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2017-12-07
Do You Hear the People?: The Construction of
the People of the 1789 French Revolution
Dreistadt, Meredith
http://hdl.handle.net/10456/42902
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Do You Hear the People?
The Construction of the People of the 1789 French Revolution
By
MEREDITH C. DREISTADT
Communication Arts and History 610*02 Senior Comprehensive Project
Allegheny College
Fall 2016
Do You Hear the People?:
The Construction of the People of the 1789 French Revolution
By
MEREDITH C. DREISTADT
Submitted to the Departments of Communication Arts and Theatre and History in partial
fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
I hereby recognize and pledge to fulfill my responsibilities, as defined in the Honor Code,
and to maintain the integrity of both myself and the College as a whole.
_______________________________________
(Student Signature)
Approved by:
_______________________________
Professor Jon Wiebel
_______________________________
Professor Barry Shapiro
_______________________________
Professor Mark Cosdon
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Professor Jon Wiebel for putting in the extra time and effort with me and being my
own personal pep leader throughout this whole process. Most importantly, thank you for
teaching me interpellation and orientation to action through Ants.
Thanks to Professor Barry Shapiro for lending me both your endless knowledge and literature on
the French Revolution. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every one of my classes with you, not least
because of our shared enjoyment of Rousseau.
Thanks to my parents, Trill and Steve Dreistadt, without whom I would not have had the
aspiration to attend college much less write a paper such as this without both of you always
encouraging me to dream and think bigger. Thank you for always giving me the best in life and
for sitting through hundreds of hours of horse shows and plays for me.
Thanks to my grandmother, Kathy Spafford, a true role model of mine through and through. The
toughest, most caring and honest person I have ever known.
Thanks to my brother, Troy, for being beside me always, literally and figuratively.
Thanks to my dearest friends here at Allegheny. You all make my time here extremely fulfilling
and meaningful.
Thanks to Sandy Everett and all of my Playshop friends for letting me blow off steam by
working with my hands and laughing at my jokes for the past few years.
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………….……....1
Context Chapter…………………………………………………………………………..….5
The Enlightenment in 18th Century France……………….……………………….....7
Cultural Turbulence Leading into the French Revolution…………………………..13
Literature Review and Theory………………………………………………………………17
Literature Review…………………………………………………………………...17
Theory……………………………………………………………………………….22
Analysis……………………………………………………………………………………...30
Orientation to Action: Redemption of Ancestors……………………………………40
Secular Religion……………………………………………………………………...41
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………47
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….50
1
Introduction
Having always had a fascination with history, in spring of my freshman year at
Allegheny, I took Professor Shapiro’s course, History of Modern France, 1789-present, and I
found my interest in French Revolutionary history, one that was more analytical and scholarly
than any studying of the subject I had completed in high school. In Professor Shapiro’s class, I
was able to focus on the details of the Revolution and subsequent events which interested me.
The primary texts we analyzed were loaded with propagandized revolutionary rhetoric which led
me to a curiosity in the meaning behind language which often helped drive such dramatic and
powerful actions like those of the Revolution of 1789. In Professor Bailey’s classes,
Fundamentals of Rhetoric and Public Communication and her Textual Analysis class, I was able
to learn to better close read and focus on the meaning of texts’ rhetoric and, specifically look at
Kenneth Burke’s study of symbols and the symbolic action of language. Through these two
interests, it seemed natural to compose my senior project around both, thus I decided to pursue
one of the more interesting revolutionary phrases, “the people” which presented itself as an
interesting challenge: write a thesis paper on two seemingly innocuous words.
Throughout the process of writing this senior project, I’ve answered the age-old question
that any comping senior is asked numerous times every week: ‘what are you comping on?’ To
which I reply with my ideas, followed usually by a pair of glazed-over eyes from the questioner
amidst the second sentence of my explanation. The reaction is understandable. Why does it
matter why the French People decided to revolt when the implications of their revolt seem so
much more important and worthy of study?
In terms of this project, studying the construction of a revolutionary movement, one that
calls individuals to set aside their own rights or agendas to follow the crowd and is successful in
2
its organization through its development is an important beast to study. Examining texts to
discover how social action that changed an entire nation was composed and enacted is valuable
for comparison in today’s society in which change is consistently preached come every new
election, every new bill passed, every new amendment made. Understanding the development of
the need for change and then pursuing that change on a large scale is vital to understanding
social action. Enacting chaos in the norms of social and political structures in order to pursue
sounder structures for the whole of the country is the purpose of such movements as the French
Revolution.
The People is an important collective to study because it was the foundation of the
movement. Though imagined by elites such as Rousseau, Marat, Sieyès, and Robespierre, French
Revolution was physically enacted by the individuals of the Third Estate, all of whom occupied
the lowest class in society. These people, largely peaceful, hardworking, and industrious, were
by no means prone to revolution. Religion had taught them that they were placed in the lowest
tier by God himself, and thus throughout the medieval era and decades following, individuals did
not attempt social mobility of any kind.
Upon the arrival of the Enlightenment era and the weakening of religion caused by the
new era recognized by hard facts, science, and progress, advocates for change began to dispense
to the lower classes ideas of themselves being oppressed and losing out on rights that ought to be
guaranteed to all people. As the political cartoon Reveil du Tiers Etat on the cover of this booklet
shows, those of the Third Estate wished to remove their shackles and take their rights from the
First and Second Estates. However, to create change, individuals could not simply revolt on their
own for varying personal causes, therefore, the advocates gave them the narrative of the People,
3
through which they governed who acted and on what behalf in order to create unity within the
movement.
That construction is the object of this study, a construction that is seen throughout time,
of advocates creating an identity that is accepted and then acted upon. Examples include the
American elites forming the American Revolutionaries during the Revolutionary War, Hitler and
Nazism constructing the Third Reich and the volksgemeinschaft, Fidel Castro and his members
of “the Movement” of the Cuban Revolution, and countless others. Today, in a turbulent
sociopolitical landscape, uniting individuals under certain political figureheads who promise
social, economic, or political change by drawing out personal fears and legitimizing them in
campaigns creates movements which ultimately lead to collectivization under a candidate. These
practices are visible throughout time and by studying them, one can learn how any why
individuals are motivated to identify with a specific movement, thus truly understanding the
movement from its core: those involved.
This project follows the standard three-chapter approach for Communication Arts comps.
The first chapter encompasses the context of the individuals who were ultimately called into
being the People. Largely covering the history of these people, this chapter reflects the history
part of this Communication Arts and History-based senior project. Outlining major changes in
social and political thinking, this historical chapter begins with the Enlightenment, a major
influence to the Revolution, and later follows the turbulence of pre-revolutionary France as
society and government were fractured by new ideas.
Chapter two, focusing on the bones of the project, the literature and theory I used
throughout my paper is addressed, compiling all that I have studied to inform my own thesis and
ideas. Ties between this chapter and my final chapter are very strong as I reference it often. My
4
final chapter, the analysis of all of my studying of history and texts delves into my ultimate
thesis: individuals molded into the People of the French Revolution by advocates such as Marat,
Sieyès, and the National Assembly of 1789 orienting them towards collectivism and action
through the political myth of the “oppressed other” that needs the movement that is the People in
order for individuals to gain their personal rights within French society. The action of becoming
the People goes through Michael Calvin McGee’s four stages of collectivization found in his
essay “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative”, organizing this last chapter by each
step to understand how this collective was designed by the advocates. Maurice Charland’s
“Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois” also informed this study by
emphasizing the interpellation, or the hailing of individuals into a certain identity that constructs
a collective into a particular movement. In the case of the People, the advocates’ construction
created an identity of oppression and social injustice to individuals, thus the People were
informed to act in a collective manner to gain strength as a movement that could topple society
and restructure a new government and society. Through such rhetoric, the People came to
fruition in France, dismantling the establishment and forever altering society by fighting for
human rights.
5
Chapter 1: Context
In determining what began the French Revolution of 1789, one is immediately compelled
to suggest that perhaps the American Revolution just years before ignited a revolutionary spirit
in Europe, or that the loss of money from that endeavor and the terrible economy that followed
was to blame, or even that the people of France wanted to be autonomous for the first time.
Certainly, these points have their own validity to the account of the Revolution. However, to best
understand the origins of the revolutionary movement, one must examine the collective entity
that was the People that was called to being by the rhetoric of the Enlightenment. The People that
emerged out of the rhetoric and the actions thereafter argues for itself that an assortment of
nuanced enlightened ideologies, influenced emotions, eventually, firm beliefs were the pistons of
the French Revolution. Naturally, an event like the French Revolution cannot spring up in an
evening or even a year, therefore, the “seeds of collectivism”1 were sewn far before “révolution”
was ever uttered in Paris. The action and rhetoric constructed after such seeds were sewn,
therefore, were the manifestation of this pre- and early revolutionary collective rhetoric and must
be examined in its own right to understand the entire process. The rhetoric that snowballs over
time and grows from mere thought into something truly destructive begins with the rhetoric that
was most easily and widely spread: literature.
