The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 / And the Causes Which Led to That Event

by Alexis de Tocqueville

Wherever the three Orders combined in opposition, the clergy made their appearance. Usually the Bishop spoke little, but he took the chair which was offered him. The famous meeting at Romans, that which protested with the greatest violence against the Edicts of May, was alternately presided over by the Archbishop of Narbonne and the Archbishop of Vienne.[118]

Generally speaking, parish priests were seen at all the meetings of the Orders, where they took a lively and direct part in the debates.

At the outset of the struggle the middle classes had shown themselves timid and irresolute. Yet it was on those classes especially that the Government had relied for consolation in its distress, and for aid without abandoning its ancient prerogatives: the propositions of the Government had been framed with peculiar regard to the interests of the middle classes and to their passions. Long habituated to obedience, they did not engage without apprehension in a course of resistance. Their opposition was tempered with caution. They still flattered the power to which they were opposed, and acknowledged its rights while they contested the use of them. They seemed partly seduced by its favours, and ready to yield to the Government, provided some share of government were bestowed on themselves. Even when they appeared to direct, the middle classes never ventured to walk alone; impelled by an internal heat which they did not care to show, they sought rather to turn the passions of the upper classes to their own advantage than to increase the violence of them. But as the struggle was prolonged the bourgeoisie became more excited, more animated, more bold, until it outstripped the other classes, assumed the leading part and kept it, until the People appeared upon the stage.

At this period of the contest not a trace is to be seen of a war of classes. ‘All the Orders,’ said the Parliament of Toulouse, ‘breathe nothing but concord, and their only ambition is to promote the common happiness.’

A man, then unknown, but who afterwards became celebrated for his talents and for his misfortunes, Barnave, in a paper written in defence of the Tiers-État pointed out this agreement of the three Orders, and exclaimed, with the enthusiasm of the time, ‘Ministers of religion! you obtained from the reverence of our forefathers the right to form among yourselves the first Order of the State; you are an integral part of the French Constitution, and you ought to maintain it. And you, illustrious families! the monarchy has never ceased to flourish under your protection; you created it at the cost of your blood, you have many times saved it from the foreigner; save it now from internal enemies. Secure to your children the splendid benefits your fathers have handed down to you; the name of hero is not honoured under a servile sky.’[119]

These sentiments might be sincere; one sole passion paramount to other passions pervaded all classes, namely, a spirit of resistance to the Government as the common enemy, a spirit of opposition throughout, in small as well as in great affairs, which struck at everything, and assumed all shapes, even those which disfigured it. Some, in order to resist the Government, laid stress on what remained of old local franchises. Here a man stood up for some old privilege of his class, some secular right of his calling or his corporation; there, another man, forgetting his grievances and animosity against the privileged classes, denounced an edict which, he said, would reduce to nothing the seignorial jurisdictions, and would thus strip the nobles of all the dignity of their fiefs.

In this violent struggle every man grasped, as if by chance, the weapon nearest at hand, even when it was the least suited to him. If one took note of all the privileges, all the exclusive rights, all the old municipal and provincial franchises which were at this epoch claimed, asserted, and loudly demanded, the picture would be at once very exact and very deceptive; it would appear as if the object of the impending Revolution was not to destroy, but to restore, the old order of society. So difficult is it for the individuals who are carried along by one of the great movements of human society to distinguish the true motive power amongst the causes by which they are themselves impelled. Who would have imagined that the impulse which caused so many traditional rights to be asserted was the very passion which was leading irresistibly to their entire abolition?[120]

Now let us close our ears for a moment to these tumultuous sounds, proceeding from the middle and upper classes of the nation, to catch, if we may, some whisper beginning to make itself heard from the midst of the People. No sign that I can discover from this distance of time announced that the rural population was at all agitated. The peasant plodded onwards in his wonted track. That vast section of the nation was still neutral, and, as it were, unseen.[121]

Even in the towns the people remained a stranger to the excitement of the upper classes, and indifferent to the stir which was going on above its head. They listen; they watch, with some surprise, but with more curiosity than anger. But no sooner did the agitation make itself felt among them than it was found to have assumed a new character. When the magistrates re-entered Paris in triumph, the people, which had done nothing to defend these members of Parliament, arrested in their places, gathered together tumultuously to hail their return.