Readings Package – French Revolution
Document #1
SOURCE: Abbe Sieyes, “What is the Third Estate?” (1789)
What is necessary that a nation should subsist and prosper? Individual
effort and public functions. All individual efforts may be included in four
classes: (1) Since the earth and the waters furnish crude products for the
needs of man, the first class, in logical sequence, will be that of all families
which devote themselves to agricultural labor. (2) Between the first sale of
products and their consumption or use, a new manipulation, more of less
repeated, adds to these products a second value more or less composite. In
this manner human industry succeeds in perfecting the gifts of nature, and
the crude product increases twofold, tenfold, one hundred-fold in value. Such
are the efforts of the second class. (3) Between production and consumption,
as well as between the various stages of production, a group of intermediary agents establish themselves,
useful both to producers and consumers; these are the merchants and brokers: the brokers who, comparing
incessantly the demands of time and place, speculate upon the profit of retention and transportation;
merchants who are charged with distribution, in the last analysis, either at wholesale or at retail. This species
of utility characterizes the third class. (4) Outside of these three classes of productive and useful citizens,
who are occupied with real objects of consumption and use, there is also need in a society of a series of
efforts and pains, whose objects are directly useful or agreeable to the individual. This fourth class embraces
all those who stand between the most distinguished and liberal professions and the less esteemed services of
domestics. Such are the efforts which sustain society. Who puts them forth? The Third Estate.
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Public functions may be classified equally well, in the present state of affairs, under four recognized
heads: the sword, the robe, the church, and the administration. It would be superfluous to take them up one
by one, for the purpose of showing that everywhere the Third Estate attends to nineteen-twentieths of them,
with this distinction; that it is laden with all that which is really painful, with all the burdens which the
privileged classes refuse to carry. Do we give the Third Estate credit for this? That this might come about, it
would be necessary that the Third Estate should refuse to fill these places, or that it should be less ready to
exercise their functions. The facts are well known. Meanwhile they have dared to impose a prohibition upon
the order of the Third Estate. They have said to it: "Whatever may be your services, whatever may be your
abilities, you shall go thus far; you may not pass beyond!" Certain rare exceptions, properly regarded, are but
a mockery, and the terms which are indulged in on such occasions, one insult the more.
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….It suffices here to have made it clear that the pretended utility of a privileged order for the public
service is nothing more than a chimera; that with it all that which is burdensome in this service is performed
by the Third Estate; that without it the superior places would be infinitely better filled; that they naturally
ought to be the lot and the recompense of ability and recognized services, and that if privileged persons have
come to usurp all the lucrative and honorable posts, it is a hateful injustice to the rank and file of citizens and
at the same time a treason to the public weal. Who then shall dare to say that the Third Estate has not within
itself all that is necessary for the formation of a complete nation? It is the strong and robust man who has one
arm still shackled. If the privileged order should be abolished, the nation would be nothing less, but
something more. Therefore, what is the Third Estate? Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed.
What would it be without the privileged order? Everything, but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing
can succeed without it, everything would be infinitely better without the others. It is not sufficient to show
that privileged persons, far from being useful to the nation, cannot but enfeeble and injure it; it is necessary
to prove further that the noble order does not enter at all into the social organization; that it may indeed be a
burden upon the nation, but that it cannot of itself constitute a nation.
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In the first place, it is not possible in the number of all the elementary parts of a nation to find a place
for the caste of nobles. I know that there are individuals in great number whom infirmities, incapacity,
incurable laziness, or the weight of bad habits render strangers to the labors of society. The exception and the
abuse are everywhere found beside the rule. But it will be admitted that the less there are of these abuses,
the better it will be for the State. The worst possible arrangement of all would be where not alone isolated
individuals, but a whole class of citizens should take pride in remaining motionless in the midst of the general
movement, and should consume the best part of the product without bearing any part in its production. Such
a class is surely estranged to the nation by its indolence. The noble order is not less estranged from the
generality of us by its civil and political prerogatives.
What is a nation? A body of associates, living under a common law, and represented by the same
legislature, etc. It is not evident that the noble order has privileges and expenditures which it dares to call its
rights, but which are apart from the rights of the great body of citizens? It departs there from the common
order, from the common law. So its civil rights make of it an isolated people in the midst of the great nation. …
In regard to its political rights, these also it exercises apart. It has its special representatives, which are not
charged with securing the interests of the people. The body of its deputies sit apart; and when it is assembled
in the same hall with the deputies of simple citizens, it is none the less true that its representation is
essentially distinct and separate: it is a stranger to the nation, in the first place, by its origin, since its
commission is not derived from the people; then by its object, which consists of defending not the general,
but the particular interest. The Third Estate embraces then all that which belongs to the nation; and all that
which is not the Third Estate, cannot be regarded as being of the nation. What is the Third Estate? It is the
whole.
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Is Abbe Sieyes expressing his frustrations with the monarchy or nobility? Identify a
couple of examples to support your opinion.
2. In one or two words, summarize what each class does in society (1)
3. According to Sieyes, what limitation has been placed on the Third Estate? (2)
4. What effect would removing the nobles from society have on France? (3)
Document #2
SOURCE: National Assembly, Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, (1789)
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, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the
members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and
duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the
executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes
of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order
that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable
principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the
happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the
auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Articles:
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Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general
good.
The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These
rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any
authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural
rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the
enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not
forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.
Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his
representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens,
being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and
occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.
No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms
prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order,
shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as
resistance constitutes an offense.
The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall
suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the
commission of the offense.
