as the Virginia Plan). The Virginia Plan, crafted by Madison
and presented by Edmund Randolph, called for a bicameral legislature in which the
lower house would be based on population and the upper house would consist of
equal representation among the states. Madisons vision also called for a separation
of powers and the creation of three branches of government. The Virginia Plan
formed the basis for a series of compromises that resulted in the Great Compromise
and the U.S. Constitution.
Adoption of the Constitution required ratication by three-quarters, or nine, of
the states. In Virginia, a faction led by Jefferson opposed the Constitution because
they believed it would grant too much authority to the central government. How-
ever, leading gures such as Washington and Madison supported the Constitution.
Washingtons endorsement swayed many, and Virginia ratied the Constitution on
June 26, 1788, on the condition that a bill of rights be added to the basic law in
order to protect individual and states rights.
In accordance with the new Constitution, Washington was elected the rst
president of the United States. He appointed Jefferson secretary of state. Washington
left ofce after two terms (1789 1797) and was succeeded by John Adams of
Massachusetts. In the election of 1800, Jefferson was elected and appointed Madison
as secretary of state. Madison succeeded Jefferson in 1809 and appointed Monroe
secretary of state. Monroe also followed Madison as president but was the last chief
executive in the Virginia Dynasty. See also Declaration of the Causes and Necessities
of Taking Up Arms; Declaratory Act; Slavery and the Slave Trade.
FURTHER READING: Billings, Warren. A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the
Seventeenth Century. Richmond: Library of Virginia Press, 2004; Bridenbaugh, Carl. Jamestown,
1544 1699. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980; Geiter, Mary, and W. A. Speck. Colonial
America: From Jamestown to Yorktown. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; Hardwick, Kevin R.,
and Warren R. Hofstra. Virginia Reconsidered: New Histories of the Old Dominion. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2003; Hatzenbuehler, Ronald L. I Tremble for My Country: Thomas
Jefferson and the Virginia Gentry. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006; Hoobler, Dorothy,
and Thomas Hoobler. Captain John Smith: Jamestown and the Birth of the American Dream.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006; Philyaw, Leslie Scott. Virginias Western Visions: Political and Cultural
Expansion on an Early American Frontier. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004; Sidbury,
James. Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriels Virginia, 1730 1810.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
TOM LANSFORD
Virginia Resolves 749
The Virginia Resolves were a series of ve resolutions passed by the Virginia House
of Burgesses (the colonys elected legislative body) on May 29, 1765. The resolutions
were passed by the colonial legislature in response to the Stamp Act, legislation by
Parliament that imposed a direct tax on the American colonies for the rst time.
Parliament had passed the Stamp Act, which required a government stamp to
be purchased from government agents for all ofcial and many unofcial papers,
including legal documents, newspapers, and playing cards, in March of 1765. The
initial reaction among American colonial elites, despite previous protestations
against direct taxation from London, was muted. However, in Williamsburg, Vir-
ginia, Patrick Henry, a 29-year-old lawyer and radical freshman legislator, wrote and
introduced a set of resolutions at the end of the legislative session, when most of
the older, more conservative Burgesses had gone home. The rst four resolutions
were not particularly controversial, as they were based on long-standing arguments
of colonial politicians. They declared that the original colonial settlers, and their
descendants, possessed all the rights of Englishmen; that the royal charters of the
colony conrmed that; that the people of Virginia, as Englishmen, were entitled to
be governed by their own legislature; and that the Virginia legislature had never
forfeited their right to impose taxes on themselves.
The fth resolution was far more controversial; it stated that only the colonys
Assembly had the right to impose taxes on its own people, and that any attempt by
any other body (i.e., Parliament) to do so was illegal, unconstitutional, and un-
just. After erce debate, the resolutions passed. The next day, Patrick Henry went
home, and the day after that, the conservatives forced through a vote to reconsider
the nal resolution.
There, the matter appeared to end. The local newspaper did not even see t to
publish an account of the resolutions, but a paper in Rhode Island did. In addition,
the Rhode Island paper printed two additional resolves, which had not been passed
by the Virginians and may not even have been debated: that the inhabitants of the
colony were not bound to obey the tax law, and that anyone who supported it shall
be deemed an enemy of this his majestys colony.
The resolves, with the additions, were then reprinted throughout the colonies
and provoked reactions, not among the political elites, but among what would now
be called the middle and working classes. In Boston, mobs were organized to force
the agent responsible for selling the stamps to resign; his ofce was destroyed, his
house was pillaged, and he was threatened with worse. Similar mobs forced the
resignation of most of the stamp distributors throughout the colonies. By the end of
1765, the Stamp Act was effectively dead, because British authorities could not nd
anyone willing to sell the stamps.
The Virginia Resolves had three effects. First, they provided a cogent legal and
philosophical basis for resistance to taxes imposed from London. This foundation
was soon shortened to what would be called in modern parlance a bumper-sticker
slogan: No taxation without representation. Second, the rst protestsor at least
what appeared to be the rst protestsagainst the Stamp Act began in the largest
and richest of the North American colonies, Virginia. The Stamp Act riots, and
subsequent protests against later parliamentary laws, were not just the actions of a
few radicals in Massachusetts but represented (arguably) all the colonies.
750 Voltaire, Franois Marie
Finally, and perhaps most important, the Virginia Resolves and the subsequent
actions of the urban mobs set the pattern for the coming decade. The elites in all of
the colonies became increasingly radicalized against the British government. This
radicalization lent substance to the hitherto isolated radicals of Massachusetts.
FURTHER READING: Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War. New York: Knopf, 2000; Mayer, Henry.
A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Revolution. New York: Grove Press, 1991.
JOSEPH ADAMCZYK
Voltaire was the pseudonym of Franois Marie Arouet, French writer, playwright,
poet, essayist, skeptic, and philosopher, and one of the leaders of the Enlightenment.
Voltaire was also called the Dictator of Letters and used other less well-recognized
pen names: Rabbi Akib; Pastor Bourn; Lord Bolingbroke; M. Mamaki, interpreter
of Oriental languages to the king of England; Clocpitre; Cubstorf; and Jean Plo-
kof. Voltaire was born in Paris and educated at the Jesuit College Louis-le-Grand.
Voltaire was an eighteenth-century French Enlightenment philosophe (from the
Old French for philosopher). The philosophes generally accepted deism, emphasized
toleration, and believed human reason could and would discover truth through rea-
son, logic, knowledge, and education. Social injustice and religious authority were
based in ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition. The philosophes thus believed that
humanity was capable of discovering, knowing, classifying, understanding, and apply-
ing natural or empirically based truths to the betterment of humanity. For the philos-
ophes, the time for vain speculations had ended and the time for applying the ideas of
philosophical inquiry and the emerging sciences to social issues had arrived. Voltaires
age was a time of transition from enlightenment to the application of enlightened
ideas, but it was still an age ruledor at least strongly inuenced byignorance,
superstition, and powerful entities that tolerated only narrow deviations from the es-
tablished religious and political beliefs and social structures. Because open criticism
of the state and church power structures in France was illegal, many of the philos-
ophes, Voltaire in particular, communicated their ideas sub-rosa (under the table)
through plays, novels, histories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other types of litera-
ture. The impact of the philosophes was felt throughout French and wider European
society, affecting not only the church (Gallicanism and Conciliarism) and rulers such
as Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, and Maria Theresa and Joseph II of
Austria, but cultural and political movements, most notably the French Revolution.
Voltaire advocated material prosperity for all, and though he became wealthy from
his own investments and speculations, guided in part by Joseph Pris Duverney, he
was noted for his generosity. Voltaire advocated an enlightened monarchy advised
by philosophes and rejected democracy in generala French democracy in particu-
lar because he believed the masses to be ignorant and guided by superstition, and
the aristocracy to be corrupt parasites who added little to nothing to the wealth and
power of France. He advocated the abolition of torture and inappropriate punish-
ments, free speech and the open exchange of ideas, and respect for human rights
and freedoms, asserting that the personal liberties enjoyed by the British led to
their leadership in the scientic revolution, a growing economy, and their military
dominance over Louis XIV.
Voltaire, Franois Marie 751
Although Voltaire endorsed a simple deism in his rst philosophical work,
entitled For and Against (1722), the more atheistic philosophes such as Denis
Diderot (1713 1784), Claude-Adrien Helvtius (1715 1771), and Baron dHolbach
(1723 1789) openly criticized him for his temerity in rejecting the theistic God.
However, he was convinced that the organized religious establishment, the French
church, and Christianity served the positive purpose of being a counterbalance
to the monarchy and providing some solace for the ignorant masses. Though he
viewed Christianity and the God it professed as inconsistent with the moral and
natural evil pervasive in the world and the French church as more interested in
the maintenance of its power and wealth derived from the religious tax (tithe),
his abhorrence of the church, what he called linfme (infamous thing), was based
primarily on the churchs intoleranceviews different from the accepted dogmas.
Gallicanisms rejection of papal infallibility and advocacy of the authority of the civil
government over the temporal affairs of the church gave him hope.
Voltaires tendency to mock the French aristocracy, specically the French regent
Louis Philippe, the duc dOrlans, led to his imprisonment in the Bastille for eleven
months (1717). His rst play, the tragedy dipe, produced in Paris when he was
only 24, was completed during that time, and it was then as well that he began his
poem on Henry IV of France. This defense of religious toleration was later printed
anonymously in Geneva under the title Poem of the League (1723). He was imprisoned
again (1726) in the Bastille when he quarreled with a prominent French nobleman,
the Chevalier de Rohan, but was released when he promised to leave France. Voltaire
journeyed to England and remained there for more than two years, producing an
enlarged Poem of the League published as The Henriad in France (1728), and writing
an epic poem and a history of Frances civil wars. Here he also met John Locke, wis-
est of human beings, and became enamored with the simplicity and tolerance of
Quakerism.
Voltaire returned to Paris in 1729 and in 1731 published an historical narrative
on the Swedish soldier-king Charles XII entitled The History of Charles XII, which
compared the desolation wrought by Charless warring to the rise of Russian civi-
lization under Peter the Great and concluded that the warring of great men may
actually further the development of civilization. This idea was present as well in his
effusive Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733, in English), published in French
as Lettres philosophiques (Philosophical Letters, 1734), wherein he extolled the virtues
of English personal liberty, especially religious tolerance, empirical philosophy and
psychology, and natural laws derived by Newtonian science in contrast with Ren
Descartes a priori speculations and Blaise Pascals future heavenly fulllment of hu-
manitys potential. Voltaire left Paris when the English Letters were rightly perceived
as criticizing the French political, intellectual, and ecclesiastical establishment; its
publisher was imprisoned in the Bastille; the book was denounced, burned, and
banned; and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Voltaire ed to the independent duchy of Lorraine and there resided with
Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Chtelet, in her Chteau
de Cirey. The intense intimate and intellectual relationship that ensued provided
an environment conducive to Voltaires writing of plays, novels, tales, satires, light
verses, and his The Elements of Newtons Philosophies (1736), which introduced at least
in part Newtonian physics to France and the Continent. Voltaire slowly ingratiated
himself to Versailles by traveling to Berlin in 1742 1743 and convincing the king
of Prussia to continue his alliance with the French during the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740 1748) and by developing friendships and investment partnerships
with members and ministers of Louis XVs (1710 1774) court, as well as his mistress
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Madame de Pompadour.
Though Voltaires play Mahomet was not allowed to be produced (1742) because it
portrayed Islams founder, Mohammed, as an imposter and was thereby considered
blasphemous, his tragedy of the mythical Greek queen Mrope was publicly ac-
claimed (1743). That same year Voltaire sought membership in the French Acad-
emy on the death of Cardinal Fleury, but he was denied this position, held by a
clergyman, in part due to his vilication of the French church, the Vatican, and
Christianity in general. At 50 years of age Voltaire seemed more interested in posi-
tion and his legacy than his earlier condemnation of the linfme, which he then
sought to mollify. He slavishly complimented the cardinals and received permis-
sion to dedicate the banned Mahomet to Pope Benedict XIV (1740 1758). After the
publication of his poem (Pome de Fontenoy, 1745) positively describing the French
victory over the British at Fontenoy during the War of the Austrian Succession, Vol-
taire was appointed the kings historiographer, gentleman of the kings chamber,
and academician. In 1746, with the support of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour,
and Benedict XIV, Voltaire added membership in the French Academy to his mem-
bership in Britains Royal Society and Prussias Hall of Fame.
Voltaire accepted a standing invitation from Frederick II of Prussia to become
a member of his court at Potsdam after the death of Madame du Chtelet (1749).
While in residence there he wrote the Epitome of the Age of Louis XIV, a historical study
of the period of Louis XIV (1638 1715), but the king soon tired of Voltaires wit,
satire, disputations, and interference in matters of the court. Voltaire left Prussia
(1753) and moved to a Swiss chteau known as Les Dlices just outside Geneva and
acquired a house near Lausanne as well.
Voltaires sojourn in Geneva was stormy at best. Fellow exiled Frenchman and
political and social philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau resided three miles away,
and though they agreed on much of what they perceived to be wrong in politics,
society, and the church, they did not develop a friendship. Voltaire hosted frequent
private theatrical performances at Les Dlices, much to the consternation of Calvin-
ist Genevese authorities. Rousseau allied himself with the clergy of Geneva against
Voltaire, who responded by beginning a long public and private disputation with
Rousseau. Voltaire further enraged Genevese Calvinist clergy when he encouraged
Jean dAlembert (1717 1783) to write an article (Genve) falsely stating that the
Genevese clergy had abandoned organized religion for dAlembert and Diderots
Encyclopdie (17511765).
When an earthquake destroyed Lisbon on November 1, 1755, and killed 30,000
people, most of whom died while celebrating All Saints Day in the cathedrals
and churches, Voltaire was moved to publicly speculate on the problem of evil:
how an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God could allow such natural
evil to exist. He asserted that the response of the pope and the Calvinist clergy
was the simple acceptance of the tragedy, the purpose of which could be known
only by God, and that humanity should accept that reality. He soon published
a poem entitled The Disaster of Lisbon (1756) and another entitled Natural Law,
the latter seeking and failing to comprehend some all-encompassing divine and
eternal plan.
Voltaire, Franois Marie 753
He then published an Essay on General History and on the Customs and the Character
of Nations (1756) that he had begun in 1740. This work studied the customs and
morals of the history of the entire world, East and West, from the end of the Roman
Empire until his own age and, using some of the same themes developed in his The
History of Charles XII, was intended to establish that humanity was moving from bar-
barism to civilization. Voltaire asserted in this work a belief in a simple deistic God
and railed against supernaturalism, superstition, fanaticism, and organized religion
as impediments to the growth and freedom of humanity. Voltaires deism asserted
that the order of the universe indicated a designer, but the power, knowledge, and
morality or immorality of the designer could not be deduced. Voltaire never as-
serted that humanity would or even could achieve perfection; rather he asserted
that humanity would not be as bad as it was if humanity embraced knowledge,
freedom, and rational thought and correlatively rejected supernaturalism, supersti-
tion, fanaticism, and organized religion. Voltaire also asserted that just as there are
discoverable natural laws, such as Newtons law of gravity, that govern the universe,
true ethics and justice are also governed by discoverable natural laws.
Voltaire acquired his estate, Ferney, in France, in 1758. The proximity of the
estate to Geneva gave him easy access to both Switzerland and France, allowing him
to ee from one country to the other depending on which authorities he had least
offended at that point in time. He remained at his chteau in Ferney for the last
20 years of his life and was locally known as the patriarch of Ferney because of his
management of his estate and the kind treatment of his tenants and employees. He
imported silkworms and manufactured silk, farmed, and developed a large watch
factory as well as other industries. He paid his employees well and provided refuge
for those who were persecuted for political or religious reasons. He welcomed many
visitors, maintained a voluminous and varied correspondence, campaigned against
religious and political persecution, and sought an end to all torture. Specically, he
protested the execution of a Toulouse Huguenot named Jean Calas who was accused
of murdering his eldest son in order to prevent his conversion to the Roman Catho-
lic Church. Although Calas repeatedly afrmed his innocence, he was convicted on
the basis of a confession obtained under torture on the wheel (March 10, 1762).
Though it was too late for Voltaire to stop the execution, he was able to establish
Calass innocence. He was unable, however, to vindicate the 19-year-old Chevalier
de La Barre after her beheading for insulting a religious procession and damaging
a crucix ( July 1, 1766).
Voltaire continued to write while at Ferney. He contributed articles to dAlembert
and Diderots Encyclopdie and penned perhaps his most studied work, the satirical
and philosophical fantasy Candide (1759). Candide is the story of a youth burdened
with the moral and natural evil that abounds in the world, evil created and allowed
both by a supposedly good, loving, and all-powerful God and the church that sup-
posedly represented that God. Candide is a satirical renunciation of the philosophi-
cal optimism of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 1716), for Candide is the youthful
disciple of the ctional Doctor Pangloss, who is himself a follower of Leibniz. Vol-
taire mocks the resolution of the problem of evil offered by the Catholic Church
in particular and Christianity in general. Specically, he has Doctor Pangloss parrot
the words Voltaire had, on an earlier occasion, satirically attributed to Pope Bene-
dict XIV, his French Academy benefactor, on the destruction of Lisbon, asserting
that this is the best of all possible worlds.
Voltaire published his Philosophical Dictionary in 1764 and enlarged it after 1770
with Questions on the Encyclopedia. He asserted in this work that the ideal religion is
one that emphasizes morality over dogma. Though the articles contained in his
Dictionary mainly address issues concerning the Bible and the Roman Catholic
Church, he attacks some of his personal enemies and Frances political establishment
and institutions as well.
Voltaire also generated a number of historical works while at Ferney: History of the
Russian Empire under Peter the Great (vol. 1, 1759; vol. 2, 1763), The Philosophy of History
(1765), and Epitome of the Age of Louis XV (1768).
Voltaire triumphantly returned to Paris (1778) to attend the rst performance of
his tragedy Irne after many years in the safety of Ferney. The play was well received,
but he died in Paris a short time later. Voltaire had desired a Christian burial
and, seeking to obtain permission from the church for such, had signed a partial
retraction on those of his writings deemed derogatory of the Catholic Church, the
Pope, and Catholic beliefs. The church determined that the renunciation was inad-
equate, and Voltaire refused to sign a broader retraction. He was therefore secretly
buried without church permission at an abbey in Champagne. His remains were
brought back to Paris in 1791 and buried in the Panthon opposite Rousseaus
remains. The tombs of both Voltaire and Rousseau were broken open in 1814
by a group of ultras (right-wing religious zealots) after the Bourbon restoration.
Voltaires remains were dumped into a garbage pit outside the city and covered
with quicklime, which reduced the body to ash. It was 50 years before the loss of the
remains was discovered, however; his heart and brain had been removed from his
body prior to the theft. His brain was lost, but his heart remains in the Bibliothque
Nationale in Paris.
FURTHER READING: Besterman, Theodore. Voltaire. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1976; Davidson, Ian. Voltaire in Exile: The Last Years, 1753 1778. New York: Grove Press,
2006; Knapp, Bettina Liebowitz. Voltaire Revisited. New York: Twayne, 2000; Leigh, John. Voltaire:
A Sense of History. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004; Pearson, Roger. Voltaire Almighty: A Life in
Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2005.
RICHARD M. EDWARDS
W
Washington, George (1732 1799)
Commander of the Continental Army that helped achieve independence for the
United States from Britain, rst president of the United States of America, staunch
republican, and father of the country , George Washington was born on February 22,
1732, at Popes Creek Plantation, Westmoreland County , near present-day Colonial
Beach, Virginia. His father , Augustine Washington, was a wealthy slaveholder and
landowner who had two surviving children, Lawrence and Augustine, from his
rst marriage to Jane Butler. Washingtons mother , with whom Augustine had ve
children, George being the eldest son, was Mary Ball Washington of Lancaster ,
Virginia. Four years after the senior Washingtons death on April 23, 1743, George
moved to Mount Vernon to live with his half-brother Lawrence, who became a
surrogate father. This was due to the acrimonious relationship he had with his
mother. He thrived at Mount Vernon; this move provided an opportunity to enter
into Virginia society.
Unlike his half-brothers, George received an inexact and unfocused education.
He had been tutored by a convict-slave in reading, writing, and mathematics until his
father died. However , he was determined to educate himself further and learned the
necessary social graces for acceptance into Virginian society by repeatedly writing
out the Jesuits 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.
He excelled at mathematics and in 1748 trained as a surveyor. Washington surveyed
northern Virginia for Lawrences father-in-law, Lord Fairfax, who owned lands in the
Shenandoah Valley. Washington also helped survey and plan the town of present-
day Alexandria, Virginia, and in 1749 was appointed surveyor for Culpeper County.
He saved his wages, which allowed him to buy land in western Virginia.
Lawrence and Washington traveled to Barbados, hoping to cure the formers
tuberculosis. Washington contracted smallpox while there. Lawrence died in 1752
shortly after returning to Virginia. Washington administered Mount Vernon as a
lessee until Lawrences wife died in 1761, when he inherited the estate. Managing
the estate became his forte; he became a remarkable administrator.
The growing enmity between the French and the British was exacerbated by the
issue of who controlled the Ohio Valley , which the British claimed. This conict
756 Washington, George
eventually evolved into the French and Indian War , which initiated the more global
Seven Years War of 1756 1763.
Washington became involved in politics and in military affairs when he was made
an adjutant. In April 1752, Washington was ordered to establish a military post at
the forks of the Ohio River (present-day Pittsburgh) but soon realized the French
were already established in the vicinity. Washington entrenched himself at a quickly
constructed but inadequate fortication at Great Meadows that he named Fort
Necessity. During a preemptive strike on May 28, 1754, he ambushed the French,
most of whom were still sleeping. Their commander , Joseph Coulon de Villiers,
sieur de Jumonville, was killed together with 10 French soldiers. Washington left the
bodies to nature, allowing animals to devour the corpses.
On July 3, 1753, the French retaliated and forced Washingtons surrender. His
surrender paper indicated that he had assassinated Jumonville. In October 1753
Washington was sent to warn the French commander at Fort le Boeuf about ceasing
their penetration of British claimed territory. His handling of the task earned him
great respect.
Washington resigned at the end of 1754, not only due to his defeat by the French,
but also because of his belief that the British discriminated against colonial ofcers
at various levels. He was ambitious and wished to become a British ofcer but was
repeatedly refused a commission by British Army ofcials. Not wishing to serve with
a reduced rank, which was the condition imposed on him by the British, Washington
served with distinction as an aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock. At the
Battle of the Monongahela on July 9, 1755, the 1,500 British and colonial American
troops were ambushed and defeated by 30 French soldiers and 450 Indians. Wash-
ington demonstrated his courage when several horses were shot from under him,
General George Washington on horseback during the battle of Princeton, New Jersey , in 1777. Library
of Congress.
Washington, George 757
his numerous layers of clothing saved him from four bullets, and he saved soldiers
while Braddock and many of his British troops were killed. Washington resigned
once again, in 1758, and devoted his time to Mount Vernon and his business
ventures.
He married the wealthy widow of Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, 28-year-old Martha
Dandridge Custis, on January 6, 1759. She already had two children, John Parke
Custis and Martha Parke Custis, whom he raised as his own. The couple was happy
despite the fact that Washington did not sire children of his own. Washington ad-
ministered the Custis estate on behalf of the children. He also claimed land in West
Virginia as bounty for his service in the French and Indian War. Mount Vernon by
this time had grown to 6,500 acres with 100 slaves.
Washington believed British colonial policies were oppressive; this became
evident during his service in the Virginia House of Burgesses in Williamsburg from
1759 to 1775. Washington strongly resented the Proclamation of 1763 because it
restricted western expansion and controlled Native American relations with colo-
nials. He was enraged by the Townshend Acts passed by Parliament. Washington
was instrumental in leading the boycott of British goods in 1764 as a result of the
Sugar Act. Even though the Townshend Acts were repealed in 1770, tea was taxed,
resulting in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. In retaliation the British passed punitive
legislation. The Coercive Acts (known in America as the Intolerable Acts) further
enraged the Americans. Washington and his fellow plantation owners also strongly
disliked their continual indebtedness to London-based agents.
On August 5, 1774, Washington was elected by the Virginia Convention to attend
the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. On March 25, 1775, he was elected
to represent Virginia at the Second Continental Congress, where he served on three
committees. Ambitious and hoping for a military command, Washington wore his
red-and-white uniform. He was voted commander-in-chief of the continental forces
in a unanimous decision in June 1775.
However , being a good administrator does not equate to being an effective
military leader. Washington faced numerous difculties: his lack of military lead-
ership experience, the shortage of adequately trained men, and the paucity of
adequate supplies proved problematic. The one-year enlistment period meant many
men returned home, leaving Washington with a smaller army than he required. The
inability of the Continental Congress to meet his frequent nancial requests also
frustrated his ability to be an effective leader.
When the American Revolution broke out, Washington only had 14,000 troops.
Fighting between British and rebel troops broke out in Massachusetts when in July
1775 Washingtons troops surrounded the British in Boston. He occupied Dorchester
Heights for eight months and forced the British to evacuate on March 17, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, stirred great loyalty within the
new country. Washington rmly believed in its republican tenets and illustrated by
his personal involvement in the war that the Patriot cause was a worthy endeavor. He
rmly believed Parliament was tyrannical, acting against the interests of the colonial
population.
After his victory in Boston, Washington immediately decided to defend New York
City against General Sir William Howes superior land and sea forces. However ,
Washingtons inexperience became evident when he occupied an untenable
position and lost the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, and had to retreat
758 Washington, George
into Pennsylvania. By the end of the year , the troops enlistment period was nearly
over and he was in desperate straits.
Washington was not a particularly brilliant military leader. He rarely formulated
battle plans, he was overly cautious, and he often failed to use valuable military
opportunities to defeat the enemy. He generally only fought when he knew his
enemy was at a disadvantage and he knew he could win. Nevertheless, Washington
crossed the frozen Delaware River and staged a strategically brilliant attack against
the Hessians and captured Trenton, New Jersey , on December 25, 1776. He also
defeated the British at Princeton, New Jersey , on January 23 of the following year.
Although he had won three major battles, on September 9, 1777, Washington
lost the Battle of Brandywine and on October 2 he was defeated at the Battle of
Germantownthough this loss can be attributed more to bad luck than to faulty
military strategy.
Washingtons poorly equipped, badly fed, and inadequately dressed troops spent a
long cold winter at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. His 12,000 men built shelters that
barely protected them from the cold, while unhygienic conditions caused rampant
disease, by which Washington lost 2,500 men to typhus, dysentery , and pneumonia.
For its part, the Continental Congress was unable to offer nancial relief. But the
months at Valley Forge would become a time of transformation with the arrival of
a Prussian military instructor , Baron Friedrich von Steuben. He trained the troops
and taught them to march in unison, to lock muskets, and to execute a bayonet
charge. The Continental Army paraded on May 6, 1778, and proved that it was now
a reliable ghting machine. Other foreigner adventurers joined Washingtons staff,
including Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Pole serving as an adjutant, and the Marquis
de Lafayette, an ofcer in the French army. Financial and military support from
France eventually turned the tide of the conict in favor of the Americans.
In the course of the Conway Cabal, some members of the Continental Congress
intrigued against Washingtons military leadership and handling of the war by
calling him a weak general, and seeking his replacement. However , the plan lacked
adequate support, while Washington had countless supporters. Moreover , he was
liked by his troops for his strong character and his integrity. The charges were re-
viewed and dismissed by the Congress on January 19, 1778.
The war reached a stalemate from 1778 until 1781 when French aid arrived.
Washington spent his time planning strategy with the comte de Rochambeau about
the direction of the war and coordinating allied operations in a new theater of
operations: the South. A brilliantly coordinated sea and land operation against
Lord Cornwallis led to the British surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781,
leaving Howe penned up in New York with the last substantial British force left in
the American colonies. Washington and his troops eventually marched into New
York City on November 28, 1783, after the British evacuated the place. America had
won its war of independence. The news sent shockwaves around the world, and by
the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Britain recognized the independence of the United
States.
Washington returned to Mount Vernon after the war. He restored the badly
neglected estate by adding new buildings and adopting various new agricultural
practices and welcomed hundreds of visitors. He traveled to the Ohio Valley
in 1784 along with his family , visited friends and relatives, and became involved in
commercial projects and western development.
Washington, George 759
Washington had promoted a confederation of states for a number of years.
The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia in 1787 and the United
States Constitution was drafted. Washington was unanimously elected as president.
He accepted the position with some reluctance, as he had planned to stay re-
tired at Mount Vernon. His inauguration took place on April 30, 1789, in New
York City.
Washington declined the presidential salary of $25,000. His belief that a practical
executive structure would best serve the presidency consumed his time. He toured
the states to gauge opinion about major issues to try to prevent divisive issues from
developing. Washington effectively used his estimable administrative skills to create
a smooth-running presidency.
During Washingtons rst term as president he was also occupied with the serious
ideological conict between the secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who advocated
the right of individual states, and the secretary of the treasury , Alexander Hamilton,
who preferred a strong central government. Never a member of any political party ,
Washington attempted to mediate between the two, though he himself appeared
to favor Hamiltons Federalist ideas. He agreed with Hamilton that the federal gov-
ernment should assume the debts of the states and that a national bank should be
established, and he agreed with the introduction of an excise tax. Washington also
advocated a neutral foreign policy , an approach also opposed by Jefferson, whose
Democratic-Republican supporters often attacked his policies.
Washington also faced problems during his second term, which began in 1792.
American neutrality was a huge issue during the French Revolutionary Wars. The
issue upset the pro-French Jeffersonians. Washington could not excuse the cruelty of
the French Revolution and was upset with the cunning tactics of the French minister
Edmond-Charles Genet, who interfered with American politics.
Washington wanted peace with Britain. He accepted the Jay Treaty in 1794, which
resolved lingering differences between the two countries. Trade relations were
normalized and the political boundaries were adjusted. Some pre-revolutionary
debts were settled, and the British opened American trade to the West Indies. As a
result, the United States and Britain remained at peace for another 10 years.
Washington had agreed with Hamilton to impose an excise tax on distilled
beverages and liquor. This led to a popular uprising in 1794 known as the Whiskey
Rebellion. Washington made the uprising a test for federal authority , invoked the
Militia Act of 1792, and summoned 12,000 men under his personal command.
The uprising was easily suppressed. The Jefferson Democratic-Republicans were
especially vituperative against Washingtons handling of the uprising.
Washington left ofce in March 1797 after refusing a third term as president.
He had accomplished a number of major achievements: he had placed the ofce
of the president on a sound republican footing; American nances were rmly
established; Thomas Pinckneys Treaty , or the Treaty of San Lorenzo, with Spain
( October 27, 1795) had expanded U.S. territory; the Indian threat had been elimi-
nated; and the two political parties had reached agreement on the functions and
powers of the federal government. Washingtons Farewell Address, which cautioned
against partisanship and foreign wars, has become renowned in American history.
John Adams, his Federalist vice president, succeeded him.
In 1798 when war with France loomed on the horizon, Washington agreed to
accept what amounted to honorary command of the United States Army , but war
760 Waterloo, Battle of
with France never materialized. Adams awarded him the rank of lieutenant general,
the highest military rank at the time.
Washington was happy in retirement at Mount Vernon. He caught a serious cold
that developed into acute laryngitis and pneumonia. His medical treatment likely
caused his rapid decline, and he died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799.
Washington was buried at the family cemetery on his estate.
FURTHER READING: Achenbach, Joel. The Grand Idea: George Washingtons Potomac and the Race
to the West. New York: Simon and Schuster , 2004; Grizzard, Frank E., Jr. George! A Guide to All
Things Washington. Charlottesville: Mariner Publishing. 2005; Higginbotham, Don, ed. George
Washington Reconsidered. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001; Hirschfeld, Fritz.
George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal. Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1997; Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the
Frontier Rebels Who Challenged Americas Newfound Sovereignty. New York: Scribner , 2006; Jackson,
Donald, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Diaries of George Washington. 6 vols. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1976 1979; Johnson, Paul. George Washington: The Founding Father.
New York: Atlas Books/HarperCollins, 2005; McCullough, David. 1776: America and Britain at
War. London: Penguin, 2006; McDonald, Forrest. The Presidency of George Washington. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1974; Wiencek, Henry. An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the
Creation of America. New York: Farrar , Straus and Giroux, 2003.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Fought on June 18, 1815, between the Anglo-Allied army under Field Marshal the
Duke of Wellington and elements of a Prussian army under Field Marshal Gebhard
von Blcher , and a French army under Napoleon, Waterloo was the last and most
decisive battle of the Napoleonic Wars.
Following his departure from exile on Elba in February 1815, Napoleon landed
on the south coast of France, gathering supporters as he marched triumphantly
on Paris, from which the recently restored Bourbon monarchy under Louis XVIII
ed. The Allied powers, still meeting at the Congress of Vienna, where they were
seeking to redraw the map of Europe after the turmoil of over two decades of war ,
immediately declared the French emperor an outlaw and mobilized their armies
against him.
The only forces close at hand were those in Belgium under Wellington and
Blcher , who were confronted separately but simultaneously by the French on
June 16 at Quatre Bras and Ligny , respectively. Despite taking a severe mauling,
the Prussians withdrew east, Blcher promising the Duke his assistance at the next
engagement. This came two days later , 12 miles south of Brussels on the Charleroi
road, around a ridge called Mont St. Jean. There, Wellington, with 68,000 troops,
established a defensive position after his retreat from Quatre Bras and was con-
fronted on the eighteenth by Napoleon, who with his army of 72,000 men intended
to push through to Brussels and seize Antwerp, thus cutting off Wellingtons line of
communications and supply with Britain.
As heavy rain from the previous night had softened the ground, Napoleon waited
until approximately 11:30 a.m. to allow the surface to harden before opening his
attack with a massive artillery bombardment. Moving aggressively against the chteau
of Hougoumont, a fortied farmhouse and enclosure that protected the Anglo-Allied
Waterloo, Battle of 761
right, a French corps under Reille advanced as a feint to draw off Wellingtons re-
serves while the main French effort was to be concentrated against the enemy center
with dErlons corps. In the event, however , the assault on Hougoumont uninten-
tionally grew in intensity , attracting increasing numbers of French troops to this sec-
tor of the battleeld until the assault developed from a diversionary operation to a
battle within a battle.
