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“Mostly they were men of property, and above all, lawyers. To the departing Constituents, who had deliberately barred themselves from election, they seemed obscure, inexperienced and (given the relative youth of most of them) callow.

Few, certainly, were nationally known, though the journalist Brissot and the mathematician and publicist Condorcet were men of reputation. But most of the new deputies owed their election to prominence in their home localities, a prominence won in the circumstances of revolutionary clubs.”

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Doylee on the new members of the legslative assembly

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Doylee on the new members of the legslative assembly

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“Mostly they were men of property, and above all, lawyers. To the departing Constituents, who had deliberately barred themselves from election, they seemed obscure, inexperienced and (given the relative youth of most of them) callow. Few, certainly, were nationally known, though the journalist Brissot and the mathematician and publicist Condorcet were men of reputation. But most of the new deputies owed their election to prominence in their home localities, a prominence won in the circumstances of revolutionary clubs.” Doyle

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¨‘The time has come for a new crusade, a crusade for universal liberty’

¨‘ Do you wish at one blow to destroy the aristocracy and the refractory priests, the malcontents?  If so, destroy Koblenz’

¨ (Brissot)

¨War ‘raised the hopes and stakes of the counter revolution’. Moreover, the counter revolution could now also claim to be fighting a holy crusade thus ‘inside France war made the position of non-juring clergy intolerable’          (McPhee).

¨

¨But war broke out in April 1792 and, by the violence of its impact, immeasurably sharpened all the existing tensions. (Rudé)

¨War was the third ‘great polarizing issue of the revolution, as intended, it forced everybody to take sides’ (Doyle)

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•Doyle notes that: “All over the capital symbols of royalty were attacked and defaced”.

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The Peasant revolt ‘provided an excellent excuse to arm the people against royal power… gathered peasants together in turn against the aristocracy …allowed the peasantry to achieve a full realisation of its strength’ (Lefebvre)

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Doylee, on the food crisis after bastille

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Doylee, on the food crisis after bastille

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Said Doyle, ‘Hunger, hope and fear were the main ingredients of the rural crisis of 1789’.

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“The establishment of the National Assembly had both conceptualised the idea of a nation and actually facilitated the momentous transfer of sovereignty from the King to the nation.’

- Michael Adock

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“The more brilliantly the first two orders swaggered, the more they alienated the Third Estate and provoked it into exploding the institution altogether.”

- Simon Schama

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•Bosher “None played a bigger role in terrorising the nation”

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Radical journalist Camille Desmoulins

“But what is this much repeated word, active citizen, supposed to mean?” asked Desmoulins. “The active citizens are the ones who took the Bastille.”

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“Mostly they were men of property, and above all, lawyers. To the departing Constituents, who had deliberately barred themselves from election, they seemed obscure, inexperienced and (given the relative youth of most of them) callow.

Few, certainly, were nationally known, though the journalist Brissot and the mathematician and publicist Condorcet were men of reputation. But most of the new deputies owed their election to prominence in their home localities, a prominence won in the circumstances of revolutionary clubs.”

Constitutional monarchy

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George Rudé (Marxist) - "[the National Assembly's actions] made it impossible to arrest the course of the Revolution."

Patrice Higonnet - "[I reject] the idea that the essence of Jacobin politics culminated in the immoral and useless Terror of 1793-1794"

William Doyle (Revisionist) - "It was resistance that made the revolution become violent."

David Garrioch - "The 'defender' [Robspierre] of the rights of man suspended civil and political liberties. The 'spokesman' [Robspierre] for religious toleration persecuted priests and nuns."

Peter Mcphee - "While proclaiming the universality of rights and civic equality of all citizens, it [The Declaration Of Rights of Man and Citizen] was ambiguous on whether the propertyless, slaves and women would have political say as well as legal equality."

Albert Soboul (Marxist) - “The Enlightenment undermined the ideological foundations of the established order.”

Lefebvre Henri (Marxist) - “The ultimate cause of the revolution was the rise of the Bourgeois.”

Simon Schama - “It was in the Church, more than any other group in France, that the separation between rich and poor was most bitterly articulated.”

Jill Fenwick & July Anderson - “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”

William Doyle (Revisionist) - “[the Storming of the Bastille] was the climax of the popular movement.”

Lefebvre Henri (Marxist) - “[the Great Fear] allowed the peasants to realise their strength.”

George Rudé (Marxist) - “…having won its victory over “privilege” and “despotism”, the Bourgeois now wanted peace and quiet in order to proceed with its task of giving France a constitution.”

François Furet - “The August Decrees were an improvised parliamentary reaction to an emergency situation.”

Peter Mcphee - “The Revolution of the Bourgeois deputies had only been secured by the active intervention of the people of Paris.”

Peter Mcphee - “In the end, it proved impossible to reconcile a church based on divinely ordained hierarchy... with a revolution based on popular sovereignty.”

François Furet - “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.”

