The French Revolution and the Enlightenment

On a Tuesday in July 1789, a crowd of Parisians, mostly artisans and shopkeepers, marched on the Bastille, a medieval fortress being used as a state prison. The crowd, perhaps a thousand strong at the start, was looking for gunpowder and for the political prisoners rumored to be inside. The garrison, fewer than a hundred invalides and thirty Swiss soldiers, had no orders to resist. The commander, de Launay, lost his nerve, and in the confused skirmish that followed, ninety-eight attackers and seven defenders were killed. de Launay was murdered by the crowd, his head paraded through the streets on a pike. The governor of Paris, Flesselles, was murdered later in the day. The Bastille was razed. July 14 became the French national holiday. The storming of the Bastille is the conventional beginning of the French Revolution, and the fact that it began with a confused skirmish over a small quantity of gunpowder is a useful reminder that the most consequential events in history often begin with small, contingent, and not particularly heroic incidents.

The French Revolution of 1789 was the most consequential political event of the modern age, and it was in significant respects the political explosion of the French Enlightenment. The vocabulary, the principles, and the constitutional projects of the Revolution drew directly on the writings of the philosophes, and the events of 1789–1799 transformed the political life of France, of Europe, and of the world. This article examines the origins, the course, and the legacy of the Revolution, with particular attention to its relationship to the Enlightenment.

The origins of the Revolution

The French Revolution was the result of a long and complex set of political, social, economic, and intellectual developments that converged in the 1780s to produce a crisis of the Ancien Régime.

The crisis of the Ancien Régime

The Ancien Régime — the political and social system of pre-revolutionary France — was a complex structure of privileges, jurisdictions, and obligations that had developed over centuries. The king was theoretically absolute, but his power was limited in practice by the rights and privileges of a host of intermediate bodies. The result was a system that was, in some respects, a maze of contradictory jurisdictions and that made the rational reform of the state extremely difficult.

By the second half of the eighteenth century, the contradictions of the Ancien Régime had become increasingly visible. The state was chronically in debt, the result of a long series of wars — most recently the costly intervention in the American Revolution — and an inefficient system of taxation. The harvests of the 1780s were poor, and the price of bread, the staple food of the French poor, rose sharply. The political system was paralyzed by the resistance of the privileged orders to any rational reform. The financial crisis of 1788–1789, when the government could not meet its ordinary expenses, was the immediate cause of the calling of the Estates-General for May 1789.

The Enlightenment critique

The French Enlightenment had developed a thoroughgoing critique of the Ancien Régime by the time the political crisis of the 1780s began. The major thinkers of the French Enlightenment — Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, and the many other writers who participated in the great collaborative projects of the century — had developed a systematic critique of the political, social, and religious institutions of the Old Regime, and they had proposed a program of rational reform that would eventually become the program of the Revolution.

The political vocabulary of the Revolution — liberty, equality, the rights of man, the citizen, the nation, the constitution — was, in important respects, the political vocabulary of the French Enlightenment. The famous tripartite slogan liberté, égalité, fraternité was a creation of the Revolution itself rather than of the philosophes; the first documented use of the triad dates to 1790. The Revolution was, in this sense, the political translation of the philosophical and literary work of the eighteenth century. The translation was not always faithful. The philosophes had been, in most cases, moderate reformers; the Revolution was, in its radical phases, a much more violent and more ambitious project. The gap is one of the things that makes the Revolution so hard to fit into any tidy intellectual history.

The American influence

The American Revolution of 1776 had a profound influence on the French Enlightenment and on the development of the French Revolution. The French participation in the American War of Independence, the enthusiasm of the French public for the American cause, and the example of the American constitutional system all helped to create a model of republican government that the French revolutionaries would later attempt to emulate.

The Marquis de Lafayette, who served as a major general in the American army, was the most famous French participant in the American Revolution. He returned to France as a committed republican, and he drafted the first French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, drawing directly on the American Declaration of Independence. The American example was important not only for the political vocabulary of the Revolution but also for the constitutional projects that the revolutionaries attempted to realize.

The course of the Revolution

The French Revolution went through several distinct phases, each of which was marked by its own political dynamics, its own constitutional projects, and its own characteristic forms of political action.

