National
Assembly
"[the
National Assembly's actions] made it impossible to arrest the course of the
Revolution." (George Rude)
“The decision [the declaration of the national
assembly] marked the beginnings of the real revolution and it was largely as a
result of the indecision of Louis XVI” (Jill Fenwick & July Anderson)
'[The Founding of the National Assembly] was
the founding act of the French Revolution. If the nation was sovereign, the
king no longer was' (William Doyle)
'The people of
Paris [were] convinced that they alone had saved the National Assembly'
(William Doyle)
'The assembled nation cannot take orders'
(Jean Sylvain Bailly)
'The gentlemen
of the commons invite the gentlemen of the glergy, in the name of the God of
peace and for the national interest, to meet them in their hall to consult upon
the means of bringing about the concord which is so vital at this moment for
the public welfare' (Hibbert)
“Ah fuck it,
let them stay.” (Louis XVI on the Third Estate’s refusal to disband, June 1789)
“If you have
been instructed to make us leave this place, you should seek permission to use
force, for only the power of bayonets will dislodge us”. (Honore Mirabeau, June
1789)
Troops in
Paris
' Substantial
enough to perform its twin duties of facing down any further attempt at
military repression, and if necessary, punishing unlawful violence' (Simon
Schama)
Riots
“Fifteen to
sixteen hundred wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful
vices, covered with rags and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting
and revolting spectacle.” (Count Dampmartin on the Parisian rioters in 1789)
Day of Tiles
'a three-fold revolution. It signified the
breakdown of royal authority and the helplessness of military force in the face
of sustained urban disorder. It warned the elite… that there was an
unpredictable price to be paid for their encouragement of riot and one that
might very easily be turned against themselves. And most important of all, it
delivered the initiative for further political action into the hands of a
younger, more radical group' (Schama)
'enough money for the government to function for
one afternoon' (Schama)
The Storming
of Bastille
“[the Storming of the Bastille] was the climax of
the popular movement.” (William Doyle)
'it is a
revolt' (Louis XVI) 'No, Sire it is a revolution' (Duc de Liancourt)
'Provoked or
rather it strengthened a whole series of mini-revolutions throughout France' *Gwynne
Lewis)
Tennis Court
Oath
William Doyle
- [Tennis Court Oath] was one more assertion that they were subject to no other
power in France
Revolution (General)/ France
"It was resistance that made the
revolution become violent." (William Doyle)
"Was, then, the revolution worth it in
material terms? For most ordinary French subjects turned by it into citizens,
it cannot have been." (William Doyle)
'A national
will was taking shape, behind anti-absolutist unaimity' (Francois Furet)
“For the same
reason that the Ancien Regime is thought to have an end but no
beginning, the Revolution has a birth but no end.” (Francois Furet)
“The Ancien
Regime had been in the hands of the king; the Revolution was the people’s
achievement. France had been a kingdom of subjects; it was now a nation of
citizens. The old society had been based on privilege; the Revolution
established equality. Thus was created the ideology of a radical break with the
past, a tremendous cultural drive for equality.” (Francois Furet)
“I have long thought that it might be
intellectually useful to date the beginning of the French Revolution to the
Assembly of Notables in early 1787. The absolute monarchy died, in theory and
in practice, in the year when its intendants were made to share their
responsibilities with elected assemblies, in which the Third Estate was given
twice as many representatives as the past. Tocqueville dates what he calls the
‘true spirit of the Revolution’ from September 1788.” (Francois Furet)
“There was an essential instability inherent
in revolutionary politics, as a consequence of which the periodic professions
of faith concerning the ‘stabilisation’ of the Revolution unfailingly led to
renewed bursts of revolutionary activity.”(Francois Furet)
“The two
symmetrical and opposite images of undivided power furnished the ingredients
for ministers for a plot to institute a ministerial despotism; the royal
administration believed in a conspiracy among the grain merchants or the men of
letters. It is precisely in that sense that the eighteenth-century French
monarchy was absolute, and not as has been said again and again by republican
historiography on the basis of what the Revolution asserted – because of the
way it exercised its authority. Its power was weak, but it conceived of itself
as undivided. The French Revolution is inconceivable without that idea, or that
phantasm, which was a legacy of the monarchy; but the Revolution anchored power
in society instead of seeing it as a manifestation of God’s will. The new
collectively shared image of politics was the exact reverse of that of
the Ancien Regime.” (Francois Furet)
“France was
long a despotism tempered by epigrams.” (Thomas Carlyle)
Society of
Thirty
‘[Society
of Thirty] were courtiers against the court, aristocrats against privilege,
officers who wanted to replace dynastic with national patriotism’
(Simon Schama)
'conspiracy of
well-intentioned men' (Schama)
Royal
session 19/11/87
'That is of no
importance to me… it is legal because I will it' (Louis XVI via Doyle)
'no reply
could have been more catastrophic… The king's words turned what seemed destined
to be a government triumph into a disaster' (Doyle)
Enlightenment/Ideas/Publications
“The Enlightenment undermined the ideological
foundations of the established order.” (Albert Soboul)
'What Is The
Third Estate?' offers us the French Revolution's biggest secret, which will
form its deepest motivating force - hatred of the nobility' (Francois Furet)
'all that is
arduous in such services is performed by the Third Estate' (Abbe Sieyes)
“I think it
impossible that the great monarchies of Europe can last much longer.”