Around 1:30 p.m., dErlon launched his attack, only to be repulsed around 2:00
by British cavalry , which, ploughing through his ranks in a frenzied charge, suffered
severe casualties of its own when it failed to maintain its discipline and galloped deep
into enemy lines. At about the same time, elements of the Prussian army , detached
from Wavre about 12 miles to the east, began arriving on the battleeld to bolster the
Anglo-Allied left and confront the French right ank. The Prussians arrival was un-
expected by Napoleon, who after Ligny had specically detached Marshal Grouchy
to follow and contain Blchers battered army in the area around Wavre. Still, the
emperor possessed the means to contain those Prussians who, in fullling their com-
manders promise, were gradually reaching the battleeld to aid Wellington. Lobaus
corps was duly transferred from the French center to the village of Plancenoit, on the
French right, to meet this new threat. It is indeed signicant to note that by evening,
something on the order of 50,000 Prussians would eventually reach the Waterloo
battleeld, either to bolster Wellingtons left or to engage the French right.
Apart from the ghting around Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, a fortied
position in the Allied center , a lull in the ghting took place around 3:00 p.m., as
both sides considered their next moves. A new and dramatic phase of the battle
began around 4:00 p.m., when Marshal Ney , the de facto battleeld commander
(as Napoleon was indisposed and headquartered beyond view of most of the
action), erroneously interpreted Wellingtons retrograde movement for a general
withdrawal. In fact, the Duke was merely redeploying his men behind the ridge
for better protection against enemy artillery. Sensing the moment opportune for
destroying his opponent while apparently in the process of retreat, Ney foolishly
launched a series of cavalry attackseventually involving 10,000 troopersagainst
the enemy center without the benet of artillery or infantry support. Stubbornly
executed though these repeated charges proved, they completely failed to break
the squares of British infantry that dotted the slopes and only brought a temporary
silence to the Allied guns, whose crews took temporary refuge in the squares as
French cavalry swirled ineffectively around them. By 6:00 p.m., the exhausted horse-
men, unable to advance faster than a trot, withdrewa spent force with nothing to
show for themselves but massive losses in men and horses.
During the course of the afternoon, as the Prussians continued to arrive at
Plancenoit in increasing numbers, Napoleon dispatched the Young Guard to expel
them. This expedient, however , proved merely a temporary measure, for with pres-
sure mounting on his right, Napoleon knew that time was running short. Anxious,
therefore, to break Wellingtons line before the Prussians turned the tide in the
Allies favor , the emperor redoubled his efforts to seize La Haye Sainte, a fortied
farm in the Allied left-center whose small garrison of Hanoverians had withstood de-
termined attacks all day. With much of their position on re, their numbers down to
a handful of weary defenders, and their ammunition exhausted, the few remaining
survivors of the garrison were nally expelled sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m.
This strategically important position, together with an ill-conceived counterattack
762 Whigs
ordered by the Prince of Orange, one of Wellingtons subordinates, left a large
gap in the center of the Anglo-Allied line. Fortunately for Wellington, who quickly
shifted units from other sectors to plug the gap, Napoleon failed to take advantage
of circumstances by severing the enemy line altogether.
Finally , between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., with the Prussians in possession of Plancenoit
and poised to roll up the French right, Napoleon launched elements of his Imperial
Guard up the slopes of Mont St. Jean, straight into the Anglo-Allied center. After
issuing an intense fusillade to the attackers front and ank, the British infantry
repulsed this elite corps of the French army , whose retreat caused panic within the
enemy ranks up and down the line, and Napoleons army rapidly disintegrated into
a eeing mass. Wellington signaled a general advance, and with Prussian cavalry
pursuing the remnants of Napoleons shattered force through the night and over
the following days, the campaign of the Hundred Days was effectively over well
before the Allies reached Paris.
Napoleon abdicated for a second time in scarcely more than a year , surren-
dered himself to British authorities, and was exiled on the remote South Atlantic
island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821. The signicance of Waterloo cannot
be overestimated, for it put an end to more than two decades of war in Europe and
marked the last time France would seek continental hegemony.
FURTHER READING: Adkin, Mark. 2001. The Waterloo Companion: The Complete Guide
to Historys Most Famous Land Battle. London: Aurum, 2001; Barbero, Alessandro. The
Denitive History of the Battle of Waterloo. London: Atlantic Books, 2005; Chandler , David G.
Waterloo: The Hundred Days. New York: Macmillan, 1981; Fletcher , Ian. A Desperate Business:
Wellington, the British Army and the Waterloo Campaign. Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount,
2003; Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Napoleonic Wars: The Fall of the French Empire, 1813 1815.
Oxford: Osprey , 2002; Hamilton-Williams, David. Waterloo: New Perspectives: The Great Battle
Reappraised. London: Arms and Armour , 1993; Haythornthwaite, Philip. Waterloo Men: The
Experience of Battle, 16 18 June 1815. Ramsbury , UK: Crowood, 1999; Hibbert, Christopher.
Waterloo: Napoleons Last Campaign. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Cooper Square, 2004; Hofschrer ,
Peter. 1815, the Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory. London: Greenhill, 1999; Hofschrer ,
Peter. 1815, the Waterloo Campaign: Wellington, His German Allies and the Battles of Ligny and
Quatre Bras. London: Greenhill, 1997; Houssaye, Henry. Napoleon and the Campaign of 1815:
Waterloo. Uckeld, UK: Naval and Military Press, 2005; Howarth, David. Waterloo: A Near Run
Thing. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003; Longford, Elizabeth. Wellington: The Years of
the Sword. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973; No, Albert. The Waterloo Campaign: June
1815. New York: Da Capo, 1998; Roberts, Andrew. Waterloo: Napoleons Last Gamble. London:
HarperCollins, 2005; Schom, Alan. One Hundred Days: Napoleons Road to Waterloo. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993; Weller , Jac. Wellington at Waterloo. London: Greenhill, 1992;
Wooten, Geoffrey. Waterloo 1815. Oxford: Osprey , 1992.
Watson-Wentworth, Charles
See Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth, Charles, Marquess of
Whigs
The term Whig arose in the late seventeenth century when it was applied, by
their opponents, to those politicians who strove to prevent James, Duke of York, from
Whigs 763
succeeding his brother Charles II, because York was a Catholic with absolutist
tendencies. The Whigs played a major role in achieving the Glorious Revolution of
1688 1689 and the Hanoverian Succession of 1714. They went on to dominate every
administration under the rst two Hanoverian monarchs (1714 1760). By 1760 al-
most every politician in Parliament would have described himself as a Whig. They
accepted Britains mixed government and balanced constitution, the sovereignty
of king-in-parliament, annual sessions of Parliament, the established churches in
England and Scotland with toleration for Protestant Dissenters, the rule of law, quite
extensive civil liberties for the British people, and a political system dominated by
men of substantial property (especially the landed elite). Since so many politicians
were Whigs and there was no organized alternative party in the state, Parliament
in the 1760s was dominated by a number of competing Whig factions that sought
power rather than pursuing distinctive programs. Ministries in the 1760s were usu-
ally coalitions of different Whig groupings.
Ministerial instability in the 1760s, the growth of popular radicalism, and, in
particular , the American crisis inuenced one of the larger Whig factions, led by
the Marquess of Rockingham and with Edmund Burke as its leading thinker , to
become an organized party increasingly based on principle, not just the pursuit of
power. Alarmed by George IIIs use of Crown patronage, convinced that there was
a conspiracy to keep them out of power , and deeply concerned at the treatment of
Wilkite radicals at home and American Patriots in the colonies, the Rockingham
Whigs claimed to be the only true Whigs and the only parliamentary group ready
on principle to safeguard the constitution. The Rockingham Whigs, with Charles
James Fox as a new recruit in the 1770s, blamed Frederick North, Lord North,
for pursuing the authoritarian measures that provoked the rebellion in America
and for badly mismanaging the American Revolutionary War. In power for a short
period after the fall of Lord North in 1782, the Rockingham Whigs brought the war
to an end, recognized American independence, and tried to reduce Crown patron-
age by passing several acts of Parliament. Rockinghams death in the summer of
1782 weakened the party , and Shelburne and Fox disputed the succession to the
leadership. When Fox allied with North in a surprising coalition and proposed the
unpopular India Bill, the king turned in late 1783 to the younger William Pitt, who
was only 24, as an alternative prime minister. Although in a minority at rst, Pitt
soon built up majority support when independent MPs (members of Parliament)
and many voters in the 1784 general election recognized his qualities and saw Fox
as too factious.
The Foxites were to be in opposition for decades, but they strove to present them-
selves as a true party of principle. They developed a sophisticated party organization
at the national and constituency levels to rally support, distribute propaganda, and
increase unity. They believed that they were the true inheritors of Whig principles,
and they were united in believing that the king had acted unconstitutionally in
excluding Fox from power and bringing in Pitt. The wealthy Duke of Portland and
other peers helped fund the party , while Fox, Edmund Burke, Sheridan, and other
major Whig debaters led the most effective opposition to Pitt in the Commons.
Unfortunately for them, the Foxite Whigs committed major blunders that played
into the hands of Pitt. Fox was for a time a bosom companion of the Prince of
Wales, encouraging his love of wine, women, and gambling. This greatly angered
the king. Fox committed a worse misjudgment when, in 1788 1789, George III was
764 Whigs
temporarily incapacitated by a mental disorder and Fox strove to pass a Regency
Bill that would allow the Prince of Wales to assume the full powers of his father.
Pitt was able to un-Whig Fox by accusing him of betraying his declared principles
of wishing to curb royal power. When the king was restored to health, Fox found
that he was even more unpopular with George III and had also lost much credit in
Parliament and in the country.
It was the French Revolution, however , that really destroyed the Foxite Whigs.
When Burke came out as a erce critic of the Revolution in his Reections on the
Revolution in France (November 1790), many of his Whig associates were surprised.
Fox was a rm admirer of the French Revolution, believing that the French had
overthrown royal absolutism to create a limited, constitutional monarchy of the kind
established in Britain in 1688 1689. When events in France became more anarchic
and violent, Fox was ready to excuse the actions of the French revolutionaries by
placing the blame on reactionary elements inside and outside France. When war
broke out in Europe in 1792, Fox blamed Austria and Prussia, not France. When
France declared war on Britain in early 1793, Fox blamed Pitt for supporting the
reactionary enemies of France. When peace negotiations failed at various stages
in the 1790s, Fox again blamed Pitt for being intransigent when France was the
more unwilling to make peace. The French Revolution encouraged British radi-
cals to press for extensive parliamentary reform in the early 1790s. Several of Foxs
younger colleagues in the Whig opposition believed that the granting of moderate
reform was the best response to this radical challenge at home and abroad. Fox
did not join their Association of the Friends of the People, but he did not oppose
its creation either. Despite the political damage caused by his view of the French
Revolution, Fox refused to change his mind and always regarded Pitt as the source
of the countrys difculties.
The French Revolution abroad, growing radicalism throughout the British Isles,
and a long, bitter war greatly alarmed conservative opinion in Britain. The clear
majority in Parliament and among the propertied elite, and perhaps among the
people at large, grew increasingly ready to defend the status quo and oppose
the French and radical threat. Fox found that many of his Whig allies could not
agree with his stance on the French Revolution. Burke had broken with Fox as early
as May 1791. Several other prominent Whigs deserted Fox in 1792 1793, before
Portland led a large element of the opposition into a grand coalition with Pitt in
July 1794. Fox was left with a tiny rump of Whigs in opposition, and he even stopped
attending Parliament for a time in the late 1790s.
Deserted by conservative opinion and unwilling to give a clear lead to the radicals,
Fox and his allies were a weak and disunited party for well over a decade. Although
they were part of a short-lived coalition in 1806 1807, they could not rally much sup-
port in the country or in Parliament in support of their policies. Their one success
was the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The successors of Pitt dominated politics
for nearly a quarter of a century after his death in 1806. The great war against France
kept the Pittites in power even when Napoleons France was clearly in the ascendant
because majority opinion in Britain continued to oppose French principles and
the extension of French power. The Whig opposition very slowly began to recover ,
however. The blood and treasure spent in the long war and occasionally wasted
on ill-judged expeditions helped them increase their support in Parliament and
in the nation. Some major cases of political corruption and the abuse of executive
White Terror 765
power enabled them to land some effective blows against the government. When
middle-class opinion began to rally again in support of moderate parliamentary
reform in the early 1810s, some of the Whigs sought to build a loose alliance with
these reformers. By 1815, the Whigs were again a signicant opposition party , but
they were still a long way from power. See also French Revolutionary Wars; Slavery
and the Slave Trade; Tories.
FURTHER READING: Elofson, W. M. The Rockingham Connection and the Second Founding of
the Whig Party. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996; Guttridge, George H. English
Whiggism and the American Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1963; Hill, B. W. British Parliamentary Parties 1742 1832. London: Allen and Unwin, 1985;
Mitchell, L. G. Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party 1782 1794. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971; OGorman, Frank. The Rise of Party in England: The Rockingham
Whigs 1760 1782. London: Allen and Unwin, 1975; OGorman, Frank. The Whig Party and the
French Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1967; Roberts, Michael. The Whig Party 1807 12. New
York: Macmillan, 1939; Smith, E. A. Whig Principles and Party Politics: Earl Fitzwilliam and the
Whig Party 1748 1833. Manchester , UK: University of Manchester Press, 1975.
H. T. DICKINSON
White Terror (1815 1816)
After the fall of Napoleon in June 1815, King Louis XVIII returned to power and
committed himself to a policy of reconciliation for France. But for more than a year ,
royalist elements punished former revolutionaries and supporters of the deposed
emperor. These royalists who were more royalist than the king conducted an
informal reign of terror , mainly in southern France. Once strongly established in
the new French Parlement, they then unleashed their program of revenge on the
entire country.
In June and July 1815, royalist mobs murdered, imprisoned, or exiled their
political opponents in locations like Toulouse and Marseilles. Efforts by the govern-
ment in Paris to appoint moderate administrators had no immediate effect, and the
kings reactionary nephew, the duc dAngoulme, placed his supporters in positions
of power in much of the south. A notable example of events here was the murder
of General Guillaume Brune, one of Napoleons subordinates, by a royalist mob in
Avignon.
By the fall of 1815, national elections had placed the extreme royalists in a posi-
tion to control Frances new Chamber of Deputies. They set up special courts and
widened the denition of sedition to trap as many foes as possible. They established
lists of those they considered especially notorious subversives (e.g., those who ral-
lied to Napoleon after his return from Elba). A prominent victim of such proscrip-
tions was the great French military hero Marshal Michel Ney , who was executed
for treason. The king and his ministers responded by trying to soften many such
measures. By the time the Chamber was dissolved in September 1816, the White
Terror had waned.
FURTHER READING: Resnick, Daniel P. The White Terror and the Political Reaction after Waterloo.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966; Roberts, James. The Counter-Revolution in
France, 1787 1830. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Macmillan, 1990.
NEIL M. HEYMAN
766 Wilberforce, William
Wilberforce, William (1759 1833)
William Wilberforce, a lifelong conservative, worked to abolish slavery and the
slave trade. Wilberforce was born on August 27, 1759, to wealthy parents. When his
father died, William was placed under the care of his Methodist aunt and uncle.
Before long he showed an interest in Methodism, though his High Church mother
retrieved him when she discovered this problem.
Wilberforce attended St. Johns College, Cambridge, where he was rather sickly ,
and did not enjoy his time there, though he met many people who would become
lifelong friends, among them William Pitt the Younger. Wilberforces wealth allowed
him to follow a political career. He became a member of Parliament for Hull from
1780 until 1824. His oratorical skills astounded everyone he met. He converted to
Evangelical Christianity in 1784 and became interested in social reform. He was
appalled at the working conditions faced by millions of his countrymen. He de-
livered his rst speech against the slave trade on May 12, 1789, but when in 1791
Wilberforce introduced a bill to end the slave trade, it was soundly defeated. He
reintroduced this bill every subsequent year. Wilberforce married on April 15, 1797.
The couple had six children.
In 1805 a law was passed that forbade British subjects from transporting slaves, but
it was blocked by the wealthy and aristocratic House of Lords, whose business interests
often depended on slavery. After Wilberforce wrote a public letter about the export of
slaves, whose numbers exceeded 100,000 annually , more notice was taken of this in-
humane policy. In 1807 the House of Commons and the House of Lords agreed that
the slave trade was inhumane and unjust. The proposal succeeded and the slave trade
was abolished throughout the British Empire. Nevertheless, in practice the trade did
not endeven though British captains received hefty nes for transporting slaves.
Wilberforce joined the campaign to abolish the slave trade entirely. The Slavery Aboli-
tion Act was passed in August 1833, just after Wilberforces death on July 29.
FURTHER READING: Pollock, John. Wilberforce. London: Constable, 1977; Steele Everett,
Betty. Freedom Fighter: The Story of William Wilberforce. Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature
Crusade. 1994; Wilberforce, Wiliam. A Practical View of Christianity. Edited by Kevin C.
Belamonte. Peabody , MA: Hendrickson, 1996.
ANNETTE RICHARDSON
Wilkes, John (1725 1797)
The son of a prosperous malt distiller , Wilkes was born in London. Witty , intelli-
gent, and eminently sociable, he was cultured and well educated yet a notorious rake
and blasphemer. In 1747 he married an older , wealthy woman and had a beloved
daughter Mary (Polly) but abandoned his wife in 1757. Thereafter he had several
mistresses and at least two illegitimate children. He joined the Hell-Fire Club at Med-
menham and wrote his Essay on Woman, an obscene parody of Alexander Popes Essay
on Man. He entered the House of Commons as a member for Aylesbury in 1757.
He was not a very successful MP because he was a poor public speaker and debater. He
was to win much greater fame and notoriety with his pen. Having been a supporter of
William Pitt the Elder , Earl of Chatham, during the latters great military successes, he
became a erce critic of the ministers who succeeded him in the early 1760s.
Wilkes, John 767
On June 5, 1762, Wilkes established his political weekly , the North Briton, and
used it to attack the peace policies of the Bute and Grenville administrations. Issue
number 45 of the North Briton nally overstepped the mark in attacking Grenvilles
odious measures, and the government prosecuted him for seditious libel. The
ministry blundered, however , by using a general warrant directed against the au-
thors, printers, and publishers of the North Briton, without mentioning anyone by
name. Wilkes challenged the legality of general warrants on principle and sought
damages for false arrest. The ministrys use of general warrants was ruled unlawful
by the courts in 1764 and 1765, and their use against individuals was thereafter
abandoned. Wilkes had won an important legal victory and became identied as
a friend of liberty. The ministry used a copy of his Essay on Woman, however , to
blacken his reputation in the House of Lords (where it was read out). The House
of Commons condemned number 45 of the North Briton as a seditious libel and
denied that parliamentary privilege could be used to prevent Wilkes from being
prosecuted in the courts. Having been wounded in a duel with a fellow MP, Wilkes
feared the vindictiveness of his opponents and ed to France in December 1763. In
January 1764 he was expelled from the House of Commons for publishing the North
Briton, and on February 21, he was condemned in the courts for publishing both the
North Briton and the Essay on Woman. After failing to appear in court, he was nally
outlawed on November 1, 1764.
Wilkes enjoyed the life of a rake and an intellectual on the Continent but fell
heavily in debt. He made short secret visits back home in a vain attempt to secure
a pardon before returning permanently in February 1768 to participate in the
general election. Heavily defeated in London, he stood as a candidate for Middle-
sex. Superb organization and much popular support saw him come top of the polls
on March 20. He then surrendered to the courts. His outlawry was revoked on a
technicality , but he was sentenced to two years imprisonment on June 14 for his
two seditious libels. On February 3, 1769, while he was in prison, the House of
Commons expelled him and called a by-election in Middlesex. Wilkes was returned
unopposed. Expelled again, he was again returned unopposed in March. At the
third by-election on April 13, a government supporter , Henry Luttrell, stood against
the absent Wilkes. Although Luttrell was heavily defeated, the House of Commons
declared him the rightful MP (member of Parliament) for the county. This played
into Wilkess hands. He was now able to wage a massive and impressive popular cam-
paign as the champion of liberty. He used the Middlesex election case to argue that
ministers were disenfranchising the voters and subverting the constitution.
This campaign helped Wilkes to widen popular participation in politics and to
build up a power base in London. A Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights
was established to promote the Middlesex election issue and to raise funds to pay
Wilkess huge debts. Wilkite supporters began to capture control of the ofces and
the common council of the city of London. Wilkes himself became an alderman
while still in prison, then later sheriff, lord mayor in 1774 (after prolonged op-
position to him), and nally city chamberlain, in charge of Londons nances, in
December 1779. In all these posts he took his duties very seriously , and he was very
popular and effective. His greatest triumph was in the printers case, in 1771, when
he used widespread support in the City to force Parliament to give up its efforts
to prevent London newspapers from printing detailed reports of parliamentary
debates.
768 Wilson, James
Wilkes was elected MP for Middlesex in the general election of 1774. Several of
his supporters were successful in other seats, but Wilkes never led a radical party
in the House of Commons. He was a more diligent MP than before and a much
more frequent and effective speaker. He made many speeches in support of liberty.
While never supporting American independence on principle, he urged concilia-
tion, attacked government policies, agreed with the Americans that Parliament had
no authority to tax them, and denounced the war against the rebellious colonies as
bloody , expensive, and quite futile. On November 26, 1778, he was the rst MP to
urge the recognition of American independence. Wilkes was also the rst MP to sup-
port a motion for parliamentary reform, on March 21, 1776, when he advocated a
redistribution of parliamentary seats from rotten boroughs to more populous towns
and counties, and an extension of the franchise. His motion was defeated without a
vote. Also very liberal in his religious views, Wilkes supported the Dissenters Relief
Bill of April 1779, and he was active in suppressing the anti-Catholic Gordon riots
in London in June 1780.
After the American Revolutionary War , Wilkes became a supporter , though
largely a silent one, of the ministries of Shelburne and then the younger William
Pitt. Increasingly neglectful of his parliamentary duties, he decided there was no
point in contesting the general election of 1790. In his last years, he was a critic of
the violence and political extremism of the French Revolution. See also American
Revolution.
FURTHER READING: Cash, Arthur H. John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty . New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006; Christie, Ian R. Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform. New York:
St. Martins Press, 1962; Thomas, Peter D. G. John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1996.
H. T. DICKINSON
Wilson, James (1742 1798)
James Wilson was an American jurist, revolutionary politician, and a signer of
both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Of all
the Founding Fathers, Wilson was perhaps the most distinguished constitutional
lawyer , and he ended his career as an associate justice of the United States Supreme
Court (1789 1798). The son of a farmer , Wilson, who was born in Scotland, studied
at St. Andrews University and all his adult life would be inuenced by the ideas
generated by the Scottish Enlightenment, especially the philosophy of Thomas
Reid. The unexpected death of his father cut short his studies in 1762, and he
left St. Andrews without graduating. After trying his hand at many jobs, including
tutoring and bookkeeping, he immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1765.
Briey teaching at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsyl-
vania) he was awarded an honorary MA in 1766 and began studying law under
John Dickinson, the leader of the proprietary interest in the Pennsylvania colonial
legislature and conservative opponent of Benjamin Franklin. Called to the Penn-
sylvania bar in 1767, he later moved to the western Pennsylvania Scots-Irish settle-
ment of Carlisle. Opposing British colonial regulation and taxation, Wilson took a
leading part in Pennsylvanias revolutionary committee of correspondence and in
Pennsylvanias rst provincial convention. In the summer of 1774, he published
Wilson, James 769
Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament,
a work that opposed British imperial policy but also, nonetheless, reected the
moderate political position of many in Pennsylvania in 1774.
Elected to the Second Continental Congress in May 1775, Wilson continued to
take a cautious, moderate position, and although he later signed the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, his initial vote to delay the decision to declare independence
in June 1776 earned him the enmity of the more popular political element in
Philadelphia. Although he continued to support the independence movement, his
marriage to a local heiress, Rachel Bird, and his own involvement in speculative
land and business schemes, together with his political alliance with Robert Morris,
the wealthy nancier who was accused of war proteering, only increased suspicion
that Wilson was largely motivated by his own economic self-interest. Such suspicions
were compounded in October 1779, when Wilson undertook the public defense of
Quaker merchants accused of being Tories, an action that led to an attack on his
house in Philadelphia by a mob and the death of six people.
In something of a political wilderness, Wilson resurrected his career when France
appointed him its advocate general in America, a position he held until 1783. His
new position entailed advising the French on American law, and his political prole
was increased when the Congress, due to Robert Morriss inuence, appointed
Wilson a director , trustee, and lawyer to the newly chartered Bank of North America
in 1781. An economic nationalist and visionary regarding the economic potential of
North America, Wilson came to support a position in his Considerations on the Bank
of North America (1785) that reected the later position of Alexander Hamilton.
Appointed a Pennsylvania representative to the Confederation Congress in 1783,
Wilson became a vocal critic of the weak federal union under the Articles of Con-
federation. Appointed a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention in
the summer of 1787, Wilson took a leading role in the creation of a national consti-
tution in Philadelphia.
A noted lawyer , Wilson was probably the most systematic thinker at the conven-
tion. While more democratically inclined than most of the delegates, he passion-
ately believed in a system of checks and balances that would uphold the rule of
law. Believing in government administered by the great and good, he also believed
that government should be representative; be instituted to encourage the general
good; and, if power was properly controlled, be an engine to promote the gen-
eral happiness of the governed. As an active member of the convention Wilson
delivered a reported 160 speeches, and although allied to James Madison, he was
initially opposed to the Virginia Plan, as he thought it gave too much power to
the lower house of the legislature. Wilson, however , also opposed the Connecti-
cut Plan, the great compromise that preserved the equal representation of the
states in the upper chamber , as he thought the upper chamber should be directly
elected. Wilson was almost alone among his colleagues in believing that the execu-
tive should be directly elected and control an absolute veto. His most important
role, however , was as a member of the Committee of Detail, which transformed the
delegates ideas and resolutions into a formal documentthe actual United States
Constitution.
Wilson had misgivings about the Constitution but signed it and became the fore-
most advocate of its ratication in Pennsylvania; his inuential Statehouse Address
of October 1787 became, next to the Federalist Papers, one of the most inuential
770 Wollstonecraft, Mary
Federalist defenses of the Constitution and was published in 34 newspapers.
Following the ratication of the Constitution, Wilson returned to the law. Appointed
professor of law at the College of Philadelphia, he was instrumental in drafting the
new, more conservative Pennsylvania state constitution of 1790 and was appointed
by President George Washington to the United States Supreme Court. In the two-
dozen reports he wrote, especially the important Chisholm v. Georgia decision of
1793, Wilson upheld the notion of the sovereignty of the federal government and
the importance of federal judicial review.
Wilsons career as a Founding Father has been overshadowed by the careers of
many of his contemporaries, and although he was academically conservative, his
bankruptcy ruined his reputation. His increasing nancial speculations eventually
led to personal disaster , and to escape his creditors in Philadelphia, he ed to New
Jersey in 1797. Briey imprisoned, Wilson then ed to Edenton, North Carolina,
where he died of a stroke in August 1798. See also Committees of Correspondence;
Constitutions, American State.
FURTHER READING: Carey , George W. James Wilsons Political Thought. Political Science
Reviewer 17 (1987): 49 107; Hall, M. D. The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson,
1742 1798. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997; Harlan, John M. James Wilson
and the Formation of the Constitution. American Law Review 34 (1900): 481 504; McCloskey ,
Robert G., ed. The Works of James Wilson. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967.
RORY T. CORNISH
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759 1797)
An English radical who advocated rights for women, Wollstonecraft was born
in London on April 27, 1759. Self-taught, she opened a private school with her
sister , Eliza. From her experiences she wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
(1787), which advocated using Enlightenment ideals to educate women. She argued
that women were just as reasonable and capable of learning as men. In 1790 she
translated from German Christian Salzmanns Elements of Morality. She also published
A Vindication of the Rights of Men in response to Burkes Reections on the Revolution in
France.
Wollstonecrafts most important book was A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792), in which she extended the idea of equality espoused in the French Revolution
to women as well as men. She argued that men and women are equal because they
share reason. She claimed that women must gain equality by rejecting romantic
love in favor of reason; otherwise they will remain slaves to male domination. Her
posthumously published Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman used ction to illustrate the
theme.
In late 1792, Wollstonecraft moved to Paris to observe the events of the French
Revolution. In 1793 she married an American, Gilbert Imlay , whose daughter (Fanny
Imlay) she bore on May 14, 1794. That same year she published Historical and Moral
View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. Deserted by Imlay , Wollstonecraft
married William Godwin on March 29, 1797, but she died of puerperal fever on
September 10 of that year , after bearing Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the future
Mary Shelley , author of Frankenstein) on August 30.
Women (American) 771
FURTHER READING: Wollstonecraft, Mary. Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1975; Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: An Authoritative
Text, Backgrounds, Criticism. Edited by Carol H. Poston. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.
ANDREW J. WASKEY
Women (American)
The lives of eighteenth-century American women centered on the family. The
American Revolution offered women an opportunity to expand their lives beyond
the home, at least for a limited time period. The Revolution affected women of
different race, classes, and status in different ways. It provided white middle-class
women with new roles, such as performing mens work by running farms and busi-
nesses, often with great trepidation at the outset. Abigail Smith Adams (1744 1818),
wife of future president John Adams, not only managed the family farm and its
workers but also conducted extensive nancial enterprises unusual for women at
the time. She purchased and speculated in land in addition to selling goods that
her husband brought back from England. Patriot women experienced increased
pride and self-respect. They learned to manage nancial affairs and to act autono-
mously while their husbands were at the front. As far as Native American women
were concerned, the Revolution did not bring about positive changes. For African
Americans, wartime conditions enabled many slaves to acquire new liberties: slavery
was eliminated in every state north of Maryland.
Struggling to provide for their families, women banded together in times of
dearth and high ination to demonstrate their demands and dissatisfactions. They
attacked merchants, especially those with Loyalist leanings who were suspected of
hoarding, and demanded goods at a just price. When they met with resistance,
they seized the goods, sometimes leaving the amount of money they believed to be
just. Women participating in boycotts simply made different decisions about what
items to purchase and consume; they did not move beyond the boundaries of the
feminine sphere. When colonial leaders began to stress the need for homespun
cloth to be produced as a substitute for British cloth, women were not asked to
take on an unfeminine task: spinning was the very role symbolic of femininity
itself.
From the 1760s, women formed anti-tea leagues and ladies associations, which
provided crucial support for the boycotts and non-importation efforts of the men.
Patriot women increased their production and use of homespun clothes and avoided
British-made goods. They drank herbal teas and coffee rather than British tea after
the passing of the Townshend Acts of 1767. Male leaders knew that womens coop-
eration was necessary to ensure that colonists would forego the use of tea and luxury
goods until the act was repealed. Male leaders of the boycott movement needed
female support, but they wanted to set the limits of womens activism. They did not
expect or necessarily approve of clear signs of female autonomy.
This was clear in the well-known exchange between Abigail and John Adams. She
had asked her husband in March 1776 to ensure that the new nations legal code
include protection for wives against the Naturally Tyrannical tendencies of their
spouses. In reply , her husband declared, I cannot but laugh at your extraordinary
Code of Laws. He failed to come to terms with the implications raised by the
772 Women (American)
growing interest in politics among colonial women. He could deal with his wifes
display of independent thought only by refusing to take it seriously.
Although women were excluded from participating in the politics of government
before and after the Revolution, the New Jersey state constitution of 1776 allowed
everyone who had lived in the state for one year and who owned 50 of property
to vote. Unmarried women voted in this state until 1807, when the Democratic-
Republican Party ended this right. By the 1780s, women had become politically
literate in the sense that they were widely read in political literature and joined
in the debates. For example, in the South, groups of women generally supported
non-importation policies and did not conne such support to the issue of tea. The
womens meeting satirized in the famous British cartoon of the so-called Edenton
Ladies Tea Party illustrates this. The agreement signed in October 1774 by 51 female
North Carolinians did not mention tea. Instead, the women declared their sincere
adherence to the resolves of the Provincial Congress and proclaimed it their duty
to do everything as far as lies in our power to support the publick good. This
simple statement had unprecedented implications. The Edenton women were not
only asserting their right to support political measures, but they were also taking
upon themselves a duty to work for the common good. It marked an important
turning point in American womens political perceptions, signaling the start of a
process by which they would eventually come to regard themselves as participants in
the polity rather than as females with purely private concerns.
The Daughters of Liberty and other organizations like it that promoted the
Patriot cause paralleled those of men. Women attended and sponsored bonre
rallies, and they burned tax collectors efgies and produced their own anti-British
propaganda. As individuals, they inuenced the men in their efforts to support the
revolutionary cause by withdrawing their womanly favors, services, and esteem. As
professional printers and propagandists, women produced important revolutionary
broadsides, newspapers, and documents.
Until recently , most scholarly studies of the American Revolution neglected the role
of women in the army simply because they tended to examine it from the perspective
of senior commanders. They did not analyze the army from the viewpoint of the foot
soldier and the thousands of women who followed the troops. From this perspective,
the army looks far less professional and far more disorganized. Camp followers, as
they were known, worked as cooks, nurses, and washerwomen, as well as undertak-
ers for the dead. Camp followers were usually the wives and children of soldiers. The
most famous was Molly Pitcher (1754 1832), who earned this name at the Battle of
Monmouth while carrying water from a nearby spring to American troops. After her
husband, John Casper Hays, was wounded, she was in charge of the cannon of Colo-
nel William Irvines Seventh Company of the Pennsylvania Artillery until the end of
the war. The daughter of a German dairyman in Mercer County , New Jersey , her true
name was Mary Ludwig. Patriots were skeptical about giving women like Molly Pitcher
ofcial status in the army; Washington objected to a xed quota of women. He saw
them as a great hindrance, notwithstanding the fact that these women provided es-
sential services in an army that lacked the support staff more associated with modern
military. In addition to the tasks mentioned above, these women provided solace for
the men. By the end of the war , Washingtons General Orders established a ratio of
one woman for every 15 men in a regiment. Although statistics for men and women
in the army are often unreliable, Linda Grant De Pauw estimates that in the course of
the war , some 20,000 women served in the Continental Army.
