THE ENLIGHTENMENT
AND INEFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
A CAUSAL FACTOR OF THE REIGN OF TERROR
The Enlightenment and ineffective leadership influenced by the Enlightenment were direct causal factors of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. These combined to form a climate of diluted institutional authority and a populace enamored with change. This climate produced an increasing level of violence that the leaders lacked the ability to stop or control. Unlicensed violence had been a steadily growing part of the French Revolution, beginning with parades and protests and intensifying to blood baths on city and village streets. These violent episodes continued unchecked by the leadership, until the violence ran its course.
A total of 16,597 executions took place in Paris between March 1793 and late August 1794. An additional 40,000 were executed without trial or died in prison and in excess of 200,000 died in the civil war in the Vendee during this time period. Over 98 percent of the executions were for alleged opposition to the National Convention,(1) the ruling body in France from 1792 to 1795. The chance that the enlightened French could affect a rational change from a Monarchy to a constitutional republic washed away in a rain of blood, the Reign of Terror.
Maximilien Robespierre, a principal figure of the Reign of Terror, was greatly influenced by Jean Jacque Rousseau(2) whose work, Contat Social, he regarded as the Bible of the revolution.(3) The Contat Social was written as a contract among people, not as a contract between people and government.(4) This concept weakened government and institutional control. Another work by Rousseau, Emile, told of a youth kept in a state of nature and allowed to learn by experience.(5) France's Enlightenment-influenced leadership allowed the people to run amuck, unrestrained, apparently in hope that they would absorb reason and knowledge. The belief of the Enlightenment held that as a person gained knowledge, they gained reason. Robespierre remained deeply affected by this philosophy.(6)
Robespierre's cohort (later victim), Georges Jacques Danton, was greatly influenced by the writings of Voltaire and Montesquieu. These writings are extremely critical of existing institutions and advocate less institutional authority. Thus, while the monarchy weakened, the philosophes fanned the embers of dissent into what became an inferno of new ideas validated by the success of the American Revolution.(7)
Historian, Bronislaw Baczko noted that "publicists" of 1789 "worked on terrain Rousseau had plowed in-depth."(8) One could make a strong case that Voltaire, Montesquieu and others had cultivated the French psyche, then had sown the seeds harvested during the Reign of Terror. The Enlightenment philosophes questioned the status quo and sanctity of virtually all institutions. Like Rousseau, Voltaire criticized both Church and government, leaving a legacy of diluted authority in religion and government.(9) Voltaire successfully turned the focus of history from an emphasis on the struggles of nations to the struggles of civilization, placing emphasis on people above government.(10) This was presented as evidence that people can survive without traditional government. Voltaire's ideas received validation, if not support, from Rousseau who opened his Contat Social with the words "man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"(11) and from Montesquieu, who wrote, "A primitive reason exists ... intelligent beings are capable of having laws they themselves have made."(12)
The Enlightenment increased the literacy rate among all classes in France. In 1791, Paris had 27 daily newspapers, 7 newspapers that appeared less frequently, and the French language editions of foreign newspapers,(13) compared to having just 4 newspapers at the beginning of the revolution.(14) Literacy in northern France increased until more than two thirds of all men could read, as could slightly less than one half of the men in Southern and Central France. The female literacy rate also showed a marked increase. The high literacy rate meant an illiterate person could hear the news read(15) from one of the approximately 300,000 copies of newspapers printed daily in France.(16) The Enlightenment produced a literate populace with access to daily political rhetoric(17) resulting in France's transformation into a political nation.(18)
Increased literacy enhanced the effectiveness of political rhetoric and pamphleteering. The recognized effectiveness of published rhetoric increased the use of the printed media. Numerous pamphlets accusing Marie Antoinette of lesbianism, incest and other deviant behavior inundated the market of an eager populace. The appearance of the accusations in print bestowed validity to what might otherwise have been taken less seriously.(19)
There was no defense against the press and pamphlets. The accused could not counter the charges and was thus judged by the press before any trial. The prejudgement made it easier for the accused to be jailed and executed. The revolution leaders "drunk with euphoria of victory ... initiated war of propaganda aimed toward further annexation of power."(20)