French Revolutionary scholar Daniel Mornet’s classic, Les Origines intellectuelles de la
Révolution française (The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution) 1715-1787 concludes
that the Enlightenment had a large hand in prompting the revolt of the French people in 1789.
“Political causes would doubtless not have been sufficient to determine the Revolution, at least
1
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 243.
6
not rapidly. It was intelligence that drew out and organized its consequences.”2 The
“intelligence” or the logic of the Enlightenment derived from the socio-political ideologies that
surfaced beginning with René Descartes’s belief in rationalism in the early 17th century and
stretching into modern belief and practice.
Widespread beliefs in freedom of speech and press, reason and rationality over faith,
division of governmental power (or more specifically, belief in constitutional government),
scientific learning and progress, separation of church and state, individuality, and basic human
rights for were all foundational beliefs of the Enlightenment. Evidence of these ideas’ influence
could be found in multitude throughout the Revolution. For example, in June of 1789, the Tennis
Court Oath was taken by those who represented the masses in the Estates-General, the Third
Estate. This oath promised that these first revolutionaries would not break apart until King Louis
XVI became a constitutional monarch. In outlining enlightened politics such as this, Peter Gay
wrote in his book, The Enlightenment: the Science of Freedom:
“Enlightened politics is modern liberal politics, and such politics requires forums for the
debate and formulation of policies, some degree of responsibility of governors to the
governed, some measure of participation by the governed in the government, unofficial
channels for the generation of opinion and for its translation into policies….”3
By the revolt of a newly formed Estates-General which was reorganized for the first time since
1614 to provide input to the monarchy which allowed for such “formulation of policies,”
responsibility to those governed, and political participation, the connection of pre-Revolutionary
politics to Enlightened politics is unambiguous and undeniable.
2
As cited in Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 1991), 3.
3
Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Science of Freedom (New York and London: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1969), 450.
7
Dozens of other incidents such as the storming of the Bastille by the masses, the forcible
removal of Louis and Marie Antoinette from Versailles to Paris by the masses, and the
convening of the National Assembly all encompassed not only revolutionary ideals, but those
Enlightenment ideals that informed such actions. Therefore, it is important when studying the
construction of any element of the French Revolution to also ensure full understanding of the
Enlightenment so as to connect such ideas in a more precise manner.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN 18TH CENTURY FRANCE
Enlightenment thinking was formed through earlier work of such philosophers as René
Descartes, Francis Bacon, and John Locke, all of whom contributed to ideas of epistemology and
human liberty through different pathways of explanation. Their ideas laid the foundation for
what was to come as 18th century thinkers Voltaire and Rousseau constructed ideologies which
fashioned the basic structure of the Enlightenment as it would come to be known.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire, was
the first widely published and highly celebrated Enlightenment thinker of 18th century France.
His initial radical writings landed him in prison more than once, however, as he aged and
matured, so too did his published ideologies. His success was determined by these middleground ideologies that advocated for Enlightened Absolutism, a somewhat contradictory, yet
necessary form of enlightened thought in the scheme of introducing the philosophical
Enlightenment.
8
Absolutism, meaning “the king derived his power from God and could exercise it without
other constituted bodies having the right to challenge him,” 4 therefore directly contradicted any
kind of enlightened government, rendering Voltaire’s argument of Louis’s reign as being
Enlightened Absolutism rather inconsistent. However, Voltaire argued that though monarchy
couldn’t truly be enlightened (for it would then cease to be a monarchy), it could adopt certain
practices that made it much more agreeable to its people.
Voltaire looked to Louis XVI as an enlightened Absolute monarch, and indeed compared
to his forefathers he was rather enlightened. As mentioned previously, Louis was the first King
of France since 1614 to allow for an Estates-General to have a say in government, a move he
knew would dilute his power, but bring him greater acceptance from the enlightened French
people.
In his praising the monarchy, Voltaire’s public advocacy of Enlightenment ideals was
able to be consumed in a legitimate form of writing to the French public as backed by the king.
Had he continued to criticize the monarchy as he had in his younger years, Voltaire might not
have gained such a following, nor would he have primed the public for the increasingly more
radical ideas that developed during the Enlightenment.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as an Enlightenment philosophe was interested in
pure democracy and the liberties one gains from such a government. Rousseau’s pure democracy
in theory found in his Social Contract comprised of a small government in a small community
(the only way in which pure democracy could be legitimately executed) allowing for the “yoke”
of oppressive society to break apart and become more peaceful, more prosperous, more
4
William Beik, Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
2000), 1.
9
compassionate and human, and ultimately more equal. 5 A product of his own scattered
upbringing, Rousseau always longed for a sense of place for himself. His mother had died just
days after his birth6 and his father, a watchmaker in Geneva, was absent largely in Rousseau’s
childhood. He had fled Geneva so as not to be imprisoned for fighting a Captain with whom he
quarreled.7
Raised by an uncle for most of his childhood, Rousseau eventually found his way back to
his father at age twelve, only to run away at the age of sixteen and become a wanderer for nearly
a decade and a half.8 This somewhat nomadic life led to his living in Paris at age thirty where he
met Diderot and was immersed in Enlightenment culture and thought.9 He was, however, not as
swayed by all of the Enlightenment’s ideologies. He was indeed interested in pursuing freedom
and equality for all citizens of France, however, he also was a very romantic enlightened thinker
in that he wanted desperately for a closeness that he felt was missing from modern society. This
likely stemmed from his lonesome youth during which he was without a definitive home.
Rousseau chastised the idea of progress as he believed that it was the basis of the lack of
community in society. In his first major essay that gave him his first boost to fame Discourse on
the Sciences and the Arts, Rousseau addressed an essay question posed by the Academy of Dijon
in 1749: whether the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to the purification of
mores.10 Rousseau, being a romantic in terms of progress, argued that mores were corrupted
5
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, second edition, trans. Donald A. Cress
(Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2011), Discourse on Inequality, 54-67.
6
Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part X: Rousseau and Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1967), 5.
7
Ibid, 6.
8
Ibid, 7-15.
9
Ibid, 15.
10
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, ed. 2, “Discourse on the Science and the Arts,” trans. Donald
A. Cress (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 3.
10
from the sciences and the arts (more aptly called progress and philosophy). He argued that
humans are born naturally good, but through our knowledge and greed imparted into us by
society, we become evil. “That is how luxury, dissolution, and slavery have at all times been the
punishment for the arrogant efforts that we have made to leave the happy ignorance where
eternal wisdom had placed us…. Men are perverse; they would be even worse if they had had the
misfortune of being born learned.”11
In later texts, Rousseau explored this idea further, connecting also a lack of equality and
freedom to humans’ unbreakable tethers to institutionalized society. Within the “simplicity and
uniformity of animal and savage life, where all nourish themselves from the same foods, live in
the same manner, and do exactly the same things, it will be understood how much less the
difference between one man and another must be in the state of nature than in that of society, and
how much natural inequality must increase in the human species through inequality occasioned
by social institutions.”12 Pursuing enlightened ideologies such as equality, merit-based
appointment to positions of authority, and democracy, Rousseau’s ideologies quite often struck a
chord with revolutionaries.
His ideas often swung in and out of favor among those in elite society. Some were unsure
that Rousseau himself believed these ideas, suggesting that perhaps his essay was written tonguein-cheek. Others like Diderot and members of the court believed that Rousseau did a great
service in unearthing the ugly aspects of a society ruled by elites and philosophers,
11
Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Science and the Arts,” in The Basic Political Writings, ed. 2, trans.
Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 13.
12
Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men,” in The Basic
Political Writings, ed. 2, trans. Donald A. Cress, (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011),
67.
11
respectively.13 Many critics defended civilization, writing seventy-five reviews and critiques
being published within three years of the publishing of his first Discourse.14 Many others
advocated for Rousseau’s argument, largely those who supported a return to the Church and
withdrawal from toxic, sinful modernity.15
Where Rousseau picked up the most loyal following was from the Grub Street writers of
Pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary France. Mallet Du Pan, an anti-revolutionary journalist in
Paris wrote this about Rousseau’s writings:
“Rousseau has a hundred times more readers among the middle and lower classes than
Voltaire. He alone inoculated the French with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the
people…. It would be difficult to cite a single revolutionist who was not transported over
these anarchical theories, and who did not burn with ardor to realize them…. I heard
Marat in 1788 read and comment on the Contrat social in the public streets to the
applause of an enthusiastic auditory.”16
Unlike Voltaire, Rousseau was also seen by those in the literary underground as “one of their
own.”17 In the eyes of the illegal literature peddlers, Rousseau had risen from their own position
of lowly street writers to one of prominence in an underdog fashion. He had seen the dangers of
the elites and exposed their social corruption through his writings, eventually retiring to an
average neighborhood in France with a lower-class wife to live as a purified man.18
This narrative of Rousseau as a friend of the lower classes led his works to be more
popularly distributed and therefore, his ideas more largely accepted by those lower class, the
13
Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part X: Rousseau and Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1967), 22-23.
14
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, ed. 2, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis/Cambridge:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 2.
