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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of
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Narrator
original documentaries with a brand new release
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
every single week covering everything from the
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Narrator
ancient world to to World War II.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Just visit historyhit.com subscribe
- [00:35]
Parent 1
Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?
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Parent 2
Really?
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Professor Marissa Linton
I can get super specific with dealer
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Parent 2
listings and see cars based on my budget.
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Parent 1
You can really have it delivered or pick it up. I think kid is walking up the slide. Really?
- [00:48]
Parent 2
Autotrader? Buy your car online. Really?
- [00:51]
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- [01:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.
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Narrator
Paris in July 1789 is a furnace of rumor, rage and fear. The people wake up hungry. Bread is scarce, wages vanish. At the baker's door, mothers clutch coins that can no longer buy enough to feed their young children. In the inns and markets, a dangerous question is becoming everyday conversation. How can a kingdom so rich leave its people starving? For months, France has been cracking. King Louis xvi, desperate for money, has called the Estates General, an ancient assembly meant to save the monarchy from bankruptcy. But instead it has opened a door he cannot close. The commoners, the Third Estate, declare themselves the national assembly, and they swear not to disband until France has a Constitution. For the first time, sovereignty seems to be slipping from the palace at Versailles into the hands of the people. Then comes the spark. Jacques Necker, the finance minister many Parisians see. As their ally is dismissed. Royal troops gather near the capital. The message feels clear. The King may be preparing to crush the revolution before it can start.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The city erupts.
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Narrator
Crowds seize weapons from the Hotel des Invalides. But muskets are useless without powder. And the powder, they believe lies behind the thick stone walls of an old medieval fortress, the Bastille. In a matter of hours, the King's fortress that once seemed indestructible becomes suddenly vulnerable. Besieged not by an army of seasoned soldiers, but an army of the people. This month on not just the Tudors, we're exploring the French Revolution. In the first episode of this series, Dr. Charles Watson joined me to look at how frustration in the once magnificent kingdom of France turned to revolution. And how ideas about liberty, equality and rights ignited in the minds of people who'd never known them. Today I'm joined by Professor Marissa Linton, professor emerita in history at Kingston University and one of the foremost experts on the French Revolution. Together we'll be discussing the build up and events surrounding the storming of the Bastille. A moment that did not begin the French Revolution, but changed its heartbeat.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Professor Linton, welcome to not just the Tudors.
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Professor Marissa Linton
Hi Susanna, it's great to meet you.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It is wonderful to have a chance to discuss this with you. I last studied this the French Revolution, seriously, if one can call it that at a level. And so it's an absolute treat to speak to one of the leading experts in the field. So let's head back to early 1789 when Louis XVI summoned the Estates General. Did he realize that he was opening
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Professor Marissa Linton
the door to revolution? Did the king realize what he was doing? No, no, not at all. He did know, however, that this was something he really, really didn't want to do. He and his ministers had resisted as far as possible that step. It was a huge step to summon the Estates General. He did not expect what happened at all a revolution, but he did know that it was an attack on his power to do that. And successive kings of France had managed to rule without calling the estates general for 150 years. It's extraordinary really that he was forced to do that. Previous kings, they hadn't abolished the Estates General as an institution, but they simply hadn't summed it. They did without it. They ruled as absolute monarchs. And so for him to take this step was really it was a huge climb down for the monarchy. But the reasons that he did it were financial. The state was bankrupt, and he had been given no other option. And that's something that happens from sort of 1786 to 1789 onwards, where his successive ministers are trying desperately to find some alternative to summoning the Estates General. But they're blocked at every turn, really, by nobles in the Parlement and then in the assembly of Notables, and then back in the Parlement again. And these. This group kept calling for the Estates General to be summoned as the only body that had sufficient credibility left to authorize financial reforms that were desperately needed.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So this revolution is very much fueled by money, by financial collapse, by hunger. It's also fueled by ideas. At this point, how politicized was French
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Professor Marissa Linton
Society prior to 1789? Most people weren't politicized at all. But you have to think of what kind of society France is in the 1780s. The great majority of people are peasants and work on the land, and they're not politicized in the sense that we would understand it, that they have minimal literacy, if at all. So they're not reading things and censorship is in place anyway. But they are very aware of their own grievances and their lives and how things affect them. So there's a certain degree of anger and resentment amongst the peasantry, but that only becomes apparent when the system itself is breaking down from above. So when you're talking about who is politicized, there is. Because France has a system of censorship before this point, you are not allowed legally to publish anything which could be critical of the monarchy, of the Catholic Church, or good morals. You weren't meant to discuss politics as the business of the King. So politicization wasn't meant to exist. People had found a way around that, politically active people. But that's quite a sort of small group of very active people who find a way around things, find a way to right things. But it's a danger, it's a risk to do that. But what you get in the sort of that run up to the breakdown of 1789 is that system of censorship starts to break down. And once the King agrees to the summoning of the Estates General, there's a bit of a free for all, and suddenly sort of floodgates are let loose and lots more people are talking openly about politics. So there's a series of pamphlets that emerge that we could talk about very quick, very, very quickly. There's this kind of open discussion in politics, which hadn't happened in that kind of way before. The people who are very active, they're a very sort of political small p group that are active. Well, they became known by a number of names. One of them was the Patriot Party, and some of them are very high nobles indeed. But they are obviously educated people and people you think would be all for the old order and the political establishment. But actually, ironically, some of these are the people who are most interested in a really radical reform at that point. 1788, 1789. So, yes, the common people are hungry, particularly in Paris, where they have to buy bread at exorbitant prices, bread being the staple thing of their diet. And the peasants are very desperate for a number of reasons. But these aren't people who have power until the summoning of the Estates General makes it possible for them to begin to have a voice. And that voice begins with a big kind of rumble and then absolutely erupts on the 14th of July 1789.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Tell me a little bit more about those pamphlets and what sort of stuff is in them and how are they creating a revolutionary mood?
