THE HEART OF THE
CROWD: A STUDY OF THE MOTIVES
OF THE PEASANT CLASS IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Cries ring out! Jeers and slanderous talk are rampant. A man looks down the street to see what is occurring. He sees an army of women marching through the streets, followed closely behind by an equally large legion of their men folk. The man tries to step out of the way of the forthcoming onslaught. He moves into the doorway of a local shop, but finds it bustling with people leaving to join the foray. Moving stealthily down to the next alley, he again attempts to escape the torrent of people. He hears thunderous shouts. These voices ring in his ears. They sound like a unison chant from a demonic horde. Not a vocalized unison, but more of a unison of purpose, of emotion. His desire to escape has been to no avail. Just as he feels he has made it to freedom, he hears a familiar voice among the crowd. It cries out, "Vive le Tiers Etat" (Long live the Third Estate). The voice he recognizes as his own. It has found a feverish pitch, matching the crowd's, and chants the slogans that are being strewn all around. Softly at first, but with each repetition it grows louder and more animalistic in demonstration. Feverishly he roars, "a mort les calottins" (Death to the calottins [a type of clergy]). Falling into line with the others who are flooding the streets, he is carried away by the crowd. Carried to a destination he does not know, he finds himself where he desires to be. Years of frustration and hatred toward a government in which he has no voice finally find an outlet. He marches to depose a dictator and establish a life of liberty.
This is the scene that many people think of when asked about the French Revolution. This subject brings to mind pictures of men standing near the guillotine holding aloft a freshly severed head . This period is probably one of the bloodiest periods in the history of France. Is this, however, all there is to it? Is the French Revolution nothing more than a horde of blood-thirsty savages running around looking to kill someone? For many the answer would be yes. This, however, is not the case. The French Revolution has another side, an often unexplored side. This is the side of the Revolution that brings a level of humanity to the chaos. It shows that the people were not originally out for blood. The crowds that formed in Paris at this time were merely trying to survive. During the period of 1787-1789, the crowd formed of necessity, not of savagery. They formed, as did any other pre-industrial crowd, in order to combat the rising food prices. Their wages had been stagnant for years, but the price of bread had taken a dramatic upsurge. In an attempt to survive, the peoples of Paris took on the role of the crowd.(1)
Because the crowd of the French Revolution was a pre-industrial crowd, it will be helpful to know the general characteristics of the pre-industrial crowd before one looks at the specific characteristics of the crowd in the French Revolution. These characteristics will give one the foundation needed to better understand the crowd and its plight in the French Revolution. The pre-industrial period occurs during the late eighteenth century, when much of Europe was making the change from an agrarian society to an industrial one. The crowd that arises out of the riots of the day is distinct in form. There are six general points that describe it.
The first of these was the prevalence of the food riot. In almost every situation that a crowd formed, there was a food riot. Because of the change from agrarian to industrial society, many people began to move from the country to the city. They no longer grew their own food, but rather depended on the market to provide it for them. When the occasional famine or crop failure caused the price of food to rise, it created a hardship that many of the people could not handle. Thus they would riot in protest of the food prices.(2)
The second characteristic that defined the pre-industrial crowd was that it resorted to 'direct action' and violence to property in order to convey its message. In general, the crowd would enact this violence against a specified property-- one it deemed to be the threat. This could be anything from the owner of the factory that the people in the crowd worked in, to the local bakers who have raised their prices due to grain shortages. These acts were almost always against property and were rarely intended to harm a person.(3)