15
Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part X: Rousseau and Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1967), 23.
16
Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part X: Rousseau and Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1967), 891.
17
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 35.
18
Ibid, 36.
12
class he glorified in his own writings. In his quote, Du Pan even suggests that those who perhaps
could not read or weren’t interested in attempting to grapple with his more dense philosophies
were being read to in the streets as a means to spread his word to a larger audience.
Two major ideas sparked an interest in Rousseau by Grub Street. The first was the idea of
authenticity in terms of morality of self. In his Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau argued that
society had forced man to become unauthentic and artificial instead of his true self in order to
gain certain advantages over other men.19 This artificiality spun by greed was seen by Grub
Street as trademarks of elite philosophes and those who “had taken over the egalitarian “republic
of letters” and made it into a “despotism.”20 “They showed that social rot was consuming French
society, eating its way downwards from the top.”21
Secondly, Rousseau pursued ideas of sovereignty that likewise interested Grub Streeters.
In his Social Contract, Rousseau wrote “since sovereignty is merely the exercise of the general
will, it can never be alienated, and that the sovereign, which is only a collective being, cannot be
represented by anything but itself.”22 In defining general will, he argued that “by its nature the
private will tends toward giving advantages to some and not to others, and the general will tends
toward equality.”23 In arguing that the people, those that construct the general will, can
consistently be depended on only when they are formed into a collective entity to act on the
19
Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men,” in The Basic
Political Writings, ed. 2, trans. Donald A. Cress, (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011),
77.
20
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 21.
21
Ibid, 35.
22
Jean Jacques Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” in The Basic Political Writings, ed. 2, trans. Donald A. Cress
(Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 170.
23
Ibid, 170.
13
benefit of society as a whole, Rousseau informed the very foundation of the revolutionary
people’s creed.
Given how common it was to find Rousseau’s philosophies mushrooming up in the
streets, those members of “Grub Street,” saw fit to expand, as others had, on their interpretations
of Rousseau’s work, accurate or otherwise. This volatile literary pit of young people declared
their own un-famousness to write illegal, penetratingly analytical, and sometimes pornographic
literature that attempted to tear away the injustice in the society they saw, all while avoiding jail.
Some, such as Jean-Paul Marat would grow out of their street literature days and trade soap box
for pen by stepping into the world of popular journalism. Still, Marat would be on the watch list
of the monarchy’s spies eight years before the Revolution:
“MARAT: bold charlatan. M. Vicq d’Azir asks, in the name of the Societe Royale de
Medecine, that he be run out of Paris. He is from Neuchatel in Switzerland. Many sick
persons have died in his hands, but he has a doctor’s degree, which was bought for
him.”24
Other Grub Street writers such as the vulgar Charles Théveneau will only be remembered for
their brash writings during their youth in Pre-Revolutionary France. However, their boldness still
had its place in the French Revolution as did philosophers, novelists, pamphleteers, and speakers
who invested their energies into inciting action in their fellow French people.
CULTURAL TURBULENCE LEADING INTO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Alongside of building these nuanced enlightened ideologies, there were changes in
French culture that were so perfectly timed so as to create a unyielding chaos, not unlike that of a
cold and a warm front meeting. The turbulence largely stemmed from a current of
24
As cited in Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
London, England: Harvard University Press, 1982), 26.
14
dechristianization that spread throughout 18th century France. Cultural and social French
historian Roger Chartier found evidence of this departure from the Church to be unmistakable in
three major changes in wills left behind in the 18th century. Differing from the 17th century’s
Catholic Reformation, “first, the sums that testators left to fund masses for the repose of their
souls decreased; next, there was wide-spread indifference toward the place of burial that received
the mortal remains; finally, even requests for masses for the reduction of mitigation of the trials
of purgatory ceased.”25 This wave of dechristianization spread outward from the urban cultural
centers into rural areas as the 18th century progressed. Alphonse Aulard, the first professional
French Revolutionary historian, claimed that the French lost faith in the Catholic Church of their
own volition: “This incredulity was not the work of philosophers – it was this incredulity which
incited the philosophers to write thus against religion ; of course they did so with pleasure and
sincerity, but their daring would have been less had they not addressed themselves to such a
stimulating and appreciative gallery.”26
What is important about this cultural shift is that through a loss of Christian faith in
France, the people concurrently lost faith in the monarchy. France, like most European states,
was ruled by a monarch who had divine right. A religious and cultural belief that can be found in
texts as old as the Bible itself, the Bourbon monarchy’s divine rule consisted of a member of the
Bourbon line who, through ties to the Catholic Church, created an image of divinity for himself.
This image was one that was perpetuated throughout the line of monarchs as each new king was
immersed in the same tradition. The coronation of the monarch is perhaps the best example of
this enduring connection the French monarchy had with the Catholic Church. A member of the
25
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 1991), 96.
26
Alphonse Aulard, Christianity and the French Revolution, trans. Lady Frazer (New York: Howard Fertig, 1966), 32.
15
monarchical line to be crowned king would religiously travel to the French city of Reims as all
monarchs had for thousands of years. Then, a lavish ceremony that would be presided over by an
archbishop would take place, solidifying the union of church and state.
By ensuring that the people who largely believed in the Church believed unequivocally
that their monarch was equally as divine, the king had no reason to fear any kind of major
backlash thanks to the perceived consequences that God would administer to any insurgents.
However, when that belief became less fervent and prevalent, King Louis XVI who already had
a weak personality27 was stumped on how to fix his lack of legitimacy. He, therefore, turned to
what the People wished of him, which was a more enlightened monarch.28 This unfortunately for
him, weakened his already unstable control as he allowed for indecision to be his ultimate
downfall.29 He tottered between doing what was right for his state and for his people until his
lack of leadership unleashed chaos from his starving, angry, enlightened people.
As mentioned early in this chapter, France’s involvement during the American
Revolution was something of a disaster on the French economy. France sent money over to aid
the American revolutionaries more than they sent men, more than weapons, and more than
tacticians. The idea behind aiding the Americans was not as dependent on American freedom as
it was on regaining some of the colonized land they had lost to Britain in the 7 Year’s war just
years earlier. Indeed their help did have a positive influence on the American Revolution,
however they gained little land back, mainly racking up debt that would ultimately contribute to
the economic crisis that was created from food shortages in years to come.
27
Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard
University Press, 2003), 26-28.
28
Ibid, 30.
29
Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard
University Press, 2003), 34.
16
In what were some of the worst years in terms of food shortages and economic crisis, the
1780s were bombarded with plunging wine market from banner crops in the late 1770s paired
with grape shortages in the 1780s was the mark of the first economic crisis in food. Followed by
falling grain prices and a drought in 1785 that killed off a large portion of livestock. The famine
that was to follow in 1788 led to bread prices skyrocketing beyond what the average French
people could afford.30 Louis’s hands were too full in trying to organize his government as it
began to establish itself as a sovereign entity without his consent to concern himself with bread
prices rising.
The origins of the French Revolution are not as simple as these facts imply. Indeed,
Christianity was dwindling, the economy was terrible, and Louis was losing control over his
government. Those facts will always remain in history books at the very surface of the
Revolution and they are without a doubt extremely important facts that give understanding to the
hows and whys of the Revolution. However, what is changing still is the way that we as
historians understand how the French people thought just before and during the Revolution of
1789. The first part of this chapter highlights the main focus of this comprehensive project, that
the construction of the People as an entity of its own is influenced by rhetoric that is
disillusioned with its own state of being ruled, contradictory to itself, and sometimes crass in its
presentation of ideologies. This influence is the core of this project.
30
Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution from its Origins to 1793, trans. Elizabeth Moss Evanson (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 116-117.
17
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theory
LITERATURE REVIEW
In understanding the fundamental influences at work that created the French
Revolutionary movement and began to call to being a People, esteemed French literary critic and
intellectual historian31 Daniel Mornet’s (1878-1954) The Intellectual Origins of the French
Revolution is rather definitive. Throughout his essay, Mornet uses a series of texts that the
general populace of France likely would have had contact with to defend his ideas. He also
argues that the most precise way to understand the origins of the revolutionaries in 1789 France
is to commit one’s studying of texts and social action to be solely within the context of the time
period in which they were produced.32 He contends that without such contextual studying, the
meaning in these texts is lost and invalid in one’s argument as demonstrated by his criticism of
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine’s Ancien régime.33 His thesis, however, in this piece is summed up in
one line: “All France was beginning to think.”34
Mornet does not necessarily believe that Enlightenment intellectualism or the philosophes
in any sense created the revolutionary spirit or incited revolution whatsoever, instead he argues
that the ideas deriving from them “shaped” the way the Revolution played out in eighteenth
century France: “Yet philosophy did play a very definite role. It taught neither revolution, nor
democracy. But it transformed men’s minds; it made them lose the habit of respect for tradition;
31
William F. Church, The Influence of the Enlightenment on the French Revolution, second edition (Toronto: D. C.
Health and Company, 1974), 109.
32
Daniel Mornet, “The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution,” in The Influence of the Enlightenment on the
French Revolution, second edition, ed. William F. Church, (Toronto: D. C. Health and Company, 1974), 116.