Women (American) 773
A number of women disguised themselves as men and fought in the army. One of
these, Deborah Samson (1760 1827), fought for two-and-a-half years in the Fourth
Massachusetts Regiment before she was discovered to be a woman after she was
injured. She took the name of Robert Shurtliff or Shirtliffe. Congress did grant her
husband a pension later in lifeafter she had diedas the widower of a revolution-
ary soldier. She welcomed the war as a kind of liberation from the restrictions on
female behavior. Margaret Corbin (1751 1789), a soldiers wife and camp follower ,
survived the British attack on Fort Washington. After her husband was killed, she
took his place in the line of duty.
Those women who did not ght or serve as camp followers assumed the respon-
sibilities and positions of the men who volunteered and served in the army: they
sewed clothes for soldiers, rolled bandages, and prepared foodstuffs for the front. In
addition, they fought British soldiers who attempted to attack their property. Nancy
Hart (1735? 1830) earned the name Amazon Warrior for shooting British soldiers
who approached her property. Women provided medical services by converting
their homes into makeshift hospitals or by providing local medical services, as was
done by the Quaker widow Margaret Hill Morris (1737 1816) of Burlington, New
Jersey. Traditional medicines such as herbal remedies were the most common form
of treatment.
Loyalist women were no less committed to their cause than Patriot women.
Approximately 15 percent of adult white male Loyalists took up arms for Britain.
Among women it was about 5.5 percent. Some helped British soldiers by carrying
letters through the lines. Others served as spies. Two women from upstate New York
worked to prevent the Iroquois from joining the Americans. The work of Loyalist
women was by denition clandestine and dangerous.
At the outset, the American Revolutionary War represented an ironic inversion
of the colonists themes of independence, liberty , and self-government. Initially ,
slaves found in the presence of British troops a possible avenue to freedom. In
November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, offered liberation to any
slaves who ed to join the British Army. The high number of women with children
in the resulting ood of runaways contrasts sharply with statistics from before and
after the Revolution, when very few women with their children escaped. Once
women were convinced that the presence of British redcoats and the general dis-
ruptions of the war made it possible to escape without abandoning their families,
they eagerly seized the chance. In a brief period when revolutionary ideology
caused many to question slavery and the disturbances of war diverted attention, free
blacks had room to maneuver as they began to participate in and institutionalize
Afro-American culture in black schools and churches. The opportunity to buy free-
dom for their kin, which occurred predominantly in the North and upper South
during the Revolution, further strengthened family life.
Native American women found no real sources of hope or transformation in the
Revolution through alignment with either the colonial or British cause. Warfare
touched them when both sides competed for Indian loyalties. For women it meant
increased mobility , traditional war preparations, and the loss of husbands and
sons. Most of tribes supported the British as a way of resisting the pressure of white
settlement in the west.
The theories of the Enlightenment raised new questions for women during the
revolutionary era. Enlightenment thinkers in France offered a powerful critique of
aristocratic society premised on the subordination of one class to another. The men
774 Women (French)
of the Enlightenment stressed human perfectibility. In addition, through education,
people could abandon the superstition and irrationality of tradition. Educated citi-
zens became the foundation of a rational and just republican social order. Men such
as Benjamin Rush promoted education for women. Educated women were useful
in the sense that they kept men on the path of virtue. A new ideology of republican
motherhood developed, and republican mothers would take up their new patriotic
duty of educating the next generation of moral and virtuous citizens. Citizenship
was thus gender based and brought about a new civic role for women. Nevertheless,
in the Lockean worldview, men remained the head of the household.
The future of a government based on such principles as power is derived from
the people, liberty , and justice offered hope to women. But the founding fathers
had a restricted view of the citizen. For them, women, slaves, men who owned no
property , children, and the mentally ill lacked the capacity for independent and
rational judgment for the general good. The phrase All men are created equal
used the word men quite literally.
Women did receive civil benets from the American Revolution. Divorce was legal-
ized in 1800 in 12 states; primogeniture was abolished in states that had practiced it;
and all children, regardless of gender , could inherit property equally , although cov-
erture remained in effect into the nineteenth century except for wealthy women.
The American Revolution brought signicant changes to womens lives, for they
contributed to the war effort at home and on farms, in aid of the armies, and, in
some cases, as soldiers on the battleeld. Historians are divided when they turn to
the question of what lasting gains women actually made. Certainly in terms of status,
work, and public roles, they gained very little. The principles of equality and natural
rights hailed by the Declaration of Independence did not apply to women, African
Americans, Native Americans, or white men without property. Nevertheless, many
women still experienced considerable growth in self-esteem, organizational skills,
and political acumen. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade; Women (French).
FURTHER READING: Gells, Edith. First Thoughts: Life and Letters of Abigail Adams. New York:
Twayne, 1998; Grant, De Pauw Linda. Women in Combat: Revolutionary War Experience.
Armed Forces and Society 7, no. 2 (Winter 1981): 209 26; Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert,
eds. Women in the Age of the American Revolution. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
1989; Hoff-Wilson, Joan. The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution. In
The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, ed. Alfred F. Young.
DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 1976; Kerber , Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and
Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980; Lewis,
Jane E. A Revolution for Whom? Women in the Era of the American Revolution. In A
Companion to American Womens History , ed. Nancy A. Hewitt. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002; Norton,
Mary Beth. Libertys Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750 1800: With
New Preface. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.
LEIGH WHALEY
Women (French)
The Age of the Enlightenment and French Revolution was a time of mixed
blessings for women. The Enlightenment produced three different principal views
about womens nature and abilities. First, women were mentally and sociall inferior to
Women (French) 775
men ( Jean-Jacques Rousseau). Second, women were equal but different (Voltaire).
And third, women were potentially equal in both mental ability and contribution to
society (the Marquis de Condorcet). These differing perspectives prevailed during
Womens experiences and roles in the French Revolution were diverse and
multifarious. They cut across social boundaries, religious differences, politics,
and geography. Similar to mens political views during the Revolution, womens
political views ranged from conservative and counterrevolutionary to radical and
militant. Although women in revolutionary France were excluded from the formal
political process in the sense that they could not vote and they could not sit as
deputies, they nevertheless retained some means of participation in the political life
of the nation. Political activism outside the formal structures of power , for instance,
was exercised through petitions, marches, and acts of violence.
Womens political activity and interest in the Revolution can be traced back to
the rst months of 1789, when, like many others in France, they assisted with the
drafting of cahiers de dolances (lists of grievances) in which their concerns were
made known. These cahiers provide an interesting window into the reforms that
women from different social and economic backgrounds sought. Working women
were keen to obtain improved working conditions and the reestablishment of me-
dieval guilds to protect their rights. Like their male counterparts, middle class and
noble women desired the acquisition of civil rights. For women, these included the
franchise, equality in marriage, and the right to initiate divorce.
Economic issues such as access to bread and employment were the traditional
concerns of women. The French Revolution was no exception here, as there was
an acute shortage of bread in the summer of 1789 and women were the primary
instigators of the bread riots of October 5 6, 1789, and the uprisings of Germinal
and Prairial (April and May 1795) of the Year III. Hufton has argued that womens
concerns were primarily bread oriented. Others such as Landes have contended that
female militants were not only interested in but acutely aware of the contemporary
political scene. In any case, bread, or the lack thereof, remained the primary moti-
vating factor for the march to Versailles on the rainy day of October 5. On the morn-
ing of October 5, women from les Halles sounded the tocsin and went to the Htel
de Ville. From there they marched to Versailles under the protection of the Marquis
de Lafayette and the more radical contingents of the National Guard. Once there,
they demanded bread. The king agreed to provide a regular bread supply , to con-
sent to revolutionary legislation proposed by the Constituent Assembly , and to live
in Paris. The pattern set by the uprising in October is of central importance for
understanding the involvement of Parisian women from 1789 to 1795.
French revolutionary women certainly had political as well as economic demands.
The October Days resulted in the transfer of government from Versailles to Paris.
Contemporary accounts demonstrate that women understood the role of the
deputy and that they supported what the deputies were demanding. Women joined
the protest against the 1791 Chapelier Law abolishing guilds that prohibited any
professional or workers organizations. Throughout the early years of the Revolu-
tion, women petitioned the National Assembly on several occasions. Middle-class
women wanted legislation that would improve the condition of women. Educated
women wanted to see the transformation of the womens place in the family and
in the economy , the legal equality of rights within marriage, the right to divorce,
776 Women (French)
and publicly guaranteed educational opportunities that would allow girls and
women to work. In 1791, Olympe de Gouges, a playwright and the daughter of a
butcher , drafted a Declaration of the Rights of Women in which she demanded
a representative institution for women. She argued that France now had rights
guaranteed to men in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(August 26, 1789) but that this document did not apply to women. In addition, de
Gouges demanded greater equality between spouses within the institution of mar-
riage similar to that championed by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights
of Women (1792).
The organization of female clubs was another avenue through which women
expressed their views and fostered their interests. Women were banned from the
Jacobin Club, but they did participate in the more popular Cordeliers Club and
formed the earliest of the truly popular societies, the Socit Fraternelle de lUn
et lAutre Sexe, Dfenseur de la Constitution. One of the earliest clubs in which
women actively participated was the Cercle Social, founded in January 1790. By the
autumn, it was explicitly supporting womens issues, and some prominent women
came to speak before it. Women were granted full membership in this society and
also served as ofcers. Three female members of the Socit Fraternelle, Etta Palm
dAelders, Throigne de Mricourt, and Pauline Lon, were active in revolutionary
politics from 1790 to 1793. DAelders, a Dutch baroness who had been in Paris since
1774, addressed the Cercle Social on womens rights twice in the late autumn of
1790. In February 1791, she introduced an ambitious plan to form womens patriotic
societies in each of the sections of Paris and in each of the 83 departments, all to be
coordinated by a central and federative circle. Her goal was to establish schools
and workshops to teach skills to poor girls. She did manage to buy apprenticeships
for three girls. Her club survived until she became a suspect in the autumn of 1792.
She immigrated to Holland in January 1793.
Throigne de Mricourt, whose real name was Anne Josphe Terwagne, was
described as the Amazon of the Revolution by contemporaries and historians alike.
The journalist Camille Desmoulins in his Le Vieux Cordelier called her the beautiful
Amazon of Lige, the Queen of Sheba. Armed with a saber and pistols, she
distinguished herself on June 20 and August 10, 1792.
The period from January 1792 to February 1793 marked a crucial stage in the
evolution of womens involvement in the politics of the Revolution. It was a year
of critical changes: war , the overthrow of monarchy , economic hardship, and the
creation of a National Convention, the rst truly republican assembly in France.
Issues with which women concerned themselves were the defense of Paris, divorce
legislation, and other laws concerning equal rights for women. In 1792, sans-culotte
women joined the Enrags, the extreme radical movement. Its leader , Jacques
Roux, spoke for the demands of the common people: political and economic
terror against all enemies of the sovereign people, stringent laws against hoard-
ing and speculation, and the immediate execution of the king. As political institu-
tions of Paris came increasingly under the control of the ordinary people, women
were allowed to have more power. But men were still the leaders. The Paris sec-
tions began admitting passive citizens in 1792; they had been meeting consistently
since July 1792. Leadership in the sections passed from rich lawyers and merchants
to small shopkeepers, revolutionary journalists, and less wealthy clerks. Sections
were never led by the poorest sans-culottes, but by those more literate and skilled in
Women (French) 777
speech making and petition drafting, skills necessary for communicating with the
Commune, the Jacobins, and the National Convention. Women were relegated to
the spectator galleries.
The real power of women was, at the best of times, limited and short lived. At
the height of its power , the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, a society
that brought together radical women, had several hundred members. Its presidents
included Pauline Lon and Claire Lacombe. Lacombe was a well-known provincial
actress who had acted in Lyon and Marseille. Arriving in Paris at the beginning of
1792 with Lon, she frequented the Cordeliers Club. She also participated in the
overthrowing of the monarchy and in the uprisings of May 30 to June 2, 1793. She
demanded the removal of nobles from the army in the Convention on August 28.
On September 5, she demanded the purication of the government. She was pro-
tected by the Hbertistes and was violently attacked by Chabot and other Jacobins.
Lon, the daughter of a chocolate maker , was the most radical of the two women.
In 1793, she became a leader of the female sans-culottes. By the spring of 1791, she
was a member of the fraternal society of her section and of the Socit Fraternelle,
and an associate of the Cordeliers. In March 1790, she petitioned the Assembly for
the right of women to bear arms.
The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women campaigned for a law compel-
ling all women to wear the tricolor cockade as a symbol of their republican loyalties.
They circulated petitions to popular societies and to the Convention for the imme-
diate implementation of price controls and the Law of Suspects, which the Enrags
and Cordeliers also pushed for. These measures were decreed by the Convention in
September 1793.
In addition to forming clubs and radical societies, women of the French Revolution
also held political salons. One such woman was Madame Roland, wife of the minister
of the interior in 1792. She held meetings in 1791 and 1792 at her Paris home at
which journalists and men from the various assemblies and from the Jacobin Club
would assemble to discuss public policy. Although Madame Roland did not actively
engage in the discussions, she noted everything in her letters and memoirs. Lucile
Duplessis Desmoulins and Louise de Kralio-Robert, both wives of journalists and
deputies, also held political salons in their homes. Robert, like Madame Roland,
was a journalist during the moderate years of the Revolution. While Roland was a
ghostwriter for Brissots Patriote Franais, Kralio-Robert was the editor of a major
newspaper , the Mercure National. Her husband assisted her with the publication of
this paper , a journal dedicated to promoting the new popular society movement
that existed between 1789 and 1791. Both played an active part in reconstructing the
Socit Fraternelle, of which Robert became president in March 1790.
The growing hostility of other women and male Jacobins brought about the ul-
timate defeat of the society. Market women, former servants, and religious women
opposed controls and severe punishments for former aristocrats and clergy. The Jaco-
bins began to regard these women as rabble-rousers. On October 30, the Convention
decreed all womens clubs and associations illegal. Chaumette, of the Paris Com-
mune, dissolved womens clubs because he said he had the right to expect his wife to
run his home while he attended political meetings. Hers was the care of the family:
this was the full extent of her civic duties.
The Thermidorians excluded women from the galleries of the Convention,
though women did participate in the popular insurrections that occurred during
778 Wright, James
the spring of the Year III (1795). The uprisings of Germinal and Prairial were a
response to food shortages and the Conventions lifting of the Maximum. Women
called for bread and the Constitution of 1793, but the government took harsh
measures to prevent a recurrence of popular uprisings. The aftermath resulted in a
number of suicides of women and children, who were shed out of the Seine. After
June 1795, it seemed the women of Paris had been a failure as a political force: clubs
were closed, and they were kept out of the Convention.
Although women never gained equal rights during the French Revolutionthey
had to wait until the twentieth century for themtheir activities did make a lasting
contribution in French history. They pressured government ofcials to act in times
of crisis; they contributed to the political education of the nation, and the content of
French political vocabulary was permanently changed by women. Indeed, much
of their revolutionary rhetoric survives to this day. See also Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; Women (American).
FURTHER READING: Elson Roessler , Shirley. Out of the Shadows: Women and Politics in the
French Revolution, 1789 1795. New York: Peter Lang, 1998; Godineau, Dominique. The Women
of Paris and Their French Revolution. Translated by Katherine Streip. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1998; Hufton, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the
French Revolution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992; Hunt, Lynn. Male Virtue and
Republican Motherhood. In The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture.
Vol. 4: The Terror , ed. Keith Michael Baker. Oxford: Pergamon, 1994; Landes, Joan. Women
and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1988; Levy , Darlene Gay , and Harriet Branson Applewhite, eds. Women in Revolutionary Paris,
1789 1795: Selected Documents. Translated with Notes and Commentary. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1979; Melzer , Sara E., and Leslie W. Rabine, eds. Rebel Daughters: Women and
the French Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; Spencer , Samia I. French
Women and the Age of Enlightenment. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984; Whaley,
Leigh. Partners in Revolution: Louise de Kralio and Franois Robert, Editors of the Mercure
National, 1789 1791. In Enlightenment and Revolution: Essays in Honour of Norman Hampson,
ed. William Doyle, Alan Forrest, and Malcolm Crook. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
LEIGH WHALEY
James Wright served as the third and last royal governor of Georgia from 1760 to
1782, except for a brief period during the American Revolution. Wright stood out
among Georgias royal governors for his popularity and effectiveness.
Born in London on May 8, 1716, Wright came to America in 1730 when his
father secured a position as the chief justice of South Carolina. He also entered the
legal profession, practicing in South Carolina and eventually becoming the attorney
general for the colony in 1747, a position he held for a decade. Over the course
of his career , Wright purchased a considerable amount of land and many slaves
in the colony. He married in 1742. His wife, Sarah Maidman, bore eight children
before her death in 1763.
Following Henry Elliss retirement, Wright was appointed royal governor of
Georgia as a consequence of his status in South Carolina. As governor , Wright
encouraged Georgias expansion by purchasing large tracts of land from the Creek
and Cherokee Indians. Though Wright was generally a popular governor , he was
Wyvill, Christopher 779
staunchly loyal to the Crown. Under his leadership, Georgia became the only colony
in which the Stamp Act was enforced. This led to his removal when rebels seized
power in Georgia in 1776. Wright escaped to London and there lobbied for forces
to retake the colony. When British troops arrived and occupied Georgia in 1778, the
king reinstalled Wright as governor. Owing to the strength of revolutionary senti-
ment in Georgia, however , Wright would hold this position for only three difcult
years. The British abandoned the colony in 1782, and Wright returned to London.
With other displaced Loyalists, Wright would spend the remainder of his life
seeking reparations for the losses he incurred during the Revolution. He never
recouped his entire fortune and died at 69 on November 20, 1785. He is buried in
Westminster Abbey.
FURTHER READING: Coleman, Kenneth. The American Revolution in Georgia, 1763 1789.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1958; Cook, James F. The Governors of Georgia, 1754 2004.
Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005.
CHARLES H. WILSON III
Wyvill, Christopher (1738 1822)
Wyvill was educated at Cambridge University and ordained as a clergyman in the
Church of England. He showed little interest in his clerical duties and preferred
to live as a country gentleman, especially after 1773, when he married his cousin,
who inherited large estates in North Yorkshire. From 1772, when he supported the
Feathers Tavern petition to abolish the requirement for Anglican clergymen to
subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, he was an active campaigner for religious
toleration for both Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics. Deeply concerned
by the American Revolutionary War , and convinced that this disaster owed much
to excessive royal inuence and executive power , he persuaded over 600 Yorkshire
gentlemen to join the Yorkshire Association on December 30, 1779, and to mount a
campaign to reduce Crown patronage and public expenditure.
Determined to prevent peers and MPs (members of Parliament) from dominating
this association, Wyvill sought the active support of country gentlemen, many of
them liberal clergymen. With deep commitment, enormous energy and remark-
able rmness of purpose, he corresponded widely , arranged county meetings,
and organized petitions for reform. He collected about 8,000 signatures for the
Yorkshire petition of 1780 and was active in encouraging many other counties and
boroughs to establish similar associations and to join in a nationwide petitioning
campaign for reform that eventually secured 60,000 signatures. Most of these peti-
tions supported economical reform, the creation of additional county MPs, and
triennial parliaments, but the Westminster Association adopted a much more radi-
cal program, which included universal manhood suffrage, annual general elections,
and equal-sized constituencies. Wyvill opposed such radical proposals, but he strove
to bring unity to the Association movement at meetings of Association delegates in
London from March to April 1781.
Wyvill organized another , but less substantial, petitioning movement in early
1783, and he strongly backed the efforts of William Pitt the Younger to pass moderate
reform bills in May 1783 and April 1785. These failed, and with the ending of the
American war , the reform movement waned in the later 1780s. The outbreak of
780 Wyvill, Christopher
the French Revolution soon revived considerable interest in parliamentary reform,
but Wyvill could raise little support for moderate reform among the gentlemen in
the country , while he himself was alarmed at the radical demands of the popular
reformers. He tried to stand on the narrow middle ground as the country was in-
creasingly polarized between advanced radicals and militant loyalists. He thought
moderate reform would prevent revolution but radical reform would precipitate it.
Wyvill opposed Pitts repressive legislation of 1795 and looked to Charles James Fox
for support in Parliament as he grew concerned once more that war was creating
waste, extravagance, and an increase in executive power. He was pleased with the
abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and continued to campaign for full religious tol-
eration. His caution and political moderation were condemned by John Cartwright
in a series of essays in the Statesman from October 1813 to March 1814. This helped
persuade Wyvill to retire from active political campaigning, but he remained inter-
ested in political issues and he maintained his voluminous correspondence. He had
little sympathy with the extreme mass radicalism after 1815 and little condence
in the reform credentials of the parliamentary Whigs. See also Slavery and the Slave
Trade.
FURTHER READING: Black, Eugene C. The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political
Organization, 1769 1793. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963; Christie, Ian R.
Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform. New York: St. Martins Press, 1962; Dinwiddy , John. Christopher Wyvill
and Reform, 1790 1820. York, UK: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 1971.
H. T. DICKINSON
Y
A lawyer, public servant, and political writer who was born to a middle-class
family, Yates was one of the most important Anti-Federalist gures in American
history . Known for his ardent opposition to the newly promulgated United States
Constitution, Yates consistently and persistently defended a more decentralized
administrative structure. While he started his career as a lawyer, Yates became
known for his political writings on the alleged dangers posed by strong centralized
federalism.
Born in Albany, New York, before the American Revolution Yates, the son of a
blacksmith, also mended shoes. His past as a shoemaker was used against him during
the controversy over the ratication of the federal constitution by representatives
from New York. This and similar experiences, as well as his personal observations
during his career, greatly affected Yatess stance toward aristocracy . His basic con-
tention was that aristocrats had conspired to weaken the status of the common
man in New York throughout the colonial era. For Yates, the U.S. Constitution
was nothing more than the extension of this conspiracy . He maintained that the
Constitution was designed to serve the special interests of aristocracy, whom Yates
distrusted entirely .
Yates attacked the Constitution on the grounds that it provided a centralized
system of administration, which, according to him, would be exploited as a means
of repression in the hands of aristocrats. For him, the amendments made to the Con-
stitution in 1789 were also unsatisfactory, for they did not address the most imminent
problemthe dangers posed by the centralized power .
FURTHER READING: Bielinski, Stefan. Abraham Yates, Jr ., and the New Political Order in
Revolutionary New York. Albany: New York State American Revolution Bicentennial Com-
mission, 1975; Lynd, Staughton. Abraham Yatess History of the Movement for the United
States Constitution. William and Mary Quarterly 20 (1963): 223 45.
CENAP CAKMAK
782 Yorktown, Siege of
One of the few decisive actions of the American Revolutionary War, the siege
of Yorktown (September 28 October 19, 1781) sealed the fate of Major General
Lord Cornwalliss British army of 8,000 troops in Virginia, leaving the commander-
in-chief of British forces in America, Sir Henry Clinton, with only one major force
remaining in the 13 colonies, at New York.
Operating in the southern theater, Cornwallis withdrew his army from the Caro-
linas without authorization from Clinton, and though he had defeated the Ameri-
cans on a number of occasions, he had to abandon a number of garrison towns in
order to consolidate his forces in Virginia, control of which the British government
was keen to retain. There he established a good defensive position at Yorktown,
whose port could provide a safe anchorage for a Royal Navy eet. This appeared a
sensible decision, for Cornwallis could, in theory at least, be supplied indenitely
from the sea. When, however, the British temporarily lost naval superiority to the
French at the Battle of the Virginia Capes on September 5 9, 1781, Cornwallis found
himself cut off from water-borne supply and communication. Recognizing Cornwal-
liss vulnerability, Major General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the
Continental Army, concentrated a numerically superior force of 9,500 American
and 7,800 French troops under Rochambeau, which he then marched south from
New York. On September 28, the Allied force began investing Yorktown.
Once he found himself boxed in by Washington, Cornwallis suffered from
greater disadvantages than merely the numerical one: the Allies possessed siege
guns and an abundant supply of ammunition, whereas the British had begun to
run low and could not replenish their supply . The outbreak of smallpox within his
Lord Cornwallis surrenders the British forces besieged at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781.
Library of Congress.
Young, Thomas 783
lines also contributed to Cornwalliss discomture. Compounding these problems,
Cornwallis, believing that his outer defenses could not be defended with the
number of troops available to him, withdrew to his inner works. This was probably
a premature decision, for he might have lasted several more weeks had he stood
fast. Now he could no longer hold up the besiegers, whose artillery pounded the
new, more cramped positions. Once the Allies seized two important redoubts on
October 14, Cornwalliss position became untenable, and he capitulated on Octo-
ber 19. Five days later, Clinton arrived in the Chesapeake with 7,000 reinforcements,
but by then he was too late and returned to New York.
The war in America was already unpopular in Britain, and Yorktown proved a
fatal blow to the government under Lord North, which opened negotiations in
April 1782. With the Treaty of Paris, concluded in September 1783, Britain formally
recognized American independence.
FURTHER READING: Chidsey, Donald B. Victory at Yorktown. New York: Crown, 1962; Davis,
Burke. The Campaign That Won America: The Story of Yorktown. New York: Dial, 1970; Ketchum,
Richard. Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution. New York: Henry Holt,
2004; Lewis, Charles Lee. Admiral de Grasse and American Independence. Reprint,. New York:
Arno, 1980; Morrill, Dan. L. Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. Baltimore: Nautical
and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1993; Wickwire, Franklin, and Mary Wickwire.
Cornwallis and the War of Independence. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.
Young, Thomas (1731 1777)
Born in Ulster County, Albany, New York, in February 1731, Thomas Young
began practicing medicine in 1753. A very well-known deist, Young was also a writer
and poet. Historical scholarship has emphasized Youngs role as a revolutionary
ideologue. He moved to Boston from Albany because of the Stamp Act passed by
Parliament in 1765, which imposed a tax on the American colonies for every piece
of paper used, including legal documents, newspapers, and even playing cards.
Young left Boston in 1774 before the war started due to a fear of being attacked.
Even though he was a practicing physician who liked his profession very muchso
much so that he reportedly developed medical theories, the accuracy of which he
insisted upon, so producing the term YoungismYoung became renowned for his
political activities. A radical, he was involved in almost every politically signicant
development, especially during the period between 1766 and 1774. He assumed
active roles in several local organizations in Boston founded to oppose British rule.
While publicly justifying the resort to violence against the opponents of freedom,
Young also extensively relied on peaceful means in his activism, such as organizing
colonists to prevent the importation of goods from Britain. He designed plans to
enhance local production and employment so that the American colonies would
become less dependent on the British economy .
After the colonies gained their independence from Britain, Young became an
ardent advocate of democratic reform. In consideration of his ideas, which were
progressive for the time, some called him a radical, a label reecting his enthu-
siasm and ambition for a democratic transformation. Young favored democratic
rule not only in theory but also in practice. He apparently held that legislatures
784 Young, Thomas
should ensure that people meet in public buildings to discuss communal issues and
participate in the decision-making process. Young was especially concerned with
the status of the lower strata of society and asserted that government should be
able to protect the poor and allow the participation of the underprivileged in the
political process. Youngs popular and democratic inclinations contributed to his
recognition as a political radical.
Youngs radicalism was mainly associated with his past experiences as a poor
man, and it was largely as a result of his poverty that he adopted a hostile attitude
toward the apparently unfair distribution of wealth and especially toward those who
held large estates. Indeed, he was always involved in conicts between the landed
and the poor . Youngs deism has also been cited by historians as more evidence of
his radicalism. In a society whose commitment to Christianity was axiomatic, Youngs
deism was equated with atheism. Young died in Philadelphia in 1777.
FURTHER READING: Edes, Henry H. Memoir of Dr . Thomas Young: 1731 1777. Publications
of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, vol. 11, 1906 1907 (1910): 2 54; Hawke,
David. Dr . Thomas Young: Eternal Fisher in Troubled Waters: Notes for a Biography . New
York Historical Society Quarterly 54 (1970): 6 29; Maier, Pauline. Reason and Revolution: The
Radicalism of Dr . Thomas Young. American Quarterly 28 (1976): 229 49.
CENAP CAKMAK
PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
In the interests of saving space, the texts of the Declaration of the Independence,
the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are not reproduced here. Readers
should note, however, that these documents can be found on the Web site of the
National Archives at:
www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration.html
www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html
www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html
All three documents, as well as the Federalist Papers, are also available online cour-
tesy of the Library of Congress at: memory.loc.gov/ammem/help/constRedir.html
The Currency Act, passed by Parliament, was intended to compensate for the
scarcity of precious metals in Britains North American colonies by controlling the
issuance of paper money. It proved exceedingly unpopular with the colonists.
Whereas great quantities of paper bills of credit have been created and issued
in his Majestys colonies or plantations in America, by virtue of acts, orders, reso-
lutions, or votes of assembly, making and declaring such bills of credit to be legal
tender in payment of money: and whereas such bills of credit have greatly depreci-
ated in their value, by means whereof debts have been discharged with a much less
value than was contracted for, to the great discouragement and prejudice of the
trade and commerce of his Majestys subjects, by occasioning confusion in deal-
ings, and lessening credit in the said colonies or plantations: for remedy whereof,
may it please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be enacted; and be it enacted
by the Kings most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the
lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled,
and by the authority of the same, That from and after the rst day of September,
786 Primary Documents
one thousand seven hundred and sixty four, no act, order, resolution, or vote of
assembly, in any of his Majestys colonies or plantations in America, shall be made,
for creating or issuing any paper bills, or bills of credit of any kind or denomina-
tion whatsoever, declaring such paper bills, or bills of credit, to be legal tender in
payment of any bargains, contracts, debts, dues, or demands whatsoever; and every
clause or provision which shall hereafter be inserted in any act, order, resolution,
or vote of assembly, contrary to this act, shall be null and void.
II. And whereas the great quantities of paper bills, or bills of credit, which are
now actually in circulation and currency in several colonies or plantations in Amer-
ica, emitted in pursuance of acts of assembly declaring such bills a legal tender,
make it highly expedient that the conditions and terms, upon which such bills have
been emitted, should not be varied or prolonged, so as to continue the legal ten-
der thereof beyond the terms respectively xed by such acts for calling in and dis-
charging such bills; be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, That every
act, order, resolution, or vote of assembly, in any of the said colonies or planta-
tions, which shall be made to prolong the legal tender of any paper bills, or bills of
credit, which are now subsisting and current in any of the said colonies or planta-
tions in America, beyond the times xed for the calling in, sinking, and discharging
of such paper bills, or bills of credit, shall be null and void.
III. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any governor or
commander in chief for the time being, in all or any of the said colonies or plan-
tations, shall, from and after the said rst day of September, one thousand seven
hundred and sixty four, give his assent to any act or order of assembly contrary to
the true intent and meaning of this act, every such governor or commander in chief
shall, for every such offence, forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand pounds, and
shall be immediately dismissed from his government, and for ever after rendered
incapable of any public ofce or place of trust.
IV. Provided always, That nothing in this act shall extend to alter or repeal an act
passed in the twenty fourth year of the reign of his late majesty King George the Sec-
ond, intituled, An act to regulate and restrain paper bills of credit in his Majestys
colonies or plantations of Rhode Island and Providence plantations, Connecticut,
the Massachusets Bay, and New Hampshire, in America, and to prevent the same
being legal tenders in payments of money.
V. Provided also, That nothing herein contained shall extend, or be construed
to extend, to make any of the bills now subsisting in any of the said colonies a legal
tender.
Pickering, Danby, ed. The Statutes at Large of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire-
land. . . [12251867]. London: His Majestys Statute and Law Printers, 17621869.
{
Passed by Parliament immediately after repeal of the unpopular Stamp Act, the
Declaratory Act reafrmed Parliaments right to enact laws pertaining to the North
American colonies.
An act for the better securing the dependency of his majestys dominions in
America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain.
Whereas several of the houses of representatives in his Majestys colonies and
plantations in America, have of late against law, claimed to themselves, or to the gen-
eral assemblies of the same, the sole and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes
upon his majestys subjects in the said colonies and plantations; and have in pursu-
ance of such claim, passed certain votes, resolutions, and orders derogatory to the
legislative authority of parliament, and inconsistent with the dependency of the said
colonies and plantations upon the crown of Great Britain: may it therefore please
your most excellent Majesty, that it may be declared; and be it declared by the Kings
most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and
temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority
of the same, That the said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and
of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown
and parliament of Great Britain; and that the Kings majesty, by and with the advice
and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, in
parliament assembled, had. bath, and of right ought to have, full power and author-
ity to make laws and statutes of sufcient force and validity to bind the colonies and
people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever,
II. And be it further declared and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all
resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings, in any of the said colonies or planta-
tions, whereby the power and authority of the parliament of Great Britain, to make
laws and statutes as aforesaid, is denied, or drawn into question, arc, and are hereby
declared to be, utterly null and void to all in purposes whatsoever.
Pickering, Danby, ed. The Statutes at Large of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire-
land. . . [12251867]. London: His Majestys Statute and Law Printers, 17621869.
{
The Sons of Liberty was a secret society composed of disgruntled American colo-
nists who objected to the imposition of taxes imposed by Parliament. They played
an important part in agitating for rebellion against Britain in the decade prior to the
outbreak of hostilities in 1775.
The following association is signed by a great number of the principal gentle-
men of the city, merchants, lawyers, and other inhabitants of all ranks, and it is still
carried about the city to give an opportunity to those who have not yet signed, to
unite with their fellow citizens, to testify their abhorrence to the diabolical project
of enslaving America.
