The Failure of Assembly-Based Government

In the French Revolution, as in the American, assembly-based, legislative govern­ment triumphed over monarchical power. This was clear in France on October 10,1789, when the National Assembly imposed upon Louis XVI anew title: “Louis by the grace of God and, by the constitutional law of the state, King of the French”.^[708] He was, then, no longer the king by divine right, but because the Constituent Assembly had so named him in the constitutional pact.

The regime of constitutional monarchy never took firm hold because the Assem­bly stripped the king of virtually all his powers, except for a limited veto right. The irresolute Louis XVI, after first seeking to ingratiate himself with the new regime, later opted to flee France and join his fellow emigrees, though he was frustrated in his attempt, recognized and detained at Varennes, just 30 miles from his destina­tion, the royalist stronghold of Montmedy, on the night of June 20, 1791. The “Flight to Varennes” marked the beginning of the end for the French monarchy. The Constituent Assembly finished writing up the first French Constitution (1791)

unilaterally, without consulting with the king.^[709] The utter exclusion of the monarch and his loss of all credibility led to a constitution in which power was assigned to the Assembly, with no counterbalance provided by a strong executive. Louis’s failed escape attempt also sparked a wave of violent anti-monarchical sentiment among the most radical elements comprising the Mountain (La Montagne), who would end up prevailing after the declaration of war (April of 1792), and through the bloody revolution of August 10, 1792, when a mob invaded the Tuileries Palace.

The “Terror” would come to a stop on July 27, 1794 (9 Termidor de I’An II), the end of the popular revolution, when Robespierre and his companions were guillotined, and the sans culottes were overpowered. As a result, in what was called the Thermidorian Reaction the bourgeois oligarchy was able to regain control of the Revolution (Lyons 1975, 123-146).^[711]

The change of regime from the Radical to the Bourgeois republic (Rude 2000, 122) made it possible to close the second Constituent Assembly (the Convention), after the drafting of a new Constitution in 1795 (Constitution de I’An III)^[712] which, first of all, overturned the principle of the unicameral legislature which had been fiercely maintained since 1789. There was no one-man Executive (but rather a five- man Directory) and there were two legislative chambers: the Council of the Five Hundred and the Council of the Elders, with 250 members. There was no bicam­eralism, however, in the sense that the two chambers represented the same popu­lation. Legislative power was split in two, as the Thermidorians feared the Convention’s potential for assembly-based absolutism. As a result, the first cham­ber was to propose laws, while the second approved them (Lyons 2008, 18-19). Restrictions on the electorate were imposed through the reestablishment of a system of strict and indirect census suffrage; as opposed to the Constitution of 1793, which had established universal and direct masculine suffrage, under that of 1795 only the rich could vote and be voted for (meaning those who had become rich from the sale of ecclesiastical assets, as the nobles had either been guillotined or had fled France).^[713]

Did the Constitution of 1795 establish a liberal state like that in America or the one that would end up emerging in England? One might be led to think so, as its preamble included a 22-article preamble called the “Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the Citizen”.^[714] In reality, however, the bourgeois government which arose from the Thermidorian Reaction was unable to win the French people’s support for the principles of the new regime.

It is important to point out that in both the United States and in France, attempts to establish governments with strong legislative branches and weak executive ones would fail. In America, chaos and confusion would break out in the form of Shay’s Rebellion, which prompted the “federal debate” that led to the drafting and ratifi­cation of the Constitution of 1787, establishing a more solid Union under the rule of a powerful Executive, headed by a President. In France, under the Directory, the system was too artificial and could not sustain itself. The French were really not accustomed to the dynamics and the give and take of parliamentary government, at least until the Restoration of 1815. Democratic, assembly-based government would be attempted again in France in 1830 and in 1848, but would not succeed until the III Republic, in 1875. The French monarchical tradition would reappear with Napoleon Bonaparte, a former supporter of Robespierre’s who had actually been on the verge of being guillotined. Napoleon suddenly became a key figure on the French political scene after saving the Directory through his military actions immediately after the approval of the September 1795 Constitution, on October 5 (13 Vendimiaire de I’An III) (1958,191-202). Four years later, he took power, and in 1804 reestablished monarchy in France.