33
Ibid, 114-118.
34
Ibid, 119.
18
it made them apt to reflect upon revolution and democracy.”35 The consequence of this loss of
respect for tradition was most importantly that there was a loss of respect for the monarchy
prompted by weakening of faith in the Catholic Church. Despite popular discontentment with the
church’s policies, deemed “fanaticism,” that allowed for the use of force to impose its doctrines
onto the people, the French government never denounced such actions within its own country
until 1787 with introduction of the Edict of Toleration. Thanks to such a dismissal of the values
of the majority of the people within France, the seams of monarchical control over the people
began their pulling apart. 36
From this anger towards the Church and state, those provoked “printed everything that
was in manuscript; and all that they printed was circulated if not freely and easily, at least widely
and practically without risks.”37 Mornet further argues that “these books did not “dechristianize”
France. But it is certain that they spread incredulity or at least indifference among the greater
part of the aristocracy, that this indifference extensively pervaded the clergy, and that it made
rapid strides among the middle class, the young people, and in the schools.”38
Mornet along with Robert Darnton (1939-present) argue that the spread of enlightened
ideologies was not such that the average peasant was reading Rousseau’s The Social Contract in
the provinces, but that those enlightened ideologies were integrated into the books, the
pamphlets, the placards, etc. that the people of France would have come in contact with in their
average lives.39 Darnton’s collection of his own essays entitled The Literary Underground of the
35
Daniel Mornet, “The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution,” in The Influence of the Enlightenment on the
French Revolution, second edition, ed. William F. Church, (Toronto: D. C. Health and Company, 1974), 112.
36
Ibid, 117.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Daniel Mornet, “The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution,” in The Influence of the Enlightenment on the
French Revolution, second edition, ed. William F. Church, (Toronto: D. C. Health and Company, 1974), 118, 121.;
19
Old Regime covers in his last essay a wide array of analysts and historians who have tried to
uncover what the eighteenth-century French were reading. He looks largely to Mornet’s
examination of over 500 collections of private libraries that were sold in auction between 1750
and 1780. While arguing that this study is not necessarily the best indication of what an average
French person read, it provided quantitative history of what genres of legal literature were filling
the shelves of private libraries.40
Mornet along with François Furet, Jean Meyer, François Bluche, and several others were
compiled by Darnton to fill into a graph which revealed that over time the reading of religious
literature decreased and the reading of “scientific” (science and the arts) writings likely increased
or may have remained the same.41 This hints at the increase in incredulity and indifference to the
Church that Mornet argued was one of the linchpins in the revolutionary spirit that later affected
the distrust of the French government. Ultimately, Darnton declares: “the fact remains that we
still do not know much about what eighteenth-century Frenchmen read.”42 He argues, however,
that while we may never know what the majority of French people read, there is potential in
analyzing the many different reading publics and cultures that he believes may exist with over
9,600,000 fitting into the literate public. Through careful analysis and application, Darnton
argues that these smaller, more specific surveys of literature can be valuable tools in any manner.
43
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 35-36.
40
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 177.
41
Ibid, 181.
42
Ibid, 182.
43
Ibid, 181.
20
In terms of the importance of literature and readership in eighteenth century France, John
Markoff (1972-present), a sociology Professor at University of Pittsburgh, presents in his essay,
“Literacy and Revolt,” his examination of the correlation between rural literacy in the late 1700s
and the actions taken (or not) by those who could or could not read. Like Mornet, Markoff
argues that peasants who could read— as indicated by their signature instead of a simple mark on
marriage certificates collected by the Ministry of Education44— were readers of simple prose,
unlikely to be reading the texts of philosophes. While Markoff argues that the Grub Street
literature was largely of no influence due to its ephemeral nature, he suggests that the literary
material they would have come in contact with more frequently still would have been able to
produce in their minds ideas of certain kinds of revolt.45 His findings indicate that literacy had
little to no consistent influence on whether or not those in rural France revolted.46 However,
Markoff’s analysis more importantly revealed that of those who did revolt, those who were
literate “produced social movements that pressed for change in critical social institutions instead
of for an immediate stopgap crisis.”47 The data shows that illiterate peasants were far more likely
to revolt against impulsive fears such as the Great Fear, or the widespread rural concern that
nonexistent armies of aristocrats, thieves, or foreign peoples were going to attack the peasantry,
thus causing riots and hoarding of weapons by those in the provinces. The literate, on the other
hand, were less likely to riot or attack,48 but when they did, they displayed “a more long-run
orientation to economic well-being in their greater tendency to discuss issues of agricultural and
industrial development. The literate regions are also more likely to address the structure of such
44
John Markoff, “Literacy and Revolt: Some Empirical Notes on 1789 in France,” American Journal of Sociology 92,
no. 2 (1986): 328.
45
Ibid, 326.
46
Ibid, 332.
47
Ibid, 335.
48
Ibid, 336.
21
social institutions as the government or the church.”49 Therefore, literacy played an important
role in the shaping of the revolutionaries and their ideologies thereby informing their actions.
In opposition to Mornet, Darnton, and Maroff, Roger Chartier’s (1945-present) The
Cultural Origins of the French Revolution suggests that, as one of his chapter titles implies,
books do not make revolutions. He argues that the Enlightenment indeed may have had its
influences, but largely, those who would have read illegal texts would not have been wholly
altered in their already existing views. He contends that “the images in the libels and the topical
pamphlets were not graven into the soft wax of readers’ minds, and reading did not necessarily
lead to belief.”50 He further contends that the way of reading was altered by time and cultural
change, that is, reading met its peak before the texts of the Enlightenment circulated. During this
time, books were “authoritative”51 and durable; people deeply respected the ideologies presented
in the books they read, so much so that they may have amended their own opinions of certain
matters on the basis of these few, enduring books. Chartier further argues that after the
Enlightenment, the power of the book diminished due to the increasing number of books
published and circulated throughout France, each presenting its own differing opinion. This
expanding base of reading materials then allowed for readers to criticize other texts they didn’t
agree with because of the ephemeralness of the books they read. In short, Chartier argues that not
only did illegal literature have no altering effect on the minds of the French, but that this new
approach to reading as a whole changed the reading of all texts to a critical, non-influential
practice.52
49
Ibid, 345.
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 1991), 83.
51
Ibid, 90.
52
Ibid, 91.
50
22
Throughout his book, Chartier suggests that it is far less important to understand whether
or not the revolution came from Enlightenment ideology, and far more important to understand
how the ideology of the People shifted allowing for a desire to tear down a government that had
been in place for hundreds of years. Essentially, analyzing “the conditions that made it possible
because it was conceivable.”53
THEORY
Keith Michael Baker’s collection of essays entitled Inventing the French Revolution
makes a series of claims about politics in pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary France. His
chapter, Representation redefined, Baker articulates who was in control of France at the time by
understanding “representation.” He uses Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy found in
Leviathan to unearth the meaning of representation in pre-Revolutionary France:
“”A multitude of men, are made one person, when they are by one man, or one person,
represented....” It is true that Hobbes maintains that the transformation of the many into
the one through the authorization of a “sovereign representative” is achieved by the
initial, but irrevocable, “consent of every one of that multitude in particular.” It is also
true that he allows for the possibility that this representative person might even be a
collective body rather than an individual.”54
Baker understands the monarch being the unanimously agreed upon representative of the people
through Hobbes’ logic in three ways. (1) The monarch is God’s vicegerent on earth, (2) he is the
physical embodiment of the state, and (3) the masses of France could only be made one through
the “unity of his person” with each member of society “upholding the sovereign magistrate at the
expense of his own.”
53
Ibid, 2.
Keith Michael Baker, “Representation redefined,” in Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on the French
Political culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 224-225.
54
23
Baker further argues that the monarch was the only true representative of the people.
Indeed, the Estates-General and the parlement of Paris assembled at the will of the monarch to
unite the Estates and enforce the king’s policies, respectively, thus they too were facets of the
monarchy’s reach and control, but they were not sovereign, therefore they were not truly
representative of the people.55
Hobbes’ idea of representation, as mentioned, is something that is both given by consent
from a people to its representative as well as “irrevocable” once a people has chosen to declare
its representative. Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues otherwise. In his On the Social Contract,
Rousseau contends that the general will of the people is that which is truly unites people into one
entity:
“… [T]his act of association,” or the individuals agreeing to unite, “produces an artificial
and collective body composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly,
which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life, and its will. This
public person, formed thus by union of all the others, formerly took the name city, and at
present takes the name republic or body politic, which is called state by its members
when it is passive, sovereign when it is active, power when compared to others like itself.
As for the associates, they collectively take the name people; individually they are called
citizens, insofar as they are participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects, insofar as
they are subjected to the laws of the state.”56
He further argues that a sovereign entity, one created for and by the “associates,” or the people,
always has its collective body in mind when enacting laws, taxes, justice, etc.