- [10:15]
Professor Marissa Linton
So, as I said, the system of censorship begins to break down. People are writing openly about politics. This particularly happens in the run up to the Estates General. Part of that process, that time honored process for how the Estates General were run, is that people can compile books of grievances, cahiers de doleances, whilst they're doing the voting. So people are coming together in their little, their small assemblies all over France. They're gathering. When people start to gather, they start to talk. And as they gather, they are looking for guidelines to help them know how they should vote in the forthcoming elections to the States General. And so lots of pamphlets begin to be published to say, well, this is what I think should happen. This is what I think should happen. And these voices really are channeling a lot of things. Perhaps the most important of all, certainly the most most famous, is a pamphlet published written by the Abbe Sayers called What is the third estate? That comes out in January 1789. And that's said by many to be a blueprint for revolution, because he goes much further than asking for financial reform. He talks about sovereignty in France, where sovereignty lies. So it's the big question. It's the really, really big question. And he says sovereignty lies not with the king, but with the people. And the people are embodied by the nation. Literary, educated people have been using that term, nation, but now it's getting more and more openly political. What is the nation? He says it's Everyone. It's everyone except the first two orders or estates, that is the nobility and the clergy. The nation is the working part of the, of the population, the people who do everything, the people who make everything. And essentially what he's implying is that the nobility and the clergy are parasites. It's the ordinary people who are the important thing. And he says the nation wants a voice, it wants to be something in what is coming. So it's a huge blueprint for evolution. And that pamphlet comes out, it's like many of them, the pamphlets that are being put out at this time. It's supported by certain key members of the nobility. Above all, the Duke of Orleans, the cousin of the king, after the King, he's just about the richest man in France. You wouldn't think, would you, that such a rich and privileged man would be a revolutionary. But the Duke of Orleans is, for reasons which remain disputed, shall we say, is on the side of the revolutionaries, sides against his own cousin, the King of France, which is very interesting. And he protects pamphleteers in the Palais Royal and elsewhere. And so he seemed to be behind a lot of things, but a lot of people doubt his motives. Could this very rich man really be on the side of the people like he makes out, or is he using them? So there's a whole thing going on there. But yeah, this is a moment for Sayers to write about the nation. Having said that, though, the Abbe Sayers, he's also not a radical revolutionary in the sense that we would understand it later. He doesn't really want everybody, the common people to run things. He wants the bourgeoisie to be running things. Sort of middle class people who have some education, some knowledge and understanding and property and will be a kind of grounded weight in the new order that he hopes will emerge. He doesn't want people on the streets kind of lynching priests. He was a priest himself, if that's the last thing he wants. People say a lot of things in that run up to 88, 89 that they don't see the consequences of. And certainly Sayers himself didn't want every man to have the vote. Not in practice, but it was a good, good argument.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can we talk about how emotionally charged the discourse becomes? And I mean, you write about virtue and corruption. Why are those ideas becoming so central to revolutionary culture?