TIMELINE

From Louis XIV to Louis XVI

The Origins of the Revolution (June of 1788-October of 1789)

1788 Rebellion of the Nobility. The king clashes with the Parlement of Paris. June. Rebellion in Dauphine. The provincial estates of Vizille. August. Necker’s return. Convocation of the Estates General.

1789 May 5. Opening of the Estates General.

June 17. The Third Estate is transformed into a National Assembly.

June 20. Tennis Court Oath.

June 27. The Constituent Assembly is established.

July 14. The Storming of the Bastille. First popular revolution.

July 17. The tricolor flag is adopted.

August 4. The abolition of privileges. August 26. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

October 6. The people of Paris force the royal family to flee from Versailles to Paris. The Constituent Assembly also moves. Second popular revolution.

The Stage of the Constitutional Monarchy (October 10,1789-August 10,1792)

1789 October 10. The Constituent Assembly grants the king a new title: “Louis, by the grace of God and, by constitutional law, King of the French”.

2 November. Expropriation of ecclesiastical assets.

December. The club of the Jacobins is formed. First revolutionary political party (Mirabeau).

1790 January. The creation of popular societies, the Revolution’s most radical political parties (Cordeliers Club: Danton, Marat).

July 12. Civil constitution of the clergy.

July 14. Celebration of the Federation. Origin of the French nation.

1791 June 20-21. The Flight to Varennes. The king’s attempt to flee France is foiled.

July 17. The National Guard fires on a crowd calling for the abolition of the monarchy.

September 3. Approval of the first French Constitution. September 30. The end of the Constituent Assembly. October 1. Opening of the Legislative Assembly.

1792 April 20. The Legislative Assembly declares war on Austria.

July 14. Writing of “La Marseillaise”. (French national anthem) Third Celebration of the Federation.

August 1. The Brunswick Manifesto.

August 10. Third popular insurrection. The mob overruns the Tuileries Palace. The king and his family are jailed.

The Establishment of the First French Republic: The Stage of the Convention (September of 1792-October of 1795)

1792 September 1-2. First killings. The start of the Terror.

September 2-6. Elections to the Convention.

September 20. First military victory of revolutionary France at Valmy. September 22. Abolition of the monarchy and proclamation of the “republic”.

6 November. Dumouriez defeats the Austrians at Jemmapes.

19 November. Decree through which the Convention announces its intention “to carry brotherhood and aid to all those peoples who wish to recover their freedom”. France exports the Revolution. The beginnings of “revolutionary imperialism”.

1793 January 21. The execution of Louis XVI.

February. The first coalition of European monarchies against revolutionary France is formed.

March. Monarchical revolt in Vendee (Western France). A bloody civil war breaks out between monarchists and republicans.

April. Creation of the Committee of Public Safety. Restoration of the dictatorship by the most radical revolutionaries (Montagnards). Arrest and execution of the Girondins.

June 24. New French Constitution (Constitution de l’ An II). Universal masculine suffrage is established.

September 5. The sans culottes seize power and implement a regime of terror.

September 22. The Convention decrees a massive raising of troops (unmarried men ages 18-25), the first step towards the enactment of compulsory military service, implemented in 1798. In 1 year the revolutionary army grows from 200,000 to 800,000 men.

October 10. A “revolutionary government” is installed. The Revolution’s most radical phase begins.

October 16. Execution of Marie Antoinette.

24 November. Implantation of a revolutionary calendar (Fabre d’ Eglantine) as a measure of “de-Christianization”.

1794 January. Robespierre seizes power (which he maintains until July).

June 8 (20 Prarial de I’An II). Celebration in honor of the “Supreme Being”. Peak of Robespierre’s power.

July 27 (9 Termidor, An II). The Thermidorian Reaction. Moderates and centrists arrest and execute Robespierre and other “terrorists”. End of the Terror and the beginning of the last phase of the Convention (Thermidorian Convention, July 27, 1794-October 26, 1795).

August 22. Third French Constitution (L' An III).

1795 October 5 (13 Vendimiaire, An IV). General Bonaparte represses a pro-monarchy rebellion against the Convention, opening fire against the demonstrators in the streets of Paris. His actions earn him favor with the government.

