This paper examines the evolving role of ordinary French citizens — peasants and sans-culottes — throughout the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. The author argues that the common people were not a consistent revolutionary force but rather shifted across distinct phases: from controlled crowds under the monarchy, to spontaneous actors in early revolutionary events such as the storming of the Bastille and the March on Versailles, to manipulated masses exploited by political factions during the September Massacres and the Terror, and finally to passive supporters under Napoleon. Drawing on historians including David Andress and Simon Schama, the paper challenges the notion that popular action was uniformly autonomous, offering a nuanced account of popular agency and political manipulation.
Citizens known as sans-culottes and peasants in the countryside played an inestimable role in fueling the French Revolution. However, it is important to emphasize throughout this paper the periods and arenas of the Revolution where they helped trigger events, and to distinguish those periods from those in which they were used as a manipulative mass by the political factions leading the country. The manipulation of the sans-culottes for political ends — to achieve factional goals and eliminate political competition — is quite evident when examined closely. Moreover, it is often the case that the sans-culottes and the common people were invoked as a sympathetic form of defense, as with Danton, and that they sustained governmental changes, as with the proclamation of the Republic and Robespierre's eventual downfall.
In order to approach the presence and importance of the people during the French Revolution, we need briefly to examine their influence and actions before the Revolution itself. As David Andress, a lecturer in Modern European History, noted — following an idea from Arlette Farge — "the presence of the crowd as witness was essential to the display of power central to absolutist notions of governance — at executions, royal processions, religious and civil celebrations" (Andress). The eighteenth century was thus characterized by the crowd's presence at public events, functioning above all as a vote of confidence for the autocratic monarchy. It is important to emphasize, however, that this presence was controlled.
Signs that this control was loosening — that it could no longer reach every category of citizen — became apparent in the 1780s. Turbulences emerged in that decade, especially in the countryside, and were met with brief government repressions. Among these early disturbances were the Réveillon riots of April 1789, in which discontented workers were suppressed by the Gardes françaises.
The pre-Revolutionary period in this way prepared the crowd for the fall of the Bastille in July 1789. This act can be classified as a spontaneous act of the people. Several considerations support this view. First, there had still been no real attempt at the political level to end the monarchy. The formation of the National Assembly and the push toward structural democratization and reduced aristocratic influence represented a pacifist attempt at change rather than a revolutionary explosion. The revolutionary structures were not yet formed and would not be for another year or two.
Second, the fall of the Bastille had no real strategic consequence; it was above all a symbolic act. For many years the Bastille had been considered the symbol of French absolutism — a prison for those who dared to spread ideas about freedom and democracy. When it was stormed, fewer than twenty prisoners were found, most of them common thieves. It is therefore unlikely that the storming was politically directed; it was more plausibly a popular reaction against tyranny, or against what was widely perceived as its symbol.
In the first months of the Revolution, then, the common people of France triggered events and provided the primary impulse for action — a point supported by the actions of rural inhabitants during this same period.
High prices and the feudal tax system — a system in which the levels and number of taxes seemed to increase without end — led to peasant uprisings from July to September 1789. These uprisings involved burning down aristocratic manors and, with them, the hated account books in which the taxes owed were recorded.
What David Andress has called "the second great journée of the Revolution" (Andress) — the March on Versailles to bring the king to Paris and place him under closer public scrutiny — is believed to have been started by women concerned about the rising price of bread. Women had been involved in the storming of the Bastille as well, as documents of the period and secondary sources suggest (among them Romain Rolland's play Theater of the Revolution, though its historical reliability may be questioned). In the March on Versailles, however, women were not merely involved but helped trigger the event itself.
The period from 1789 to September 1791 was, in my view, the only period during which the common people acted separately from political control and coordination. Many historians would tend to associate the September Massacres and the Terror with spontaneous popular actions; however, I believe the political factions in power — be they the Girondins, Danton's moderates, Hébert's enragés, or Robespierre's Committee — used the masses as a formidable tool to exercise power, frighten opposition, and impose their will. The strongest argument for this view comes from the historical facts themselves and from the analogy with the Russian Revolution of 1917, where the masses were similarly maneuvered to sustain the goals of the Bolshevik political class.
The historical circumstances of this period were exceptionally harsh. The Prussians were sweeping across France, and anyone even loosely associated with the aristocracy or the clergy could be suspected of favoring foreign intervention. The people in power at that moment — beginning with Danton — felt compelled to take drastic measures to save the Revolution. First, enemies in the interior needed to be eliminated in order to create a reasonably secure atmosphere at home; the force of the mob offered an efficient and ruthless means of doing so. Second, the new political class needed to consolidate itself and make any return to the past impossible. The September Massacres served as a way to sever all ties with the old order.
"Danton and factions exploit the masses for political ends"
"Peasants and workers become majority of guillotine victims"
"Army and bourgeoisie, not the people, deliver Napoleon power"
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