The Reign of Terror 1793–1794: Leading the Angry Mob and Murdering Political Rivals. Part 3: La Grande Peur et la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen
Storming the Bastille did not just inaugurate the French Revolution, it emboldened the urban poor and peasantry to take extreme measures to secure their dominance. Bread and grain prices remained the single elusive dilemma that the government could not grasp, and along with fear, it became a deadly motivator for the urban poor and peasantry. After the Bastille fell, nobles began emigrating, but those caught by the angry mob felt their wrath. On 22 July 1789 the city intendant, Berthier de Sauvigny, and his father-in-law, Joseph Foulon were captured in an emigration attempt. Many suspected that Foulon attempted to starve the city and immediately after their capture, the angry mob brought them to the city center and gave them the à la lanterne execution. Before Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed a more humane method of execution in October 1789, the nobility were obliged execution by beheading while most lower-class citizens hanged from a lamppost (à la lanterne). To hang the nobility from the lamppost signified equality in death and extreme humiliation towards the nobleman. Although the king accepted the National Assembly’s demands for reform, violence continued to grow to a malicious vengeance on centuries of social and economic oppression. Since the fall of the Bastille, peace and order appeared scarce and infrequent with the king’s troops failure to break up the angry mob on the Parisian streets. With these events and reliable communication lacking, erroneous information spread throughout France. Many peasants in the French countryside heard rumors of the angry mob coming to attack them following their expulsion from Paris. Authors Tackett and Strick (2015, 58) explain how news of the Revolution spread throughout France piecemeal and inaccurately with rumors of brigands coming to the countryside to steal their crops when they write, “it was the overwhelming fear of the collapse of authority and of roving bandits attacking homes and villages — not of an aristocratic conspiracy — that set off one of the most extraordinary mass panics in history.” Without any troops or police force to ensure the citizens safety, the countryside peasants began to fear the worst.
Known as the ‘Great Fear’, peasants from provinces all over France took this moment to revolt against their feudal lords. From the last weeks in July to the first week in August, the Great Fear spread like a chain reaction where the peasantry not only dismantled the symbols of feudalism — coats of arms and wine presses — but set ablaze the feudal documents and chateaus. In an interesting turn of events, the peasantry initially grouped and armed themselves for a defense against the supposed oncoming banditry; however, realizing their potential and the lack of punitive authority turned on their lords. Rumors and inaccurate accounts continued to spread into other major cities and provinces while nobles continued to emigrate in fear for their life. In order to quell the peasant revolts, it was the Bretons who proposed the abolition of feudalism to the National Assembly. When not attending the National Assembly meetings, delegates from Brittany often met at coffee houses to discuss plans of action for the following days. The delegates eventually met in an old Jacobin monastery creating the Breton Club and their proposal to abolish feudalism was one of the key solutions to the Great Fear. In a majestic turn of events, noble after noble renounced their feudal privileges in front of the Assembly on 4 August, yet there was one Parisian who found this act to be conniving: Jean-Paul Marat. In his pamphlet, A Project to Deceive the People, Marat writes a scathing rebuttal to the renunciations when he states, “Don’t let anybody fool you, if the aristocratic landowners made these sacrifices out of the goodness of their hearts, why did it take them so long to raise their voices? Their mansions were in flames and they had the great generosity to renounce the privilege of holding in chains people who had already gained their freedom, arms in hand!” (Conner 2012, 42). By renouncing their feudal privilege, the nobles gained monetary compensation from the peasants’ emancipation, yet Marat was arguing that the peasants already emancipated themselves through rebellion which there was no need to pay.
As the Great Fear subsided, and weeks of deliberations, the National Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The preamble is not only directly aimed at the corrupt social system but claims this system is what caused the monarchy’s downfall when it states, “The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man.” The document continues to reaffirm the natural rights of man such as born with equal rights (art. I), the removal of arbitrary imprisonment (art. VII), and innocent until proven guilty (art. IX). Article XI adds a dramatic touch when it states, “The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.” Although emphasizing it as the most precious, it adds the caveat against abuses which for the next four years Jean-Paul Marat is actively pursued for sedition. Another hallmark in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen is how it defines the law as “the expression of the general will” (art. VI). From this the Revolution will move towards the Enlightenment/Deist virtues removing God as a moral authority. The angry mob does not care for virtue and more often than not, the “general will” became vengeance and murder. Within one month, the angry mob sufficiently fractured centuries of socioeconomic policy and brought an inept government to its knees; however, the angry mob would prove that it is only capable of destruction and could not establish a civilized government. It would continue to abandon reason as a means to institute equality and install fear and murder to maintain their newly acquired rights.
References
Conner, Clifford D. 2012. Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution. New York: Pluto Press.
Tackett, Timothy, and James E. Strick. 2015. The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