- [14:17]
Professor Marissa Linton
The ideas of virtue and corruption have been central to political culture in France for a long time. The term virtue goes back, as you know, I'm sure, very well, to classical authors, to the Romans, to the Greeks. Virtue in a Political sense means dedication to the public good. And so people like Montesquieu had written about this. Rousseau, Jean Jacques Rousseau. And what they meant by it is that anybody who wanted to be involved in what we would call politics would be a man. I assumed it was a man. Let's just assume a man, a man of personal integrity. A man who would not be open to bribes. A man who would not be involved in politics in order to feather his own nest or that of his family or his friends. A man who was involved in politics because he wanted to serve the common good. People might not use the term virtue right now, in 2026 when talking about politicians, but corruption is still right in there. Corruption incredibly important, because you have to ask the question, why are people engaged in politics? What do they want from this? Do they want to be involved in public service or are they in it for the money? Quite simply, it's a complicated question, because ancien regime France operated on venality. It was how things were done. So the elite of the old regime were used to buying their posts and their offices and making money out of these things. That was how things were managed, that was how it was done. So banality was perfectly legal, perfectly understood. But one of the forces for revolution is that, hey, we don't want this anymore. We don't want our leaders to be in it for the money. And that's a hugely, hugely powerful statement to make. And many of the future leaders of the revolution become very involved in that discourse, in that way of speaking and that rhetoric of, no, I'm not in it for the money, I don't want the money, I've not taken bribes. You can look at my home, you can look at my, you know, what I eat, where I have dinner, what houses I own or chateaus, what have you. And you will not find instances of corruption there. But it's quite a difficult path to walk because a lot of people do make money out of the revolution because it sets up new channels, new ways of doing things. But they do make that step. The revolutionaries abolish venality of office, the buying of posts and positions. August 1789. So they try and erase it.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So can we move into the events of the summer of 1789? Could you talk me through the creation of the national assembly and the tennis court oath and take us up to the moment where Jacques Necker is dismissed?
- [17:16]
Professor Marissa Linton
So the Estates general meets in May 1789 at Versailles. There's 1200 of them. There'd been a huge contestation over what form the Estates General would take, because the Monarchy and then the Parlement, wanted it to be just as it had been when they'd last met, 150 years earlier. But, of course, times had changed. So when they'd last met, the Estates General had been formed of three orders, or estates, that were equal in number within the estates, but they weren't equal in number in the population at large. So the first order or estate, is the clergy, because they're close to God, they pray. Second Order or estate is the nobility, because they have that noble status, Third Estate, everybody else, which is the great majority of the population and includes everybody from the highest member of the bourgeoisie and wealthy financiers, bankers, people like that, right down to the humblest peasant. But if the Estates General was to meet as it had formerly done, those three orders would each have an equal number of members represented within the Estates General. And the traditional way in which the Estates General had voted is they voted the best out of three, which meant that basically the two privileged orders, the clergy and the nobility, could gang together and outvote the Third Estate every turn, obviously, demonstrably unfair. So, before the Estates General even met, a huge debate begins on will they follow the old ways or will they do something new? And necker, the minister at the time when they made this announcement agreed that they would act on the orders of the King, of course, agreed to the doubling of the numbers of the Third Estate deputies, so they would have twice as many, but didn't pronounce on whether or not they would still vote best out of three, or whether they would vote by head, by individual. If they could vote by individual, then actually you can start having meaningful votes and changing things. He didn't say, he didn't pronounce. And this kind of vacillation was symptomatic of what was going on with the Monarchy. So they capitulate. Okay, we'll have the Estates General, but we just want you to vote in these financial reforms, chaps, and then go home again, thank you very much. But once you summon the Estates General, they're there. They're right there at Versailles. They're meeting right next to the palace, and it's not so easy to disband them, to send them home again. So immediately when the Estates Generals start to meet, this question of how are they going to vote, who are they? Starts to arise. And because the King doesn't say, doesn't make it clear. I mean, he acts very poorly, I have to say, throughout. I mean, we could say a lot About Louis xvi, he makes a lot of very poor political decisions, because from his point of view, he should have been much more ruthless with the Estates General. He had it in his power to have difficult people arrested, which of course, he has used in the past. But he doesn't use it with the Estates General because it would look bad. And so he's torn, he's very torn over what he should do there. And so he vacillates, which is the worst thing of all. So the Estates General meet, and the deputies of the Third Estate become more and more dissatisfied, because everything seems to be suddenly like it was the last time the Estates General had met. Nothing seems to have changed, and there seems to be an expectation that the deputies of the Third Estate will just go along with it, and they're not prepared to. And they feel aggrieved, many of them, by the intransigence of the first two orders. They start to meet separately. They start to put into effect what Sayers has said. They are the nation, they are the working, productive part of the nation, the useful part of the nation, where they are, that is where the nation is. And so they, after sort of weeks of vacillation, they meet. The deputies of the third estate meet on 20 June, 1789, at a tennis court. Court, which is a closed affair. It's not like a modern tennis court. It's a closed court, which is just a little bit removed from the palace because they've been shut out from their normal meeting place. And they swear not to disband until they have given France a constitution. It's a huge step. They know they are courting arrest by doing it because it's illegal. And that's what the King says afterwards. Well, this is illegal. You can't do this. And they say, well, we are. What are you going to do about it? A day or two later, they refuse to disband. Three days later, the King says, sends one of his flunkeys to say, well, you must disband. Mirabeau, who's kind of become a leader of the Third Estate, although he's actually a noble at this point, says, we will only disperse at the point of bayonets. So, yeah, we could fight, but they're just civilians, they can't fight. But they know they have a lot of popular opinion on their side. People are stirred up now throughout France because of this process that is happening, and the King seems to have accepted what they will