Although the Enlightenment leaders had died before the eve of the French Revolution, their ideas were still discussed and debated. The leaders of the revolution knew Rousseau's words and used them to justify even their most horrendous actions. Georges Lefebvre credited the Enlightenment with creating experimental rationalism which "laid the foundation of modern science" arming "the bourgeoisie with a philosophy that encouraged class consciousness with a bold inventive spirit."(21)
Historians such as Simon Schama hold a view less charitable than Lefebvre's Marxist interpretation. Schama describes the revolution of 1789 as a lesser version of the terror.(22) He noted that the Enlightenment was, "at best, a mixed blessing" for the French people as proponents of revolution did not want rational communication and "stoked the revolutionary heat" to attain their goal.(23) Francois Furet noted that the Enlightenment produced a public opinion derived from a public tribunal that preempted rulings from the monarchy.(24)
This reliance on reason enabled the leaders of the revolution to select passages and works of the philosophes, to support both the revolution and their actions. Rousseau wrote of man that "his absolute and naturally independent existence may make him regard what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which would be less painful for others than the payment is onerous for him."(25) This could be interpreted to mean that those who do not support the "common cause" of the revolution could be eliminated with justification. Saint Just, speaking on November 17, 1792, against King Louis XVI, noted that Louis was not bound by the social contract and therefore should be judged as a rebel. This statement strongly implied that anyone who disagreed with the status quo du jour would also be a rebel.(26) This point of view closely parallels Rousseau's reasoning that those who oppose the dogma (general will or common cause) should be executed.(27) Saint Just later noted that "no man can reign innocently"(28) thus legitimizing the further execution of France's leaders.
This selective use of rhetoric, coupled with a largely literate populace and numerous newspapers, allowed the leaders of the revolution the potential of fetterless condemnation of virtually anyone. The leaders received support from the successful bourgeoisie who felt they should achieve the class level of sometimes bankrupt nobility rather than remain second class citizens.(29) "In an effort to level the class structure, and in the spirit of the Enlightenment, philosophic nobles .... quitted their talons rouges to wear thick shoes, and relinquished their costumes to wear that of the bourgeoisie."(30) Everyone's attention was on the masses of people. The people were speculated about, talked about, praised and imitated by the upper class.(31)
The written and spoken thoughts of the Enlightenment were critical of established institutions and questioned the usefulness of these institutions. Among the institutions that lost credibility was the Catholic Church, which had tried to suppress the work of individuals such as Galileo and Copernicus. Robespierre, speaking to representatives of the clergy during the Assembly of the spring of 1789, noted:
This indictment of the Catholic Church was rendered without fear of adverse public opinion or of excommunication from the church and the subsequent damnation that would follow.
The French monarchy, having failed to maintain the glory days of Louis XIV, also lost credibility. This dilution of institutional authority left the philosophes unopposed (except by other philosophes) to shape the attitude of the people toward change. Change became more important than tradition.(33) It is ironic, given the almost continuous warfare between France and England in the eighteenth century, that the argument of the Englishman John Locke, that there was no divine right to rule,(34) would be accepted by the French people.
The attitude of the philosophes was printed and available to a public becoming increasingly more literate. The public, inundated by propaganda, accepted even the most incredible rhetoric as factual. Thus the French people were more than ready to see Marie Antoinette beheaded, having been bombarded with written tracts avowing that she was a lesbian, had committed incest with her son (the heir), and participated in various deviant sexual activities.(35) John Moore, MD, noted in his journal that handbills kept the populace inflamed.(36) The increased literacy rate brought forth by the Enlightenment gave people the ability to read or hear the news but did not teach the populace to separate rhetoric from fact.
The public used the words of the Enlightenment to justify the revolution and their own actions. During the "Wave of Fear" in July 1789, rhetoric and circumstances led to massive mob action. During this period, many people avenged real or imagined slights by murdering people and stealing what they wanted. This precedence foreshadowed the terror to come and was not overlooked by writers of the period.
