In many ways the French Revolution was a clash between classes, with
the middle class (the Third Estate) assaulting the privileges and indeed
the very existence of the nobles. However, in order to do that a new conception
of the structure of society, a new valuation of the contributions
of the various parts of society, and a new theory of the source and
purpose of political power were needed. In this document a leading publicist
for the Third Estate, the Abbe Sieyes, describes the self-understanding
of those who made the Revolution.
Called by the King to address the financial problems facing the nation,
the Estates General immediately became divided. The Nobility and Clergy
wanted to vote as estates, which would give them a two to one majority
over the Third Estate. The latter wished to vote as individuals which would
give them the majority (a similar problem had plagued fifteenth century
Church councils). Upon finding their meeting place locked, the Third Estate
withdrew to a tennis court where they took the following Oath. In time
the King required the first two estates to join the Third in a new National
Assembly, dominated by the Third Estate.
Still with the support of the King the National Assemby proceeded to
reform and restructure the nation to assure equality, uniformity and efficiency.
Institutions that threatened or opposed those goals were either abolished
or severely revised. But already events were proceeding more swiftly than
the Assemby could control. In the countryside the peasantry spontaneously
threw off the burdens of feudalism in a wave of violence and disorder.
Fearing that disorder (and agreeing that the feudal order was an abuse)
the Assembly voted it out of existence. In doing so the Assemby dismantled
the social/political system that had ruled France since the early Middle
Ages.
Already in the Decree Abolishing Feudalism the Church and the clergy
had been subject to the Assembly's desire for reform. But the Assembly
went much further. Its vast estates were confiscated to meet the
national debt and its officials placed under the secular authority. As
in the Reformation, the clergy were stripped of their privileges and endowed
with both the rights and responsibilites that all other citizens enjoyed.
Clergy became officials of the state without any independence. Already
one can see a difference from developments in England where John Locke
had preached religious toleration and the separation of Church and State.
The needs of equality and the cohesion of the state battled against the
freedom of both institutions and individuals.
The King, appalled by the decrees of the National Assembly became a
threat to the Revolution. He and his family were at first arrested and
then eventually executed, making of France a Republic. As the Revolution
became more radical, it faced enemies both at home and abroad. In order
to confront these challenges to the new Republic the Committee of Public
Safety was created and given dictatorial powers in order to harness the
full strength of the nation. Perhaps the most important example of its
innovative approach was the creation of the mass citizen army. Such conscript
armies, drawing upon all levels of society, and supported by the total
resources of the nation, would become standard in Europe and elsewhere,
making possible the ever increasing destructiveness of war. In effect this
legislation created the modern nation in arms.
The most famous innovation of the Committee of Public Safety, an innovation
that most revolutions would henceforth copy, was the terror. While the
armies confronted France's foreign enemies, it was the duty of the terror
to cow or eliminate the internal enemies of the Revolution. It was not
only the Royalists who were its targets, however. It was also directed
against those who had supported the Revolution, but who opposed its further
radicalization. The Revolution had begun to feed upon its own. It
is especially important to note that opponents were viewed as immoral,
not merely politically dissident. The strictures against profiteering echo
the shift of power in the Revolution from the monied middle class to ever
more radical and ever poorer elements in society. Robespierre's logic will
be that of the terrors unleashed in our own century.
Already in the previous passage Robespierre betrays the religious quality
of his devotion to the Revolution, to virtue, and to purity. In this last
selection he addresses religion itself, claiming God or Nature or Reason
for the Revolution. Temples and festivals to Supreme Reason were instituted
throughout France. Note that it is not a specifically Christian God.
In fact the Revolutionary government pursued a policy of de-Christianization.
The God of the Revolution and of Robespierre is in many ways the God of
the Enlightenment, although already certain Enlightenment thinkers had
moved beyond religion to atheism.