October 26. End of the Convention.

The Second Stage of the First French Republic: The Directory (October of 1795-November of 1799)

1796 April. The Conspiracy of Equals (Babeuf).

March 27. Napoleon takes control of the Army of Italy. Napoleon undertakes a victorious 1.5-year military campaign against Austria that ends with the Peace of Campo-Formio (October 7, 1797). His victory makes Napoleon extremely popular.

1797 September 4. The government overpowers the monarchists by force of arms.

1798 May 4. New government, a coup d'etat against the extremist republicans (Jacobins).

July 1. Napoleon disembarks in Alexandria. Beginning of his Egyptian campaign.

August 1-2. The English destroy the French fleet at Aboukir Bay. September 5. The Jourdan Law enacts obligatory military service for unmarried men ages 20-25.

1799 August 23. Napoleon abandons Egypt after ceding control to General Jean Baptiste Kleber.

October 8. Napoleon disembarks in France.

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Valois, N. (1896). Le Roi tres chretien. In A. Baudrillart (Ed.), La France chretienne dans l'histoire (pp. 314-327). Paris: Firmin Didot.

Van Kley, D. (1994). Introduction. In D. Van Kley (Ed.), The French idea of freedom: The old regime and the declaration of rights of 1789 (pp. 5-22). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Van Kley, D. (2001). Church, state, and the ideological origins of the French Revolution: The debate over the General Assembly of the Gallican clergy in 1765. In R. Schechter (Ed.), The French Revolutions (pp. 263-300). Oxford: Blackwell.

Vardi, L. (2012). The physiocrats and the world of the enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Vovelle, M. (1991). The revolution against the Church: From reason to the supreme being. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Walzer, M. (1992). Regicide and revolution: speeches at the trial of Louis XVI. New York: Columbia University Press.

Whaley, L. A. (1993). Political factions and the Second Revolution: The insurrection of 10 August 1792. French History, 7(2), 205-224.

Woloch, I. (1970). Jacobin legacy: The democratic movement under the directory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Zagorin, P. (2003). How the idea of religious toleration came to the West. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Zimmermann, E. (2011). Political violence, crises and revolutions theories and research. New York: Routledge.

Zorgbibe, C. (2008). Mirabeau. Paris: Fallois.

Zweig, S. (2012). Marie Antoinette: The portrait of an average woman. New York: Atrium Press.

Further Reading

Andress, D. (1999). French society in revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Andress, D. (2000). Massacre at the Champ de Mars: Popular dissent and political culture in the French Revolution. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

Andress, D. (2004). The French Revolution and the people. London: Hambledon.

Andress, D. (2009). 1789: The threshold of the modern age. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Aston, N. (2004). The French Revolution, 1789-1804: Liberty, authority and the search for stability. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Baker, K. M. (1989b). Constitution. In F. Furet & M. Ozouf (Eds.), A critical dictionary of the French Revolution (pp. 479-493). Cambridge, MA: The Bellknap Press of the Harvard University Press.

Baker, K. M. (1990). The old regime and the French Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baker, K. M. (1994). Inventing the French Revolution. Essays on French political culture in the eighteenth century (Reprint). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Behrens, C. B. A. (1989). The Ancien Regime. New York: Thames & Hudson.

Bienvenu, R. (Ed.). (1968). The ninth ofThermidor: The fall of Robespierre. New York: Oxford University Press.

Blanning, T. C. W. (1998). The French Revolution: Class war or culture clash? (2nd ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Boureau, A., & Ingerflom, C. S. (Eds.). (1992). La royaute sacree dans le monde chretien: Actes du Colloque de Royaumont. Paris: Editions de L’Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences.

Campbell, P. R. (1996). Power and politics in old regime France: 1720-1745. New York: Routledge.

Censer, J. R. (2003). Amalgamating the social in the French Revolution. Journal of Social History, 37(1), 145-150.

Censer, J. R., & Hunt, L. (2004). Liberty, equality, fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (3rd. printing). The University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Chartier, R. (2004). The Cultural origins of the French Revolution (6th printing). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chateaubriand, F. -R., vicomte de. (2010). Memoirs of Chateaubriand. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press.

