Political Philosophies

Political Philosophy:
A French Revolutionary Primer The French Revolution was the origin of the battle of political idealogies that has divided the Western World for the past two centuries. Before the Revolution, parties depended on one's standing with the King or with one's powerful friends. But the French Revolution polarized factions into Left and Right in many countries. Those who were opposed to the Revolution formed the backbone of the conservative tradition, while those who embraced it were the ancestors of modern liberals. In France herself, however, political ideologies were rarely so clear-cut. Although the French Revolutionaries, like the American Founding Fathers, deplored political parties, a myriad of rival factions claiming to represent the public good soon arose. In times as turbulent as those of the French Revolution, it is necessary to keep in mind, however, that the ideological foundations of many groups were subject to change in a matter of years and months. The "force des choses" moved mentalities with the sweep of events. In 1789, Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just and other regicides of 1793 still supported the monarchy that they would later help to destroy.

Royalists Louis XVI was the 66th King to reign over France and, despite their high idealism and sense of mission, the revolutionaries had to eventually come to terms with the widespread royalism existent in 18th century France. The peasants, who made up 97% of the population were fiercely monarchistic, and though few leading intellectual and political lights of the day would accept the traditional arguments for a king, many defended the right of a monarch to rule on the grounds of public order and national tradition.

Prominent Royalists: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Comte d'Artois, Comte d'Provence, "Tounneau" Mirabeau

The argument for a King was based on the ancient doctrine of divine right which, as Bishop Bosseut stated to Louis XIV in 1662 meant that "you are of the gods, even if you die, your authority never dies...The man dies, it is true, but his king, we say, never dies." Hence the cry "The king is dead! Long live the King!" whenever a king passed away. Sacred kingship was passed through the generation from father to son. The King was said to possess two bodies---the corperal earthly one that could be killed and the "body politic" which embodied his sovereignty over the country and was eternal.

Divine right and the concept of the king as incarnating the body politic had been taken to an extreme by Louis XIV, the Sun King, in his establishment of an absolute monarchy in France. Because the King alone was God's (Jesus---the King of Kings) representative on earth, he alone could possess such immense earthly power. His decisions were inevitably right because they were made by him, as Louis XIV said, "L'etat c'est moi." The King was the apotheosis of his people. Supposedly a benevolent father, like God on earth, watching out for his unruly children.

By the eve of the French Revolution, however, few people in high positions believed much of this anymore. Louis XVI's weakness as an absolute monarch merely complicated the matter. Louis XVI saw himself as the best judge of the people's good....and he tried to do right by them, at least in his own opinion.

Jacobins Although the term "Jacobins" was later used to describe the excessive fanaticism of the Montagnards, and, in particular, the Robespierrists, Jacobinism in the Revolution was a quite broad term. The Jacobins get their name from the Jacobin Club, a political group of mainly middle-class lawyers who met at the former Convent of St. Jacques starting in 1790. At first the group was most like a debate society and included Revolutionaries of all stripes. Later, many of these groups would be ousted from the Club as the Jacobins became the center of power for the Montagnards.

Political Subgroups: Feuillants (originally Jacobins), Girondins (later ousted), Dantonists, Hebertists, Enragés

Feuillants The Feuillants started out as members of the Jacobins Club but, being more inclined to a constitutional monarchy, separated from the Jacobins Club after the Jacobins drafted a petition to the Champ de Mars asking for the King to step down.

Prominent Feuillants: Marquis de Lafayette, Jean Sylvain Bailly, Duport, Dr. Joseph Guillotin, Alexandre Lameth, Antoine Barnave

Party Duration: July 1791-August 1792

The Feuillants believed in the Rights of Man and Citizen, freedom of press and speech, and a property qualification necessary for voting. However, they also supported the monarchy, believing that a circumscribed monarchy was the best way to keep law and order. The Feuillants opposed the republican inclinations of the Jacobins and Cordeliers and, because of this, lost a lot of power to the Gironde and the Montagne with the popular resentment of the Champ de Mars incident