The third characteristic was that the crowd was spontaneous. While the crowd usually acted in unison, it rarely planned its actions. Small bands of people would form at a pub or bar and then take to the streets. Here it would be joined by others until it grew into a sizable crowd. The actions which followed would be spur of the moment. The crowd rarely, if ever, knew where it was heading next. A shout from the group would ring out and that would decide the next place to move against.(4)
The leadership of the crowd came from outside its masses. This was the fourth characteristic. Leaders of the crowd would normally come from other stations in life than that of the people which composed the crowd. For instance, if the crowd were to be made up of common peasants, then an artisan or merchant would be the one to take charge as leader. This leader would be the one to give guidance, what little there was, to the crowd. He/she would lead it toward whatever goal he/she set forth. This goal could be either for the benefit of the crowd as a whole or solely for the gain of the leader.(5)
Fifth, the crowd was not a homogenous mass made up of one sort of people. Instead, it had a mixed composition comprised of people from several walks of life. It could be a mixture of peasants and artisans, merchants and peasants, or any number of other combinations. In this sense, the crowd was generally a wide representation of the people in any given area.(6)
The last characteristic of the pre-industrial crowd is its concern for the restoration of 'lost' rights. The surest way to bring the different components of the crowd together was to take away some right that each part once held. This gave them the common bond that was needed so that they could act as a whole. They worked together so that enough power could be mustered to regain the lost right.(7)
Since the general characteristics of pre-industrial crowds have been examined, the specifics of the crowd in the French Revolution can be discussed. Contrary to popular belief, the popular uprisings of the French Revolution did not start in 1789, but rather in 1787.(8) It came in two waves--from August to October 1787, and August to September 1788. For this reason one must study the crowd in 1787 to better understand the crowd of the Revolution.
During the period of 1787-1789, France was in an economic crisis. Its empty exchequer and mounting deficit compelled the government to resort to drastic measures: The Assembly of Notables was convened in order to find a remedy to this crisis.(9) The effects of the French debt were not only hard on the government, but it was hard on the people as well. The mounting debt had led to higher taxes on the people, which in turn led to an increased financial burden on people who were already economically stressed. A cahiers of the Estates General states the peasants' plight as follows:
This financial crisis was quite severe. If one were to plot a curve of the short term rate of interest on commercial paper, then one would see that it was essentially flat from the end of 1783 to the beginning of 1787. The curve then becomes a roller-coaster for the next two years, peaking three times: in April through May 1787; in September 1787; and again between September and November 1788. The last two peaks coincide with major runs on the Caisse d'escompte (France's Principle Bank), as well as with the worst moments of the pre-Revolutionary rioting. As one can see, there was a clear connection between rioting and financial crisis.(11)
The financial crisis was so bad that in the area of St-Hilaire-de-ligne the people asked that the roads be fixed so that better communication between parishes would be possible and so that goods could make it to the market easier. They asked that this be done at no cost to them because they were all poor or possessed very little means.(12)
Furthermore, in 1789 unemployment was spreading. The price of bread was on the rise.(13) The people found that the necessary items of life were high-priced and they had little or no money to pay for these things.(14) This price influx was extremely hard on the worker. Whereas the price of bread had risen on an average of 62% between 1730 and 1789, nominal wages had remained fairly stagnant, rising only 22%.(15) All of this, taken in conjunction, gave rise to the crowd.