Indeed Rousseau contends that it is “impossible” for a body to harm any within it because
all initiatives taken by the sovereign should always be for the good of the people.57 Yet, a
monarch who is not elected to power, nor can realistically understand the desires of his collective
55
Ibid, 226-229.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ”On the Social Contract,” in The Basic Political Writings, second edition, trans. Donald A.
Cress (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 164-165.
57
Ibid, 166-167.
56
24
people— those who Rousseau glorifies as the ultimate good (Discourse on Inequality)— is
Rousseau’s preferred form of government, at least in terms of ruling a large country.58 Still
Rousseau argues that democracy can work in the case of a smaller government, allowing for a
pure form of democracy in which the people are entirely sovereign and make decisions as a
whole, only relying on government to execute laws and preserve civil and political liberty. This
kind of government is not the sovereign, but “merely the servant” of the sovereign people.59
Hobbes and Rousseau both understand the people as an entity that exists in the world
without the need of being called into existence; to them, the people is an extrarhetorical being
and as such, they do not examine the process of collectivism in the people. To Hobbes and
Rousseau, along with many other political philosophers before the 20th century, “the people” has
always existed outside of any rhetorical process. It is a unified entity that acts on its own terms
and is minimally, if at all, influenced by any kind of rhetorical text. Constitutive rhetoric, or the
rhetoric that influences the collectivism of a group of people, is a contemporary idea that Hobbes
and Rousseau would not have been knowledgeable about, therefore, we turn our attention to
modern studies of “the people.”
A more contemporary look at constitutive rhetoric, Michael Calvin McGee’s (1943-2002)
essay “In Search of ‘the People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” attempts to understand what a
collective “people” is comprised of, how it is constructed and dismantled, and in which ways it
functions in rhetoric. In defining “the people,” McGee reasons that one cannot look towards
rhetoric or historical documents deriving from individuals or, indeed, from a specific group
within a collective to gain a universal understanding of it, arguing against Plato’s use of elites in
58
59
Ibid, 201-206.
Ibid, 192.
25
his studies of a “people”.60 He thus defines the “people” through the rhetoric surrounding the
collective whole itself.
Beginning with the notion of the reality of “people,” McGee uses Hitler’s ideas found in
Mein Kampf, to understand the duality of the existence of a collective whole. Abandoning their
individuality, individuals become the “people” through their collective actions and ideas that are
suggested by a particular “advocate,” whether that advocate is a single person or a group.61
Similar to Hobbes’ idea of a leading man, the advocate is responsible to call a “people” into
action by, as Hitler describes, finding “an old longing” and reinvigorating it in the minds of the
“people” so that the ideas meant to be persuaded are familiar and commonplace enough to rally a
collective in favor of them. Therefore, the “people” aren’t truly real, as they are constructions of
the advocate’s own “political myth” imparted on a perceived reality, a collective “people.”62
Alternatively, the “people” does exist through a collective belief in a matter or an action
taken as a whole, physically personifying a movement. However, McGee argues that the people
are largely an illusion by the advocate as individuals must be continuously “seduced into
abandoning their individuality [and] convinced of their sociality.”63 From Hitler’s ideas about the
constitution of the “people,” McGee discovers that there is a process involved in the construction
of a collective body. He contends that there are four stages of this “collectivization process”:
(1) “The seeds of collectivization stay dormant in the… “total ideology” of a particular
culture,” (2) “From time to time, advocates organize dissociated ideological
commitments into incipient political myths, visions of the collective life dangled before
individuals in hope of creating a real “people,” (3) masses of persons begin to respond to
a myth, not only by exhibiting collective behavior, but also by publicly ratifying the
60
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 237-238.
61
Ibid, 240.
62
Ibid, 240-241.
63
Ibid, 242.
26
transaction wherein they give up control over their individual destinies for sake of a
dream,” and (4) the rhetoric decays and a “hostility toward collectivism” can arise.64
McGee argues that the political myth is the most inspiring part of this process, essentially
developing a “people.” These myths can arise from a “false consciousness” which attempts to
make “objective reality” more “comfortable” for the people who are living in it. Such “false
consciousnesses” can help ease a “people” into a sense of security during difficult times while
also encouraging them to embrace the change, thereby creating a powerful rhetoric towards a
specific unifying end. Thus these myths are not technically real, but they are extremely
functionally “real” within society. Without such myths, there would be no “people.”65
To the end of defining the “people,” McGee argues that these political myths can be
broken up into “stable” and “vital” myths. The former refers to myths that preexisted a “people,”
while the latter describes new myths that must be persuaded onto a “people.” McGee contends
that ““the people” are the social and political myths they accept.” 66 McGee hopes that those
analyzing historical documents will be able to truly uncover the convictions of “the people” in
history through looking at how they were constructed in historical context.67
In addition to McGee’s idea that “the people” are awoken to collectivism by persuasion
from an advocate, Maurice Charland argues in his essay, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the
Peuple Québécois,” that audiences must first be interpellated into a discursive position that
orients them toward action.68 To support this idea, Charland uses a case study, the Peuple
64
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 243.
65
Ibid, 244-245.
66
Ibid, 247.
67
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 249.
68
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech
73, No. 2 (May 1987): 133.
27
Québécois to demonstrate the calling of the Quebec people to support sovereignty for the
province from Canada in 1967.
In determining whether or not the “Québécois” were a legitimate political or social group
worthy of their own sovereignty, the Parti Québécois designed the formal White Papers that
declared the need for sovereignty on the basis of the oppression of the peuple Québécois. 45% of
the “Québécois” voted “OUI” for sovereignty. The vote was the result of a discrepancy between
those who identified strongly with the newly coined “Québécois” and those who still identified
as “Canadiens français.” Both terms aimed to describe the same people, those from Quebec who
spoke French, however, Charland points out that “there was a strong sense in which “Québécois”
was a term antithetical to “Canadien””69 thereby rejecting those who strongly identified
themselves as Canadian.
In understanding the “ideological trick”70 at play which resulted in nearly half of the
“Québécois” vote for sovereignty, there is a belief among the collective whole that they are
inherently different from Canadians in terms of language, history, and ideologies, therefore, it is
only logical to free them from the oppressive Canadian rule. To know one’s self as a
“Québécois,” one must first be interpellated, or hailed into a particular position like “Québécois,”
into such a discursive position, thus one knows of one’s own existence as a member of the
collective “Québécois.” That individual has then become aware of his or her place as such and
can be appealed to accordingly.71
69
Ibid, 135.
Ibid, 137.
71
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech
73, No. 2 (May 1987): 138.
70
28
Charland agrees with McGee in that narrative is often the force that drives a “people”
into action.72 Through three different ideological effects, the “Québécois” were created in the
White Papers. In the first ideological effect, historical narrative gives an explanation for
sovereignty in the White Papers that allows the “Québécois” to unite through identification with
a political myth, an illusion of “community” among the “Québécois” that seemingly doesn’t exist
outside of Quebec. It ensures the collectivism of the term “Québécois.”73 In the second effect, the
White Papers offer a link between the eighteenth century ancestors and the current residents of
Quebec to close the gap between history and present. Such rhetoric ensures the “Québécois” that
they are “transhistorical” subjects, that they must unite because they have always been united
throughout time. This understanding of history places the subjects center in identifying
themselves as such subjects as the “Québécois.” Meaning is created through this carefully
selected history in the White Papers to hit chords of identification with the “Québécois” so that it
invokes a sense of pride and honor in one’s decision to vote for or against sovereignty.74 The
third and last ideological effect asserts that the “Québécois” ought to be independent while also
rhetorically suggesting that the peuple must vote for sovereignty, thereby providing the illusion
of freedom.75
The identification with the constitutive rhetoric of the “Québécois” is powerful, Charland
argues, because the rhetorics “are oriented towards action.”76 It is the rhetorical recreation of
history that designs a new identification, one that is not simply historical, but again
72
Ibid.
Ibid, 140.
74
Ibid.
75
Ibid.
76
Ibid, 143.
73
29
transhistorical, that is, a rhetorically devised history that can both interpellate a subject and
orients that subject to then act in a particular manner.77
The ideas discussed here that attempt to identify a collective entity that is free from
individuals, as it is a being of its own creation and function. These works address the implicit use
of such ideas, allowing for an interpretation of each unto specifically historical texts. It is largely
through these mentioned scholars that I will address the idea of the “people” throughout the preRevolutionary and early Revolutionary France era, working to understand how the “people” was
formed into its own sovereign, collective body, what its function was, and how it then acted in
response to such interpellation.
77
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech
73, No. 2 (May 1987): 143.
30
Chapter 3: Analysis
In understanding the derivation of collectivized individuals who revolted during the
French Revolution in Paris of 1789, one must understand how this group identity was
constructed in terms of the constitutive rhetoric that surrounded and influenced its production. I
argue that the texts examined call individuals into a collective entity called the People by
interpellating them as the “oppressed other” that may only become a legitimate and equal
societal group through collectivization. Providing representative works of major “advocates”78 of
the People during pre-Revolutionary France, the texts this project analyzes by no means cover
the full scope of texts that surrounded individuals during the second half of the eighteenth
century. However, these voices were the most influential, most resonant of the early voices that
shaped the People and its revolutionary movement. Echoes of their words littered the streets for
the duration of the Revolution with their ideals being the cornerstones of revolutionary ideology
that was to follow.