Girondins The Gironde, so called because most of the original party members came from that region of France, are usually described as being "a brilliant and eloquent group of orators." More than this however, they had little cohesiveness as a political party. Factions within the group today regarded as Girondins existed around who could tolerate who. Generally, however, the Gironde agreed with several concepts, concepts that eventually made them a threat to their more liberal colleagues, the Montagnards

Prominent Girondins: Brissot, Pierre Verginaud, the Rolands, Francois Buzot, Jerome Petion, Marquis de Condorcet, Louvet, Barbaroux, Charlotte Corday

Party Duration: 1792-October 1793

The Gironde, obsessed with Plutarch and the values of the Ancients, favored a republican government such as existed in Rome before the Empire. The Gironde were federalists, meaning that they believed that the central government and the provincial governments should each have a sphere of power and that the power of the central government should not interfere with those of the provincial governments. They wanted a confederation of united areas such as existed in the United States and in Switzerland. For this reason, the Gironde was identified with the provinces and usually used the appeal of representing "the true people of France" in the face of the Montagnard's centralistic obedience to the will of the Parisian population.

The Gironde were an extremely idealistic group and believed that the blessings of the Revolution should be spread outwards among the people of all nations. The Gironde was the chief advocate of a widespread European "holy war" to extend the cause of Liberty. They were opposed in this not by the aristocrats or the Court but by the most radical Montagnards, such as Robespierre and Marat, who were avid pacifists.

Although later Verginaud was to say "they are making the Revolution through Terror, I wanted to make it through love" and the Gironde has generally been thought of as more gentle then the ruthless Montagne, it should be remembered that slightly before their overthrow, the Girondins issued an ultimatum threatening that if such a move were taken "Paris would be removed from the face of this earth." Madame Roland was known to have advised her friends to act radically to suppress the Jacobins. However, the key to the Girondins seems to have been a lot of talk and very little action, so nothing really came of that and the party was doomed by its own lack of impetus and the turn of events in the capital.

Montagnards The Committee of Public Safety

La Montagne was the name given to the group of extreme radical delegates who, in 1792, began sitting in the highest seats of the Convention. At first the various factions within the Montagne acted together, as they did in order to arrest and execute the Girondins and begin the Reign of Terror. Later, however La Montagne lost unity, dissolving into many conflicting groups.

Political Subgroups: Robespierrists, Dantonists, Hébertists (although they actually belonged to the aligned Cordeliers Club), Enragés (even though they had no seats in Convention)

Dantonists Dantonism was not so much a political party as a particular group of friends who liked to have a good time and raised some pretty incredulous eyebrows whenever Robespierre began discussing Virtue. Up until late 1793, Robespierrism and Dantonism were only separable by who had a social life (the Dantonists) and who spoke of "the divine Jean-Jacques" as if he were still alive (the Robespierrists). But when Danton came back from semi-retirement in Sievres and Desmoulins started printing some rather subversive issues of Le Veiux Cordelier, Dantonism began to be diametrically opposed to the official stance of the Committee of Public Safety

Prominent Dantonists: Georges Danton , Camille Desmoulins , Lacroix, Fabre d'Eglatine, Herault de Seychelles, Bourdon d'Oise, Legendre, Panis, Merlin de Thoinville