It is essential to the freedom and security of a free people, that no taxes be im-
posed upon them but by their own consent, or their representatives. For What prop-
erty have they in that which another may, by right, take when he pleases to himself ?
The former is the undoubted right of Englishmen, to secure which they expended
millions and sacriced the lives of thousands. And yet, to the astonishment of all the
world, and the grief of America, the Commons of Great Britain, after the repeal of
the memorable and detestable Stamp Act, reassumed the power of imposing taxes
on the American colonies; and insisting on it as a necessary badge of parliamentary
supremacy, passed a bill, in the seventh year of his present Majestys reign, imposing
duties on all glass, painters colours, paper, and teas, that should, after the 20th of
November, 1767, be imported from Great Britain into any colony or plantation in
America. This bill, after the concurrence of the Lords, obtained the royal assent.
And thus they who, from time immemorial, have exercised the right of giving to, or
withholding from the crown, their aids and subsidies, according to their own free will
and pleasure, signied by their representatives in Parliament, do, by the Act in ques-
tion, deny us, their brethren in America, the enjoyment of the same right. As this
denial, and the execution of that Act, involves our slavery, and would sap the founda-
tion of our freedom, whereby we should become slaves to our brethren and fellow
subjects, born to no greater stock of freedom than the Americans-the merchants and
inhabitants of this city, in conjunction with the merchants and inhabitants of the an-
cient American colonies, entered into an agreement to decline a part of their com-
merce with Great Britain, until the above mentioned Act should be totally repealed.
This agreement operated so powerfully to the disadvantage of the manufacturers of
England that many of them were unemployed. To appease their clamours, and to
provide the subsistence for them, which the non-importation had deprived them of,
the Parliament, in 1770, repealed so much of the Revenue Act as imposed a duty on
glass, painters colours, and paper, and left the duty on tea, as a test of the parliamen-
tary right to tax us. The merchants of the cities of New York and Philadelphia, having
strictly adhered to the agreement, so far as it is related to the importation of articles
subject to an American duty, have convinced the ministry, that some other measures
must be adopted to execute parliamentary supremacy over this country, and to re-
move the distress brought on the East India Company, by the ill policy of that Act.
Accordingly, to increase the temptation to the shippers of tea from England, an Act
of Parliament passed the last session, which gives the whole duty on tea, the company
were subject to pay, upon the importation of it into England, to the purchasers and
exporters; and when the company have ten millions of pounds of tea in their ware-
houses exclusive of the quantity they may want to ship, they are allowed to export tea,
discharged from the payment of that duty with which they were before chargeable.
In hopes of aid in the execution of this project, by the inuence of the owners of
the American ships, application was made by the company to the captains of those
ships to take the tea on freight; but they virtuously rejected it. Still determined on
the scheme, they have chartered ships to bring the tea to this country, which may
be hourly expected, to make an important trial of our virtue. If they succeed in the
sale of that tea, we shall have no property that we can call our own, and then we may
bid adieu to American liberty. Therefore, to prevent a calamity which, of all others,
is the most to be dreaded-slavery and its terrible concomitants-we, the subscribers,
being inuenced from a regard to liberty, and disposed to use all lawful endeavours
in our power, to defeat the pernicious project, and to transmit to our posterity those
blessings of freedom which our ancestors have handed down to us; and to contrib-
ute to the support of the common liberties of America, which are in danger to be
subverted, do, for those important purposes, agree to associate together, under the
name and style of the sons of New York, and engage our honour to, and with each
other faithfully to observe and perform the following resolutions, viz.
1st. Resolved, that whoever shall aid or abet, or in any manner assist, in the introduction of
tea from any place whatsoever, into this colony, while it is subject, by a British Act of Parlia-
ment, to the payment of a duty, for the purpose of raising a revenue in America, he shall
be deemed an enemy to the liberties of America.
2d. Resolved, that whoever shall be aiding, or assisting, in the landing, or carting of such tea,
from any ship, or vessel, or shall hire any house, storehouse, or cellar or any place what-
soever, to deposit the tea, subject to a duty as aforesaid, he shall be deemed an enemy to
the liberties of America.
3d. Resolved, that whoever shall sell, or buy, or in any manner contribute to the sale, or pur-
chase of tea, subject to a duty as aforesaid, or shall aid, or abet, in transporting such tea,
by land or water, from this city, until the 7th George III, chap. 46, commonly called the
Revenue Act, shall be totally and clearly repealed, he shall be deemed an enemy to the
liberties of America.
4th. Resolved, that whether the duties on tea, imposed by this Act, be paid in Great Britain or
in America, our liberties are equally affected.
5th. Resolved, that whoever shall transgress any of these resolutions, we will not deal with, or
employ, or have any connection with him.
Niles, Hezekiah, ed. Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America. . . . Baltimore: W. O. Niles, 1822.
{
4. Circular Letter of the Boston Committee of Correspondence
(May 13, 1774)
Committees of correspondence were established to enable colonists from different
regions of the 13 American colonies to discuss colonial policy and coordinate their
activities in response to legislation passed by Parliament. The Boston Committee of
Correspondence, the rst such committee, was established by Samuel Adams in
1772; it sent out the following circular letter to other colonial committees in 1774.
We have just received the copy of an Act of the British Parliament passed in the
present session whereby the town of Boston is treated in a manner the most ignomin-
ious, cruel, and unjust. The Parliament have taken upon them, from the representa-
tions of our governor and other persons inimical to and deeply prejudiced against
the inhabitants, to try, condemn, and by an Act to punish them, unheard; which
would have been in violation of natural justice even if they had an acknowledged
jurisdiction. They have ordered our port to be entirely shut up, leaving us barely so
much of the means of subsistence as to keep us from perishing with cold and hun-
ger; and it is said that [a] eet of British ships of war is to block up our harbour until
we shall make restitution to the East India Company for the loss of their tea, which
was destroyed therein the winter past, obedience is paid to the laws and authority of
Great Britain, and the revenue is duly collected. This Act lls the inhabitants with
indignation. The more thinking part of those who have hitherto been in favour
of the measures of the British government look upon it as not to have been ex-
pected even from a barbarous state. This attack, though made immediately upon
us, is doubtless designed for every other colony who will not surrender their sacred
rights and liberties into the hands of an infamous ministry. Now therefore is the
time when all should be united in opposition to this violation of the liberties of all.
Their grand object is to divide the colonies. We are well informed that another bill is
to be brought into Parliament to distinguish this from the other colonies by repeal-
ing some of the Acts which have been complained of and ease the American trade;
but be assured, you will be called upon to surrender your rights if ever they should
succeed in their attempts to suppress the spirit of liberty here. The single question
then is, whether you consider Boston as now suffering in the common cause, and
sensibly feel and resent the injury and affront offered to here If you do (and we can-
not believe otherwise), may we not from your approbation of our former conduct in
defense of American liberty, rely on your suspending your trade with Great Britain at
least, which it is acknowledged, will be a great but necessary sacrice to the cause of
liberty and will effectually defeat the design of this act of revenge. If this should be
done, you will please to consider it will be, though a voluntary suffering, greatly short
of what we are called to endure under the immediate hand of tyranny.
We desire your answer by the bearer; and after assuring you that, not in the least
intimidated by this inhumane treatment, we are still determined to maintain to the
utmost of our abilities the rights of America, we are, gentlemen,
Your friends and fellow countrymen.
Cushing, Harry Alonzo, ed. The Writings of Samuel Adams. New York: G. P. Putnams Sons,
190408.
{
5. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress
(October 14, 1774)
The First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in September 1774, when
delegates from 12 colonies assembled to discuss the Coercive Acts passed by
Parliament. The establishment of the Congress set an important precedent in the
process of American independence, for the Congress declared that while Parlia-
ment had a right to regulate trade, it should not pass laws concerning the Ameri-
can colonies without the consent of the colonists themselves.
Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British parliament, claiming a power,
of right, to bind the people of America by statutes in all cases whatsoever, hath, in
some acts, expressly imposed taxes on them, and in others, under various presences,
but in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties pay-
able in these colonies, established a board of commissioners, with unconstitutional
powers, and extended the jurisdiction of courts of admiralty, not only for collecting
the said duties, but for the trial of causes merely arising within the body of a county:
And whereas, in consequence of other statutes, judges, who before held only es-
tates at will in their ofces, have been made dependant on the crown alone for their
salaries, and standing armies kept in times of peace: And whereas it has lately been
resolved in parliament, that by force of a statute, made in the thirty-fth year of the
reign of King Henry the Eighth, colonists may be transported to England, and tried
there upon accusations for treasons and misprisions, or concealments of treasons
committed in the colonies, and by a late statute, such trials have been directed in
cases therein mentioned:
And whereas, in the last session of parliament, three statutes were made; one
entitled, An act to discontinue, in such manner and for such time as are therein
mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading, or shipping of goods, wares and
merchandise, at the town, and within the harbour of Boston, in the province of
Massachusetts-Bay in New England; another entitled, An act for the better regu-
lating the government of the province of Massachusetts-Bay in New England; and
another entitled, An act for the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of
persons questioned for any act done by them in the execution of the law, or for the
suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New
England; and another statute was then made, for making more effectual provision
for the government of the province of Quebec, etc. All which statutes are impolitic,
unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional, and most dangerous and destructive
of American rights:
And whereas, assemblies have been frequently dissolved, contrary to the rights
of the people, when they attempted to deliberate on grievances; and their dutiful,
humble, loyal, and reasonable petitions to the crown for redress, have been repeat-
edly treated with contempt, by his Majestys ministers of state:
The good people of the several colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay,
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-
Carolina and South-Carolina, justly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of par-
liament and administration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed
deputies to meet, and sit in general Congress, in the city of Philadelphia, in order
to obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not
be subverted: Whereupon the deputies so appointed being now assembled, in a
full and free representation of these colonies, taking into their most serious con-
sideration, the best means of attaining the ends aforesaid, do, in the rst place,
as Englishmen, their ancestors in like cases have usually done, for asserting and
vindicating their rights and liberties, DECLARE,
That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable
laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or
compacts, have the following RIGHTS:
Resolved, N.C.D. 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty and property: and they
have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without
their consent.
Resolved, N.C.D. 2. That our ancestors, who rst settled these colonies, were at the
time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties,
and immunities of free and natural- born subjects, within the realm of England.
Resolved, N.C.D. 3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surren-
dered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are,
entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other
circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.
Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government,
is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English
colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot
properly be represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and
exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their
right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal
polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been
heretofore used and accustomed: But, from the necessity of the case, and a regard
to the mutual interest of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of
such acts of the British parliament, as are bonde, restrained to the regulation
of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages
of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benets of its re-
spective members; excluding every idea of taxation internal or external, for raising
a revenue on the subjects, in America, without their consent.
Resolved, N.C.D. 5. That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law
of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being
tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.
Resolved, N.C.D. 6. That they are entitled to the benet of such of the En-
glish statutes, as existed at the time of their colonization; and which they have, by
experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other
circumstances.
Resolved, N.C.D. 7. That these, his Majestys colonies, are likewise entitled to all
the immunities and privileges granted and conrmed to them by royal charters, or
secured by their several codes of provincial laws.
Resolved, N.C.D. 8. That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their
grievances, and petition the king; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclama-
tions, and commitments for the same, are illegal.
Resolved, N.C.D. 9. That the keeping a standing army in these colonies, in times
of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony, in which such army
is kept, is against law.
Resolved, N.C.D. 10. It is indispensably necessary to good government, and ren-
dered essential by the English constitution, that the constituent branches of the
legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legis-
lative power in several colonies, by a council appointed, during pleasure, by the
crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous and destructive to the freedom of American
legislation.
All and each of which the aforesaid deputies, in behalf of themselves, and their
constituents, do claim, demand, and insist on, as their indubitable rights and liber-
ties, which cannot be legally taken from them, altered or abridged by any power
whatever, without their own consent, by their representatives in their several pro-
vincial legislature.
In the course of our inquiry, we nd many infringements and violations of the
foregoing rights, which, from an ardent desire, that harmony and mutual inter-
course of affection and interest may be restored, we pass over for the present, and
proceed to state such acts and measures as have been adopted since the last war,
which demonstrate a system formed to enslave America.
Resolved, N.C.D. That the following acts of parliament are infringements and viola-
tions of the rights of the colonists; and that the repeal of them is essentially necessary,
in order to restore harmony between Great Britain and the American colonies, viz.
The several acts of Geo. III. ch. 15, and ch. 34.-5 Geo. III. ch.25.-6 Geo. ch. 52.-7
Geo. III. ch. 41 and ch. 46.-8 Geo. III. ch. 22. which impose duties for the purpose of
raising a revenue in America, extend the power of the admiralty courts beyond their
ancient limits, deprive the American subject of trial by jury, authorize the judges
certicate to indemnify the prosecutor from damages, that he might otherwise be
liable to, requiring oppressive security from a claimant of ships and goods seized,
before he shall be allowed to defend his property, and are subversive of American
rights.
Also 12 Geo. III. ch. 24, intituled, An act for the better securing his majestys dock-
yards, magazines, ships, ammunition, and stores, which declares a new offence in
America, and deprives the American subject of a constitutional trial by jury of the
vicinage, by authorizing the trial of any person, charged with the committing any
offence described in the said act, out of the realm, to be indicted and tried for the
same in any shire or county within the realm.
Also the three acts passed in the last session of parliament, for stopping the port
and blocking up the harbour of Boston, for altering the charter and government of
Massachusetts-Bay, and that which is entitled, An act for the better administration
of justice, etc.
Also the act passed in the same session for establishing the Roman Catholic re-
ligion, in the province of Quebec, abolishing the equitable system of English laws,
and erecting a tyranny there, to the great danger (from so total a dissimilarity of
religion, law and government) of the neighboring British colonies, by the assistance
of whose blood and treasure the said country was conquered from France.
Also the act passed in the same session, for the better providing suitable quarters
for ofcers and soldiers in his majestys service, in North-America.
Also, that the keeping a standing army in several of these colonies, in time of
peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony, in which such army is
kept, is against law.
To these grievous acts and measures, Americans cannot submit, but in hopes
their fellow subjects in Great Britain will, on a revision of them, restore us to that
state, in which both countries found happiness and prosperity, we have for the
present, only resolved to pursue the following peaceable measures: 1. To enter into
a non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement or associa-
tion. 2. To prepare an address to the people of Great-Britain, and a memorial to
the inhabitants of British America: and 3. To prepare a loyal address to his majesty,
agreeable to resolutions already entered into.
Tansill, Charles C., ed. Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofce, 1927.
{
The Articles of Confederation established the rst proper government of the United
States. The Second Continental Congress approved the Articles in November
1777, but full ratication by all 13 states did not occur until March 1787.
Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hamp-
shire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina and Georgia.
1 March 1781
I.
The Stile of this Confederacy shall be The United States of America.
II.
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the
United States, in Congress assembled.
III.
The said States hereby severally enter into a rm league of friendship with each
other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual
and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force of-
fered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sover-
eignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.
IV.
The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among
the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these
States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to
all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of
each State shall free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy
therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impo-
sitions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such
restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported
into any State, to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also
that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the property of
the United States, or either of them.
If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misde-
meanor in any State, shall ee from justice, and be found in any of the United States,
he shall, upon demand of the Governor or executive power of the State from which
he ed, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offense.
Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and
judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.
V.
For the most convenient management of the general interests of the United
States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislatures of
each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the rst Monday in November, in
every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them,
at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of
the year.
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor more than seven
members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three
years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of
holding any ofce under the United States, for which he, or another for his benet,
receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.
Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and while
they act as members of the committee of the States.
In determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each State
shall have one vote.
Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or ques-
tioned in any court or place out of Congress, and the members of Congress shall
be protected in their persons from arrests or imprisonments, during the time of
their going to and from, and attendence on Congress, except for treason, felony, or
breach of the peace.
VI.
No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall
send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference,
agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person
holding any ofce of prot or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept
any present, emolument, ofce or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince
or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them,
grant any title of nobility.
No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance what-
ever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled,
specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how
long it shall continue.
No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations
in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King,
Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the
courts of France and Spain.
No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such num-
ber only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled,
for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up
by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of
the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the
forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a
well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufciently armed and accoutered, and shall
provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of led
pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.
No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in
Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have
received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to
invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the
United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant
commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except
it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then
only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has
been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United
States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case
vessels of war may be tted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger
shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine
otherwise.
VII.
When land forces are raised by any State for the common defense, all ofcers
of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State
respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State
shall direct, and all vacancies shall be lled up by the State which rst made the ap-
pointment.
VIII.
All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common
defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled,
shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several
States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed
for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be
estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall
from time to time direct and appoint.
The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and
direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the
United States in Congress assembled.
IX.
The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right
and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the
sixth articleof sending and receiving ambassadorsentering into treaties and al-
liances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made whereby the legislative
power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and
duties on foreigners, as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the
exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoeverof
establishing rules for deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be
legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the
United States shall be divided or appropriatedof granting letters of marque and
reprisal in times of peaceappointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies
committed on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining
nally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of Congress shall
be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.
The United States in Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on appeal
in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between
two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other causes whatever;
which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following. Whenever the
legislative or executive authority or lawful agent of any State in controversy with
another shall present a petition to Congress stating the matter in question and pray-
ing for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given by order of Congress to the legisla-
tive or executive authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for
the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to
appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing
and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, Congress shall
name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of such per-
sons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners beginning, until the
number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven,
nor more than nine names as Congress shall direct, shall in the presence of Con-
gress be drawn out by lot, and the persons whose names shall be so drawn or any
ve of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and nally determine the
controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall
agree in the determination: and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day ap-
pointed, without showing reasons, which Congress shall judge sufcient, or being
present shall refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons
out of each State, and the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party
absent or refusing; and the judgement and sentence of the court to be appointed,
in the manner before prescribed, shall be nal and conclusive; and if any of the
parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend
their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence,
or judgement, which shall in like manner be nal and decisive, the judgement or
sentence and other proceedings being in either case transmitted to Congress, and
lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned: pro-
vided that every commissioner, before he sits in judgement, shall take an oath to be
administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the State,
where the cause shall be tried, well and truly to hear and determine the matter in
question, according to the best of his judgement, without favor, affection or hope
of reward: provided also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benet
of the United States.
All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different
grants of two or more States, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and
the States which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them
being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of
jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either party to the Congress of the United States,
be nally determined as near as may be in the same manner as is before prescribed
for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different States.
The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive
right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own author-
ity, or by that of the respective Statesxing the standards of weights and measures
throughout the United Statesregulating the trade and managing all affairs with
the Indians, not members of any of the States, provided that the legislative right of
any State within its own limits be not infringed or violatedestablishing or regulat-
ing post ofces from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and ex-
acting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to
defray the expenses of the said ofceappointing all ofcers of the land forces, in
the service of the United States, excepting regimental ofcersappointing all the
ofcers of the naval forces, and commissioning all ofcers whatever in the service
of the United Statesmaking rules for the government and regulation of the said
land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a com-
mittee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated A Committee of the
States, and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint such other
committees and civil ofcers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs
of the United States under their directionto appoint one of their members to
preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the ofce of president more
than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money
to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the
same for defraying the public expensesto borrow money, or emit bills on the
credit of the United States, transmitting every half-year to the respective States an
account of the sums of money so borrowed or emittedto build and equip a navy
to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State
for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which
requisition shall be binding, and thereupon the legislature of each State shall ap-
point the regimental ofcers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a
solid-like manner, at the expense of the United States; and the ofcers and men
so cloathed, armed and equipped shall march to the place appointed, and within
the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled. But if the United
States in Congress assembled shall, on consideration of circumstances judge proper
that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number of men than
the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, ofcered, cloathed, armed
and equipped in the same manner as the quota of each State, unless the legislature
of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spread out in
the same, in which case they shall raise, ofcer, cloath, arm and equip as many of
such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. And the ofcers and men so
cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the
time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled.
The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant
letters of marque or reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alli-
ances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and
expenses necessary for the defense and welfare of the United States, or any of them,
nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropri-
ate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased,
or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief
of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same: nor shall a question on
any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the
votes of the majority of the United States in Congress assembled.
The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within
the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjourn-
ment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the
journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties,
alliances or military operations, as in their judgement require secrecy; and the yeas
and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the
journal, when it is desired by any delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their
request shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as
are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several States.
X.
The Committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to ex-
ecute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United
States in Congress assembled, by the consent of the nine States, shall from time
to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated
to the said Committee, for the exercise of which, by the Articles of Confeder-
ation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the United States assembled be
requisite.
XI.
Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the
United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this
Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission
be agreed to by nine States.
XII.
All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under
the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance
of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against
the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and
the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.
XIII.
Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress as-
sembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And
the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and
the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made
in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United
States, and be afterwards conrmed by the legislatures of every State.
And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the
hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and
to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union.
Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority
to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our
respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and conrm each and every of the
said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the mat-
ters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage
the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations
of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said
Confederation are submitted to them. And that the Articles thereof shall be invio-
lably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be
perpetual.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done at Phila-
delphia in the State of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the Year of our Lord
One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Eight, and in the Third Year of the
independence of America.
Tansill, Charles C., ed. Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States.
{
7. Tennis Court Oath (June 20, 1789)
The deputies of the French Third Estate, upon nding themselves locked out of their
usual meeting hall, moved to the royal tennis court at Versailles and declared that
thereafter legislative authority would rest with them rather than with the king, thus
setting the stage for the establishment of the National Assembly.
The National Assembly, considering that it has been summoned to determine
the constitution of the kingdom, to effect the regeneration of public order, and to
maintain the true principles of the monarchy; that nothing can prevent it from con-
tinuing its deliberations in whatever place it may be forced to establish itself, and
lastly, that whenever its members meet together, there is the National Assembly.
Decrees that all the members of this assembly shall immediately take a solemn
oath never to separate, and to reassemble whenever circumstances shall require,
until the constitution of the kingdom shall be established and consolidated upon
rm foundations; and that, the said oath being taken, all members and each of
them individually shall ratify by their signatures this steadfast resolution.
Ministre de linstruction publique, ed. Collection de documents indits sur lhistoire de France.
Documents de la priode rvolutionnaire. 28 vols. Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1889.
{
These decrees established various rights for the French population and abolished
the centuries-old institution of feudalism.
1. The National Assembly completely abolishes the feudal regime. It decrees that, among
the rights and dues, both feudal and censuel, all those originating in real or personal
serfdom, personal servitude, and those which represent them, are abolished, without
indemnication; all others are declared redeemable, and that the price and mode of
the redemption shall be xed by the National Assembly. Those of the said dues which
are not extinguished by this decree shall, nevertheless, continue to be collected until
indemnication takes place.
2. The exclusive right to maintain pigeon-houses and dove-cotes is abolished; the pigeons
shall be conned during the seasons xed by the communities; and during that time, they
shall be regarded as game, and every one shall have the right to kill them upon his hand.
3. The exclusive right to hunt and to maintain unenclosed warrens is likewise abolished;
and every land-owner shall have the right to kill or to have destroyed upon his own
land only, all kinds of game, observing, however, such police regulations as may be
established with a view to the safety of the public.
All captaineries, royal included, and all hunting reserves, under whatever denomina-
tions, are likewise abolished; and provision shall be made, in a manner compatible
with the respect due to property and liberty, for maintaining the personal pleasures
of the king.
The president of the assembly shall be commissioned to ask for 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 offences of this kind,
and the dismissal of such cases as are now pending.
4. All manorial courts are suppressed without indemnication; nevertheless, the magis-
trates 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.
5. Tithes of every description and 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 beneces, members of
corporations, including the Order of Malta and other religious and military orders, as
well as those impropriated to lay persons and those substituted for the portion congru,
are abolished, on condition, however, that some other method be devised to provide
for the expenses of divine worship, the support of the ofciating clergy, the relief of
the poor, repairs and rebuilding of churches and parsonages, and for all establish-
ments, seminaries, schools, academies, asylums, communities and other institutions,
for the maintenance of which they are actually devoted. And moreover, 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.
6. 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, domanial apanagists, or to the Order of Malta, shall be redeemable;
champarts, of every kind and under every denomination, shall likewise be redeemable
at a rate xed by the assembly. No due shall in the future be created which is not re-
deemable.
7. The sale of judicial and municipal ofces shall be suppressed forthwith. Justice shall
be dispensed gratis; nevertheless, the magistrates at present holding such ofces shall
continue to exercise their functions and to receive their emoluments until the assem-
bly shall have made provision for indemnifying them.
8. The fees of the country curs are abolished; and shall be discontinued as soon as provi-
sion shall be made for increasing the minimum salary (portion congru) for priests and
for the payment of the curates; and there shall be a regulation drawn up t determine
the status of the priests in the towns.
9. Pecuniary privileges, personal or real, in the payment of taxes are abolished for-
ever. The assessment shall be made upon all the citizens and upon all property, in
the same manner and in the same form; and plans shall be considered by which
the taxes shall be paid proportionally by all, even for the last six months of the cur-
rent year.
10. 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 surren-
der of such privileges is essential to the intimate union of all parts of the realm, it is
declared that all the peculiar privileges, pecuniary or otherwise, of the provinces,
principalities, districts, cantons, cities and communes, are once for all abolished and
are absorbed into the law common to all Frenchmen.
11. All citizens, without distinction of birth, are eligible to any ofce or dignity, whether
ecclesiastical, civil or military; and no profession shall imply any derogation.
12. 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; but the
clergy of the diocese shall apply to their bishops for all provisions in regard to beneces
and dispensations, which shall be granted gratis, without regard to reservations, expec-
tancies, and monthly divisions, all the churches of France enjoying the same freedom.
13. The rights of deport, of cte-morte, dpouilles, vacat, censaux, Peters pence, and other
dues of the same kind, under whatever denomination, established in favour of bish-
ops, archdeacons, archpresbyters, chapter, curs primitifs and all others, are abolished,
but appropriate provision shall be made for those beneces of archdeacons and arch-
presbyters which are not sufciently endowed.
14. Pluralities shall not be permitted hereafter in cases where the revenue from the ben-
ece or beneces held shall exceed the sum of three thousand livres. Nor shall any
individual be allowed to enjoy several pensions from beneces, or a pension and a
benece, if the revenue which he already enjoys from such sources exceeds the same
sum of three thousand livres.
15. 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 xed which the king may in the future disburse for this purpose.
16. 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.
17. The National Assembly solemnly proclaims the king, Louis XVI, the Restorer of French
Liberty.
18. The National Assembly shall present itself in a body before the king, in order to sub-
mit to His Majesty the decree which has 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.
19. The National Assembly shall consider, immediately after the constitution, the drawing
up of laws necessary for the development of the principles which it has laid down in
the present decree which 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 both may
be printed, published, announced from the parish pulpits, and posted up wherever it
shall be deemed necessary.
{
9. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(August 26, 1789)
In the course of its debates, the French National Assembly established a manifesto
that articulated the principles and philosophy of the Revolution. The Declaration of
the Rights of Man stated that all citizens were equal under the law, were entitled to
freedom of speech and opinion, and possessed the right to liberty and property.
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, be-
lieving that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole
cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined
to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of
man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the
Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that
the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be com-
pared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and
may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens,
based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the main-
tenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the Na-
tional Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices
of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Article I. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be
founded only upon the general good.
Article II. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and impre-
scriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to
oppression.
Article III. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor indi-
vidual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
Article IV. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence
the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to
the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only
be determined by law.
Article V. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be pre-
vented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not pro-
vided for by law.
Article VI. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate
personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all,
whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally
eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abili-
ties, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.
Article VII. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and ac-
cording to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or caus-
ing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or
arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.
Article VIII. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously
necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inicted in virtue of a
law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.
Article IX. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest
shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoners
person shall be severely repressed by law.
Article X. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious
views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
Article XI. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the
rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but
shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be dened by law.
Article XII. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces.
These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advan-
tage of those to whom they shall be entrusted.
Article XIII. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and
for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens
in proportion to their means.
Article XIV. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representa-
tives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what
uses it is put; and to x the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the
duration of the taxes.
Article XV. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
Article XVI. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of
powers dened, has no constitution at all.
Article XVII. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof
except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only
on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnied.
{
The Decree on the Church declared all ecclesiastical property henceforth at the
disposal of the French nation but offered provision for those clergy who continued
to perform their religious duties.
The National Assembly decrees, 1st, that all the ecclesiastical estates are at the dis-
posal of the nation, on condition of providing in a suitable manner for the expense
of worship, the maintenance of its ministers, and the relief of the poor, under the
supervision and following the directions of the provinces; 2d. that in the provisions
to be made, in order to provide for the maintenance of the ministers of religion,
there can be assured for the endowment of each cure not less than twelve hundred
livres per annum, not including the dwelling and the gardens attached.
{
11. Decree Abolishing Hereditary Nobility and Titles (June 19, 1790)
In the course of a few years, the French Revolution swept away centuries of privi-
lege, including hereditary titles and other trappings of the hitherto entrenched aris-
tocracy and nobility.
1. Hereditary nobility is forever abolished; in consequence the titles of prince, duke,
count, marquis, viscount, vidame, baron, knight, messire, cuyer, noble, and all other simi-
lar titles, shall neither by taken by anyone whomsoever nor given to anybody.
2. A citizen may take only the true name of his family; no one may wear liveries nor cause
them to be worn, nor have armorial bearings incense shall not be burned in the temples,
except in order to honor the divinity, and shall not be offered for any one whomsoever.
3. The titles of monseigneur and messeigneurs shall not be given to any society nor to any
person, likewise the titles of excellency, highness, eminence, grace, etc.; nevertheless,
no citizen, under pretext of the present decree, shall be permitted to make an attack
on the monuments placed in the temples, the charters, titles and other tokens of in-
terest to families or properties, nor the decorations of any public or private place; nev-
ertheless, the execution of the provisions relative to the liveries and the arms placed
upon carriages shall not be carried out nor demanded by any one whomsoever before
the 14th of July for the citizens living in Paris and before three months for those who
inhabit the country.
4. No foreigners are included in the provisions of the present decree; they may preserve
in France their liveries and their armorial bearings.
{
In seeking to establish freedom for all before the law and a more equitable system
of justice, the French revolutionaries abolished the sale of judicial ofces, guaran-
teed trial by jury, and decreed that all such proceedings must be held in public.
TITLE I. OF THE ARBITERS
1. Arbitration being the most reasonable means for the termination of disputes between
citizens, the legislature shall not make any provision which may tend to diminish ei-
ther the popularity or the efciency of the compromise.
TITLE II. OF THE JUDGES IN GENERAL
1. Justice shall be rendered in the name of the King.
2. The sale of judicial ofces is abolished forever; the judges shall render justice gratu-
itously and shall be salaried by the state.
3. The judges shall be elected by the justiciable.
4. They shall be elected for six years; at the expiration of this term a new election shall
take place, in which the same judges may be re-elected.

. . .
12. They shall not make regulations, but they shall have recourse to the legislative body,
whenever they think necessary, either to interpret a law or to make a new one.
13. The judicial functions are distinct and shall always remain separate from the admin-
istrative functions. The judges, under penalty of forfeiture, shall not disturb in any
manner whatsoever the operations of the administrative bodies, nor cite before them
the administrators on account of their function.
14. In every civil or criminal matter, the pleadings, testimony, and decisions shall be pub-
lic, and every citizen shall have the right to defend his own case, either verbally or in
writing.
15. Trial by jury shall occur in criminal matters; the examination shall be made publicly
and shall have the publicity which shall be determined.
16. A privilege in matters of jurisdiction is abolished; all citizens, without distinction, shall
plead in the same form and before the same judges in the same cases.
{
13. Decree for the Maintenance of Public Order (June 21, 1791)
Fear of the mob motivated successive French revolutionary governments to issue
decrees such as the one reproduced below, which called for public calm at times
of crisis.
The National Assembly declares to the citizens of Paris and to all the inhabitants
of the kingdom, that the same rmness which it has exhibited in the midst of all
the difculties that have attended its labours will control its deliberations upon the
occasion of carrying away the king and the royal family. It noties all citizens that
the maintenance of the constitution and the safety of the empire have never more
imperatively demanded good order and public tranquillity; that the National As-
sembly has taken the most energetic measures to follow the traces of those who have
made themselves guilty of carrying away the king and the royal family; that, without
interrupting its sittings, it will employ every means in order that the public interest
may not suffer from that event; that all citizens ought to reply entirely upon it for
the arrangements which the safety of the kingdom my demand; and that everything
which may excite trouble, alarm individuals, or menace property, would be all the
more culpable since thereby liberty and the constitution might be compromised.
It orders that the citizens of Paris hold themselves in readiness to act for the mainte-
nance of public order and the defense of the fatherland, in accordance with the orders
which will be given them in conformity with the decrees of the National Assembly.
It orders the department administrators and the municipal ofcers to cause the
present decree to be promulgated immediately and to look with care to the public
tranquillity.
{
14. Decree Upon the Oath of Allegiance (June 22, 1791)
Amid growing fear of invasion by the royalist armies beyond the Rhine, the French
revolutionary government called upon its troops to swear to defend their homeland
from the forces of counterrevolution.
The National Assembly decrees as follows:
1. That the oath ordered on 11 and 13 June, the present month, shall be taken in the fol-
lowing form:
I swear to employ the arms placed in my hands for the defence of the fatherland
and to maintain against all its enemies within and without the constitution decreed
by the National Assembly; to perish rather than to suffer the invasion of French
territory by foreign troops, and to obey only the orders which shall be given in
consequence of the decrees of the National Assembly.
2. That commissioners, taken from within the body of the assembly, shall be sent into the
frontier departments in order to receive there the above-mentioned oath, a record of
which shall be drawn up, and to concert there with the administrative bodies and the
commanders of the troops and measures which they think suitable for the mainte-
nance of public order and the security of the state, and to make for that purpose all the
necessary requisitions.
{
By accepting the constitution of 1791, King Louis XVI formally acknowledged the
existence of constraints upon his rule.