These advocates consist of firstly Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793), the revolutionary
journalist who created and wrote for his popular newspaper L’Ami du Peuple from 1789 until his
assassination. Secondly, Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836) is examined, specifically
his widely-read 1789 pamphlet, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? or What is the Third Estate? in
which he publicly argues for the sovereignty of the People. Thirdly, the Nation Assembly’s
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which was posted across France after its
conception and adoption in August of 1789, less than a month and a half after the fall of the
Bastille. The ideas and arguments about constitutive rhetoric made by Michael Calvin McGee
78
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 240.
31
and Maurice Charland, as identified in the theory section of chapter two, will inform the analysis
of these texts.
ANALYSIS
Recalling from chapter two, McGee argues that the four steps of the “collectivization
process” occur in order to create the collective entity known as the People. The first of these
steps consists of the “seeds of collectivism” which exist in the form of “total ideology,” or
ideologies that an entire culture largely values. 79 In the case of the People in Pre-Revolutionary
France, these dormant seeds are Enlightenment ideologies that public opinion largely accepts.
Ideas such as freedom, progress, and civility were dominant in in mid- to late 18th century
France. The most fundamental and influential of the Enlightenment ideologies is that of universal
equality of men. Before the Enlightenment, there was no sense that the lower classes could have
institutionalized equality nor was there widespread belief that they should ever have it.
Equality, this seed of collectivism, despite its latency in widespread belief in the
Enlightenment, was perhaps the most volatile facet of the collectivism that was to come in the
late 1700s. Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau introduced the idea of equality to
readers who then began to accept it as a truism. In his Social Contract, Rousseau argues that the
most qualified, most experienced individuals ought to be able to be elected into political office
for the betterment of society. He maintains that elitism is a large part of the problems facing
French government. In The Social Contract, Rousseau writes, “it is the best and most natural
order for the wisest to govern the multitude, provided it is certain that they will govern for its
profit and not for their own…. More important reasons for preference are to be found in a man’s
79
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 243.
32
merit than in his wealth.”80 For the sake of the multitude, Rousseau argues, the individuals
elected to office must be worthy of election, not simply born into a family of wealth and power,
an idea that translates beyond government elections, it argues for the equality of all individuals in
positions of employment or public service, in the eyes of the law, and respect for all individuals.
Indeed Rousseau’s entire Discourse on Inequality argues totally against the inequality of men
created by society. He declares that society, “which gave new fetters to the weak and new forces
to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property and
inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few
ambitious men henceforth subjected the entire human race to labor, servitude, and misery.”81
Rousseau’s famous line in the Social Contract, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is
in chains,”82 concisely argues his belief in equality. Through the Social Contract, Rousseau
determines that for equality, mass collectivization must occur. He argues that society makes “a
master and slaves”83 out of a ruler and his people, a division he believes should not exist. In
order to “legitimately” create an equal and just society, Rousseau reasons that individuals must
give up their individual rights in order all individuals to have equal rights.84 He argues that this
can only happen through mutual agreement by members of the society, thus reasoning that
collectivization must occur in order to gain equality: “Each of us places his person and all his
power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and as one, we receive each
member as an indivisible part of the whole…. this act of association produces an artificial and
80
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ”On the Social Contract,” in The Basic Political Writings, second edition, trans. Donald A.
Cress (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 200.
81
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ”Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men,” in The Basic
Political Writings, second edition, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company,
Inc., 2011), 79.
82
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ”On the Social Contract,” in The Basic Political Writings, second edition, trans. Donald A.
Cress (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 156.
83
Ibid, 163.
84
164.
33
collective body composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which
receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life, and its will.”85
The best example of the influence and acceptance of Enlightenment ideologies such as
Rousseau’s can be seen in McGee’s second step in collectivization, the organization of
widespread truisms into that of political myth, pulling together a series of individual emotions
and ideologies into a collective identity.86 Marat and Sieyès use Rousseau’s ideas to legitimize
their own arguments. Jean-Paul Marat engages with Enlightenment-based equality in his 1774
pamphlet, The Chains of Slavery written in London to sway voters from the nobility into electing
non-incumbent parliamentary representatives. Though this piece does not refer to Revolutionary
France or France at all for that matter, Marat re-publishes it in 1793 in France in L’Ami du
Peuple using it as an argument against oppressive government in general, thereby becoming a
part of the revolutionary rhetoric.87
In The Chains of Slavery, Marat reiterates Rousseau’s belief in universal equality,
creating a collective vision by arguing against the ascriptive nature of power and wealth in
France. He does this by suggesting that France ought to evolve from an ascriptive to an
achievement-based society in order to have more qualified and experienced leaders: “Reject men
of pompous titles; among them there is little knowledge and less virtue; nay, what have they of
nobility but the name, the luxuries and the vices of it?”88 Here, Marat argues against “men of
pompous titles,” or elites, claiming that such men are not “knowledgeable” or “virtuous” simply
85
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ”On the Social Contract,” in The Basic Political Writings, second edition, trans. Donald A.
Cress (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 165.
86
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 243.
87
Rachel Hammersley, “Jean-Paul Marat’s The Chains of Slavery in Britain and France, 1774—1833,” The Historical
Journal 48, no. 3 (2005): 641.
88
Earnest Belfort Bax, Jean-Paul Marat: The People’s Friend (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1901), 68.
34
because they were born into power and wealth, but that the electors should elect individuals who
are qualified over those who inherit power. Marat’s echo of Rousseau’s belief in equality
legitimizes the argument he is poised to make, allowing him to cut deeper into the need for
collectivization for all to be equal.
In arguing for ascription, Marat creates a division between nobles and the electors,
despite their being one in the same, by arguing that the elites in Parliament are the enemy
attempting to sway the electors into voting against the will of the People by “buying” their votes.
Further drawing on Rousseau’s collective vision, Marat argues that electors must ensure the
liberty of the entire nation by casting aside the temptations of incumbents who wished to buy
their way back into power: “Behold the dismal scene arising from neglect of national interest;
…behold your country bleeding at the feet of a minister of the wounds she has received.
Gentlemen, the whole nation casts its eyes upon you for redress….”89 In this excerpt, Marat
creates a division between the electorates and members of the lower classes in the rhetoric
displayed, calling the electors “gentlemen” in charge of the fate of the “whole nation.”
However, more subtly, yet more influentially, he creates a connection between these
nobles who are the electors and those members of the Third Estate by arguing that instead of
being concerned about lining their own pockets, the electors ought to be more conscious about
their “fellow-subjects,” despite their having no personal need to vote on behalf of the Third
Estate considering the electors’ own noble status and wealth. Marat implores the electors to
understand the implications of not voting on behalf of the last Estate: “Is the age of liberty
passed away? Shall your children, bathing their chains with tears, one day say, “These are the
89
Jean Paul Marat, quoted in Earnest Belfort Bax, Jean-Paul Marat: The People’s Friend (Boston: Small, Maynard &
Company, 1901), 70.
35
fruits of the venality of our fathers?””90 Marat draws on the connection of fathers to children to
influence electors to think of themselves as parts of a whole People by arguing that they are
family. He suggests that electors hold a patriarchal responsibility to the People and argues that
the People’s well-being unifies the two different groups, connecting them on a fundamental,
familial level. He further indicates that those in the lower classes ought to matter to the voting
nobles in their decision-making as history will know the responsibilities of the nobles to the
People, just as it understands the responsibilities of a father to his children, and that the web of
the two social groups are entangled through the kinship they share. Therefore, the nobles must
come to think of themselves as members of the populace, members of the People in order to elect
the correct members of Parliament and allow for the most free and equal living for all citizens.
Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès’s January 1789 pamphlet Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? or
What is the Third Estate? argues that the Third Estate, the People, are the workhorses of the
economy of France, taking on the burden of providing for the nobles. Similar to Rousseau’s and
Marat’s ideas on freedom and an achievement-based electoral system, What is the Third Estate?
addresses these Enlightenment ideologies: “the privileged have dared to preclude the Third
Estate. “No matter how useful you are,” they said, “no matter how able you are, you can go so
far and no further.””91 In this case, Sieyès argues that individuals from the Third Estate are not
able to rise up the societal ladder, despite any qualifications or skills that they may have which
society could benefit from. He maintains that the “privileged” are ensuring that those in the
masses stay in the Third Estate. Sieyès’s belief in equality follows the same line as Rousseau and
90
Jean Paul Marat, quoted in Earnest Belfort Bax, Jean-Paul Marat: The People’s Friend (Boston: Small, Maynard &
Company, 1901), 71.
91
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 156.
36
Marat’s, showing that he too believes in and expounds this most fundamental of enlightened
ideologies which rallies individuals into the People, fighting for the common goal of equality.