In order to determine that the crowd acted out of necessity and not of savagery, one must look to the motives. The usual reason for the movements of crowds in early France was food riots and price-fixing. Riots were provoked to prevent the movement of grain, to lower prices to a traditional level, and were often accompanied by wild rumors of plots to starve the people. This type of crisis occurred in 1789 and made the Revolution possible.(16)
In the spring of 1789, riots caused by famine were matched by revolts against the tax collecting and against the privileged class. The prime cause of these revolts was famine.(17) Bread was an important article of popular consumption. During the period 1726-91, the wage earner's expenditure on bread averaged 50%. During the economic crisis of 1788-89, it rose to 58%. In the months of famine and top-level prices of 1789, it rose to 88%. From this follows the constant popular concern for the price and supply of bread. In 1789, the dominant concern in Paris was the price of bread. This dominated all other concerns.(18)
The price of bread was such a factor that George Rude, an authoritative historian on the crowd, stated,
The concern for bread was well noted by contemporaries. Jean Sylvain Bailly, mayor of Paris in 1789, wrote in his diary that Paris was running out of grain. He said grain could only be obtained from foreign sources. Any flour that was brought into Paris was attacked and pillaged by the mobs outside the city and by the bakers inside the city. This, he said, caused a two fold problem. First, the flour distribution was unequal, one baker getting too much while another not enough. Second, the Paris market became poorly stocked, which hurt the public.(20)
Also a letter dated April 30, 1789 states,
Throughout France, there was also a general hunt for corn. The public granaries, merchants' shops, and the storehouses and barns of religious establishments and private persons were relentlessly plundered. Anywhere there might be grain was searched. In order to appease the masses, many local councils were forced to artificially lower the bread prices, as well as abolish custom dues and milling dues.(22)
Economics and bread were not the only motives for the people of the crowd. A second motive was politics. Although it only played a minor role in the movements of the crowd, it must not be overlooked. The traditional focus of the city political riot was the parliament, but during the winter of 1788-89 it resolved itself into a conflict between the Third Estate and the privileged. As widespread taxation outbreaks began to occur, the pacte de famine(23) was linked in popular psychology to the aristocratic plot against the Great Hope of the Estates General. For this reason, the Reveillon riots in the Faubourg Saint Antoine in April, which had no political link, were loud with cries of "Vive le Tiers Etat!" (Long live the Third Estate!)(24)
This psychological connection was the starting point for many rumors. One such rumor was that foreign armies were surrounding Paris with the intention of massacring thousands of people. Such rumors caused panic and led to the Great Fear, a period of time in which it was believed that the aristocracy was trying to destroy the peasantry. These rumors began on July 12 and ran rampant for several days.(25) The Great Fear influenced the people greatly. It led committees and town militias, still existing in an embryonic state, to organize and gave them the opportunity to act. It obliged the militia to meet and obtain arms and ammunition.(26)
A second political event that caused the people to be outraged was the dismissal of Jacques Necker, France's Minister of Finance. After his dismissal on July 12, there was rioting in the streets. The people saw him as the man who held food-hoarders at bay.(27) Part of the reason for this belief about Necker was due to a pamphlet, called Les Verites bonnes a dire (Truths that ought to be told), that was circulating at the time. It ascribed the high price of bread to Necker's enemies.(28)
Although there were some political motives for the crowd's actions, it should be noted that even in the political arena there was one underlying theme--the price of bread. The importance of bread superseded all else. Even when other things were considered, bread still remained in the forethought of the people.
Even so, the crowds, distraught as they were, did not rise of themselves. They required leadership. These leaders gave direction and aim to the crowd, perhaps of the leader's own accord, perhaps in accordance with well-thought-out plans. Whatever the case, leaders rose up to direct the crowd to serve whatever purpose they saw fit.(29) For this reason, the actions of the crowd did not always reflect its own motives. At times the crowd was coerced, by its leader, into an action that it by itself would not have committed.
On several occasions from 1787 to 1789 the crowd took action. At first it came only in the form of bread riots. Gouverneur Morris, American Minister to France, stated,
Rioters sought grain wherever they thought it could be found. Sometimes they literally pillaged what they found, but more often than not they paid for what they took, even if it was less than the market price. Occasionally they roughed up uncooperative local officials or suspicious merchants, but usually they broke down a bakery or granary door, damaging property not people.(31) Bakeries and granaries were not the only places pillaged. Other sources of bread were sought and found. One such place was the Monastery of St Lazar, where stores of grain held by the holy Brotherhood was found and taken.(32)
It would be a fallacy, however, to assert that the rioters only damaged property and never injured people. On one occasion the people amassed outside the house of Master Reveillon, a Parisian wallpaper manufacturer. They came with the purpose of burning him in effigy. They were outraged because they had asked him for higher wages on account of the high price of bread. They had been told that he had stated, in public, that 15 Sols a day were wages sufficient enough an amount on which a workman could subsist.(33) For this reason, they hanged him.(34)
Indeed the grain shortage became so bad in 1789 that Mayor Bailly recorded in his journal,
He also revealed that while the bread the peasants could obtain was mouldy and rotten, the king and his ministers were fed with fresh bread of the finest quality.(36) All of this worked together to fuel the anger of the crowd.
