Daily Life During the French Revolution (46 page)

Cahiers de Doléances—
Lists of grievances drawn up in early 1789
in specially convened meetings of citizens in regional districts and cities and
representatives of each of the three orders of the Estates. They exposed
problems inherent in the political and social system that could be acted upon
by the deputies elected to the Estates-General.

Certificat de Civisme —
Documentary proof of civic virtue and
revolutionary purity; generally demanded of applicants before employment could
be obtained in the Paris sections during the Terror. The documents were issued
first by the municipality and then by the surveillance committees. Denial of a
certificat
meant that one was suspected of antirevolutionary thoughts or activities. Their
issuance came to an end after the Terror.

Champ de Mars—
Originally the main military parade ground of Paris on the
left bank of the river Seine (the Eiffel Tower stands today at one end of it.)
Site of the Festival of Federation on the anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille and the massacre of July 17, 1791.

Committee of General Security—
A body charged by the Convention with
surveillance of state security throughout the country, issuance of passports,
and prosecution of foreign agents and counterfeiters. Essentially a police
committee, it was second in power only to the Committee of Public Safety, and
the functions of the two committees overlapped somewhat. It oversaw
revolutionary justice.

Committee of Public Safety —
The more important of the two leading
government committees of year II (1793) (see Committee of General Security);
responsible for both internal and external affairs. Its powers overlapped those
of the Committee of General Security in police and judicial matters. Consisting
of a dozen members, it functioned as the executive power of government from
April 1793 to October 1795 and was presided over by Robespierre during the
period of the Terror.

Constituent Assembly—
A body made up of members of the Third
Estate and their noble and clerical allies of the Estates-General. It drafted a
constitution and acted as a provisional legislature from 1789 through 1791.

Convention—
The National Convention, a revolutionary single-chamber
parlement elected in September 1792 to write a constitution following the
downfall of the monarchy. The 745 deputies were divided between Girondins and
the more radical Montagnards, with a large number of uncommitted members (the
Plain) in between. It remained in session until October 1795.

Cordeliers—
The ultra-revolutionary club of the Cordeliers, founded in
April–May 1790 under the leadership of Danton, Marat, Hébert, and Ronsin,
attracted many members because of the low dues (two sous per month) and its
radical rhetoric. It also welcomed women to its meetings, which were each
attended by about 400 people. Hebert’s newspaper
Père Duchesne
became
its mouthpiece. It lost power and influence after the Terror and was
discredited and closed in March 1794.

Corvée—
Unpaid work on land or roads or aid given to troops by peasants
for a specified number of days each year. The corvée was a kind of royal tax
paid in manual labor to the government. It was abolished in 1790.

Council of Ancients—
Made up of 250 married or widowed men,
priests excluded; all were over 40 years of age. It served as the upper house
of the legislature during the Directory. Members could accept motions of the
Five Hundred, which would then become law, or veto them. Members were elected
for three-year terms, one-third of which were renewable every year.

Council of Five Hundred —
Made up of 500 members, it and the Council
of the Ancients served as the legislative branch of government during the
Directory. Created by the constitution of 1795, it served as the lower house of
the bicameral legislature. Members served three-year terms, with one-third of
the seats renewed each year. The council had the power to initiate laws, which
then had to be approved by the Council of Ancients. Stability in government was
not achieved, however.

De-Christianization—
General government policy of eliminating
Christianity by defrocking priests, closing churches, and instituting the
worship of the secular abstractions of reason and a supreme being. See Deism.

Deism—
Deists held the view that religious knowledge or natural religion
is either inherent in each person or accessible through the exercise of reason.
They denied the validity of religious claims based on revelation or on the
church teachings.

Dîme—
Tithe collected by the Catholic Church for its own uses under the
old regime. Levied on peasants, mainly on their crops or animals, or both, it
varied from region to region and according to the type of crop or animal but
could be anywhere from 8 to 20 percent. Abolished in 1790.

Directory—
A board of five directors chosen by the Council of Five
Hundred and approved by the Council of Ancients as authorized by the
Constitution of 1795 to serve as the executive branch of government. It was in
power from October 26, 1795, to November 10, 1799, and was supposed to be a
safeguard against dictatorship.

Émigrés—
Anti-revolutionists, mostly aristocrats, who went into exile
outside France and plotted against the revolutionary government. They numbered
about 150,000.

Estates—
The three orders of society:
clergy, nobles, and commons.

Estates-General—
The consultative assembly summoned by
Louis XVI in 1789 to consider taxation and government debt. It consisted of
deputies from the three estates. They met at Versailles in May 1789, in a
session attended by 1,139 delegates, of whom 291 were clergy, 270 were
aristocrats, and 578 were commoners.

Farmers General—
A company of financiers, 40 to 60 men,
under the old regime who paid the crown a specified sum in return for which
they were granted the right to collect taxes—by force if necessary.

Faubourgs—
Suburbs once outside the walls of Paris but within the city
limits by the time of the revolution. The two most famous at the time of the
revolution were Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marcel. They were mostly working-class
districts and strongholds of the sans-culottes. Saint-Antoine, located east of
the Bastille, accounted for about 70 percent of the besiegers of the Bastille.
Saint-Marcel, situated on the left bank of the Seine in the southeast section
of the city, included the many tanneries and dye shops along the Bièvre stream
and was the poorer of the two.