The Constitutional Monarchy (1789–1792)

The Revolution began with the meeting of the Estates-General at Versailles in May 1789. The Third Estate — the representatives of the commoners, who constituted the great majority of the nation — refused to meet separately from the other orders and declared itself the National Assembly. The Tennis Court Oath, in which the deputies of the Third Estate pledged not to disband until they had given France a constitution, was the founding act of the Revolution.

The events that followed — the storming of the Bastille on July 14, the Great Fear of the countryside, the August decrees abolishing feudalism, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen — were a series of improvisations, each of which pushed the Revolution further than its leaders had intended. The National Constituent Assembly, dominated by moderate reformers, set about the work of drafting a constitution and reforming the institutions of France. The night of August 4, 1789, when the Assembly voted to abolish the feudal regime, is the symbolic moment of the destruction of the Old Regime. The actual destruction took longer, and it was less complete than the night of August 4 suggested.

The Constitution of 1791 established a constitutional monarchy with a separation of powers, an elected legislature, and a system of indirect elections that gave the propertied classes a disproportionate share of political power. The King, Louis XVI, accepted the constitution only reluctantly, and his attempted flight to Varennes in June 1791 destroyed what remained of his credibility with the French public. The flight was the political blunder that made the constitutional monarchy impossible.

The Republic and the Terror (1792–1795)

The war with Austria and Prussia, which began in April 1792, and the increasing radicalism of the political situation in Paris led to the fall of the constitutional monarchy in August 1792. The monarchy was abolished, the king was imprisoned, and the new National Convention proclaimed the French Republic on September 21, 1792.

The Republic was soon in crisis. The war with the European powers was going badly, the economy was in disarray, and the political situation in Paris was increasingly dominated by the radical Jacobin faction. The trial and execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, the establishment of the Committee of Public Safety, and the beginning of the Terror in the autumn of 1793 marked the most radical phase of the Revolution.

The Terror, which lasted until the summer of 1794, was a period of political repression in which thousands of French citizens were executed in the name of the Republic. The number is contested. The most reliable recent estimates put the death toll at around 17,000 by guillotine, with perhaps 25,000 more killed in summary executions, in prison, or in the déportations. The most prominent victims included the Girondin deputies, the moderate Revolutionaries, the Hébertists, and, eventually, the architect of the Terror himself, Maximilien Robespierre. The Terror ended with the Thermidorian reaction of July 1794, in which Robespierre and his allies were overthrown and executed. The reaction was, in its way, as bloody as the Terror: Robespierre was guillotined with his allies, and the subsequent months saw a wave of revenge killings of the Jacobins. The Thermidorian reaction is a useful reminder that the violence of the Revolution did not begin with the Terror, and it did not end with the Terror.

The Directory and the Consulate (1795–1804)

The period after the Terror was marked by political instability, economic crisis, and continued war with the European powers. The Directory, established by the Constitution of 1795, was a five-member executive that was unable to provide effective government, and it was overthrown in the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799) by a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte. The Directory was a constitutional form without a constitutional substance, and the coup of 18 Brumaire was, in retrospect, almost inevitable.

The Consulate, established by the Constitution of 1799, marked the beginning of the Napoleonic period. Napoleon served as First Consul, and he gradually consolidated his power until he was able to declare himself Emperor of the French in 1804. The Napoleonic period was one of major reforms — the Napoleonic Code, the reorganization of the educational system, the Concordat with the Pope — and of major military campaigns that brought much of Europe under French control.

The ideologies of the Revolution

The French Revolution was animated by a complex set of political ideologies, each of which drew on different aspects of the Enlightenment tradition.

Constitutional Liberalism

The constitutional liberalism of the early Revolution, represented by such figures as Lafayette, Mirabeau, and the Marquis de Condorcet, drew on the British and American models of constitutional government. The constitutional liberals advocated for a written constitution, a separation of powers, a system of representative government, and the protection of the basic rights of the citizens. The Constitution of 1791 was the most important expression of this ideology. The constitutional liberals were, in many ways, the natural heirs of the moderate Enlightenment; the tragedy of the Revolution is that they lost control of it.

Republicanism

The republicanism of the more radical Revolutionaries, represented by such figures as Robespierre, Saint-Just, and the other members of the Jacobin Club, drew on the political philosophy of Rousseau and on the Roman republican tradition. The republicans advocated for a more democratic and more participatory political system, and they were willing to use the Terror as a means of defending the Republic against its internal and external enemies.