As the food shortages worsened, the Great Fear began to take its hold. Starting on July 12, the rumor that the king had called in foreign armies to destroy the rioters began to spread. The fear reached its climactic point on July 14. It was on this day that the people moved against the Bastille. After already having visited the Hotel des Invalides in order to gain arms, the crowd headed toward the Bastille. They did not go there in order to release the seven prisoners held there. Instead, their motive was to find and obtain the gun powder believed to have been sent to its arsenal. It was also believed that the fortress was heavily manned; its guns could play havoc among the crowd. Lastly, it was widely hated as a symbol of ministerial despotism. The intention of the crowd was not to storm the Bastille and take it by force. They had made their intentions clear from the start: "to negotiate with the Governor for the surrender of the gunpowder in his keeping and for the withdrawal of the guns from his battlements."(37)
The influence of the Great fear in the people's decision to move against the Bastille can be seen in the statement made by one of the leaders of the attack. She exclaimed,
The first people who reached the Bastille came only with the intention of demanding arms. They were met with threats from the defenders and swore to triumph or die. The crowd continued to increase in size with the arrival of people from the streets, most coming without weapons, all assembled confusedly. Any who came in the hopes of pillage were soon swept away.(39)
The crowd immediately went into the outer courtyard, which was unguarded. After a half an hour wait, two besiegers climbed the wall of the inner court and lowered the drawbridge.(40) The crowd then stormed the drawbridge to the inner court, but did not fire. It was not until they were fired upon and repulsed that they began to fire at the soldiers.(41) The attack continued, and the Bastille fell.
In the attack 150 of the assailants were killed or wounded. The death toll for the defenders was far less. Of the 110 members of the defending garrison, only six or seven were slaughtered. The Governor was also beheaded on his way to the Hotel de Ville to be jailed.(42) The numbers speak for themselves. If the crowd had come to the Bastille in a blood-thirsty rage, there would have been fewer of the defenders who lived.
In October the bread shortages once again caused great distress among the people of Paris, and once again the riots began. On October 5, the people began to assemble in the streets. Women ran through the streets crying that there was no bread at the baker's. They were joined by a large group of men. Their first job was to hang on a lamp-post a baker accused of having sold under-weight bread.(43)
In an attempt to petition the king to provide bread for Paris, the crowd then began its march to the palace at Versailles. Once there, a few of the women were admitted in order to present their grievances. Once inside, their story goes as follows:
As one can clearly see
in the actions of the crowd, it was not set in motion by savagery.
The crowd came into being because it was necessitated by the
hardships faced by the people. It may be argued that the crowd
became more savage as the Revolution continued, but during the
years of 1787-1789 it retained its humanity.
ENDNOTES
1. The term 'crowd' is used in reference to the
peasant population of France comprised of unskilled workers and
farmers.
2. George Rude, Paris and London in the Eighteenth
Century: Studies in Popular Protest (London: Wm. Collins
Sons and Co., 1970), 18.
3. Ibid., 19.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 19-20.
6. Ibid., 21.
7. Ibid., 22.
8. Thomas Manley Luckett, "Hunting for spies and
whores: A Parisian riot on the eve of the French Revolution,"
Past & Present 156 (August 1997): 116.
9. George Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 28.
10. P. Goubert and M. Denis, eds. 1789 Les Francais
ont la parole: cahiers des Etats Generaux (Paris: Julliard,
1964); quoted in D.G. Wright, Revolution and Terror in France
1789-1795 (New York: Longman, Inc., 1974), 116.
11. Luckett, "Hunting," 128.
12. G.L. Chassin, Les Elections et les cahiers de
Paris en 1789, 2 vol., (n.p., 1888): quoted in Richard Cobb
and Colin Jones, eds., The French Revolution: voices from a
momentous epoch (London: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 46.
