National Assembly

1. National Assembly

3. Impact of Storming of Bastille • Great Fear: • In the rural areas, peasants rose up in arms against the nobility. • Chateaux were looted and burned in an attempt to destroy the feudal records of taxes & duties. • Many nobles were killed or driven from their homes.

4. Great Fear: Between June and the beginning of August there were riots in the countryside. Peasants burned their nobles' chateaux, monasteries and buildings which housed public records. They particularly targeted documents which contained records of their feudal obligations. It was called "The Great Fear" and spread quickly throughout France.   Between June and the beginning of August there were riots in the countryside. Peasants burned their nobles' chateaux, monasteries and buildings which housed public records. They particularly targeted documents which contained records of their feudal obligations. It was called "The Great Fear" and spread quickly throughout France.  

5. Rumors that drove the Great Fear • Was it true that Marie Antoinette had attempted to blow up the Assembly? • Were there really foreign brigands from England and Spain marching on rural France? • Were foreign powers preparing to invade and restore the king? • Had Polish troops landed at Dunkirk?

9. Impact of Great Fear • August 4, 1789-National Assembly started to write a constitution to abolish the system of feudal privileges. • Taxes were now to be paid by everyone & based on what your earned. • All peasant obligations were abolished. • They passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

10. Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen • Proposed by Lafayette • Based on the ideas of John Locke, Montesquieu, & the Declaration of Independence • Stated “Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights…and the source of power resides in the people.” • It guaranteed liberty, security, equal justice, fair taxes, freedom of speech, press, and religion to all Frenchmen. • Barely 300 words long • Printed cheaply on one single sheet of paper, so it could be distributed to everyone • Symbol of the new French social order

11. Declaration of Rights of Man

12. Declaration of Rights of Man • On August 26, 1789, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" was passed by the National Assembly. • This presented to the world a summary of the ideals and principles of the Revolution, and justified the destruction of a government based upon absolutism and privilege, and the establishment of a new regime based upon the inalienable rights of individuals, liberty, and political equality. • The Declaration became the preamble to the Constitution of 1791. • It has been referred to in almost every single revolutionary movement since 1789, and has been translated into nearly all major languages. • It is the basis of the constitutional foundations of many countries, including France's Fifth Republic. • Many ideas for the Declaration were from the Enlightenment, with the most important influence being John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (first published in England in 1690 at the time of the 'Glorious Revolution').

14. Declaration of the Rights of Man • By 1791, the Declaration had been transformed from a legislative document into a kind of political manifesto. • No one assisted this process more than Tom Paine, whose Rights of Man became one of the best-selling books in English history, and the bible of working-class radicals. • Paine reproduced the document, word for word, treating it as a sacred text that ushered in a new epoch of world history. •  The King was never in favor of the Declaration and he refused to endorse it because he thought its clauses were too ambiguous. • He only sanctioned it under popular pressure on October fifth and sixth, 1791. • Since then, it has been adopted by all kinds of political groups, and has been used both to justify revolution and also to suppress it.

15. British cartoon making fun of the French Revolution and Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen

17. Constitution of 1791 • From July 6th, consecutive committees of the assembly, staffed mainly by lawyers worked hard to construct the document. • Finished in September of 1791, it was prefaced by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, voted in on August 26th of 1789. • The constitution of 1791 was far from a meager regularization of existing laws and practices, as sensible deputies had first wanted. • The monarchy was certainly preserved, with conventional aspects, but royal power was carefully restricted. Louis became the first 'functionary' of the state. • A permanent legislature, which the king could not disband, would make laws. • The king was given a suspensive refusal over legislation that could postpone endorsement for up to five years, even though Mirabeau had proposed a permanent veto. • The monarch ran the executive power that would implement the laws; it was intensely disbelieved, because it might provide opportunities for a renewal of despotism.

18. Constitution of 1791 • Reorganized the government into three branches of government---system of checks and balances • The executive was the King • conduct foreign affairs • appoint ambassadors • propose war • Moved royal family from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris • It was a constitutional monarchy. • The legislative branch was the National Assembly • freely elected • initiated & voted on all laws • fixed taxes • controlled expenditures • declared war • The judicial branch consisted of popularly elected judges. • Standardized the court system. • Abolished the sale of judicial office. • Juries were now citizen filled. • Abolished the use of torture.