Gentlemen: I have examined attentively the constitutional act which you have
presented to me for my acceptance; I accept it and shall cause it to be executed.
This declaration might have sufced at another time; today I owe it to the interests
of the nation, I owe it to myself, to make known my reasons.
Let everyone recall the moment at which I went away from Paris: the constitution
was on the point of completion; nevertheless the authority of the laws seemed to be-
come enfeebled every day. Opinion, far from becoming xed, was subdividing into
a multitude of parties. The most extreme opinions alone seemed to obtain favour,
the license of the press was at the highest pitch, no authority was respected. I could
no longer recognize the mark of the general will in the laws which I saw everywhere
without force and without execution. At that time, I am bound to declare, if you had
presented the constitution to me, I should not have believed that the interest of the
people (the constant and sole rule of my conduct) would permit me to accept it.
I ha only one feeling, I formed only one project: I wished to isolate myself from all
he parties and to know what was truly the will of the nation.
The considerations which were controlling me no longer remain today; since
then the inconveniences and evils of which I was complaining have impressed you
as they did me; you have manifested a desire to re-establish order, you have directed
your attention to the lack of discipline in the army, you have recognized the neces-
sity of repressing the abuses of the press. The revision of your work has put in the
number of the regulative laws several articles which had been presented to me as
constitutional. You have established legal forms for the revision of those which you
have placed in the constitution. Finally, the opinions of the people is to me no lon-
ger doubtful; I have seen it manifested both in their adhesion to your work and their
attachment to the maintenance of the monarchical government.
I accept ten the constitution. I take the engagement to maintain it within, to de-
fend it against attacks from without, and to cause it to be executed by all the means
which it places in my power. I declare that, instructed by the adhesion which the
great majority of the people give to the constitution, I renounce the co-operation
which I had claimed in that work; and that, being responsible only to the nation, no
other, when I renounce it, has the right to complain thereof. I should be lacking in
sincerity, however, if I said that I perceived in the means of execution an administra-
tion, all the energy which may be necessary in order to give motion to and to pre-
serve unity in all parts of so vast an empire; but since opinions at present at divided
upon these matters, I consent that experience alone remain judge therein. When
I shall have loyalty caused to operate all the means which have been left to me, no
reproach can be aimed at me, and the nation, whose interests alone ought to serve
as rule, will explain itself by the means which the constitution has reserved to it.
{
16. Brunswick Manifesto (July 25, 1792)
While the manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick, the allied commander-in-
chief, was intended to protect Louis XVI and his family from harm at the hands of
the French populace, it proved spectacularly counterproductive, for it turned public
opinion against the notion of restoring Bourbon rule in France and galvanized resis-
tance to the invading Austro-Prussian army.
Their Majesties, the Emperor and the King of Prussia, having committed to me
the command of the united armies which they have causes to assemble on the fron-
tiers of France, I have wished to announced to the inhabitants of this kingdom, the
motives have determined the measures of the two sovereigns and the intentions
which guide them.
After having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and possessions of the German
princes in Alsace and Lorraine, disturbed and overthrown good order and legiti-
mate government in the interior exercised against the sacred person of the king
and his august family outrages and brutalities which are still carried on and renewed
day by day those who have usurped the reins of the administration have at last com-
pleted their work by declaring an unjust war against His Majesty the Emperor and
by attacking his provinces situated in the Low Countries. Some of the possessions
of the Germanic Empire have been enveloped in this oppression, and several oth-
ers have only escaped the same danger by yielding to the imperious threats of the
dominant party and of its emissaries.
His Majesty the King of Prussia, united with his Imperial Majesty by the bonds of
a strict defensive alliance and himself the preponderant member of the Germanic
body, could not excuse himself from marching to the help of his ally and his co-
state; and it is under this double relationship that he takes up the defense of this
monarch and of Germany.
To these great interests is added another aim equally important and very dear to
the hearts of the two sovereigns; it is to put an end to the anarchy in the interior of
France, to stop the attacks carried on against the throne and the altar, to re-establish
the legal power, to restore to the king the security and liberty of which he is deprived,
and to put him in a position to exercise the legitimate authority which is his due.
Convinced that the sound part of the French nation abhors the excesses of a fac-
tion which dominates it, and that the greatest number of the inhabitants look for-
ward with impatience to the moment of relief to declare themselves openly against
the odious enterprises of their oppressors, His Majesty the Emperor and His Majesty
the King of Prussia, call upon them and invite them to return without delay to the
ways of reason, justice, order and peace. It is in accordance with these views, that I,
the undersigned, the General, commanding in chief the two armies, declare:
1. That, drawn into the present war by irresistible circumstances, the two allied courts
propose to themselves no other aim than the welfare of France and have no intention
of enriching themselves by conquests;
2. That they do not intend to meddle with the internal government of France, but that
they merely wish to deliver the king, the queen and the royal family from their captiv-
ity, and to procure for His Most Christian Majesty the necessary security that he may
make without danger or hindrance the conventions which he shall judge suitable and
may work for the welfare of his subjects, according to his promises and as far as it shall
depend on him;
3. That the combined armies will protect the towns, boroughs and villages and the per-
sons and goods of those who shall submit to the king and who shall co-operate in the
immediate re-establishment of order and of the police in the whole of France.
4. That the national guard will be called upon to watch provisionally over the peace of the
towns and country districts, the security of the persons and goods of all Frenchmen,
until the arrival of the troops of their Imperial and Royal Majesties, or until otherwise
ordered, under pain of being personally responsible; that on the contrary, those of the
national guard who shall ght against the troops of the two allied courts, an who shall
be taken with arms in their hands, will be treated as enemies and punished as rebels to
their king and as disturbers of the public peace;
5. That the generals, ofcers, under ofcers and troops of the French line are likewise
summoned to return to their former delity and to submit themselves at once to the
king, their legitimate sovereign;
6. That the members of the departments, of the districts and municipalities shall like-
wise answer with their heads and their goods for all offences. Fires, murders, pillaging,
and acts of violence, which they shall allow to be committed, or which they have not
manifestly exerted themselves to prevent within their territory; that they shall likewise
be required to continue their functions provisionally, until His Most Christian Majesty,
being once more at liberty, may have provided for them subsequently or until it shall
have been otherwise ordained in his name in the meantime;
7. That the inhabitants of the towns, boroughs and villages who may dare to defend them-
selves against the troops of their Imperial and Royal Majesties and re on them either
in the open country, or through windows, doors and openings of their houses, shall be
punished immediately according to the strictness of the law of war, and their houses
destroyed or burned. On the contrary, all the inhabitants of the said towns, boroughs
and villages, who shall submit to their king, opening their doors to the troops of their
Majesties, shall at once be placed under their immediate protection; their persons,
their property, and their effects shall be under the protection of the laws, and the gen-
eral security of all and each of them shall be provided for;
8. The city of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction shall be required to submit at
once and without delay to the king, to put tat prince in full and perfect liberty, and to
assure him as well as the other royal personages the inviolability and respect which the
law of nations and men requires of subjects toward their sovereigns; their Imperial and
Royal Majesties declare personally responsible with their lives for all events, to be tried
by military law and without hope of pardon, all the members of the National Assembly,
of the department, district, municipality and national guard of Paris, the justices of the
peace and all others that shall be concerned; their said Majesties also declare on their
honor and on their word as Emperor and King, that if the chteau of the Tuileries be
entered by force or attacked, if the least violence or outrage be offered to their Majes-
ties, the king, queen and royal family, if their preservation and their liberty be not im-
mediately provided for, they will exact an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance,
by delivering the city of Paris over to a military execution and to complete ruin, and the
rebels guilty of these outrages to the punishments they shall have deserved. Their Im-
perial and Royal Majesties, on the contrary, promise the inhabitants of Paris to employ
their good ofces with his Most Christian Majesty to obtain pardon for their misdeeds
and errors, and to take the most vigorous measures to assure their lives and property, if
they obey promptly and exactly all the above mentioned order.
Finally, their Majesties being able to recognize as laws in France only those which
shall emanate from the king, in the enjoyment of a perfect liberty, protest before-
hand against the authenticity of any declarations which may be made in the name
of His Most Christian Majesty, so long as his sacred person, that of the queen, and
those of the royal family shall not be really in security, for the effecting of which they
Imperial and Royal Majesties beg His Most Christian Majesty to appoint the city in his
kingdom nearest the frontiers, to which he would prefer to retire with the queen and
his family under good and sufcient escort, which will be furnished him for this pur-
pose, so that his most Christian Majesty may in all security summon such ministers
and councillors as he may see t, hold such meeting as he deems best, provide for
the re-establishment of good order and regulate the administration of his kingdom.
Finally, I declare and bind myself, moreover, in my own private name and in my
above capacity, to cause the troops entrusted to my command to observe a good and
exact discipline, promising to treat with kindness and moderation all well inten-
tioned subjects who show themselves peaceful and submissive, and only to use force
against those who shall make themselves guilty of resistance and ill-will.
It is for these reasons that I call upon and exhort all the inhabitants of the king-
dom in the strongest and most urgent manner not to oppose the march and the op-
erations of the troops which I command, but rather to grant them everywhere a free
passage and with every good will to aid and assist as circumstances shall require.
Charles-William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg
{
By this decree, France formally became a republic, placed the king under arrest,
and set the stage for an increasingly radical turn in the fortunes of the French Revo-
lution.
The National Assembly, considering that the dangers of the fatherland have
reached their heights;
That it is for the legislative body the most sacred of duties to employ all means
to save it;
That it is impossible to nd efcacious ones, unless they shall occupy themselves
with removing the source of its evils;
Considering that these evils spring principally from the misgivings which the con-
duct of the head of the executive power has inspired, in a war undertaken in his
name against the constitution and the national independence;
That these misgivings have provoked from different parts of the kingdom a de-
sire tending to the revocation of the authority delegated to Louis XVI;
Considering, nevertheless, that the legislative body ought not to wish to aggran-
dize itself by any usurpation;
That in the extraordinary circumstances wherein events unprovided for by any
of the laws have placed it, it cannot reconcile what it owes, in its unshaken delity to
the constitution, with the rm resolve to be buried under the ruins of the temple of
liberty rather than to permit it to perish, except by recurring to the sovereignty of the
people and by taking at the same time the precautions which are indispensable, in
order that this recourse may not be rendered illusory by treasons; decrees as follows:
1. The French people are invited to form a national convention; the extraordinary com-
mission shall present tomorrow a proposal to indicate the method and the time of this
convention.
2. The head of the executive power is provisionally suspended from his functions until
the national convention has pronounced upon the measures which it believes ought
to be adopted in order to assure the sovereignty of the people and the reign of liberty
and equality.
3. The extraordinary commission shall present within a day a method for organizing a
new ministry; the ministers actually in service shall continue provisionally the exercise
of their functions.
4. The extraordinary commission shall present, likewise, within the day, a proposal for a
decree upon the selection of a governor for the prince royal.
5. The payment of the civil list shall continue suspended until the decision of the national
convention. The extraordinary commission shall present, without twenty-four hours, a
proposal for a decree upon the stipend to be granted to the king during the suspension.
6. The registers of the civil list shall be deposited in the ofce of the National Assembly,
after having been numbered and attested by two commissioners of the assembly, who
shall repair for that purpose to the intendant of the civil list.
7. The king and his family shall reside within the precincts of the legislative body until
quiet may be re-established in Paris.
8. The department shall give orders to cause to be prepared for them within the day a
lodging at the Luxembourg [Palace], where they shall be put under the custody of the
citizens and the law.
9. Every public functionary, every soldier, under-ofcer, ofcer, of whatever grade he
may be, and general of an army, who, in these days of alarm shall abandon his post, is
declared infamous and traitorous to the fatherland.
10. The department and the municipality of Paris shall cause the present decree to be
immediately and solemnly proclaimed.
11. It shall be sent by extraordinary couriers to the eighty-three departments, which shall
be required to cause it to reach the municipalities of their jurisdiction within twenty-
four hours, in order to be proclaimed with the same solemnity.
{
In response to the French Republics desperate need for manpower on an unprec-
edented scale, the Convention decreed the leve en masse, or mass conscription,
which laid claim to the services of a large section of the population, above all men
t to ght.
1. From this moment until that in which the enemy shall have been driven from the soil
of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the service of the
armies.
2. The young men shall go to battle; the married men shall forge arms and transport
provisions; the women shall make tents and clothing and shall serve in the hospitals;
the children shall turn old linen into lint; the aged shall betake themselves to the
public places in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach the hatred of
kings and the unity of the Republic.
3. The national buildings shall be converted into barracks, the public places into work-
shops for arms, the soil of the cellars shall be washed in order to extract therefrom the
saltpetre.
4. The arms of the regulation calibre shall be reserved exclusively for those who shall
march against the enemy; the service of the interior shall be performed with hunting
pieces and side arms.
5. The saddle horses are put in requisition to complete the cavalry corps; the draught-
horses, other than those employed in agriculture, shall convey the artillery and the
provisions.
6. The Committee of Public Safety is charged to take all the necessary measures to et
up without delay an extraordinary manufacture of arms of every sort which corre-
sponds with the ardor and energy of the French people. It is, accordingly, authorized
to form all the establishments, factories, workshops and mills which shall be deemed
necessary for the carrying on of these works, as well as to put in requisition, within
the extent of the Republic, the artists and workingmen who can contribute to their
success. For this purpose there shall be put at the disposal of the Minister of War a
sum of thirty millions, to be taken out of the four hundred ninety-eight million two
hundred thousand livres in assignats which are in reserve in the fund of the three keys.
The central establishment of this extraordinary manufacture shall be xed at Paris.
7. The representatives of the people sent out for the execution of the present law
shall have the same authority in their respective districts, acting in concert with the
Committee of Public Safety; they are invested with the unlimited powers assigned to
the representatives of the people and the armies.
8. Nobody can get himself replaced in the service for which he shall have been requisi-
tioned. The public functionaries shall remain at their posts.
9. The levy shall be general. The unmarried citizens and widowers without children, from
eighteen to twenty-ve years, shall march rst; they shall assemble without delay at the
head-town of their districts, where they shall practice every day at the manual of arms
while awaiting the hour of departure.
{
During the course of the Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety grew in-
creasing paranoid, issuing decrees and passing laws that made a mockery of the
rights guaranteed under the constitution of 1791. The Law of Suspects is one ex-
ample of French revolutionary fervor gone awry.
1. Immediately after the publication of the present decree all the suspect-persons who
are in the territory of the Republic and who are still at liberty shall be placed under
arrest.
2. These are accounted suspect-persons: 1st, those who by their conduct, their connec-
tions, their remarks, or their writings show themselves the partisans of tyranny or fed-
eralism and the enemies of liberty; 2d, those who cannot, in the manner prescribed
by the decree of March 21st last, justify their means of existence and the performance
of their civic duties; 3d, those who have been refused certicates of civism; 4th, public
functionaries suspended or removed from their functions by the National Convention
or its commissioners and not reinstated, especially those who have been or shall be
removed in virtue of the decree of August 14th last; 5th, those of the former nobles, all
the husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons or daughters, brothers, or sisters, and agent
of the migrs who have not constantly manifested their attachment to the revolution;
6th, those who have emigrated from France in the interval from 1 July 1789, to the
publication of the decree of 30 March-8 April 1792, although they may have returned
to France within the period xed by that decree or earlier.
3. The committees of surveillance established according to the decree of 21 March last,
or those which have been substituted for them, either by the orders of the representa-
tives of the people sent with the armies and into the departments, or in virtue of special
decrees of the National Convention, are charged to prepare, each in its district, the list
of suspect-persons, to issue warrants of arrest against them, and to cause seals to be put
upon their papers. The commanders of the public force to whom these warrants shall
be delivered shall be required to put them into execution immediately, under penalty
of removal.
4. The members of the committee without being seven in number and an absolute major-
ity of votes cannot order the arrest of any person.
5. The persons arrested as suspects shall be rst conveyed to the jail of the place of
their imprisonment: in default of jails, they shall be kept from view in their respective
dwellings.
6. Within eight days following they shall be transferred to the national building, which
the administrations of the department, immediately after the receipt of the present
decree, shall be required to designate and to cause to be prepared for that purpose.
7. The prisoners can cause to be transferred to these buildings the movables which are
of absolute necessity to them; they shall remain there under guard until the peace.
8. The expenses of custody shall be at the charge of the prisoners and shall be divided
among them equally; this custody shall be conded preferably to the fathers of fami-
lies and the parents of the citizens who are upon or shall go to the frontiers. The salary
for it is xed for each man of the guard at the value of a day and a half of labor.
9. The committees of surveillance shall send without delay to the committee of gen-
eral security of the National Convention the list of the persons whom they shall have
caused to be arrested, with the reasons for their arrest and the papers which shall have
been seized with them as suspect-persons.
10. The civil and criminal tribunals can, if there is need, cause to be arrested and sent
into the above mentioned jails persons accused of offences in respect of whom it may
have been declared that there was no ground for accusation, or who may have been
acquitted of the accusations brought against them.
{
20. Decree Upon Religious Toleration (December 8, 1793;
18 Frimaire, Year II)
While the French National Convention attempted to establish a new form of state
religion to replace Roman Catholicism, all such measures failed. The following de-
cree guaranteed all citizens the right to express their faith freely.
1. All violence and measures in constraint of liberty of worship are forbidden.
2. The surveillance of the constituted authorities and the action of the public force shall
conne themselves in this matter, each or what concerns it, to measures of police and
public safety.
3. The National Convention, by preceding provisions, does not mean to derogate in any
manner from the laws or precautions of public safety against the refractory or turbu-
lent priests, or against all those who may attempt to take advantage of the pretext of
religion to compromise the cause of liberty; no more does it intend to disapprove of
what has been done up to this day in virtue of the orders of the representatives of the
people, nor to furnish or for diminishing the free text for disturbing patriotism or
for diminishing the free scope of the public spirit. The Convention invites all good
citizens, in the name of the fatherland, to abstain from all disputes that are theologi-
cal or foreign to the great interests of the French people, in order to co-operate by all
methods in the triumph of the Republic and the ruin of all its enemies.
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Waldstreicher, David. In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism,
1776 1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
. Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution. New York:
Hill and Wang, 2004.
Ward, Christopher. War of the Revolution. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1952.
Ward, Harry M. The War of Independence and the Transformation of American Society. London:
University College London Press, 1999.
Warren, Charles. The Making of the Constitution. Boston: Little, Brown, 1937.
Weintraub, Stanley. Iron Tears: Americas Battle for Freedom, Britains Quagmire, 1775 1783. New
York: Free Press, 2005.
834 Bibliography
Wharton, Francis, ed. The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States. 6 vols.
Wiencek, Henry. An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
Wilentz, Sean. Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787 1848. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1992.
Wilson, David K. The Southern Strategy: Britains Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia,
1775 1780. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005.
Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
.The Creation of the American Republic, 1776 1787. Chapel Hill: University of North
Wood, W. J. Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775 1781. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1990.
Wright, Esmond. Franklin of Philadelphia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. Britain and the American Frontier, 1783 1815. Athens: University of Geor-
gia Press, 1975.
Contributors
Joseph Adamczyk
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Robert J. Alderson
Georgia Perimeter College
Rockdale/Newton Campus
Conyers, Georgia
Charles Allan
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, Tennessee
Margaret Cook Andersen
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
Melanie A. Bailey
South Dakota State University
Brookings, South Dakota
Lee Baker
University of Cincinnati
Raymond Walters College
Cincinnati, Ohio
Jakub Basista
Institute of History
Jagiellonian University
Krakow, Poland
Natalie Bayer
Rice University
Houston, Texas
Richard Bowler
Salisbury University
Salisbury, Maryland
About the Editor and
Contributors
Editor
GREGORY FREMONT-BARNES holds a doctorate in Modern History from the
University of Oxford, where he studied under the distinguished military histori-
ans Sir Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History, and Robert ONeill,
Chichele Professor of the History of War. After leaving Oxford he lived briey in
London before moving to Japan, where he spent eight years as a university lecturer
in European and American history. He is the author of numerous books, including
The French Revolutionary Wars; The Peninsular War, 1807-1814; The Fall of the French
Empire, 1813-1815; The Boer War, 1899-1902; Trafalgar 1805: Nelsons Crowning Victory;
Nelsons Sailors; The Wars of the Barbary Pirates: To the Shores of Tripoli, the Rise of the U.S.
Navy and Marines; and The Indian Mutiny, 1857-58. He is editor of the three-volume
Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as co-editor of the
ve-volume Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War. He lives near Oxford with
his wife and two sons.
836 About the Editor and Contributors
Richard Boyd
University of WisconsinMadison
Madison, Wisconsin
William E. Burns
Howard University
Washington, DC
Cenap Cakmak
Rutgers UniversityNewark
Newark, New Jersey
James T. Carroll
Iona College
New Rochelle, New York
Roger Chapman
Palm Beach Atlantic University
Palm Beach, Florida
William L. Chew III
Vrije Universiteit Brussels
Brussels, Belgium
Justin Coreld
Geelong Grammar School
Corio, Victoria, Australia
William S. Cormack
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Rory T. Cornish
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, South Carolina
Malcolm Crook
Keele University
Keele, Staffordshire, England
Laura Cruz
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, North Carolina
Michael T. Davis
University of Tasmania
Burnie, Tasmania, Australia
Boris DeWeil
University of Northern British Columbia
Prince George, British Columbia, Canada
H. T. Dickinson
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland
Raymond Anthony van Diemel
Cape Town, South Africa
Richard M. Edwards
University of WisconsinWashington
County
West Bend, Wisconsin
James L. Erwin
Independent Scholar
Des Moines, Iowa
Russell Fowler
Legal Aid of East Tennessee
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Gregory Fremont-Barnes
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Linda S. Frey
University of Montana
Missoula, Montana
Marsha L. Frey
Kansas State University
Manhattan, Kansas
Gene C. Gerard
Tarrant County College
Arlington, Texas
Michael F. Gretz
New School
New York, New York
Neil M. Heyman
San Diego State University
San Diego, California
Carl Cavanagh Hodge
Irving K. Barber School of Arts
and Sciences
University of British Columbia
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
Arthur Holst
Widener University
Chester, Pennsylvania
James Inglis
Edinburgh, Scotland
Nicholas Katers
University of WisconsinMilwaukee
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Roy Koepp
PhD candidate, University of
NebraskaLincoln
Lincoln, Nebraska
Christian Kuhn
Otto-Friedrich-Universitt
Bamburg, Germany
Christine LaHue
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Tom Lansford
University of Mississippi
University, Mississippi
Robert Lee
Gilder Lehrman Collection
New York Historical Society
New York, New York
L. L. Lomin
University of Winchester
Winchester, England
Eric Martone
Kennedy High School
Department of Social Studies
Waterbury, Connecticut
Laura Mason
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia
Terry M. Mays
The Citadel
Charleston, South Carolina
Peter R. McGuire
Elkin, North Carolina
James R. McIntyre
Moraine Valley Community College
Palos Hills, Illinois
Rini Bhattacharya Mehta
University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana
Urbana, Illinois
Alexander Mikaberidze
Fellow, Institute on Napoleon and the
French Revolution
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Patit Paban Mishra
Sambalpur University
Sambalpur, India
Nicole Mitchell
Georgia College and State University
Milledgeville, Georgia
Ian Morley
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, China
J. Patrick Mullins
Saginaw Valley State University
University Center, Michigan
Michaela Mudure
Babes-Bolyai University
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Isabel Perez-Molina
Centre dEstudis Duoda
University of Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
Barbara Bennett Peterson
Oregon State University
Corvalis, Oregon
Kirsten E. Phimister
Edinburgh, Scotland
Michael Rapport
University of Stirling
Stirling, Scotland
Brian W. Refford
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Benjamin Reilly
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Brodie Richards
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Annette Richardson
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jeff Shantz
Wilfrid Laurier UniversityBrantford
Brantford, Ontario, Canada
Jonathan Spangler
University of Gloucestershire
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England
Mark G. Spencer
Brock University
St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada
Robert N. Stacy
Leominster, Massachusetts
Adam C. Stanley
University of WisconsinPlatteville
Platteville, Wisconsin
Leonard A. Steverson
South Georgia College
Douglas, Georgia
Stephen Stewart
Dumbarton, Scotland
Richard Taws
University College London
London, England
838 About the Editor and Contributors
Guy-David Toubiana
The Citadel
Charleston, South Carolina
Jitendra Uttam
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
Andrew J. Waskey
Dalton State College
Dalton, Georgia
Rowland Weston
University of Waikato
Tauranga, New Zealand
Leigh Whaley
Acadia University
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
Charles H. Wilson III
Gainesville State College
Gainesville, Georgia
Brett F. Woods
American Public University
Charles Town, West Virginia
Jonathan Wright
Hartlepool, County Durham, England
INDEX
Abolitionists, 12, 419, 67980. See also
Slavery and the Slave Trade; Society for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
Abolition of the Catholic Cult, 3. See also
French Revolution; Religion
Abolition of the Monarchy (France),
3 4, 255
The Abridgement of the History of England
(Burke), 96
LAccusateur Public, 4. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary; French Revolution
Actes des Aptres (Acts of the Apostles)
(Peltier), 569
Act of Union (Britain/Ireland), 89,
302, 354
Adams, Abigail, 8, 371, 771
Adams, John, 510, 25, 26, 83, 86, 146, 167,
169, 170, 186, 188, 321, 368, 371, 436,
462, 494, 550, 555, 578, 673, 674, 687,
720, 731, 759, 771
Adams, Samuel, 1012, 83, 139, 167, 170,
32425, 410, 461, 465, 600, 686, 687, 733.
See also Adams, Abigail; Adams, John;
Committees of Correspondence; Conti-
nental Congress; Tea Act
Addington, Henry, 302, 416, 580
Address to Protestant Dissenters on the Approach-
ing Election pamphlet (Priestley), 597
Address to the German Nations (Fichte), 239
Administration of Justice Act, 1213,
13035, 325, 461, 687
Administration of the Colonies (Pownall), 592
The Adventures of Caleb Williams
(Godwin), 311
Africa, impact of revolutionary thought on,
1315, 679. See also Abolitionists; Haitian
Revolution; Slavery and the Slave Trade
Age of Enlightenment. See Enlightenment
Age of Reason, 583
Agrarian Justice (Paine), 553
Ailly, Peter d, 292
Aix-la-Chapelle conference, 474
Alamance Creek, Battle of, 727
An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province of
New York (Seabury), 666
Albania, and slavery, 679
Albany Plan of Union (1754), 1516, 22,
166, 262, 26465
Albuera, Battle of, 660
Aldama, Juan, 336
Alembert, Jean Le Rond d, 21516, 220,
445, 560, 573
Alexander I (Tsar of Russia), 1620, 377,
382, 474, 499, 70910, 744
Alexeievna, Elisabeth, 17
Ali, Haider, 350
Alien and Sedition Acts, 8, 146, 378
Allende, Ignacio, 336, 476
Alliance, Treaty of, 7
Amendments, to U.S. constitution, 74, 192
American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
550
American Board of Commissioners of the
Customs, 8283
The American Crisis essays (Paine), 551
American Independence: The Glory and Interest
of Great Britain (Cartwright), 113
American Philosophical Society, 264, 683
840 Index
American Revolution, 1, 12, 2027, 82, 86,
107, 112, 117, 164, 185, 189, 197, 203,
206, 226, 262, 268, 352, 380, 389, 401,
435, 514, 516, 535, 551, 554, 565, 568,
596, 600, 609, 616, 682, 687, 691, 724,
725, 741, 745, 757, 778, 781
American Revolutionary War, 2733, 2829,
2930, 3031, 3132, 3233, 48, 64, 95,
98, 147, 163, 171, 188, 190, 200, 247, 251,
301, 314, 366, 368, 389, 392, 400, 418,
428, 437, 467, 487, 493, 514, 517, 537,
539, 551, 579, 596, 614, 674, 682, 689,
726, 745, 763, 768, 782. See also Lexington
and Concord, Actions at
Ames, Nathaniel, 22
Amherst, Jeffrey, 291
LAmi du Peuple (Marat), 449, 450, 541
Amiens, Treaty of, 162, 249, 499
Amis de la Constitution, Socit des, 3335,
296, 31516, 483, 589. See also Constitu-
tions, French Revolutionary; French
Revolution; Political Clubs (France)
Les amours du Chevalier Faublas (Louvet de
Couvray), 433
Anarchists, 3536
Ancien rgime, 3640, 48, 55, 63, 65, 103,
106, 121, 157, 162, 192, 229, 282, 296,
313, 398, 408, 412, 444, 465, 496, 533,
539, 562, 576, 589, 598, 602, 670, 717,
739. See also Papacy
Ancients, Council of, 198, 281, 390
Andr, John, 684
Angel of Terror. See Saint-Just, Louis
Antoine Lon Florelle de
Anglicanism, 292
Anglo-Dutch War, 206
Annales politiques, civiles et littraires du XVIIIe
sicle play (Linquet/Mallet), 445
Annals of the French Revolution (Bertrand de
Moleville), 70
Annapolis Convention, 211
Anti-clericalism, 4041, 143, 316, 329,
619, 729
Anti-Federalists, 233, 235, 236, 322, 333,
401, 435, 555, 732
Anti-Jacobin, 41. See also Religion
Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, 42
Anti-Machiave (Frederick II), 269
Antislavery groups, 1, 2, 1314
Antoine-Louis-Claude, comte Destutt de
Tracy, 349
Antoinette, Marie. See Marie Antoinette,
Queen of France
Aperu de la situation en France et des moyens
de concilier la libert publique avec lautorit
royale (Mirabeau), 483
Apostolic Chamber, 582
An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs
(Burke), 98
Aquinas, Thomas, 191
Les arbres de la libert, 4243
Archenholtz, J. W. von, 602
Archery; A Poem (Ogden), 544
An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of
Ireland (Tone), 684, 721
Armed Neutrality, League of, 305
Armenia, and slavery, 679
Army of the Three Guarantees, 477
Arnauld, Antoine, 367
Arnold, Benedict, 28, 110, 185, 436, 519, 684
Articles of Association, 687
Articles of Confederation, 12, 4346, 110,
144, 146, 15152, 155, 171, 197, 202, 234,
325, 345, 370, 401, 440, 459, 538, 549,
566, 614, 669, 731, 747, 769, 79399
Comte d, 4648, 108, 214, 427, 448, 730
Assembly of Notables, 4849, 71, 204, 231,
387, 422, 454, 546. See also Parlements
(France)
Assembly of the Clergy of France, 293
Assembly of the Known and Veriable Rep-
resentatives of the French Nation, 4950
Association of Friends of National
Insurrection (Poland), 584
Association of Friends of the Governing
Constitution (Poland), 584
Association of the Friends of the People,
5051, 248, 491, 764
Association of the Sons of Liberty, 78789
Astell, Mary, 222
Atheism, 237
Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation
(Fichte), 239
Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative
Magnitudes into Philosophy (Kant), 379
Auchmuty, Samuel, 84
August, Karly, 312
Augustinian theology, 367
Augustin I (Mexican emperor), 477
Augustus III, 492
Auspicious Night, 547
Austerlitz, Battle of, 260
Austria, 5152, 71, 127, 158, 161, 214, 238,
248, 251, 282, 387, 390, 471, 498, 508,
533, 560, 567, 580, 581, 583, 591, 619,
Index 841
743, 744, 764. See also Francis II (Em-
peror of Austria); War of the Austrian
Succession
Autel de la Patrie, 5253
Avis au Franois (Ption), 572
Aymerich, Melchior, 396
Aztecs, 675
Babeuf, Franois-Noel, 5566, 62, 227, 244,
414, 415, 591, 715. See also Conspiracy of
Equals; Constitutions, French Revolu-
tionary; Jacobins
Bacon, Francis, 372
Bailn, Battle of, 660
Bailly, Jean Sylvain, 714
Bailyn, Bernard, 55455
Bakunin, Mikhail, 36
Bamberger Zeitung newspaper (ed. Hegel),
330
Bank of England, 323
Barre de Vieuzac, Bertrand, 5759, 134,
594, 618. See also Reign of Terror
Barnave, Antoine Pierre, 33, 59, 157, 205,
238, 362, 389, 403, 589, 590. See also Con-
stitutions, French Revolutionary; Haitian
Revolution; Louis XVI (King of France);
Reign of Terror; Varennes, Flight to
Barras, Paul-Franois Nicolas, Vicomte de,
6063, 202, 244, 740
Barr, Isaac, 64, 688
Bas, Philippe Le, 657
Bastille, 47, 103, 148, 179, 190, 21314, 248,
253, 288, 334, 377, 388, 415, 430, 443,
456, 506, 518, 542, 602, 661, 751; fall of,
6567; storming of, 7, 196
Batavian Republic, 67, 206, 207
Bavaria, Kingdom of, 261
Beauharnais, Josphine de. See Josephine,
Empress of France
Beaumont, Francisco Javier de Lizana y, 476
Beccaria, Cesare, 218, 221
Belgium, 59, 61, 67, 68, 106, 127, 206, 214,
255, 260, 280, 282, 387, 457, 469, 474,
520, 580, 591, 598, 668, 672, 744, 760;
Dantons mission to, 182
Belgrano, Manuel, 660
Benedict XIV (Pope), 55960, 582
Bentham, Jeremy, 218
Beresford, Marshal, 501
Berlinische Monatsschrift (Nicolai), 603
Bernadotte, Karl, 695
Bertier de Sauvigny, Louis-Benige-Francois,
66, 69
Marquis de, 70. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary
Le Bien Inform (De Bonneville), 491
Billaud-Varenne, Jacques Nicholas, 34,
7072, 134, 594, 618, 717
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
( Jefferson), 372
Bill for the More General Diffusion of
Knowledge ( Jefferson), 371
Bill of Rights (England), 73, 155, 425, 735
Bill of Rights Society, 400
Bill of Rights (U.S.), 7274, 191, 442, 459,
735, 747. See also Federalist Papers
Biographie moderne ou dictionnaire des hommes
qui se sont fait un nom en Europe, depuis
1789 (Michaud), 479
Bird, Rachel, 769
Blackstone, William, 24, 7475, 235, 352,
555, 564, 732
Bland, Richard, 23, 7576
Blcher, Gebhard von, 760
Bohemia, 260
Comte, 6162, 7677, 159, 594
Bolvar, Simn, 7781, 394, 396, 661
Bolvarian Revolution, 8081
Vicomte de, 8182
Bonaparte, Jrme, 63, 79
Bonaparte, Joseph, 335, 393, 475, 495, 692
Bonaparte, Lucien, 174
Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon I
Bonaparte, Pauline, 288
Bonapartists, 730
The Book of the New Moral World (Owen), 548
Bordeaux Jacobin Club, 297, 743
Boston Massacre, 6, 1112, 301, 313, 324,
434, 550, 610
Boston Port Act, 64, 8485, 131, 140, 324,
459, 461, 687, 712. See also Continental
Congress, Second
Boston Tea Party, 6, 12, 25, 64, 8586, 130,
167, 291, 301, 324, 459, 461, 464, 536,
555, 568, 687, 712, 757
Bourbon dynasty, 105, 125, 192, 202, 204,
245, 250, 254, 25859, 293, 414, 470, 474,
495, 561, 569, 695, 737
Bourgeoisie, of France, 252
Bourges, Pragmatic Sanction of, 293
Boves, Jos Toms, 395
Boyaca, Battle of, 395396
Braddock, Edward, 756
842 Index
Brandywine, Battle of, 386, 758
Braschi, Giovanni Angelo. See Pius VI
(Pope)
Brazil, 392, 668, 678
Breeds Hill military fortication, 292
Breton Club, 99, 361, 390
Briefe aus Paris zur Zeit der Revolution
geschrieben (Campe), 6012
Brienne, Etienne Charles de, 205
Brissot de Warville, Jean-Pierre, 1, 8688,
88, 175, 184, 196, 306, 317, 362, 363, 403,
469, 572, 617, 669, 743. See also Abolition-
ists; Abolition of the Monarchy (France);
Brissotins; Girondins; The Mountain;
Newspapers (French); Slavery and the
Slave Trade
Brissotins, 88, 306, 404. See also Jacobins;
Political Clubs (France)
Bristol Speeches (Burke), 96
Britain, 6, 12, 22, 25, 37, 41, 49, 64, 8893,
113, 114, 154, 162, 166, 168, 185, 214,
243, 26162, 356, 446, 468, 508, 520,
532, 534, 544, 546, 551, 554, 558, 564,
578, 579, 596, 600, 614, 616, 680, 687,
690, 699, 709, 724, 727, 729, 731, 744,
746, 755, 760, 783. See also American
Revolution; English Militia Act; Fox,
Charles James; French Revolutionary
Wars; Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth;
Tories
The British Lions Rousd, or Acts of the
British Worthies, a Poem in Nine Books
(Ogden), 543
British West Indies, 520
Brumaire, Coup dEtat de, 77, 9394, 104,
161, 174, 199, 202, 244, 256, 282, 414,
415, 470, 490, 591
Brune, Guillaume, 765
Brunswick Manifesto, 456, 80810
Bull, William, 9495
Bunker Hill, Battle of, 292, 462, 544
Buonarroti, Filippo, 56
Burdett, Francis, 113
Burgoyne, John, 28, 29, 305
Burke, Edmund, 6, 7, 41, 42, 86, 9598,
247, 248, 552, 579, 596, 602, 604, 764.