Unlike Marat and Rousseau, however, Sieyès does not believe in uniting the nobles and
the People to make all equal, he instead argues that the Third Estate is the only true member of
the nation, that is, it is the only estate that is held responsible for following common laws such as
paying taxes, therefore, the People of the Third Estate ought to command the nation.92 The
nobles of the First and Second estates, Sieyès reasons, “possess privileges and exemptions”93
that those in the Third do not. Therefore, nobles should not be considered members of the French
nation as they are not true subjects to the law, therefore, not subjects to the state.
With the belief in the Third Estate’s ability to gain power as he outlines historically94,
Sieyès traces members of the Third Estate on a path from their current state of oppression to a
futuristic vision of the collective People having a legitimate participation in the government. He
does this through intepellating individuals in a manner that orients them towards action,95
channeling them through the lens of the “oppressed other,” a political myth created by advocates
arguing that the People is oppressed through its lack of political rights while also being othered
through its lack of social status. He does this in two steps, the first is distinguishing the People
from the nobles, and the second is giving the People a narrative to follow. Separation of the elites
and the People is the first act of unity that Sieyès argues must occur in order for the true People
to be realized, a collective which he already believes exists in a physical sense, already united
92
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 157.
93
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 157.
94
Ibid, 157.
95
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech
73, No. 2 (May 1987): 143.
37
because it has always been pitted against the nobility, whether or not the nobles or the People
understood their inherent opposition. Sieyès frames the nobility not just as different from the
People, but poisonous to it. He argues, “… the nobility is not part of our society at all; it may be
a burden for the nation, but it cannot be part of it.”96
Sieyès also works to structure and shape the reasons for a collective People to form
within the minds of individuals. He argues that aside from the injustices that arise from the
excessive labor of the People, that there is a culture that promotes “insult and humiliation”97 to
the People: “To avoid being completely crushed, what must the unlucky non-priviledged person
do? … he prostitutes his principles and human dignity for the possibility of claiming, in his need,
the protection of a somebody.”98 By suggesting here that the People are considered sub-human
by the aristocracy, Sieyès is inflicting sharp rhetorical stabs onto his readers, arguing that the
“strong” and “robust” People are in fact not considered people at all, giving them an identity of
the “oppressed other.”
Identifying the nobility as the cause for France’s economic, political, and social
problems, Sieyès argues through his second step of orientation to action that the People is to be
the savior of France. A true good versus evil narrative, Sieyès suggests that the People alone is
the nation,99 and as such, he suggests that instead of continuously giving the political power to
nobles as had always been the case, “we should have resorted to the extreme measure of calling
96
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 156.
97
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 158.
98
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 158.
99
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 173.
38
an extraordinary representative body. It is the nation that ought to have been consulted.”100
Sieyès’s proposal for mass decision-making by the People, specifically excluding the nobility is
indicative of his vision of the People: the People as the leader of France. He argues that freedom
will only come from the People taking the reins: “We can be free only with the People and by the
People.”101 As such, he orients them to fill in the gaps between “oppressed other” that
individuals of the Third Estate inherently are and the People that they can become as they shed
themselves of individuality and collectivize to create a strong movement with the goal of
equality and freedom for individuals.
Tailing Rousseau, Marat, and Sieyès, the National Assembly, a revolutionary group of
representatives of the Third Estate that broke apart from the Estates-General of 1789, wrote the
doctrine declaring a constitution containing laws they believed the People ought to fight for
called The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It was published just over a
month after the fall of the Bastille. By placing the article declaring equality for all at the front of
the Declaration, the National Assembly, like the advocates of equality before them, argue that
the People’s right to equality was perhaps the most significant of the seventeen articles that
defined citizen’s rights. The first article reads as follows: “Article 1. Men are born and remain
free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only on public utility.”102 In placing this
article first, the members of the National Assembly draw attention to the issue they believe to be
the most vital basic right that they believe has been taken from the People by a government that
needs massive alteration. The guarantee of individual human rights for all is a universally held
100
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 173.
101
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 167.
102
The National Assembly, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, quoted in The Old Regime and the
French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 238.
39
individual belief that the National Assembly understands is agreeable and defendable by all
individuals willing to become a part of a collective uprising. By addressing the need for rights,
the National Assembly is, by extent, addressing the lack of rights that currently exist for the
“oppressed other.” Therefore, the use of such a right as the first, most basic of the listed rights,
placed front and center in the Declaration is in their best interest to unite individuals and mold
them into a People that is willing to fight for, if nothing else, basic individual rights.
Likewise, Marat’s style of rhetoric calls the People into being by acknowledging the
oppression of the individuals who were to become the People. He claims that the People are
“injured” and that they have been taken advantage of by princes, parliament members, and
government officials for years:
“Gentlemen, the present Parliament by law must soon expire; and no dissolution was ever
more earnestly wished for by an injured people. Your most sacred rights have been
flagrantly violated by your representative, your remonstrances to the throne artfully
rejected, yourselves treated like a handful of disaffected persons, and your complaints
silenced by pursuing the same conduct which raised them.”103
Here, Marat uses divisive and impassioned language to drive a wedge between members of the
Third Estate and their government, a common thread found in revolutionary texts. By loosening
respect and trust in the government, Marat then can remarry individuals to the only societal
institution he deems to be pure of intention and morality: the People, another Rousseauian
ideology that adds to the narrative of the “oppressed other.” Marat argues that the government
which exists to protect individual rights is unwilling to work with and for the people, making the
oppression something that is nearly impractical to push against unless there is a cohesion
amongst individuals, organizing them into the collective “oppressed other,” who he calls, the
People, collectively searching for their individual freedoms.
103
Earnest Belfort Bax, Jean-Paul Marat: The People’s Friend (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1901), 67.
40
ORIENTATION TO ACTION: REDEMPTION OF ANCESTORS
As Maurice Charland discusses interpellation, he argues that part of the reasoning behind
almost half of Quebec’s population’s vote for independence from Canada was due to the White
Papers’ use of “transhistorical” narrative to unite the Quebecois. He argued that pride in
individuals heritage and ancestry led to a wide spread acceptance of arbitrary difference by
identifying the Quebecois as a people historically different from Canadians. The Quebecois were
interpellated as people whose ancestors had been all connected not just through geography, but
through similar values, experiences, and ideologies.
In 1789 France, Sieyes differs from the White Papers’s transhistorical interpellation of
nostalgia onto the Quebecois. He does this through arguing that the People must stand up for
themselves as their ancestors attempted but failed to do, continuing the narrative of the
“oppressed other” as one that was too weak in the face of nobles to win its freedom. Unlike the
White Papers, this is not a positive association between those that living and their ancestors, but
it is a redemptive association, one that orients individuals to action by identifying them as the
heroes of French history. In What is the Third Estate, Sieyes argues that the People ought to
deviate from the history of the French lower classes, arguing that the People can be more
successful than their predecessors: “During the long night of feudal barbarism, it was possible to
destroy the true relations between men, to turn all concepts upside down, and to corrupt all
justice; but, as day dawns, so gothic absurdities must fly and the remnants of ancient ferocity
collapse and disappear.” Though different from the collectivism of a people united by their
heritage on the basis of pride as in the case of the Quebecois, Sieyes still unites the People
through their ancestral history through a desire for redemption leading to an orientation to act on
41
behalf of their ancestors. This act interpellates individuals to act as “agents” 104 for the cause of
the collective by placing them into a narrative of the history of France, identifying them as the
heroes of dozens of generations of failed ancestors, ending forever the notion of the People as the
“oppressed other.”
SECULAR RELIGION
With the decline of religion ultimately leading to the development of Enlightenment
ideas, as discussed in chapter two, those who were oppressed by society now needed a new faith
that was rooted in both the tangible world, stemming from enlightened ideology of fact and
science, while also filling the void of a missing mysticism and religiousness that the Church had
left behind. In order to fill that gap, advocates presented to individuals who understood
themselves as the “oppressed other” or further, as members of the People, a new religion that
was that collective. This allowed individuals to become even more invested in the cause,
understanding it not just as a mission for personal equality, but as a larger mission for all.
The rhetoric used by Marat expresses this secular religiosity in a passage previously
examined from The Chains of Slavery on page ten (“Your most sacred rights have been
flagrantly violated by your representative…”), arguing that the People’s rights are entirely
“sacred,” implying that they not only are immensely important to the structure of a government,
but that they have a tradition of importance within England’s governmental system.
“Sacredness” also suggests that “violation” of such rights is nearly as horrible as committing
sacrilege, therefore arguing that those in power are essentially evil foils acting against the
virtuous People, again applying the idea of the “oppressed other” to the People. This creates a
104
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech
73, No. 2 (May 1987): 143.
42
simple yet divisive narrative of villain versus hero in the minds of readers, suggesting that
ultimately, the People must triumph over the government. The virtuousness of the People also
hails back to Rousseauian and Enlightenment theory which argues that individuals are good until
they are corrupted by society.