Federalist Revolt—
Reacting to the proscription of Girondin
deputies from the National Convention in June 1793, 13 departments began
resisting the Montagnard leadership in the Convention. The revolt centered
around Bordeaux, Caen, Lyon, and Marseille. These cities withdrew recognition
of the Convention in Paris and all decrees issued after May 31, 1793. They
called on their citizens to march on Paris and restore the deputies. The revolt
failed. The struggle was fundamentally about the provincial cities’ reaction to
the hegemony of Paris, but the rebellions were crushed by government troops.
Lyon held out for two months, and 1,900 rebels were executed.

Fédérés—
Citizen soldiers, mostly National Guards, who came to Paris from
the provinces for the Festival of the Federation in July 1790, and again on
July 14, 1792. Many were from Marseille and participated in the uprising of
August 10, 1792. Some returned home, and others went to join the regular army
at the front.

Feuillants—
Constitutional monarchist deputies and journalists who
split off from the Jacobins over moves to depose Louis XVI after the flight to
Varennes in June 1791. They formed their own club, named after the monastery in
which they met. Resurgent Jacobins forced their decline and closure by the end
of 1791.

Girondins—
Left-wing deputies,
mostly from the
Gironde, in southwest France, in the Legislative Assembly. They were one of the
two major factions in the National Convention (along with the Montagnards);
they opposed, and were largely eliminated by, the Jacobins in 1793.

Hébertists—
Followers of Hébert, a writer turned revolutionary who was
a prominent member of the Cordelier club. Anti-Christian, his followers turned
several thousand churches, including Nôtre Dame, into temples of reason.
Falling afoul of Robespierre, Hébert was guillotined on March 24, 1794.

Hospitals—
Before 1789, hospitals served the poor and were funded by
the Catholic Church. Eventually the state took them over and tried to create a
welfare system. There was never enough money to maintain them, and by 1793 they
were in bad condition. Local authorities who distributed funds to hospitals
were always short of money. While all French people were guaranteed free
medical care, the declining value of assignats and the continuous wars led to
overcrowding and a shortage of funds.

Hôtel de Ville—
City hall.

Hôtel-Dieu—
General hospital.

Jacobins—
Paris revolutionary popular club that met in a former Jacobin
(Dominican) monastery, the primary center of increasingly left-wing
discussions. Jacobean clubs, the most important of the popular societies, were
also located in the provinces. Members were mostly middle-class professionals;
they numbered about 1,000 in 1790, but membership more than doubled the
following year, There were about 934 such clubs around the country by July
1791. The Jacobins rose to political dominance in Paris and in some provincial
cities. Because of its association with the policies of the Terror, the Paris
club was ordered closed by the Convention on November 12, 1794.

l’Ami du Peuple
—
(Friend of the people) The popular
newspaper put out by Marat for Parisian readers, mostly sans-culottes, printed
scandals and articles on conspiracies against the revolution and attacked the
king and his ministers, the deputies of the Assembly (of which he became a
member), and any perceived treason to the revolutionary cause. Marat rallied
against the Girondins and was considered responsible for the September
massacres, of which he approved.

Legislative Assembly—
Single-chamber parlement elected under the
constitutional monarchy, 1791–1792, that ended with the declaration of the
French Republic.

Lettres de Cachet—
Sealed orders by which the king could
incarcerate or exile anyone without charges or trial. Voltaire was a victim of
such a
lettre
and was imprisoned in the Bastille. The
lettres
were
abolished by the Constituent Assembly in January 1790.

Levée en Masse—
Mobilization of the nation’s total
manpower and material resources for war; issued on August 23, 1793.

Liberty Tree—
An early and enduring symbol of the revolution, the liberty
tree grew out of the ritual of the maypole at the time of spring planting but,
as a living tree, came to represent regeneration. It could be any kind of hardy
tree and was present at all revolutionary festivals. Under the Terror, it
became a capital offense to cut one down.

Lit de Justice—
Royal session of the Paris parlement at
which the king presided to force acceptance of his edicts.

Livre—
Unit of weight and a unit of
monetary value. See Money.

Maximum—
Laws of May 1793 that fixed the price of grain and of September
1793 that did the same for the price of basic foods, such as bread. The part of
the law that covered fixed wages was never rigorously imposed.

Métayage—
Share cropping, most widespread in the south; the farmer usually
split his crop equally with the landowner.

Money—
There were 12 deniers in a sou and 20 sous in a livre. The louis
d’or was a gold coin first struck in 1640 and issued until the revolution. The
franc was established as the national currency in 1795 as a decimal unit, and
in 1796 it was set at about 1 livre 3 deniers. It contained 4.5 grams of fine
silver and was made up of 100 centimes. A 20-franc gold piece was issued after
the revolution.

Montagnards—
Occupying the highest seats at the National Convention, the
Montagnards (the men of the mountain) were the primary faction that opposed the
Girondins. Estimates of the number of Montagnards (often referred to as
Jacobins, since most were members of the Jacobin club) vary considerably, from
135 to 270. They were supported by a strong base in Paris and by the
sans-culottes. Of the 24 deputies elected from Paris, 21 sat on the mountain.
They came to dominate the Convention but lost influence with the demise of
Robespierre.

Muscadins—
Anti-Jacobin youth from upper-middle-class families. They
wore flamboyant clothes of the earlier court style and reacted to the Terror
after the fall of Robespierre by smashing busts of Marat and violently
attacking former supporters of Robespierre and the Terror. They were repressed
when their usefulness against former radicals was over.