Party Duration: approx. November 1793-April 1794

Dantonists, "citras" or "Indulgents" as they were called preached ending the Terror after the end of 1793. "I will die in the opinion that to make France free and happy a little ink would have sufficed...and only one guillotine" wrote Camille Desmoulins in the Dantonist mouthpiece Le Vieux Cordelier. This was somewhat of a dramatic reversal from that summer in which Danton had said "Nemesis is not a prude. Let us be terrible and useful" and had set up the Revolutionary Tribunal. Desmoulins himself had written "The Secret History of the Brissotins" which was used as the "evidence" with which to destroy the Gironde. Most of the Dantonists had a past history of radicalism, having sat in the Montagne since the Convention opened. They were in favor of the Republic and had been in favor of the Terror, up until the point that they found it had become excessive. Whether they opposed the Terror out of a genuine wish to stop the bloodshed or because they wished to stop the Robespierrian digging into private lives which would jeopardize many of the shady financial dealings they had made is still a matter of question. Nevertheless, the Dantonist faction are those who followed Danton in his wish to end the Terror and set up a "Committee of Clemency" to review charges against the accused. The Dantonists also differed from the Robespierrists, and perhaps this is why they found it easier to call an end to the Terror, in that the Dantonists were far less idealistic and far less in love with Rousseau and his concept of "Vertu." Rather indifferent to the subjects of God and the immortality of the soul, the Dantonists "smiled pityingly on the words glory, virtue and sacrifice." Danton was said to have defined Robespierre's much loved virtue as "Something I do with my wife every night." Needless to say, this did not put the Dantonists in a good way with their more idealistic colleagues.

Robespierrists Robespierrism was the most coherent and easily recognizable of the many political philosophies that emerged during the French Revolution but even it was not so much a philosophy in itself, but rather a state of mind. One can access this state of mind quite easily by taking a deep breath and thinking I am righteous and virtuous, I desire what is good for everyonefollowed by There are those who do not desire what I desire or do not live how I live, these people are therefore not desiring good and are therefore evil. The appeal of Robespierrism came from its Manichaen division between right and wrong, its careful following of Rousseau and its appeal to both public and private virtue

Prominent Robespierrists: Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Saint-Just, Georges Couthon, Jacques-Louis David, Augustin Robespierre, Philippe LeBas

Party Duration: approx. September 1793- July 1794

The Robespierrists yearned for a Republic founded on the concept of Vertu. Georges Rudé comments that "to Robespierre virtue is essentially that which contributes to the public good: love of country and the subjection of the private to the public interest. To promote public good.....sovereignty must be undivided and exercised by the people as a whole. Yet some people, he believed, were more trustworthy as depositories of virtue and therefore more fit to exercise sovereignty over others." Virtue requires unwavering sacrifice to the common good, as R.R. Palmer comments it was an expected priniciple of Jacobin doctrine that "the love between parent and child, man and woman, brother and brother, friend and friend must if necessary be foregone for love of country."

The premise of the Republic of Vertu so idealized by the Robespierrists required that France, according to Robespierre, replace "morality for egotism, probity for a mere sense of honor, principle for habit, duty for etiquette, the empire of reason for the tyranny of custom, contempt for vice for contempt for misfortune, pride for insolence, large-mindedness for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good men for good company, merit for intrigue, talent for conceit, truth for show, the charm of happiness for the tedium of pleasure, the grandeur of man for the triviliality of grand society, a people magnanimous, powerful and free for a people lovable, frivolous and wretched-that is to say all the virtues and miracles of the Republic for all the vices and puerilities of the monarchy."The difference between Ancien Regime vice and Republican virtue was very pronounced for, according to Robespierre, "vice and virtue decide the destiny of the earth; they are the two opposing spirits struggling over it." The French people (le peuple) were inherently good and innocent as Revolutionary France herself, as opposed to the evil monarchies (Saint-Just said "The French people exchange nothing with their enemies except lead"). "Evil" people-who were inevitably evil because they had been corrupted by foreign gold-was anyone who usurped the General Will. As Saint-Just said at the trial of the King, "no one can reign innocently." The great Robespierrian purpose was to make the governed and the governors, private and public life, one and indivisible...so that no one was really ruling. Ruling itself, because it implied overstepping the General Will, was a crime for which one was a "rebel" and an "enemy of the people." Due to the recurrent opposition to the Committees during the course of the Revolution, "le peuple" became a smaller and smaller group. Carol Blum in Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue defines the people as "the totality of the inhabitants of France less the royal family, monarchists, aristocrats, vicious men and the wealthy, actors and mercenary writers...and women."

