Does Revolution Occur the Day After It? The French Revolution as an Example (2-3)

These are notes about the French Revolution that I took from “Revolutionary Europe, 1780-1850” (2000), a book by my former colleague in the History Department at the University of Missouri, Jonathan Sperber.

81 and some gathered in a place calling themselves the “Royal and Catholic Army,” marching to Paris to topple the assembly. Another group waged guerrilla warfare. Both were connected to exiles hopeful of British intervention. This conflict embodied the clash between religion and the Enlightenment culture that opposed it. It was a conflict marked by brutality. The revolutionaries slaughtered government supporters like sheep and sang hymns for them. When government supporters received aid, they killed all their prisoners.

Page 80 The Reign of Terror, 1793 to 1794

The terror of the government led to 35,000 deaths in prison or through the guillotine. Most were from southern France, who took up arms against the government. This does not include those killed in western France, perhaps five times that number. But they died in direct combat between the warring factions between the government and its dissenters.

81 What makes those numbers gripping is not that we have not seen higher numbers in our era, but because it happened during an attempt to build a new France based on the concept of the “Republic of Virtue,” a term coined by Robespierre. During the civil and foreign wars, the Jacobins worked on establishing a new system for France, which lasted in its extreme forms for only one year:

1. A new culture for France replaced the old culture. This included changing the calendar. They made September 22, 1792, the start of the new calendar, which replaced the Christian calendar. They made the week ten days long, ending with a day off that was not Sunday. They renamed the months with new titles, such as “Thermidor,” meaning the height of summer, and “germinal,” which refers to some months of May and June, the time of crop growth. However, no one accepted the calendar due to its disruptions to religious holidays and limited days off. The calendar was restricted to official use only until it was abolished in 1806.

2. Reforming weights and measures and standardizing them. Before the revolution, measurements were based on the king’s body. For instance, a foot was actually the length of the king’s foot. They adopted the meter as a more natural measurement from natural structures. This “innovation” gained acceptance.

3. Renaming streets that were named after kings, replacing them with names of Greek and Roman heroes. The Jacobins even named their children “Brutus” and Franklin (the American) in honor of the republic. People referred to each other as “citizen,” breaking the traditional system of titles.

Their aim was to dismantle Catholicism. They increased their attacks on churches, desecrating their symbols. Even accommodating priests did not escape scrutiny, and 18,000 of them were forced to renounce their clerical robes and accept civilian life, the first aspect of which was marriage, which had previously been prohibited to them.

The radicals were at a loss as to what would replace Christianity. Some proposed atheism or rationalism. They even called the Notre Dame Cathedral the “Temple of Reason.” They eventually arrived at a more moderate version of the new faith, the “deist” belief, which held that a god existed, but had withdrawn after creating the universe. It was disconnected from the world and its inhabitants. The fate of the new religion turned out to be similar to the calendar: people grew averse to it. However, the Jacobins established the principle of citizenship and equal rights under the law, including male citizens. Women were left out.