Edmund Burke (writing in 1791), referring to the leadership in France, noted: "Whoever opposes any of their proceedings, or is suspected of a design to oppose them, is to answer with his life, or the lives of his wife and children."(37) John Moore, wrote in his journal, "Terror has acted a principle part since the beginning of this revolution," and noted the danger posed to anyone who did not support the mob.(38)
Gouverneur Morris, who had little sympathy for the revolution, wrote in dispatches that although many leaders knew the wholesale arrests and executions were unjustified, they were afraid to object lest they be arrested and executed as well.(39) Writing after the terror, he noted that the "greater culprits" found protection in the fears of the lesser culprits.(40)
The violence, once initiated, continued with little effort from the country's leadership to halt the slaughter. Simon Schama noted of the mob of August 10, 1792, "there was no authority to stop mob action."(41) Lacking moral or physical forces to stop them, the mob massacred the Swiss Guard at Versailles. During the massacre, the mob's hysteria was so extreme that they slaughtered French militia whose uniforms were similar to that of the Swiss Guard. The women stripped the bodies, scissored out the genitals which were then either stuffed into the corpses' mouths or thrown to the dogs. Robespierre referred to the slaughter as "the most beautiful revolution that has ever honored humanity."(42) The violence was not the result of the revolution. Violence was the impetus of the revolution, the source of its energy.(43) Thus the French Revolution was led by blood lust rather than by credible leaders.
The violence that preceded the terror escalated to the point that corpses were thrown into ditches and pits "like dogs." Gouverneur Morris wrote Robert Morris on Christmas Eve, 1792, that the horrors were "more so than you can imagine," noting that a quarry was so full of bodies that the pit could not be worked and that there were too many bodies to be removed for burial. He further stated that most of the slain were innocent of any crime other than differing opinions with the murderers and over two hundred were "Ecclesiastics of Irreproachable lives" who refused to sign an oath. Writing to Thomas Jefferson on January 6, 1793, he quotes a Jacobin as telling him they were "determined to rule or perish."(44)
The Jacobin leadership's inexperience and arrogance resulted in repressive policies, aggravated the situation, and resulted in increased opposition. Thus a problem was turned into a crisis and finally into a Reign of Terror.(45) The leadership's arrogance fueled the flame of resentment until the violence was out of control and had become a self-generating entity.(46)
The leaders possessed minimal authority. When Marquis de Lafayette attempted to stop the slaughter with the national guard, his orders were ignored. The rioting included hacking the intendant and chief magistrate of Paris, and the governor of the Bastille to pieces, then parading their heads around the city on pikes. The national guard refused to act.(47)
Many lower echelon leaders had minimal experience.(48) During the violence of 1789, the militia was sent out in the countryside to quell riots but did not have the experience or training to accomplish the task. The untrained, inexperienced militia was used because the populace did not trust the traditional force or leadership.(49) The violence at the eve of the Reign of Terror was worse but the leadership was not able to stop or control the excesses.
The National Assembly was aware of the rioting, looting, and murder that was taking place. A spokesman of the reports committee noted August 3, 1789, that
The leadership was aware of the violence that occurred between the Wave of Fear and the Reign of Terror but was unable to find a solution. Some observers were convinced that the leadership was afraid to stop the violence.
The end result of the lawlessness was that magistrates willingly gave up the privileges of their office, as did representatives of corporate towns. Additionally, the nobles were deprived of hunting rights and the Catholic Church of tithes. The session of the National Assembly destroyed most of the feudal system that had been in place for centuries.(51) As a result of these sweeping changes, the actions of the mobs, who had indiscriminately looted, destroyed, and killed, were vindicated and a precedent for mob violence was set.
The violence was only two months away when mobs, inflamed by political accusations and rhetoric in pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers, escorted King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Dauphin from Versailles to Paris.(52) The return to Paris, during what came to be known as the October Days, provided further demonstration of the strength of the will of the mob and the helplessness of the leaders to prevent mob action.
A major barrier to developing leadership experience came when the National Assembly voted to prevent anyone serving as a deputy to become a minister or join the government for three years after leaving the Assembly. The leadership's experience and ability in the National Assembly had failed to maintain order or respond effectively to disorder. The leadership then abrogated responsibility to apply the knowledge and experience they had gained by arbitrarily denying any deputy of the National Assembly the opportunity to pursue government office. The Self Denying Ordinance prevented continuity of experience to successive Assemblies.
