Economia

6.2 French Revolution and Industrial Revolution.

Inflamed by their poverty and hatred of wealth, the SANS-CULOTTES insisted that it was the duty of the government to guarantee them the right to existence. Such a policy ran counter to the bourgeois aspirations of the National Assembly. The sans-culottes demanded that the revolutionary government immediately increase wages, fix prices, end foodshortages, punish hoarders and most important, deal with the existence of counter-revolutionaries. In terms of social ideals the sans-culottes wanted laws to prevent extremes of both wealth and property.

Their vision was of a nation of small shopkeepers and small farmers. They favored a democratic republic in which the voice of the common man could be heard. In this respect, their ideologyfalls into line with that of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the English radical who argued that the best form of government was the one which governed least: government should guarantee basic natural rights and then lay off the. In other words, and this is important to grasp, the social and economic ideas of the sans-culottes were politicized by the Revolution itself.

On AUGUST 10, 1792, enragedParisian men and women attacked the king’s palace and killed several hundred Swiss Guards. The result of this journee was the radicalization of the Revolution. The royal family was placed under house arrest, but the king could not perform any of his political functions. Although the revolutionaries had drafted a constitution, now they had no monarch.

By September, Paris was in turmoil. Fearingcounter-revolution, the sans-culottes destroyed prisons because they believed they were secretly sheltering conspirators. Street fights broke out everywhere and barricades were set up in various quarters of the city. On September 21st and 22nd, 1792, the monarchy was officially abolished and a republic established. The 22nd of September, 1792 was now known as day one of the year one. In December, LouisXVI was placed on TRIAL for violating the liberty of his subjects and on January 21, 1793, Louis was executed like an ordinary criminal.

After the execution of Louis, the National Assembly, now known as the National Convention, faced enormous problems. The value of paper currency (assignats) used to finance the Revolution had fallen by 50%. There was price inflation, continued food shortages,and various peasant rebellions against the Revolution occurred across the countryside. France was close to civil war.

Meanwhile, the revolutionaries found themselves not only at war with Austria and Prussia, but with Holland, Spain and Great Britain. As the Revolution stumbled under the weight of foreign war and civil war, the revolutionary leadership grew more radical. Up to June 1793,moderate reformers had dominated the National Convention. These were the Girondins, men who favored a decentralized government in which the various provinces or departments would determine their own affairs. The Girondins also opposed government interference in the economy.

In June 1793, factional disputes with the Convention resulted in the replacement of the Girondins with the Jacobins, a far moreradical group. The Jacobins and Girondins were both liberal and bourgeois, but the Jacobins desired a centralized government (in which they would hold key positions), Paris as the national capital, and temporary government control of the economy. The Jacobin platform managed to win the support of the sans-culottes.

The Jacobins now had firm control not only of the Convention, but the Frenchnation as well. They were the government. And they now had even more pressing problems: civil war was everywhere, economic distress had not been lifted, they had to keep the sans-culottes satisfied, they suffered continued threats of foreign invasion and the nation’s ports had all been blockaded. They lived, dreading the possibility that if they failed, so too would the Revolution. Only strong...