(Jean-Jacques
Rousseau)
“Man will only
be free when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
(Denis
Diderot)
“Superstition
sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.” (Voltaire)
“I had been
brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that
having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.”
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
“This year has
begun hopefully for right thinkers. After all these centuries of feudal
barbarism and political slavery, it is surprising to see how the word of
‘liberty’ sets minds on fire.” (Napoleon Bonaparte in 1789)
The Great Fear
Lefebvre Henri (Marxist) - “[the
Great Fear] allowed the peasants to realise their strength.”
William Doyle
- Hunger, hope and fear were the main ingredients of the rural crisis of 1789
The
Estates-General
'The calling
of the Estates-General facilitated the expression of tensions at every level of
French society, and revealed social divisions which challenged the idea of a
society of orders' (Peter McPhee)
'The more
brilliantly the first two orders swaggered, the more they alienated the Third
estate and provoked it into exploding the institution altogether' (Schama)
“The King did
not summon the Estates because he needed them, but out of his own pleasure.”
(Jacques Necker)
'The nobles
underestimed the determination and powerful political potential of the third
estate who finally stood up for its own rights' (EJ Hosbawm)
The
estates-general 'produced the upstart National Assembly which thereby set the
revolution in motion' (Leo Gershoy)
'Louis'
acquiescence in the nobility's demand for voting to be in three separate orders
galvanized the outrage of the bourgeois deputies' (Peter McPhee)
August 4
'A moment of
revolutionary drunkenness' (Marquis de Ferriers)
“Great and
memorable night, we wept and hugged one another. What a nation! What glory!
What an honour to be French!” (Ernest-Francois Duquesnoy on August 4th 1789)
Third Estate/
Commons/ Bourgeoisie/The People
“The ultimate cause of the revolution was the
rise of the Bourgeois.” (Lefebvre Henri)
'Like the menu
people of Paris, peasants adopted the language of bourgeois revolt to their own
ends' (Peter McPhee)
“The
Revolution of the Bourgeois deputies had only been secured by the active
intervention of the people of Paris.” (Peter McPhee)
'The
bourgeoisie, the leading element of the Third Estate now took over. Its aim was
revolutionary Before long, however, it was carried forward by the' (Albert
Soboul)
'The distance
which seperates the rich from other citizens is growing daily and poverty
becomes more insupportable at the sight of the astonishing progress of luxury
which tires the view of the poor. Hatred grows more bitter and the state is
divided into two classes: The greedy and insensitive and the murmuring
malcontents' (Mercier)
'Everything
conspires to render the present period in France critical. The want of breed is
terrible: accounts arrive every minute from the provinces of riots and
disturbances, and calling in the military' (Arthur Young)
Compte Rendu
'It is impossible to tax further, ruinous to
be always borrowing and not enough to confine ourselves to measures of economy'
(Calonne)
“The public
nature of the Compte Rendu, rather than its inaccuracy, incensed ministers.
Necker was accused of being something less than a Frenchman. Vergennes gave to
Louis XVI an opinion of the Compute Rendu which encapsulated this point of
view: ‘…the example of England, where accounts are made public, is that of a
calculating, selfish, troublesome nation. To apply such principles to France is
a national insult: we are people of feeling, trusting and devoted to the person
of the King’, and he went on to spell out that the Compte Rendu was a slight to
monarchy… The King yielded and Necker lost office.” (Olwen Hufton)
Economy
'It was the
domestic perception of financial problems, not their reality that propelled
successive French
governments
from anxiety to alarm to outright panic' (Simon Schama)
'It was not because Calonne had shocked the
Notables with his announcement of a new fiscal and political world; it was
either because he had not gone far enough or because they disliked the
operational methods build into the program' (Simon Schama)
'By opposing a
single and proportional tax, they were protecting their own interests and at
the same time gratifying public opinion' (Francois Furet)
'There were
therefore two French economies, only tenuously linked. Coastal regions… were
integrated with international and intercontinental trading networks and shared
their benefits, which seemed destined to go on improving. But most of Louis
XVI's subjects lived in the interior where communication were poo, economic
life sluggish, and such improvements as good harvests had brought in
mid-century were being eroded by climatic deterioration and an inexorably
rising population' (William Doyle)
'no tax be
legal or collected unless it has been consented by the nation and that taxes
remaining or to be established be borne equally by all order of the state'
'As the prices
rose during the years of shortage, so did the tension between urban populations
dependent on cheap and plentiful bread and the poorer sections of the rural
community' (Peter McPhee)
“I shall
easily show that it is impossible to tax further, ruinous to be always
borrowing and not enough to confine ourselves to measures of economy.” (Charles
Calonne)
'Financial
crisis was the immediate cause of the revolution' (George Lefebvre)
Assembly
of Notables
'in a
controversial career Calonne had made many enemies and they were well
represented in the assembly… The first president of the Parlement of Paris was…
a personal enemy' (William Doyle)
'if Calonne's
proposals had come from anybody else there is little doubt that the Notables
would have welcomed them more warmly' (Doyle)
Politics/The
King
The French
King's government could not command the confidence of its most eminent
subjects. (William Doyle)
The King had
thrown away his authority almost as soon as he had tried to reassert it
(William Doyle)
"I have
no intention of sharing my authority" (Louis XVI)
"L'état,
c'est moi." (I am the state) (Louis XVI)
"One
king, one law, one faith." (Louis XVI)
"The
interests of the state must come first" (Louis XVI)
'The power to
make the laws belongs only to me (Louis XVI)
'the weakness
and indecision of the king is beyond description' (Comte de Provence)
'It was the
rural population above all which underwrote the cost of the three pillars of
authority and privilege in France: The church, the nobility and monarchy.