See also Jacobins
Burr, Aaron, 32324, 371, 614
Butler, John, 9899
Buzot, Franois Nicolas Lonard, 99100,
306, 572. See also French Revolution;
National Assembly (France)
Cabinet Cyclopedia (Mackintosh), 440
Cadoudal, Georges, 1012. See also Thermi-
dorian Reaction; Vendan rebellion
Cadwallader, Lambert, 682
Cahiers de dolances, 102, 242, 775. See also
First Estate; Second Estate
Calas Case, 212
Calendar, French Revolutionary, 103,
510, 617
Calonne, Charles Alexander de, 48, 205,
423, 429, 454
Calvin, John, 444
Calvinism, 367, 444
Cambacrs, Jean-Jacques-Rgis de, 1045,
125, 162. See also Amis de la Constitution,
Socit des
Cambon, Pierre-Joseph, 1057, 183. See also
Brissotins; migrs; Girondins; Jacobins;
Reign of Terror; Thermidorian Reaction
Camden, Battle of, 578
Campaigns, in the south (American Revo-
lutionary War), 3132
Campbell, Lord William, 107
Camp de Jals, Conspiracy of the, 1078
Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 6012
Campo Formio, Treaty of, 123, 199,
260, 285
Camus, Armand Gaston, 10910. See also
Tennis Court Oath
Canada, 28, 98, 10910, 112, 131, 140, 185,
241, 291, 428, 437, 610, 668, 720; Ameri-
can campaign for invasion of, 185. See
also Continental Congress, Second
Candide (Voltaire), 15, 574, 753
A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of
Great Britain and the Colonies with a Plan of
Accommodation on Constitutional Principles
(Galloway), 294
Carabobo, Battle of, 80, 396
Carleton, Guy, 306
Carlisle Peace Commission, 536, 684
Carnot, Lazare, 63, 11012, 134, 510, 594.
See also French Revolutionary Wars
Carr, Dabney, 140
Carrera, Jos Miguel, 394
Carrier, Jean-Baptiste, 112, 624. See also
Reign of Terror; Thermidorian Reaction;
Vendan rebellion
Carroll, Charles, 110, 11213. See also Signers
of the Declaration of Independence
Carroll, John, 110
Cartwright, John, 92, 11314, 780
Index 843
The Case of Ireland Justly Stated pamphlet
(Molyneux), 352
The Case of the Ofcers of Excise pamphlet
(Paine), 550
Castlereagh, Viscount, 417
Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Rus-
sia, 16, 11415, 198, 223, 305, 374, 381,
406, 493, 584, 585, 586, 587, 607, 750.
See also Poland, Partitions of; Pugachev
Rebellion; Russia
Catholic cult, abolition of, 3
Catholic Defenders, 241, 353
Catholic Emancipation Act, 354, 355
Catholicism, 3, 213, 56162, 690
Catholic League, 230
Catholic National Guard, 108
Catholic Relief Act, 353, 721
Cato Street conspiracy, 694
Censorship Edict (Williams), 603
Cercle Social publishing group, 308
Chabot, Franois, 183, 232
Chacaburo, Battle of, 395
The Chains of Slavery (Marat), 448
Chalmers, James, 555
Chamber of Deputies, 433
Chambers of Peers and Deputies, 258
Champs de Mars, Massacre, 238
Le Chapelier, Isaac-Ren-Guy, 116,
399400
Chapeliers Law, 116, 150
The Characteristics of the Present Age
(Fichte), 239
Charles (Archduke), 284
Charles, Francis Joseph. See Francis II
(Emperor of Austria)
Charles II (Great Britain), 37, 420, 722, 763
Charles III (King), 487, 690
Charles IV (Great Britain), 691
Charles IX ou la Saint-Barthlmy
(Chnier), 119
Charlestown Powder Alarm, 292
Charles X. See Artois, Charles Philippe de
Bourbon, Comte d
Charlotte, Marie Thrse, 453
Charlotte Town Resolves, 468
Charpentier, Antoinette-Gabrielle, 179
Charter of 1814 (Charte Constitution-
nelle), 258
Charter of the Forest, 75
Chase, Samuel, 110, 11617, 549. See also
Committees of Correspondence; Signers
Chateubriand, Franois-Rene de, 215
Chatham, Pitt, William (the Elder), Earl
of, 64, 11718, 217, 247, 535. See also Pitt,
William (the Younger); Townshend Acts
Chaumette, Pierre Gaspard, 11819, 329,
777. See also French Revolution
Cheap Repository Tracts pamphlet (Moore), 42
Chnier, Marie-Joseph-Blaise, 11920.
See also Jacobins
Chiaramonti, Luigi Barnaba Gregorio.
See Pius VII (Pope)
China, 675, 679
Chonan, Jean, 12021
Chouans, 122, 214, 255, 282, 619. See also
La Chounnerie; French Revolution
La Chounnerie, 12021. See also Chouans;
Vendan rebellion
Christianity, 41, 118, 196, 221, 331, 445,
553, 619, 730, 784
Christophe, Henri, 337
Chuquisaca Audencia proclamation, 393
Church, Benjamin, 122. See also Commit-
tees of Correspondence; Loyalists
Church of England, 139, 436
Circular Letter, of Massachusetts, 461
Circular Letter of the Boston Committee of
Correspondence, 461, 78990
Cisalpine Republic, 12223, 161, 244. See
also Austria; French Revolutionary Wars
Citizen, 123, 159. See also American Revolu-
tion; French Revolution
Citizenship, 81, 12324, 205, 295, 320, 365,
512, 568, 598, 673, 774
Citoyennes Rpublicaines Rvolutionnaires
(Revolutionary Republican Women), 405
Civic oaths, 124. See also Civil Constitution
of the Clergy; Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; National Guard
Civil Code, 36, 104, 12527, 162, 241, 258,
496, 498
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 3, 40, 108,
121, 127, 150, 162, 199, 25354, 315, 403,
423, 561, 582, 729, 739. See also Constitu-
tions, French Revolutionary
Civil List, 184
Civil War Amendments (U.S. Constitution),
735
Civil War (England), 745
Civil War (United States), 735
Clarke, Jonas, 410
Class barriers, vs. social mobility (Franklin),
267
844 Index
Claude, Florimond, 455
Clement XI (Pope), 367
Clement XIII (Pope), 55960, 560
Clement XIV (Pope), 55960, 560
Clinton, George (Cato), 233, 234, 305
Clinton, Henry, 30, 782
Cloots, Jean-Baptiste, 329
Club des Impartiaux. See Impartiaux,
Club des
Club Massiac, 319
Clubs. See Political Clubs (France)
Clymer, George, 673, 674
Coachman of Europe, 474
Cobbett, William, 114, 12829
Cochrane, Thomas, 395, 661
Cockades, 129. See also Symbols (Ameri-
can Revolutionary); Symbols (French
Revolutionary)
Code Napolon. See Civil Code
Code of Civil Procedure, 125, 258
Code of Criminal Procedure, 125
Code of Laws, 771
Coercive Acts, 25, 86, 13032, 140, 167,
291, 301, 324, 410, 435, 465, 518, 536,
544, 596, 609, 686, 699, 700, 712, 757. See
also Administration of Justice Act; Boston
Port Act; Boston Tea Party; Massachusetts
Government Act; Quebec Act
Coldstream Guards (Germany), 211
Collot dHerbois, Jean Marie, 132, 134,
618, 717. See also Jacobins; Representa-
tives on Mission; Thermidorian Reaction
Collot dHerbois, Jean Marie, 18081
Columbus, Christopher, 366
Combination Acts, 13233
Commentaries on the Laws of England
(Blackstone), 24, 75
Commerce, Treaty of, 7
Commercial Code, 125, 258
Commission of Orange, 544, 545
Committee for Postponed Matters, 669
Committee of General Security, 717
Committee of Public Safety, 57, 61, 70, 72,
94, 104, 106, 108, 111, 119, 132, 13337,
159, 175, 182, 183, 283, 317, 318, 328,
330, 334, 355, 364, 397, 413, 414, 434,
469, 508, 545, 547, 594, 597, 613, 616,
617, 653, 656, 657, 663, 711, 714, 717. See
also Constitutions, French Revolution-
ary; Directory; Fte de lEtre Suprme;
French Revolutionary Wars; Jacobins;
Patrie en Danger (the nation in danger);
Revolution; Thermidorians
(Continental Congress), 122, 13738. See
also American Revolutionary War
Committee of Twelve, 309, 326
Committee on the Constitution, 672
Committees of Correspondence, 13841,
461, 687. See also Non-Importation Acts
Common law, 75, 378
Common Sense pamphlet (Paine), 14142,
170, 186, 301, 545, 551, 555
The Commonwealth in Danger (Cartwright),
113
Commune of Paris, 72, 103, 118, 327
Compagnie de Jsus ou du Soleil, 142
Comte rendu (Louis XVI), 428
Conciliatory Resolution, 325
A Concise Narrative of All the Actions, in Which
the British Forces Were Engaged, during the
Present War, on the Continent of Europe
(Ogden), 544
Concord, Battle of. See Lexington and
Concord, Actions at
Concordat, 3, 41, 104, 127, 143, 162, 257,
316, 496, 583, 709, 729
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 349, 671
Caritat, Marquis de, 88, 14344, 218, 317,
445, 573, 775
The Conduct of Understanding (Locke), 421
Confederation of Bar (Poland), 587
Confederation of Targowica, 584
Confederation of the Rhine, 258, 26061
Congress of Vienna. See Vienna, Congress of
Congress (U.S.), 74, 14446. See also Slavery
and the Slave Trade
Connecticut, 98, 131, 14647, 167, 460,
520, 666, 669, 677, 726, 727, 731. See also
American Revolution; American Revo-
lutionary War; Constitutions, American
State; Continental Association; Continen-
tal Congress, First; Continental Congress,
Second; New England Restraining Act;
Sons of Liberty; Trumbull, Jonathan;
Tryon, William
Connecticut Compromise, 153, 732
Connolly, John, 147
Considerations on the Bank of North America
(Wilson), 769
Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur of
Rome and Its Decline (Montesquieu), 485
Index 845
Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the
Legislative Authority of the British Parliament
(Wilson), 769
Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing
Taxes (Dulany), 24, 203
Considrations sur le gouvernment de la Pologne
(Rousseau), 587
Conspiracy of Equals, 56, 19899, 227, 281
Conspiracy of the Camp de Jals, 1078
Conspiracy of the Egaux, 62
Conspiration de lEtranger. See Etranger,
Conspiration de l
Constance, Council of, 293
Constant, Benjamin, 695
Constituent Assembly, 34, 58, 71, 99,
14851, 179, 189, 205, 238, 253, 317, 389,
412, 465, 489, 514, 541, 561, 743, 775;
presidency of Du Pont de Nemours, 204.
See also October Days
Constitution, United States. See United
States Constitution
Constitutional Convention (U.S.), 6, 113,
144, 147, 15153, 197, 233, 262, 26667,
368, 440, 459, 519, 578, 614, 669, 689,
759, 769
The Constitution of a Perfect Commonwealth
pamphlet (Spence), 694
Constitution of the Year III (Constitution
de lAn III), 62, 77
La Constitution pamphlet (Marat), 449
Constitutions, American State, 15455
Constitutions, French Revolutionary, 15661
Consulate, 63, 94, 104, 109, 120, 16163,
256, 282, 389, 390, 398, 414, 507, 715
Continental Army, 27, 85, 147, 16364, 170,
189, 190, 325, 333, 402, 434, 462, 614,
699, 726, 755, 758, 772, 782
Continental Association, 16466, 268, 294,
520, 534, 669, 674, 700
Continental Congress, First, 6, 13, 76, 132,
140, 144, 16669, 213, 268, 369, 402, 418,
462, 518, 520, 534, 549, 550, 555, 687,
746, 757. See also Declaration and Re-
solves of the First Continental Congress
Continental Congress, Second, 27, 76, 110,
137, 17071, 185, 188, 200, 202, 262, 266,
304, 322, 324, 333, 382, 383, 401, 402,
410, 418, 434, 469, 487, 518, 544, 550,
600, 614, 67475, 699, 746, 757. See also
American Revolution; Northwest
Continental System (of Napoleon), 19, 359,
498, 5023, 692
The Controversy between Great Britain and Her
Colonies Reviewed (Dickinson), 197
Convention Act (Ireland), 353, 685
Convention of Alkamaar, 286
Convention of Cintra, 500
Convention on Human Rights, 194
Convention to Chlons, 595
Conversations of German Immigrants
(Goethe), 602
Conway Cabal, 434, 758
Copley Medal, 264
Corbin, Margaret, 773
Corday dArmont, Marie Anne Charlotte,
17172
Cordeliers Club, 34, 71, 103, 118, 119, 173,
179, 288, 363, 385, 738, 776, 777. See also
Political Clubs (France); Republicanism;
Sans-culottes
Corfu, 260
Corinne ou lItalie (Stal), 695
Coriscan revolt, 557
Corn Law, 3023
Cornwallis, Charles, 29, 32, 305, 387, 458,
519, 689, 747, 782, 783
Council of Ancients, 198, 281, 390, 415
Council of Constance, 293
Council of Five Hundred, 104, 109, 120,
17374, 198, 256, 281, 414, 434, 471, 672,
711, 715. See also Constitutions, French
Revolutionary
Council of Public Instruction, 82
Council of Revision, 144
Council of Safety, 107, 211
Council of Trent, 367
Coup dEtat de Brumaire. See Brumaire,
Coup dEtat de
Coup of 9 Thermidor, 6162
Cours des aides (courts of taxation), 230
Couthon, Georges Auguste, 134, 175, 317,
365, 711, 717. See also French Revolution;
Jacobins; Reign of Terror; Representa-
tives on Mission
Couvent des Cordeliers, 451
Crvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de,
17576
Criminal Code, 125, 258
Critical Journal of Philosophy (Hegel &
Schelling), 330
Critique, Critique of Judgment (Kant), 380
Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 380
Croatia, 260
Cuba, 678, 680
846 Index
Cult of Reason, 237
Cult of Supreme Being, 237, 329, 511
Cum Occasione (Innocent X), 367
Currency Act, 13839, 17677, 301, 696,
78586
Custis, Daniel Parker, 757
Cvetwertynska, Maria (Princess), 17
Czartoryski, Adam, 584
Daily Advertiser (New York), 233
Dandridge, Dorothea, 333
Danton, Georges-Jacques, 71, 88, 94, 134,
151, 173, 17984, 196, 232, 246, 280, 328,
330, 334, 365, 404, 449450, 507, 619,
656, 669
Daughters of Liberty, 772
David, Jacques-Louis, 120, 172, 185, 237,
451, 511, 568
Deane, Silas, 167, 400, 551
Death of Marat (David), 185
Declaration and Resolves of the First
Continental Congress, 79093
Declaration of Human Rights (U.N.), 74, 680
Declaration of Independence, 6, 12, 23,
124, 137, 142, 154, 156, 167, 171, 18588,
197, 201, 213, 225, 266, 304, 310, 325,
338, 368, 370, 386, 401, 417, 459, 463,
514, 518, 549, 550, 601, 609, 616, 669,
698, 74647, 757, 768, 774
Declaration of Pillnitz, 254, 406
Declaration of Rights and Grievances, 169,
698, 735
Declaration of Rights (Virginia), 73, 459
Declaration of Saint-Ouen, 433
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of
Taking Up Arms, 170, 18889
the Citizen, 40, 74, 116, 124, 14849, 151,
156, 18994, 253, 296, 387, 389, 412, 429,
483, 509, 514, 541, 601, 613, 672, 747,
8024. See also Amis de la Constitution,
Socit des; Constitutions, French Revo-
lutionary; French Revolutionary Wars;
Haitian Revolution; Philosophes; Repub-
licanism; Slavery and the Slave Trade;
Tennis Court Oath; Women (French)
Declaration of the Rights of Women, 191, 776
Declaratory Act, 64, 118, 19495, 301, 351,
697, 78687
Declaratory Act, of Ireland, 243, 314
Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance
(Paine), 553
Decree Abolishing Hereditary Nobility and
Titles, 8045
Decree for Reorganizing the Judicial
System, 8056
Decree for Suspending the King, 81112
Decree for the Leve en Masse, 81213
Decree for the Maintenance of Public
Order, 806
Decree on the Church, 804
Decree Upon Religious Toleration, 814
Decree Upon the Oath of Allegiance, 8067
A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of
the United States of America (Adams), 67
Defense of the French Emigrants (Lally-
Tollendal), 389
Le Dfenseur de la Constitution, 195. See also
Newspapers (French)
Defoe, Daniel, 554
Deism, 219, 372, 511, 574, 636, 750, 784
Delgrs, Louis, 296
De lorganisation dun tat monarchique (On
the Organization of a Monarchical State)
pamphlet (Salaville), 557
Delphine (Stal), 695
Democracy in American (Tocqueville), 720, 721
Denmark, 288, 436, 676
De Pauw, Linda Grant, 772
Deputies, Chamber of, 433
Dernires vues de politique et de nance
(Necker), 518
A Description of Manchester (Ogden), 544
Description of Spensonia pamphlet (Spence),
694
Desze, Raymond, 444
Desmoulins, Camille, 65, 173, 183, 19597,
245, 246, 288, 307, 334, 362, 541, 557,
655, 776
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 320, 337, 723
Diamond Necklace Affair, 429, 454
Dickinson, John, 698
Dickinson, Jonathan, 23, 25, 138, 167, 197,
544. See also Continental Congress, First;
Diderot, Denis, 115, 19798, 213, 21516,
218, 220, 372, 560, 573, 575, 659
The Difference between Fichtes and Schellings Sys-
tem of Philosophy (Hegel & Schelling), 330
Directory, 55, 6263, 9394, 111, 120,
16061, 198200, 202, 244, 256, 28182,
359, 376, 388, 470, 492, 496, 591, 595,
597, 620, 670, 709, 715, 717, 722, 740. See
also Boissy dAnglas, Franois Antoine
Index 847
de, Comte; Cisalpine Republic; Consti-
tutions, French Revolutionary; French
Revolutionary Wars; Jacobins; Political
Clubs (France)
The Disaster of Lisbon (Voltaire), 752
Discourse on the Love of Our Country
(Price), 596
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
(Rousseau), 220, 226
A Discourse on the Study of Law of Nature and
Nations (Mackintosh), 439
Discourses Concerning Government
(Sidney), 420
Discourses on Davila (Adams), 7
Dissenters Relief Bill, 768
Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law
(Fox), 6
Dissertation on the First Principles of
Government (Paine), 553
Dissertation on the Profess of Ethical Philosophy
(Mackintosh), 440
Dix annes d exil (Stal), 695
Dobson, Thomas, 26
Dominican Republic, 337
Dominus ac Redemptor papal brief, 560
Dover, Treaty of, 420
Drayton, William Henry, 200201. See also
Dred Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court
decision, 735
Drennan, William, 684, 685
Dreyfus Affair, 143
Duane, James, 167. See also Continental
Congress, First; Continental Congress,
Second
Ducos, Pierre-Roger, 94, 202, 241. See also
Consulate
Duer, William, 2023. See also Constitutions,
American State
Duff, James, 660
Dulaney, Daniel, Jr., 203
Dumouriez, Charles, 88, 403, 587, 737
Dundas, Henry, 354, 581
Dunlap, John, 310
Dunmore, Earl of. See Murray, John, Earl
of Dunmore
Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel,
204, 576
Duport, Adrien Jean Francois, 2045, 389,
403, 590. See also Assembly of Notables
Du Roy, Jean-Michel, 594
Dutch Antilles, 678
Dutch Revolutions, 2059, 520
Duverney, Joseph Pris, 750
Dyer, Eliphalet, 20910
East India Company, 536, 71112, 726
Ecclesiastical Committee, 390
Eden, Sir Robert, 21112. See also American
Revolution; Carroll, Charles; Dulaney,
Daniel, Jr.; Paca, William
Edenton Ladies Tea Party, 772
Edgar (Chnier), 119
Edict of Nantes, 212, 313, 421
Edict of Toleration, 582
Edict of Versailles, 21213. See also Religion
Education Act (France), 67
Egalit, Philippe. See Orlans, Louis
Philippe Joseph, Duc d
Eglantine, Fabre d, 232
Egoism, 237
Electoral College (U.S.), 7, 146
Elments didologie (Tracy), 349
The Elements of Newtons Philosophies
(Voltaire), 751
Elizabeth I (Virgin Queen), 745
Ellery, William, 213
Ellis, Henry, 778
Eloge de Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Necker), 517
Eloge de Suger (Hrault de Schelles), 334
Emanuel, or; Paradise Regained: An Epic Poem
(Ogden), 544
Embargo Act, 371
migrs, 142, 21315, 282, 397, 409, 444,
447, 450, 471, 496, 602, 711, 739, 743
Emile (Rousseau), 574
Enclosure Acts, 302
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
(Hegel), 330
LEncyclopdie (Diderot and dAlembert),
197, 21516, 220, 372, 57475, 659, 727.
See also Anti-clericalism; Slavery and the
Slave Trade
Engels, Friedrich, 55
Enghien, Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-
Cond, Duc d, 21617. See also Cadou-
dal, Georges; migrs
DEnghien, duc, 18
Englands Aegis (Cartwright), 113
The English Constitution Produced and
Illustrated (Cartwright), 114
English Letters (Voltaire), 751
English Militia Act, 21718
Enlightened despotism, 691
848 Index
Enlightenment, 13, 23, 37, 78, 114, 149,
181, 207, 215, 21823, 235, 266, 296,
318, 356, 381, 405, 415, 422, 479, 498,
507, 510, 513, 558, 559, 566, 572, 573,
601, 618, 667, 681, 690, 727, 742, 768,
773, 774. See also Condorcet, Marie-
Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis
de; Diderot, Denis; Franklin, Benjamin;
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; Hume,
David; Jefferson, Thomas; Kant, Imman-
uel; Locke, John; Montesquieu, Charles-
Louis de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et
de; Philosophes; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques;
Smith, Adam; Voltaire
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(Hume), 343
An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (God-
win), 34
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
(Hume), 343
Enrags, 405, 663
Epinay, Louise d, 222
An Epistle on Poetical Composition (Ogden), 543
Epitome of the Age of Louis XIV (Voltaire), 752
Equality, 49, 56, 102, 116, 126, 162, 190,
198, 22428, 253, 296, 412. See also Slav-
ery and the Slave Trade
Equals, Conspiracy of, 19899, 227, 281
Erfurt Conference, 709
Esprit de la Rvolution et de la constitution de
France (Saint-Just), 655
Essai sur la lgislation et le commerce des grains
(Necker), 517
Essai sur le despotisme (Mirabeau), 481
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(Locke), 190, 422
Essay on General History and on the Customs
and the Character of Nations (Voltaire), 753
Essay on Man (Pope), 766
An Essay on Priveleges (Sieys), 671
Essay on the Application of the Analysis of Prob-
ability to Decisions Made on a Pluralitly of
Votes (Condorcet), 143
An Essay on the First Principles of Government,
and on the Nature of Political, Civil and
Religious Liberty (Priestley), 597
An Essay on the Trade of the Northern Colonies
(Hopkins), 339
Essay on Woman (Wilkes), 766, 767
Essay on Women (Thomas), 222
Essays (Hume), 26
Estates-General, 33, 37, 48, 49, 58, 66, 87,
99, 102, 104, 106, 124, 148, 175, 189, 204,
22831, 242, 307, 315, 319, 361, 372, 387,
389, 409, 414, 423, 430, 454, 455, 465,
482, 505, 520, 533, 546, 589, 597, 613,
670, 71213, 714
Ethocratie (Holbach), 338
LEtranger, Conspiration de, 23132
Europe, 1314, 37, 78, 194, 356, 422, 498
European Messenger (ed. Karamzin), 382
Eutaw Springs, Battle of, 241
Expos de la conduite de Mounier dans
lAssemble nationale et des motifs de son re-
tour en Dauphin (Mounier), 489
Eylau, Battle of, 18
Falklands Islands, 392
Le fanatisme des philosophes (Linguet), 415
Far East, 679
The Farmer Refuted (Seabury), 666
Farmers Letters (Seabury), 438, 666
Faust (Goethe), 312
Feast of Reason, 136, 717
Feathers Tavern petition, 779
Federalist Papers, 23, 26, 153, 23336, 322,
368, 440, 486, 720, 76970. See also Anti-
Federalists
Federalist Party (U.S.), 8, 9, 10, 383, 442, 759
Femmes, soyez soumises vos maris! (Women,
Be Submissive to Your Spouses!) pamphlet
(Voltaire), 557
Fnelon, Franois de, 411
Ferdinand VI, 495
Ferdinand VII, 335, 393, 476, 583, 660,
69293
Fernandez, Manuel Felix, 477
Fersen, Axel, 429
Festival of Reason, 119
Fte de lEtre Suprme, 23738, 244.
See also Jacobins; Symbols (French
Revolutionary)
Feuillants, 3435, 151, 205, 238, 362, 387,
390, 400, 404, 590. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary
Feuille villageoise (Rabaut de Saint Etienne),
613
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 23839, 312, 602
Fiefs, 23940, 482. See also Physiocrats
Fielding, Henry, 533
Fifth Coalition (France), 261, 502
Filmer, Robert, 420
Finland, 695
First Coalition (France), 255, 28285, 509, 580
First Consul, 93, 102, 104, 109, 161, 217,
24041, 256, 496. See also Jacobins
Index 849
First Continental Congress. See Continental
Congress, First
First Estate, 102, 189, 192, 230, 24142,
250, 456, 709, 713. See also Second Estate;
Third Estate
The First Program for a System of German Ideal-
ism (Hegel & Schelling), 330
First Vatican Council, 730
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 24243. See also
Fitzwilliam, Earl, 315
Fleetwood (Godwin), 311
Fleury, Andr, 484
Flood, Henry, 24344, 314, 352
For and Against (Voltaire), 751
Forster, Georg, 6023
Fouch, Joseph, 61, 132, 24445, 280, 624
Founding Fathers (U.S.), 151, 225, 226, 419
Fountainebleau, Edict of, 212
Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine Quentin,
24546. See also LAccusateur Public
Fourth Coalition, 499500
Fourth of August Decrees, 800802
Four Years Parliament, 584
Fox, Charles James, 6, 70, 98, 242, 24649,
565, 579, 764, 780. See also Slavery and
the Slave Trade; Tories
Fox, Henry, 247
Fox Club, 249
France, 86, 106, 116, 138, 24959, 356, 361,
368, 409, 452, 469, 496, 504, 505, 508,
514, 546, 547, 551, 558, 56263, 580, 617,
668, 676, 714, 717, 719, 724, 727, 738,
742, 750, 764, 767, 769. See also Calendar,
French Revolutionary; Constitutions,
French Revolutionary; The Mountain
Francia, Jos Gaspar Rodriguez de, 392, 394
Francis II (Emperor of Austria), 25961, 499
Franco-American Alliance, 26162. See also
American Revolution
Frankenstein (Wollstonecraft), 311, 770
Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzigen (Goethe), 311
Franklin, Benjamin, 6, 16, 22, 110, 130,
138, 151, 166, 185, 188, 213, 218, 261,
26267, 268, 321, 325, 368, 400, 436,
447, 448, 550, 555, 595, 597, 611, 673,
674, 731, 768. See also Abolitionists;
American Revolutionary War; Constitu-
tions, American State; Equality; France;
Franco-American Alliance; Franklin, Wil-
liam; Loyalists; Newspapers (American);
Revolution; Signers of the Declaration
of Independence; Slavery and the
Slave Trade
Franklin, William, 268, 43637. See also
American Revolution; American
Revolutionary War; Loyalists
Fraternity, 190
Frederick II (Prussia), 18, 158, 198, 223,
26870, 406, 446, 500, 533, 559, 576, 750
Frederick William III (King of Austria), 744
Free Corps (Utrecht), 207
Freemans Journal, 352
Freemasons, 381, 413
French and Indian War, 5, 11, 131, 189,
291, 418, 435, 609, 610, 756, 757
French Revolution, 1, 3, 16, 33, 36, 38, 40,
41, 46, 55, 57, 64, 65, 70, 78797, 86, 91,
102, 104, 106, 107, 112, 124, 143, 156,
179, 189, 195, 214, 244, 245, 27082,
318, 322, 326, 330, 334, 359, 361, 380,
389, 409, 430, 443, 446, 452, 466, 479,
488, 495, 496, 505, 511, 514, 534, 540,
541, 56061, 565, 580, 582, 583, 589, 592,
597, 599, 601, 616, 654, 659, 669, 684,
691, 714, 730, 739, 742, 774, 780. See also
Calendar, French Revolutionary; Consti-
tutions, French Revolutionary; Directory;
The Mountain; Reign of Terror
French Revolutionary Wars, 67, 254,
28288, 320, 357, 403, 499, 547, 759. See
also Carnot, Lazare; Consulate; Lafayette,
Marie Joseph Paul Gilbert du Motier,
Marquis de; Representatives on Mission
French Royal Academy, 448
Frron, Louis-Stanislas, 28889. See also The
Mountain
Friedland, Battle of, 18
Friends of the Law, Society of, 469
Frondes, 230, 563
Fructidor, coup detat of, 244, 470
Fugitive Slave Act, 378
A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Con-
gress, from the Calumnies of Their Enemies:
In Answer to a Letter under the Signature of
A. W. Farmer (Hamilton), 666
Gage, Thomas, 27, 85, 131, 140, 169, 189,
29192, 324, 410, 457, 464, 687, 699. See
also Tea Act
Gageure imprvue play (Mallet), 445
Galiani, Ferdinando, 576
Galileo, 446
Gallicanism, 29293, 582, 729, 750, 751.