say. He says that the Third Estate should be joined by the other two estates, which is what they wanted meet together in one big national assembly, where every man has a vote. So the old structure is broken down. So he seems to accept what's happened. But simultaneously, the King begins to gather soldiers around Paris and Versailles, and everybody knows what that means, of course. And so there's a huge fear that what he's aiming for is a political crackdown when he feels strong enough with his soldiers on the newborn national assembly before it's even begun. And so, yeah, there is huge tension in Paris and elsewhere. People are panicking, people are expecting the worst. And then news reaches Paris, 12th of July, that the King has dismissed Necker. He's his chief finance minister. This is seen as a signal for the crackdown to begin, and people are terrified. The stock Exchange, the Bourse, closes in protest. There are reactions in the Palais Royal. There's a parading of busts of Necker and Orleans. They take them out of the waxworks. It's the forerunner of Madame Tussaud and all that. They take their bus and people parade them around and kind of making huge statements. Barricades are erected, there's looting. It's an incredibly febrile atmosphere. Again, the King does not react well. He acts very defensively. There's a terrible scene in the Tuileries Garden where German cavalry troops attack people, a crowd of people that are peaceful, people that are just there in the gardens and talking and unarmed. It really intensifies the atmosphere, the fear. A man whom no one had previously heard of, called Kami Demoula, who will one day become a very famous revolutionary, he leapt onto a table, I think it was a table or a chair somewhere high at the Palais Royal, at the Cafe de Foix. And he says that you must arm yourselves, you must fight. This is the moment, or the troops are coming. Necker's dismissal. This is where it begins. What are we going to do? Are we going to fight? And people answer him and they say, yes, we're going to do that, we're going to fight, we're going to make a stand. So there are riots and all sorts of things happening, and then the people start to arm themselves in Paris. They go first to the Invalides, where there is a store of powder and this huge fear of aristocrats conspiring and stockpiling of powder to be used against the people, gunpowder. And so, yeah, they're real panic. And so then, of course, their next stop is the Bastille, the biggest prison in the center of Paris.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yeah.
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Parent 2
So why.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Tell me about the Bastille and why it looms so large in the public imagination. Why is this the next place to go?
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Professor Marissa Linton
The Bastille. The Bastille, it's a bit like the Tower of London. It no longer exists, so you have to. Except as a metro stop. But you have to imagine it. It literally looms very large. It's a big, dark fortress. It had been a prison. They had used it to store lots of confiscated pamphlets. They'd put political prisoners there, they put Fulous off there. People like Voltaire and Lange is another one. It seemed very much a symbol of repression that the Fulasoff had spoken about. And of course, it's a defended place. And ironically, at the time that it was stormed, there were only seven prisoners in there. Four kind of. Not political offenses, but there's this whole kind of story that the Bastille is full of political prisoners. And if you know A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens makes a great deal of this moment, of the storming of the Bastille. And it's very visual, very dramatic in his novel as he depicts all these people who have been locked up for decades, with their hair sort of down to their knees, all gray and desperate, being brought out of the Bastille in triumph. Really, it's a political image rather than the reality. The real significance of the Bastille is that its centre, it's a fortress, it's a center for the King's forces within Paris, and it is heavily defended. And the leader of those soldiers within the Bastille is the governor of the Bastille, Delaunay, a man called Delaunay, and he defends the Bastille against the onslaught of the people. And it's the fall of the Bastille. It's a hugely symbolic moment, which bystanders and people in other countries also recognized. It's said that when Immanuel Kant, in his small German village, when he hears the news of the fall of the Bastille, he does a thing that he's never done before, which is he postpones his daily walk, which he always used to take at the same time in order to read the newspapers, the account. So his neighbours knew something really big must have happened. The British ambassador reported back that this had been the storming of the Bastille, had been a huge event which had happened with relatively little loss of life. And in a sense, the ambassador is saying that it's something to be welcomed because it will mean that France will be closer now to Britain and its politics and have some kind of representation, a parliament that meets continually and Also, it's a bit of one upmanship from the British because Britain and France, old rivals, particularly in the American War of Independence. So they were quite happy to see the, the French monarchy suffer a little bit, but nobody kind of really anticipates quite how far, of course, it will go. But they do see that it's a hugely momentous event. The storming of the Bastille is followed almost immediately by huge outcry excitement. People see this within France. They see it as the big moment where things have happened. People who've taken part in the storming of the Bastille come forward to receive medals from the new National Assembly. The King accepts what has happened, or appears to goes to Paris and accepts it. And they immediately start to demolish the Bastille, which is why you won't see it now if you go to Paris, they demolish it stone by stone. And a man of business, an entrepreneur, sells off the stones as sort of souvenirs. It's a bit like the Berlin Wall. Yeah, yeah, they sell it off. So it's very symbolic. But it is also a big political moment because this is a moment when the people take up arms against the forces of the king and the people become a voice in history, in what's happening within France. And this, of course, is why it's still a huge deal, of course, in France, and it becomes a national holiday. It's the moment when popular sovereignty is put into action in Paris itself. And everyone knows perhaps the biggest thing is that some of the soldiers within Paris, the Garde Francaise, they either don't side against the people or they side with them. This is a big moment for a king. If he can keep hold of its military, he's okay, really, against unarmed civilians or people who only have kind of improvised weapons. But if he can keep hold of his military, he's still okay. He can smash those people. But with the Guard Francaise seeming to side with the people of Paris on the streets, the King starts to doubt that he can control events. And a big part of his decision making was that he was warned that the troops outside Paris and Versailles could not be relied on. If he brought them into action, whose side would they be on? It was a moot point that really, that's. That really, really kind of makes a revolution. Hey there, it's Jlo and I'm officially back in my rom com era and honestly feels like home. And this is Brett Goldstein. Our new movie, Office Romance, is now streaming only on Netflix. We cannot wait for you to see it.