Together the two privileged order and the monarchy exacted on average
one-quarter to one-third of peasant produce through taxes, seigniorial dues and
the tithe' (Peter McPhee)
'The French King's government could not
command the confidence of its most eminent subjects.' (William Doyle)
'it was the
policies of the old regime rather than
its operational structure which brought it close to bankruptcy and political
disaster' (Simon Schama)
“…the actual
irrational Versailles Government? Alas, that is a Government existing there
only for its own behoof: without right, except possession; and now also without
might. It foresees nothing, sees nothing; has not so much as a purpose, but has
only purposes, and the instinct whereby all that exists will struggle to keep
existing. Wholly a vortex; in which vain counsels, hallucinations, falsehoods,
intrigues, and imbecilities whirl; like withered rubbish in the meeting of
winds!” (Thomas Carlyle)
Cahiers de
Doleances
're-establish
the empire of morals, make religion reign, reformat, find a remedy for
the evils of the state, be an era of prosperity for France and profound and
durable glory for his majesty' ( Dwyer and McPhee)
'In every
political society, all men are equal in rights. All power emanates from the
nation and may only be exercised for its well-being...In the french monarchy,
legislative power belongs to the nation conjointly with the king; executive
power belongs to the King alone' (Fielding and Morcombe)
'The
distinction of the three orders will be maintained in the French
government'
(Cahier of First Estate- Clergy of Troyes)
'That nobility
no longer be purchasable' (Cahier of Second Estate- Nobility of Crepy)
'In ever
political society, all men are equal in rights' (Cahier of Third Estate-
Citizens of Paris)
'the
bourgeoisie saw themselves as representatives of the interests of all, and
carrying the burden of the nation as a whole' (Sobul)
Parlement
Function was
to 'maintain the citizens in the enjoyment of rights which the law assure them'
(Sutherland)
Nation saw
parlements as 'a barier to despotism of which everyone was weary' (Rabaut
Saint-Etienne)
They let the
people 'be overwhelmed [with taxes] for over a century [permitting government]
all its waste and its loans which it knew all about' (Abbe Morellet)
'the
constitutional principles of the French monarchy was that taxes should be
consented by those who had to bear them' (Schama)
Dismissal of
Necker
' A large
number of troops already surrounds us. More are arriving each day. Artillery is
being brought up… These preparations for war and obvious to anyone and fill
every heart with indignation' (Mirabeau)
'The signal
for popular action was the dismissal of Necker' (Peter McPhee)
'[Dismissal of
Necker was] interpreted as a double unlucky omen: bankruptcy and
counter-revolution' (Francois Furet)
Marie
Antoinette
“Poor
ill-advised Marie-Antoinette; with a woman’s vehemence, not with a sovereign’s
foresight!”(Thomas Carlyle)
The Privileged
Estates
“Foolish
enough! These Privileged Classes have been used to tax; levying toll, tribute
and custom, at all hands, while a penny was left: but to be themselves taxed?
Of such Privileged persons, meanwhile, do these Notables, all but the merest
fraction, consist.” (Thomas Carlyle)
Church
“It was in the Church, more than any other group
in France, that the separation between rich and poor was most bitterly
articulated.” (Simon Schama
In the end, it proved impossible to reconcile a
church based on divinely ordained hierarchy... with a revolution based on
popular sovereignty.” (Peter McPhee)
“It is clear that refusal to take the Oath was
the first sign of popular resistance to the revolution… the religious element
was immediately transformed into a political issue because both the monarchy
and the revolution had turned the catholic Church into an auxiliary of the
state.” (Francois Furet)
"...aroused the determined hostility
of at least half the French clergy and of the entire Church abroad... This [The
Civil Constitution] was fated to divide the nation more than any other single
measure." (J.F.Bosher)
Nobility
' nobility was
a club which every wealthy man felt enriched, indeed obliged, to join. Not all
nobles were rich, but sooner or later, all the rich ended up noble' (William
Doyle)
'they want
everything to themselves-dignities, employments and preferences' (Louis
Sebastien Mercier)
In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten. For more france Quotes Visit here.
ReplyDelete