19. "The Roman Aristocrat" • The fattened clergyman and the well–bedecked nobleman go off unbothered while the figure in the foreground assesses carefully the value of a commoner. • This complex image also includes a pig—likely a symbol for Louis XVI—with the cleric and the noble. • Thus the print clearly attacks the upper classes and likely the monarch. • But there is more. Specifically, the National Assembly had set a means test for voters, and a higher one for prospective officeholders. S • o the gigantic female is measuring the commoner for his right to participate in the new revolutionary society. • This then is also a critique of the National Assembly. • Who, then, is the figure in the foreground? Perhaps it is the revolutionary legislature, represented here as an arrogant Roman Senate, a clearly oligarchical body.

20. Weaknesses of the Constitution of 1791 • The chronic weakness of the executive and the unpopularity of the king's ministers, Louis himself felt, made the constitution not viable. • After his escape attempt and capture at Varennes in June 1791, some modifications were made to reinforce his position, but they failed to reassure him and his acceptance, on September 14th, was half-hearted. • The constitution, after so much debate and trouble, lasted only eleven months

21. Additional Political Reforms of the National Assembly • All Frenchmen had basic rights of citizenship, but the right to hold office & vote was based on persons who owned property & paid taxes. • This eliminated several million from voting. • Constitution of 1791 • Civil Constitution of the Clergy

22. Additional Political Reforms by the National Assembly • Moved royal palace from Versailles to the Tuileries.

23. Tuileries Palace/Louvre

24. "Long Live Liberty" • Cartoonists extrapolated more and more on a new Louis as the Revolution went along. • Here, a rather rumpled King, dressed more like a shopkeeper than a monarch, opens a cage to let liberty out. • Many scholars argue that the King was already desacralized as much as a couple of decades before the Revolution. • Still Louis is associated with liberty here, and this treatment was mild compared with the personal attacks and the execution that would follow

25. "Abuses to Suppress" This print depicts the Third Estate—represented by the peasant at the rear of the chariot, the worker leading the horse, and the merchant driving—delivering to the National Assembly a petition listing "abuses" to be remedied. Source: mfr 88.133 This print depicts the Third Estate—represented by the peasant at the rear of the chariot, the worker leading the horse, and the merchant driving—delivering to the National Assembly a petition listing "abuses" to be remedied.

26. Civil Constitution of the Clergy • On November 27, 1790, the deputies passed a decree saying that an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution must be taken by all bishops, parish priests, and their assistants. • Those who refused to take it were forced to leave their posts. • On the 26 of December, King Louis signed that decree. • This was a decision he would regret until the end of his life. • The members of the assembly thought that all prelates would eventually swear the oath. • They were wrong. Only eight did. • Pope Pius VI was against the oath, which did not become known to the public until April of 1791.

27. "Mea Culpa of the Pope" • Although the revolutionaries long regarded the Pope as an enemy, their anger was stoked significantly by the papal decision to decree as unacceptable the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. • This decision, hardly unexpected given the way that the revolutionary settlement upended church tradition and papal authority, apparently weighed heavily on Louis XVI. • Some scholars believe it was this decision in Rome that turned the King down the path of no compromise.

28. Civil Constitution of the Clergy • July 1790 • Since the government now paid the clergy’s salaries, it declared that the people will now elect their bishops. • Priest had to give an oath of loyalty to the constitution just like other government officials. • This split the Catholic clergy into two groups: those who took the oath & those who formed the counter-revolutionary groups.

29. Civil Constitution of the Clergy • Throughout history, the Church had owned 6% of the National lands. • Louis XVI and Necker decided to remove the Church from society and give the Church Lands to the people. • By doing this, the people would be happier. • The changes in the Church which followed the seizure of its possessions is a perfect example of the feeling of the National Assembly. • The Bishops argued that the legislation affected the church so profoundly, in spiritual as well as temporal matters, that individual clerics could not be expected to give their consent until the whole church had considered it. • In practice, this meant waiting for papal approval. • Departments were very anxious to fill empty clerical posts, and the first sales of church lands under the provisions of the law nationalizing church property on November 2, 1789, were due to begin in the autumn.