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Parent 2
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Professor Marissa Linton
To watch what's going on.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One striking thing about it is quite how quickly violence escalates. So there's the governor is killed. How were contemporaries reacting to this violence?
- [33:14]
Professor Marissa Linton
There was violence in the act in the storming of the Bastille, and more attackers were killed actually than defenders in the actual storming. But once the governor had surrendered, then the people have free rein and many people want revenge. It's a kind of It's a ritualistic violence. It's really horrible. But things like that have happened in France before, but not on that kind of scale, not to a man like that. But the idea of retributive violence by the people when they're en masse in a crowd, that kind of idea is not so unusual. They take Delaunay to the Place du Cve, which is where the town hall is now, and that's where they normally execute the Ancien regime normally executed people that were going to be killed. So that's a kind of. It's a sort of popular, retributive, ritualized violence. And it is extremely violent. I mean, he's ripped to pieces. This man is just very, very horrible. And a few other individuals also who were seen as having conspired to starve the people, to withhold grain so that the price of bread would soar so they could profit from the people. And there's a real visceral anger against these men. And some of them also were killed on the Place de Greve. They are lynched. And yeah, it's very, very nasty. One of them has straw stuffed in his mouth. After death, it's like you tried to starve the people. Now you can try and eat straw. And their body parts are taken around sites in Paris. They're taken to the Palais Royale where people are rejoicing and cheering. Now, a lot of people are very horrified by that, particularly bourgeois supporters of the revolution who aren't used to such things happening. And you have to decide very quickly, whose side are you on? This is now a revolution. Whose side are you on? So if you take a few examples, take one example, a man who becomes a very big revolutionary, but not for some time afterwards. Louis de Saint Just, who later becomes a member of the Committee of Public Safety. He happened to be in Paris when the Bastille was stormed. And he wrote in a book in 1791, he said it was really awful to see people playing with bits of flesh, with hearts and heads. It was just awful. But also, he says this is the result of them having been like enslaved and kept ignorant. When they burst out, they will react almost like children, a bit like Lord of the Flies. We might say now that they will have this huge emotional reaction. So it's kind of to be expected. But there are many middle class bourgeois people who do choose to side with this. It's a significant moment. Having said that, though, order is quickly restored afterwards. It's not kind of happening all the the time. It's a kind of huge emotional cathartic outburst. And then forces gather to sort of get control back of the situation. Because the elite, even people like the patriot group, they don't want anarchy on the streets and lynching on the streets. This is not what they're up for at all. So Lafayette, the Marquis de Lafayette, who has been very much a revolutionary, he becomes the head of the newly formed militia, the National Guard, which is made up of kind of middle class men of property and one of the things that doing is trying to ensure that this sort of thing does not keep happening in future, because they understand this can quickly slide into wild anarchy.
- [36:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So how does the storming of the Bastille transform the balance of power between the King and the national assembly and the people of Paris?
- [36:58]
Professor Marissa Linton
The storming of the Bastille transforms power because the King very, very reluctantly accepts its fait accompli. It's he's supposed to have said when he heard the news, so it's a rebellion. And one of his nobles replies, non, Sire, no Sire, it's a revolution. There's a very big difference. From that point onwards, he could only re establish force by bringing his troops on a big scale. That's the only way he could do it. And he doesn't do that in large part because he's advised that he may not have authority over his own soldiers, over the French soldiers who have been amassing outside Paris and Versailles. That's why he accepts it.
- [37:40]
Carter's Advertiser
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- [37:41]
Professor Marissa Linton
All revolutions come down to force or the threat of force in the end. And that's why the King appears to accept it. But he may be playing a longer game. He's resisting in many ways. So although he seems to have accepted what is happening, there is a big fear on the streets of Paris that this is only bought them time until the King kind of recuperates, get forces together. Some very powerful nobles leave France immediately after the storming of the Bastille and become emigre. They emigrate, they risk losing everything. They leave things behind in order not to accept the revolution. One of these people is the younger brother of Louis, the Comte d', Artois, who much later on becomes Charles X after many, many things. But he flees so as not to accept. So there's a kind of question, will the King fight back or might he too become an emigre, that is leave his own country and return perhaps with a force of possibly foreign soldiers to fight back, to put the revolution down by force. So those become his options really. He chooses for the moment to capitulate, to side with the revolution and appears to accept it. And a lot of people think that he has accepted it because they want their king. That's quite a fraught point. And we could get on to the October days if you like, and talk about that.