The Assembly in 1791 consisted of men with little parliamentary experience, or for that matter, leadership experience.(53) This Assembly met after a chaotic four years of confusion and upheaval, due primarily to a power vacuum.(54) Historian of the French Revolution, Francois Furet, noted that the French were accustomed to defining themselves in contrast to their enemies. He maintains that this characteristic was necessary to define the French Revolution and to explain the violence that was part of the revolution. He noted that before the revolution, the aristocrats had been excluded from the governing and decision making processes.(55) This exclusion accounts for their lack of allegiance to the monarchy and lack of experience in the bureaucracy required to run a government.
Compounding the problems facing the Assembly from 1791 through 1794, most deputies of the Assembly were unknown either as to belief or character. The group as a whole had not formed into a body with a single purpose and overall, lacked experience. Furet credited Condorcet as being the most illustrious figure in the Assembly but noted that the remainder were not nationally known, and were for the most part "minor young provincial notables."(56) Furet did not credit the deputies with either strong beliefs or ability, describing their contributions as "ultra-patriotic rhetoric superimposed on a politico-literary culture ... enveloped in daring oratory ... a vigor born of confidence."(57)
France's new leaders knew what kind of government the philosophes had championed; a government with little institutional control that interfered as little as possible with the people. Like the tutor of Rousseau's Emile, the crowds were left to destroy and loot while the leaders hoped that they would cease when they learned this was counter productive behavior.
John Moore noted in his journal that King Louis XVI was kept ignorant of his upcoming trial. The leadership, while keeping Louis XVI uninformed, was unable to decide whether he would be able to have counsel at his trial(58) or whether he could be visited by his family.(59) This indecision is indicative of the disarray of the leadership at this time. While the king waited in his quarters, his guard "stretched out" in the king's chair, leaving the king to sit on a common chair. This was ignored by the deputies who brought demands to the king.(60)
The leadership was not able to reach ready consensus on matters involving the king, and were unable to check the rioting, looting, murders and executions that were occurring. A British lady traveling in France noted on September 3 that all Paris was in acute fermentation. Her letters told of sleepless September nights where sleep was replaced by the sounds of rioting, proscription, and massacres, during which members of the clergy and nobles were "sacrificed without mercy."(61) She wrote of rioters besieging her hotel(62) and commented that on October 2, 1792, a militia colonel's wife walked the streets wearing a red cap, with two pistols in her girdle, boasting of the people she had killed during the August and September massacres.(63) She later commented on the "frequent use" of the guillotine.(64)
France's leaders seemingly found accepting the lawlessness easier than formulating a response to quell the violence. Unable to control events, the leaders advocated change. Tom Paine responded to Edmund Burke's comments on the French Revolution with rationalization and justification for continual revolution, as opposed to maintaining a status quo, noting that the "opinions of man change and government is for the living and not for the dead."(65)
The leadership, unable to control the revolution of 1789, faced a bloodier revolution in 1792. Where the revolution of 1789 had been fed by the "Wave of Fear," the revolution of 1792 was inculcated with "missionary zeal" that fed on political rhetoric.(66) Furet noted that while the Assembly was influenced by the Enlightenment, the Assembly membership consisted of men with minimal parliamentary experience.(67) This lack of experience necessarily slowed lateral communication and action by the Assembly and contributed to the leadership's disarray.
The revolution leading to the Reign of Terror was dominated by "fairly unknown men of letters like Brissot, Marat and Desmoulins." A major difference in the revolution of 1792 as compared to the revolution of 1789 was that fewer nobles and bourgeois were participating. The major resemblance was the high number of lawyers who participated and domination of the Assembly by political zealots who worked to form a revolutionary environment. A key to the lack of control the Assembly possessed in 1792 is that none of the leadership or the other participants had held a starring role in the revolution of 1789.(68)
Lacking experience, the Assembly did not seek to form a consensus. Instead the leaders relied on the favor of the "masses" as support to govern. They sought the largest factions of the masses and fed them political rhetoric to keep their support, rather than attempting to restore order.(69)
In summation, the Enlightenment, loss of institutional authority, unchecked violence and inexperienced leadership were direct causal factors of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror's profound effect on France and Europe was evident at the end of the eighteenth century and, to a great extent, influences both France and Europe today.
