Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (38 page)

and lasting nightmare, that concerning the possibility of foreign interven-

tion, and hence played naturally into the hands of those radical Jacobins

who were utterly determined from the start to defend the Revolution.This

does not mean that the Jacobin contingent in the Assembly emerged un-

scathed from the traumatizing events of the summer of 1791 – the Flight to

Varennes, the “suspension” and subsequent reinstatement of the king, the

brutal repression of Parisian demonstrators calling for a republic on the

Champ-de-Mars on 17 July, and the appearance of a “war scare” in many

places.Under the impact of these events, Jacobin unity in the Assembly

shattered: longtime tribunes of the Society such as Duport, Barnave, and

Alexandre de Lameth withdrew to form their own, more moderate “club,”

the Feuillants, leaving radical stalwarts like Robespierre, Pétion, and Buzot

temporarily in a state of near isolation.

Yet it is crucial to note that the dynamics of the situation, destined to

carry these last-named deputies successfully through their season of de-

feat, had already been established in the months
before
Varennes.Those

on the Far Right in the Constituent Assembly had been abandoning that

body in increasing numbers ever since the start of 1791, in effect giving up

on parliamentary debate and raising the possibility of civil war and for-

eign intervention.In response to such a drastic course of action, centrist

politicians had only been able to suggest lamely that Louis XVI’s govern-

ment be allowed to take back some of its former authority so as to seek to

“stabilize” affairs.Yet to the Jacobins on the Left – still precariously unified

in the months leading up to Varennes – such talk had smacked of lunacy.

With good reason, they had accused delegates in the Center of being ready

to jeopardize all that had been gained so far in the Revolution in the fool-

ish hope of working with a king who had yet to demonstrate convincingly

112 Michael L.Kennedy,
The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The First Years
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 194, 196–98. See also, on these military developments in 1791: Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution
, pp.49–57; and Scott,
The Response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution
, p.106.

154

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

his acceptance of anything the Assembly had done.113 What was ironic, of

course, was that after Varennes and the Champ-de-Mars “massacre,” and

the splintering of Jacobin unity, the same critique applied with equal force

to those deserting the Jacobin Club to form the Feuillant Club.When one

of their number, Barnave, persisted in depicting Louis XVI as uniquely

positioned to unify the nation against both “powerful neighbors” abroad

and scheming “demagogues” at home, Robespierre could have replied with

unimpeachable insight that this king was simply no longer willing to play

such a statesmanlike role.114

And what was true of the Jacobins at Paris was equally true of their

brethren in the provinces: they came grandly into their own with the rumors

of international crisis in the summer of 1791.After the flight of the king, ru-

mors that an English naval force was poised to descend on Brittany touched

off scenes of panic in the clubs of the west and southwest.Bordeaux’s

Jacobins railed hysterically against the reported buildup of English arms,

while those at Ste.-Foy drafted a call to the English people to overthrow

the detestable Pitt.Clubs all over the kingdom reacted to the news of the

royal family’s flight by convening emergency sessions.Permanent commit-

tees in some communities sat through the nights, and as the crisis heated

up, huge crowds began to assemble at the halls reserved for the Jacobins

just after dawn.The clubs were so overwhelmed by numbers that many

of them were forced to convene in public squares.Dark rumors of inva-

sions by Spanish, British, Imperial, and émigré forces placed a premium

upon civil defense.Couriers were dispatched to nearby towns to obtain the

latest information.Deputations rushed off to the authorities “to demand

the mobilization of the National Guards, the placement of beacon fires on

the heights, the seizure of the papers of émigrés, and the surveillance of

suspects.” Clubs in a number of regions – notably on France’s threatened

frontiers – transformed themselves overnight into recruitment bureaus,

took newly formed companies of “volunteers” under their wing, and de-

manded that all officers in the armies be subjected to rigorous “patriotic”

oversight.Needless to add, the provincial Jacobin societies corresponded

ceaselessly among themselves and deluged the Parisian mother club and

the Constituent Assembly with messages of encouragement.115

In all these ways, then, the Jacobins of Paris and the provinces, running

the gamut from Assemblymen of national reputation to unheralded local

activists, began to harvest the benefits of their long and inflexible adherence

to the revolutionary cause.That they were very well positioned to orches-

trate a national response to threats from abroad, to lead a mobilization

113 Hampson,
Prelude to Terror
, pp.162–64.

114 Barnave quoted in Applewhite,
Political Alignment in the French National Assembly
, pp.174–75.

115 See, on all of this, Kennedy,
The Jacobin Clubs
, esp.pp.194, 196–98, 241, and 269.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

155

of citizens in defense of the Revolution, was of course not yet fully ap-

parent.In retrospect, however, the Jacobins’ fundamental strengths seem

evident.In this connection, it might be especially useful to enlarge upon

a point made earlier, regarding the social origins of those who composed

this political faction.

In differentiating the Jacobins in the Constituent Assembly from their

fellow deputies of the Center and Right, scholars have underscored their

provenance in the professional milieus of urban and small-town France.