- [39:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, yes, let's talk about how the fall of the Bastille leads to the next chapter in the revolution and the astonishingly modern sounding Declaration of the Rights of Man and how radical that was at the time.
- [39:28]
Professor Marissa Linton
Well, there's jubilation after the fall of the Bastille, amongst the radicals and supporters of revolution. Like, we've done it, we've done it. What are we going to do next? And the national assembly, still at Versailles at this point, quickly decides that they will make a new constitution for a new France. It will be a constitution where popular sovereignty is recognized. But instantly they've got the problem of how much popular sovereignty to recognize. You can have the principles, but then what happens in practice? And so this becomes a huge, huge matter of debate. Before they write the constitution, they agree to set out a set of principles which will be guidelines for that constitution. And this becomes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. And that's put out in August 1789. It's an incredibly radical document. Just how radical? Well, a lot of the principles that are enshrined in it aren't so widely accepted in the world even today. Which tells you something. I think it's based on principles of liberty and equality. In terms of the break with the ancien regime, it's huge. It's huge. The people are sovereign. Everyone shall be equal under the law. There will be one law for everybody, not a particular law. For the privileged group. There will be freedom of political expression. People can say what they think about politics. These are all new and revolutionary. People can choose their own religious faith. That is enormous. That is enormous to say. You don't have have to go along with the national authorized religious belief, which is that based on Roman Catholicism. So, yeah, there are so many things that are absolutely huge in terms of principles about it. But almost immediately then there becomes the question, how far do we really want to put this into practice? When we say equality for all, liberty for all, do we really mean for all, or do we mean really for a group of propertied, essentially white men within France? Yeah, it becomes very, very contested. But the fact that these principles exist becomes something that can be held up and used in the future to argue that, yeah, we have these principles. These are the founding principles of the revolution of liberty and equality, and we should make our laws based on those principles.
- [42:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, I'm really interested in this idea. I mean, how much do you think that revolutionaries were at the time aware of the contradictions in the Declaration regard to gender or race? Or is that a later? Are we sort of. I mean, obviously they're talking about everyone being born free and equal in rights, and we can say you're not standing up to your own standards. Is that a fair take on what's going on.
- [42:31]
Professor Marissa Linton
Yes, those things are discussed, but part of the opening up of politics means for the first time they can be discussed the issue of race, or even more than race, of slavery and whether slavery in the French colonies should be legal or not. Does it contravene principles of liberty and equality? Well, of course it did, but. But can you hold those two ideas at the same time? This is recognized. Yeah, Very, very early, very early on, pressure group forms the Club Massiac, which forms specifically to defend the interests of planters, plantation owners in the French colonies. That is the men who run the business of slavery in the French colonies in Saint Domingue, Guadeloupe, places like that. And they're lobbying. They're lobbying. They say that if you were to decree that slaves had a right to liberty and equality, if you freed the slaves, then this would be very detrimental to the French economy and to France as an international power. So, yeah, they are arguing that from the beginning, it's very contested. And really, in Saint Domingue, which is now Haiti, eventually this leads to that refusal to listen to those principles, to take those principles on board on path of a revolutionary government in France, leads directly, directly to a revolution in Saint Domingue, a very, very bloody revolution where people live by Toussaint Louverture, putting these principles into practice and saying, this has to apply to us, but that's kind of a way down the road. But certainly people are aware of this right from the outset in summer of 1789, about women. That seems more to many people of a side issue. There are certain people who argue that women should have rights, that rights of liberty and equality should not be defined on the basis skin color or gender. There are people who say that Condorcet is one, the Marquis de Condorcet. Another one is Olympe de Gouges, who writes a declaration of the rights of women. And that's just fantastic document. She's saying, you have these principles, they should apply to women. Why should they not? Why should they not? So these things are being said, they are being argued, but the whole position of women having a political voice is more controversial. Having said that, though, there are many things in the constitution that the French revolutionaries write which are positive for the situation of women. That is, women are given social legal rights which they had not had before. So for many women, those rights to equality before the law. Equality of inheritance is a really big one where it's decreed that inheritances should. From that parents should be divided equally amongst the children of a marriage, equally. That's Huge. That's absolutely huge. Because before that it's been mostly sons, older sons at that, and now suddenly women daughters should have an equal right to inheritance. So a lot of these things have very big ramifications. And for women, this is a very positive move. But in terms of should women have a vote, most people were not arguing that, but a few people were. And some women organize themselves into clubs and things, political clubs, and they start having a voice and they start at least to argue these things.