Cobban, A. A. (1991). History of modern France. 1. Old regime and revolution, 1715-1799. Baltimore: Penguin.

Danton, G. J. (1920). Discour 134: Sur les reunions dans la Belgique-D’apres laLogotachigraphe. Convention, jeudi 31 janvier 1793. In Discours civiques (pp. 267-272). Paris: Bibliotheque Charpentier.

Doyle, W. (1999). Origins of the French Revolution (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Doyle, W. (Ed.). (2001). Old regime France: 1648-1788. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Doyle, W. (2003). The Oxford history of the French Revolution (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Doyle, W. (2009). Aristocracy and its enemies in the age of revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Edelstein, D. (2009). The terror of natural right: Republicanism, the cult of nature, and the French Revolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Egret, J. (1977). The French Pre-Revolution: 1787-1788. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fielding, M., & Morcombe, M. (2001). France in revolution. Sydney: McGraw Hill.

Forrest, A. (1981). The French Revolution and the poor. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Forrest, A. (1995). The French Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell.

Furet, F., & Ozouf, M. (1989). A critical dictionary of the French Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Griffith, P. (1998). The art of war of revolutionary France 1789-1802. London: Greenhill Books.

Hagemann, K., et al. (Eds.). (2009). Soldiers, citizens and civilians: War, culture and society, 1750-1850. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hampson, N. (1974). The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre. London: Duckworth.

Hippler, T. (2008). Citizens, soldiers and national armies: Military service in France and Germany, 1789-1830. New York: Routledge.

Hunt, L. A. (2004). Politics, culture and class in the French Revolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Jones, C. (2002). The great nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kaiser, T., & Van Kley, D. (2011). From deficit to deluge: The origins of the French Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kennedy, M. L. (1988). The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The middle years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kwass, M. (2000). Privilege and the politics of taxation in Eighteenth-century France: Liberte, Egalite, Fiscalite. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Le Goff, J., & Remond, R. (Eds.). (2001). Histoire de la France religieuse, 3. Du roi tres chretien a la laicite republicaine: XVIIIe-XIXe siecle. Paris: Ed. du Seuil.

Le Roy Ladurie, E. (1996). The Ancien Regime: A History of France 1610-1774. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lewis, G. (1993). The French Revolution: Rethinking the debate. London: Routledge.

Luttrell, B. (2000). Mirabeau. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Lyons, M. (1981). Recent interpretations of the French Directory. The Australian Journal of Politics and History, 27(1), 40-47.

McPhee, P. (2012). Robespierre: A revolutionary life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Mirabeau, Honore-Gabriel de Riquetti, Comte de. (1835). Memoirs of Mirabeau: Biographical, literary, and political (4 Vols.). London: E. Churton.

Mitchell, H. (1958). Vendemiaire: A reevaluation. The Journal of Modern History, 30(3), 191-202.

Neely, S. (2008). A concise history of the French Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Price, M. (2004). The road from Versailles: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Fall of the French Monarchy. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin Ed.

Rapport, M. (2012). Revolution. In W. Doyle (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the Ancien Regime (pp. 467-488). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Russell, P. (2005). Lights of Madness: In Search of Joan of Arc. Savannah, GA: Frederic C. Beil.

Soboul, A. (1988). Understanding the French Revolution. New York: International Publishers.

Stone, B. (1981). The Parlement of Paris: 1774-89. Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press.

Stone, B. (1994). The genesis of the French Revolution: A global-historical interpretation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sutherland, D. M. G. (2003). The French Revolution and empire: A quest for a civic order. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Sydenham, M. J. (1973). The first French Republic, 1792-1804. London: Batsford.

Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice de, prince de Benevent. (1892). Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand (5 Vols.). London: G. P. Putnam’s and Son.

Thompson, J. W. (1895). The development of the French monarchy under Louis VI Le Gros: 1108-1137: A dissertation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Vignery, R. (1965). The French Revolution and the schools: Educational policies of the mountain, 1792-1794. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Vovelle, M. (1989). The fall of the French Monarchy: 1787-1792. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Woloch, I. (1995). New regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820. The new regime. New York: Norton & Company.

Woronoff, D. (1984). The Thermidorian regime and the directory, 1794-1799. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.