Whereas the most active and outspoken members of the Center tended dis-

proportionately to be rich entrepreneurs and young “enlightened” Parisian

aristocrats of illustrious lineage, and whereas activists of the Right were es-

pecially likely to be somewhat older, more traditionally minded nobles and

clerics of rural France, Jacobin militants were overwhelmingly of the for-

mer Third Estate.Most of the Jacobin representatives in the Constituent

Assembly seem originally to have been practitioners of the law or
officiers

of various types in the small towns of provincial France.They were much

less affluent than the celebrated nobles, bankers, and merchants of the Club

of 1789, and indeed many were among the humbler members of the Third

Estate.One scholar has ascertained that nine of the eleven leading Jacobin

orators were of the legal vocation.In the legislature as in the country in

general, “it was often the men of law who represented the most important

bastion of radicalism.”116 We can add to these findings a natural counter-

point: that Jacobin clubs in provincial communities drew their membership

from much the same professional strata of middle-class society.117

This last observation is important, because in the crises that lay ahead

the Jacobins would have to be active
nationally
, and not just at the capital.

And here the most relevant fact is that the social elements most faithfully

represented among the Parisian and provincial Jacobins were – in a more

general sense – assuming the direction of civic affairs all over France.The

individuals involved were prospering in various bourgeois callings, if not

yet endowed with major political experience.Whether urban entrepreneurs

or professionals skilled in the law, they had in the past been denied positions

of real power by royal officials, nobles, and clergymen who monopolized

the highest social status in the old regime.They were now, nonetheless “the

men best prepared by their style of life, reading habits, professional skills,

116 Refer again to Tackett,
Becoming a Revolutionary
, pp.285–87.See also, once again, Applewhite,
Political Alignment in the French National Assembly
, esp.pp.193–201.Note again that Applewhite sees old-regime bureaucrats rather than young, enlightened aristocrats of Parisian origin as especially prominent among the “centrists” in the Assembly.

117 “During the Constituent Assembly the leaders of the clubs came almost exclusively from the middle and upper strata of the bourgeoisie.The rank-and-file was also overwhelmingly middle class.” Michael Kennedy,
The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The Middle
Years
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 34–35.

156

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

economic positions, in short, by their sociopolitical organization, to take

power.”118

Local studies have confirmed this general characterization of sociopolit-

ical change offered by Lynn Hunt.In the capital city, research suggests that

the 407 electors who selected the Parisian deputies to the Estates General

and helped set the tone for municipal politics in the early Revolution hailed

largely from the wealthier strata of the middle class.Among their number

present at the H ôtel de Ville on 14 July 1789 were 4 bankers, 26 merchants,

154 lawyers, and 13 doctors and surgeons.119 At Toulouse, it seems, the

individuals emerging as revolutionary leaders in 1790 were businessmen

and barristers; and in 1791 the administration was still the preserve of

comfortable, educated bourgeois citizens.120 At Marseilles, so dominated

by commercial connections and interests, the municipal government in the

early stages of the Revolution was headed by a merchant; trading types

also ranked prominently in the administration, as did manufacturers and

nonentrepreneurial bourgeois.121 At Bordeaux, another city in southern

France sensitive at all times to issues of profit and trade, those outstanding

in commerce and the law now acquired the status recognition that they

had so long coveted, and it was they who, in the wake of the municipal

upheaval of 1790, controlled the deliberative assemblies in both the city

and the department.122 At Toulon, too, in the far southeast, the Revolu-

tion, at least at first, conferred power upon the moneyed elite of
rentiers
, lawyers, and merchants.123 And in most of the Midi departments one can

(unsurprisingly) point to moderate notables, primarily bourgeois, as the

“men of 1789” who successfully established the new departmental and mu-

nicipal governing bodies.124 These examples could be multiplied ad infini-

tum, and they further document the transference of power in revolutionary

France from the old elites to entrepreneurs and members of the legal and

other “bourgeois” professions.
Notabilité
was everywhere coming into its

own.

118 See Lynn Hunt, “Committees and Communes: Local Politics and National Revolution

in 1789,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History
18 (1976): esp.336–42.

119 Hampson,
A Social History of the French Revolution
, p. 72.

120 Martyn Lyons,
Revolution in Toulouse: An Essay on Provincial Terrorism
(Berne: Peter Lang, 1978), p.35.

121 William Scott,
Terror andRepression in Revolutionary Marseilles
(London: Macmillan, 1973), pp.25–26.

122 Alan Forrest,
Society andPolitics in Revolutionary Bordeaux
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p.253.

123 Malcolm H.Crook, “Federalism and the French Revolution: The Revolt of Toulon in

1793,”
History
65 (1980): 384.

124 Hubert C.Johnson,
The Midi in Revolution: A Study of Regional Political Diversity,
1789–1793
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 258.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

157

It was perfectly natural that, in quite a few of these localities, many

of the citizens most active in the newly opened arena of governmental-

administrative affairs should also have been conspicuous in Jacobin and

other “patriotic” societies.This does not of course allow us to posit a tight

“fit” between Parisian and provincial policymakers, on the one hand, and

Parisian and provincial Jacobin militants, on the other.It does, however,

seem fair to speculate that those bourgeois Frenchmen now wielding in-

fluence both in public office and in Jacobin clubs would be better prepared

by their past experiences and social connections than more “elitist” revo-

lutionaries would be to mobilize masses of newly enfranchised citizens in

defense of the Revolution, should it ever become truly imperiled.Beyond

this generalization we cannot at this point in our analysis go, though we

know that, in times soon to come, the Revolution’s middle-class Jacobin

leaders would themselves splinter into factions more or less determined to

defend France and to pursue the Revolution’s domestic agenda.

Of course, in differentiating between “bourgeois” Jacobins on the Left