- [46:10]
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- [46:39]
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- [47:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
When we get into the October days, we start to see ordinary women taking on a political role essentially in the revolution, don't we?
- [47:15]
Professor Marissa Linton
The October days. So over the 4th to 5th of October, 1789, this is when a group of women within Paris, mostly market women, women who come and sell their goods in the markets, and ordinary, very ordinary women, humble women in terms of their social status within Paris, they take things into their own hands, is a huge moment. In a sense, there is a kind of traditional basis to it, in that women were traditionally in the forefront of food riots in their role as women mothers, providers of the family. And the authorities had always been reluctant to arrest women because they were women. So there's a kind of. There's a sort of traditional place for women in those situations to be at the forefront of a food riot and say, you know, we need to feed our families. You've got to do something about this. So it kind of that stirring that happens in Paris on 4 October, it comes partly out of that position, recognized position of women as economic actors when they're speaking on behalf of their families. But there's also a very political side to it, which is that rather than just protesting at the town hall, the Hotel de Ville, they say, right we're going to Versailles where the King is. We're going to sort the King out. And wow, this is totally unprecedented. And a group of about 1200 women march on Versailles to speak to the King. And it's about 12 miles, you know, it's a big deal. But they go. And at first, they won't let men go with them. They said, this is a women's thing. We're doing this. We don't want you men involved. And the King meets a deputation of them. He must have been so bewildered by what was happening. It's just like nothing adept happened before. But then the whole situation escalates. That night, the National Guard, newly formed militia, comes up to Versailles, led by Lafayette. So the chaps get involved. There are weapons increasingly involved. And during that night, somehow people get into the palace of Versailles, somehow. Still not sure quite how they got there, because how did they know who left the door open? Why don't leave a door open? How did they know where to go? Well, they went straight to, not the king's bedroom, the queen's bedroom, the bedroom of Marie Antoinette. Many people hated the Queen and they saw her as being the author of all their troubles. And a group of people, many of them women, not just women, went to the queen's bedroom. She got out just in time, realizing they were coming. She got to the king's bedroom by a back route and took refuge with the king, or they probably would have killed her if they'd caught her. And they killed a couple of her bodyguards outside her door defending it. It was a huge, huge moment. And in the face of that, in the face of the threat, the very big, very real threat to his family, the king capitulates altogether. The next morning, he comes out on a balcony at Versailles, at the palace, overlooking this huge crowd by this time that has assembled, and the crowd says that you have to come to Paris. You have to be with us in Paris where we can keep an eye on you. And they insist on Marie Antoinette coming out on her own, because at first she's terrified. Not surprising. She goes out holding the hands of her children, with her children as a mother, so seeking refuge in that position. And the crowd shouts, not the children. Send the children in. She sends the children in. She comes out again alone and kind of applauds the people. And they seem to accept that. But they say that the King has to come with them to Paris. And the king capitulates. Now, he could have fled. He could have. He knew that they did have some warning that these People were coming, that the women were coming. But he. He kind of vacillated again, as Louis was wont to do, and stood his ground. And then it becomes too late. And then he kind of can't do anything, really, because there are so many people amassed against him by that point, that he agrees to go to Paris. And they go, the king, the queen, the children, the whole royal court, all their guards, all the nobles are congregated at Versailles, and the entire national assembly that has been there, all 1200 of them. So they all go. They all go back to Paris, and people are thrilled and they're on the streets and isn't this wonderful? And the king is with us, and this is going to be great. It's a huge moment of possibility, seems to open up for people in Paris who are so excited by this, for the king personally and the queen. It was a devastating moment. Devastating because they were losing everything in which they believed. I mean, ironically, the king and Marie Antoinette blamed Lafayette, a marquis, you know, who's one of their own, as it were, more than anyone, because he was like them. He was an elite noble. He was their kind. He'd been at the court. They thought that such people had been stirring up the rabble, the populace. But Lafayette didn't make the women march on Versailles. It was the women who did that. And it was. Yeah, it becomes an enormous moment.
- [52:34]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And from that year onwards, from 1789 and through to 1791, many revolutionaries are hoping that France could become a constitutional monarchy similar to Britain. Why do you think did the constitutional monarchy prove so unstable almost from the start?