William Doyle (Revisionist) - “The French Revolution had many turning points; but the oath of the clergy was; if not the greatest, unquestionably one of the. It was certainly the Constituent Assembly’s most serious mistake. For the first time, it forced fellow citizens to choose: declare themselves publicly for or against the new order.”

J.F Bosher - "...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."

Albert Soboul (Marxist) - “From this moment the King appeared as the most dangerous foe to the mass of the people; the Flight to Varennes had finally torn off the mask and revealed him in his true colours.

Charles Richet - “By fleeing, one King renounced his sovereignty, while another king, the people, looked on.”

Timothy Tackett - “The events [Flight To Varennes] of that night would prove a turning point in the history of the Revolution and the of the French monarchy, with an enormous immediate impact on Paris, and on the National Assembly and indeed on the whole of France and Europe.”

Albert Mathiez (Socialist) - “But this war, which was desired by all parties except the Mountain… as a move in their internal policy, was to falsify all the calculations of those who brought it about.”

Lefebvre Henri (Marxist) - “In reality the government lost control of the repression [The Terror]... like administration, it was decentralised by the emergency."

Peter Mcphee - “The central purpose of the Terror was to institute the emergency and draconian measures necessary at a time of military crisis.”

Albert Mathiez (Socialist) - “The dictatorship of a party or a class is as a rule only established by force, and in time of war this is necessarily so. Revolutionary government had as its inevitable accompaniment the Terror.”

Jeffrey Lewis - “The institutions of the Terror had been created long before Robespierre joined the government on 26th July 1793.”

Simon Schama - “it [Law of 14 Frimaire] ended… the anarchic process by which zealots could take the law into their own hands.”

William Doyle (Revisionist) - "Was, then, the revolution worth it in material terms? For most ordinary French subjects turned by it into citizens, it cannot have been."

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Doyle writes that the commune did not stop the massacres, but helped co-ordinate them. The Assembly did not have the power to stop them and hesitated to call out the National Guard for fear of another Champ de Mars massacre.

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Thus the republican revolution, brewing since Varennes, and militant since 10 August, reached its logical climax.

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Timothy Tackett on the spread of civil war

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Timothy Tackett on the spread of civil war

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The terrible civil war in the heart of Paris had lasted little more than two hours. Yet over a thousand people had died—the greatest hecatomb [great slaughter] in the city since the sixteenth century. The largest toll was amongst the Swiss Guards, of whom some 600 were killed. But another hundred or so of the noble volunteers had also succumbed, and close to 400 insurgents were killed or wounded. The young volunteers from Marseille and Brittany [fédérés] caught in the crossfire of the courtyard represented the single largest number of patriot casualties. Other victims came from nearly every quarter of Paris and from many different provinces of France.

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It was the bloodiest day of the Revolution so far, but also one of the most decisive. Though the King and his family remained unscathed, his authority fell with his palace. ... Few believed that he would ever sit on the throne again, unless with foreign aid.

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Simon Schama on the attack at Tuileries on the 10th 

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Simon Schama on the attack at Tuileries on the 10th 

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It was not an incidental moment in the history of the Revolution. It was, in fact, its logical consummation. From 1789 ... it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that had given them the power to challenge constituted authority. Bloodshed was not the unfortunate by-product of revolution, it was the source of its energy. The verses of the ‘Marseillaise’ and the great speeches of the Girondins had spoken of the patrie in the absolute poetry of life and death. Perversely, only if it could be shown that blood did indeed flow in its defence could the virtues of the Revolution be shown to be worth dying for. Means had become ends.

Simon Schama

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George Rudé Inpretation of the September massacres 

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George Rudé Inpretation of the September massacres 

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Whatever their origins and unsavoury as they were, the massacres were an event York: Grove Press, 1988), 79. of some importance: they appeared to complete the destruction of the enemy some weeks before the volunteers at Valmy, on 20 September, routed Brunswick's army and drove it back across the frontier. Thus the Republic, proclaimed that autumn, became established on what seemed a solid enough foundation—by the victory of the Revolution over its enemies at home and abroad.

George Rudé

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Simon Schama Schama Interpretation of louis's death

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Simon Schama Schama Interpretation of louis's death

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Citizens: A Chronicle of The September massacres ... [arguably exposed] a central truth of the French the French Revolution (London: Revolution: its dependence on organised killing to accomplish political ends. For Penguin, 1989), 637. however virtuous the principles of kingless France were supposed to be, their power to compel allegiance depended, from the very beginning, on the spectacle of death.

Simon Schama Schama

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“The king had decided on his defence at the time of his interrogation, and it was his decision and his alone. He would defend himself not as an anointed king but as a constitutional monarch who had fulfilled his oath of office. He was determined to fight for his life by providing his innocence in an adversary proceeding. He had no illusions about the outcome of the trial, as he told Malesherbes at their first interview: ‘I am sure they will make me perish. They have the power and the will to do so. That does not matter. Let us concern ourselves with my trial as if I could win, and I will win, since the memory that I will leave will be without stain’.”
David P. Jordan, historian