Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective by BAILEY STONE

Author:BAILEY STONE
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Louis XVI’s acceptance of the Revolution was problematic even before

the end of 1789.He had forthrightly denounced the decrees of 4 August

in domestic correspondence, and – perhaps even more revealingly – had

informed his royal Spanish cousin and his imperial Austrian brother-in-

law of his absolute rejection of every reform associated with the October

Days.105 Although those deputies who should have been his natural cen-

trist allies in the Constituent Assembly were eager – pathetically eager – to

detect in his every gesture toward that body a sign of royal acquiescence

in fundamental sociopolitical change, retrospective inquiry does little to

justify their optimism.When, for example, Louis appeared before the

Assembly on 4 February 1790 ostensibly to call for unity in the face of

peasant insurrections in southwestern France, he also took advantage of

the situation to argue for a reinforcement of “executive authority” and for

the preservation of religion, property, and the titles of the “honored race”

of the nobility.True, both king and queen on this occasion paid a cer-

tain homage to the emerging principles of constitutionalism; however, dis-

quieting rumors had Marie-Antoinette viewing the royal address to the

deputies primarily as affording an opportunity to foment discord among

the Patriots.106 When, five months later, Louis presided in the Champ de

Mars on the Left Bank over what had originally been intended as a festive

commemoration of the events of 14 July 1789, he must have been gratified to

see the event take on a “fundamentally conservative” nature, “rallying the

103 Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, p.284.

104 Hampson, Prelude to Terror, p.169.

105 See, on this subject, Hardman, Louis XVI, p.174.

106 On this incident, refer to Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, pp.274–77.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

151

country toward the consolidation of the Revolution under a strengthened

constitutional monarchy.” Indeed, some orators on the Left fearfully di-

vined behind preparations for this “Federation of 1790” a military plot to

stifle any further work of revolution.107 Such suspicions may have overshot

the mark; yet developments involving the king were soon to justify nagging

doubts on the Left about his fidelity to France’s revolutionary course.

Perhaps Norman Hampson has come closest to defining, sympatheti-

cally yet honestly, Louis XVI’s dilemma: “He was a conventional man with

old-fashioned ideas of his rights and obligations, adrift in a new world that

he did not understand....His tone was that of a benevolent and paternal

ruler, always ready to sacrifice himself for the welfare of his subjects – but

on his own terms.” Hampson has trenchantly noted that one of Louis’s

most keenly felt grievances “was the Assembly’s divorce of the idea of the

state from the person of the king.If he was not prepared to accept that,

which, in a sense, was what the revolution was all about, there was perhaps

no ground for any agreement at all.”108 Our whole analysis in this chapter

is keyed precisely on this issue: that is, the emergence of the modernized

secular state in its international and domestic contexts.In so many of its

important reforms, we have seen, the Constituent Assembly was essentially

working to remove the shackles of old tradition from the revived state,

and it was to that aspect of this process which affected him most closely

that this “traditional” monarch could never agree.

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