The Oxford History of the French Revolution
The Oxford History of the French Revolution
Third Edition
William Doyle
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© William Doyle 2018
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First Edition published in 2018
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From Number Six
Praise for The Oxford History of the French Revolution
‘ … a wonderfully lucid, authoritative and balanced history, ornamented with all the scholarly apparatus one would expect from an Oxford history.’
Linda Colley, London Review of Books
‘The most comprehensive all-in-one history of the Revolution … supremely clear and brimming with scholarly detail.’
Independent
‘ … a tour de force of historical scholarship … and a pleasure to read.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A work of breathtaking range … masterfully written.’
Observer
‘An outstanding model of clarity and informed scholarship.’
Simon Schama, New Republic
‘Excellent narrative history.’
Spectator
‘An excellent historical survey.’
Sunday Times
‘A lucid, beautifully structured narrative of the Revolution … For a sober, highly informative account of the causes, course and consequences of the Revolution no enquiring mind could do better than turn to Professor Doyle.’
Sydney Review
‘Doyle’s book, in its readability, its clarity and its balance, is certainly the best of the general studies of the Revolution that have recently appeared; it will appeal both to the general reader and to the historian.’
Times Higher Education Supplement
Preface to the Second Edition (2002)
No preface seemed necessary when this book first appeared. That was perhaps a mistake. Little in history is self-evident, much less the intentions of those who attempt to write it. A more explicit statement of what I was trying, and not trying, to achieve might have given readers a better idea of what to expect—for better or worse. A second edition provides the opportunity to rectify the omission, and to explain any changes now incorporated.
It is a history of the French Revolution and not simply of the Revolution in France. Seldom has an upheaval in one country had such widespread repercussions beyond its borders; and the Revolution in turn was deeply affected by how foreigners reacted to it. The wider dimension therefore appeared to me an essential part of the story. Written to appear for the bicentenary of the Revolution in 1989, as an Oxford History the book was conceived as a narrative for general readers rather than the student textbook it has nevertheless largely become. In deference to that fate, however, I have now expanded the short bibliography of the first edition into a wider introduction to the historiography of the subject—although it remains an appendix which less utilitarian readers can bypass as they prefer. Otherwise I have taken the opportunity to rectify errors, update information where necessary, and occasionally expand on topics which perhaps received less emphasis than they deserved in the first edition. The general shape and interpretation, however, remain much as they were. The story still ends in 1802, when Napoleon’s power was secure, reflecting my belief that the safest definition of the Revolution is as a series of tumultuous events and uncertainties which only he found the key to terminating. His own tenure of power brought about a new series, but that forms a different (though related) story. Finally, I have not wavered from my judgement that the Revolution was a tragedy. Some readers have interpreted this as a hostile verdict. But to call something tragic is not necessarily to condemn it. It is to lament wasted promise. There are still few periods in history when so many benevolent intentions led to so much unintended chaos and destruction, vitiating into the bargain all later attempts to realize them. Napoleon, once again, saw the fruitlessness of condemning the revolutionary past, even while its embers were still glowing. ‘We must avoid’, he wrote,1 at the very moment when he was preparing to dethrone the last ruling Bourbon king, ‘all reaction in speaking of the Revolution. No man could oppose it. Blame lies neither with those who perished nor with those who have survived. There was no individual force capable of changing its elements or of preventing events which arose from the nature of things and from circumstances.’ The tragedy is that of all the human beings caught up in such an inexorable process.
Preface to the Third Edition
The second edition of this book gave the opportunity for a preface in which to clarify its original scope and purpose, as well as to explain its frequently misunderstood conclusion. The years since then have not led me to modify what I then wrote; but inevitably some historical perspectives have moved on. A ‘global turn’ in interest has led many revolutionary historians to focus on the overseas links and ramifications of events in France, and especially their significance in the history of slavery and race relations. These matters, it has been claimed, were all but ignored in older histories of the Revolution. They were certainly not ignored in this one, but in preparing a new edition I have resisted the temptation to expand the original coverage. Infinitely more people were affected by the French Revolution in Europe, however profound its echoes elsewhere. And whereas it is once again fashionable, after over half a century, to view the Revolution in the context of a wider global Age of Revolutions, my original brief was to focus on France and its influence, and there it remains.