See also Papacy; Religion
850 Index
Galloway, Joseph, 167, 29394. See also
Albany Plan of Union (1754); Loyalists
Garibay, Pedro de, 476
Garrison, William Lloyd, 2
La Gazette, French newspaper, 528
Genet, Edmond Charles Edouard,
29495, 759
Gens de couleur, 29597, 316, 319, 320, 723
Gensonn, Armand, 88, 29798, 317. See
also Civil Constitution of the Clergy;
French Revolutionary Wars; Girondins;
Jacobins; The Mountain; Political Clubs
(France)
Geoffrin, Madame, 659
George III (King of England), 47, 83, 90,
117, 131, 168, 170, 185, 189, 247, 304,
355, 370, 436, 535, 544, 559, 579, 610,
688, 699, 722, 763, 764. See also Slavery
and the Slave Trade
George I (of Hanover), 26869
Georgia, 32, 167, 3034, 436, 687, 698, 778
Germain, Lord George, 3046, 536
Germantown, Battle of, 758
Germany, 15, 211, 239, 304, 387, 497,
5034, 543, 591, 6016, 695, 737, 741,
745. See also Prussia and Germany,
Impact of Revolutionary Thought on
Gerry, Elbridge, 151, 153, 673, 674, 731
Gerson, John, 292
Gettysburg Address, 188
Gibbon, Edward, 218, 659
Girondin-Montagnard split, 307, 308, 309
Girondins, 34, 63, 86, 88, 100, 112, 118,
151, 171, 181, 182, 202, 238, 246, 255,
280, 3069, 326, 334, 355, 362, 409, 430,
431, 451, 613, 617, 656, 668, 711, 743,
744. See also Jacobins; Sans-culottes
Glorious Revolution, 25, 88, 166, 425
Goddard, Mary Katherine, 310. See also
Goddard, William, 310
Godwin, William, 34, 42, 31011
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 218, 31113,
513, 533, 602. See also Hegel, Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich; Kant, Immanuel
Golden Hill, Riot at, 313. See also American
Revolution; Townshend Acts
Gordon Riots (London), 97, 302, 536
Gorham, Nathaniel, 325
Gouges, Olympe de, 191, 776
Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne
(Malby), 587
Grammar of the English Language (Cobbett),
128
Grande Arme, 258
Grande bourgeoise, 179
La Grande Chambre, 31314
Grand Incendiary. See Adams, Samuel
Grand Sanhedrin (of Rabbis), 256
Grattan, Henry, 243, 31415, 352, 354. See
also Tories
Great Bridge, Battle of, 747
Great Britain. See Britain
Great Compromise, 145, 153, 419, 732
Great Fear, 205
Great Powers, 357, 499
Great Reform Act (1832), 249
Great Terror, 620
Great Yarmouth, 724
Greece, and slavery, 67576, 679
Greene, Nathanael, 551
Greenville, Lord, 416, 581
Greenville, Treaty of, 539, 571
Grgoire, Henri, 31516. See also Religion;
Grenville, George, 516, 535, 696
The Grievances of the American Colonies Can-
didly Examined (Hopkins), 339
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
(Kant), 380
Guadeloupe, 295, 316. See also Slavery and
the Slave Trade
Guadet, Marguerite-Elie, 88, 297, 31617,
743, 744. See also Brissotins; Jacobins;
Parlements (France)
Guanajuato, 336, 477
Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace, 31718, 713
Guillotine, 112, 172, 184, 245, 318, 318,
398, 431, 443, 444, 483, 594, 617, 663
Hague, Treaty of, 67, 183
Haitian Revolution, 257, 296, 297, 31920,
723. See also Slavery and the Slave Trade
Hamilton, Alexander, 8, 24, 26, 69, 73, 119,
145, 153, 203, 235, 32124, 370, 372,
383, 486, 666, 731, 732, 759, 769. See also
American Revolution; American Revolu-
tionary War; Federalist Papers
Hampshire County Rebellion, 463
Hancock, John, 170, 211, 32426, 410, 463,
67475, 731. See also Lexington and Con-
cord, Actions at
Hanriot, Franois, 326. See also Committee
of Public Safety; Jacobins
Index 851
Hapsburg Empire, 259, 261, 285, 415, 690
Hardenberg, Karl von, 474, 744
Hardy, Thomas, 423, 424
Harrington, James, 485
Harrison, Benjamin, 138
Hart, Nancy, 773
Hauranne, Jean Duvergier de, 367
Hawkesbury, Lord, 416
Hays, John Casper, 772
Heath, William, 411
Hbert, Jacques Ren, 72, 119, 132, 173,
183, 32628, 365, 619, 656, 663. See also
Newspapers (French)
Hbertistes, 173, 183, 231, 32830, 656,
663, 777. See also Cordeliers Club; French
Revolutionary Wars
Hebrews, 675
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 15, 33031,
602, 604. See also Kant, Immanuel
Hell-Fire Club, 766
Helvetius, Claude-Adrien, 196, 671, 751
The Henriad (Voltaire), 751
Henri VIII (Chnier), 119
Henry, Patrick, 76, 167, 169, 33133, 401,
731, 733, 747, 749. See also Lexington and
Concord, Actions at
Henry IV, 230, 293
Hrault de Schelles, Marie Jean, 134,
33334, 618. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary; The Mountain;
Parlements (France)
dHerbois, Collot, 34, 72
Herder, Johann Gothfried von, 311, 513
Hertz, Henriette, 602
Hesse, Carla, 444
Hibernian Journal, 352
Hidalgo, Manuel, 392
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel, 33536, 476. See
also Mexican Revolution
High Court, at Orlans, 409
Hippolyte Charles, 376
Hispaniola, 319, 33637, 678, 723. See also
Haitian Revolution; Slavery and the Slave
Trade
Histoire des quinze semaines ou le dernier rgne
de Bonaparte (Michaud), 479
Histoire du sicle dAlexandre le Grand
(Linguet), 415
Historical and Political Reections on the Rise
and Progress of the American Rebellion (Gal-
loway), 294
Historie de l anarchie en Pologne (Rulhire), 587
The History of Charles XII (Voltaire), 751
History of England (Hume), 25, 343
History of England (Mackintosh), 440
History of Fifteen Weeks, or the Last Reign of
Bonaparte (Michaud), 479
History of the Air (Boyle), 421
History of the Commonwealth of England: From
Its Commencement, to the Restoration of
Charles the Second (Godwin), 311
History of the Protestant Reformation
(Cobbett), 129
The History of the Province of New York
(Smith), 683
History of the Reign of James II (Fox), 246
History of the Russian Empire under Peter the
Great (Voltaire), 754
Hobbes, Thomas, 79, 218, 219, 235,
412, 419
Hogendorp, Gijsbert Karel van, 520
Hohenlinden, Battle of, 260
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d,
220, 33738, 575
Hlderin, Friedrich, 330, 602
Holland, 474, 591, 676, 679, 744. See also
Netherlands, United Kingdom of
Holy Alliance, 474
Holy Roman Empire, 38, 260, 406, 452,
495, 532, 582
Hondschoote, Battle of, 620
Hopkins, Stephen, 33839. See also Albany
Plan of Union (1754); Continental Con-
gress, First; Continental Congress, Sec-
ond; Pamphlets (American); Signers of
the Declaration of Independence
Hopkinson, Francis, 33940. See also Ameri-
can Revolutionary War; Signers of the
Declaration of Independence; Symbols
(American Revolutionary)
Hostages, Law of. See Law of Hostages
Htel des Invalides, 34041
Htel de Ville de Paris, 66, 69, 341, 542, 775
House of Assembly, 668
House of Burgesses (Virginia), 140, 382,
518, 696, 745, 757
House of Commons (Britain), 88, 89, 90,
91, 9293, 129, 243, 249, 354, 537, 565,
579, 592, 724, 766, 768
House of Commons (Ireland), 314, 351
House of Lords (Britain), 88, 89, 354,
565, 766
House of Orange, 206, 208
House of Peers, 399
852 Index
House of Representatives (U.S.), 7374,
145, 153, 234, 267, 34143, 614, 732
Howe, William, 28, 29, 30, 85, 292, 305, 757
Hubertusburg, Peace of, 270
Huguenots, 212
Hugues. Victor, 296
Humboldt, Alexander von, 79
Hume, David, 2526, 218, 222, 235, 34344,
513, 559, 575, 659, 733
Hundred Days With the Restoration, 107,
204, 355, 387, 470, 495, 562, 695, 762
Hundred Years War, 230
Huntington, Samuel, 345
Hutchinson, Thomas, 12, 16, 83, 85, 292,
34547, 400, 461, 592, 712. See also
Boston Tea Party
Hymn to Humanity (Hlderin), 602
Iberian Peninsula, 302
Idalogues, 199, 349
Iguala, Plan of, 477
Impartiaux, Club des, 349, 350. See also
Imperial Crypt, 261
Inalienable rights, 223
Incas, 675
Independent Journal (New York), 233
Independent Reector newspaper, 418, 554, 683
India, 97, 247, 251, 285, 35051, 579, 675,
679. See also Jacobins
India Bill, 248
Industrial Revolution, 90
De linuence attribue aux philosophes, aux
francs-mason et aux illumins sur la Rvolu-
tion franaise (Mounier), 490
Inglis, Charles, 555
Innocent X (Pope), 367
Inquest (Filmer), 420
Inquiry in the Character and Tendency of the
American Anti-Slavery Societies ( Jay), 2
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations (Smith), 26, 204, 681
An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colo-
nies pamphlet (Bland), 23
Inquisition, Tribunal of, 335
Insurrection Act (Ireland), 686
International Court of Justice, 680
Intolerable Acts, 687. See also Coercive Acts;
Les Invalides. See Htel des Invalides
Ireland, 64, 242, 302, 35155, 536, 553,
566, 580, 699. See also Britain; French
Revolutionary Wars; Insurrection Act
(Ireland); Society of United Irishmen
Irish Declaratory Act, 243, 314
Iroquois Confederacy, 16, 539
Irvine, William, 772
Isnard, Henri Maximin, 355, 624. See also
Jacobins; Sans-culottes
Italian Journey (Goethe), 312
Italy, 4, 123, 214, 35659, 471, 498, 532,
558, 591, 668, 690, 737, 740. See also Con-
cordat; Pius VII (Pope); Pius VI (Pope)
Iturrigaray, Jos de, 475, 476
Ivan the Terrible (Tsar), 382
Jackson, Andrew, 720
Jackson, William, 685
Jacobin Club (France), 34, 99, 132, 180,
205, 309, 390, 403, 483, 566, 572, 58990,
591, 655, 717
Jacobin Republic, 238
Jacobins, 41, 56, 94, 99, 103, 119, 123, 142,
144, 151, 171, 173, 202, 244, 255, 328,
334, 355, 358, 36166, 385, 387, 398, 403,
413, 451, 466, 483, 496, 509, 546, 557,
581, 584, 589, 593, 597, 603, 656, 663,
711, 777. See also Anti-Jacobin; Constitu-
tions, French Revolutionary; The Moun-
tain; Political Clubs (France)
Jacques I (Haitian Emperor), 337
Jamaica, 320, 36667, 678, 724. See also
Haitian Revolution; Slavery and the Slave
Trade
James II, 420
Janissaries, 547
Jansen, Cornelius, 367, 415
Jansenism, 315, 367, 560, 729. See also
Gallicanism; Religion
Jaucort, Louis de, 220
Jay, John, 2, 6, 138, 153, 167, 188, 368,
486. See also Articles of Confederation;
Federalist Papers
Jay Treaty, 7, 322
Jeanbon Saint-Andr, Andr, 135, 369, 618.
See also Jacobins
Jefferson, Thomas, 6, 7, 23, 26, 73, 138,
140, 145, 185, 188, 190, 204, 218, 225,
322, 323, 325, 333, 36973, 387, 401, 421,
442, 459, 519, 553, 554, 568, 745, 759.
See also Federalist Papers; Slavery and the
Slave Trade
Jervis, John, 287
Jeunesse dore (guilded youth) militia, 594
Index 853
Jews/Judaism, 186, 256, 315, 446, 547, 562,
742, 745
Jimnez, Mariano, 336
John of Jandun, 292
Joseph, Louis Philippe, 205
Joseph II (Austria), Holy Roman Em-
peror, 158, 223, 259, 260, 374, 405,
4115, 456, 533, 56061, 582, 750. See also
LEncyclopdie (Diderot and dAlembert)
Josephine, Empress of France, 62, 37476
Journal-af che, LAmi des Citoyens, journal
fraternel (Tallien), 711
Journal de la Rpublique Franaise (Marat), 451
Journal de Paris, 434
Le Journal de Paris French newspaper, 528
Journal des Etats-Gneraux (Mirabeau), 482
Journal des Libres newspaper, 591
Journal historique et politique de Genve, 446
Journes, 377, 663
Judiciary Act (1789), 567
Julie (Rousseau), 574
July Monarchy, 710
July Revolution, 68, 730
Juries, 378
Kant, Immanuel, 218, 222, 37981, 444,
513, 602. See also Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich
Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich, 38182
Karr, Alphonse, 557
Keith, WIlliam, 263
Kellerman, Franois, 737
Kemble, Margaret, 292
Kentucky, 382. See also Murray, John
Kheraskov, M., 381
King, Rufus, 151, 383, 731. See also Ameri-
can Revolution; American Revolutionary
War; Northwest
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 495
Kingdom of Wrttemberg, 261
Kings Acceptance of the Constitution,
8078
Kollataj, Hugo, 584, 587
Kosciuszko, Thaddeus, 758
Lacomb, Claire, 385, 405, 777. See also
Motier, Marquis de, 32, 4849, 149, 156,
190, 195, 32122, 362, 38588, 389, 428,
512, 519, 540, 542, 572, 667, 758, 775
Laibach conference, 474
de, 389
Lamennais, Robert de, 729
Lameth, Alexandre, comte de, 205,
389390, 403, 589. See also Jacobins;
Varennes, Flight to
La Mettrie, Julien Offroy de, 573
Land Plan (Spence), 694
Lanjuinais, Jean Denis, Comte de, 390.
See also Brumaire, Coup dEtat de; Ca-
hiers de Dolances; Constitutions, French
Revolutionary; Consulate; First Consul;
French Revolution; Jacobins; Parlements
(France)
La Lanterne, 388
Lartigue, Jeanne de, 484
Latin American Revolutions, 39296. See
also Slavery and the Slave Trade
Launay, Bernard-Ren de, 65, 66
Laurens, Henry, 325
Law of Frimaire, 617
Law of Hostages, 396
Law of 22 Prairial, 61, 13637, 246, 397,
397398, 620, 711, 775. See also Fouquier-
Tinville, Antoine Quentin; Law of
Suspects
Law of Suspects, 364, 397, 470, 509, 617,
777, 81314
Law of the Maximum, 281
Laws of New York from the Year 1691 to 1751
(Smith), 683
League of Armed Neutrality, 305
League of Nations, 680
Lebrun, Charles-Francois, Duc de Plai-
sance, 162, 39899
Le Chapelier, Isaac, 33
Leclerc, Jean-Thophile, 385, 405
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Hegel), 15
Lee, Arthur, 6, 138, 400401. See also Slav-
ery and the Slave Trade; United States
Constitution
Lee, Charles, 30, 140
Lee, Richard Henry, 140, 167, 169, 186,
4012, 518, 733. See also Boston Port Act;
Legion of Honor (France), 162, 202, 470
Legislative Assembly (France), 70, 86, 106,
111, 158, 175, 180, 181, 195, 202, 296,
297, 317, 334, 355, 363, 398, 4024,
430, 471, 487, 508, 509, 567, 590, 655,
Revolutionary
854 Index
Legislative Corps, 256
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 753
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Goethe), 311
Lenz, J. M., 381
Lon, Pauline, 385, 4045, 776, 777
Leopold II (Emperor), 254, 374, 4056, 469
Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis Michel,
4067. See also The Mountain
Les arbres de la libert, 4243
Lescynski, Stanislas, 288
Lse-Nation, Crime de, 408. See also Cahiers
de dolances
Lespinasse, Julie de, 575, 659
Lessart, Claude Antoine de Valdec de,
4089
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 218
Letter Addressed to the Addressers of the Late
Proclamation (Paine), 552
Letter Concerning Toleration (Locke), 23, 421
Letters Concerning the English Nation
(Voltaire), 751
Letters concerning the Present State of Poland
(Murray), 492
Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the
Inhabitants of the British Colonies pamphlet
(Dickinson), 197
Letters from an American Farmer
(Crvecoeur), 175, 176
Letters of a Russian Traveler (Karamzin), 381
Letters on a Regicide Peace (Mackintosh), 42,
98, 439
Letters to the Economists on Their Political and
Moral System (Sieys), 671
Des Lettres de Cachet (Mirabeau), 65, 101,
480, 481
Lettres sur lhistoire primitive de la Grce
(Rabaut de Saint Etienne), 613
Leve en masse, 255, 283, 40910, 510, 567, 587
Leviathan (Hobbes), 219, 419
Levin, Rahel, 602
Lewis and Clark expedition, 371
Lexington and Concord, Actions at, 20, 85,
169, 170, 185, 189, 303, 383, 41011, 468,
544, 746. See also Suffolk Resolves
Libel Act, 249
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (Libert,
Egalit, Fraternit), 18687, 190, 227,
253, 350, 41113. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary; Cordeliers Club;
Life of the Earl of Stafford (Lally-Tollendal), 389
Ligurian Republic, 398
Lincoln, Abraham, 2, 188, 732
Lindet, Jean-Baptiste Robert, 134, 135,
41314, 618
Lindet, Robert-Thomas, 41415. See also
Jacobins; The Mountain
Lines of Torres Vedras, 501
Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri, 415. See also
French Revolution
Liniers, Santiago, 393
Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of,
41617, 564
Livingston, Philip, 417418
Livingston, Robert, 185, 188
Livingston, William, 41819, 554, 683. See
also Livingston, Philip; Loyalists; Newspa-
pers (American); Paterson, William; Slav-
ery and the Slave Trade; Smith, William
(1727-1803); United States Constitution
Locke, John, 2223, 42, 79, 157, 186, 218,
219, 223, 225, 235, 338, 349, 372, 41922,
555, 596, 597, 671, 672, 733, 751
Les lois civiles (Ption), 572
Lomnie de Brienne, Etienne Charles,
422423, 48182, 563
London Corresponding Society (LCS),
42325, 694
London Revolution Society, 3334, 42425.
See also Slavery and the Slave Trade
Long Island, Battle of, 28, 757
Lord Proprietors of Carolina Colony, 420
Louis XIII (King of France), 212
Louis XIV (King of France), 37, 24950,
250, 711
Louis XV (King of France), 25051, 453
Louis XVI (King of France), 4, 34, 41, 46,
48, 61, 65, 70, 71, 88, 99, 103, 110, 118,
150, 157, 173, 175, 179, 189, 204, 212,
258, 283, 308, 317, 350, 362, 390, 413,
42631, 443, 444, 446, 471, 481, 487, 491,
505, 508, 540, 541, 558, 561, 563, 569,
572, 590, 597, 617, 655, 663, 669, 672,
691, 713, 738, 741, 743. See also Constitu-
Louise, Elizabeth Wilhelmina, 260
Louis XVII (King of France), 61, 260, 43132
Louis XVIII (King of France), 46, 59, 63,
70, 204, 245, 258, 389, 427, 428, 431,
43233, 447, 465, 504, 730, 760. See also
Louisiana Purchase, 204, 371, 488
Louvet de Couvray, Jean-Baptiste, 34, 308,
43334. See also Constitutions, French
Index 855
Revolutionary; Girondins; Newspapers
(French)
Lovell, James, 138, 434
Lowndes, Rawlins, 435. See also Constitu-
tions, American State
Loyal Foresters, 147
Loyalists, 85, 97, 110, 154, 43538, 614,
683, 684, 773, 779
Loyal Nine, 697
Ludwig, Mary, 772
Lundy, Benjamin, 12
Lunville, Treaty of, 123, 260, 287, 359
Luttrell, Henry, 767
Luxembourg, 474, 744
Lyon, Matthew, 567
Macaulay, Catharine, 222
Mackintosh, Sir James, 43940. See also
Latin American Revolutions; Whigs
Madison, James, 23, 26, 72, 73, 145, 151,
153, 322, 422, 44042, 459, 486, 566, 614,
720, 731, 734, 745, 769. See also Federalist
Papers; Republicanism
Magna Carta, 73, 75, 166, 735
Maillard, Stanislas Marie, 44243, 542
Maimorte, 443
Maip, Battle of, 661
Maistre, Joseph de, 445
Malby, Gabriel, 587
Lamoignon de, 444. See also Parlements
(France)
Mallet du Pan, Jacque, 70, 44447
Malouet, Pierre Victor, 447
Manseld, Earl of. See Murray, David, Earl
of Manseld
Marat, Jean-Paul, 171, 179, 298, 309, 317,
44851, 541, 590, 617, 668, 719, 744.
See also The Mountain
Marbury vs. Madison Supreme Court
decision, 567
Marengo, Battle of, 123, 260
Margarot, Maurice, 424
Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman (Wollstone-
craft), 770
Maria Louisa (Archduchess), of Spain, 259
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, 172,
182, 226, 246, 254, 260, 405, 406, 427,
428, 432, 446, 45257, 508, 517, 542, 617,
663, 743. See also First Estate; Second Es-
tate; Tennis Court Oath
Marmont, Marshall, 501
Marra, Giovanni, 448
Marronage, practice of, 319
Marsilius of Padua, 292
Martin, Josiah, 45758, 538
Martineau, Pierre, 484
Martineauand, Madeleine Franoise, 727
Marx, Karl, 55, 62
Maryland, 113, 152, 197, 211, 458, 520, 549,
683, 731. See also American Revolutionary
War; Carroll, Charles; Committees of Cor-
respondence; Constitutions, American
State; Galloway, Joseph; Paca, William
Maryland Journal, 310
Mason, George, 73, 151, 186, 459, 731,
73435, 747. See also Slavery and the
Slave Trade
Massachusetts, 72, 85, 139, 263, 291, 324,
383, 410, 434, 45963, 493, 520, 536,
550, 592, 669, 677, 696, 731, 734, 746,
749, 757. See also Adams, Abigail; Chase,
Samuel; Church, Benjamin; Circular
Letter, of Massachusetts; Constitutions,
American State; Continental Association;
Continental Congress, First; Continental
Congress, Second; King, Rufus; Loyalists;
Navigation Acts; Non-Importation Acts;
Proclamation of 1763; Quincy, Josiah;
Sons of Liberty; Whigs
Massachusetts Government Act, 13, 130,
140, 291, 324, 46465, 687. See also Com-
mittees of Correspondence
Massacres. See Boston Massacre; Champs de
Mars, Massacre; Peterloo Massacre; Sep-
tember Massacres
Maury, Jean-Sifrin, 465
Maximum, 100, 397, 466, 509, 593, 619, 778
Mayans, 675
McKean, Thomas, 46667. See also
Continental Congress, First; Continental
Congress, Second; Signers of the Decla-
ration of Independence
McKinly, John, 46768
Mecklenburgh Declaration, 46869. See also
Declaration of Independence; Virginia
Resolves
Mmoires acaddemiques, ou nouvelles dcou-
vertes sur la lumire (Marat), 448
Mmoires historiques (Mallet), 445, 446
Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia
(Laramzin), 382
Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the
Rights of Women (Godwin), 311
856 Index
Memorial Addressed to the Sovereigns of America
(Pownall), 592
Memorial Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe
(Pownall), 592
Mercure Britannique, 447
Mricourt, Anne-Josphe Throigne de,
469, 776
Merlin, Philippe-Antoine, Comte, 470
Merlin de Thionville, Antoine Chris-
tophe, 471
Mesopotamia, 675
Mestizos, 475
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
(Kant), 380
Metternich, Klemens von, 261, 47174, 744
Mexican Revolution, 47578. See also Latin
American Revolutions
Mexico, 335, 392, 393, 475, 678, 680
Michaud, Joseph Francois, 479
Middle Ages, 443, 530
Middleton, Arthur, 200
Ministry of All the Talents, 416
Mirabeau, Honor-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte
de, 40, 101, 143, 151, 205, 362, 389, 408,
465, 47983, 507, 557, 576, 589, 667, 671
Missouri Compromise, 1
Modern Biography, or a Dictionary of Men Who
Have Made Their Name in Europe since 1789
(Michaud), 479
A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of
Paper Currency pamphlet (Franklin), 263
Molasses Act, 516
Moleville, Bertrand de, 184
Molyneux, William, 352
Momoro, Antoine-Franois, 411
Le Moniteur Patriote (Marat), 449
Moniteur periodical (Cloots), 329
Le Moniteur Universel, French newspaper,
528, 613
Monmouth, Battle of, 386
Monroe, James, 383
Montagnards. See The Mountain
Baron de le Brede et de, 23, 157, 190,
218, 223, 235, 307, 442, 48387, 533, 555,
586, 618, 659, 732
Montgomery, Richard, 28, 110, 185
Montmorin de Saint-Hrem, Armand Marc,
comte de, 409, 487
Moore, Rebecca, 437
Moore, William, 437
Moores Creek Bridge, Battle of, 458
Moral and Political Magazine (London
Corresponding Society), 424
La morale universelle (Holbach), 338
Moreau, Jean, 102
Morelos y Pavon, Jose Maria, 477
Morillo, Pablo, 395
Morris, Governeur, 383, 48788, 731.
See also Slavery and the Slave Trade
Morris, Margaret Hill, 773
Morris, Robert, 138, 401, 488, 769
Moscow Journal (Karamzin), 381
Motte, Jeanne de la, 429
Moultrie, William, 200
Mounier, Jean Joseph, 48890, 713,
See also Cahiers de dolances
The Mountain, 112, 175, 25556, 281, 288,
306, 308, 309, 317, 413, 49091, 546,
Revolutionary; Danton, Georges-Jacques;
French Revolutionary Wars; Hbert,
Jacques Ren; Hbertistes; Jacobins
Muhammed, and slavery, 676
Muir, Thomas, 49192. See also Whigs
Mnster, Treaty of, 68
Murat, Joachim, 474, 495, 692
Murray, David, Earl of Manseld, 49293.
See also Franco-American Alliance;
French Revolutionary Wars; Poland,
partitions of
Murray, James, 693
Murray, John, Earl of Dunmore, 140,
493, 747
Murray, Judith Sargent, 49394
Muslims, 547, 676
Nancy mutiny, 180
Nantes, Edict of, 212, 313
Naples, Kingdom of, 256, 260, 281, 474,
495, 557, 566, 744
Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard Pass
(David), 185
Napoleon I, 3, 4, 8, 10, 1819, 42, 47, 59,
67, 72, 91, 93, 102, 111, 12527, 136, 143,
161, 204, 297, 355, 37476, 398, 414, 447,
465, 475, 49699, 557, 558, 561, 569, 582,
591, 59798, 659, 670, 672, 709, 724, 739,
740, 765. See also First Consul; Slavery
and the Slave Trade
Napoleonic Code, 36, 12527
Napoleonic Wars, 16, 91, 93, 261, 287, 302,
359, 395, 410, 475, 499505, 568, 605,
693, 744, 760; French campaign, 504;
Index 857
German campaign, 5034; naval op-
erations, 502; Peninsular War, 500501;
Russian campaign, 5023; War of Fifth
Coalition, 502; Waterloo campaign, 5045
Napoleon II, 261
Natalia the Boyars Daughter (Karamzin), 381
National Assembly (France), 3, 4, 40, 49,
71, 86, 101, 106, 116, 148, 175, 231, 242,
252, 282, 319, 350, 389, 398, 408, 415,
425, 443, 450, 456, 470, 479, 5057, 512,
558, 567, 590, 613, 655, 668, 672, 709,
Revolutionary; First Estate; Second Estate
National Constituent Assembly. See Con-
stituent Assembly
National Convention (France), 57, 70, 72,
88, 99, 103, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 119,
120, 132, 142, 173, 182, 202, 232, 244,
306, 326, 334, 355, 361, 397, 409, 413,
414, 434, 470, 50811, 545, 546, 572, 592,
613, 617, 653, 663, 669, 672, 714, 723,
Revolutionary; Guillotine
National Guard, 61, 100, 107, 149, 173, 326,
388, 411, 51112, 542, 592, 654, 738, 740,
775. See also Bastille; Cockades
Nationalism, 41, 267, 51216, 686, 722, 729
Native Americans, 16, 226, 304, 539, 600,
677, 773, 778
Natural Law (Voltaire), 752
Natural rights, 191
Navigation Acts, 324, 516
Necker, Jacques, 47, 49, 65, 69, 71, 242,
252, 408, 423, 428, 429, 445, 447, 450,
453, 506, 51718
Necker, Suzanne, 575, 659
Neilson, Samuel, 684
Nelson, Horatio, 499
Nelson, Thomas, Jr., 51819
Netherlands, United Kingdom of, 37, 68,
104, 107, 127, 138, 208, 251, 262, 356,
398, 474, 51920, 574, 576, 680, 690, 744.
See also Dutch Revolutions
New Eloise (Rousseau), 220
New England Courant newspaper, 263
New England Restraining Act, 459, 520.
See also Non-Importation Acts; Quincy,
Josiah
A New Explanation of the First Principles of
Metaphysical Knowledge (Kant), 380
New Hampshire, 167, 520, 521, 698. See
also American Revolution; American
Revolutionary War; Boston Port Act;
New Jersey, 2829, 140, 188, 418, 520,
52122, 566, 592, 666, 698, 731, 758, 770,
772. See also American Revolution; Con-
stitutions, American State; Continental
Association; Continental Congress, Sec-
ond; Loyalists; Stockton, Richard
New Jersey Gazette, 419
New Jersey Plan, 152
Newspapers (American), 22, 168, 215, 223,
52728, 772
Newspapers (French), 195, 196, 327, 52830
Newton, Isaac, 372
The New View of Society (Owen), 548
New World, 366, 679
New York, 2829, 72, 139, 146, 167, 201,
233, 303, 368, 383, 417, 436, 461, 520,
52227, 552, 592, 609, 616, 666, 669, 683,
698, 724, 731, 734, 759, 773, 781, 783. See
also American Revolution; Constitutions,
American State; Continental Congress,
Second
New York Journal (New York), 233
New York Packet, 233
Ney, Marshal, 761, 765
Nicolai, Christoph Friederich, 602, 603
Nicolas, Jean, 618
Nile, Battle of, 282
Nobility, 3840, 47, 55, 57, 73, 104, 108,
150, 190, 205, 214, 231, 250, 329, 389,
413, 429, 443, 453, 465, 482, 53034, 546,
563, 607, 666, 670, 719, 739
Noblesse de robe, 204
Non-Importation Acts, 53435. See also Bos-
ton Port Act; Boston Tea Party; Stamp
Act Congress
North, Frederick North, Lord, 64, 90, 247,
304, 325, 493, 53537, 564, 579, 592,
763, 783
North Briton (Wilkes), 767
North Carolina, 457, 468, 53738, 698, 727,
770. See also American Revolutionary War;
Charlotte Town Resolves; Constitutions,
American State; Continental Congress,
First; Continental Congress, Second;
Loyalists; Mecklenburgh Declaration
Northwest, 53839, 600
Northwest Ordinance, 171, 383, 539
Norway, 474, 744
Notables, 53940. See also Assembly of
Notables
858 Index
Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention
(Madison), 732
Notes on the State of Virginia ( Jefferson), 371
La nouvelle Helose (Rousseau), 575
Nouvelles observations sur les Etats-Gnraux de
France (Mournier), 489
Nouvelles Ordinaires de Divers Endroits French
newspaper, 528
Nugent, Thomas, 23
Oath of the Horatii (David), 185, 566
Observations on the Act of Parliament,
commonly called the Boston Port Bill,
with Thoughts on Civil Society and
Standing Armies (Quincy), 611
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime (Kant), 379
Observations on the Importance of the American
Revolution (Price), 596
Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty
(Price), 596
Oceana (Harrington), 486
OConnor, Arthur, 241, 249
October Days, 253, 450, 469, 512, 54143,
Revolutionary; Pamphlets (French);
Women (French)
ODonoju, Juan de, 477
Offrande la Patrie pamphlet (Marat), 449
Ogden, David, 699
Ogden, James, 54344. See also Slavery and
the Slave Trade
Ogden, William, 544
Og, Vincent, 31920
Ogilvie, William, 242, 243
OHiggins, Bernardo, 394, 660
Ohio Company of Associates, 539
Old Northwest. See Northwest
The Old Regime and the Revolution (Toc-
queville), 721
Old Revolution Club, 425
Olive Branch Petition, 189, 54445, 600, 699
Oliver. Andrew, 697
On Crimes and Punishments (Beccaria), 221
On Divorce (Bonald), 82
One Penny Worth of Pigs Meat: Lessons for the
Swinish Multitude (Spence), 694
The Only Possible Argument in Support of
a Demonstration of the Existence of God
(Kant), 380
On the Crucixion and Resurrection
(Ogden), 543
On the Equality of the Sexes essay (Judith
Murray), 494
On the Export and Import of Grains (Du Pont
de Nemours), 204
On the Freedom of the Press essay
(Hume), 25
On the Penitentiary System in the United States and
Its Application in France (Tocqueville), 720
On the Social Contract, Principles of Political
Right (Rousseau), 227
Lopinion de M. de Cazals sur le renvoi des
ministres, prononce dans la sance de
l Assemble nationale de 19 octobre 1790 (The
Opinion of Mr. de Cazals about Firing Min-
isters, Delivered at the Meeting of the National
Assembly on October 19, 1790) pamphlet
(Salaville), 557
Oporto, Battle of, 501
Orateur du Peuple newsheet, 288
Organt poem (Saint-Just), 653
Orlans, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d,
65, 87, 112, 180, 250, 429, 455, 543,
54546, 751
Osborn, Charles, 2
Osborn, Danvers, 592
Otis, James, 22, 321, 696
Thought on, 256, 260, 54647, 580,
679, 741
Owen, David Dale (son), 548
Owen, Robert Dale (son), 548
Owen, Robert (father), 54748
Paca, William, 549
Paine, Robert Treat, 83, 167, 55051
Paine, Thomas, 41, 42, 92, 97, 128, 14142,
148, 170, 186, 242, 301, 321, 492, 55053,
602, 684. See also Continental Congress,
Second
Pamphlets (American), 22, 252, 321, 400,
55455, 611. See also Federalist Papers
Pamphlets (French), 55657
Panckoucke, Charles-Joseph, 446
Paoli, Pasquale, 55759
Papacy, 3, 4041, 124, 127, 143, 162, 356,
474, 55962, 582, 583, 729. See also
Paris, Peace of, 302
Paris, Treaty of, 21, 171, 204, 266, 438, 504,
758, 783
Paris Commune, 72, 103, 118, 181, 309,
663, 668, 71415, 743
Index 859
Parker, John, 410
Parlements (France), 38, 71, 204, 230, 250,
415, 423, 443, 482, 532, 539, 56263, 765
Parliament (Great Britain), 12, 25, 37, 64,
82, 85, 89, 113, 117, 128, 130, 140, 166,
197, 305, 520, 521, 530, 534, 535, 56365,
579, 600, 610, 687, 699, 725, 746, 749,
763, 783
Parthenopean Republic (Naples, Italy), 359,
566. See also French Revolutionary Wars
Pascal, Blaise, 367, 751
Paterson, William, 145, 151, 56667, 731.