During the time that those whose policies that they opposed were in office, Saint-Just and Robespierre spoke out vehemently against all forms of dictatorial repression; most notably against the death penalty. However, once they came to power they initiated the Terror. This is not a matter of hypocrisy but rather of good ol'fashioned Roussea-esque self-righteousness. Before a "virtuous" government came to office, a government which did not seek to rule but rather to merely secure the right for virtue to rule, all crimes were really the result of the ruler, since the People and the General Will, by very definition, could not commit a crime. However, once a "virtuous" government came to power, the wicked bandits were attempting to usurp power from the General Will represented by the government. France was generally good but scoundrels seeking power threatened that. Saint-Just put the concept in the words," "The Republic consists of free citizens; the rest are helots or nothing." This was why the Terror was idealogically necessary and justifiable (besides the fact that nobody could figure out a better way of doing things). As Robespierre said, "the aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic. The aim of revolutionary government is to found it." Those executed by the Committee of Public Safety were defined at slaves to tyrants and enemies to the people, under the Law of 22 Prairal advocated by Couthon and Robespierre, Carol Blum notes that "the very desire to defend oneself against the state was a definition of guilt. As Couthon expressed it, "defending the cause of the tyrants is conspiring against liberty."

Part of the reasoning behind the Law of 22 Prairal which denied the accused the right to a lawyer, to witnesses and to defense was that the Robespierrists had become genuinely afraid of the ways languages could be used. Saint-Just, who was probably more responsible than anyone for the High Jacobin lexicon, notes "I recognize only two words; the just and the unjust." Language could be bent and used by wicked people against the "virtues [which] are simple, modest, poor, often ignorant., sometimes gross." Language had to be abandoned then, circumscribed to allow more power to the instinct which was where virtue was always triumphant. The belief and the word had to match precisely; as Saint-Just said "he who makes jokes while in positions of power had a tendency to tyranny." When the meaning of a word was detached from personal meaning, from inner truth, this in itself was a vice.

Robespierrism also involved religious matters as well. Robespierre, denying the materialistic Cult of Reason advanced by the Hebertists claimed that "atheism is aristocratic." But neither would the Robespierrists accept Catholicism, which had for years bolstered the argument of divine right and Original Sin and the priesthood. Instead they worshipped the deistic Supreme Being. The Supreme Being was the enlightenment Clockmaker God par excellence, although He had made the world, He had absolutely nothing to do with the Evil that flourished in the form of the ubiquitous traitors and rogues.

Economically speaking, the Robespierrists didn't really understand the problems facing the peasantry at the time. They tended to see wealth as a matter of the ubiquitous battle between vice and virtue. While Saint-Just declared that 'opulence is an infamy" Robespierre said that "we should strive to make poverty respectable rather than abolish wealth." The Rousseauvian mentality-which taught that those who suffered were the virtuous of the earth-endowed the Robespierrists with a curious dilemma. As Carol Blum states "to satisfy the poor would have been to ruin them, for a contented people, enjoying the pleasures of indulgent consumerism.....would no longer be that "suffering animal" with whom it was happiness to identify." The Robespierrist utopia could best be said to be one of small independent artisans and farmers.

Finally, the most obvious external sign of being part of the Robespierre group was obsession with death, incorruptibility and constant claims to martyrdom. As R.R. Palmer says in Twelve Who Ruled "in nothing were the Revolutionary leaders more alike than in their moral self-approval." Saint-Just and Robespierre particularly were always harping on their virtue versus the wickedness that surrounded them everywhere. Robespierre described himself as "a martyr for the Revolution", Saint-Just, in a private letter, declared, "Oh God! Surely, since you place me among wicked men it is to unmask them." Suicide also dominated Robespierrist thoughts, especially in the weeks leading up to 9 Thermidor. Philippe Lebas talked of blowing his brains out, Saint-Just declared, "I despise the dust of which I am made and which speak to you...", Robespierre said he was ready for the dagger blows of the tyrants.