ENDNOTES
1. Hugh Gough, The Terror in the French Revolution (New York: St. Martin's Press Inc., 1998), 77.
2. George H. Lewis, The Life of Maximilien Robespierre: With Extracts From His Unpublished Correspondence (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart Publishers, 1849), 26; Peter Gay, "Rhetoric and Politics in the French Revolution," The American Historical Review 66 (1961) : 666.
3. Lewis, Robespierre, 27.
4. Michial Walzer, Regicide and Revolution, trans. Marian Rothstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 123.
5. Victor G. Wexler, "Made for Man's Delight: Rousseau as Antifeminist," The American Historical Review 81 (1976) : 271.
6. Lewis, Robespierre, 29.
7. Robert Christophe, Danton: A Biography, trans. Peter Green (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1967), 26.
8. Bronislaw Baczko, "The Social Contract of the French: Sieyes and Rousseau" The Journal of Modern History 60 (1989) : 99.
9. Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution from its Origins to 1793, trans. Elizabeth Moss Evanson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 54.
10. Ibid., 55.
11. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Maurice Cranston (1792; reprint, London: Penguin Books, 1968), 49.
12. Lefebvre, The French Revolution, 66.
13. Jeremy D. Popkin, Revolutionary News: The Press in France 1789-1799 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1990), 35.
14. Ibid., 36.
15. Ibid., 81.
16. Ibid., 82.
17. Ibid., 89.
18. Ibid., 95.
19. Michael Reid, "Marie Antoinette," www.geocities.net/BourbonStreet/Delta/6569, October 9, 1998.
20. Lefebvre, The French Revolution, 264.
21. Ibid., 54.
22. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989) 437.
23. Ibid., 291.
24. Francois Furet, Revolutionary France: 1770-1880, trans. by Antonia Nevill (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 1988, 1998), 17.
25. Rousseau, Contract, 63-64.
26. Saint Just, speaking during the trial of Louis XVI, Michail Walzer ed., Regicide and Revolution, 123.
27. Rousseau, Contract, 186.
28. Saint Just, Regicide, 124.
29. Lefebvre, The French Revolution, 54.
30. Lewis, Robespierre, 27.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., 74.
33. Bazcko, "Social Contract," 101
34. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690; reprint, New York: Hafner Press, 1943), 121.
35. Reid, "Marie Antoinette," 10 October 1998.
36. John Moore, A Journal During a Residence in France from the Beginning of August to the Middle of December 1792 (London: C.G. and J. Robinson, 1793), 530.
37. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791; reprint Oxford: Oxford University Press, n.d.), 276.
38. Moore, A Journal, 530.
39. Gouverneur Morris's dispatches to the Department of State, as cited in Henry Bertram Hill "Gouverneur Morris on Robespierre," The Journal of Modern History 9 (1989), 203.
41. Schama, Citizen, 614.
42. Ibid., 615.
43. Ibid.
44. Gouverneur Morris, A Dairy of the French Revolution, ed. Beatrix Cary Davenport (1839; reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972), 595-597.
45. Gough, The Terror, 78.
46. Ibid.
47. William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 112.
48. Doyle, History, 115.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 116.
51. Ibid., 116-117.
52. Ibid., 122.
53. Francois Furet, The French Revolution 1770-1814, trans. Antonia Neville (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988), 105.
54. Ibid., 101.
57. Ibid.
58. Moore, Journal, 518.
59. Ibid.
60. Jean Baptiste Clery, A Journal of the Terror: Being an account of the occurrences in the temple during the confinement of Louis XVI (London: The Folio Society, 1838, 1955), 94.
61. John Griffith, Esq., A Residence in France During The Years 1792, 1793, 1794, and 1795; Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners, 2 vols (London: T.N. Longman, 1797), 1:97.
62. Ibid., 107.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 175.
65. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1792; reprint, Cambridge, 1992),17.
66. Francois Furet, The French Revolution, 104.
67. Ibid., 105.
68. Ibid., 111.
69. Ibid., 113.