See also American Revolutionary War;
Constitutions, American State; Jefferson,
Thomas; United States Constitution
Paterson Plan, 419
Patriarchia (Filmer), 420
Patrie en danger (the nation in danger), 567.
See also French Revolution; French Revo-
lutionary Wars; Reign of Terror
Patriote Franais periodical (Cloots), 329
Patriotic Billy. See Smith, William (17281793)
Patriotism, 568
Patriot Revolution, 207, 242, 243
Paul, Marie Joseph, 190
Paul I (Tsar of Russia), 1718
Pauperism report (Locke), 421
Peace of Amiens, 162
Peace of Hubertusburg, 270
Peace of Paris (1783), 302, 691
Peace of Sistova, 406
Peers, House of, 399
Peltier, Jean-Gabriel, 215, 56869
Penal Code, 125
Peninsulaires, 475, 476, 477
Peninsular War, 500501
Penn, John, 147
Pennsylvania, 147, 15455, 167, 170, 197,
200, 266, 268, 382, 436, 520, 539, 544,
552, 56971, 616, 669, 731, 758, 768. See
also Constitutions, American State; Slav-
ery and the Slave Trade
Pennsylvania Chronicle, 310
Pennsylvania Magazine, 551
The Peoples Barriers against Inuence and Cor-
ruption (Cartwright), 113
Perceval, Spencer, 302, 416
Pre Duchesne newspaper, 326, 327
The Persian Letters (Montesquieu), 484
Peter III (Tsar), of Russia, 269, 607
Peterloo Massacre, 303
Peter Porcupine. See Cobbett, William
Peters, Thomas, 15
Ption de Villeneuve, Jrme, 35, 99, 306,
572, 589. See also French Revolution;
Girondins; Jacobins
Petty, William, Earl of Shelburne, 64, 247,
302, 400, 579
Phenomenology of Mind (Hegel), 604
The Phenomenology of the Spirit (Hegel), 330
Philadelphia Gazette newspaper, 263
Philadelphia Zeitung newspaper, 263
Philippe Egalit. See Orlans, Louis
Philippe Joseph, Duc d
Philippe II (France), 250
Philippe IV (France), 229
Les Philippiques (The Philippics) pamphlet
(Lagrange-Chancel), 556
Philosophes, 33, 36, 157, 179, 196, 213,
22122, 372, 413, 422, 533, 558, 57375,
577, 671, 727. See also American Philosoph-
ical Society; LEncyclopdie (Diderot and
dAlembert); Enlightenment; Locke, John;
Baron de le Brede et de; Physiocrats; Rous-
seau, Jean-Jacques; Voltaire
Philosophical and Political History of the Estab-
lishments and Trade of Europeans in the Two
Indies (Diderot/Raynal), 198
Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire), 754
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Burke), 96
A Philosophical Essay on Man (Marat), 448
Philosophical Letters (Voltaire), 220
The Philosophy of History (Voltaire), 754
Philosophy of Nature (Hegel), 330
The Philosophy of Spirit (Hegel), 330
Physiocrats, 22122, 479, 517, 57677, 727
Pichegru, Jean-Charles, 102
Pillnitz, Declaration of, 254, 406
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 151, 57778,
731. See also American Revolutionary
War; Slavery and the Slave Trade
Pinckney, Thomas, 578
Pitcher, Molly, 772
Pitt, William (the Elder). See Chatham, Pitt,
William (the Elder), Earl of
Pitt, William (the Younger), 42, 64, 90, 91,
217, 244, 247, 302, 416, 425, 446, 493, 537,
564, 57982, 697, 722, 763, 766, 768, 779
Pius VI (Pope), 465, 559, 56061, 582. See
also Gallicanism; Pius VII (Pope)
Pius VII (Pope), 143, 162, 25354, 376, 465,
559, 56162, 58283, 729
860 Index
Pius IX (Pope), 730
Place, Francis, 114
The Plain, 583, 624. See also Jacobins
Plan de legislation criminelle pamphlet
(Marat), 449
Plan of Iguala, 478
Plenary Court (France), 230
Poem, Moral, Philosophical and Religious,
in Which Is Considered the Nature of Man
(Ogden), 543
Poem of the League (Voltaire), 751
A Poem on the Museum, at Athrington, Belong-
ing to Ashton Levee (Ogden), 543
Poland, 532; constitution of, 115, 58586;
impact of revolutionary thought on,
58384; partitions of, 115, 269, 270,
58485; revolts of, 58689
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 583
Polish-Saxon Question, 474
Political Clubs (France), 3335, 34, 62,
58991. See also Girondins
Political Justice (Godwin), 311
Political Register (Cobbett), 128
The Politician (London Corresponding
Society), 424
La politique naturelle (Holbach), 338
Pontiacs Rebellion, 539
Poor Law Amendment, 129
Poor Liza (Karamzin), 381
Poor Richards Almanac (Franklin), 263
Popham, Home, 393
Portugal, and slavery, 676
Potemkin, Grigory, 115
Potocki, Ignacy, 584
Du pouvoir excutif dans le grands Etats
(Necker), 518
Powers, separation of, 190
Pownall, Thomas, 59192. See also Adams,
Samuel; Albany Plan of Union (1754);
American Revolution; Boston Port Act;
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 293
Pragmatism, vs. ideology, 267
Prairial insurrection, 198, 256, 281, 59295.
See also Constitutions, French Revolution-
ary; Council of Five Hundred; Hber-
tistes; Law of 22 Prairial; Legislative
Assembly (France)
Prescott, Samuel, 410
Pressburg, Treaty of, 499
Preston, Thomas, 83, 84
Price, Richard, 41, 42, 59596
Priestley, Joseph, 42, 595, 59697
Prieur de la Marne, 13435, 59798.
See also National Assembly (France)
Prieur-Duvernois, Claude-Antoine, 134
Primary assemblies, 598
Principles of Polity (Pownall), 592
Privileges, 47, 4849, 102, 127, 171, 191,
250, 390, 412, 445, 453, 478, 530, 540,
577, 586, 587, 59899
Privy Council (Ireland), 265, 314, 351,
353, 416
A Problem (Cartwright), 114
Proclamation Line (Great Britain), 22
Proclamation of 1763, 2122, 301, 539,
600, 610, 757
Proclamation of Rebellion, 536
Prohibitory Act (1776), 301, 600601
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
(Kant), 380
Proli, Pierre, 232
Property, inviolability of, 253
Proposed Book (The American Book of
Prayer) liturgy (Smith), 683
Protestant Ascendancy (Ireland), 353
Protestants, 253, 331, 562, 742, 779
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 36
Providence Gazette, 310, 339
Provincial Congress, 689
Provincialism, vs. nationalism, 267
Provincial Letters (Pascal), 367
Prussia, 127, 158, 207, 214, 248, 251, 254,
508, 567, 576, 619, 744; and Germany,
impact of revolutionary thought on,
6016
Puerto Rico, 678, 680
Pugachev, Yemelyan, 115, 650
Pugachev Rebellion, 607, 649
Puisaye, Joseph de, 121
Puritans, of New England, 733
Pyramids, Battle of, 285
Quakers, 1, 154, 338
Quartering Act, 130, 131, 291, 301, 313,
324, 46162, 609, 687
Quasi-War, 8, 9, 578
Quebec Act, 110, 131, 324, 610
Queens Secret Society, 453
Quesnay, Franois, 479, 576, 577, 671, 727
Quesnel, Pasquier, 367
Quest-ce que le Tiers Etat? (What Is the Third
Estate?) pamphlet (Sieys), 557, 670
Questions on the Encyclopedia (Voltaire), 754
Index 861
Quincy, Josiah, 83, 61011. See also Boston
Port Act; Coercive Acts; Navigation Acts;
Whigs
Quincy, Samuel, 83, 550
Rabaut de Saint Etienne, Jean Paul, 613.
See also French Revolution; Jacobins;
Reign of Terror
Raimond, Julien, 296
Ramsay, David, 24, 325
Randolph, Edmund, 151, 614, 731
Randolph, Peyton, 167, 170, 615. See also
Adams, John; American Revolution;
Boston Port Act; Boston Tea Party; Com-
mittees of Correspondence; Declaration
of the Causes and Necessity of Taking
Up Arms; Declaratory Act; Randolph,
Edmund; Virginia Resolves
Rankin, William, 616. See also Continental
Congress, Second; Loyalists
Rapp, George, 548
Rapport sur les crimes imputs Louis Capet, 413
Rastatt, Treaty of, 495
The Real Rights of Man pamphlet
(Spence), 694
Reason, Cult of, 237
Rebellion, Proclamation of, 536
Rcherches physiques sur lelectricit (Marat), 448
Reed, George, 673, 674
Reeves, John, 416
Reections on the Revolution in France and on
the Proceedings of Certain Societies in London
(Burke), 97, 124, 248, 439, 552, 596, 602,
604, 764
Regency Act, 315
Regency Crisis, 248
Regnier, Jacques, 215
Regulator grievances, 727
Reign of Terror, 3, 9, 41, 55, 70, 86, 119,
124, 135, 142, 151, 174, 196, 199, 214,
221, 245, 256, 28081, 309, 316, 318, 326,
331, 361, 376, 385, 397, 409, 412, 443,
466, 497, 507, 508, 545, 590, 61621, 653,
659, 663, 670, 709, 714, 719, 738
Religion, 75, 143, 162, 192, 209, 21819, 596,
62123, 653, 735. See also Constitutions,
French Revolutionary; Ultramontanism
Religious Edict (Williams), 603
Religious Freedom: Bill for Establishing,
372; Statute for ( Jefferson), 333
Rennes, Parliament of, 251
Renunciation Act (1783), 314
Rponse au Mmoire de M. labb Morellet: sur
la Compagnie des Indes (Necker), 517
Rponse aux alarmes des bons citoyens
(Mirabeau), 482
Report on the Subject of Manufacturers
(Hamilton), 322
Representatives on mission, 72, 132, 135,
142, 255, 364, 508, 62325. See also
Girondins; Jacobins; The Mountain
Republicanism, 18, 24, 188, 198, 235, 238,
403, 451, 482, 514, 555, 568, 62527, 686,
Revolutionary; Hamilton, Alexander;
Jacobins; Jefferson, Thomas; Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity (Libert, Egalit,
Fraternit); Montesquieu, Charles-Louis
de Secondat, Baron de le Brede et de;
Paine, Robert Treat; Robespierre, Max-
imilien; Society of Revolutionary Repub-
lican Women; United States Constitution
Republic of Virtue, 364
Resolution Not to Import, 168
The Restorer of Society to Its Natural State
pamphlet (Spence), 694
Revenue Act, 62728
Revere, Paul, 27, 83, 168, 169, 325, 62829,
687, 700. See also Boston Port Act; Lex-
ington and Concord, Actions at; Tea Act
A Review of the Principal Questions and Dif-
culties in Morals (Price), 595
The Revolution, an Epic Poem (Ogden), 54344
Revolution, 62930. See also Committee
of Public Safety
Revolutionary Republican Women (Citoy-
ennes Rpublicaines Rvolutionnaires),
405, 664
Revolutionary tribunals, 106, 112, 119, 182,
246, 255, 355, 364, 39798, 451, 508, 545,
620, 63031, 711, 717
De la Rvolution franaise (Necker), 518
Les Rvolutions de France et de Brabant
newspaper (Danton), 196
Revolution Settlement (1688-1689), 91
Rhine, Confederation of, 258, 26061
Rhode Island, 213, 338, 520, 63132, 666,
731, 749
Rigaud, Andr, 296
Rights: inalienable, 18687, 191, 223;
natural, 191
Rights of Man (Paine), 97, 423, 439, 552,
602, 684
862 Index
The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and
Proved (Otis), 22, 24
Rillet, Hlne, 444
Riqueti, Gabriel, 408
Riqueti, Victor, 479
Rivington, James, 63233. See also Newspa-
pers (American)
Robespierre, Maximilien, 35, 55, 59, 61, 72,
87, 94, 99, 103, 104, 106, 111, 112, 119,
124, 132, 134, 183, 195, 244, 246, 255,
281, 283, 309, 326, 334, 361, 403, 411,
414, 470, 471, 483, 496, 507, 509, 511,
545, 572, 589, 59091, 617, 619, 63338,
653, 663, 66869, 670, 710, 711, 714, 717,
742. See also Guillotine
Rochambeau, comte de, 758
La Rochejaquelein, Henri du Vergier,
Comte de, 391392
Marquess of, 96, 195, 247, 638, 697, 763
Rodney, Caesar, 467
Rogers, Deborah Read, 263
Rohan, Cardinal de, 454
le Roi Soleil (the Sun King). See Louis XIV
(King of France)
Roland, Jean-Marie, 181, 297, 434, 669, 777
Roland, Marie-Jeanne Philipon, 88, 99,
63839. See also Girondins; Jacobins;
Newspapers (French)
Roland de la Platire, Jean Marie, 88, 403,
64041. See also Jacobins; Roland, Marie-
Jeanne Philipon
Rolandins, 88
Roman Catholicism, 143, 253, 256, 420,
429, 477, 536, 574, 610, 729, 779
Romanov dynasty (Russia), 382
Romans, and slavery, 67576
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 23, 36, 78, 86, 124,
157, 19091, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 226,
307, 338, 433, 481, 486, 513, 533, 558,
573, 575, 587, 601, 618, 64144, 672, 752,
754, 775. See also Jacobins
Roux, Jacques, 66364
Royal Literary Fund, 215
Royal Society, 264, 420
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul, 64445
Rule of Law, 64547
Rulhire, Claude, 587
Rural Code, 125
Rush, Benjamin, 23, 551, 555, 64749,
699, 774
Russell, Thomas, 684
Russia, 19, 115, 214, 251, 381, 382, 5023,
532, 581, 584, 64951, 695, 715
Russo-Turkish War, 270
Rutledge, Edward, 651
Rutledge, John, 95, 652. See also Constitu-
tions, American State
Rye House Plot, 420
Sackville, George, 304
Sacre de Josphine (David), 185
Sade, Marquis de, 101
Saint-Antoine, Faubourg, 388
Saint-Domingue, military expedition, 296,
320, 367, 415, 724
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Lon Florelle
de, 135, 175, 183, 365, 617, 65357,
Revolutionary; Republicanism
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de, 65758
Saint-Simonism, 65758
Salaville, Jean-Baptiste, 557
Salons, 517, 602, 65859
Samuel, Pierre, 204
San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 287
San Lorenzo, Treaty of (Thomas Pinckneys
Treaty), 759
San Marrtin, Jos de, 394, 65961
Sans Culotte and Jacobine, an Hudibrastic Poem
(Ogden), 544
Sans-culottes, 118, 181, 198, 255, 256,
326, 328, 363, 364, 404, 405, 450, 509,
590, 593, 594, 617, 656, 66164, 715,
776, 777. See also Girondins; Women
(French)
Sanson, Deborah, 773
Sans-Souci Palace, 269, 270
Sauvigny, Bertier de, 388
Savil Act, 97
Saxe-Coburg, Prince, 283
Say, Jean-Baptist, 349
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von,
330, 602
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von,
312, 602, 66465. See also Hegel, Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich; Kant, Immanuel
Schimmelpennick, Rutger Jan, 207
Schmidt, Tobias, 318
Schnbrunn, Treaty of, 261
The Science of Knowledge (Fichte), 239
The Science of Logic (Hegel), 330
Scotland, 222, 681, 699
Scott, John Morin, 418, 683
Index 863
Seabury, Samuel, 666. See also American
Revolution; Continental Congress,
Second; Loyalists
Second Coalition (France), 123, 256, 260,
28285
Second Continental Congress, 382, 383,
401, 402, 418, 434
Second Estate, 102, 189, 192, 205, 231, 250,
389, 456, 482, 489, 66667, 713. See also
First Estate; Third Estate
Second Restoration, 105, 433
Second Treatise of Civil Government (Locke),
22, 225, 422
Sedenham, Thomas, 420
Seditious Meetings Act, 425
Senate, 77, 104, 111, 145, 157, 160, 162,
256, 383, 418, 440, 614, 66768, 732
La Sentinelle newspaper, 434
Separation of powers, 190
September Massacres, 72, 88, 171, 181,
254 55, 306, 326, 334, 377, 404, 443, 456,
487, 663, 668 69, 743. See also French Revo-
lutionary Wars; Girondins; The Mountain
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (Astell), 222
Seven Years War, 1516, 21, 22, 117, 131,
218, 251, 261, 269, 295, 301, 304, 322,
324, 428, 453, 460, 516, 539, 579, 600,
690, 696, 724, 756
Shays, Daniel, 463
Shays Rebellion, 46, 235, 325, 463, 521, 550
Sheridan, Charles Francis, 352, 764
Sherman, Roger, 147, 151, 167, 185,
66970, 673, 674. See also American Revo-
lution; Constitutions, American State;
Continental Congress, Second; Signers
Shirley, William, 550
Short Hints toward a Scheme for Unit-
ing the Northern Colonies proposal
(Franklin & Hutchinson), 16
Shurtliff, Robert, 773
Sicily, 495
Sidney, Algernon, 420
Sieys, Emmanuel Joseph, Abb, 151, 157,
190, 231, 241, 242, 252, 482, 506, 557,
589, 669, 67073, 709, 71718, 719. See
also Brumaire, Coup dEtat de; Constitu-
tions, French Revolutionary; The Moun-
tain; Prussia and Germany, impact of
revolutionary thought on
Signers of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, 67375
Simon, Antoine, 431
Sinking Fund, 579
Sistova, Peace of, 406
Six Acts (1819), 303
Sketch for a History of the Progress of the Human
Mind (Condorcet), 144
Slavery Abolition Act, 766
Slavery and the Slave Trade, 1, 2, 1314,
153, 187, 188, 267, 447, 67580, 766. See
also Amis de la Constitution, Socit des;
Antislavery groups; Gens de couleur; Hai-
tian Revolution; Supplementary Conven-
tion on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave
Trade, and Institutions and Practices
Similar to Slavery (Geneva)
Smith, Abigail, 5, 371, 771, 774
Smith, Adam, 96, 218, 222, 349, 446, 513,
592, 68182
Smith, Francis, 410
Smith, Melancton (Federal Farmer), 233, 733
Smith, William (17271803), 418, 437,
68283. See also Loyalists
Smith, William (17281793), 68384. See
also American Revolution; Constitutions,
American State; Livingston, Philip
The Snare Broken pamphlet (Mayhew), 23
The Social Contract (Rousseau), 19091, 220,
221, 558, 573
Social mobility, vs. class barriers (Franklin),
267
Socit des Amis de la Constitution. See
Socit Fraternelle, 777
Society for Promoting the Abolition of
Slavery, 267
Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts (Church of England), 683
Society of Friends of the Monarchical Con-
stitution, 350
Society of Jesus, 560, 562
Society of Revolutionary Republican
Women, 385, 777
Society of Supporters of the Bill of
Rights, 767
Society of the Friends of the Law, 469
Society of United Irishmen, 241, 243, 315,
353, 354, 491, 68486, 721, 722
Solemn League and Covenant, 68687
Some Considerations of the Consequences of Low-
ering of Interest, and Raising the Value of the
Money (Locke), 421
864 Index
Sons of Liberty, 6, 43, 85, 213, 266, 313,
324, 521, 534, 536, 683, 68788, 697, 726
Sonthonax, Lger-Ficit, 320
Sophism, 422, 67980
The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe), 312
South Carolina, 30, 94, 107, 167, 200, 520,
535, 577, 689, 778. See also American
Revolution; Articles of Confederation;
Constitutions, American State; Conti-
nental Congress, Second; Declaration of
Independence; Pinckney, Charles Cotes-
worth; Pinckney, Thomas; Rutledge, John
Sovereign Chamber of the Clergy (Paris),
67071
Spa Fields riots, 694
Spain, 30, 31, 41, 104, 261, 335, 356, 368,
474, 475, 500, 532, 580, 583, 65961,
668, 676, 69093, 724, 744. See also Latin
American Revolutions
Special Tribunals (of Napoleon I), 497
Speech on Reconciliation with America
(Burke), 97
Spence, Thomas, 93, 69394
Spensonian Philanthropists, 694
The Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), 23,
219, 48586
St. Leon (Godwin), 311
Stal, Anna-Louise Germaine Necker,
Madame de, 222, 517, 69495. See also
migrs; Jacobins; Rousseau, Jean-
Jacques; Salons
Stamp Act, 6, 11, 22, 24, 25, 64, 83, 85, 96,
118, 139, 194, 195, 203, 265, 268, 301,
303, 324, 401, 435, 459, 46061, 464, 534,
549, 555, 596, 682, 688, 696, 69697, 712,
746, 749, 779, 783. See also Newspapers
(American)
Stamp Act Congress, 16, 139, 144, 146, 166,
303, 418, 435, 461, 467, 521, 538, 697,
69798, 746
A State of the Rights of the Colonists pamphlet
(Samuel Adams), 23
Statute for Religious Freedom ( Jefferson),
333
Steuben, Friederich von, 387, 758
Stockton, Richard, 69899
Stoddert, Benjamin, 910
Stoicism, 67980
Story, Joseph, 720
Sucre, Antonio Jos de, 396
Suez Canal, 658
Suffolk County Convention, 700
Suffolk Resolves, 168, 699700. See also
Suffrage (American), 700702
Suffrage (French), 7024
Sugar Act (1764), 22, 324, 339, 460, 696,
698, 704, 757. See also American Revolution
Sullivan, John, 167, 386
Sultan, Tipu, 35051, 589
A Summary View of the Rights of British Amer-
ica pamphlet ( Jefferson), 369, 554
Supplementary Convention on the Aboli-
tion of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and In-
stitutions and Practices Similar to Slavery
(Geneva), 680
Supreme Being, Cult of, 237, 329, 51011
Supreme Court (United States), 74, 117, 146,
155, 378, 467, 566, 567, 7046, 733, 768
Supreme Executive Council, of Pennsylva-
nia, 266
Sur ladministration de M. Necker (Necker), 518
Sur la litrature considr dans ses rapports avec
les institutions sociales (Stal), 695
Surveillance Committee (Paris Commune),
669
Suspects, Law of. See Law of Suspects
Suvorov, Alexander, 286
Sweden, 474, 581, 680, 695
Swift, Jonathan, 554
Swift, Zephaniah, 24
Swiss Guard, 430
Switzerland, 574, 591, 737
Syllabus Errorum (Pope Pius IX), 41
The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX), 730
Symbols (American Revolutionary), 707
Symbols (French Revolutionary), 7078
Syria, 547
Systme social (Holbach), 338
A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut
(Swift), 24
Tableau (Quesnay), 577
Taille (personal tax), 230
Take Your Choice (Cartwright), 114
Talleyrand-Prigord, Charles Maurice de,
8, 40, 63, 94, 157, 204, 217, 241, 258, 474,
70910, 744
Tallien, Jean Lambert, 71011, 714, 717.
See also The Mountain; Thermidorian
Reaction
Tandy, James Napper, 352, 722
Tappan, Lewis, 2
Targowica, Confederation of, 584
Index 865
Taxation, 6, 56, 97, 102, 126, 192, 225, 229
30, 230, 250, 257. See also Cours des aides
(courts of taxation); Taille (personal tax)
Tea Act, 131, 211, 324, 351, 71112. See also
Continental Congress, Second; Gage,
Thomas
Tecumseh, 539
Temple of Reason, 119, 327
Tennis Court Oath, 65, 106, 124, 204, 231,
315, 390, 489, 506, 572, 71214, 800. See
also Constitutions, French Revolutionary;
First Estate; Second Estate
The Terror. See Reign of Terror
Terwagne, Anne Josphe, 776
Textor, Katherine Elisabeth, 311
Thelwall, John, 424
Thorie des lois civiles (Linguet), 415
Theory of Colors (Goethe), 312
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 26, 681
Thermidorian Reaction, 62, 72, 104, 134,
142, 159, 202, 244, 256, 281, 326, 355,
361, 365, 41415, 451, 466, 470, 509, 592,
597, 617, 620, 653, 71415. See also Bru-
maire, Coup dEtat de; Calendar, French
Revolutionary
Thermidorians, 61, 591, 654, 664, 714,
71617, 739, 77778
Things as They Are (Godwin), 311
Third Coalition, 499, 581
Third Estate, 47, 4950, 58, 65, 99, 102,
106, 108, 124, 189, 205, 230, 242, 250,
252, 350, 390, 413, 414, 455, 482, 489,
5067, 533, 546, 563, 613, 713, 714,
71719. See also First Estate; Second Estate
Third Letter for Toleration (Locke), 421
Third Reich, 312
Thomas, Antoine-Lonard, 222
Thomas Pinckneys Treaty (Treaty of San
Lorenzo), 759
Thornton, Matthew, 674
Thoughts on Government (Adams), 554
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
(Burke), 96
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (Woll-
stonecraft), 770
Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living
Forces (Kant), 379
Three Guarantees, Army of, 477
Tilsit, Treaty of, 19, 502
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 645, 71921
Tolentino, Battle of, 495
Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 684, 685, 72122
Tonnelier, Louis Auguste le, 214
Tooke, John Horne, 249
Tories, 83, 86, 96, 419, 435, 565, 581,
72223, 769. See also Britain
Totalitarianism, 56, 616
To the Citizens of the United States essay
(Paine), 553
Toussaint lOuverture, 296, 320, 337,
72324. See also French Revolution;
Le tout est-il plus grand que la partie? (Is the:
Whole Greater than Its Parts?) pamphlet
(Salaville), 557
Townshend, Charles, 724. See also
Coercive Acts
Townshend Acts, 6, 11, 22, 82, 83, 85, 197,
291, 301, 324, 461, 464, 518, 534, 535,
555, 688, 712, 724, 72526, 747, 757,
771. See also Boston Port Act; Boston Tea
Party; Committee of Secret Correspon-
dence (Continental Congress); Stamp
Act; Stamp Act Congress
Tracts on the Property Laws (Burke), 96
Tracy, Destutt de, 349
Trafalgar, Battle of, 691
Trait de ladministration de la France
(Necker), 517
The Transition from the Metaphysical First Princi-
ples of Natural Science to Physics (Kant), 380
A Treatise of Human Nature (Hume), 343
Treatise on Political Economy (Say), 199, 349
Treatise on Tolerance (Voltaire), 574
Treaty of Campo Formio, 260
Trelawney Maroons, 366
Trent, Council of, 367
Tribunal of the Inquisition, 335
Tribunate, 256
Le tribun du peuple (The Peoples Tribune),
55, 56
Tronchet, Franois-Denis, 125, 444
Troppau conference, 474
Trumbull, Jonathan, 726. See also American
Revolution; Constitutions, American
State
Tryon, William, 457, 72627. See also Ameri-
can Revolutionary War
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, 213, 220,
252, 427, 444, 453, 480, 517, 557, 576,
659, 671, 72728, 742. See also Ancien
rgime; Louis XVI (King of France)
Twelve, Commission of, 182, 309, 617
22 Prairial, Law of. See Law of 22 Prairial
866 Index
Two Acts (of 1795), 424
Two Treatises of Government (Locke), 190,
219, 421
Ulster Volunteers (Ireland), 244
Ultramontanism, 292, 72930. See also
Abolition of the Catholic Cult; Anti-
clericalism; Religion
Ultras, 47, 433, 730, 754
Unitarians, 597
United Empire Loyalists, 438
United Irishmen. See Society of United
Irishmen
United Kingdom of the Netherlands. See
Netherlands, United Kingdom of
United Provinces of the Low Countries, 68
United States Congress. See Congress (U.S.)
United States Constitution, 6, 12, 72, 74,
113, 124, 144, 147, 151, 192, 193, 201,
223, 262, 322, 325, 370, 383, 422, 438,
447, 458, 467, 609, 73136. See also Con-
stitutional Convention (U.S.); Constitu-
tions, American State; Federalist Papers;
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 680
Universal Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens (Kant), 379
Vadier, Marc-Guillaume, 594
Valmy, Battle of, 255, 282, 737. See also
French Revolutionary Wars
Varennes, Flight to, 34, 71, 99, 150, 238,
254, 307, 387, 430, 450, 487, 572, 711,
738. See also Abolition of the Monarchy
(France); migrs; French Revolution;
Vendan Rebellion, 41, 134, 136, 284, 510,
597, 617, 73839. See also Chouans; La
Chounnerie; French Revolutionary Wars;
La Roche-jaquelein, Henri du Vergier,
Comte de
Vendmiaire, Rising of, 281, 73940. See
also French Revolution; Thermidorian
Reaction
Venezuela, 680
Ventse Decrees, 619, 656
Vergennes, Gravier, Charles, Comte de, 261,
446, 487, 741. See also American Revolu-
tionary War; Franco-American Alliance
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien, 88, 297, 306,
317, 74244. See also Jacobins; Parlements
(France); Reign of Terror
Verona conference, 474
Versailles, Treaty of, 204, 452
Vienna, Congress of, 19, 68, 206, 208,
261, 359, 473, 474, 519, 562, 693, 710,
74445, 760
Le Vieux Cordelier (Desmoulins), 776
View of the Origin and Progress of the French
Revolution (Wollstonecraft), 770
Villiers, Joseph Coulon de, 756
Vimeur, Jean Baptiste Donatien de, 387
A Vindication of Natural Society (Burke), 95
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Wollstone-
craft), 770
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Woll-
stonecraft), 776
Vindictiae Gallicae: A Defence of the French
Revolution and Its English Admirers
(Mackintosh), 439
Virginia, 7, 31, 32, 72, 73, 131, 140, 154, 234,
382, 400, 436, 458, 459, 518, 520, 539, 616,
677, 696, 698, 734, 74548, 747, 755, 757,
782. See also Declaration of the Causes and
Necessity of Taking Up Arms; Declaratory
Act; Slavery and the Slave Trade
Virginia Capes, Battle of, 782
Virginia Plan (Madison), 144, 152, 440,
566, 769
Virginia Resolves, 696, 698, 746, 74950
Virginia Stamp Act resolutions, 24
Virtue, Republic of, 364
Vitam impendre Vero (Marat), 449
The Vocation of Man (Fichte), 239
Voltaire, Franois Marie, 15, 23, 36, 42, 65,
71, 78, 115, 157, 196, 213, 216, 218, 220,
269, 288, 389, 422, 443, 445, 558, 559,
573, 574, 576, 618, 75054, 775
Vues sur les moyens dexcution dont les
reprsentants de la France pourront disposer
en 1789 pamphlet (Sieys), 671
War Commission of Saxe-Weimar, 312
War of 1812, 488, 539, 578
War of Fifth Coalition, 502
War of the Austrian Succession, 269, 304
War of the Oranges, 660
War of the Spanish Succession, 68, 250
Warren, Joseph, 410
Washington, George, 7, 27, 29, 30, 31, 85,
117, 151, 163, 170, 189, 190, 200, 213, 291,
322, 325, 333, 368, 386, 402, 419, 458, 459,
488, 494, 549, 551, 567, 577, 578, 683, 684,
699, 726, 731, 75560, 770, 782
Index 867
Waterloo, Battle of, 59, 259, 399, 416, 433,
5045, 598, 695, 76062
Watson-Wentworth, Charles, 64, 760. See
also Rockingham, Watson-Wentworth,
Charles, Marquess of
Wattignies, Battle of, 620
Wealth of Nations. See An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(Smith)
Weimar Republic, 312
Wellesley, Arthur, 501
Westmoreland Association, 401
Wests Almanack, 310
What Is Property? (Proudhon), 36
What Is the Third Estate? pamphlet (Sieys),
506, 671, 717
Whigs, 25, 41, 90, 91, 96, 131, 248, 315,
354, 410, 565, 581, 699, 721, 76265, 780.
See also French Revolutionary Wars; Slav-
ery and the Slave Trade; Tories
Whipping Post Club, 11
Whiskey Rebellion, 567, 571, 759
Whitelocke, John, 393
White Plains protest, 666
White Terror, 47, 142, 288, 433, 620, 765
Wilberforce, William, 1, 579, 766
Wilkes, John, 92, 118, 247, 400, 535, 694,
76668. See also American Revolution
William I (King of Netherlands), 68, 208, 519
William of Occam, 292
William of Orange, 420
Williams, Frederick, 603
Williams, Gwyn, 66263
William V (King of Netherlands), 207
Wilson, James, 2425, 26, 186, 673, 674, 731,
76870. See also Committees of Correspon-
dence; Constitutions, American State
Witherspoon, John, 26
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 42, 92, 222, 311,
770, 776
Women, 26, 119, 179, 191, 253, 405, 494.
See also Astell, Mary; Citoyennes Rpub-
licaines Rvolutionnaires (Revolutionary
Republican Women); Declaration of
the Rights of Women; Epinay, Louise d;
Femmes, soyez soumises vos maris! (Women,
Be Submissive to Your Spouses!) pamphlet
(Voltaire); Macaulay, Catharine; Murray,
Judith Sargent; Society of Revolutionary
Republican Women; Stal, Anna-Louise
Germaine Necker, Madame de; Suffrage
(American); Suffrage (French); Woll-
stonecraft, Mary
Women (America), 77174. See also Slavery
and the Slave Trade; Women (French)
Women (French), 77478. See also Constitu-
Wooler, Thomas, 114
World War II, 13
Wright, James, 77879
Wrttemberg, Kingdom of, 261
Wyvill, Christopher, 77980. See also Slavery
and the Slave Trade
XYZ Affair, 8, 578, 709
Yates, Abraham, 73, 234, 781
Yates, Robert (Brutus), 233
Yeomancy, 353
Yorktown, Siege of, 6, 3233, 262, 321, 428,
467, 519, 537, 616, 747, 758, 78283
Young, Arthur, 590
Young, Thomas, 139, 78384
Young Hegelians, 331

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