105
Similarly, the National Assembly’s August 1789
edition of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen exudes religious symbolism (pictured left). Ten
Commandment-like in appearance, the Declaration shows
Lady Liberty releasing herself from her shackles on the left
side of the two tablets declaring the rights of individuals. On
the right, an angel sits, casting the all-seeing masonic eye,
over the Declaration, suggesting that God is in favor of the
People of France. Like Marat, the National Assembly is
making the ideas of the Revolution sacred, informing individuals that giving up their
individuality to the larger cause, the People, will produce a safety for them just as the Church
preaches safety under God. This is not to say that individuals attend regular revolts on Sundays
or read the “Word” of the National Assembly nightly, but that this kind cause formed a collective
that was tightly knit and well-unified because of the near sacredness of the cause that individuals
became a part of through the promise of a better life. The secular religion of the “oppressed
other,” of the People, gave it the durability that would influence doubters and retain the
connection of individuals to the People.
105
Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789, Musée
Carnavalet, Paris.
43
McGee’s third step of collectivism, the step in which the People comes into being in an
“objective way”106 and individuals begin to act as a collective in a manner reflecting the political
myths impressed upon them. For example, Sieyès’s rhetoric was embraced by the People. His
pamphlet What is the Third Estate? which was published just months before the start of the
Revolution was widely read and became one of the most influential, foundational pieces of
literature that subsequently influenced the ideologies of the Revolution107. Sieyès who was at the
time, a vicar-general in the diocese of Chartres, was soon after this pamphlet’s release, elected
deputy of the Third Estate of Paris due to the popularity of his ideas.108 He had great influence on
the agenda of the Third Estate within the Estates-General as well as helping to develop the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 which became the creed of the
People for the revolutionaries and influenced the French Constitution today.
As mentioned, Marat in his later 1789 writings breaks away from arguing to repair the
various branches of government in France at the time and begins to argue directly for the
physical action of the People to begin to develop in France. He is able to incite action because of
the following he had in his newspaper L’Ami du Peuple and because of his prior interpellations
of the People, mentioned previously as well, in which he created a movement, stirring up
feelings of anger and directing it towards the monarchy. Uniquely, the effects of Marat’s ideas,
once published in L’Ami du Peuple were almost immediately detectable due to the nature of
newspapers and the continuousness of incensed crowds ready to take action. For example, the
106
Michael Calvin McGee, “In Search of the People: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61,
no. 3 (October 1975): 243.
107
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 154.
108
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate, quoted in The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 154.
44
day before the Women’s March on Versailles, Marat wrote the following in his newspaper on
October 4, 1789:
“… there is not a moment to lose; all the good citizens must assemble in arms to send a
large squad to remove all the powder from Essone. Every district must withdraw its
cannons from the Hotel de Ville. The National Militia is not so deprived of good sense to
realize that it must never be separated from the rest of its fellow citizens and that, far
from obeying its leaders, if they forget themselves to the point that they give orders
hostile [to the revolution], it must take care of them. Finally if the danger becomes too
great, it’s all over for us if the people do not name a tribunal and if they do not arm it
with the means to carry out the will of the people.”109
In this passage, there is an intense sense of fear of the government that Marat creates in a long
line of his texts which aim to inculcate not simply ideas of revolt, but of action against the
government into the People. After months of perpetuating the interpellation of individuals as the
“oppressed other,” Marat goads the revolutionaries along, now calling on the People as a weapon
of revolt in his newspaper. The very next day that the above mentioned paper was published,
thousands of people marched on Versailles to bring Louis into Paris in order to keep him under
watchful eyes, showing that Marat’s collectivist rhetoric did indeed have a real influence in
drawing individuals into the People, now not just believing in the myth of the “oppressed other,”
but acting on it.
Three years later, in Marat-style, this incendiary rhetoric, one of the most violent to this
date to be published argues for the execution of military officers without trial. He reasons that
the severity of such an act is necessary due to the irreparable crimes they have committed against
the People. On August 19, 1792, he writes in L’Ami du Peuple:
“But what is the duty of the people?... The last option, which is the most sure and the
most wise, is to go into the Abbaye armed, extract the traitors, especially the Swiss
109
Marat quoted in Kiri D. Johnson, "Revolutionary Events: Jean-Paul Marat and His Role" (2012), Honors Theses.
Paper 2047, 26.
45
Guards and their accomplices, and pass them through with a sword. What madness to
want to hold their trials! It’s all done; you have caught them, arms in hand against the
fatherland, you have massacred the soldiers, why spare their officers, [who are]
incomparably more guilty?... It is the traitors should have been killed on the spot, for
there can never be any other view of them.”110
The two weeks following this publication were full of killings on the streets of these Swiss
Guards by crowds.111 Revolt, being almost inherently violent at the time, was frequently
peppered with deaths. However, to have such a steady stream of outright murders demonstrates
that the revolution for many in France was rooted deeply in their psyche, showing a strong
devotion of individuals to the People that was fostered through the spread revolutionary rhetoric.
Each advocate of the People and of the myth of the “oppressed other” mentioned in this
chapter had his/its own influence that oriented individuals into unifiying acting on behalf of such
a myth. Indeed, a vast ocean of other revolutionary texts, not to mention the spread of mouth
which was an incredibly popular method of dispersing ideas during this era, influenced
individuals into becoming the People. As the rhetoric advanced through its stages of
collectivization, slowly engulfing the citizens who were predisposed to the belief that they too fit
into the identity of the “oppressed other,” individuals were able to see a future dangled before
them through the People, one that provided them and their children the freedom and equality that
perhaps they hadn’t known before was missing from their personal rights. Eventually, this then
led to a realizing of this collective and a manifestation of the People as crowds revolted in the
streets of France, fighting for what advocates such as Marat, Sieyès, and the National Assembly
argued was the purpose of their revolt. As time progressed, these advocates and their texts
became more and more radicalized, eventually leading to the Reign of Terror in 1793 and the
110
Marat quoted in Kiri D. Johnson, "Revolutionary Events: Jean-Paul Marat and His Role" (2012), Honors Theses.
Paper 2047, 32.
111
Ibid.
46
rise of different advocates such as Maximilien Robespierre creating a new vision of the People as
mandatory revolutionaries. Thus, the rhetoric of the People of the 1789 French Revolution began
to decay, completing McGee’s steps of collectivization.
47
Conclusion
The analysis of the texts I have chosen from Pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary France
offers an important understanding of how and why people collectivize. It shows that the
individuals who do so are not simply cattle herded into revolting against the state through
incendiary rhetoric, but that the advocates who wish to enact this kind of collectivism must do so
in a manner that acknowledges and makes use of the preexisting concerns and desires of the
majority of individuals within a society. This type of rhetoric must be skillfully articulated,
carefully grown starting from ideas that most individuals agree with, in this case, that all people
should have rights, to something that may logically follow, that people without rights are
oppressed, and finally allowing the rhetoric to blossom into an idea more radical, that individuals
must give up their personal identities to create a collective movement that will obtain those
rights. This analysis shows a delicate process that ought not be rushed into, but instead eased
into, with each step that is created by advocates seeming logical to those interpellated throughout
this process so as not to appear too radical.
This kind of study is applicable to any kind of movement or collective identity
throughout any time period. It is a vital study to understanding individuals and their motives as
well as those advocates and their motives. Without such knowledge, a People cannot be
understood as fully as possible. It is important not only to the field of communication which
works to understand perspective and influence, but I believe it ought to be more often used in the
study of historical texts. By understanding a People, an entire society’s actions are then
understood which is invaluable to the examination of the past. Studying the rise of Robespierre
and the Reign of Terror through its constitutive rhetoric, for example, would be incredibly
48
valuable to understanding how an entire populace can become intrigued by the mass killings of
heads of state, and later, grow weary and afraid of this terror.
In examining a new set of texts in a new era, I would be more particular of whose
writings I initially examined and why I examined them. In this particular project, I feel as though
I chose a fairly representative group of texts that showcase revolutionary writing by choosing a
large group of texts and narrowing my scope down to the most important, most representative
ones. However, had I more time, I would have liked to have translated more texts, particularly
Marat’s 62 page pamphlet L’Offrande à la Patrie in which he argues that the People are being
mistreated by the state and they ought to act against it. Another limitation of this project aside
from a small selection of texts is the small selection of advocates I chose to study. As mentioned,
I found these texts to be both extremely influential in the Revolution as well as reflective of the
other texts that were being published at this time, however, having a wider scope of advocates
may have facilitated more interesting connections between writers. Lastly in terms of limitations,
the process of finding texts that were translated from the 1789 French was perhaps the most
difficult leg of this project. With only four years of high school French and one in college, I am
not by any means an expert translator. I have translated a few simple phrases throughout this
project, but certainly a richer education in the French language would have made this project
much more detailed.
Finally, I believe my project has many strengths to it from the many years of French
history that I have taken both in high school and at Allegheny. I walked into this project with an
already fairly sufficient grasp on French history, particularly from medieval France to modern
France. As such, this project contains many connections to older history and ties in with the
history that was to follow the French Revolution. I believe that this project is a fine culmination
49
of my studies here, and that it truly unearths the People and does individuals within French
society at that time justice in explaining their motives.
50
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