So there are only two substantial changes to this third edition. First, I have removed or replaced a number of quotations from one source whose authenticity I have come to suspect. Secondly, I have completely rewritten the final section of Appendix 3, on The Revolution Today, to acknowledge and incorporate the steady stream of significant new work which has continued to appear since the second edition. Much of this new work, however, has led me to change or amend innumerable lesser points of detail throughout. In doing this I have had invaluable help and advice from Charles Walton. He has devoted more time than I had any right to expect to a detailed re-reading of a tex
t he once ploughed through as a student, and doubtless never imagined needing to do again. He has saved me from many an error or infelicity. Those that remain are of course all my own responsibility.
W.D.
Bath, 2017
Contents
List of Maps
1. France under Louis XVI
2. Enlightened Opinion
3. Crisis and Collapse, 1776–1788
4. The Estates-General, September 1788–July 1789
5. The Principles of 1789 and the Reform of France
6. The Breakdown of the Revolutionary Consensus, 1790–1791
7. Europe and the Revolution, 1788–1791
8. The Republican Revolution, October 1791–January 1793
9. War against Europe, 1792–1797
10. The Revolt of the Provinces
11. Government by Terror, 1793–1794
12. Thermidor, 1794–1795
13. Counter-Revolution, 1789–1795
14. The Directory, 1795–1799
15. Occupied Europe, 1794–1799
16. An End to Revolution, 1799–1802
17. The Revolution in Perspective
Appendices:
1. Chronology of the French Revolution
2. The Revolutionary Calendar
3. The Revolution and its Historians
Notes
Index
List of Maps
1. Pre-revolutionary France: principal administrative, judicial, and fiscal subdivisions
2. The departments of revolutionary France
3. Revolutionary Paris: the sections and main places and streets mentioned in the text
4. Resistance to the Revolution, 1793–1799
5. The expansion of revolutionary France
Le mal de changer est-il toujours moins grand que le mal de souffrir?
Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (1748), bk. xxix, ch. xviii
We can no longer be certain about anything to do with the future, except that it must be very unlike the past.
W. B. Yeats (1916)
La Révolution, en dépit de toutes ses horreurs, n’en avait pas moins été la vraie cause de la régénération de nos moeurs.
Napoleon, Las Cases, Mémorial de Saint-Hélène (27 octobre 1816)
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell, ‘Charles Dickens’ (1939), in Collected Essays (1961), 47
1
France under Louis XVI
The king of France needed no coronation. He reigned by the grace of God from the moment his predecessor breathed his last, and a coronation was purely customary. So the argument was heard, even in the highest circles, that the elaborate consecration of Louis XVI, arranged for 11 June 1775 in the traditional setting of Rheims cathedral, was a waste of public money. A month beforehand, the countryside around Paris, and many districts of the city, had been shaken by rioting against high flour and bread prices. The disturbances led to talk of postponing the ceremony, and the approaches to Rheims were ringed with precautionary troops. And far fewer people than expected made the journey to the capital of Champagne to witness the historic spectacle. Innkeepers complained of unlet rooms, and caterers of wasted supplies. But when, that brilliant morning, the cathedral doors were flung open to reveal the young monarch crowned and enthroned in glory, invested with the sceptre of Charlemagne and anointed with the holy oil of Clovis, men broke down and wept despite themselves.
The son of St Louis, the Most Christian King of France and Navarre, had sworn that day to uphold the peace of the Church, prevent disorder, impose justice, exterminate heretics, maintain forever the prerogatives of the Order of the Holy Spirit, and pardon no duellist. Three days later, in the summer heat, he ritually touched 2,400 stinking sufferers from scrofula, the disfiguring disease believed by countless generations to be curable through the miraculous touch of an anointed king. And all this still left him time to write letters to his 74-year-old chief minister, who had remained at Versailles; and to resist the attempts of an empty-headed queen to have her favourites given office. Court intrigues could not be expected to stop merely because the king was being crowned. And so the ceremonies that Louis XVI observed that week, the motions he went through, were a strange blend of momentous and trivial, significant, and purely formal, meaningful and empty. The powers he exercised, the promises he made, the regalia he wore, all resulted from a long, tortuous, and often haphazard evolution. Few knew or remembered why things had to be the way they were. And this was typical of the kingdom over which he had ruled since 10 May 1774.