As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed
indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed
by law.
No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their
manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
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.
The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are,
established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be entrusted.
A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of
administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.
All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the
public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of
assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.
Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no
constitution at all.
Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public
necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have
been previously and equitably indemnified.
1. Look at the list of grievances in the American Declaration of Independence. Identify grievances
in the Declaration of Independence that relate to the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of
Man.
Document #4
SOURCE: Jean Paul Marat, Illusion of the Blind Multitude on the Supposed
Excellence of the Constitution, (1791)
The public’s infatuation with the constitution is the fashionable folly of
the moment. There’s no way to be surprised by this; it’s a thing absolutely new
among us, and for this alone it can’t fail to seduce light and frivolous men ,
equally incapable of seizing its defects and of calculating its ill effects. How could
it fail to infatuate the French, of all people in the world the least reflective?
To this fury for novelty should be added the pitfalls of vanity. When it
enters the head of a people who have broken their chains, nothing in the world is
more apt to flatter self-love than the idea of an indefinite freedom supported by
the supreme power, and one can conceive just how far the enthusiasm of limited but honest citizens for the new
order of things can be carried. And it’s not that the scoundrels at the head of affairs haven’t taken pains to inspire
this infatuation. What strings haven’t they played on with this end in sight?
In the first place, a mass of bought-off pens have represented the constitution as the most sublime work
ever given birth to by the human spirit; as an eternal monument to wisdom and virtue, as the infallible guarantor
of the nation’s happiness. These pompous elegies have been circulated throughout the empire, while no occasion
has been missed to flatter the self-love of the people by presenting to it a false image of its strength and its
freedom, at the very moment when new chains are being forged for it. Credulous Parisians! Remember the
inscriptions that decorated the altar of the Fatherland the day of the military federation. It said to the people: You
are the sovereign. You are also the legislator. The law is still against you. And the blind multitude, puffed up with
vanity, didn’t see that this whole foolish apparatus had no other goal than that of metamorphosing the soldiers of
the Fatherland into satellites of the executive power, and to chain them to the maintaining of the evil decrees that
returned authority to the hands of the prince.
In the midst of the cries of enthusiasm that filled the air the voice of the Friend of the People vainly spoke
out to reveal the trap and recall you to wisdom. What he said to you then – and what he said a hundred times – I
repeat to you today: the constitution is a failure, a complete failure and so completely failed that it forms the most
dreadful of governments, for in the last analysis it is nothing but an administration of royal commissioners still
connected to the noblesse de la robe and followed by armed satellites, i.e., a true military and noble despotism.
1. How does Marat characterize the French people who are impressed with the 1791 constitution?
2. Explain how Marat uses the chain metaphor.
Document #3
SOURCE: Maximilien Robespierre, Justifying the Terror, (1794)
It is time to mark clearly the aim of the Revolution and the end
toward which we wish to move; it is time to take stock of ourselves, of the
obstacles which we still face, and of the means which we ought to adopt to
attain our objectives....
What is the goal for which we strive? A peaceful enjoyment of
liberty and equality, the rule of that eternal justice whose laws are
engraved, not upon marble or stone, but in the hearts of all men.
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We wish an order of things where all low and cruel passions are enchained by the laws, all beneficent
and generous feelings aroused; where ambition is the desire to merit glory and to serve one's fatherland;
where distinctions are born only of equality itself; where the citizen is subject to the magistrate, the magistrate
to the people, the people to justice; where the nation safeguards the welfare of each individual, and each
individual proudly enjoys the prosperity and glory of his fatherland; where all spirits are enlarged by the
constant exchange of republican sentiments and by the need of earning the respect of a great people; where the
arts are the adornment of liberty, which ennobles them; and where commerce is the source of public wealth,
not simply of monstrous opulence for a few families.
In our country we wish to substitute morality for egotism, probity for honor, principles for conventions,
duties for etiquette, the empire of reason for the tyranny of customs, contempt for vice for contempt for
misfortune, pride for insolence, the love of honor for the love of money . . . that is to say, all the virtues and
miracles of the Republic for all the vices and snobbishness of the monarchy.
We wish in a word to fulfill the requirements of nature, to accomplish the destiny of mankind, to make
good the promises of philosophy . . . that France, hitherto illustrious among slave states, may eclipse the glory
of all free peoples that have existed, become the model of all nations.... That is our ambition; that is our aim.
What kind of government can realize these marvels? Only a democratic government.... But to found and
to consolidate among us this democracy, to realize the peaceable rule of constitutional laws, it is necessary to
conclude the war of liberty against tyranny and to pass successfully through the storms of revolution. Such is
the aim of the revolutionary system which you have set up....
Now what is the fundamental principle of democratic, or popular government- that is to say, the
essential mainspring upon which it depends and which makes it function? It is virtue: I mean public virtue.
That virtue is nothing else but love of fatherland and its laws....
The splendor of the goal of the French Revolution is simultaneously the source of our strength and of
our weakness: our strength, because it gives us an ascendancy of truth over falsehood, and of public rights over
private interests; our weakness, because it rallies against us all vicious men, all those who in their hearts seek
to despoil the people.... It is necessary to stifle the domestic and foreign enemies of the Republic or perish with
them. Now in these circumstances, the first maxim of our politics ought to be to lead the people by means of
reason and the enemies of the people by terror.
If the basis of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the basis of popular government in time of
revolution is both virtue and terror: terror without virtue is murderous, virtue without terror is powerless.
Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue.
1.
What traits does Robespierre value? (4)
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How does Robespierre define virtue? (7)
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