13. Olivier Bernier, Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood:
The Mob, the Monarchy, and the French Revolution (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1989), 12.
14. P. Boissonnades and L. Cathelineau, eds., Cahiers
de doleances de la senechaussee de Civary pour les Etats Generaux
de 1789 (n.p., 1908), 244-5; quoted in Richard Cobb and
Colin Jones, eds., The French Revolution: voices from a
momentous epoch (London: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 40.
15. Jacques Godechot, The Taking of the Bastille
July 14th, 1789, trans. Jean Stewart (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1970), 63.
16. Gwyn A. Williams, Artisans and Sans-Culottes:
Popular Movements in France and Britain during the French
Revolution, 2nd ed., (London: Libris, 1989),10.
17. Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural
Panic in Revolutionary France intro. George Rude, trans.
Juan White (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), 40.
18. Rude, Paris, 165.
19. Ibid., 169-170.
20. Jean Sylvain Bailly, Memoires de Bailly, 2
vols. (Paris: n.p., 1821-22), 304-5; quoted in D.G. Wright Revolution
and Terror in France, 1789-1795, Seminar Studies in History
(New York: Longman, 1990), 121.
21. Lord Dorset, "Letter April 30, 1789," in English
Witnesses to the French Revolution, ed. James Matthew
Thompson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1938), 28-29.
22. Lefebvre, Great, 41.
23. The pacte de famine was a popular belief that the
famines were an aristocratic attempt to starve the masses.
24. Williams, Artisans, 23.
25. Lefebvre, Great, 61.
26. Ibid., 203.
27. Godechot, Taking, 187.
28. Ibid., 171.
29. Henri Beraud, Twelve Portraits of the French
Revolution, trans. Madoleine Boyd (Freeport, New York: Books
for Libraries Press, 1968), 271.
30. Gouverneur Morris, A Diary of the French
Revolution, ed. Beatrix Cani Davenport, 2 vols. (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972), 61.
31. Cynthia A. Bouton, The Flour War: Gender, Class,
and Community in Late Ancien Regime French Society (University
Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993),
2-3.
32. Morris, Diary, 146.
33. Dorset, "Letter," 26-27.
34. Rude, Crowd, 35.
35. Jean Sylvain Bailly, Memoires de Bailly, 2
vols. (Paris: n.p., 1821-22), 71-3; quoted in Richard Cobb and
Colin Jones, eds., The French Revolution: voices from a
momentous epoch (London: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 64.
36. Ibid.
37. Rude, Crowd, 54.
38. Lucie-Simplice-Camille-Benoist Desmoulins, Le
Vieux Cordelier, in Berville and Barrierre, Collection des
memoires relatifs a la Revolution francais, 68 vols. (Paris:
n.p., 1821-1828); quoted in E.L. Higgins, The French
Revolution: as told by contemporaries (Cambridge: The
Riverside Press, 1938), 93.
39. Jean-Joseph Dusaulx, L'insurrection parisienne
et de la prise de la Bastille (Paris: n.p., 1822); quoted in
E.L. Higgins, The French Revolution: as told by
contemporaries (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1938), 96.
40. Rude, Crowd, 55.
41. Jean Francois Marmontel, Memories, 4 vols.
(London: n.p., 1805); quoted in E.L. Higgins, The French
Revolution: as told by contemporaries (Cambridge: The
Riverside Press, 1938), 97-98.
42. Rude, Crowd, 56.
43. Joseph Weber, Memoires, 2 vols. (Paris: n.p.,
1827); quoted in E.L. Higgins, The French Revolution: as told
by contemporaries (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1938),
122.
44. Charles-Elie, Marquis de Ferrieres de Marsay, Memoires, 3 vols. (Paris: n.p., 1821-22); quoted in E.L. Higgins, The French Revolution: as told by contemporaries (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1938), 125.