The domains of the king of France in the 1770s, excluding overseas territories in the Americas and east of the Cape, covered some 277,200 square miles and had over 27 million inhabitants. By 1789 there would be a million more. These realms had been built up since the early Middle Ages by a process of conquest and dynastic accident or design, and during the last century of the monarchy they were still being added to. In 1678 Louis XIV acquired Franche Comté, in 1766 Louis XV inherited Lorraine, and in 1768 he took over Corsica. But deep inside French territory Avignon and its surrounding district still belonged to the Pope, and in Alsace there were islands of territory nominally under the sovereignty of German princes and an independent city-state at Mulhouse. Nobody thought such enclaves anomalous, for they were well established by law, prescription, and international consensus. In any case, they were only extreme examples of the variety which prevailed within the kingdom itself.
Its most ancient division was into provinces. Originating as independent feudal domains that had been progressively swallowed up by the kings of France, they varied enormously in size. Vast regions like Languedoc, Dauphiné, or Brittany counted as provinces alongside tiny Pyrenean counties like Foix or narrow frontier strips like Flanders or Roussillon. Even the precise number of provinces was uncertain, for historical traditions were often far from explicit, but in 1776, 39 provincial governorships were recognized. The functions of governors were largely honorific, however, since for most administrative purposes the kingdom was divided into 34 generalities, each presided over by an intendant. The origin of the generalities was much less ancient, and it was still only a century since intendants had become established everywhere. But these administrative units were far more uniform in size than the old provinces, and consequently their boundaries seldom coincided. Closer to provinces in this respect were the ressorts or jurisdictional areas of the parlements, the 13 sovereign courts of appeal. That of Paris, for example, covered a third of the kingdom, whereas those of Pau or Douai were scarcely larger than the smallest provinces. The parlements had their origins in the supreme courts of the great feudal rulers of medieval times. When their lands fell to the king of France, he tended to accept or adapt the institutions he found there rather than impose his own. Normans still called the parlement of Rouen the Exchequer 500 years after the English king had ceased to be their duke and hold court there; and the last parlement was established at Nancy in succession to the old ducal court of Lorraine only in 1775. But inevitably most ressorts took in all or part of several provinces and generalities, a rich source of conflicts of jurisdiction. And the Church, meanwhile, divided up the kingdom in its own way, into 18 archiepiscopal provinces and 136 dioceses. The majority were in the south, where dioceses were much smaller and older. But many bishops enjoyed enclaves of jurisdiction in dioceses other than their own: the bishop of Dol in Brittany had no less than 33. Such uneven, illogical patterns of organization were repeated in a thousand different ways at the more local levels of town and village.
Map 1. Pre-revolutionary France: principal administrative, judicial, and fiscal subdivisions
Source: W. Doyle, The Old European Order (Oxford, 1978).
Nor did complexity end there. Apart from royal edicts on certain general issues, the king’s domains were subject to no law and no administrative practice common to them all without exception. Southern provinces regulated their affairs by written, Roman
law; but even there, in isolated regions like the Pyrenees, local customs were more important. In northern France they were all-important. Here nearly all law was customary, and at least 65 general customs and 300 local ones were observed. This meant that the law relating to marriage, inheritance, and tenure of property could differ in important respects from one district to another; and those who had property in several might hold it on widely differing terms. Every district, too, had its own range of weights and measures, and the same term often meant different values in different places. In these circumstances fraud, or fear of it, bedevilled all exchanges and provided endless business for the hundreds of petty courts and jurisdictions on the lower slopes of the judicial pyramid. So did taxation, where again there was no uniformity. Northern and central France notoriously bore a heavier tax-burden than the south, or the periphery of the kingdom in general. The main direct tax, the taille, was levied on persons in central provinces, but on land in peripheral ones like Languedoc. The salt tax, the notorious gabelle, was levied at six different rates according to area, while six other specially privileged districts, including Brittany, were exempt. And the whole country was criss-crossed with innumerable internal customs barriers, whether at the gates of towns, along rivers, or between provinces, where excises, tolls, and tariffs could be collected—again at a bewildering series of rates, on a limitless range of items. Goods shipped down the Saône and Rhône from Franche Comté to the Mediterranean, for example, paid duty at 36 separate customs barriers, some public and some private, on the way. To rational observers such complexities appear, and appeared, an arbitrary shambles; the product of routine and meaningless historical traditions. But these traditions were often as not rooted in geography, climate, culture, and economic necessity, as any traveller could readily testify.
The Oxford History of the French Revolution Page 1