- [52:54]
Professor Marissa Linton
Yeah, a lot of the revolutionaries, they thought, yeah, we'll have something like Britain, or actually, to be honest with you, something better than Britain. Because they saw the British Parliament as corruption, corrupt in a smaller way, peopled by cronies. And the other thing about the British Parliament is that it had two chambers. That is, the nobles and bishops were in a separate chamber, the House of Lords. The French make a decision quite early on. There will be only one chamber. They won't have a privileged chamber. And of course, we still have that privileged chamber in. Well, in an attenuated form. We still have that today. They got rid of that. They only had one body, which was the National Assembly. They debated intensely over what to do about the king, because he's gone in a few dizzying months from being an absolute monarch to being a constitutional monarch. What kind of powers will he retain? They let him. After much debate and contestation, they say that he can keep a power of a suspensive veto. That is, he can turn down legislation that he doesn't like for some period of time, period of years, but not indefinitely, and he no longer makes laws. So he's lost a huge amount of power, but he's got some power left. That's quite a fraught situation. Another fraught situation that makes the constitutional monarchy unstable is what they do about the Church, because France is still bankrupt, the French state is still bankrupt. After all this, they still have to find a way of funding the business of running the state. And one way in which they choose to do that is by nationalizing Church property. That's a big one. That's a very contentious decision which has enormous ramifications. And it starts a process whereby the Catholic Church, or certainly the leaders of the Catholic Church, turn against the revolution. This becomes very, very divisive. And the revolutionaries respond to that increasing tension by, when they formulate the constitution, they insist that the clergy of France should swear an oath of loyalty to that constitution. They're effectively making Catholic priests choose between their loyalty to the Pope and their loyalty to the new French revolutionary state. Many of those clergy will not choose to support the revolution over the Pope, of course. I mean, as you would expect. I mean, half, more than half, won't do that. That becomes incredibly contentious. France has more and more emigre people who will not accept the revolution. And the King, who's very troubled by all of this, eventually running ahead a bit, but he eventually imposes his power of veto to not accept laws that are detrimental to the emigre and to the clergy. Nobility has been abolished. And nobility, that's June 1790. They get rid of. They get rid of it. Isn't that amazing? And we still have nobility in the UK today. They got rid of it. June 1790. Hugely revolutionary. But this whole question about what to do about the emigre becomes huge. And so the emigre outside France's borders, particularly within the Austrian Empire, are pushing for a military engagement to reimpose an absolute monarchy within France by force. This becomes a very moot point. And In June of 1791, the King and the Queen take a very fateful decision to flee Paris. All that time, from 89 to 91, they've been under the watchful eye of the people of Paris. But they. They decide to flee in what becomes known as the Flight to Varennes. For the monarchy, it is a disaster because they're intercepted near the Austrian border at Varennes. They are brought back in disgrace and the King has been seen to Side against his own people, to side against the revolution. It's just. It's a moot point. And for many revolutionaries who had accepted a constitutional monarchy with a monarch, it now becomes a real matter of choice. How can you have a constitutional monarchy when the monarch does not want to play ball? As one of the revolutionaries said, we always wanted him. He never wanted us. And so by fleeing to Varennes, he, presumably to Austria, he has exposed the fact that he is not siding with his own people. And from there, it becomes a slippery slope. The more moderate revolutionaries, led by Lafayette, they reinstate the king. They put out this fiction to say he was kidnapped from the palace of Versailles. We don't know how that happened. During the middle of the night, he was kidnapped by forces. I know nobody believes that story, and that's not. Yeah, how could that have happened? But they put out this fiction. They repress violently any attempt to call for the overthrow of the monarchy, for the King to abdicate. And from then on, really a path stage is set for another revolution, which is in fact what happens in August of 1792.
- [58:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, that sounds like we need another episode to cover that. So I wonder, Professor, Mr. Linton, whether you can come back and talk to me about that next revolution and about Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.
- [58:18]
Professor Marissa Linton
I would love to come back and talk about. About that. Yes. So much to say about that. Yeah. So many misconceptions, so many exciting things happening. So, yeah, I'd love to. Thank you, Suzanne.
- [58:27]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Wonderful. Okay, so join us again, folks, to hear how the revolution entered a new phase. But thank you for today, Professor Marissa Linton.
- [58:36]
Professor Marissa Linton
Thank you.
- [58:41]
Narrator
Thank you, Professor Marissa Linton. And I've asked professional Professor Linton to come back next time as we ask how a movement born in the name of liberty came to embrace fear, suspicion and the guillotine. How did justice become vengeance? And how did ordinary people come to accept, even demand violence in the name of virtue? So I hope you'll join us to explore the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.
- [59:19]
Parent 1
Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?
- [59:22]
Parent 2
Really?
- [59:23]
Parent 1
At a playground?
- [59:24]
Professor Marissa Linton
Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.
- [59:27]
Parent 1
Wow, your search can really get that specific. Really? And you just put in your info and boom, cars in your budget.
- [59:33]
Professor Marissa Linton
Mom needs a second.
- [59:34]
Parent 1
Honey, you can really have it delivered. Really?
- [59:37]
Professor Marissa Linton
Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie.
- [59:40]
Parent 2
Mommy's buying a car.
- [59:42]
Carter's Advertiser
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Parent 1
I think your kid is walking up the slack, Kyle.
- [59:45]
Eight Sleep Advertiser
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- [59:46]
Parent 2
Really? Auto trader. Buy your car online. Really?
- [59:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What's going on?
- [59:49]
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