Hebertists The Hébertists "ultras" or Cordeliers (new Cordeliers, that is, not Danton's old Cordeliers) were followers of Jacques-Rene Hébert, the editor of the scurrilous and vulgar Pere Duchesne which had a strong popular base among the sans-culottes. Hebertism was never a very strong force within the Convention itself but rather was the moving philosophy of the Paris Insurrectionary Commune and the War Office. Hebertists and the Enragés may seem hard to distinguish, and in fact they were, as the groups often tried to outdo each other in terms of revolutionary extremism.

Prominent Hébertists: Jacques-Rene Hebert, General Ronsin, Anaxorgas Chaumette, Joseph Fouché, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes (although the latter two were merely sympathetic to the cause)

Party Duration: December 1792-March 1794

The Hébertists, a popular-based group, tended to excite trouble wherever was possible. Unlike the Enragés however, the Hébertists did not agree with complete government take-over of industries or with fixing of food prices. The main goals of the Hebertists revolved around a) the execution of "aristocrats" and "profiters" and b) Dechristianization

To the Hebertists, "enemies of the people" was a pretty wide term encompassing just about everyone disliked for whatever reason by the Parisian populace. Like the Robespierrists and nearly every other revolutionary group of the time, Hébertism owed a lot to Rousseau, and in fact, the Hebertists worked from the same principles as the Robespierrists, they just phrased thing-errr-slightly different. Robespierre and Saint-Just's subtle and complex arguments about the General Will would appear in Pere Duchesne as "Good citizens must expect persecution, f--- the more virtuous a citizen is the more enemies he has. F---, the people as a whole is always pure, it may be misled, but its intentions are good." Given that the people were always good, it was indeed profiteers and aristocrats---secret or not---who were the cause of all the public's misfortune and misinformation. No group was more adamant or more apparently joyful about executions than the Hebertists. Pere Duchesne called Marie Antoinette's execution "the greatest of all joys experienced by Pere Duchesne."

Another aspect of the old regime which the Hébertists were passionately against was religion. Atheistic and materialistic, Pere Duchesne asked "F--- God, where was he when you needed him?" In God's place, the Commune declared the "Cult of Reason" celebrated at Notre Dame with an actress (consider that actresses were considered little better than prostitutes at the time) playing the part of the Goddess of Reason and the populace dancing around her. The Hebertists also ordered "Dechristianization" to take place in Paris and the provinces. Fouché advocated that "Death is the eternal sleep" be placed outside every cemetary. The Hébertists advocated destroying all former signs of Christian worship throughout France.

Enrages The Enragés were not so much a political party as a mob movement. They did not have seats in the Convention and they represented the desperation of a population angered by rising prices, fears of aristocratic conspiracies and disappointment with the little material benefits the Revolution had brought. The Enragés, in whom some historians have found the origins of modern communism and socialism, were also termed the "Mad Dogs" for rampaging through the streets and sometimes into the Convention itself, demanding food.

Prominent Enragés: Jacques Roux, Theophile LeClerc, Varlet, Claire Lacombe, Pauline Leon

Duration: 1792-March 1794

The Enragés were mainly concerned with the fight against hoarders, who were supposed to be the cause of much of the misfortune and privation in Paris, as well as the high cost of living. The Enragés were known to favor state-owned businesses that could keep the cost of necessities down to a minimum, thus prefiguring modern socialism. The Enragés were bitterly anti-aristocratic and favored death for all of those who even went so far as to appear monarchistic. Although sometimes allied with the Montagnards in the Convention, the enragés tended to be somewhat skeptical of those mainly bourgeois lawyers and often fought against the Jacobins. They dreamed of direct democracy run by the sans-culottes.

Another notable aspect of the Enragés was the fact that they were allied with the Revolutionary Republican Women, led by Leon and Lacombe, the most progressive and militant of women's groups that demanded female suffrage. (although one of the chief reasons for this alliance was Leon and Lacombe's shared interest in Leclerc) There is reason to assume then that the Enragés also supported more rights for women than any of the other major political groups

If you have Microsoft Publisher, have a copy of the spectrum from Left to Right of political groups in various years during the Revolution as well as a diagram explaining changes in the government.