THE ENLIGHTNMENT CRITIQUE OF ROYAL
AUTHORITY AND SOCIAL HIERARCHY
(Note that “Enlightenment can be defined
in different ways:)
• BROADLY: The gradual spread from the 16th to the 19th
century of the “scientific method” for understanding the
natural world and of literacy.
• NARROWLY: A movement that arose among French
intellectuals around 1730 to apply the scientific method
to the analysis of society and politics. The most
widespread slogans of this movement were
– Religious toleration!
– Freedom of thought!
– Let the punishment fit the crime!
Europe in 1763: The “Great Powers” were France,
Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain.
Spain, Sweden, Poland, & Turkey were declining powers…
European population density in 1600
MANY FEATURES OF EUROPEAN LIFE IN
1750 WOULD STRIKE US AS UNFAIR:
 Hereditary monarchs with almost absolute power
(except in Britain, the Netherlands, & Switzerland)
 “Established” churches, financed through taxation,
enforcing strict laws against blasphemy and heresy
 Horrific punishment of crimes (also in England), and
the use of judicial torture on the Continent
 The legal subordination of women to men
 The subordination of “peasants” to “lords” (including
outright serfdom in Eastern Europe)
 Venality of office (army posts and in France even
supreme court judgeships were bought and sold)
Most Europeans were peasants, farming by hand with the
steel plow and scythe (painted by Pieter Breughel in 1565)
Peasants enjoyed their leisure time:
“The Peasant Dance” (1568)
EVEN WESTERN EUROPEAN PEASANTS WHO OWNED
THEIR LAND OWED MANY OBLIGATIONS
TO THE “LORD OF THE MANOR” OR SEIGNEUR
The Tarde Manor House in
the Dordogne, France
Burg Eltz on the
Mosel River,
The “Manual of Rights” of the Seigneur of Essigey (1780)
ARTICLE ONE: In the event of sales, the seigneur is owed the twelfth part
of the price of each and every acquisition….
ART. 2: The inhabitants of Essigey …each owe a hen on the first day of
Lent and a manual corvée for each laborer at harvest-time….
ART. 3: Each plough-owner or others possessing horses or oxen owes an
annual corvée of ploughing or cartage at grape-harvesting or seed-time.
ART. 4: To the aforesaid seigneur belongs the right to levy a tithe on all the
lands of the seigneury at a rate of one in every fourteen sheaves,
whereas the prior of Tart takes one of the fifteen sheaves in each stock.
ART. 5: To the aforesaid seigneur belongs high [??], middle, and low justice
throughout his jurisdiction.
ART. 7: The inhabitants must maintain the watercourse supplying the water
of the river to the château moats….
ART. 8: All wine-sellers in the aforesaid Essigey owe the seigneur a pint of
wine...to be taken to his château within an hour of the cask being
broached….
ART. 9: No inhabitant has any right to hunt or fish within the span of
Essigey,
ART. 10: At all times, the seigneur may keep his woods private and under
ban, nor may anybody collect wood or graze his beasts therein…
Most towndwellers were
handicraft
artisans in small
workshops, such
as this French
blacksmith from
the 1640s.
Artisanal guilds
regulated prices
and quality.
THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL
SOCIAL HIERARCHY
In England equality before the law was the norm, but
not on the Continent. In Catholic lands one’s rights &
duties depended on membership in one of the three
great “estates” of society:
1st Estate: The clergy, “those who pray” (perhaps 1% of
the population, tax exempt)
2nd Estate: The nobility, “those who fight” (perhaps 2%
of the population, tax exempt)
3rd Estate: The commoners, all who work (perhaps 97%
of the population, taxed)
In Protestant Germany & Scandinavia, the law divided
the population into nobles, burghers, and peasants.
“The Divine Origin of the Three Estates”
“Louis XIV”
(reigned 1643-1715),
the most famous
practitioner of
“royal absolutism.”
He never convened
the
“Estates General,”
the medieval French
equivalent of the
English Parliament
P.D. Martin, “Chateau of Versailles,” 1722
Palace of Versailles: The Hall of Mirrors
Sir Isaac Newton
(1642-1727)
discovered the
universal law of
gravitation, three laws
of thermodynamics, &
differential calculus.
John Locke (1632-1704) pioneered the “Enlightenment”
in the sense of a political movement:
• “A Letter Concerning
Toleration” (1689).
• Second Treatise of
Government (1689): Legitimate
government is based on a social
contract in which we promise
obedience in exchange for the
protection of our “life, liberty,
and possessions.”
• An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690) applied
Newtonian physics to
psychology; at birth, the mind is
“a blank slate.”
Pioneers of the French Enlightenment:
Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Voltaire (1694-1778)
Title page of Diderot’s Encyclopedia, 1751
Illustration of agricultural techniques from the Encyclopédie
Norman peasants signing a marriage contract: By this crude
measure, French literacy rates rose to about 40% by 1780
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
as a conventional young man and a mature eccentric
Joseph Duplessis,
Portrait of Louis
XVI in his
coronation robes
(reigned 1774-92)
“Libertas Crowns
Franklin,”
engraving by
Richard
Saint-Non
(1778)
L.-N. van Blarenberghe, “The Siege of Yorktown” (1781) by G.
Washington, General Rochambeau, and Admiral de Grasse
Charles Wilson
Peale,
George
Washington and
the Marquis de
Lafayette at
Yorktown
(1784)
“Louis XVI,
Liberator of
America,”
shown with
Franklin &
“Wadington”
(1786)
Jacques
Necker,
French
Finance
Minister,
1776-81
The Assembly of Notables, convened by Calonne in 1787
to discuss the abolition of tax exemptions
“Calonne: In what sauce would you like to be eaten?”
“Response: But we do not want to be eaten at all!!!”
THE FISCAL CRISIS OF THE
FRENCH MONARCHY, 1770-1788
1770: Louis XV dissolves the Paris Parlement after it
rejected his tax decrees.
1774: Louis XVI restores the Parlement
1776-81: Jacques Necker attempts to balance the budget
by eliminating “venal” offices but is driven from power
1781-87: C.A. Calonne fails to persuade the high nobility to
surrender their tax exemptions
August 1788: Necker is recalled as finance minister and
persuades the king that the Estates General must be
revived
Autumn 1788: Bad wheat harvest for the second year in a
row