Revolutionary France, 1770 1880

640 Pages·1992·15.418 MB·English

by  François Furet

Revolutionary France
1770-1880
A History ofx France will, in five volumes, provide an
account of 1,000 years of French history. The authors are
among the most distinguished French historians, and the
reception given to the first three volumes when they appeared
in France in 1987 and 1988 suggests that this will be the
standard history of France for many years to come.
Already published
France in the Middle Ages 987-1460
Georges Duby
Revolutionary France 1770-1880
François Furet
Forthcoming
Early Modern France 1460-1610
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
The Ancien Regime 1610-1771
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
The French Republic 1880-1987
Maurice Agulhon
Revolutionary France
1770-1880
FRANÇOIS FURET
Translated by
Antonia Nevill
g
BLACKWELL
Ox/orJ UK & Cambridge USA
Copyright © Hachette, 1988
English translation copyright © Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1992
X
The right of François Furet to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 1988
English translation first published 1992
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-iñ-Publication Data
Furet, François, 1927-
[Révolution. English]
Revolutionary France 1770-1880 / François Furet; translated by Antonia Nevill.
p. cm. — (History of France)
Includes bibliographical references.
Translation of: La Révolution.
ISBN 0-631-17029-4
I. France—History—Revolution, 1789-1799. 2. France—History—19th
century. 3. France—History—Revolution, 1789-1799—Influence. I. Series.
DC148.F8713 1992
944.04—dc20 91-47098
CIP
Typeset in io1/? on 12 pt Plantin by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed in Great Britain by T. J. Press Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall.
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Foreword ix
PART I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION I
The Anden Régime 3
2 The Revolution of 1789: 1787-1791 41
3 The Jacobin Republic: 1791-1794 101
4 The Thermidorian Republic: 1794-1799 151
5 Napoleon Bonaparte: 1799-1814 211
PART II ENDING THE REVOLUTION 267
6 The Restoration: 1814-1830 269
7 The July Monarchy: 1830-1848 326
8 The Second Republic: 1848-1851 385
9 The Second Empire: 1851-1870 43$
The Republic: 1870-1880 492
Appendix 1: Chronological Table 53$
Appendix 2: The Republican Calendar for Year II (i793~I794) 566
Bibliography 5^7
Glossary 6°8
Index of Names 610
Index of Subjects 622
List of Illustrations
Page
Hyacinthe Rigaud Louis XV in coronation robes 5
Joseph Siffrein Duplessis Jacques Necker, 1791 12
Joseph Siffrein Duplessis Louis XVI in coronation robes 20
Jacques Louis David The Tennis Court Oath of 20 June 1789 65
Campion The Taking of the Bastille 67
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, 1789 75
Nicolas Henry Jeaurat de Bertry Revolutionary Allegory, 1794 112
Portrait of Maximilien Robespierre 114
Portrait of Danton 115
Louis Lejeune Battle of the Bridge at Lodi, 10 May 1796 174
Jacques Louis David The Coronation of Napoleon 11806-1807 242
Ingres’ portrait of Napoleon 246
Engraving of Charles X 299
Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson’s portrait of Chateaubriand 302
Daumier Monsieur Guizot: The legislative ‘Belly’: view of the
ministerial benches of 1834 329
Théodore Chasseriau Alexis de Tocqueville 368
Thomas Couture Jules Michelet 372
Rue Saint Antoine during the June days of 1848 (barricade) 407
François Flemeng Literary History 443
Hippolyte Jean Flandrin, portrait of Napoleon III, 1861 450
The Men of the Commune, 1871 502
Barricade in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine during the Commune, 1871 505
Benjamin Ulmann Thiers applauded by the deputies during the sitting
of 16June 1877 514
The French Revolution is such an extraordinary event that it must
serve as the starting-point for any systematic consideration of the
affairs of our own times. Everything of importance which takes place
in France is a direct consequence of this fundamental event, which
has profoundly altered the conditions of life in our country.
Ernest Renan, ‘Constitutional Monarchy in France’, Revue des Deux Mondes,
1 November 1869.
The translator gratefully acknowledges the expert guidance on historical termi­
nology and the invaluable textual clarifications given by Professor Norman
Hampson.
Foreword
The French Revolution began in 1789, but there is no clear date for its
end. It has no American-style definitive close like the 1787 constitution,
which became the sacred ark of the nation. Nor does it claim to live on