30. Political Cartoon: “Reducing the Clergy”

31. Impact of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy • The relations between the jurors and the non-jurors became increasingly bitter as the hope that the church would sanctify and back the Revolution faded farther and farther away, just like to the hopes for national unity: the forces of the reaction and the counter-revolution could now argue that they fought to defend the church and religion from attack by the Revolutionaries.

32. A cartoon representing Louis XVI as "King James" with one face turned towards the Constitution and the other towards the non-juring clergy.

33. Other Mobs & Riots • October 5, 1789: Women’s Bread March on Versailles • King refused to approve the Declaration of Rights of Man & bashed the revolution at a banquet. • In response to this insult of the Revolution, a crowd of housewives marched from Paris to Versailles saying they were upset about the high cost of bread. • The housewives presented their demands to the National Assembly peacefully. • That night, a mob stormed the palace and broke into the royal bedchambers. • The royal family barely escaped. • Two of the King’s bodyguards were murdered and beheaded and their heads were carried around on pikes. • After this, the royal family and National Assembly moved the seat of government from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

34. Women’s March on Versailles

35. Edmund Burke wrote of the attack on Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber • “A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking…with blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen and pierced with an hundred strokes and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.”

38. Economic Reforms of the National Assembly • November 1789 • Confiscated the land & wealth of the Church to pay off debts • Government now took the responsibility of paying for education, social services, & salaries of the clergy. • Church land was used as a security for additional loans to avoid bankruptcy. • Assignats • Government bonds could be exchanged for a new paper currency called Assignats but there was a 5% interest rate on them. • Assignats were only used to buy Church land and were then destroyed. • After a while, the assignats were treated as regular currency. But lost 25% of their face value. • The use of Assignats created a new class of property owners loyal to the revolution. • Uniform system for weights & measures • Abolished guild restrictions. • Abolished customs transported within the country.

43. Flight to Varennes • On the 20 June 1791, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their children and closest servants fled Paris in secret, hoping to reach the Luxembourg border and to join the Austrian troops there. • Unfortunately for the King, the royal party made it only as far as the small town of Varennes. • A man called Drouet, who was a local postmaster, recognized them. Louis was brought back to Paris on June 22. • Surrounded by the National Guard as they passed through the streets of the capital, the people watched the royal family with silence and hostility. • The King had left a proclamation behind explaining his rejection of the Revolution's "complete anarchy": many thought he had renounced the right to lead the French nation.

44. The Arrest of the Royal Family at Varennes

45. Royal Family’s Flight to Varennes • The King had been communicating with his brother-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor in Austria to raise an army to take back control of France. • They plotted their escape. • But they were intercepted, and thousands of people lined the road to watch their forced return by the National Guard. • Anti-revolutionary documents were found. The people realized the King would never work with the revolution • Now the royal family were prisoners.

47. Royal Flight to Varennes • The Flight to Varennes (June 20-21, 1791) was a significant episode in the French Revolution during which King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family were unsuccessful in their attempt to escape from the radical agitation of the Jacobins in Paris. • Their destination was the fortress town of Montmédy in northeastern France, a Royalist stronghold from which the King hoped to initiate a counter-revolution. • This represents a turning point after which popular hostility towards the monarchy as an institution. • The various disguises included: Louis- a dress and a black wig, Marie- a servant dressed in a plain grey dress and a veil, and Count Axel Fersen- dressed as a coachman for Marie. • Marie in the end was the one to be discovered. She was supposed to be a humble servant, but she still acted like a stuck up royal when they were inspecting her fake passport.

48. "Louis XVI Stopped in his Flight at Varennes" • This romantic English painting of the King’s flight suggests only a few feet separated the King from escape.

49. Royal Flight to Varennes

50. Public’s Reaction to Their Escape • When the King and Queen returned, the public spat on the King and tore the Queen’s clothing. • Messages were written on the walls of the city. One of them was: “Anyone clapping for the King will be whipped; Anyone booing the King will be hanged.” • When the new Emperor of Austria threatened to invade France and set the Queen and King free, the people acted like a mob to arrest them and defend their city. • The mob killed the guards and anyone else in sight and in the palace including the maids. • Louis and Marie were thrown in prison.