Girondin Federalism

The Girondin faction of the Republic, represented by such figures as Brissot, Roland, and the other deputies of the Girondin department, advocated for a more decentralized and more federalist political system. The Girondins were generally more moderate than the Jacobins, and they were eventually purged by the Jacobin leadership in the summer of 1793. The Girondins were, in retrospect, the most reasonable of the revolutionary factions, and their destruction was one of the tragedies of the Revolution.

Sans-culotte Democracy

The sans-culotte movement, which represented the interests of the urban poor and the working classes of Paris, advocated for a more radical and more participatory democracy. The sans-culottes were suspicious of the propertied classes and of the representatives of the National Convention, and they pushed the Revolution in a more radical direction. The sans-culotte movement was eventually suppressed by the Jacobin government, and it was not a major factor in the post-Terror period.

The legacy of the French Revolution

The French Revolution had a profound and lasting influence on the political life of the modern world. The political vocabulary of the Revolution — liberty, equality, fraternity, the rights of man, the citizen, the nation — has become the basic vocabulary of modern democratic politics. The constitutional projects of the Revolution — the declaration of rights, the separation of powers, the system of representative government — have become the basic principles of modern constitutional government.

The Napoleonic Legacy

The Napoleonic period, which followed the Revolution, was a period of major reforms that consolidated many of the achievements of the Revolution. The Napoleonic Code, the educational reforms, the administrative reorganization, and the various other reforms of the period established the basic institutions of the modern French state, and they were widely imitated in other European countries. The Code, in particular, has been one of the most influential legal texts in modern history. It was adopted, with modifications, in the Low Countries, in the Italian states, in the German Rhineland, in the Swiss cantons, in Poland, in Louisiana, and in various other jurisdictions under French or French-influenced control. The Code established the basic institutions of the modern civil law tradition — equality before the law, the protection of property rights, the freedom of contract, the secularization of the family law — and it was one of the most successful exports of the Revolution.

The Napoleonic Wars, which brought much of Europe under French control, also spread the principles of the Revolution — the legal equality of citizens, the abolition of feudal privileges, the protection of property rights — throughout Europe. The defeat of Napoleon in 1815 did not undo all of these reforms, and the post-Napoleonic settlement preserved many of the basic achievements of the Revolution.

The influence on other countries

The French Revolution had a profound influence on other countries. The Latin American independence movements of the early nineteenth century were inspired by both the American and the French Revolutions, and the various constitutional projects of the new Latin American republics drew directly on the French example. The European revolutions of 1848, the Risorgimento in Italy, the German unification movement, and the various other national movements of the nineteenth century were all, in important respects, descendants of the French Revolution.

The influence on modern political thought

The French Revolution was one of the central events in the development of modern political thought. The revolutionaries themselves — Robespierre, Saint-Just, the other Jacobin leaders — developed a revolutionary political theory that drew on the Enlightenment tradition. The conservative reaction against the Revolution — Burke, de Maistre, Bonald — developed a counter-revolutionary political theory that has been an important feature of modern conservative thought. The liberal response to the Revolution — Constant, Tocqueville, the various defenders of liberal constitutionalism — developed a more moderate political theory that has been an important feature of modern liberal thought.

The contemporary debate about the legacy of the French Revolution is part of the broader debate about the legacy of the Enlightenment. The defenders of the Revolution point to the genuine achievements — the abolition of feudalism, the establishment of the principle of legal equality, the proclamation of the rights of man. The critics point to the failures — the Terror, the authoritarianism, the failure to establish a stable democratic order. The contemporary engagement with the Revolution is shaped by a recognition of both the achievements and the failures, and by an awareness that the project of building a just and free political order is one that the Revolution began but did not complete.

The French Revolution is, in the end, the political event that most thoroughly tests the Enlightenment legacy. The Revolution was, in its aspirations, a thoroughgoing attempt to put the Enlightenment program of reason, liberty, equality, and human rights into political practice. The Revolution was, in its actual course, an attempt that produced both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Terror. The fact that the Revolution produced both is the reason that the Revolution has been, for more than two centuries, the central case study in political philosophy, and the central case study in the philosophy of history. The philosophers have not finished arguing about it. The Revolution is one of the events that the modern imagination cannot quite put to rest.

The French Revolution and the Enlightenment: Origins, Course, and Legacy