indefinitely, in Soviet fashion, but it falls somewhere between the two
extremes. Like the American Revolution, and at almost the same epoch, its
desire was to found, within the law, a body politic of free and equal
individuals; but the French Revolution was continually revising the terms
of the undertaking, deferring its final outcome or success, and so repro­
ducing ad infinitum the fear that it had been dispossessed.
One can trace a short-term history of its course, stopping at the fall of
Robespierre or the arrival of Bonaparte. The method I have chosen in this
book is, by contrast, to write an extended version, spread over the hundred
years and more between Turgot and Gambetta. The central theme is that
only the victory of republicans over monarchists in 1876-7 provided
modern France with a regime that established in lasting form the full range
of the principles of 1789 ensuring not only civic equality but also political
liberty. Thus I have attempted to encompass and depict the first century of
democracy in France.
This falls into two great cycles, widely commented upon in the nine­
teenth century. The first covers the French Revolution (in the narrow
sense), from the ancien régime to the Napoleonic Empire. It comprises
the successive forms of public authority which made up the catalogue
of French political struggles: the Bourbon dynasty, the constitutional
monarchy, the Jacobin dictatorship, the parliamentary Republic, Bona­
partism. The last managed to implant the revolutionary heritage in a
centralized administrative state, and thus to ‘close’ the Revolution.
In 1814, however, the Empire, vanquished by a European coalition,
inaugurated a second chain of events through which the first began anew,
in fresh circumstances, but still haunted by the memory of what had
happened before. Not only did ancien régime and Revolution again con­
front each other, but equally opposed were the traditional sources of
conflict born of the Revolution itself: 1789 and 1793, the Rights of Man
X Foreword
and Jacobinism, liberty and equality, representative government and
Bonapartism.
The restored Bourbons fell in 1830 because it was thought they aimed to
bring back the ancien régime. The July monarchy foundered in 1848 in its
attempt to restrict the vote for the benefit of the few. The Second Republic
for a brief moment regained the democratic brotherhood of the Festival of
the Federation, but had to crush a popular rising in June 1848 before
leaving the two royalist traditions to fight it out with Bonaparte’s nephew.
Even that sequence of French history which had been thought unique,
linked to an incomparable man and exceptional times - the Empire -
reappeared for twenty years, without war, heroes, military glory, victorious
generals, merely through the power of memory. The defeat of 1870
brought a new Parisian revolution, followed by a final attempt to restore
the Bourbons. This was a dual failure which opened the way to the lasting
victory of the French Revolution, in a republican version which finally won
the acceptance of the country.
However, between the two cycles of this long period lies an essential
difference. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Revolution smashed
the entire structure of the ancien régime. In the nineteenth century, the
prefects survived the revolutions. The country’s administrative consti­
tution, dating from the Consulate, stood throughout the whole era like an
inviolable monument. Thus, in its own way, the centralized state ensured
the continuity of public authority and national unity; but at the same time
it constantly intensified post-revolutionary civil struggles over the 1789
heritage. Being the vital centre of the nation, it had only to seize control to
become the master of society. Paradoxically, the points on which the
French were in agreement only inflamed their differences; the conservative
in them was also the revolutionary, bound by a common conception of the
state. This is exactly what we learn from de Tocqueville, when he remarks
that Napoleon ‘by constructing this powerful hierarchy. .. suddenly made
revolutions easier for us, yet at the same time less destructive’.1
By establishing the state, through universal suffrage in the name of the
equality of its citizens, the republicans of the 1870s managed to entrench
the law on a lasting basis in the sovereignty of the people. Thus they at last
completed the task begun in 1789.
1 Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, Oeuvres complètes, part II, vol.
2, p. 274, note.